Missing Marbles

by NINAD JOG

Vinod crawled toward the center table in the living room and reached for the green marble lying underneath it. He had rolled it on the floor until it struck the wall and rolled back. But much to his chagrin, it had rebounded at an angle and come to a stop under the table instead of returning to him. When he tried again, it obeyed his wishes, much to his delight. But who knew what would happen on subsequent rolls? Past success didn’t guarantee favorable future returns!

Smita sauntered into the living room, groggy from waking up from an afternoon nap. She was surprised to see her son squatting on the floor, looking tired, his shirt untucked from his orange nylon shorts.

“Vinnie, didn’t you take a nap? I thought you’d be fast asleep on the settee.”

Vinod shook his head. “Aai, I’m playing roll-marble!”

“Who would’ve thought his attraction to his newest toy would last so long?” Smita murmured, approaching the writing table. She sat on the chair next to it, letting out one yawn after another. “I’m going to bring you a cup of milk and make myself some coffee. Only then will I be fully awake.”

Vinod continued playing with the marbles while Smita squatted next to him and made him drink chocolate milk. As Vinod drank his last gulp, his mother noticed something amiss.

“Vinnie, why are you playing with just three marbles?” she asked with a start. “Where are the others?”

Vinod was barely ruffled. “These marbles are nice,” he said, pointing to the green ones he was playing with. “The others are bad.”

A chill went up Smita’s spine. “You didn’t swallow any of them, did you?” she gasped, barely able to conceal her panic.

He shook his head vigorously.

She didn’t take his word for it, though. She hurriedly opened his box of marbles, only to find it empty. “Did you hide them somewhere?” she inquired sternly.

Vinod could barely conceal his smile as he bobbed his head. Smita was heartened by her son’s affirmative response. Thankfully, the matter wasn’t anywhere as serious as she had feared.

Vinod couldn’t imagine why his mother was asking him the where the other marbles were. He knew she had been fast asleep when he hid them, but weren’t adults all-knowing? Wouldn’t she be able to guess correctly on her own?

Smita strode into the balcony and beckoned her son. The balcony was empty, save for a broom standing in the far corner. Smita crouched on the floor, bent her head down until it touched the floor, and peered into the small pipe that drained rainwater. She could see right through it.

“Don’t tell me you rolled the marbles through the pipe and watched with glee as they fell three floors to the ground! That’s what you and Sentil did with his marbles last week.”

“No, I didn’t!” cried Vinod, distressed at the very thought of losing his marbles.

But Smita wasn’t so sure. “Show me where you’ve hidden them,” she snapped impatiently, getting up, “or I’ll go downstairs and look for them in the flower-bed.”

She found it odd that her son had hidden his marbles, for he had been keen on playing with every single one of them. When he hid his toys and challenged his parents to find them, he hid large toys that were easier to find, such as his teddy bear and the wooden blocks. But the marbles were another matter.

Smita hadn’t been keen on buying him any marbles to begin with. Just the previous evening, she had told him he was too young to play with them.

“But Kedar has marbles,” Vinod had protested, visibly dejected by his mother’s refusal. This wasn’t the first time she had turned down his request. Badgering her for days had yielded no dividends. “Even Sentil has marbles,” Vinod added. “I too want them.”

“If his friends can play safely with marbles, I’m sure so can Vinnie,” Hemant interjected, shrugging and throwing his arms out. “I don’t see any harm. Let’s buy him a few.”

Vinod grinned, pleasantly surprised by the sudden change in his fortunes. Hemant smiled and tousled his son’s hair.

The Saneys mounted their scooter and headed for the Deccan Gymkhana market, with Hemant driving the scooter, Smita riding the pillion, and Vinod standing between his father and the front fender. Vinod was perky and chipper as his parents first bought vegetables from the roadside stalls by Lakdi Bridge. He often got bored and inexplicably had a stomachache at such times, but that day was different. The goodies he had longed for were finally within reach.

Vinod’s eyes popped with wonder when the Saneys went to the Fortune Toy Store, and the shopkeeper showed him box after box of small and large marbles. Never had he seen so many at once.

