‘I am going to do it.’ Sameer said. The other guys nodded, pretending to believe him.
They hid behind a wall on the turning a hundred meters away from the Pharmacist’s, and watched Sameer walking towards the shop. Sameer headed straight for the shop, like a bull heading for someone with a muleta.
The pharmacist’s store was crowded. Middle-aged men were seated on a bench, waiting for the visiting doctor to discuss their blood pressure issues. It was a pleasant autumn morning. Sunshine splattered all over the steps leading to the store. School had just closed for the festivals and the guys had nothing better to do. And while they usually came up with foolish ideas like this, the vacation meant that they had the time to actually try it.
As soon as Sameer reached the steps, he paused, held himself for a few seconds. He looked at the store like he was going to climb the steps. But suddenly, he turned around like a steering wheel, and walked right back to the guys peeking at him from behind the wall.
The guys started laughing.
‘I could not do it; I saw a man there who lives in the house next to mine.’ Sameer declared.
‘That’s a lie,’ Rakesh claimed.
‘Well, why don’t you go get it then?’ Sameer replied.
‘I never said I could. But I can catch your lies.’ Rakesh said.
‘Why aren’t you going, Sabin?’ Binod asked. Sabin was the guy with the skills for situations exactly like these. He was friendly, and he could lie with a straight face. He also had facial hair, so that was a bonus.
‘I could go, no problem, but I need you all to come with me. I am not doing this alone.’ Sabin replied.
‘Well, Binod is going.’ Sameer said.
‘No, I am not.’ Binod said.
The five of them continued the ‘you’re going’ and ‘no, I am not’ for a few minutes, until Sameer finally spoke again.
‘Okay, we will all go, and Sabin will ask for it.’
‘Alright,’ everyone said.
Rakesh looked at Sameer’s face with scepticism. Sameer did not give anything away.
The boys started walking to the store, and as they got so close to the store that the pharmacist could see them coming, Sameer turned and walked around towards an alleyway on the opposite side of the road. Rakesh quickly ran towards him as well, giggling.
The other boys looked back, but it was too late. They were already standing on the steps, facing the store counter.
‘Yes?’ the pharmacist asked.
‘Uncle, I mean brother, can I have those?’ Sabin pointed at a packet of condoms on the glass case behind the counter.
‘Those what?’ The pharmacist was not sure.
‘There, on the rack, above the toothpastes.’ Sabin said.
‘The moisturizing lotion?’ The pharmacist asked again.
‘No. The, those condoms. I need two packets.’ Sabin was clearer this time.
‘Hey kiddo, are you old enough to be using those?’ asked one of the men sitting on the waiting bench. He looked at him with a grin.
‘Erm, umm, it is for a science experiment. We are learning about this in our science class.’ Sabin said.
Binod and Manish clenched their teeth. A Science experiment? No one was going to believe that.
‘Are you sure?’ it was another man who was curious now.
‘Yes, we learn about reproductive health. We have learnt a good deal about family planning, in fact.’ Sabin did not want to give up on his façade.
‘What are these private schools teaching kids these days? I fail to understand the kind of future we are moving towards.’ the first man spoke.
The pharmacist pulled out a packet and handed it over. Sabin quickly put it in his pocket.
‘I need two.’ He said.
‘Why two?’
‘We need enough for the experiment.’
The pharmacist tossed him another one.
‘Hey, what school do you go to?’ the man on the bench had one more question.
‘Oh, it is nearby.’ said Sabin, hopping down the steps and walking away, snuggling the change in his other pocket. He did not want to fumble over any more questions anymore.
Sameer and Rakesh stepped out of the alleyway and the boys ran as fast as they could to the end of the street. They then stopped at the turn, and entered a deserted grassy plot.
Manish and Binod started laughing.
‘He said it was for a science experiment!’ Manish looked at Sameer and Rakesh, who also burst out into laughter.
Then the boys spent some time staring at the packet.
