My love stories: Part Four: Kirti and Jalpa

When I moved to Bombay for my college, I ran across two girls. Kirti desai and Jalpa Aggrawal.

I do not know why but the moment I saw Kirti, my heart said that this was my soul mate. I used to stay awake at night thinking of her. I painted her in all my favourite hues and colors. And I got the picture of the perfect woman.

But the picture started cracking soon. I had drawn a figure of kindness, love, emotions and sympathy. Kirti was anything but that. She was a proud and haughty daughter of two doctors. She was intelligent but like the rest of the girls had little use for a sentimentalist like me.

I believed true love would wash away all my woes, my imperfections. I would get a reason to live. To live for love.

But real life is anything but that. Love is a very scarce commodity. Pure, unselfish love I mean.

With Jalpa Aggrawal it was hardly a mating of souls. She was a very physical girl. A few gropes in her car and some hard fondling of the butt and it was over.

Jalpa never appealed to me. Not by mind nor by the body.

My love stories: Part Three

After Trupti there were two other girls. Rachana and Roopa. Both when I was in the pre-college class.

Rachana's mother was my Hindi teacher when I was in high school. I was good in Hindi. The teacher used to read out to the class essays written by me.

But I discovered that the Hindi teacher had a lovely daughter only when I went to the pre-college class. She was my classmate.

She was beautiful and had a lot of admirers in school. I was one of them infatuated with her.

But the line was too long. And I did not have the means to jump the queue.

Roopa too was another beautiful girl who caught my fancy. But she was one year senior. So I had only fleeting glances of her. Different classrooms you see.

I heard stories about how one of her classmates determinedly went up to her house and rang the doorbell,. Roopa's father opened the door. He took him to be the raddiwallah (the guys who buys old newspapers) and said "abhi nahin hai. Agle mahine aana." (There are no papers at present. Come next month).

Poor guy! But he persisted and by the time I left pre-college I learnt he had managed to break the ice, notwithstanding Roopa's father.

With such a determined suitor, there was little chance for lesser mortals that included me.

My love stories: Part Two: Trupti

The first girl who caught my amorous fancies was my neighbour, Trupti Parekh.

I must admit the attraction was all animal. I like dark girls. Trupti was dark. I like women with big bosom and big hips. Trupti had both.

I used to lock myself in my room and furtively look through a closed window at Trupti as she strolled about in her house's compound. We lived in adjacent bungalows you see.

I thought I was very clever that as I secretly ogled at Trupti, she was unaware about it.

How wrong I was!

I was in for a shock when my friend Shivakar slapped me on the back and winked. "Looking at girls on the sly, eh?" he said. My secret was out!

It seams Trupti had noticed my lustful eyes prying on her and told all her friends. One of them had told Shivakar.

But that episode started the liaison, if you can call it that.

Call me boring. Call me a no-good. But nothing 'happened' between me and Trupti.

There were a few close calls but unfortunately there were no hits scored.

One day I found out that her parents had gone out on a social outing. She was all alone in the house! Ahh! "My chance!" I told myself. I braced myself and went up to her house and rang the doorbell.

Trupti opened the door but to my dismay, for a girl who seemed interested, her manner was cold. I used the usual gimmicks. I congratulated her on passing the recent exams and shook her hand. She did so very uninterestedly. I guess that is the reason I did not pull her towards me, hug her and smother her with hot kisses.

Phusssh!

At another occasion there was a social event at my house. Trupti (along with her family) had come too. She made her intentions clear when she gave me hard aggressive stares and frowns. She also touched me whenever she went passed me.

The feminine species in heat, perhaps. But I am a coward. With all the people in the house I did not have the guts to pull her into an empty room and do you-know-what.

Phusssh went another chance!

Another clear indication Trupti gave me was on the day I and my family were leaving town. Her family had invited us all for a farewell dinner.

Trupti banged the dish, spoon, knife and fork when she served me. She splashed some dal and rice on my clothes for good measure.

The disappointed female in heat.

My love stories: Part One

Many girls came into my life. But none of them, I must regretfully admit lasted too long. One of the reasons for that I think is that I am not very physically inclined. Another reason is that I am very emotional; something which, surprisingly, the girls did not like.

People say girls are the emotional ones. The guys are the ones who use their heads. Humbug! In my case I was the emotional one. By comparison the girls were quite practical.

They did get emotional at times but when it came to their relationship with me, they were so practical!

I guess women like guys who use their heads rather their hearts.

