The Hapless Tale of Ganesh Dubey | Sayantan Ghosh

Ganesh wanted his father Mahadev to cut him some slack. He had lived long enough in his shadows, and was finally ready to do something just for himself.
Mahadev Dubey was a middle-aged, bespectacled man who worked as a site supervisor for a local construction company. He hadn’t done much with his life. But considering his affiliation to local liquor stores and the fact that his wife left him for a wealthier man, he hadn’t done too badly either. His only son Ganesh was his ultimate hope after Meenaxi, his wife of 11 years, eloped with his own senior at the Durable Construction Company leaving behind just a 2-page letter written in blotted blue ink and their 8-year-old son.
Unfortunately, Ganesh did not turn out to be a boy one could pin his hopes on. For starters, Ganesh had failed twice in the eighth standard and once each in the third and sixth. So even though he was all of 17 now, he was stuck with kids much younger to him in Class VIII at the Shankaracharya Mahavidyalaya. Father and son lived in a small one-bedroom-kitchen rented apartment near Govind Puri and shared a common latrine with two other families who lived on the same floor of the dilapidated building that was older than Mahadev himself. The plaster from the walls in their home was wearing off and so was Mahadev’s life with every passing day in this suburban south Delhi colony.
But this is not Mahadev’s story. This is a story about Ganesh. Ganesh Dubey, whose name was reduced to a caricaturish nightmare by the boys in his society; the first three letters from his name – GAN were combined with the first two from his surname – DU. That’s how he was known till the day he died alone in a municipality hospital near Baroda. But that’s another story.
At the age of 17 Ganesh knew that he had failed his father as a son, because no longer could he study medicine and become the doctor that Mahadev had once wanted him to be. He had failed his friends in cricket, promising wins if he was taken in their side. But all he got to hear from them was, “You bat like a girl. You have no strength”. His teachers had long given up on him; his neighbors sympathized with the ‘motherless boy’ initially but Ganesh’s thankless behavior and abusive language skills soon earned him a bad reputation among all.
He needed a turnaround in life and he had read somewhere that for a comprehensive transformation every human being must go through some kind of life–altering experience. Given his luck, that wasn’t to be served on a platter. Therefore he needed to step in and make it happen himself.
A week ago few of the boys in his colony had rented a CD-player and they had watched back-to-back adult films. One of them was about a teenage American boy who wanted to lose his virginity and the disastrous situations he finds himself in formed the rest of the film. It was the most fun he had had while watching a movie since his favorite Bollywood actor stopped working in films to serve his prison term for killing an exotic animal during a shoot.
Ganesh concurred that this could be his ticket to freedom. If he could make his first sexual encounter riveting and memorable enough, he could perhaps find a new lease of life. If not, he would at least have had sex. But there were a few essential things he had to decide before that. He listed them down in his Life science notebook. How apt!
1)     Place of sex – make sure it’s somewhere Dad doesn’t find out.
2)     Time of sex – can’t be night because then Dad will find out, and if I could get up in the mornings then why would I miss school every other day; so afternoon suits fine. But that I am neither in school nor at home in the afternoon, make sure Dad doesn’t find out.
3)     With whom? – Definitely cannot be with one of the girls who played on the yard overlooking our window. Dad has seen me staring at them determinedly many times and he would surely find out if it’s one of them. Going to a prostitute will kill the purpose because that won’t be a unique experience; like reading a book borrowed from the library. Whoever it is I have to ensure, Dad doesn’t find out.
4)     Budget – If I have to spend on the person concerned, buy her flowers, take her to the cinema, buy her popcorn, etc. then what is the maximum amount I can afford to spend.
5)     If I should share this secret with any of my friends, an ally. If at all it has to be either Ratan or Manik.
6)     And last but not the least, who will buy the condom?
Incidentally he confessed to both Ratan and Manik that very day. People with only two friends don’t afford to tell a secret to one and not tell the other. Something only people with only two friends will understand.
