Just Another Case

Just Another Case


With large black eyes, a tiny nose and dark brown skin, eleven year old Shekhar looked weak and malnourished which, he was. Shekhar was one of the thousands of pre-teenagers who lived on the streets of Bombay . His parents, lepers, begged at the Four bungalows signal, somewhere in Bombay’s western suburbs and occasionally, at fort on the town side of the city.
The more dilapidated the condition of the beggar's body, the more money he would earn.
On a good day, they would ‘earn’ about fifteen rupees otherwise, they would have to acquiesce to the paltry sum of five or six rupees.

Shekhar lived with his parents in one of the seven polythene tents built on the footpath of S.V. road, where people seldom walked. Each tent was two to three square yards of plastic propped up by bamboo or maybe nailed to a wall on one side and kept in place by tying its free ends to rocks. Though the setting may seem hostile, Shekhar’s and other families like his were well adjusted to this life. They had chosen roadside homes to hard work.

Motorists passing through the area could see Shekhar with all his equally naked friends playing Cricket with a small wooden piece as a bat and a crumpled piece of paper as ball.

Shekhar’s parents were more intelligent than others in their vicinity. They didn’t want their son to grow up in this dirty ‘neighbourhood’ of Bombay (and they couldn’t afford an extra mouth to feed). They wanted him to make a life; become a peon in a small office or maybe, the municipal sweeper…and earn for them. But their unreal dreams of making their son a sweeper or a clerk wouldn’t stand a chance in the job market. The competition was too much... with graduates in Arts and Commerce lining up for the jobs, it would be impossible for Shekhar to become a sweeper in ‘the city of dreams’. Shekhar, however, did have a chance- in New Delhi. His paternal uncle, Ramsingh, a man with protruding teeth and a light moustache, was a sweeper there. And the job is known to be passed down hierarchically.
His parents waited and waited, till they saved enough money to send him to Delhi. And when there was enough money secretly stashed away in an old tin chocolate box, Cadbury's Nutties to be precise, they booked his tickets for Delhi. And so on a lazy Monday evening, Shekhar landed alone in the bus to Delhi.


Ramsingh was promptly there, at the Bus-stand awaiting his nephew. He was anxious to see him. The last time he had seen him was when he was six. ‘He must be a big boy now’…. he thought.

Shekhar didn’t mind leaving his place of birth. What would he leave behind anyway? An old yo-yo and untouchable parents (his parent’s disease didn’t let them touch him often). He was attached neither to his parents nor to his friends. He was a quiet boy with minimal needs.

For Shekhar, Ramsingh was the only manifestation of niceness in the human form. Ramsingh had two daughters, twins, barely six months old who kept his wife Manjit busy through days and nights. Life, for her, was one big punishment. There was not a shred of optimism and not a trace of smile on her face. Her eyebrows would always be closed in to form a frown. Predictably, the news of Shekhar moving in had disturbed her no end. “We don’t have enough food to feed our two daughters, where will we keep him?” she had asked

”It’s ok Manjit, I’ll arrange it somehow.”

“Money doesn’t grow on trees. I am telling you, if we can’t handle Shekhar’s expenses, then out he goes.” Ramsingh had obliged thinking that day would never arrive.

Ramsingh and his wife didn’t sleep together at night. There was only one ‘charpoy’, a bed which had ropes intertwined forming a net, taking place of a mattress, which was used by Ramsingh. But after Shekhar’s arrival, Shekhar and Ramsingh shared it. It was inevitable as his wife slept on the floor with their daughters and there was no more space left in the small house to accommodate a body as small as Shekhar's.


It was also obvious, for Ramsingh, that he get his share of desires fulfilled. In Shekhar, Ramsingh saw Vaibhav, his partner when they were eleven. He remembered the times when they had touched each other in places that had sent Goosebumps across his body and that first experience... memories came flooding back to Ramsingh and he experienced hardness inside his pants.

Ramsingh slept hugging the boy who wore nothing but an old pair of shorts. Moments after the lights went off, Ramsingh’s hand slid from the boy’s back down to his bottom. He pulled down his shorts and squeezed his butt. He felt the familiar hardness again. He turned Shekhar and started entering him. It was the familiar resistance he felt, it wasn't the same with Shekhar. Shekhar felt like something was intrudng his space, something his body was desperately trying to keep out. And then he started experiencing pain, immense pain in his backside. He couldn't bear it; in his unconcious unguarded condition, he started crying...
“Shh…it’s ok beta. Ram chacha is here…he loves you. You love him no? Then don’t cry.”
Shekhar felt a little safe hearing his uncle’s voice. He sniffed and wiped his tears eyes still closed.

“But it hurts chacha.”

“It’s ok Shekhar, after a while you will start liking it.” Ramsingh said, the conversation being in pure Punjabi language.

The same continued night after night and Shekhar was blissfully oblivious of his abuse. He didn’t like it nor did he hate it. He thought it was very normal, something which was supposed to happen and was happening with everyone. With each passing night, Ramsingh got freer with Shekhar. And after a few days, Shekhar started getting his share of erections and as days passed, he realized that he was indeed liking it, albeit little by little, slowly.

Sometimes when Shekhar got bored with his friends after playing Cricket, he would return home at around seven in the evening where his Ram ‘chacha’ would be waiting for him. Shekhar would jump on Ramsingh’s lap and demand a story…a practice which Ramsingh had started soon after Shekhar moved in. Little things like these made Ramsingh’s wife all the more jealous. She felt left out and thought that Ramsingh was ignoring her and their daughters, which to an extent, was true.

