There is
a reason why, in this day and age, there are so few ghosts in Bunglistan.
**************************************************************************
“It eej,” Bhola Babu said, “not poseebool to leebh weeth thees woman.”
Of
course he did not say it aloud. “This woman”, that is to say his wife, would
skin him alive if he summoned the courage to utter such a sentiment in her
hearing. He didn’t even dare mutter it under his breath, in case she saw his
lips move and demand to know what he was saying. So he had to content himself
with saying it inside his head to himself, and even then he could not summon
the boldness to shout it, but kept it to a whisper.
It wasn’t enough. His wife, who had been berating him from the kitchen,
stuck her head out of the door and glared at him.
Bhola Babu’s wife’s name was Opurboshundori. Everyone, of course, called
her Futki Boudi. She had the voice of a dysfunctional cement mixer, the skin of
a coconut, and the build of a sumo wrestler. When she walked the walls shook.
When she spoke the paint flaked off the ceiling. And as for her face, well,
mirrors wished they could jump off the walls and take to their heels. Not being
able to do that, they settled for committing suicide by falling on the floor
instead.
“Hwat are you saying?” she demanded now. “I know you are geebhing me bad
waards. Don’t try too deny eet.”
Bhola Babu looked at her, and suddenly decided enough was enough. “I
am,” he said with as much dignity as he could muster, reaching for his long
umbrella, “going out. I habh waark to do.”
“Hwat waark?” his wife replied suspiciously. “You habh no waark at thees
time of night.”
“Shomoresh Babu,” Bhola Babu said, inventing desperately, “asked me too
teech heej saan how too do erithmetic. You know tha boy hej felled heej
ekjamination for tha laast two yearj.”
“Eef you are going out,” Futki Boudi told him, “don’t forget too weyaar
your maask, or elj you weel bee stopped by the pulish. And breeng back one
keelo obh feesh from tha maarket. Bee sure that eet eej not rotten and smelly
thees time.”
“Eet waj not rotten and smelly laast time,” Bhola Babu whispered to
himself resentfully in his head, tying on the cloth mask as loosely as possible.
“You ate eet all and gabhe me not a beet. And hwaile eating eet you kept
shouting at me that eej waj rotten.” But he knew, once again, that he’d not dare
say a syllable of it aloud.
Bhola Babu’s real name, or, as he said, his “good name”, was
Gyanendrochondro Ghoshal. He had been named by a grandmother who had decided
that it would be a “mouth filling name”. And that was apparently the last time
anything had filled his mouth, because he was as short, skinny, and balding as
his wife was big, obese, and hirsute. And his station in life had kept in
accordance with his appearance, for he was still, as he had been twenty years
before, a lower division clerk in an insurance office.
That had not stopped Bhola Babu from dreaming big dreams, though. “Eef
only I could get reed obh thees woman,” he had often thought to himself, “I
could become reech and famous. At least I could get promotion too aapaar deebheeshon
claark or eebhen an ofeesaar.”
But that had been back when Bhola Babu still could have some time off
from his wife; he could go to work every day and his wife went back to her
parents’ house at least a couple of times a year for a visit. Now he hadn’t
gone to work in months; his office was closed off in a containment area, and
his wife couldn’t go to visit her parents either. It was driving him out of his
mind.
“Eet eej tha fault obh theej Chaineej,” Bhola Babu told his friend
Nobeen Babu, whom he met in the street outside Shopon Dotto’s Calcutta Sweets
Shop. Nobeen Babu, whose “good name” was Troilokkonath Mojoomdar, was Bhola
Babu’s only friend, or so Bhola Babu had it. It had been hard for Bhola Babu to
catch up with Nobeen Babu, who had for some reason been waddling along as fast
as his immense paunch would permit, despite Bhola Babu waving his long umbrella
in a desperate attempt to draw his attention. You’d almost think Nobeen Babu
was desperate to avoid Bhola Babu’s company.
