A fulfilling life

 He was nicknamed Pahadi by the villagers. Nicknames hardly followed any rhyme or reason during those days. Had there been any logic in naming another boy as Bodda (roughly translated as kamzor or weak), he ought to have been named thada (majboot, strong) because he was rotund and full-bodied like a double-door big refrigerator in girth. So Pahadi (hill) was no mountain but maybe being a big boy with somewhat mountain man features must have aroused someone’s creativity to name him as such.

Pahadi was my classmate from class one to matriculation at the village school. A robust, rosy-jowled boy who had, and still has, a propensity to unleash distinguished rolling notes of laughter at the littlest provocation. It must have given him loads of—almost a little pahadi—positive hormones. He has retained the laughing spirit that I witnessed in him as a small boy. And now as a grown up man he is the same one as far as laughter is concerned. He is a big man with a loud, booming laughter and that sums up his name-de-plume. His ever-green laughter seems to have given him a kind of timeless vitality.

Pahadi loved movies. Those were the VCR and cassette days. If someone brought a VCR player on rent for a night, it would turn into an epoch-making news in the countryside. Pahadi would walk for kilometers to watch movies at neighboring villages.

I met him recently at a new mall in the city. He looked happier and healthier than ever. His laughter also had taken bigger, longer notes. He has a new job—bouncer at the multiplex cinema in the mall. There are some guys who cannot help hurling bad words during the screening, targeting the female audience, especially the love-birds seeking dark corners to carry out their pleasant conspiracies. So in Haryanvi multiplexes you need to have bouncers as well, just like there are muscular order-keepers in bars and discotheques. It still is a stubbornly conservative society. The shadowy, chilled out corners of a multiplex sound like flower-banked altar to lovebirds.

Love always has had its enemies. So there are plenty of evil’s foot soldiers, the rowdy ones without girlfriends, itching to force their transient transgressions into the little love-tales blooming in the shade. With his impressive bulk Pahadi is a kind savior. Let there be a lewd comment or abusive phrase and there you see Pahadi the bouncer moving across the rows to catch the throat sourcing the nuisance. There are even guys—so thoroughly drenched in discourtesies—that sometimes he has to drag them by the collar and dump them outside. He is a kind of all goody-goody hero beating the villains. The lovebirds look up to him with a lot of gratitude in their eyes.

Nurtured by daily doses of movies at the glittering new multiplex, life seems a bed of roses. Compare it with the days of watching movies in a street on a small television set having a bleary and grainy screen, with a water drain gurgling nearby and sleepy street dogs yawning with boredom. And now all this! Do we still need proofs that life gives blessings?