Lord Ganesha, universally revered as the ultimate facilitator, the deity whose forte is obstacle eradication, the benevolent Lord who smoothens the harsh, thorn-filled, rock-strewn pathways of life, the hallowed usherer of felicity and auspicious times. Pray then, why doesn’t he teach that obnoxiously inconsiderate Patel to turn the volume down on those monstrously jarring speakers, whose only quality is a hair-raising, spine tingling decibel level loud enough to register on deaf ears, whilst deafening those with perfectly good hearing. Not to mention scaring the daylights out of Ramlal, the poor street dog whose mangy misfortune it was to have been napping right next to those auricular assault weapons. A field full of donkeys braying their lungs out would have been preferable to those atrocious wooden boxes fobbed off to Patel by some charlatan. Wouldn’t Lord Ganesha himself might have shuddered at the besmirchment of his fair image, were he to chance to descend from his celestial abode upon this godforsaken town, and suffer the eardrum shattering blast of assorted devotionals from Bollywood films, non-stop, 24x7, an assault more brutal than Viv Richards ripping through overweight English bowling attacks in his pomp?
Thus wondered Ramu in the midst of a particularly jarring number during the festive Ganesh Chaturthi season celebrating the birth of Lord Ganesha. Ramu was the intellectual half of the Ramu Somu duo, who had earned more than their fair share of notoriety in lethargic Shivajinagar, by posing just such irksomely inconvenient questions, and having the temerity to follow them through to their logical conclusion with their streetsmart schemes, which it must be said did not always yield the desired result. The devotional fervor of the ear-splitting song was lost on Somu, the more practically oriented of the two, donning, as he was those rather thick cotton plugs in his ears. Somu was blessed with a temperament that did not lend itself to philosophical ramblings. Rather he was one of those types who adapted themselves to fit the world, and lived by doing, content to leave the endless philosophizing and theorizing to gear heads like Ramu.
Ramu had worked himself up into a frenzy over Patel’s brazen insouciance to the pleas of customers and neighborhood residents to turn down the volume. The cops had also turned a deaf ear to allegations of disturbing the peace and mental harassment, whether on account of sheer slothful inertia or haughty indifference or unabashed venality it was not immediately clear. At any rate, it was deafeningly obvious to Ramu that the law was refusing to solve this particular situation, which left him with no recourse, but to take matters into his own hands in the interests of public harmony and dharma, which was not always strictly congruent with human law, nor with its shambolic enforcers.
Patel, proprietor of the sole grocery store in the neighborhood, was a portly, mustachioed, pock-marked, surly fellow with silky center-parted hair, long ladylike nails painted with glossy red nail polish for reasons best known to himself, and an eternally suspicious demeanor. His general lack of congeniality was ably complemented by his extreme parsimony; he was a modern day Scrooge with a penchant for being socially disruptive. He was perpetually clad in kurta and pyjama, which had been white at some point in it’s history, and of which he had only one set, rumored to be washed once a week to keep expenses down, hygiene be damned. Apocryphal tales abounded about his stinginess; one such being that he saved used pencils, pared down to about a centimeter long, and sold the barely usable stubs to poor students, for five paise each, a fair sum in the time warp of a Shivajinagar economy. Another story ran that he went barefoot for an entire monsoon, because he didn’t want to spoil his new leather sandals, while at the same time not wanting to fork out money for rainy shoes. How then, could he bear to bring himself to pay for the copious amounts of electricity his loudspeakers were greedily guzzling? Because, it turns out that he was a fanatic devotee of the Hindu Lord Ganesha, and in his misguided attempts to please the Lord, allowed his devotional fervor to get the better of his frugality in the festive season. Only in the festive season.
Ramu, while loafing around the dusty by lanes of Shivajinagar one fine day, in Somu’s august company, had a flash of inspiration as tremendous as a monsoon lightning bolt. Kalpesh, a servant in Patel’s store was a good acquaintance of Somu’s, courtesy street cricket matches. Kalpesh usually played in Ramu’s team, which team Ramu captained by bullying, browbeating and tyrannizing smaller, meeker lads. Docile as a cow, Kalpesh was usually relegated to fielding in the deep outfield, was never called upon to bowl, and was sent in so late down the order that he never got a chance to bat nine times out of ten. Imagine his feverish excitement then when Somu offered, on Ramu’s behalf, to send him in as opening batsman henceforth, and even give him an over or two to bowl now and then as a bonus. Of course, as free lunches usually prove chimerical, so too did this entirely unexpected offer come with a set of strings attached. In order to earn this magnanimous favor, Kalpesh had to execute the small matter of Ramu’s diabolical plan, consisting of snipping a set of key wires that transported current to those monstrous speakers. Following a quick mental cost-benefit analysis, the deal was struck.
Patel usually spent most of his time in the store, his suspicious nature not allowing him to trust Kalpesh with charge of the store. Except for 10 minutes in the evening, when he allowed himself the luxury of a spicy snack at the adjacent New Amar Chaat House. Kalpesh only had those 10 minutes to execute his end of the bargain. At the usual hour, Patel eagerly embarked on his daily gastronomic sojourn, after duly locking the cash register and barking orders to Kalpesh to mind the store in his absence. As soon as Patel was out the door, Kalpesh swung into action, and was a beehive of activity for the next five minutes, which time was all it took him to silence the cacophonic blare. The sudden pin drop silence brought Patel hastily scurrying back to the store. Kalpesh innocently professed complete ignorance and even managed to convey a sense of disappointment. Little did Patel suspect his angel-faced servant. Ramu had guessed correctly that Patel would not be in any hurry to get the speakers repaired by those lethargic laggards at Lavkare Electricals, since they would never turn it around in time for the festive season. Patel raved and ranted and nearly brought the house down, but his fury was directed at his unfortunate fate rather than at anyone in particular.
In the meantime, an unearthly silence prevailed in the neighborhood. Ramu and Somu spent an entire day exchanging smug smiles, high fiving, backslapping and generally basking in the satisfying glow of their scheme’s total success. In the evening, they treated themselves to drool-inducing snacks from New Amar’s to celebrate, during course of which they ran into a disconsolate Patel on his daily snack break, and offered their “sympathies for the untimely end to the festive music, which they had been blessed to enjoy”. Patel felt mild pride at this acknowledgement of his social contribution, but soon relapsed into gloom.
The following day, Ramu and Somu were rudely awoken by devotional songs from Bollywood films blared at obscenely high decibel levels from speakers that made Patel’s sound like Walt Disney Concert Hall. They staggered out from bed in the direction of the cacophony, and were stunned and stupefied to discover that the goonish volunteers from the local unit of the Maratha Sena party had taken it upon themselves to fill the void left by Patel’s misfortune.