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Clean your ears and hear the stories!
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Even while removing the wax from your ears, the ear-cleaners can wax eloquent with their fascinating stories, says R.V. SMITH
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Want to spend a quiet afternoon, away from it all? Step into Netaji Subhas Park, pick a clean bench, preferably under a shady tree, and wait till the ear-cleaner comes around. He wears a red turban from which stick out all sorts of pins and needles - and he carries cotton too - for making buds to clean the ears. Uninitiated foreigners take him for an acupuncture expert but old Delhiwallahs know him for what he is since the time the place was known as Edward Park.
Strike a bargain if you can, but the best thing is to put off your fear of bad hygiene and just allow the thin chap to take charge of you.
Slowly and softly he will tickle one ear, then another like a man picking diamonds in a mine. Only in this case ear-wax is involved. But he chuckles with glee every time he finds evidence that you have been neglecting your ears. His probing make you feel creepy and sleepy too.
Close your eyes and relax. Let the ear-cleaner do the talking. He is as gossipy as a barber. What he needs is a little encouragement to regale you with information that you wouldn't find in any newspaper."Lallan's wife has left him for a man who turned out to be a drug addict. She wants to come back now but he is determined to keep her out. His in-laws are offering him money to renovate his shop but Lallan is resisting the temptation to say `yes'."
Who is Lallan? You don't bother to ask. A male chauvinistic pig may be, or a man who has been cheated by someone. What difference does it make? You are a disinterested listener, for a change. Just nod and he'll tell you another. We are a neglected lot now. But it was not always so. In the badshahi (royal) days we were in great demand and held in some esteem. And why not? Didn't we hold the king's ear?
Breaking news
If Laddan Bai was corrupting the young nobles, it was we who broke the news to His Majesty. If there was a conspiracy brewing in Badoo Khan's house, we knew all about it and sometimes managed to warn the king in time before the queen lost her favourite maid. Sometimes there were more serious things - like the heir apparent's plans to launch a rebellion with the help of ambitious officers of the court or a conspiracy to poison the ruler. The ear-cleaner will tell you all about it. Just relax and listen as he takes off his turban to cool his head in the humid heat of a late June afternoon, when even Netaji Road is free of heavy traffic.
Handsome eunuch
"Neelam, a dancing girl of Chawri Bazar, fell in love with a handsome eunuch, who used to live with others of his group below the kotha. But the Mir Sahib, who came to her mujra every evening, got wind of it and planned to have the hijra murdered. An ear-cleaner heard two conspirators talking about it behind the Ajmere Gate and warned Neelam, who ran away with her lover the same night.
"But why would a dancing girl fall for a eunuch," you ask. "In matters of the heart you never know," replies the kanmelia and goes on further.
"Dildar Khan, a eunuch who was a chamberlain in the Red Fort, had fallen in love with a girl of the Walled City. One night her brother saw the two in the bed on the terrace and slew them with his sword."
That was all in the past. But the man has tales of modern times too. There was a hippie who used to visit Gauri Shanker Mandir in Chandni Chowk every Tuesday and Saturday as he was convinced that in his previous birth he was a pujari of the temple. He went on a pilgrimage to Badrinath and got drowned in the Alaknanda while on his way back.
"Moti Bai, the mother of a halwai, found gold mohurs of Shah Alam's time while her kitchen floor was being relaid. She bribed the masons not to tell anyone and started selling them one at a time in Meerut and Aligarh. But the spirit of the man who had buried the treasure in Teliwara never left her in peace and Moti Bai began to get epileptic fits which eventually took her life," informs the kanmelia before finally declaring your ears clean.
He pockets his charges and walks away, leaving you wondering about the credibility of his tales.
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