MOFBEE

“Somebody get this idiot off the middle of the road or I’ll beat the shit out of him!” squawked an enraged if effeminate voice from inside a blue Ambassador car,  travelling perforce at a snail’s pace on the narrow road, just below our balcony. The voice belonged to Mr. Madan, who was on his way home for lunch, from the bank where he worked as chief of security. He was so short that when he drove without his uniform cap, it looked as if the car was self- propelled; and to my much exercised imagination, was being driven by a ghost.

In front of the car about two feet away walked the madman of Barahdwari, fondly abbreviated to Mofbee by a group of children, of which I was a highly fanciful member. The name wasn’t as exciting as Boo Radley’s – a character I loved from my favourite book; but then Mofbee wasn’t like Boo at all. I would have dearly loved some similar mystery to have surrounded Mofbee. However, he was neither ghostly looking nor invisible, being a very tall man of over six feet in height. He was thin and angular with long arms, the fingers dangling to his knees with a face that was gaunt and bony, the cheekbones jutting out like upturned collars. The eyes are what made us most uncomfortable. They were large, the pupils dark and staring straight ahead but never seemed to be seeing anything. We knew he was not blind because we often saw him stop to pick up a stone, a piece of glass or other such object which took his fancy, from the road.

What Mofbee’s real name was has been lost in the passage of time. He was one of two children, both boys. Nobody knew why his mind had stopped working at the age of about twenty. There were as many opinions from the neighbours, family and friends as there were years in his life, however. His parents believed that an erstwhile friend, jealous of the success of his father, old Mr. Yadav in business, had cast an evil eye and put a hex on his younger son. The vegetarians believed that he had had a severe shock after watching a goat being killed at his aunt’s house in the village. The one that most people wanted to believe was that his brother’s wife had hired some goons to beat him up so that there would be only one claimant to the property of their father, old Mr. Yadav.

However, old Mr. Yadav showed no signs of relinquishing either his life or his property just yet. In fact, he would have been seriously offended if anyone had told him that he was referred to as old Mr.Yadav. He spent a lot of his time exercising in the courtyard of his house and imbibed all sorts of tonics in order to remain youthful. Someone had told him that he would stay fitter and longer if he ate a fish called Magur, kept live till just before it was cooked. So, although he could never find the money to indulge his grandchildren when they wanted sweets or chocolates, he spent plenty of it on this very expensive fish, of which he had one a day. His other critical indulgences were a cream called whitex which he used to look fairer or so he thought; and kohl paste which he used to blacken his moustache and hair to look younger.

Mofbee’s only indulgence was smoking. Partly because of the guilt that sometimes smote him for not having tried hard enough to have his son treated for his mental problems and partly to get him off his back, old Mr. Yadav gave Mofbee money to buy his cigarettes. Although Mofbee had no concept about money or the change that he should get back, the owner of the little paan shop that sold cigarettes, did not dare to cheat him, thinking God would surely punish him for cheating someone as helpless as Mofbee. And when his Godfearing self seemed to dither a little in the face of temptation, he recollected what old Mr. Yadav might do to him if he ever found out, and desisted. Mr. Yadav’s clout in the neighbourhood would ensure the end of his paan shop in Barahdwari.

Barahdwari, literally meaning ‘of twelve doors’ was a suburb in the city of Joypur and had long since outgrown its name, having started as twelve houses around an oval playing field. The initial twelve spaciously built houses facing the oval were backed by much smaller apartment like houses with no gardens to redeem their bleak appearance. An alleyway separated the two rows of about thirty houses.

Our house was an upstairs flat on the back row, and it was from our balcony facing the road that we were watching the car, following Mofbee’s slow progress on the road. He walked with his usual peculiar, stiff legged gait, like a Hardy tin soldier, but with his long arms immobile and straight by his sides. He wore trousers of some indeterminate mousy colour which fell short of his ankles by a good six inches. Depending on their length we referred to his trousers as flood or puddle pants.

The motley crowd on the balcony consisted of a few other members of the Mofbee fan club, Ma and I. Ma had probably not imagined the effect of reading to me a book with a character like Boo Radley. All the children were between eight to twelve years old at the time and although I was only nine, I had become the boss of the brat pack, pipping everyone to the post simply due to my superior knowledge of all things weird and mysterious. I had created a mystery around Mofbee and we secretly wished that like Boo he would save us from some terrible calamity. During our holidays we crept after Mofbee everywhere, wanting to be the first to see if he really ate people or saved them, or maybe left presents for us like Boo.

