B M P

Translation of N Prabhakaran's Short story 'B M P' by K T Dinesh

A burglar broke into our house six or seven months ago. None of our valuables was stolen. A bell metal pan was the only thing taken away. It was almost an unused thing dumped in a corner of the kitchen. But Jalaja had a special fascination for it. It was sent to her by her mother a week after our marriage. A loyal servant of her mother secretly brought it to us. When I saw it I too was a bit lured by it. As for Jalaja it was as if she was in possession of a treasure.

The metal workers of Kunjimangalam got the pan wrought under the special instruction of her late grandfather. Its sides and the round supporting things it has have a special charm about them and also the bottom is adorable. And if you look into it you can see an extraordinary shine, as if oil oozing from it constantly. I don’t know how bell metal pans are made or what combinations of metals are used in making bell metal utensils. Jalaja believes that gold is an essential metal in them. She had heard of such sayings in her childhood. If you eat food items prepared in utensils made with a mixture of gold your beauty and intelligence will be enhanced. You won’t be troubled by diabetes and blood pressure either. She strongly believes in all these. But, anyhow, in the last fifteen years we have used it only once or twice to cook. It was lying in a corner of the kitchen covered with dust and cobwebs between a rat-trap without a latch and a kitchen knife without a handle.

The burglar stole it during day time by entering the work area by bending the grills and breaking open the kitchen door using a crowbar. The doors to the other rooms from the kitchen were lying open. Still the guy has not ransacked anything. He could have easily taken away the five hundred rupees kept in the drawer of my table, at least. He had not done, even that.

Who would be this burglar? What could have been his intentions? Jalaja and I discussed all these for long. Our children and our neighbour Philip sir and his wife helped us with the various assumptions they had. But in spite of all these we could not find out the motive behind his action.

‘After the pan was taken away I feel very tired these days. It is as if a piece of my life has been cut away.’ Jalaja kept saying this quite often. I didn’t take it seriously. After one or two months she too stopped mentioning the pan. All of us almost forgot the thing. I never thought, even in my wildest dreams, that the pan would again be a burning issue in our life.

The episode took place this morning. A handsome young chap who looked like a foreigner rode to our courtyard on a dazzling motorbike. ‘Good morning sir, good morning madam,’ he wished Jalaja and me separately. He gave a Kitkat each to both our children. Then he took out a beautiful cardboard box from a big polythene cover and placed it on the floor. From the way he tried to take it out it was evident that the thing inside the cardboard box was something quite heavy.

Without opening the cardboard box he began to speak. ‘Sir, I’m the south Indian sales representative of Aztec company. Inside the box is a very prestigious product of our company.’ Straightening the cap he wore on which ‘Aztec’ was written in golden letters, touching lightly his tie and smiling gently he continued, ‘We’ve no intentions to cheat our customers with a metaphoric name like ‘Aztec’. The name of our product is quite simple – Bell Metal Pan. Pausing for a while he proceeded with the smile of a champion, ‘Sir, metallurgy was not first developed in Mesopotamia or Indus Valley. The pioneers in this field were the Red Indian tribes called Aztecs of Mexico. The Spanish invaders of sixteenth century conquered them and seized all the good aspects of their material culture. Our company’s MD is related to the descendants of the Aztec tribe who had mastered the craft of working with bell metal. Mainly our market, till the 1950s, was Latin America. Our production unit in India was set up in 1992 in Nagpur. We are not manufacturing our products excessively. Firstly it is because of the difficulty in getting skilled labourers and then it is that we use the same crude machinery the Aztec tribes used in making our products. Then only the products will have the same genuine quality.’

Realizing that we were fed up, he suddenly looked at his watch and asked, ‘Sorry sir, am I boring you too much?’ Assuming a light vein and laughing loudly he added, ‘After all, today is Sunday. Isn’t it better watching my demonstration than being bored by watching TV programmes?’ I liked his sense of humour and scintillating laughter very much. I nodded and gave him consent to continue.

‘The issue now is not the ingredients of the food we take. Various pressure cookers, frying pans, cooking range, aren’t all these making whatever we eat like cattle feed? Whatever we cook, if we want to maintain the original flavour, colour and taste the utensil in which we cook them also must be as good as what we cook. But what to do? We cannot supply it for an affordable price to all. It will come to a good sum while considering the labour charge, the price of the metal, establishment expense and transportation charge. But, actually while considering the quality of the pan and the purpose behind it, everyone will nod their heads approving that the price is reasonable. Sir, you have to cook and taste all such things as chicken sixty nine, Kadai chicken, ladies chicken and then your payasam, neyyappam, kalathappam etc. in our pan. Then only will you understand that what you eat in star hotels are things like rubber sheets.’

He opened one side of the cardboard box a little, took out a picture almost of the size of a calendar and handed it over to me by winking at me once. A young lady clad only in a thin nightgown and a smart youngster wearing a bermuda and vest who has placed his hands on her hips and his face on her shoulders could be seen posing in an exquisitely designed kitchen. In the hands of the lady an oval shaped, inwardly dented beautiful pan was seen. A pan festooned with hundreds of light rays. When our children stood on tip toe to have a look at the picture he took out two cards from his pockets and gave them to the children. The photographs of Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid were on the cards.