“Hwat eej?” Nobeen Babu asked, wistfully ogling Shopon Dotto’s glass
display cases from the corner of his eye. Piles of sweets sat on trays under
the glare of tube lights, crawled over by fat black houseflies which took time
off to sit on the glass, happily rubbing their forelegs together. Nobeen Babu
was resentful of the houseflies, whom Shopon Dotto didn’t ask to pay to eat his
sweets. He wanted a nice plate of the jeelebees and another of the roshogollas
that the flies were clustered most thickly over, proving how tasty they must
be, but if he went in he’d have to invite Bhola Babu too. And none of Nobeen
Babu’s money went to feed anything but his considerable stomach. “Hwat eej tha
fault obh tha Chaineej?” he repeated absently.
“They eenbhented thees dijij, thees Coronabhairaas,” Bhola Babu replied,
waving his umbrella around. “They deed eet to cauj lockdown so aj to draibh ebhrywaan
een thees caantry crayjee becauj obh being shouted at bai theyar waibhes. Then
they can capchaar all tha land een Ladhaak.”
“Wheyar eej thees Ladhaak?” Nobeen Babu
answered automatically, eyeing a particularly large fly squatting on a
particularly tasty looking roshogolla. “I theenk eet eej an Arob caantry, eej
eet not?”
Bhola Babu impatiently waved off the suggestion that Ladakh was an Arab
country. “And eet eej warking. I am already half crayjee weeth my wife’s
shaauting. Eny more and I weel be foolly mad.”
“Een that case,” Nobeen Babu responded, trying to keep from drooling,
“why don’t you keel her and set yourself free?”
And thus the Great Idea was born.
**************************************************************************
Of course
this was easier said than done. Even Bhola Babu realised that. He also realised
that there was not the slightest chance that he could possibly murder Futki
Boudi by himself. For one thing he hadn’t the faintest idea how to go about it.
“Kaam een,” he sighed, pointing to Shopon Dotto’s shop, “and habh saam
sweets. We maast talk about thees.”
Nobeen Babu needed no encouragement. “Theyar aar many ways too keel
people,” he said, round a mouthful of roshogollas the flies had lately been
crawling over. His mask, pulled under his chin, bobbled rhythmically as he
chewed. “You can find methods on tha eentarnet. Look at tha eentarnet, Bhola
Babu, you weel find ebhrytheeng you want on eet.”
Bhola Babu waved off the suggestion of looking for murder methods on the
internet. “I do not understand thees computer-shomputer,” he said. “Also, eef
eet eej on the eenternet, eet eej known way to maardaar, eej eet not? Then the
pulish weel know that she has been keeled, and then they weel catch me and
geebh me hanging.” He shuddered at the thought of the noose around his neck. “Also,
eef I try too keel her she weel peek me up by tha legs and dash my brens out.
She eej beeg enough too do thees, you know.”
Nobeen Babu shrugged and began on his second plate of jeelebees. “I theenk
then,” he said, “you can only hope that she weel get thees coronabhairaas and
die obh eet.” He snapped a finger at the waiter. “Oi boy, breeng me a plet of
shondesh, queeklee. That shodesh, theyar, tha one the fliej are seeteeng on.”
“How?” Bhola Babu groaned, partly at the problem and partly at the rate
at which Nobeen Babu, free of the requirement of having to pay, was polishing
off the sweets. “She nebhar goej anywheyar now. Eebhen eef she needs a box of
matchej she sends me to buy eet. Arlier she ujed to go to her friends for
goseep baat now she only talks to them on tha mobile phone, for hawars and
hawars ebhry day een between watching telebheeshon. And,” he added
pathetically, “I habh too pay tha beel.”
Nobeen Babu made an inarticulate noise around the last piece of
shondesh, and began eyeing the lalmohans. They didn’t seem to be too popular
with the flies, so they probably weren’t much good, he concluded regretfully.
But there were the borfis in the corner, at least three or four flies were
walking on them. He began to raise his hand again to snap his fingers.
Bhola
Babu saw the direction of his gaze, the lifted hand, and got up hurriedly. “I
maast be going,” he said, sidling towards the desk where Shopon Dotto sat,
glowering at his clientele. “I weel see you letaar.”