“Let’s buy Vinnie three or four large marbles,” Smita whispered to her husband. “They should be easier to play with than the small ones.”

“The small ones are just as convenient,” Hemant shot back. “Besides, they are cheaper than the large ones. Not that it matters, because we can afford both.”

Smita asked her son whether he wanted the large marbles or the small ones.

Vinod studied both sets. The small ones were bright green and pale yellow, while the large ones were dull blues and browns. The small ones had sharper boundaries between the transparent and opaque regions of their interior designs, while the large ones had fuzzy designs and seemed to be unsure of their identity, as if they yearned to become something other than marbles.

“Aai, I want both small and big marbles!” Vinod announced with a flourish, even though he preferred the small ones.

“You can’t have both. Pick one.”

Vinod chose the small ones, disappointed that he couldn’t have both.

“Are you sure you don’t want the big, blue ones?” Smita prodded him. “Blue is my favorite color.”

Her son repeated his preference.

“Vinnie has made the correct choice,” observed Hemant, his face lighting up with pride. “He’s smart, just like me!”

Vinod beamed at his father.

Hemant then turned to his wife. “Why did you offer him a false choice if you wanted to force the large marbles upon him?” he asked scathingly. “You remind me of military dictators who hold referendums on their rule, fully expecting the voters to vote yes!”

The shopkeeper guffawed heartily, as he wasn’t used to seeing couples squabbling with each other in public.

 “You like to make connections between all sorts of unrelated things,” Smita retorted severely. “If Vinnie were to put a marble in his mouth, he’d be more likely to swallow a small one. Heaven forbid if it were to happen, though.”

“Ma’am, no five-year olds put marbles in their mouths,” the shopkeeper butted in, wary as he was of losing customers. “Your son’s well past the age when marbles pose a hazard.”

“Exactly!” concurred Hemant with a triumphant air. “Besides, it’s easier to choke on large marbles than on small ones.”

Sensing an opening, Vinod tugged at his father’s trousers. “Baba, I want both!” he whimpered in appeal.

Noticing the pleading look on his son’s face, Hemant caved in to his demands.

“We’ll buy half a dozen of each type,” he told the shopkeeper. “I’ll let my son choose them.”

Thrilled by the turn of events, Vinod selected the brightest of the small marbles and the least dull of the large ones. The shopkeeper was relieved that his fears about the Saneys squabbling to the point of leaving the store empty-handed hadn’t come to pass.

“If you’re going to buy both types of marbles, we might as well buy just three of each,” Smita insisted, frowning. “What’s the point in buying twice as many? Half a dozen should be more than enough.”

But Hemant would have none of it. “You’re an epitome of a stingy Kobra!” he charged, dismissing her suggestion with a contemptuous flick of his hand as he alluded to the stereotypical tight-fistedness of people belonging to their caste. “We can easily afford a dozen.”

Smita sighed, resigning herself to the inevitable.

When the Saneys reached home, Smita went into the kitchen and started unpacking the groceries, while father and son sat cross-legged on the living room floor and opened the box of marbles.

“There are two bubbles trapped inside this marble,” said Hemant, showing Vinod a large blue marble. “And this one has an imperfect design, even though it’s smooth from the outside.”

“Baba, there’s a fish inside this marble!” cried Vinod, holding up a small marble. “It’s swimming.”

Hemant took a close look and laughed. “Did you hear what Vinnie just said?” he asked his wife in a loud voice.

Smita answered from the kitchen that she was too caught up with chores to notice. Hemant told her Vinod had mistaken the marble’s colored design for a fish, and the transparent glass for water.

Smita entered the living room and reminisced about how their son had mistaken a fish for an airplane the first time he saw a fish. When Vinod was younger, he used to see small airplanes from his home every day, as the Saneys lived in New Delhi near Safdarjung Airport. Only when they moved to Pune did Vinod first see a fish in the small aquarium at Sambhaji Park.

“My son mistook a marble for an aquarium and a fish for an airplane,” Smita murmured as she headed back to the kitchen. “I hope he never mistakes a marble for anything else.”

