The Electrician’s Apprentice

“It's 5:30 in the morning! Maharani do you want me to bring out the red carpet for you to wake up and get to work.”

My mother is a yeller. She yells when the food is ready and she yells when Papa asks for some salt. She yells when my sister and I have to go to school and she yells when we need to go to work. She yells when we need to help clean the house and she yells that she has to sweep so many houses to bring rice to the table. I never blamed her. Since Papa lost his right arm in the factory accident, it's like he lost his tongue too and Maa fulfills his role just like her yelling makes up for his silence. And when my brother lost his life on Mrs Katya’s roof top, and his lively laughter turned to our bitter cries and then nothing at all, her yelling became the one sign of life in House #5, Sri Govind Road, Singrauli.

“I have to go to Sharma’s house and then Srivastav’s and I will come back to cook before going to the Shukla’s so keep the water filled and the vegetables cut before I come back and be on time to school and make sure your sister has her braids done,” my mother yells while combing her hair in the other room. I like to think she uses her yelling to create an illusion that our house is big enough that she has to yell to get her words to travel across the house. In reality, there are only two rooms in our one storey mud house, with a living room that also serves as the kitchen and only Maa and Papa’s room has a door. I sometimes imagine having a door. But that is not in my stars.

“Why the Shukla’s? It is Tuesday,” I reply — without the yelling — from me and my sister’s room. I know the walls are thin enough that she can hear me whisper under my breath from our “verandah”. Only Maa calls it a verandah but it’s actually just a little area of paved concrete right outside our door. Last winter when our neighbours were getting some construction done, they dumped some concrete in front our entrance. When we complained, they offered to pave it in front of our house. So suddenly one day, we had a verandah connected to the dirt road of our street and Maa said “well good that we are a family of complainers, at least we got a free verandah out of it.”

“Her other maid is sick so Mrs Shukla needs me to do the dishes too. Also don’t forget you need to do the sweeping at Mrs Agrawal’s. I already told her you’ll be there at 5. I don’t want to hear excuses, just be there on time.”

So I get out of the comforts of my warm bed, though it isn't the bed but the weather that is warm. I make sure Shanti has her braids done properly and I cut the vegetables out in the verandah because the smoke from the coal chulha that Shanti is boiling water on for Papa has filled my lungs enough. Since last month when Papa got cholera, we are trying to do whatever we can to make sure we don’t have to pay the Rs 500 for Doctor’s fees again. After covering the cut vegetables with a steel plate, I go out to fill the water from the Shukla’s tap. The Shuklas are the wealthiest in the neighbourhood so they very kindly attached a tap for the others to fill water from in the mornings. So kindly that Mrs Shukla never shuts up about it. I pick up the bucket and get out of the house, walking past first bhaiya’s beautiful smile in the photo above the TV with the dry marigold garland running around the frame and then Papa’s withered frame sitting on his usual plastic chair with a broken arm rest in the verandah. Good thing he doesn’t need it anyway. While standing near the tap, I watch the water slowly fill up the bucket, splashes bouncing out, escaping, almost touching the rim, about to fall over.

“Arreyy! Meena close the tap or get another bucket. You think you’re so entitled like your chatty mother. You think that water belongs to you or what?” came Mrs Sharma’s shrill voice from her chair placed outside her house. God damn the people in this neighbourhood. Wouldn’t the world collapse if I have a moment to myself. I switch off the tap and lift the bucket, holding its thin metal handle with both hands, waddling back to our one storey blue house with my arms straining to lift the weight. Everyday while walking back to the house, I imagine our house being any other color. God, how much I hate blue. But that was the cheapest color we could find. 

I run to get my skirt and tie hanging on the wire in the back to dry. Last Holi, I asked Maa to buy me an extra skirt so I wouldn’t have to wash mine everyday but instead we got my brother a brand new tool box. That was back when he first started talking about putting his skills to use and becoming an electrician. He used to fix our satellite when the black and white dots populated the screen instead of Shah Rukh Khan’s beautiful face singing kabhi khushi kabhi gum. He even found a way to get electricity from the most generous Mrs Shukla.

“Eyy Meena come with me,” he said one evening last summer.  I remember the heat was so unbearable that day that everything looked like it had gained a yellow tint from the summer sun and remained saturated even after sun set. And of course, Singrauli being Singrauli, the entire town lost electricity every day from 7pm to midnight. Everyone except the Shuklas who had an in at the municipal corporation.

“Meena get me a thread or something to tie two things together.” I never really questioned bhaiya so I ran and got my black hair ties.