Nobeen
Babu, whose mouth had been liberally watering at the thought of the borfis,
which he could all but taste on his tongue, was filled with furious
disappointment. “Een that kess,” he snapped, “you go get eenfected by tha
coronabhairass yourself, and geebh eet to her.”
And, after goggling for a few seconds, Bhola Babu decided that this was
exactly what he needed to do.
**************************************************************************
“Baat,” Bhola Babu thought to himself, hurrying away from the sweet
shop in case Nobeen Babu ordered the borfis and told Shopon Dotto that he,
Bhola Babu, would pay for them. “Baat, how eej eet possibool to get thees
coronabhairaas? Who haj eet that I can get eenfected by eet?”
It was not an easy question to answer. Though the state government of
Bunglistan was less than active in the anti-coronavirus efforts, it wasn’t as
though it was waiting on every street corner to jump on passers-by. It wasn’t
even as though he could walk into a coronavirus-infected area and get it, like
going to a brothel to get syphilis. The very thought of a brothel brought to
Bhola Babu’s mind the supple naked limbs of girls in lingerie advertisements in
magazines he had sometimes bought on the way home from work, and always thrown
away in dustbins before entering his house. Futki Boudi would wring his neck if
she ever knew that he wasted money on magazines. And some of those other magazines in those shops! Just the
idea of touching them, something he had never dared to do, of course, made
Bhola Babu go red as a tomato and his heart hammer like a tabla player banging
away at top speed. If only he could buy one, just once! But he knew that if he
did, Futki Boudi would smell it on
him, and then tear him limb from limb.
“Once she eej dead,” he had a sudden thought, “nobody weel tell me hwat
I can buy or not buy. Then I can get those magajeens eef I want.”
His
mind so filled with happy thoughts of opening fold-outs of topless women that Bhola Babu quite forgot what he was
doing and where he was supposed to be going. Turning down a lane that meandered
down towards the old temple, he found himself in semi-darkness under the heavy
branches of an overshadowing tamarind tree. And there he collided heavily with
someone who he couldn’t even see in the darkness.
“Look heaar,” the other person whined. “I waj not geebhen one minute of
peace hwen I waj alibhe. Can’t I ebhen get to claaimb up into thees tree een
peace now that I am dead?”
“What?”
Bhola Babu was so deep in his cheesecake fantasy that he even forgot to be
afraid. “Deed you say you are dead?”
“Yes,” the other person replied. “I died two hawars ago een the
hospital, from thees coronabhairaas. Now I am a ghost and I need to go up eento
a tree and leebh theyar. Thees eej a tamarind tree and so ideal for ghosts.
Baat you come banging eento me and geebhing me not ebhen peace now.” And the
ghost burst into tears.
Bhola
Babu registered only one word, the magical word, coronavirus. “Wait,” he told
the ghost, grabbing it by the arm. The arm was very thin and reedy, so that
even Bhola Babu’s tiny hand could grasp it easily. “Wait, I want saamtheeng
faarst.”
The ghost emitted a terrified squeak. “Let me go,” it pleaded. “l am not
haarteeng you. Pleej let me go.”
“Only
when you geebh me hwat I want.” Never had Bhola Babu felt so bold and in control.
He gave the ghost’s reedy arm a shake.“You had coronabhairaas? I am looking for
coronabhairaas. You get thees coronabhairaas for me and I weel let you go.”
“That eej all you want?” The ghost wriggled in astonishment. “I can get
eet for you. They habh not baarnt my body yet, so theyar are many
coronabhairaases een eet. And eef I get them for you, you weel let me go?”
“That I weel,” Bhola Babu affirmed. “Baat eef you do not caam back weeth
tha bhairaas...” He threw his mind back to half-remembered childhood tales to
recall what might coerce a ghost. “Eef you do not caam back weeth tha
bhairaas,” he finished, “I weel find you, and then I weel pour a bottle of
maastaard oil on you.”
The
ghost whimpered in even greater terror than before. “Pleej,” it begged, “not
maastaard oil. I weel breeng tha bhairaas to you heaar. Let me go and I weel be
back een five minutes.”
