The Fallen Woman

I am a banana peel thrower’s delight. You know the kind that intentionally throws a banana peel in the middle of the road and hides behind a tree to watch? 'Be careful', I warn others. And then I forget, walk unsuspectingly, head in the clouds, slip and fall; face first. 

Apart from this type of general carelessness, I have two left feet. Acutely aware of this disability, in unknown places I walk gingerly like I am stepping on ice. However, since normal surfaces are not made of ice, my ice-walk doesn't work. I trip and fall disgracefully. On such occasions I casually smile and say 'I'm trippin', but my wit is usually lost on the better half who says I am an embarrassment to go out with. Then I analyze my problem on google. I troll through pages and I don’t know why, but I am given tips about walking on ice. It says I should try walking like a penguin, since they have mastered the walk. With this effort, I fall even more. 

In known places, I am more at ease. I don’t fall really but I keep banging into tables and bed corners, walk into doors or any other furniture lying in its destined place. You would think this loss of motor-control is because I’m an octogenarian or thereabouts; but actually I am a young, dashing, easily excitable woman, in my early thirties for many years now. 

With the above being the state of how I walk, you can imagine my plight when I have had to take jumps of any kind. Of course I don’t mean the – ‘Go, take a jump’ kind of thing that the husband tells me each time I ask him for anything. I mean the sudden jumps that one has to undertake in life, faced with an eventuality. So here is a wild jump, I remember having taken. 

When I was 15, I had to attend an extra class in school. Leading a typically sheltered life of a school-girl, I was used to traveling by the school bus. On the ill-fated day, the arch enemy of my childhood (my elder brother) offered to take me along on public transport. I should have known his intentions. Anyway, we got into a rusty Delhi Transport Corporation bus that contained a few thousand people. The moment, the sibling pushed me on to the bus, we were separated like in the movies by a sea of fat, sweaty people. I was overwhelmed. I had never seen anything like that in my tender years. Being pushed by all sides, I stood right in the middle, squeezed into half of my usual size (which is not very much). Sweaty armpits loomed large on my face. I fell against soft cushiony bums and a few people purposefully stood on my feet. 

As luck would have it, the place where we had to get off came unannounced and suddenly I glimpsed the elder sibling standing on the street gesticulating. As I pushed through the crowd with all my might, resembling a mini bulldozer, the bus started moving. By now, I could hear my mother's first born yelling frantically – 'Jump Jummmp JUUMMPPP.' 

In the cacophony, I froze for a few seconds staring at the stretch of moving tar in front me, glistening in the sun. No one had prepared me for this day. I didn’t even know whether to jump in the direction of the moving bus or the opposite. I chose the opposite, where the betrayer stood, wildly flailing his arms. My life of a few years flashed in front of my eyes. I would see my enemy for the last time, I thought satisfactorily. And then I took the leap into the unknown.

While this event of great significance was taking place, an hour or half prior to my tragedy, a childless couple had decided to appease the gods of reproduction by feeding a cow (Indian cows enjoy demi-God status, hence the expression 'Holy Cow!'). That morning, the couple scouting for a hungry cow couldn’t locate any, to their dismay. All they spotted was this healthy and disinterested cow meandering on the main road. They parked their car in front of it and began force-feeding the reluctant animal. 

'I will ruminate on it later’, said the mammal to itself and gulped halfheartedly whatever they were stuffing into its face. So while I was preparing for the great fall, this very cow decided to take a hearty dump, to lighten itself of this unusual breakfast. Having done its deed, it ambled away slowly. It was this fresh, bright yellow mound of shit that I landed on when the bus full of people ejected me. 

‘BULL SHIT’!  exclaimed the sibling in a volume that the city of over 14 million heard. He deserted me promptly and refused to recognize me in school later. 

Anyway, instinct saved my face from getting smeared. The left arm and school bag were not spared. They landed in the center of the manure. After endless minutes of pondering over my fate, I limped slowly to the school smelling like a Delhi municipal toilet at 6 in the morning, without water supply. 

While at school, I cleaned whatever could be cleaned. The teacher, a secret practitioner of Chinese torture didn't give me the day off despite the enormity of my tragedy. Smelly, abhorred, ostracized and shame faced, the day passed somehow. At home later the mother (another practitioner of the said torture) threw away the school bag. She was making up her mind to throw me away too when a pang or two of motherhood struck her and I was retained. 

Needless to say, I was variously referred to as 'shit-face', 'potty-face' and what not, for years to come.