slowly between the rows of carriages, sprinkling each one with a few drops of water from the Ganges and a little ghee. Every rickshaw wallah's heart was constricted with emotion. For once it was not sweat or tears of pain that were flowing over their poor old carts, but the life-giving water of the god who would protect them and give their children food.
When the priest had blessed all the rickshaws, he returned to the deity to place upon his lipfc a little rice and ghee and to cense him with the burning arati the Brahmin carried in a little cup. One of the employer's sons then called out: "Viswakarma-ki jai! Long live Viswakarma!" The six hundred or so pullers present repeated the invocation three times. It was a sincere and triumphant roar that charmed the ears of the owners infinitely more than the hostile slogans shouted on the occasion of the recent strike.
"But why didn't we cry out at the same time, 'Long live Viswakarma and long live the solidarity of rickshaw workers?' " wondered Hasari. "And why not also, 'Long live the revolution!' Wasn't Viswakarma god of the workers first and foremost, before he was god of the owners? Even if sometimes he did give us the impression that he had forgotten to oil the wheel of our karma."
After the ceremony the Bihari's eldest son invited the pullers and their families.to sit down on the grass. Pullers originating from the same regions grouped themselves together as did those who had come with their families. The Bihari's other sons then placed before each person a banana leaf on which they put several ladles of rice and mutton curry with some chapatis, pastries, and a mandarin orange. It was a real banquet, one which stomachs contracted by deprivation could not absorb in its entirety. "In any case," Hasari was to say, "what satisfied my stomach most was the sight of our bosses bending over to serve us. It was like seeing a family of tigers offering grass to a herd of antelopes."
Someone was knocking at the door of 49 Nizamudhin Lane. It was Anouar. Stephan Kovalski helped the cripple over the threshold and settled him on the mat made out of rice straw that served as a bed. The leper looked embarrassed.
"Stephan, Big Brother, I have a big favor to ask of you," he eventually said, joining his wasted palms together in a gesture of supplication.
"I am your brother. You can ask me anything."
"Well, in that case, could you go and tell Puli that I would like to marry Meeta."
"Meeta?" repeated Kovalski, surprised. "But she's his wife!"
"Exactly, Stephan Daddah, that's why I would like it to be you who asks him. He'll listen to you. Everyone respects you."
Puli was a lean little man of about fifty, with a very dark skin. Originally from the South, he had visited Calcutta one day and had never left. He must have contracted leprosy when he was young, during the long peregrinations of his nomadic life. At one time he had been an exhibitor
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of monkeys. Having changed to begging, for years he had haunted the steps of the Kali Temple until a clash with the local gang leader of the begging racketeers forced him into exile on the steps of Howrah Railway station on the other side of the river. His gifts as a comedian earned him an appreciable income. No traveler could resist the drollery of his mimicry or the horror of his wounds. He had been relatively spared by his illness and so he made up false dressings and painted them with red iodine. Puli lived in one of the most wretched compounds in the leper colony of Anand Nagar, together with his wife, Meeta, a sweet young woman of twenty-seven, and three lovely children aged four years to six months.
Meeta was the youngest daughter of a refugee potter from East Pakistan. At the age of sixteen, when her parents were about to marry her to a potter of her caste, the girl discovered a small whitish patch on her right cheek that was insensitive to touch. After weeks of hesitation, she went to join the line for consultation at Howrah Hospital. The medical verdict was instantaneous. It was a patch of leprosy. As far as her parents were concerned, God had cursed their daughter. They banished her immediately from the family hut. Had they not done so, the whole family would have been in danger of being expelled. Reduced to begging around the station, Meeta was picked up by a Bengali who sold her to a brothel in Calcutta. When the proprietor discovered that his new lodger was a leper, however, he beat her black and blue and threw her out. She was salvaged by some ragpickers, taken to Mother Teresa's home for the dying, and saved just in time. Afterward she went back to begging near the station and it was there that the onetime exhibitor of monkeys found her. He immediately took her under his wing and one year later, married her.