Hemant asked his son which marbles he liked the most. Vinod showed him three small ones. Hemant noticed that they were more brightly colored than the others.

“Those are my favorites as well,” he told Vinod. “Do you know why?”

Vinod shook his head.

“Because they are the same color as my eyes—and yours!”

Vinod giggled, pleased by the comparison. He crawled away from his father and rolled a marble on the tiled living room floor towards him. Hemant caught it and rolled it back. Father and son indulged in roll play for a few minutes, until a marble that Vinod rolled shot straight to the wall, rebounded, and came back to him. Vinod was pleasantly surprised that it had returned to him on its own, without having to be rolled back by his father. Rebound-marble was surely more fun than roll-marble.

Smita took a break from her chores and entered the living room. “Now I know why you bought so many marbles,” she remarked, a cheerful glint in her eyes as she looked directly in her husband’s. “You were just as eager to play with them as Vinnie was. The marbles are as much yours as his. You too are a child!”

“And so are you, my smiling sparrow!” Hemant blurted out. “Come, sit on lap,” he beckoned, patting his thighs. “I’ll pull your two pigtails, and you too can play with my marbles.”

Smita blushed. “Don’t say such naughty things,” she admonished him. “Who will do the kitchen chores if I join you? Will you help me?”

“You can always do them later,” Hemant declared with a wave of his arm. “Come on over, just for two minutes.”

“You’re so relaxed and jovial because it’s Sunday,” Smita pointed out. “You’re cranky on weekdays.”

She returned to the kitchen while Vinod continued playing rebound-marble.

But it was Smita’s mood, not her husband’s, which took a hundred-and-eighty-degree turn the next afternoon. “Vinnie, show me where you hid the marbles!” she demanded menacingly, glaring at her son.

Vinod led her to the doorway connecting the entrance hallway to the living room and proudly pointed to the bolt hole in the doorway’s frame.

Smita’s heart sank. The hole appeared to be chock-full of marbles. “We won’t be able to bolt the door now, let alone lock it!” she cried. “How many marbles did you put in it? Two? Three?”

“Three,” Vinod stammered.

“Why did you put them into the hole?”

Vinod was caught off-guard. The question made no sense. Adults were all too prone to asking questions that didn’t have answers, that too when you least expected them to. It was like asking a mountaineer why he had climbed a mountain. Vinod was also mystified by his mother’s displeasure, since he had half expected her to be pleased with him for filling up the hole that had been sitting empty.

Hardly an hour had passed since Vinod had stumbled upon the hiding place. As he had headed back to the living room after fetching a marble that had rolled into the entrance hallway, his gaze had chanced upon the bolt hole. There was nothing new about it; he had seen it dozens of times before. He had even put his index finger in it a few times, as it was at his shoulder level.

But now that Vinod had marbles, the hole had acquired a whole new meaning. On an impulse, he inserted the small marble he was carrying, and was delighted when it rolled effortlessly inside. Vinod got the message loud and clear. The cavity was practically begging to be filled with marbles.

Vinod fetched a large blue marble and tried inserting it. It did go in, but just barely. He pushed it in with his index finger with all his might until it fit snugly inside the hole. Pleased by his success, he fetched another marble—this time a small yellow one—and stuffed it in. The hole was now completely filled. Vinod was thrilled. There was no mistaking the fact that marbles-in-the-hole was a more exciting activity than rebound-marble.

Vinod snapped out of his reverie when Smita bent down to his level and thundered: “Tell me Vinnie, why did you fill the hole?”

Vinod wondered why he was being scolded. What was he supposed to do, leave it half-filled? “I didn’t put the green marbles,” he said by way of explanation. “Baba and I like them, so I kept them for playing.”

Smita had an uneasy thought. She guessed the hole could accommodate no more than two or three marbles. “And where are the others?” she asked brusquely.

But Vinod wasn’t forthcoming. Smita lost her patience. She twisted his left ear and repeated the question.

“Balcony!” he finally whimpered, his face contorted into a pitiful grimace. “Balcony!”

