Aam Aadmi learned this habit at home. His parents, Aam Baba and Aam Amma, loved lecturing Aam Aadmi, who was then called an Aam Larka.
They would tell him how to become a good boy, an obedient son, a wonderful neighbour and above all, a brilliant student. Sometimes Aam Aadmi wondered if his parents also had these qualities! They never tired of telling Aam Aadmi that those who had these qualities became something special, “Not just ordinary peons and clerks you see in this neighbourhood.”
Aam Aadmi knew his father too was a clerk in the railways and his mother was as ordinary a woman as others in the neighbourhood who gossiped all day.
At school, the teachers also loved telling Aam Aadmi what he should or should not do; not because he was a particularly brilliant student. He was very obedient. They often shouted at him, and at some other students, whether they had a reason to do so or not.
Like his parents, the teachers also never tired of telling Aam Aadmi that he was no good because he was not doing what they asked him to do.
Aam Aadmi never understood why they said that because he always tried to be a good boy, a good neighbour and as good a student as he could.
After high school, Aam Aadmi learned typing and joined the railways as a junior clerk, as his father could not afford to send him to college.
He remained an Aam Aadmi at his office too; one among hundreds of junior clerks. There’s nothing special about him, or at least that’s what senior clerks told him.
Aam Aadmi never learned what his officers thought of him because he was too junior to meet them. The senior clerks, however, told him that “the Sahibs are not happy” with his work. Every time a senior clerk said that, he also told him “how to make the Sahibs happy and become a good, senior clerk.”
So, the lectures never stopped. Soon Aam Aadmi began to enjoy being the target of all these well-meaning people. Sometimes senior clerks were too busy discussing politics, or their family matters, to target Aam Aadmi.
On such occasions, he would wait patiently for their attention and when they continued to ignore him, he would purposely do something to annoy them. The response was immediate, “You good for nothing. You will never learn,” one of them would say and others would join.
Sometimes Aam Aadmi also liked listening to the so-called pavement doctors: snake charmers, magicians and medicine-men trying to sell whatever they had.
They all claimed that the medicine or amulet they were selling so cheap was given to them by a 100-year old Baba who lived on the Himalayas. They insisted that they were selling their goods at a throw away price because they wanted to serve humanity, not make money.
Aam Aadmi often bought their merchandise, hoping that they will change him into something special (khaas) from ordinary (aam).
Aam Aadmi also had a fondness for political speeches. Whenever he had time – he had plenty of time before he got married – he would go to a political meeting and hear all the speeches, good or bad.
He did not follow a particular political party or politician. “They all work so hard, preparing these beautiful speeches for us. Why should we disappoint others by liking a particular party or politician?” he argued.
Aam Aadmi did not realise that all these speeches, lectures and advices that he had been listening to were gathering in his brain, traveling through his ears, infecting both in the process.
And since, he was a man of few words. Only a few thousands out of those millions of words he had heard in his life ever came out of his mouth.
Only a handful of these words were useful. Most were filthy and obnoxious. Some were infectious and others were poisonous. And since there was no ventilator in Aam Aadmi’s brain, the words began to rot inside.
And one day, they began to ooze out of his ears, the left first.
It started with a shooting pain. When it did not subside, Aam Aadmi went to one of those doctors who had their clinics in poor neighbourhoods but lived in rich areas. This was a specialist too, an ear and nose specialist.
At the clinic, the doctor’s assistant received Aam Aadmi and demanded Rs. 300 to let him see the physician. That was a little steep for Aam Aadmi but he knew he had to pay, so he did.
Doctor Sahib was busy, as he always was. So he was not wasting much time on his patients. He pulled this patient into the consultation room by his right ear, as Aam Aadmi had his left covered.
“Ahem,” the doctor cleared his throat. “Hurts, eh?” he asked the patient.
“OK, sit,” he said, gesturing to a stool which had lost its colour with overuse.
Aam Aadmi sat. Doctor Sahib took out a torch from his apron’s pocket, peeped into the patient’s ear canal and tapped the area under his lobe with his index finger.
“Does it hurt here?” he asked and without waiting for an answer jotted something on a piece of paper and gave it to Aam Aadmi. “Show it to my assistant and he will give you the medicine you need,” said Doctor Sahib, gesturing him to leave.
Aam Aadmi returned home with the medicine and at night asked his wife – yes, by then he had married an Aam Aurat – to pour the liquid into his left ear. She did. The medicine brought some relief and Aam Aadmi went to sleep.
In the morning, he jumped out of his bed and said to his wife,” great medicine, Aam Aurat, no pain, no pain at all.”
Yes, there was no pain but by the afternoon, he noticed a new phenomenon: his left ear was growing. He could feel it, and also noticed it in the mirror. But his wife disagreed and told him he was imagining things.
Aam Aadmi was not sure if he was but he listened to Aam Aurat and took another dose of the medicine. This made him sleep. In the morning, everybody could notice that his left ear was bigger than his right. By next evening it was as big as that of a rabbit.
[To be continued…]