Bablee (Part – 9) —

(Recap – In the last episode, we came to know how, old father of Bablee fooled Ranjit by giving him some mischievous plan that made Ranjit fall into a trap. Now some more description about Ranjit.)

It’s a common thing, when one stays in a mini- market, there all traders become acquainted with one another, there develops a kind of intimacy in their interactions. In the sense, they begin to know each other and well- informed about one another habits and deeds. This incidence occurred prior to the appearance of Bablee on the shop, I mean when Ranjit in partnership was running the shop. Since, Ranjit’s repair shop had a location just in front of my office and I too used to get repaired my scooter there. This helped generate an amicable relationship with Ranjit as well as younger brother of Bablee.

One day it occurred that the owner of a shop, who had his shop on my side of row, came to me. It was early morning and I just had opened my office. This young shop owner dealt in the supply of “scientific goods” to schools. He said with a mischievous smile , ” Sir, today Ranjit is upset to the extinction. He is heavily drunk at this early hour of the day and shedding tears sitting inside my premise.” I felt, he was in some big trouble and I should listen his problem, so I can be helpful to him.  On reaching there, I found him sitting behind the partition of the shop ( used by owner as personal cabin.) A glass full with country liquor he had before him on the table.

I asked him, ” what has happened with you Ranjit?” In the same shadowy  condition he extended greetings to me. His face glum and cheeks wet with tears. He mutely inserted his hand in his side pocket and extracted  a full size paper and gave that to me . It was a letter some one wrote to him. On the upper half of the letter, a heart shape figure was sketched and it was painted with some thing like red ink. Just below the heart in broken Hindi Language, some words were scribbled, ” I am sending for you my blood stained heart. Only yours.” and below was written the name ‘Yogmaya.”

” What this all is Ranjit?” I asked him in a puzzled tone, with intent to know the detail. Upon which he replied, ” Yogmaya is my Nepali neighbor lady. She loves me and she sent me this love letter stained with her own blood.” When he said this, he was sobbing under the emotional impression of intoxication of country-liquor. I was again in a confusion, hence I asked , “how far there comes a reason to cry upon this?” The reply he delivered was so shocking and mind blowing. ” Last evening, when I was kissing her in her house, unfortunately her husband arrived from some where unexpectedly. He gave her severe  beating. Despite of the hard sufferings, she handed me over this love letter early this morning. How deeply she loves me big brother. Her devotion is excruciating my heart !”
This revelation made me grip my head with both hands, When you venture to get entangle with the wife of another man, this was destined to occur in this way only. Above all, that woman too was an intelligent one. She had sketched the heart figure and painted it with red ink only and this man, who was blind in her love was unable to distinguish the real facts. But, as it were the need of the  tender situation, I didn’t express my real anger. On the contrary, I consoled him and wished him a good luck and left him behind in a disconsolate mood . One thing more, adjacent to Ranjit’s ‘repair center,’ there was a welding shop ran by a young man named Brijlal. Both they had intimate friendship. There this relationship too ended with some weird outcome. all that reader will know in the concluding episode.

Now, I come back to the story of the Bablee’s shop. When Ranjit got entrapped in the ‘honey trap’ of the old man. Then firstly, in pursuance of the plan, Bablee along with her elder sister Jito got partitioned the shop temporarily, with the help of makeshift card board. For they had a plan to run a tailoring shop, hence they installed two pedestal sewing machines and one extra stitching machine needed for specific purpose. As far as both sisters were concerned about their appearance, they had medium height but were beautiful and charming. Not only this, they had a sugary tongue. Specifically, Bablee had such a sonorous and melodious voice that sounded, as if, bell is ringing.

Just imagine the situation. One day before, the entire market had a monotonous, dry and boring air and suddenly that been inhabited by two young beautiful girls as shop keeper. It was enough to bring an upheaval in the ambiance.  It imbued everything. Suddenly, everything began to look radiant and market became warmly animated. Almost, all shopkeepers with intent to develop an intimacy with Bablee and Jito, began to persuade their female family members to get their cloths stitched from them. It brought some outcomes, in the sense, the family members of shop keepers were offered extra- costume facility by their male patron. Besides, such shop keepers found a pretension to visit the tailoring shop  and last but not the least, with in no time, the tailoring business of Bablee picked a good deal of pace.

On shop coming on a smooth track, it also produced some other unexpected results as well. First of all, it was the change in the  behaviour of Ranjit. Prior to the opening of the shop ( when both sisters used to stay back in the home,) he used to address them as Didi (In vernacular it meant  for elderly sister.) But now, when he became helper to them and began to help them in minor side work i.e. in rough stitching and ironing of ladies costumes, he began to address them directly by name. ( I already have told, he had had some soft corner for both of them and old man took the advantage of that in taking him into his honey trap.) Further, in short duration he forgot his knack of scooter repairing.

Not only this, god knows only, what magic Bablee applied upon him, after few months he wound up his entire repairing business, handed over the rest of shop to Bablee to expand her shop in full length and became full fledged helper of Bablee and Jito. Obviously, partition got removed now. Now, Ranjit merely was a “worker”in the shop but was content somewhere. But a problem he had; his income from the shop was nominal in the capacity of ‘worker,’ but expenditure were heavy as before. It became hard for him to meet out the expenditure.

Another major problem, that nagged him incessantly was ; the intermittent visits of other shop keepers on the pretext of this and that cause. In fact, he had metamorphosed into a lover whose love fancy was on the track of “one way traffic.” The truth was, Jito and Bablee were not the innocent kids, they had manipulated all this under a scheme. They too encouraged him in this drive indirectly but to the extent , so he could work as a helper on nominal wages only.

It occurred on one day, under his whim of “possessiveness” about Bablee and Jito,  overburdened and hurt by the frequent visits of other shop keepers, he initiated the argument with them and a big quarrel generated. In that strife he was thrashed hard by other shop keepers. Although, no police report was lodged by any of the party, but it all was so humiliating for Ranjit. Both sisters, who were his dream girls, before them he was beaten on the open road. He felt so insulted , for a long he didn’t show up. After a long lapse of his sufferings with unemployment, I came to know from some sources, he was running a small shop of scooter repair in his own Muhalla (locality), in a part of his own house. In total, honey trap scheme of old father of Bablee took a good shape as per his plan , even in the sense, Ranjit left the place altogether. ( End of the Part-9. Cont’d). Penned by — Vinay Pharasi —–