‘I had never seen a new packet. I had only seen those little packets that have the actual thing.’ Rakesh said.
‘I had once found them under my parents’ bed.’ Binod remarked.
‘I have only ever seen them thrown out on the roadside.’
‘Why is it always tied?’
‘Also, how do you put it on? What exactly goes in there?’
‘I have tried it once. Stole one from my brother’s purse and tried it on in the bathroom. Those were the best five minutes I have ever had.’ Sameer lied again.
Sameer opened a packet. Out came three little sachets. Sabin opened the other one. Three more.
‘Here is what we are going to do. I am going to take two of these, and the rest of you are going to get one each.’ Sabin said.
‘But I paid for all of it.’ Manish spoke.
‘But I was the one who bought it. So, I get two.’ Sabin was insistent.
That evening, each of them went home with at least one condom sachet in their pockets.
When Rakesh reached home, his mother was waiting for him with questions.
‘Where have you been all day?’ she asked.
‘Was with my friends, Sabin, Sameer, and the others.’ Rakesh said.
‘Better not spend so much time with them. They are not the best influence on you.’ she said. Rakesh did not reply. His hands covered his trousers’ left pocket.
Later in the night, Rakesh crept into his blanket and wondered what he was going to do with the sachet. His mother slept in the other bed in the other corner of the room, barely a couple of meters away from his bed. A window in the room let soft streetlights from a few houses away enter the room. If one really tried, they could move around the room and have a visual sense of most things even if all the lights in the room had been turned off.
Under his blanket, Rakesh waited. His mom slowly started breathing slower, and he heard the rhythm in her breathing slow down. That was how he would know that she had fallen asleep. He took a torchlight from under his pillow, got under the blanket, and took out the plastic sachet from his pocket. He looked at the packet shine on the torchlight. His heartbeat rose, and his hands trembled.
He looked at the packet some more. He also produced a paper from his pocket that had instructions on how to use it. He had picked it up earlier when the boys had thrown the packet away. Only Rakesh would be interested in reading, even an instruction manual. He went through each word, looked at each of the pictures shown, and understood why people tied one up when they threw it away. He felt a shiver run through his spine.
‘Rakesh, what are you doing with the torch under your blanket?’ his mother’s remark frightened and alerted all his senses. He quickly grabbed the paper and the sachet into a sweaty fist, and replied, ‘Nothing. Nothing.’
‘If you are reading again, you can do that tomorrow. Go to sleep now.’ his mother said in a drowsy voice.
‘Okay,’ he responded. His heart was pounding more than it had done a few minutes earlier. He shoved the contents of his fist into his pocket again, turned the torch off, and pulled the blanket from his face. He could see his mom turning over in the other bed. He wondered if she found out what he had been up to. He closed his eyes and tried not to think.
As he opened his eyes, Manish realized that he had fallen asleep watching TV in the TV room all evening. And he also realized that he had something way more interesting in his pocket that he could be exploring instead. He stood up, walked into his room, and locked the door behind him.
His room was like a typical teenager’s room they showed in movies. For one, he was the only one in the group of boys whose parents could afford a room for each of their children. Naturally, his room was a hotpot of all the boys’ mischiefs, he was a sponsor for all shenanigans, and he was more prone to starting a bad habit. Which was why there was a makeshift ashtray hidden under his bed where he hid his occasional cigarette. Leaning on the wall next to the window was a guitar, that had a ‘PEACE’ scribbled on it with a correction pen, and a marker sketch of Bob Marley. One of the strings was out, and the other one was loose. He had not played it much since perhaps after a month of buying it. The only time it was played now was when the boys came over and tried their hands on it. Next to the guitar was a big Daraz, but his clothes were all over the room. He pulled back the curtains on the room, turned on his light, took the sachet out of his pocket, and put it on the bed. Then he pulled his pants down. As he was taking the pants off his feet, his sole accidentally hit the ash tray under the bed. He crouched under to see what had happened. The ash tray had tipped over, and the cigarette butts and ash had spilled on the floor. He tore a page from his math copy to collect the dust and put it back into the tray. While he was doing so, he felt the urge to smoke another one again.