But Ramsingh and Shekhar were happy in their own world. No one had loved Shekhar like Ramsingh had and it was only natural for a quiet, introverted eleven year old to become something of a pampered brat when he saw is only ‘true friend’. Ramsingh too, loved Shekhar’s company. At first, it was only the sex; but later, as Ramsingh learnt, both had a unique bond, a relationship, which could neither be defined, nor named. The world, society, all lost meaning when they were together. If their relationship had to be given a name…then Ramsingh and Shekhar were lovers…each fulfilling the other’s emotional needs. Shekhar found security and more importantly love, a feeling which he had never known, in Ramsingh. Ramsingh found, in Shekhar, innocent, pure love…something which he had long forgotten.

They talked like lovers. Their act of forbidden, unknown love made it even more exciting. Shekhar didn’t mind being mistreated by his aunt. He had his uncle on his side. As long they were together, they didn’t feel the need for anyone else.


Shekhar and Ramsingh lived in the same house for about a year, before monetary constraints and woman’s jealousy drove Ramsingh’s wife to put him out of the house. What did Shekhar mean to Manjit? Nothing but extra clothes to wash, extra chapattis, extra cleaning…workworkwork and nothing more. Ramsingh had (timidly) tried to maintain a strong stand but had she threatened she would kill their children and herself too if, he didn’t throw the boy out. Madness like this was not new to households like theirs. In families like theirs, women were impulsive, uneducated and mad. Such monstrous stupidity was not stupid at all for a woman whose mother had burned herself alive when she could not bring her body to bear a male child for her husband.

An act of cowardice bears seeds for a million others. And one of those seeds had grown into a huge and wild tree in Manjit.
Shekhar’s jaundice was the time when Ramsingh took leave from work and spent entire days with him. This proved to be the ultimate blow to Manjit’s faltering ego and self-respect. The moment he was declared fit by the roadside ‘doctor’, she packed his bags and was ready for Shekhar’s farewell.

Ramsingh’s frail display of pseudo-superiority couldn't convince Manjit to keep him in the house. The boy had to go. But he couldn’t leave a helpless boy out in the open. He made a small hut on the backside of the park and gave Shekhar his meals secretly; which included an occasional sex and the regular story telling if Ramsingh had extra time on his hands.

Days rolled by. In December, Delhi encountered one of the lowest temperatures in five years. All of Ramsingh’s attempts to bring Shekhar back were in vain.

“What! You haven’t sent him back to Mumbai? I thought he was back to that dirty place where he belonged!” his wife said when he asked if he could get Shekhar back at least for the winter.

…It was one of those chilling winter nights. Fever was incinerating Shekhar's malnourished body. Shivering like others in the vicinity, he slept on the ground in his ‘home’ and the chattering of his teeth could be heard at a little distance from him. But most of them were used to this. Years of poverty and chilling winters had hardened everyone’s hearts, and bodies too. Everyone lived for himself.

Ramsingh had provided Shekhar with a blanket a month back, but it had large holes in it because of the rats infesting the area. It provided little protection for Shekhar from the cold.

As he lay down, he saw a puppy approach him from a distance. It moved towards Shekhar and licked his small nose. Shekhar let out a giggle and pulled the puppy towards him and both slept side-by-side. Though shivering in the dead of the night at 2 or 3 degree Celsius, both felt wanted and secure as they slept beside each other. Shekhar caressed the pup's little stomach as he slowly fell asleep.


The next morning, Ramsingh brought a couple of bhajiyas wrapped in an old newspaper for breakfast. Shekhar didn’t wake up to his calls when he came in. Ramsingh bent down to wake him up, but saw that he was hard and cold as stone. Shekhar had died out of cold deep in the night and the puppy was trying to wriggle out of his folded stone-hard arms.


Ramsingh’s head started spinning. He was breathing heavily…he lost all sense of self, time and world at that instant. He sat there, silently, in shock… then got up and checked Shekhar again. He shook him violently… “Ae Shekhar! Get up re! Your chacha is alone...ae Shekhar yaar…” his words melted into silent sobs which grew louder by the second. He beat his forehead in despair, crying dramatically… What would he tell his brother? Why didn’t he just send Shekhar to Bombay…but how could he? He made barely enough money to feed his own family. And then, there was also sex; hundreds of thoughts like these were running across Ramsingh’s mind.

In his mental turbulence, Ramsingh sat there, running his hands through Shekhar’s hair, tears rolling down his eye. He wiped his face, blew his nose and picked Shekhar up. He went outside into the sun, searching for an ambulance.

If Ramsingh was to gain some respite from his bliss-less ignorance, then that would have been the knowledge that Shekhar’s ending wasn’t the last. There were more deaths to come- those of his parents.

Further down, in Bombay, Shekhar’s father was tending to his dying wife. In his own pain, he moaned, knowing that there was no need for care and no need for nursing. Both were going to die anyway. As their bodies disintegrated, Ramsingh shed tears. Tears which didn’t leave their salty taste behind, tears which were unknown to the world. He cried…his sobs falling on ears which could hear, but selectively. And Shekhar’s parents fought, vainly, against the insidious poverty which had befallen them in the form of leprosy.

In a month’s time, as he himself didn’t know, Ramsingh would not have any parents to answer to. Dreams, love, lives…all were trampled like insects under poverty’s magnanimous foot.
Death of dreams, lives, salt-less tears and Ramsingh’s still unheard sobs made no difference to the billion-strong population of India. For them, Shekhar’s death was just statistic, just another case of the thousands of deaths in India.