Smita marched him to the balcony, and sure enough, the doorway’s bolt hole was burgeoning with the gleaming glass balls. She soon learned that the same story had repeated itself at the bedroom door. She realized that her son would have filled the bolt holes of all the other doorways if only he had more marbles.

Smita’s neighbors would have found it odd to see her so upset at being unable to bolt the doors that the Saneys usually left open, as it was common in Indian homes to leave doors open. The Saneys’ front door could still be locked, for Vinod hadn’t been able to open it to stuff its bolt hole. Why was Smita worried about safety if she could still restrict entry into her flat?

When the Saneys went out of town, they locked the front door with a large, five-lever padlock in addition to the door’s self-latch. But that wasn’t all. They also locked the living-room and bedroom doors, making it well-nigh impossible for a thief to enter their bedroom, where their meager valuables were stashed in a double-locked steel cupboard. A thief would have to break six locks, which was no mean feat.

One would think break-ins and robberies were common in the Saneys’ neighborhood. Yet the opposite was true. The multiple locks were the middle-class equivalent of gated communities and elaborate home security systems: they gave Hemant and Smita the sense of security they yearned.

And now in one fell stroke, the apple of their eyes had shattered that very sense of security.

“I shouldn’t work myself up into a frenzy,” Smita mumbled as she fetched a spoon from the kitchen and made her way to the living-room doorway. “A thief will still have to break four locks to steal our valuables.”

She wedged out the first marble with the spoon and was pleased when it popped out promptly. It was a small marble after all. “One down, two more to go before the hole will be empty again,” she told herself, feeling encouraged. At this rate, it would take no more than five minutes to unclog all the holes. She would still have an hour to spare before her husband came home from work.

But the lady of the house was in for a nasty surprise. Try though she did, the second marble refused to budge. It fit snugly inside, as if the hole were a cozy burrow designed precisely for its comfort. Smita tried using a knife, but it was no better. It reached into the gap between the large marble and the uneven interior wall of the hole, but there simply wasn’t enough wiggle room to wedge the marble out. The marble’s wish to become something other than a marble had truly been fulfilled.

Vinod watched his mother with a mixture of amusement and concern. Who would have thought she would try to remove the marbles that he had so carefully stashed, and get so worked up about it?

Smita gave up. With the knife in her left hand, she gave her son a tight slap with her right. “You donkey!” she shouted, sweat dripping from her brow. “You good-for-nothing karta! Now who’s going to remove these marbles?”

Vinod burst into tears as the slap stung his cheeks. He didn’t know a karta was someone who handled people’s dead bodies—a person forbidden by the misfortune of his birth into a caste of corpse handlers to take up any other vocation. Vinod knew bugs could die, and so could butterflies. But human deaths were still an unborn notion—and so were kartas.

Smita hit her son on his back before spanking his butt. Vinod held his breath for several seconds before his sobs turned into crying, and the crying into howling as the tears flowed freely down his cheeks, splattering on the cold, tiled floor. Bad as the physical pain of the spanking was, the sting of its unexpectedness was a lot worse. He had snugly fit large, blue marbles into the bolt-hole, only to be struck by a bolt from the blue. Who could have imagined that his mother would give him what he had given his marbles: a good hiding? Why was his mother hitting him when he had done nothing wrong? Oh, the gross unfairness of it all!

Vinod freed himself from his mother’s clutches and dashed to the bedroom. He grabbed the can of Cuticura talcum powder from the dressing table and dabbed it on the parts of his body that he could easily reach: his arms, face, and ears. After all, his mother had beaten him all over. And although she had struck him no more than half a dozen times, Vinod could have sworn he had received twice as many strikes.

“There you go again!” Smita mocked him caustically when she came into the bedroom soon thereafter, “Powdering yourself silly whenever I punish you.”

The talcum powder was Vinod’s sole trusted friend at such times; the only shoulder he could lean on. A magic spell that was always close at hand, he was sure it went a long way toward reducing the soreness and the physical pain of the spankings. Little did he know that it was an even more potent balm for his psyche.

