The Gun

It was a beautiful gun. The long double barrels gleamed grey-black, the luster of solid metal shining through. The trigger curved like a comma, sturdy and smooth, inviting the hook of a finger to pull it. The butt, old wood polished into beauty, was inlaid with delicate curlicues and vines of a lighter wood. Deadly beauty married to precision engineering.

Wednesday afternoons at 3, between his after-lunch nap and his tea and two digestive biscuits at 4, the general cleaned his gun. He was no longer a general, of course. He had been retired for over twelve years now. But everyone still called him that. And, he still kept a strict schedule. He prided himself on that. He had written out his schedule for each day of the week on a lined piece of paper, black letters marching straight across, announcing the order in his life.
Wednesday
Awaken: 5:45
Brush teeth, bathe, etc.: 5:45-7:00
Depart for walk: 7:00
Return from walk: 7:45
Inspect the garden: 7:45-8:00
Breakfast: 8:00-8:30
Read paper: 8:30-10:00
Misc.: 10:00-12:00
Lunch: 12:00-13:00
Siesta: 13:00-14:00
Reading: 14:00-15:00
Clean gun: 15:00-16:00
Tea: 16:00-16:30
Visit/Ring up friends: 16:30-19:00
Watch TV news: 19:00-20:00

Dinner: 20:00-21:00
Talk with wife: 21:00-21:45
Brush teeth, change clothes: 21:45-22:00
Read/write correspondence: 22:00-22:45
Bed time: 22:45

His mornings, days, afternoons and evenings were divided into precise segments. Some control in a life where sometimes he felt as if things were slipping away. A life which, after his retirement kept him on edge, surprised in a world that had changed so drastically since he had entered the service so many years ago. His wife was the biggest surprise. He had seen her grow from the shy, skinny eighteen-year old he had married to this woman he lived with now.

In the first days of their marriage he did not know what her voice sounded like. He made love to her, watching her still face, willing her body to move and drinking in her silence, needing a connection.

Finally, he had to resort to making funny faces to make a connection. Flapping his arms and pretending to be a chicken is what did it. She collapsed into laughter and said, in a light, breathless voice that glistened like the sound of two glass bangles rubbing against each other, "you are very silly."

That was the heady, romantic memory he carried with him, when his tours of duty took him to remote and dangerous places. Even as he shouted orders to his men, or slept in a cold tent on a high glacier, he could hear her sweet voice, "you are very silly." And he could feel the soft exhalation of her breath, warm on his chilled flesh. He slept with her picture placed inside his shirt, right on his heart. His eighteen year old bride remained frozen inside his heart the way she had been those nights early in their marriage. He maintained the illusion during each visit, not recognizing that she was growing up, hardening, becoming self sufficient, changing.

So, he still found himself surprised when two children, three grandchildren and thirty five years later, she had become a nag. He shook his head as he ran his fingers down the stiff bristles of the cleaning brush, assessing the life still left in it.

He thinks about his infrequent visits home in the past. If he digs deeper he can pinpoint his slight discomfort at barely recognizing this efficient, smartly dressed woman who barely had time to fit him into her routine. He would wander through his own home and try to find places within which he belonged. His sons were respectful but distant, his wife too involved in everything but him. It was a relief when he had to report back to some distant place and reinstate the image of his wife the way she had been and not the way she truly was.

Then he retired and there he was, at home, all the time. He invaded her domain and tried to take it over. He would reverse her instructions to the cook and create havoc by sending the gardener off on some errand when the man was supposed to be planting chili peppers in the small vegetable garden. It was then that he was first fully confronted by the woman his wife had become. Since then he had deliberately stopped interfering in the household, though he still noticed everything that went on. The children had already left home, taking with them that fragile buffer zone and he was forced to find ways to fill his empty days.

Carefully, he fed the brush down the barrel, cleaned out the inside and withdrew it gently. With a soft rag he wiped down the metal, feeling its smooth chilliness upon his skin. He squirted some wood polish onto another rag and smoothing it into the wooden butt, massaging it into the already existing sheen, caressing the slight warmth of the wood.