So, he looked inside his school jacket’s inner pocket, and found a cigarette that was barely holding together, having been forgotten for the weekend. He lit the cigarette and started smoking it.
Suddenly, there was a knock on his door. He frantically shut down the cigarette and started blowing the smoke around the room.
‘What?’ he asked in response to the knock.
‘The dinner is ready, aunty wanted me to call you.’ A young man’s voice replied from outside the room. It was Solu, their house help.
‘I will be there in two minutes.’ Manish said. And he started changing into his bedtime clothes.
He had completely forgotten about the sachet, and when he noticed it in the bed again, he picked it up, and put it in a locker in his Daraz.
‘I will get back to this tomorrow,’ he told himself while he closed the door behind him.
Sameer opened the bathroom door, and jumped inside. He had to try it on. But he also had to make sure his parents and brother did not suspect a thing. Before he went to the bathroom, he pretended to have a sudden upset stomach. The bathroom had a small window for ventilation, and the window was next to a tall wall. So, except for a few hours in the afternoon, one had to turn the bathroom lights on when they were in there if they wanted to see anything at all. Sameer turned on the light, and turned on the faucet to start filling the water bucket in the toilet. The flush tank was broken, and the bucket was the way to flush anything down the toilet. But filling the water bucket triggered a weird Pavlov’s bell effect. He actually had to go to the toilet. He pulled his pants down and squatted on the toilet commode.
After he had cleaned himself, he took out the sachet from his pocket. He had just torn the sachet when a knock at the door almost made him drop the whole thing into the toilet.
‘Are you okay? Are you done?’ It was his brother on the side.
‘I am okay.’ Sameer replied. The knock completely ruined what he was trying to do.
Sameer tried thinking of the dirty videos that he had started watching a month ago. He had gotten a CD from a senior at school, and inserted it into the computer when his brother was out for work. His first response to the video was disgust. He could not watch it for more than ten minutes, and told his mother he did not feel like having dinner that night. Only after a couple of days had passed, he had found himself wanting to watch the video again. He had then taken Binod to a small underground CD store, and asked for ‘a spicy mix’. The store owner had first tried to shoo them away but after they had said they were going to pay a hundred rupees, handed them over a CD. Since then, Sameer had watched the movie multiple times, and procured several more movies like those from seniors in exchange for lunch money.
It was in some of these movies the people used what he had in the toilet with him right now. He was enthusiastic, and a little too much perhaps, because when he tried to open the sachet again, the power suddenly went out, the toilet became dark, and he fumbled and dropped the whole thing. He tried feeling for it on the floor, but could not find it. The power came back on after a minute, and he saw that it had slit and dropped into the toilet pipe and now was floating on water that he was definitely not going to touch. Disappointed, he flushed it away with a bucket of water, and started thinking of what he was going to tell the boys to hide the fact that he dropped it.
Binod picked the torn sachet up from next to his bed, mostly disappointed. After he reached home and realized that his parents were going to be back late, he wasted no time. He had pulled out some old adult magazines, opened the sachet, and tried it on.
But now that he was done, he realized that it was not nearly as fun as he and the guys had made it out to be. Sure, it was an exciting experience, but it did not change the experience overall. If anything, he felt like it made it worse. He realized what his English teacher meant when he said, ‘It is better to travel hopefully than to arrive.’ The anticipation of using it was actually better than using it, he could not stop feeling awkward the whole time. Perhaps it would be better if he was really doing it, he thought.
He packed up the mess in an old newspaper, and walked towards the dustbin. That was when he realized, he could not dump it at home. His parents could find it. So, he left his room, locked the doors, and went out looking for a street dustbin. But whenever he found one, he looked around and there was someone always watching. It felt like they knew what he had been up to. After walking around aimlessly for around fifteen minutes, he tossed it in a garbage dump in an old alleyway and ran and did not stop until he had reached his home.