“Enough of the powder,” Smita finally chided him. “It’s not going to help.”

Vinod looked drowsy and appeared to be on the verge of bursting into a fresh round of tears. “I’ll tell your name to Baba,” he threatened in a feeble voice. “He will punish you!”

“Okay, you can tell him my name,” said Smita with a sarcastic laugh as she sat on her bed, combing her long hair, preparing to braid it into pigtails.

Vinod climbed into his cot and lay down, his back turned to his mother. He made up his mind to complain to his father the moment he returned home from work.

It wasn’t long before he fell fast asleep.

“Vinnie will wake up just in time for his father’s return,” Smita mumbled to herself as she went into the kitchen to cook dinner.

True to Vinod’s wishes, his father learned all about the incident within minutes of coming home. But it was his mother who did the telling, for the little one was still in dreamland.

“And little Vinnie did all this slyly and silently when I was asleep,” Smita concluded, heaving an exasperated sigh as she rested her case. “And he didn’t tell me until I asked him where he had hidden his marbles.”

“Don’t worry,” Hemant assured her calmly as he changed into shorts. “I’ll remove all the marbles easily.”

But the lord of the house had spoken too soon. All he could do was wedge one small marble out from the balcony doorway’s hole with a knife. All the large ones stubbornly stayed put.

“You shouldn’t have foisted your preference for large marbles on Vinnie,” he rebuked his wife angrily, wiping the sweat off his brow. “We would’ve been able to get all of them out had we bought him just the small ones.”

“You were the one who insisted on buying both sizes,” Smita reminded him. “You could’ve easily stuck to your guns and bought him just the small ones. But no, you wanted to show off to the shopkeeper that you could afford both. And now you’re blaming me?”

Hemant made a Herculean effort to keep himself from exploding. “Have you forgotten that Vinnie and I both preferred the small marbles? I bought the large ones in keeping with your wishes.”

“But you were the one who insisted on buying so many marbles. If you had listened to me and bought just three of each size, he wouldn’t have clogged more than one hole.”

Hemant could take it no more. “You donkey! You gantode!” he bellowed, employing the term he had coined to refer to people he was angry at. “You don’t understand.”

Smita kept quiet, wary of provoking her husband any further.

Hemant fetched a couple of tools from the passageway closet and threw himself like a lion into the task at hand. Hammer in his right hand and screwdriver in his left, he started hammering the screwdriver into the living room doorway’s hole. He chipped away at the outermost marble, collecting its shards on a sheet of newspaper as they flew out. But the innermost one was in no mood to yield to the chipping. Mortally bruised that it was, it retreated deeper into the hole with every blow, desperately seeking refuge from the screwdriver’s wrath.

Hemant blew his top off. “I’ll punish Vinnie!” he cried, his face an unforgiving mosaic of anger and weariness.

“Don’t punish him today,” Smita beseeched him plaintively. “I’ve already hit him. Do it tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow will be too late. He will have all but forgotten about it. It has to be done right away.”

Hemant marched to the bedroom and shook his son awake. “Come here, you gantode, see what you’ve done!” he yelled, his eyes bloodshot and glaring as he dragged Vinod to the living-room doorway and showed him the marble chippings. “Why did you stuff the holes with marbles?”

Vinod turned deathly pale. “Why did you shatter my beautiful marbles?” he felt like asking his father, saddened at the unseemly sight of his treasure smashed to smithereens. But he couldn’t muster the courage to utter a word. Perhaps this was all just a bad dream. Wasn’t his father supposed to make light of the escapade? Wasn’t he supposed to lavish praise upon him for not stuffing the three small green marbles? Who would have thought his parents would gang up on him so mercilessly?

“Aai and I have indulged your every wish,” Hemant continued. “You wanted a toy train, so we bought you a toy train. You wanted a tricycle, so we bought you a tricycle. Aai and I do everything for you, and this is what you do in return. You prodigal son!” With that, he spanked Vinod’s butt.

Vinod started crying. This was not a dream after all. It was happening for real.

