I am a pretty girl in her twenties. Recently, I have learnt some awfully perplexing things surrounding my life. I am intrigued by the extent to which love, friendship and marriage have intertwined in leading towards my conception.
When I was growing up as a child, I was subjected to extreme attention. People in the neighbourhood would lovingly refer to me as ‘the little pretty thing’; mother’s relatives, when they were there at our house, teased me of hardships that my futuristic lover would have to put in to protect me. Father worked for the radio. He composed music, wrote dialogues for shows. His work kept him at home most of the time, his friends and people form the radio company, when they visited our place, always bought me chocolates. They greeted father with the usual ‘how lucky you are to have such a pretty daughter’.
Everywhere I go, shopping with mother or the neighbourhood café with father, I immediately became the subject of attention, it became something of a habit for me to expect gifts and novelties from total strangers. It was not unusual for my mother or father to interject me into a dialogue with anybody in general. On my eighth birthday, my father brought home a TV. It was raining heavily and all the neighbours had left by that time. The TV set amused me, it opened up my doors to a fascinating world rich with imagination poured astray in every pixel and every detail. Suddenly, after two months, the TV stopped working. Father was so busy with his work that he requested the bald headed stout little man from the neighbourhood to take it and leave it at the TV repair shop. I was so eager to learn the details of repair that I hopped into the taxi with the bald man. The driver was somewhat of a quirky personality. He smoked heavily, and was eyeing me through the convex glass. After a while, he spoke ‘aren’t you the pretty girl from the neighbourhood?’ For this, the baldy replied corrosively ‘you should be watching the road mister’.
That episode left a lasting impression on me. I later found out from mother that the baldy and father studied in the same school, they were almost like brothers. But an incident, which mother did not confide in me, had altered their friendship forever. They were no longer brothers, merely friends. I found a good friend in baldy, by the time I reached my teens, baldy and I became so close that we would sit together and watch TV. He had no kids, no family, and I never enquired.
It was on my first day of graduation, and I was ragged by my seniors at the college. Boys made me sing, dance and made me say awful things. One of the seniors snatched my hand bag and returned it empty; girls were equally worse, a certain rowdy girl with curly hair asked me if I liked any of the boys, she could set me up with them for a night. Other newbies were not as humiliated as I was, I came home disgusted. On the way home, a senior, who appeared very understanding, suggested that I should leave my hair unkempt, wear something preposterous, avoid rouge or lipstick; in short appear delightfully ugly. I recounted the whole episode to baldy. He was now suffering from acute headache; once it grips onto him, lasts for a good ten minutes. The medicines weren’t curing, the doctors weren’t of much help either, baldy was now in his late forties and reconciled with himself that it has come with age.
Next day, baldy walked me to the college; he stayed there in his car all day long. He met me in the intervals and lunch time, mostly looking around and making a strong statement. He did that for over two weeks. It worked, the seniors left me be. As the years passed, baldy grew increasingly ill. And soon the day came, he was hospitalised and the doctors injected heavy dosages of sleeping pills. I visited him everyday; I went to the hospital soon after college, he was barely speaking. He was sleeping all day long. After two weeks of hospitalisation, the doctors declared that the body was not responding to any treatments and they said that baldy was going to die in a little over a week. On that day, through the glass windows of the ICU, I found mother and father arguing violently, mother was pointing towards baldy and was completely soaked in tears; father was furious, the arguments grew intense and father had lost his temper, he kicked the door open and walked away banging the door behind him. I soon rushed in to meet mother inside. I noticed that baldy was awake; with his lips pursed tightly, was weeping like a small child.
I assumed that it was the news of baldy’s death that disturbed all of them. But back home, mom confided in me that baldy sought the doctors to pull the plugs off, he has made his wish clear, he did not want to live for a whole week on sleeping pills knowing fully well that he would die. The slow agonising death was annoying and baldy wanted to die the next day. He expressed one last wish. And that wish happened to be a startling revelation, one that was about to change my life altogether.
That night mother explained to me that Baldy had a wife, a ravishing beauty. The woman was baldy’s classmate, father was closely acquainted with his best friend’s wife. After father got married, the two couples partied together, went to places, and celebrated festivals together. It was all too well until one winter night. The night I was planned for. Baldy wanted a child badly, but he failed to impregnate his beautiful wife. The doctors declared that his sperms were not agile enough. So tormented was he that he experienced nervous depression with that rage and discomfiture. During his stay in the hospital, father, unwilling to see his best friend suffer, approached his wife and suggested that she should let him impregnate her. Baldy was still hospitalised, about a month. During this period, father proceeded to have sex with baldy’s wife day after day. Mother was aware of this, and she approved of it.
After a week or two, mother learnt from baldy’s wife that the sex which was hesitant hitherto had become very intimate, even mother felt that sex had changed their relationships forever. Baldy’s wife was still not pregnant, but they had come too far to let go, so with mother distressed, father torn between the two ladies, and baldy’s wife expectant, the sex continued for another two weeks and finally baldy’s wife turned pregnant. They all agreed to keep it a secret, so baldy would never know. One month after baldy’s return from hospital, the wife expressed her wish to have sex with baldy. After that night’s failure, baldy retired into his lonely self, plagued with the notion of impotency. As weeks passed by, the three-baldy’s wife, mother and father-realised that their plan was going to backfire if baldy was not to leave his misgivings behind and participate in sex; with repeated urging, under the influence of alcohol (father’s idea) and Viagra (mother’s idea), baldy participated in sex one night after two months from the day of actual impregnation. Next morning, baldy’s wife broke the news of miraculous impregnation to her husband, she acted joyous with disbelief. Baldy, although enchanted for a couple of days, put up a sorrowful smile. He remained apprehensive for a major part and he suspected his wife of adultery. He confided this with father, and spoke about divorce with the wife.
Mother could not let that happen. After putting the woman through so much, she could not let baldy divorce her. So she confided in baldy and all hell broke loose. The relationships were severed for ever. Baldy and father were no longer the old buddies that they were. Mother was deeply agitated, for father was a changed man after sex with baldy’s wife (she was ten times more beautiful than anybody in the neighbourhood including mother); baldy’s wife lay depressed. After nine months, the period that was disturbing for both the couples, I was born and soon after my birth baldy’s wife committed suicide. In her suicide note, she mentioned that it was only for the baby that she clung to life and put through the nine months, a period of immense decay in relationships. Following the episode, baldy entrusted me with my present parents and fled. His whereabouts were unknown, but he felt drawn towards me, I was the memory of his beautiful wife, one he loved all his life. He bought a home in the neighbourhood and on my eighth birthday he met me.
Presently, on his death bed, he wished for me to know the real incidents that surrounded my birth. My mother was emotionally exhausted through the narration of the most depressing times of her life. I stood before baldy next morning, my mother left me with him after letting him know that the wish had been fulfilled. Baldy took my hand, covered it with his palms, pulled me closer and kissed my hand. That was all, there were no words exchanged, the doctors soon finished their formalities and baldy was dead.
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