Ratan was his age but Manik was two years older. He had seen more of life; the obvious inference – he knew more about life than the other two. His first advice was to watch at least one porn flick everyday in the run-up to the grand finale. This will help keep the rod hot, he had said. Second, even if he did not want to do it with a prostitute, he must visit the brothel at GB Road once to get a hang of the act and understand what was expected of him. Ganesh had cringed at the thought and said, “But it’s a dirty place”. Manik had stuffed a paan inside his own mouth and profoundly replied, “If it’s not dirty, it’s not worth it”.
Acquiring the latest porn films available in the market was Ratan’s responsibility, while Manik was to accompany Ganesh to the brothel.
Ratan’s maternal uncle had a DVD parlor, and so it soon started raining porn for them; from Nepali and Mallu to Pakistani and American. Anything from the south was supposed to be Mallu porn, anything from east was Nepali, ones with more exotic and prettier looking actresses were Pakistani and blonde wigs meant American.
As Ganesh was made aware of these distinctions, he had inquisitively quipped, “So it’s a lot like Geography”.
Manik (who had recently started working as a property broker), his enlightening response to this was, “Remember, in pornography like in real estate, it is all about three things… location, Location and LOCATION!”
However the day he was taken to the GB Road brothel, did not go as planned. The tall buildings, the dingy lanes filled with piles of garbage, the stench from the meat shops stacked one next to the other, became all too overwhelming for Ganesh. They were selling electric wires and equipments on the ground floor, and right above them whores were grinding one dick after another with the insouciance of screws being drilled into concrete walls. These thoughts muddled the inside of his head and made irregular chaotic noises, until he puked on the pavement next to one of the garbage drums.
So it was decided that a professional sex worker will be hired and that they will meet privately in one of the cheap hotels in Paharganj for some ‘on-the-field training’. The next day he went alone to find a suitable hotel or lodge where this elaborately designed plan could be carried out.
Thus, Balaji Inn, Room no. 26 was booked for the following day. The manager was well accustomed with the ‘nature’ of customers he had to attend on a daily basis. Hence Ganesh’s unwanted explanation that he would be visiting with his cousin sister because they were new in the city was met with a sly smile.
Reshma was a dusky, young woman who had a small scar on her chin and a birthmark on the left side of her neck. She laughed a lot, sometimes without any reason, and was wearing a blue denim skirt with a green tank top that day. Reshma was charging Rs 2650/- for her two hour stint.
First few minutes passed in extreme discomfort for Ganesh as Reshma flung her chappals on the floor, jumped on the bed and started watching a dance reality show on TV while Ganesh was left stranded, sitting stupefied on a plastic chair.
He turned towards the television set and saw a well-known film director, who was mocked for being effeminate, dancing to a song from one of his own recent blockbusters. He felt gawky and turned his face away.
Fifteen minutes later she pressed the Mute button on the remote and asked him to take his pants off.
He clumsily obliged.
Ganesh was not proud that he was wearing red underwear but it was the only one he had that did not have a single extra perforation than those that were required for him to get in and out of it. As he slid the red piece of clothing coyly down his feet, she began to laugh hysterically. He had never felt so nauseated in his life before, not even when he had failed twice in the same class. He thought he would faint.
But Ganesh stood still, like a wax statue for a few seconds, until she stopped laughing and said, “Is it a dick or is it your appendix hanging out of your crotch?”
Ganesh somehow mustered enough strength to pull up his pants, and ran hastily out of the room. He ran for as long as he could remember. His belt loosely clung around his waist, his zippers undone, his shoelaces untied and his surrendered self-esteem quivering inside his belly like undigested food from three nights earlier.
He ran till he reached the New Delhi Railway Station. He thought of taking a train and running away forever. Then his eyes fell on a vendor selling newspapers and cheap magazines. Ganesh stared at the semi-nude photographs of the models on the covers of some of the foreign magazines. Then he slowly walked up to the stall and asked for an adult magazine in Hindi. He paid fifteen rupees and walked inside one of the public toilets with a copy of Madmast Jawani in his hand.
Next morning, at exactly 8:13 AM, he knew who he was going to lose his virginity to.
It was Mrs Sharma from next door, whose husband, 22 years her senior, was out for work almost every day of the week in his 1999-model Bajaj scooter.
