The Engineer

via Wikimedia

I lay in my bedroom, the space I occupied in a rented portion of a house in posh Vasant Kunj in New Delhi. It was dark because I had switched off the lights. The AC was whirring at the window. It was Friday night and I had just returned after watching a movie, B.A. Pass. Life, which had seemed utterly hopeless until yesterday, looked full of possibilities.

Though the movie genre was advertised as film noir, to me it seemed film clair or film blanc. It threw floodlight on Delhi women. For a while, I browsed the FB profiles of lots of aunties and decided to stop chasing that office colleague, who showed a lot of bhav. Loved, loved, loved the movie! Sarika Aunty was fab—bold and beautiful. Why, in the beginning she absolutely resembled Savita Bhabhi. What a coincidence that the aunty who lived two houses away on the opposite side of the road was named Sarita. But I corrected myself that I shouldn't call her aunty, as I wasn't a student anymore. Should I call her bhabhiji? Sounded old-fashioned, so I decided to stick to Sarita ji.

I had seen Sarita ji many times from a distance with her two school-going kids tagging behind her, but had met her in person only a few days ago at a get-together at another neighbor's house. While all the other aunties were busy exchanging notes on clothes and jewelry, she was kind enough to inquire about my well-being. I really liked her sophisticated way of carrying herself. She gulped plate after plate, but gave the illusion of eating like a bird. Her elegant sari covered all the bulges, and my eyes couldn't go past her bejeweled hands and face. She kept arranging her hair that covered both sides of her face with the white tips of her fingernails.

Once I tried to move away from her, but the enigmatic smell of her perfume pulled me back and I found myself in her company for the rest of the evening. Why, she was greatly impressed that I was an engineer. I supposed her husband was a businessman until she introduced him to me, saying, "He is also an engineer, but is useless at home." Her motherly admonitions in flirtatious voice completely enamored me.

And then in the coming days we kept on crossing our paths. One day, we were face to face at our Mother Dairy's vegetable store. She taught me how to pick tender bhindis and solid tomatoes and asked me to drop by for tea any day.

So the next day after watching B.A. Pass, I went for tea to her house and there was no looking back. It became my daily routine to stop at her place after work before coming home. When I hit the sack at night, my whole body would ache and my hands bruised and fingers sore. Even then, I looked forward to visiting her. I was an electronics engineer, but she made me fix many of her electrical appliances, from toaster to ceiling fan, all the while saying that her husband was a useless engineer. I even fixed her leaking toilet flush, and then a fallen curtain rod, and then a broken chair, the list is endless. I sharpened her knives and scissors. In the process got cuts and bruises on my hands. And then she also asked me to help her son with his math homework.

On the fifth day, I was exhausted, so I came straight home after work, and was embedded in my bed when I heard Sarita Aunty's son asking, "Is Bhaiyya there?"

I told Chhotu, the teenage boy who came to clean my room, to tell him that I was not at home. Chhotu made him go away and then entered the room saying, "You should keep away from that aunty. She calls everyone bhaiyya and makes them work for free. The previous tenant was fired from his job because he bunked office and spent a week decorating the aunty's house for her son's birthday party."

The next day, I saw her at Mother Dairy. Although I thought I avoided her successfully, I overheard her complaining to someone, "There's something in the grain of our home. Even the dogs that eat our rotis become unfaithful."

Related:
Wikipedia: 2013 Movie  B.A. Pass
Google Books: The story on which the movie is based: The Railway Aunty by Mohan Sikka
Open Magazine: The story behind the story: Coming Out In Celluloid by Mohan Sikka