"Still messing with that evil thing? I hate guns." His wife’s rusted metal voice grated on his nerves.

"I know. You tell me you hate it often enough," he said, his voice steady as he unscrewed the brush rods, putting them away in their case. She retreated into the kitchen and he heard her talking to the cook.

For a while he worked on putting the gun back together. Then he lifted the butt on to his shoulder, closed one eye and looked down the length of the double barrels. He heard her move back into the room. She took up the conversation where they had left it.

"Yes, yes…you are the man of the house. Everything should be as you decree. But I am telling you this…"

"What?" he barked, barging into the middle of her speech.

"I will not have it. You don’t hunt any more. I mean, look at your age, after all. Sixty years old and still sitting here, playing with that gun. You no longer hunt. Get rid of it. This is my house too and I’ve put up with enough from you."

"It’s mine. I have had it for more years than we have been married."

"I know, I know. You’ve had this gun for well over 45 years. It’s a valuable antique. So…sell it. God knows we need the money. How we are making do on a retired army officer’s pension only I know. And God knows. Only he knows and I know. You give your life…our life… to the army, to the country and at the end all you get is this piddly pension and a thank you. No accounting for the prices going up a hundred times since you retired. We can only buy meat three times a month now, that too not the best cuts. Is this any way to live?" For an instant she remained entangled in the web of her faith and her desires.

Then, she sniffed once, as the General slid the gun back into its case. He willed her not to cry. She defied his wish.

The tears slid down her face, like a wash of translucent paint, and like all true martyrs, she looked upward.

"I’ve given everything to you. How old was I when we were married? I was a child. I looked after your house, your children while you traveled around for the bloody army. I never complained. Never. God knows this. And now, you can’t do this one thing for me." Her voice rose higher and became more incoherent as she continued.

He stood up and carried the gun, carefully as if it were a sleeping baby, to its wood and glass cabinet.

"I will put in an advertisement in the paper tomorrow. Satisfied?"

She sniffled noisily, the skin of her nose crinkling like delicate tissue paper, her eyes rimmed with red. Her voice soft, reveling in her victory, she said, "I’ll get tea ready."

Disregarding his schedule the next day, he sat down to write down his advertisement right after breakfast.

Gun for sale by high-ranking, AVSM, PVSM, retired army officer. Side by side, double barrel Holland and Holland in mint condition…

What should he put as the price? When he had bought the gun, second hand, in 1945 it had been about a three hundred rupees. Now, with prices being what they are, and the antique and valuable qualities of his firearm…

He continued with the ad.

Will sell for one lakh rupees. Please contact, in person, between 4 and 6 PM. General Harsh Vardhan. 55/54 Civil Lines Road, Allahabad.

The ad ran the next morning in the newspaper, each letter thick black, staring at him in mute accusation. He did not even notice the typo. The newspaper had spelled thousand as thoasand.

***

Two weeks later, the first prospective buyer arrived. He reeked of new merchant money, crass and oily and the General took an instant dislike to him. The buyer shifted his mess of chewed paan into one side of his mouth. Then, his cheek bulging as if he had tucked an egg inside, his speech gargling, he started to negotiate.

"General Sahib, I respect people like you very much. Protect our nation, no? So, I was telling my father today, no haggling with General Sahib. I will give him what he asks. The least I can do, no?" His fingers danced over the butt, tracing the delicate carvings.

"So, ten thousand rupees, it is then. Do you prefer cash or check? I prefer to pay with cash only."

The General grabbed his gun away, unconsciously wiping out the buyer’s traces of body oils. "I have changed my…the newspaper made a mistake, a misprint. I have to call them today. I am not selling it for less than…less than five lakhs."

The buyer’s jaw slackened in surprise. Red paan juice escaped from its pouchy hiding place inside his mouth and trickled down the side of his mouth and on to his chin. That night the General crept to his gun cupboard, his fingers stroking the grey gun-metal, the smooth coldness sensuously captivating to the touch.