“Good, now tie this metal hook to the stick.” He handed me a long piece of wood and a metal hook with a long wire attached to it.

“What will this do?”

“I am going to make you my apprentice and then one day you’ll take my spot,” he beamed with the smile that Papa had lost along with his arm.

“Yes!”

So without questions, we carried on with our project. We attached the hook to the stick and a bright red insulated wire, with its exposed end attached to the metal hook, ran along the side of the stick. “Make sure you only hold the wood part, you understand? Never ever the metal. Now watch and learn. These are the life skills they won’t teach you at school.”

With extreme focus I glued my stare to bhaiya’s hand, trying to mimic his hand motions with my own. 

“Are you watching me?”

“Yes!” Hardly able to control my excitement, my hands were clenched next to the smile on face and my pride blooming. That’s my brother alright! He attached the other end of the wire to a panel on the wall. “That’s where we will store it, that’s the light panel of the house. Always keep that red lever down before doing this ok?.” I nodded vigorously.

He lifted the stick up and hooked the metal hook on to the electric wire going into the Shukla’s house from right above our house. “Hah! Maa always complained about those preppie Shuklas thinking they’re better than us. Now they’ll get a taste of their own medicine,” bhaiya said with his eyes still on the connection where the metal hook met the electric wire. After about 15 minutes, he brought the stick down again.

“Now Meena. This is important. Like super important. More important than your exams”

I gasped. “More important than my exams?”

“Absolutely! Now pay attention. This wire you see? Attached to the big light panel. Detach them first and then turn the red lever on again.”

I followed his instructions methodically. Keeping more focus than when I was cleaning  Mrs Shukla’s crystal glasses. Instead of the dish washing sponge this time, my clammy hands were holding the insulated end of the wire, twisting and pulling carefully so it would loosen its grip on the light panel. Then, with my right hand, I grabbed the lever and looked behind me at bhaiya.

“You got this. You need to know how to do this on your own, right? Or do you want to depend on me forever?”

Absolutely not! Pushing the lever up, I could feel a slight strain building in my arm like the time bhaiya’s second hand motorcycle stopped in the middle of the road and we had to push it up the speedbreaker and then a sudden release of tension and all the lights in the house went on. It was like Diwali in May.

“How did this happen? Did the municipal board finally become generous?”

“No one will ever be generous to you Meena. You have to make things happen on your own. The lights won’t stay on for long, maybe twenty minutes, so finish your homework before it goes out again.”

No one was ever generous to me except him. I hadn’t realized the depth of his words that day. I was just happy I wouldn’t have to do homework under the streetlamp again. The mosquitoes were too much in the summer and if I got Malaria, Maa would kill me first.

#

This morning, while doing the dishes at Mrs Shukla’s, I committed a sin that I didn’t know would land me in hell. With one slip, uneven glass pieces were covering the floor, twinkling in the light like finally liberated. But their liberation cost me mine. 

“You can’t do one thing right. What’s wrong with your hands? Do you not know how to hold one fucking glass.” Maa’s wrath was pouring out of her blood red eyes, more than her words. I say nothing.

“Now Mrs Shukla will tell this entire damned neighbourhood and not let you wash dishes anywhere. Saali thinks she is so superior. She hasn’t worked a single day in her fucking life and these stupid mindless women follow her like pimps. Where are you going to work now?”

Maa is right. Mrs Shukla loved her crystal glasses and she has the money to never forgive and forget. She will tell everyone in the neighbourhood not to employ that chatty Meeta’s daughter. But that isn’t the worry, I am dreading where I will find work now. Maa turns to Papa.

“Ask that coal miner friend of yours from Krishna Vihar. He must know of something.”

Papa usually just replies in nods and head shakes but to this, even he couldn’t hold his tongue. “She is 16. She has school.” His morose voice, barely audible compared to Maa’s.

“Remember your son? He went to school, didn’t he? Look where he is now. Remember how much we spent on his school bag, school shoes and when he wanted to be an electrician, we got him that stupid tool box.” She runs into mine and Shanti’s room that once belonged to bhaiya too and storms back with the red and black toolbox that I had seen so many times in a different set of coarse hands. I remember the tight hold of his on the wooden handle bar on top of the box and the spring in his feet when he went to fix Mrs Katya’s satellite and his sweet yet bold voice promising me he’ll be back in thirty and that I needed to finish my homework before then because he was taking me and Shanti to Lal Bahadur’s ice cream stall for a surprise.