O always go by my heart. May be that is why I am without a girlfriend today.

THE STORY OF THE GUY FROM KATHIAWAD: Part 3

In the previous part we had heard Fajuba mentioning losing a son.

That son was delivered at Fithad. Remember that the time was in the early 1950s. There were no doctors in Indian villages then. There was even no metalled road to Fithad then.

The baby boy was quite healthy looking, dark and plumpish. Everyone was happy. Firubha used to play with his daughter's new born son all day.

But after five days the baby stopped breast-feeding. As there were even no traditional medicine doctors in the village, the village astrologer was called in.

The astrologer solemnly said that if the baby boy lived for another three days, he would live. Otherwise....

It did not survive. It died at the hands of its grandmother, Teshar Sinh's mother, Fakatba. The lady had come from Fangpar to see the new born.

The grandmother took the baby in her lap. She asked for some butter. She dipped her finger into the bowl of butter and fed the baby with it.

The baby hiccoughed once and died. Fajuba was hurried away from the room. Firubha wrapped up the baby's corpse in a piece of cloth and took it to 'Limbda na fariyu' (Neem compound). He dug a hole and buried the baby.

The neem compound had a history of its own. Fajuba used to tell the story to Karan many a time.

It is said that one of Firubha's ancestors was buried here. That too in a secretive gruesome manner.

The ancestor had no children and he used to lie in bed sick most of the time. One day he died. but his wife concealed the fact. She cut up the body into small pieces and used to burn it piece by piece every night.

In the mean time she travelled to the nearby town and sold off her dead husband's land and kept the money for herself. According to the law in those days since the dead man had no children, the land would otherwise pass on to his brother. The wife would get nothing.

One day when the woman was burning a piece of the corpse, the wife of the dead man's brother smelt the stench and told her husband about it.

The husband went to the woman's house accompanied by other villagers and confronted the greedy woman.

They found the remaining pieces of the body and cremated it properly according to Hindu rites.

The scheming wife of the dead man was sent away from the village.

THE STORY OF THE GUY FROM KATHIWAD: Part 2

Karan came into the world on a stormy monsoon September night in Durgapur.

When his mother Fajuba started having labor pains, her mother Fagjiba told her son-in-law Teshar Sinh to take his wife to the hospital. Teshar Sinh had just finished a good dinner and was enjoying listening to the radio. He said he would take her in the morning. His mother-in-law told him not to be silly.

So Teshar Singh reluctantly took his wife to the local hospital at ten in the night. Karan was born at 2.30 in the morning.

After birth the Marathi lady doctor asked Fajuba what she wanted; a son or a daughter. Fajuba said ever since she had lost a son, her mother-in-law had told her that a woman should at least have two sons.

"What if the baby is a daughter?" asked the doctor.

"Then I will accept it as God's will," replied Fajuba.

"It is a son," said the doctor and held the baby boy inverted holding him by his legs.

Fajuba saw the tiny penis and heaved a sigh of relief. Thank God it was a son.

Karan was thus born.

THE STORY OF THE GUY FROM KATHIAWAD: Part 1

Karan Sinh Jhala is from Kathiawad. Kathiawad is the peninsular part of Gujarat in India.

At least his parents were Kathiawadi. He was born in Durgapur in Bengal. He was the youngest in a family of four. Two elder sisters and an elder brother.

His father Teshar Sinh Jhala hailed from Fangpar, a village near Morbi. His father and grandfather never tilled their ancestral lands. They both worked in the princely states of Saurashtra.

His grandfather worked in one of the many small princely states of Saurashtra. Saurashtra in Gujarati means 'a hundred states'.'Sau' means hundred. 'Rashtra' means nation.

Teshar's grandfather was a rather stupid man. He had much land before the independence of India. But he did not understand that he would lose half of it because of land reforms initiated after the country became free. The new laws said that the tiller of the land would get to be the owner of half the land he tilled for the real owners. Teshar's grandfather used to say that the man who tilled his farms was like his son. How could a son go against his father? But the 'son' quietly gave an application in the local government office and from a landless labourer he became a land owner.

Karan's maternal grandfather, Firubha, was a cleverer man. He lived in Fithad village in a nearby district and had educated baniyas as his friends who warned him of the upcoming land reforms. So Firubha quickly divided his large farmlands of four hundred bighas into four parts and named his three sons as owners of three parts. Thus Firubha escaped the land redistribution law and managed to hold on to his large farms.