***

Mrs. Harsh Vardhan sometimes forgets the name she was born with. Savitri. Savitri, she tells herself today, speaking out loud in the silent room, the mortal woman who had defeated Yama, the lord of death, cleverly wresting the life of her beloved Satyavan from the dark god’s clutches. Her mother had told her this story often when she was a child, trying to infuse in her daughter the virtues of a good wife while hoping, perhaps in vain, to pass on an unspoken message, that intelligence in a woman can be valued more than beauty.

For Savitri had been a plain child, dark and angular, scrawny as a wild chicken. The prospect of a good marriage remained vague until she blossomed overnight into a shapely, slender woman, with an elegant sense of style. A good candidate to be married to an army officer, eleven years her senior. An officer destined to be a general. And she made up her mind to be a good wife, burying her desires, silencing her voice lest he be troubled by her errant, unformed, childish thoughts.

So she would lie under him, eyes closed, lips puckered, trying not to writhe, hearing her own mother’s voice ring in her ears, "You won’t like it but you will get used to it. Girls from good families never enjoy it."

She never told him she lived in a fever of lust every day, waiting for him to make his move. Her face remained frozen, expressionless, a sleepwalker’s dead stare even as inside she died and was re-born into a thousand points of ecstasy.

Savitri does not remember exactly when she turned from a biddable, glamorous wife to this nag that sometimes even she cannot recognize. Perhaps it was the day she ceased to be just a wife. The day she gave birth to the first of her two children, a boy who screamed at the top of his lungs, who demanded attention and adoration.

She was a mother, responsible for the life and well-being of another. She did this task mostly by herself since her husband was mostly away. He would return to toss his child in the air, coo to him, and give him horseback rides before handing the baby, Ranjeet, back to his mother for a diaper change or a feeding.

The routine continued with the birth of their second son Ranbir. Ranjeet and Ranbir appropriately martial names for an army family, victors of the battlefield. When Ranbir was born, Savitri recalled, her then Colonel husband had been away in the Indo-Pak skirmish of 1971.

In fact, for two months he was declared missing and probably dead, when she was eight months pregnant. During that time she cried and mourned, already reconciled to his death before news came that he was alive, wounded and emaciated but alive. By the time he made it back home, his new son was already four months old, while three year old Ranjeet cried at the tall, thin stranger tried to pick him up. Savitri found it difficult to let go the hardened shell of self protection she had created for herself. As her eyes began to pierce through the wounded soldier to find her husband it was time for him to return to duty.

Through the long years during which her sons became men and her husband defended his country, Savitri became less of herself. As inflation mounted and her husband’s salary failed to keep up she got more creative, depriving them of luxuries so they could go on. When Ranjeet needed money for his college applications she could find little left over from her household expenses. She sold her gold necklace. That was the first piece of jewelry she sold, until all she had left was her mangal sutra, one gold bangle, two rings and a small pair of ear studs.

The general and Savitri uneasily meandered through each other’s worlds. When Savitri’s paploo playing friends would come over, they could hear him noisily clearing his throat in the other room, at regular intervals. Their gossip would soon be diluted by the loud presence of a man so very close by. How could they talk about Mrs. Tahiliani’s daughter-in-law’s affair with the family’s new tenant? They could never let a man know about the Darr family’s daughter who was barren and had just been sent home by her in-laws. The neighborhood had buzzed with horror at the burn marks on her forearm and the local masseuse talked of the many bruises that marked her skin at other places. Now Savitri was missing out on the details of all this gossip and found that she was getting only the less juicy crumbs.

Savitri resented her husband’s intrusion into her stable life. Nervously rotating the one gold bangle she still wore she convinced him to join the retired officers club. He would not be lonely. He could talk about his guns and whatever else it was that retired army officers liked to talk about.

