Geetanjali Krishna: Just desserts for poor Rajrani

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There's no money to pay the corporation fellow today," said Rajrani's husband Pyarelal as she got ready for work, "See if any of your employers would give you an advance."

He reckoned that even Rs 100 would be enough to fob off the corporation people if they came to throw him off the premises of the government school where he sold kulfi and ice cream to students.

This was a new venture for Pyarelal and had seemed promising until now, when the inspector got fussy about his standing outside the school.

Every morning he'd buy ice from the cold storage to fill his icebox, go to the dingy, dirty house in a small South Delhi village from where he bought the kulfi, and then sell it during the day. Now that summer was here, he hoped he'd be able to earn as much as Rs 150-200 a day, if he was lucky.

But it just wasn't his day. Rajrani couldn't convince any of her employers to cough up any money. She was still neck-deep in the advances she took to help her husband set up the kulfi business.

She reported her lack of success to her husband. "Never mind," he said, "I'll try my luck outside that school again. But I have 30 rupees in my pocket today, so if I get caught, there'll be trouble!"

Rajrani laughed and said, "Look at the bright side, if you get caught, we'll all have kulfi for dinner!" She had no idea how prophetic her words would turn out to be...They did have kulfi for dinner that night, and their five children were ecstatic.

So was she, it did make a delicious change from the chapaati and onion they normally ate. Pyarelal was the only one who was quiet and ate little. The next day, he decided to stand near a bustling market.

But lady luck seemed to have deserted him there as well, and he brought most of the kulfi home again. That day the children had eaten at their grandmother's house, and so Rajrani ate all the kulfi for dinner. Pyarelal savagely refused to eat anything, saying he'd had enough kulfi to last a lifetime.

Without hardly any sales, Pyarelal had no money to bribe the inspectors with. So standing outside the school was out of question.

Once he bought the kulfi, he had to sell it in the next few hours or else it would melt. Pyarelal was frantic with worry "" he'd invested a Rs 1,000 in the business and got virtually no returns. The advance his wife had taken, and a substantial amount of their savings, had all gone.

In the next fortnight, he resignedly brought home most of his payload of ice cream, which was duly consumed by his family.

As poor Pyarelal's business went kaput, Rajrani, who'd never been slender, began to develop positively Junoesque proportions. When she beat the dust out of carpets, she looked like she'd be able to defeat a WWF wrestler "" with just one hand.

Her neighbours thought she was blooming because Pyarelal's business was booming. So did her employers, unfortunately. When Pyarelal was in dire straits, he begged them for a loan, saying he was starving and couldn't even afford to feed his large family anymore.

Everyone scoffed, saying his wife looked fatter than she'd ever done before. Had he taken to gambling or drinking, they asked? Meanwhile, at home, Rajrani was sick with acidity.

There was nothing to eat but melted kulfi. But she got no sympathy from Pyarelal. Whether his failed business because of his destiny, his wife sure seemed to have got her just desserts.