He had heard the neighborhood women gossiping about how she led manly salesmen indoors and had quick romps with them in the bed during summer afternoons; he had seen her pallu drop while rinsing utensils in the common toilet, her ample bosom popping out of the modest blouse like ripe mangoes in an orchard and noticed her not caring about them.
His target was fixed and now he had to take the plunge. This time he didn’t share his plan with anybody. Place of sex was fixed; it necessarily had to be her flat. Between 2 and 4 in the afternoon would be perfect, because both her husband and his father would be out for work. He didn’t feel the need to buy condoms because he was confident that a married couple would have a stock of their own in the house. And most importantly he did not need to spend a penny on Mrs Sharma; after all he was to walk into her apartment offering her cure for her loneliness.
He woke up early that day, went out with a two-rupee coin and came back with a crisp, ironed shirt. Then he watched the replay of a cricket match on the TV, and waited for both Mahdev and Mr Sharma to leave.
At around 12:55 PM he slipped inside the ironed shirt, stamped his neck and shoulders with talcum powder so he smelled good, soaked his hair with Brylcreem and combed it parting from the middle. That was how his favorite Bollywood actor used to keep his hair before he was arrested.
When Mrs Sharma opened the door for him she was wearing a light blue nighty and her flimsy mangal sutra around her neck. She seemed tired after serving the daily chores and was sweating profusely even under the fan. She seemed slightly reluctant to let him in.  
But he managed to convince her, taking advantage of her confusion. She shut the bedroom door and stood near the dining table, fixing her eyes on him. Ganesh looked around the room, a blown up photograph from their wedding day adorned the wall across the hall. She looked ravishing in her red Benarasi. Oh, how the then young and energetic Mr Sharma must have ripped it off her petite frame and left bite marks over her wherever he desired!
He turned his face towards her and checked her body from toe to the hairpin. She was definitely fuller now and her tits were not as firm as in the photograph, but there was still so much unexplored.
He asked her to get him some water and decided that he is going to grab her from behind when she is pouring from the bottle, one hand on her bum and the other on her breast. Then he will tear the thread of the mangal sutra and rip her nighty open that would expose her soft pumpkin breasts, her copper-colored skin and sweaty tethered waist in front of his eyes.
As she walked inside the kitchen Ganesh made his move. It was when he was walking past that half-shut bedroom door that it struck him for the first time. The smell of the talcum powder that he had put on himself a few minutes earlier, the same odor was coming from the bedroom and filling the entire passageway. But how could that be, that powder bottle was a gift from one of his father’s clients from Dubai. ‘This brand is not even available in India’, Mahadev had proudly declared.
Ganesh did not dare open the door. He quickly walked up to the balcony that opened on the backside of the building and peered down. And there it was! Mahadev Dubey’s sparkling new Honda motorcycle that hadn’t yet lost the swastika mark on its headlight that Panditji had drawn on the day it was bought.
He looked for the shoe rack and instantly recognized the pair of black Sreeleathers kitos. A thousand questions cluttered in his 17-year old brain. Was this the reason his mother left? Or was this the result of that? He heard Mrs Sharma’s footsteps coming out of the kitchen. He decided his questions could wait. For then he had to leave that apartment silently and without alarming anyone. And so that afternoon, Ganesh Dubey tiptoed past the bedroom door, the shoe rack and the blown up photograph of Mr and Mrs Sharma like a dormouse on the prowl for leftover cheese, artfully, such that Dad doesn’t find out.

Indian Review | Literature, Fiction and Short Stories | Author Profile | Sayantan Ghosh was born in Calcutta, India and currently lives and writes in a 11×11 room in New Delhi where he works as an editor for a publishing house. His work has been published in The Missing Slate, The Aerogram, Northeast Review, Reading Hour, The Bangalore Review, Antiserious among others and one of his short stories was longlisted for the DNA-Out of Print short fiction prize 2014. He was also a part of the 5th UEA-India Creative Writing Workshop (2015) led by Amit Chaudhuri, award-winning author and UEA Professor of Contemporary Literature, and Ian Jack, memoirist, Guardian columnist, and former editor of Granta. He tweets @sayantansunnyg