And it was as good as its word. In fact, it wasn’t even five minutes
before it returned, clutching something between its clasped hands. “Heear eet
eej,” it said. “I habh brought all the coronabhairaases een my dead body. What
should I do weeth eet?”
“You geebh me the bhairaas,” Bhola Babu replied. “Then you can go
hweyarebhar you want.”
“You weel not haant me weeth maastaard oil?” the ghost asked fearfully.
“No,” Bhola Babu told it. “I weel not haant you weeth maastaard oil. Now
geebh me tha bhairaas.”
“How?” the ghost asked, reasonably enough. “Eet eej not as eef tha
bhairaas can be poot into a bottle or saamtheeng.”
Bhola Babu was nonplussed for a moment, but
only for a moment. The prospect of freedom and cheesecake seemed to have
sharpened his mind wonderfully. “Thees eej how,” he said. “Raab the bhairaas on
my clothes.”
And so the ghost did, its spindly hands vigorously swarming over Bhola
Babu’s apparel. It then shinnied up the tree and disappeared.
Bhola Babu was so excited at getting the virus that he didn’t even
realise that he had forgotten to be afraid of the ghost – a real live ghost! –
he’d met. He’d also forgotten to buy
the fish, but that was all right, because he was reminded about that.
His wife reminded him the moment he stepped through the door, and didn’t
stop reminding him all night and into the next day.
**************************************************************************
The first
sneeze was so explosive that Bhola Babu nearly cracked his nose on the shelf on
which, at his wife’s orders, he had been stacking her old almanacs. The almanac
he’d been in the act of raising began to slip from his hand. He grabbed
desperately for it and his clutching fingers ripped the cheap pink cover almost
in two.
“Hwat
deed you do too my almanac?” Futki Boudi shrieked, like a steam engine venting
its boiler. “How dare you tear eet?”
“Eet
waj a bhery old waan,” Bhola Babu protested weakly. “See, tha det eej from ten
yearj ago.”
“Eet
eej a holy book.” Futki Boudi was totally unmollified and began bearing down on
Bhola Babu like a steam engine with a malfunctioning brake. “Eet eej tha waard
of grate guruj and god and you tear eet! I weel tear your ear for thees. I
weel...” And then she sneezed too.
It was a very impressive sneeze. It started somewhere near the pit of
Futki Boudi’s ample belly, rode up her vast bulk, gathering force all the while,
and finally emerged from her nose in the manner of twin artillery shells. “Hacchhoo,”
she sneezed, and her arm, raised in the act of reaching for Bhola Babu’s ear,
dropped to her side. It was, after all, a very
bad omen to do something after sneezing, even if that thing was the eminently
laudable act of tearing off her husband’s ear. “I weel take care obh you
letaar,” she said, feeling the beginnings of another sneeze gathering. “I weel
go and lie down for a while. You cook and clean tha keechen and aftaar that I
weel tell you what to do next.”
Bhola Babu could feel sneezes playing around in his nasal passages as
well, and a burning, tickling sensation in his chest climbing up into his
throat. But the prospect of Futki Boudi confined to bed, and, therefore, not
able to rip him limb from limb, was agreeable. Besides, her sneeze could only
mean one thing. “She weel soon be dead,” he thought, and got to cooking and
cleaning the kitchen, as ordered. Despite the burning in his chest, and the
suspicion that he was beginning to develop a temperature, he would have
whistled, if only he knew how to.
“I
am feeling seek,” Futki Boudi said, raising her huge, healthy face from the
pillow, when Bhola Babu came to report that he had fulfilled her orders. “You
weel go and do tha shopping, then clean tha weendows obh tha front room. And
then you weel scraab tha floors. Do you aanderstand?”
“Yes,”
Bhola Babu said, between coughs. “I understand.”
“And
don’t you dare cough at me. Don’t you know I am seek or saamtheeng?”
That night, Bhola Babu’s cough worsened, and he definitely had a fever. But,
as he went about his list of chores, he was filled with joy at the thought that
Futki Boudi would soon be dead, and then he would be able to do whatever he
wanted and buy what he wanted, too. When his wife thundered at him to “Breeng
my deenaar to me een bed, and don’t cough een heeyar, don’t you aanderstand
that I am seek?” he even smiled in genuine happiness.