After he had reached his home, Sabin went through his regular routine. He washed his feet in the laundry area by the bathroom, washed his hands and face, and walked into his kitchen. His kitchen was also his parents’ bedroom, and his mother was chopping vegetables while his father was peeling potatoes for dinner when he stepped in.
‘Where were you all day?’ His father asked, in a rather stern tone.
‘I was just out with my friends. Did not go very far, just around the town, playing football on the ground next to the school.’ Sabin replied, hesitating.
‘You should be cutting off the time you spend playing with your friends and spending more time on your studies now,’ his mother spoke.
Sabin’s parents ran a canteen in a government office. They had run a small restaurant in the town before they got recommended by a family friend to run a canteen in a relatively small wing of a ministry. Talking to people in the restaurant when he was really young was how Sabin had developed great confidence and adult communication skills. After loaning out money to bribe officers to get the lease agreement for the canteen, his parents had been working day after day to pay back the loans, and save some money for the future. And amidst all of this, they had admitted Sabin to a private school, as cheap as it was, to make sure he could someday potentially get a job at one of these government offices, like the officers they served on a daily basis.
Sabin understood his parents’ expectations, but he was only thirteen, and it got overwhelming at times. Like that evening, when he had two condom sachets in his trouser pocket, the conversation quickly turned towards how he had to be serious with his studies, to show relatives close and far that they could amass wealth too, because they had apparently treated his parents terribly during their times of struggle. And that he was wasting his time hanging out with the boys, and that they were not a good influence on him.
By the time dinner was ready, Sabin was desperately waiting for a reason to leave the room politely. He sat down on the floor on a cushion, chomped down the cauliflower curry and rice, picked up bits of rice that had fallen out of the plate, and left the room.
He washed his hands and gargled in the wash area, turned on a bucket tap to clean his plate, and left it to dry on the top of the bucket. Then, he went into the other room that had the TV, his bookshelf, the study desk, the cupboard, and in a corner, his bed. He pushed the door such that it was closed but not locked. He sat on his study chair and tried to calm down. He reached his hand in his trouser pocket. Something was wrong. He only had one sachet in the pocket. He looked around the room, it was not anywhere to be seen. He then ran to the wash area, and did not find anything there either.
He had only entered his room, when the door behind him opened with a thud, and his dad walked into the room.
‘Sabin!’ he screamed, holding the other sachet in his hand high, ‘Where did you get this?’
Sabin was out of words.
‘The boys,’ he tried forming words, ‘It was, It was a joke…’
‘This is it. You are going to a boarding school. Kalpana, it does not matter if it costs us more, we will send him to a boarding school next year.’ He shouted. By this time his mother had entered the room too, and she had her eyes filled with tears.
Sabin looked down.
‘Go out. Go to one of those boys’ homes. You will not sleep here tonight.’ His father said, as he dragged him out of the room, and locked the rooms.
Sabin started crying hysterically with his back on the door. But the door did not open. After what felt like an hour, he got up, and walked out of the home, still sobbing.
It was past nine at night, and humans were rarely outdoors at this hour in this town of Kathmandu. All Sabin could hear were distant meows, barks, and TV shows playing in houses. He started walking aimlessly until he reached a completely dark alleyway. His feet hesitated to step into the alley, so he stopped for a while. He reached into his pocket, grabbed the sachet, and threw it as far away as he could. And he ran back to his home.
His door was still locked. But a young man who lived in the room next to theirs had his door open. He had apparently heard the whole conversation, and realized that the kid had been left outdoors for the night.
He invited Sabin in, and let him sleep with a mattress on the floor. Although all Sabin could think about was what was going to happen the next morning, he fell asleep almost instantly.
Early the next morning, a middle-aged man found an unused condom sachet while taking his dog out for a walk. He quickly slid it under his pocket, and it reminded him of the bunch of teens he had seen buying condoms at the pharmacy the earlier day. He wondered what they might have done with them.