‘Sir, the pan costs five thousand rupees,’ he said as if he had a sudden revelation. Jalaja and I were a bit shocked. I guessed from his long speech itself that it would be expensive. But still, I assumed it would be around two thousand five hundred. This anyway was too high. This is humbug, charging five thousand rupees for not so big a pan, though it was made of bell metal.

As if he had read everything in my mind, he said, ‘Sorry sir, I cannot sell this pan for a reduced price. The market rate of this pan will be more than six thousand rupees. I offer the pan to you for its company rate. This is a rate we fixed as a part of advertising the product. This is not a deal for profit.’ Throughout his lecture he was standing. He shrugged his shoulder and loosened his tie a little and sat on the sofa.

‘Spending five thousand rupees for just a pan will be a problem for many. It happens because of your set notions about the price of products. Even those who belong to lower middle class group are buying TV sets, refrigerators and washing machines. But they wish to buy utensils in which they prepare their food for a cheap price of ten or twenty rupees. That is not right. Aztec company is not for any compromise with such people. There are a few people at least in our country who think price of the things they buy is not a big issue but their quality. We don’t even have sufficient pieces with us to supply to such people. We had conducted a survey earlier to spot such customers in each city and town. According to the survey conducted in this town, sir, you and Doctor Sudevan are the only two customers our company could identify. I have already given a piece to the doctor, now there is only one piece left and it is for you.’

He sat on the sofa and began to wipe his face with his handkerchief as if he had said everything he wanted to say and it was our duty to take a positive decision.

I was thinking how I could ever send him back disappointed after listening to him for such a long time. Jalaja also was in such a dilemma. The expression on the face of the children was also quite against losing the pan. I stood there silently for some time looking at the picture he had handed over to me. Then I looked at Jalaja placing the picture on the cardboard box. She looked at me too. Then we both went in.

It was the previous day that we got our salary. It was not a problem for us to give five thousand rupees all on a sudden. What would happen later could be thought after. I handed five thousand rupees to him. He smiled and nodded his head as if he was congratulating us on taking a wise decision.

‘Madam, do you want me to place this in the kitchen?’ he asked.

‘Oh, no,’ said Jalaja.

‘Then, thank you, madam. Ok, see you, sir.’ Saying thus he got out of our home. It was when the sound of his motorbike faded away in the distance that Jalaja opened the box.

‘Oh, my beloved gods, what is this that I see?’ she withdrew her hand with a shudder. The pan in the box did not in any way resemble the pan in the picture. It looked like our old bell metal pan. The only difference it had in sight was that the bottom of the pan was painted maroon.

Suddenly reminded of something Jalaja dashed into the kitchen. She came back with a kitchen knife. She overturned the pan and started to scratch slowly at the centre of the pan. Without having the least idea what she was doing the children and I gazed at her. She cried out saying, ‘Cheating, he cheated us,’ and she put the knife on the floor and sat there supporting her head with her hands.

‘What happened? What’s the matter?’

‘Look, look at this,’ she said without moving from where she sat.

I looked. On the part where Jalaja scratched off the paint, the letters B. M. P. were clearly seen.

Jalaja’s grandfather was the first B. A. degree holder of her village, a man who had taken a B.A. degree from Madras. He made the metal workers who had no idea how to write English alphabets draw the picture of the letters B.M.P. on the bottom of the pan. It was the abbreviation of Bichantevida Madhava Panikker.

‘Oh, is this the issue? Hasn’t he said about this? The name of this pan is bell metal pan, and B.M.P. is the abbreviation of it, right?’

Jalaja was in a delirium with anger, and she was sad for being cheated at the dawn of the day. She felt that I was deliberately trying to belittle her and she became almost blind with such feelings. She jumped up suddenly and took a book from my table and threw it out. I too lost my calm. Though I used to deliver speeches against harassment of women I forgot it all for a moment and slapped her twice on her cheeks. Children were quite scared at this unexpected mess. Jalaja began to sob and she was swirling on the floor.

After a while, when everything became calm, I came out of the house. I searched for the book she had thrown away. Its front cover was torn. The stitch was broken and the pages hung loose. I took the papers in a pile and arranged them according to the page number. It was only then that I realised which book it was. ‘Oh, God it was not a book by any of the third-rate Indian authors. It was Jaques Derrida’s ‘Writing and Difference’.’

When I stepped back into the room with the anguish of that awareness, I saw the big picture given to me was lying on the floor. It was the picture that showed the beautiful lady holding the pan, the young guy standing quite close to her and the elegantly designed kitchen.

‘Hmm, what’s gone is gone. This lady is a first-class thing. It seems she is worth not just five thousand but fifty thousand rupees,’ I said to myself unable to withdraw my eyes from the picture.