From the concrete grill surrounding our dining room cum open kitchen, we could if we cared to, see old Mr. Yadav who was our landlord, exercising. We could also sometimes see Mofbee having a bath fully clothed, from a bucket in the middle of the courtyard, or sitting cross legged on the floor, smoking.

It was Mofbee’s smoking addiction that first drew him to our living room. After my Baba retired from his job at the blast furnace, he spent almost all his waking moments in the living room. On most afternoons he even had his nap on the divan bed on one side of the room. Till Mofbee walked in one afternoon, no one had ever thought of closing, let alone locking the front door. The steady stream of milkwalla, dabbawalla, newspaperwalla, dhobi and so on knocking on the door – from seven in the morning till lunch time, made the opening and closing of the door too much of a bother for Baba. So the door stayed open until it was time for him to have his post lunch nap.

It was therefore quite simple one day for Mofbee to walk in and sit opposite Baba, who was reading his newspaper in his usual reclining chair. Now you have to understand that when Baba was behind his newspaper which he read from cover to cover and then again, or when he was listening to his transistor radio placed close to his ear, he was oblivious to the rest of the world. Ma would have to call him at least three or four times to breakfast or lunch or to remind him to shower.

So it was that Baba having folded his paper, was in the act of taking off his glasses preparatory to a short afternoon nap, when he looked up straight into the madman’s eyes. For a minute Baba was not sure whether he had absentmindedly forgotten one of his visitors. Then, as all his senses started to focus on the man before him he gave a big start, but all he said was,

‘Yes?’

‘May I have a cigarette?’ asked the madman politely.

Baba was too shocked to do anything other than proffer his packet of Charminar cigarettes to Mofbee. All the time Mofbee sat smoking on the chair opposite, Baba sat on the edge of his own, pretending to read his paper. As soon as Mofbee had neatly put out the butt in the ashtray, he got up, stood straight, stared for a minute at the framed picture of John F Kennedy on the wall opposite, turned and shuffled out of the room.

Mofbee thus became a frequent visitor at our house, if only to smoke one of Baba’s cigarettes; and for many months Baba and he sat in a comfortable if not companionable silence. It did not occur to Baba to lock the door even after Mofbee took to coming in unannounced at any time of the day. And though Ma did try locking it a few times, she soon stopped, feeling guilty shutting out Mofbee like that.

It became quite apparent that Mofbee’s mind was not going to mend by itself. The solution came from one of the wise and experienced inhabitants of Barahdwari, Mr. Gupta. The only cure left was to get Mofbee married. It is to be supposed that having two wives made Mr. Gupta an authority on the curative powers of marriage. The proposal was vetted by old Mr. Yadav and his wife and they agreed that at least it would not do any harm. The eldest of six girls belonging to a poor family from the village where Mofbee’s aunt lived, was found. Whether her consent for marriage to a madman was asked was never known; but she seemed not unhappy with her fate; and their union produced two girls.

Mofbee’s wife was further sought to be burdened by the guilt of giving birth to only girls, but she quietly and firmly refused to have any more children. This deceptively meek woman from the village made sure Mofbee was given his three meals a day and walloped any child who dared to throw stones after him. She could outshout and out curse her mother in law and fought to have her daughters sent to school, so they would not end up like her.

The oldest, Manju, came to learn English from Ma and it was her piercing shriek merging with the sudden screech of the accelerator of the Ambassador car that gave us a few seconds warning of the impending horror unfolding down below. I had a glimpse of the terror stricken face of the driver just before his car smashed first into Mofbee, then into another car parked to the left, the momentum carrying all three to smash into the wall of the house behind the second car.

Neither Mr. Madan nor Mofbee survived the accident and it was thought that the driver must have accidentally put his foot down on the accelerator instead of the brake. I saw only two people crying for Mofbee. One was his wife; she wailed loudly, beating her chest; and the cynical said it was because it was worse being nobody’s wife than a madman’s. The thought that she might have loved a man such as him was too ludicrous to be considered.

Baba was the other person I saw crying quietly by the window. I was a little ashamed because chachi had said men who cried were sissies and when I tackled Ma with it, she said only that Baba was one of those who felt others’ pain. She also said that she was glad he had because it meant that Mofbee’s life had meant something to someone, that he had not lived completely in vain. When I found my face wet with tears I was glad of two things; that I was not a sissy and that there was one more person Mofbee had meant something to.