It got even better. “You sleep on tha sofa,” his wife decreed, as she
gobbled down her third helping of fish curry and rice. “I am so seek that I can’t
ebhen eat a spoonfool, and I need to sleep weethout being deestarbed by your
snoring.” Since it was Bhola Babu who normally lay awake nights listening to
the elephant-like trumpeting that she emitted, this was more than welcome. He
even grinned to himself, between coughs, as he made his bed on the sofa, and
used a wet handkerchief to wipe his burning brow.
Soon, he thought, there wouldn’t be any snoring at all.
**************************************************************************
Bhola
Babu woke suddenly.
He’d slept badly, as he had the last several
nights, his sleep disturbed by coughing, headaches, and bad dreams. In some of
the dreams the half-naked girls in the magazines he wanted to buy were in his
room before him, beckoning alluringly, but when he took a step towards them
they turned into his wife. Sometimes there was only one of them, sometimes
three or four, and when there were three or four there were three or four of
his wife, all out to rip his ears off and tear him limb from limb.
Waking from these dreams was always good, because his wife, in the real
world, stayed resolutely in bed, complaining of being sick and unable to sleep
or eat. True, she ate like a starving prize sow, and she snored like an air
raid siren, but she did sneeze sometimes and even felt slightly warm whenever
she demanded that Bhola Babu stopped thinking only of himself and feel her
raging fever. So she must have the virus, and she would soon die of it, and
that thought kept Bhola Babu happy while he shopped, cooked, scrubbed floors,
washed up, and coughed and reeled with fever in between all the while.
Tonight, though: tonight he felt great. He’d had some exceptionally bad
dream, in which Futki Boudi had been strangling him with one hand while
thrusting him into a furnace with another, and had woken just as the heat and
choking were together consuming him. But as soon as he woke, he felt wonderful.
Even the fever and headache were gone. With as close to a merry laugh as he
could manage, he jumped to his feet.
And screamed. On the sofa, where he had been lying moments before, there
was a corpse.
It was quite a genuine corpse. Ugly, scrawny, its face still flushed an
angry red, it was very dead. It even looked vaguely familiar.
“Eet
maast be saam rascal who came een heaar to die.” Bhola Babu bent low for a
closer look to see if he could recognise the rascal, and screamed again. It was
impossible to deny; the corpse was his own.
“I
am dead,” he thought frantically. “That meanj I am a ghost. That also meanj
that I habh to get out obh heaar aj faast aj I can go. Becauj soon she weel be
dead too and then she weel be a ghost and then I weel habh to spend eetarneetee
weeth her.” The very thought turned his ghostly limbs to water, and, like the
same water, he melted down to a puddle on the floor and oozed towards the door.
He had managed to slide under the door and leak down the stairs when he
discovered that he wasn’t alone. All around him, flowing like him down the
stairs, were tiny specks. He peered at one and saw that it was a tiny, ghostly
sphere studded with knobs and spikes. They gathered around him, prodding and
poking at his ghostly body, slipping in through all its orifices and pores.
“Hwat...hwat
are you?” he whispered at the sphere he was peering at.
And the tiny sphere replied! It spoke in English, a language that Bhola
Babu had, as befit a middle class Bunglistani gentleman, little acquaintance
with, especially when spoken, as now, in crisp but unidentifiable foreign
accents. But his fear was so great that, somehow or other, he managed to
understand. “We’re the ghosts of the coronaviruses that infected that female
monster up there,” it said, before forcing itself into him through his ghostly
nostrils. “Now we need a new host. What did you think we were?”
Then,
at last, Bhola Babu knew. His wife wasn’t going to die from the coronavirus;
she’d murdered the virus instead.
A moment later he sneezed, and then he began to cough.
A moment later he sneezed, and then he began to cough.
**************************************************************************
And that
was the beginning of the Great Coronavirus Ghostdemic of Bunglistan, which all
but wiped out the ghost population; and that is why there are so few ghosts in
Bunglistan now.
Copyright B Purkayastha 2020