Papa’s lack of voice returns and his head turns down toward the floor while Shanti cowers into a corner of the kitchen. Maa drops the toolbox in front of my feet and points to the now open box with screw drivers and pliers spilling out. “This is what happens when you dream too big. This is what happens when you forget where you belong.”

I could hear Shanti’s sniffs and her desperate attempt to calm herself down. Her wheezing breath trying to quieten her painful sobs. Just like mine that day we were supposed to get ice cream. I quietly bend down, holding the red and black toolbox in my hands. This was the first time I had held it since that day when Mr Panchali came running into the house. 

I remember him running into our house last summer. Panting, his chest swelling and collapsing in quick successions, sweat dripping down his forehead and leaving a wet stain at the collar of his shirt. I remember thinking oof that’s gonna take quite the washing. His eyes paused at me for a second before darting around the house until it landed on Maa who had emerged from her room, hearing the loud creek of our metal door announcing Mr Panchali’s entrance. 

“Raju. He got electrocuted on Mrs Katya’s roof. Hurry, we’re taking him to the hospital.”

I immediately stopped in my tracks, a numbing dread taking over me. My eyes stuck at Mr Panchali’s frame and even when he ran out, my eyes remained glued where he stood a second ago. Maa started yelling. “Meena, Shanti, did you not hear? We have to go.” Papa was already on his way to the hospital while Maa held Shanti’s hand before rushing out. I put on my broken flip flops, there was no time to find the ones that bhaiya had fixed for me the day before. As I stepped out into our verandah and the ambulance whizzed past our house and all I could think was this is not happening. I ran behind the ambulance with all my strength but my broken flip flops couldn’t catch up the speeding wheels of the ambulance. I caught up to Maa and Shanti and we reached the hospital covered in sweat and hearts beating out of our chests. As soon as we walked into the hospital, it was like a punch landed on my stomach and all air escaped my lungs. Papa was sitting on a bench in the lobby. There was an air of peace around him, he wasn’t scared. His calm made my heart sink. His tear stricken face with horror etched in his expressions turned toward us and our bodies reacted before our minds could comprehend.

I remember my crippling headache that kicked in as my screams overpowered my thoughts. The clinking of Maa’s bangles as she shattered them while beating her wrists on her chest. Shanti’s deafening cry as she ran toward Papa, holding on to his white shirt, thrashing and yelling until Mr Panchali dragged her little body away from Papa’s broken one. I remember the doctor at Nehru hospital handing me a big white plastic bag of his belongings; one shirt, one pair of pants, a belt, a watch, a wallet, two rings and a toolbox. I didn’t touch the toolbox again until I was holding it with its contents spilled at my feet.

I look at it in my coarse hands — an aftermath of the massive amount of dish washing soap — and examine it for the first time since his escape. When I turn the box upside down it has the words “For my little apprentice who will soon be a boss. Love, bhaiya” written in black ink and gorgeous curvy letters. I start collecting the scattered pliers and nails and putting them back in the box.

“Do you see Meena, he left us like this. He’s free and we are here and this all he left us.” Maa’s face is streaked with tears, snot running down her nose, her kajal smudged leaving a black trail on her brown skin.

Papa walks out of the house and takes his usual seat on the plastic chair with the missing armrest in the verandah. Shanti’s sobs become increasingly audible as she walks into the living room. She sits down next to me, her voice still coming out in staccatos of sniffs and harsh cries, like she is choking on her own mucus. Maa gets down on her knees and hugs us both so tight that one tear breaks loose from my eyes and the rest follow in an unbroken stream. I am still clutching his toolbox — with the message at the back Love, bhaiya, etched in my mind — between us as we all melt into each others’ sorrow and stay connected until there are no more tears to shed. 

#

Three days later, I fill up two buckets of water while Shanti cuts the vegetables after Maa left to Mrs Sharma’s house. While Shanti braids her hair, I wear my yellow kurta salwar for my first day at the factory. Papa had talked to his coal miner friend and I am beginning work at a factory close to the neighbourhood that makes machines for the mines. “There is always a need for laborers and machine operators,” Papa’s friend had said to him, “of course we will get her a job.” Bhaiya’s red and black toolbox sits solemnly over the TV with his picture right above it. The same dried marigold garland running around the frame. His smile intact and almond eyes with slight lines in the corners looking down at me. I wish we could see his light brown eyes but black and white pictures are cheaper than color. His face still leaves a pang of sorrow in my heart as I walk out of the door passing his gaze but it’s like his smile is letting me know that at least I will be free someday.