Hemant spanked his son a few more times. There was no denying that it was a good outlet to release the day’s frustrations that had welled up inside him. “Stop crying, or I’ll place you on the loft!” he threatened roughly.

“Please don’t do that,” Smita pleaded, folding her hands and bowing before her husband, a terrified look on her face. “You’ve already spanked him enough.”

“I’ll place you up there next to him if you don’t behave! He deserves this extra punishment. We won’t be able to lock any of the doors when we leave Pune unless we get the marbles out.”

Try though he did, Vinod was unable to stop crying. Although his father had spanked him no more than a dozen times, each strike was far more powerful than his mother’s. Hemant lost no time in making good on his promise. Vinod spent ten minutes on the loft, his legs dangling down the wall and his fear of the darkness and heights at an all-time high. When Hemant brought him down, he rushed to his mother and hid his face in her sari. Smita cuddled him and took him back to bed.

Hemant continued to chip away at the marbles, but none of the innermost ones yielded to his efforts. Smita tried to dissuade him from hammering away, but Hemant would have none of it.

“What’s the point in having a hammer at home?” she mused ruefully, “if you can’t hammer the point home?”

She finally tried a different tack. “Take a break and resume next Sunday,” she suggested tentatively, afraid that he would dismiss her suggestion outright. “We won’t need to lock any of the doors before then.”

With great reluctance, Hemant stopped hammering. “Let’s make sure Vinnie never inserts anything into these holes,” he remarked.

Fortunately, Hemant did not have to try again, for Smita arranged for a carpenter to pay a visit the very next day. He widened the holes ever so slightly and removed all the shards of the remaining marbles.

Over the next few days, Vinod continued to roll the marbles on the living-room floor towards the wall at different angles and study the rebound’s trajectory. He didn’t play with all five of his remaining marbles, though. He kept the two that his parents had extracted from the holes safely out of sight under a sheet of tissue paper in his box of marbles. “Those marbles don’t roll properly,” he convinced himself. “And they need some rest after coming out of the hole.”

One afternoon, Sentil paid Vinod a visit, and the two squatted on the floor at opposite ends of the living room, rolling marbles on the floor towards each other, and bursting into cheers on the rare occasions when they collided head-on with each other. Vinod enjoyed having company while playing with marbles, but he couldn’t help being envious of his friend for having a dozen marbles.

“I too would’ve had many marbles,” he told Sentil wistfully, “if I hadn’t put them in holes.”

Sentil laughed at him, much to his chagrin. Vinod was sure that the days when he owned several marbles would never return.

But he was mistaken. His friend told his parents about Vinod’s plight, and returned the very next day, brandishing a box filled with ten new red and brown marbles.

“My Aai said you can have two of them,” he graciously offered Vinod as soon as Smita went back into the bedroom to continue her afternoon nap. “Choose the ones you like.”

A wide smile lit Vinod’s face as he greedily eyed the gleaming glass balls. Here at last were replacements for his lost marbles, even if he could have just a couple of them. But two were a start, and they held out hope that his collection would grow. And just as his original marbles had fallen into his lap out of the blue, so had these. Both were truly mannas from heaven.

He lost no time in accepting Sentil’s offer. As he started choosing marbles, he realized with a start that all of them were large. He knew exactly what he would do the moment he laid his hands on them and his mother’s back was turned. Heaven forbid if they got stuck again despite the widened holes!

If the marbles that Sentil offered were a silver lining, there was no mistaking the fact that their size was a cloud. Never mind that they were smoother and more brightly colored than the large ones that Vinod had once posessed, however fleetingly.

“I don’t want them,” he demurred, pushing Sentil’s box of marbles away, looking downcast. “Big-big marbles aren’t good. They don’t roll properly.”

Sentil was visibly surprised. “Kedar took two red marbles,” he explained. “You should, too.”

But Vinod firmly shook his head. He turned his gaze to his own marbles—the small, green ones that resembled not only his father’s eyes but also his own. They seemed extra smooth and colorful, now that events had chipped away the luster of the large ones. Having lost his marbles once, he was wary of losing them again.