"Someone called. A Mr. Khan or is it Mr. Khan Bahadur…anyway, he wants the gun and has offered six lakhs for it. I told him to come by later today and finalize the deal," she said one morning as she poured him a second cup of tea. Before the general realized his cup was empty she filled it up.

"How did he sound?" His voice reflected the cold dread that he could not keep putting off the sale forever.

"I think he is from some old nawab family. He sounded very refined." Savitri felt satisfied, liking to see his fear. Aware of his usual objections to the buyers, she knew that there was nothing he could do to sabotage this sale.

Mr. Rishadatullah Khan Bahadur was the third son of the nawab of Mursheedpur. His aquiline features, the skin like milky almonds, the respectfully lowered eyes, the delicate language redolent with poetry; all pointed towards his lineage from distant Persian royalty. He was willing to offer more than the asking price. He exuded old money, breeding and class that the General could not fault. Mr. Khan Bahadur was also aware that he was getting the gun for a bargain, that even six lakh rupees was a pittance for a firearm that could command five times that amount.

Helpless, the general held the gun on his lap and watched the buyer sip the tea his wife had brought out. He leaned over and held out the plate of chocolate cream biscuits to the man, an offer that was politely declined.
Savitri, on her way from the kitchen to the dining room, could partially see her husband as he sat on the cane couch, clutching his gun. His eyes flickered down to watch the glint of the metal while his fingers restlessly caressed it.

She remembered the first time she had walked into Jhaveri jewelers’ shop with her gold choker so many years ago. Carefully she had unwrapped the large handkerchief in which she had carried it. The lights from the chandeliers bounced back, magnified by the spotless mirrors, and collided with the yellow metal, magnifying its luster until it seemed the center of the universe.
The jeweler touched the necklace and murmured, "22 carat. Good. Very good. But old fashioned. We will have to melt to make a new piece…so price has to be lower, yes?"

She could not look away from his paan stained mouth, at his fingers that touched the same metal that had warmed itself on her neck. He looked at the choker with anticipatory ownership and she could barely restrain herself from snatching it away. Then, remembering her sons, she clenched her hands into fists and watched herself negotiate with the man, as if she was a stranger to the transaction.

It never got easier, and each time her gaze would find her reflection in the mirrors that made the shop look bigger and grander than it actually was. Her expression was always the same. Shame mingled with deprived longing and the sadness that comes from knowing that you are slowly selling off part of yourself each time you are forced to sell a personal possession.
She could now see the same expression on her husband’s face. For a moment, something stirred within her and she wanted to rush in and shoo the buyer away.

"We don’t need your money," she would say and wipe that look away from her husband’s face and they would return in time to a place where he was less lost and she was less hard. Then they would go in and eat dinner, the two vegetables, dal and chapattis the cook had left warming in the kitchen.

However, remembering her own similar humiliations and pain, she forced herself to head back into the kitchen. Why should he be immune to loss and shame? Besides they really did need the money to fix the house and add to their depleted savings account and she was not about to sell the jewelry she had left.

After some time she heard the men talking again and then the door opening and closing and the sound of a car driving away. It was done.

The general was sitting in the same position on the couch, his hands still in his lap. His fingers had stopped moving, however, as he looked at the wall opposite him. A stack of crisp hundred rupee notes sat on the coffee table next to the chocolate cream biscuits. He did not look up as his wife came into the room.

"I bought that gun with my first salary. What will I do on Wednesday afternoons now?" He spoke to himself or perhaps to the wall or even to the money that had taken his gun away from him.

Savitri wanted to hug him, to retreat into the easy flirtatiousness of their early marriage, to break through her silence that now fully trapped her within its walls. But too much time had passed and she had forgotten how to breach her own defenses. Their interactions were too set, like rusty machinery that would break if it was made to work in a different way.

She touched his shoulder, letting her fingers linger for just an instant.
"Dinner is almost ready. Come, wash your hands."

The gold of her bangle glowed against her wrist and its smoothness felt cool against his neck before she withdrew her hand.