Book Excerpts

Mumbai is the City of (Not) Motion in Jugal Mody’s “Turds of Gold”

Bombay is suffering from a severe gastric epidemic of inexplicable origins. A young freelance caregiver, Nikunj, discovers that he has the superpower to make anyone poop, and with that poop, cure the person of any stomach ailments. As Nikunj begins to help people, and make money using his superpower, things start looking up for him. Till he meets Kalpeshbhai, a billionaire paraplegic whose family owns Param Churna, India’s best selling Ayurvedic cure for constipation. Kalpeshbhai, who hasn’t pooped in over two decades, hires Nikunj to heal him.

Will Nikunj’s superpower be able to make Kalpeshbhai poop? Will they cure Bombay of the gastric epidemic?

Jugal Mody’s Turds of Gold is an irreverent, audacious, and hilarious story of greed, blind belief and small miracles. Read an excerpt.

Over the next few days, the time Nikunj spent with Kalpeshbhai kept increasing. He would get there in time for breakfast and then hang out with Kalpeshbhai till lunch. On one of those days, Kalpeshbhai told him about how his body sometimes became a biogas plant. That’s why his diet was so controlled. Not that he could eat much. It was like his body consumed every last molecule of nutrients from all the food that had accumulated, and formed a high-gravity black hole in his intestine. A black hole that misbehaved as soon as you sent more food its way. Kalpeshbhai giggled as he told Nikunj that half a boiled egg would give him a flammable burp. Nikunj laughed, ‘Just because you’ve got this unsolved puzzle of an illness doesn’t mean everything you say is true.’

The next morning when Nikunj reached the Sheth dining table, Kalpeshbhai waited with an egg on his plate. Almost every Sheth family member’s clockwork-like rhythm broke that morning. They stopped on their way in, smelling the egg. Outraged, they would locate the source of the smell, and, on finding that it was Kalpeshbhai, they would just sigh and give up: ‘It must be some new therapy he is trying.’
Kalpeshbhai looked down at the egg and then up at Nikunj, and said, ‘Challenge accepted.’
Kashmira bhabhi cut the egg into two halves and fed Kalpeshbhai one half. Kalpeshbhai patiently chewed and swallowed the half egg and then asked Nikunj, ‘Do you have a lighter?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then, to the shayankaksh!’ he shouted joyously. If his arms had been working, he would have raised a fist in the air for sure. On reaching the bedroom, Kalpeshbhai shouted, ‘Quick! Quick! There’s a burp coming; bring your lighter to my mouth.’
Nikunj sparked the lighter and held the small flame in front of Kalpeshbhai’s mouth. When Kalpeshbhai burped, the lighter flame turned into a little mushroom cloud. Nikunj jumped back in shock. ‘Whoa!’
‘I think I have a couple of more burps left in my stomach. They’re taking a while to come out.’
‘Wait, wait! I want to try something.’ Nikunj placed the lighter in front of Kalpeshbhai’s mouth, looked into his eyes and said, ‘Kalpeshbhai, think of a can of Thums Up opening. Think of a half-filled PET bottle of Thums Up being unscrewed. Think of that pop and fizz sound. Think of that release of gases.’
And there it was—one more mushroom cloud exploding upwards from the lighter. This one was bigger and survived until it floated as high as Nikunj’s face.
‘One more! One more!’ Kashmira bhabhi applauded.
‘No, no! Let’s keep some gas in there. If you’re okay with it, Kalpeshbhai, I want to try something during the enema. I’m sure we can make you fart fire.’
Kashmira bhabhi couldn’t stop laughing. She stayed in the room that day through the enema. At the end of the failed attempt to make him poop, Kalpeshbhai asked, like an eager child, ‘Shall we fart fire now?’
With his legs still propped up for the enema, Nikunj took the lighter to Kalpeshbhai’s colon and said, ‘Think of a balloon. Think about a small hole in the balloon. Think of the balloon deflating as a small whistling current of air is released from that hole.’
A small whisper was heard blowing out of his butt as it turned into a small flame shooting outwards from the lighter. It looked like someone had installed a tiny jetpack or a small flame thrower up his butt. Kashmira bhabhi’s face had gone pink with laughter. She slipped off the couch and fell to the floor. ‘Saambhlo … ’ she stopped gasping for air as she laughed. ‘I should … hahaha … have … hahaha … pulled out my phone … hahaha … camera to show it to you!’
Even if he couldn’t see the whistle of a flame shooting out of his ass, Kalpeshbhai giggled with Nikunj and Kashmira bhabhi. When Nikunj put Kalpeshbhai’s legs down again, Kalpeshbhai told him, ‘I like doing this fire thing only because it makes her laugh so much. Thanks for helping me make her laugh more than she has in a long time.’’

The disappointment of failing to make Kalpeshbhai poop at the end of every session weighed on Nikunj’s soul. He carried that weight to his evening patients in whatever suburb was deeply affected by the gastric storm. But this day was different. Nikunj was happy that at least he was leaving the Sheth household with Kalpeshbhai and Kashmira bhabhi in a good mood.

To read more, order your copy of Turds of Gold today!

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