Anouar's request left Kovalski dumbfounded. He still did not fully appreciate to what extent the leper world was a universe apart, with its own distinctive laws. Leprosy, particularly in its advanced stages, exacerbates sexuality. This is why lepers have occasionally more than one wife and usually many children. Knowing that in any case they are cursed by God and excluded from the rest of the
human race, lepers feel they have no taboos to respect. They are free. No representative of the law would ever come and poke his nose into their affairs. In Anand Nagar, these disfigured, crippled, fallen men did not go without women. The revenue they made from begging invariably enabled them to buy them. The last recourse of a very poor family who had not managed to marry off one of its daughters because of physical disgrace or some infirmity was often to sell her to a leper. One spouse was rarely, however, enough for the appetites of these disease-ridden men. Women, also, had sometimes more than one husband. Such polygamous transactions were set up by an intermediary and then solemnized with a ceremony that was as ostentatious and expensive as any other marriage.
"Big Brother Stephan," insisted Anouar eagerly, "I assure you that you won't have any difficulty convincing Puli. I've got enough to keep him happy."
With these words, the leper thrust his stumps into the top of his loincloth and brought out a bundle of notes tied up with a piece of string. "Three hundred rupees isn't to be sneezed at!"
"Have you asked Meeta what she thinks?" inquired the priest with concern. This question was primordial to him.
Anouar seemed surprised.
"Meeta will do as her husband orders," he replied.
Naturally Kovalski refused. He was prepared to play virtually any other role in the service of his brothers, but not that of procurer. Anouar would have to address himself directly to his "rival."
After laborious negotiations, the transaction was finally concluded for five hundred rupees, two hundred more than the sum contained in the bundle Anouar carried at his waist. The cripple borrowed the difference (and more besides, to cover the cost of the marriage) from the colony's usurer, a fat Punjabi who had several beggars working for him.
In a community where each member believed himself to be unclean and condemned by God, religion had no role to play. No Brahmin or mullah ever came to celebrate a ceremony here. Hindus, Muslims, and Christians lived together in relative indifference to the beliefs and rites of
the religion of their origins. All the same, one or two odd customs such as the choice of an auspicious date for a wedding had been preserved. The colony even had its own astrologer, an old man with a white beard called Joga, who for forty years had exercised his profession as a fortuneteller on the esplanade of the Maidan. His work was not always easy, especially when, like*Anouar and Meeta, the prospective marriage partners did not know their dates of birth. Old Joga contented himself with suggesting a month that was under the benign influence of the planet Venus and a day of the week that was not Tuesday, Saturday, or Sunday, the three ill-omened days in the Indian weekly calendar.
The ghetto of the damned was in a state of full bacchanalian revelry. On the day appointed, dazzled by the glare of the floodlights and bewildered by the bellowing of a sound system gone wild, Stephan Kovalski entered the neighborhood of the cursed. Although in his heart of hearts he disapproved of the nature of the alliance about to be formed, he had not been able to bring himself to turn down his friends' invitation. It was so rare, after all, for anyone in good health to provide these pariahs with the
reassurance of their presence. Leper women draped in bedizened muslin saris were waiting at the door to adorn the bride and groom's guest of honor with garlands of marigolds and jasmine and to place upon his forehead the tilak of welcome, the patch of scarlet powder symbolizing the third eye of knowledge. That evening Kovalski would have plenty of need of that additional eye to discover all the refinements of the unwonted festivities of which he was to be the prince. He had swapped his sneakers and his old black shirt for gondola-shaped mules and a magnificent embroidered white cotton kurta, gifts from the prospective husband and wife to their partner in poverty.
The spectacle around him was beyond belief. In their new shirts and colored waistcoats, their cheeks cleanshaven and their dressings immaculate, the lepers had almost reassumed human form. Their gaiety was heartening. The master of ceremonies was none other than Puli, the
bride's first husband. He had managed to dig out from somewhere a morning coat and a top hat.
"Welcome to our gathering, Big Brother Stephan," he cried in his falsetto voice, clasping the priest to him.
His breath betrayed the fact that he had already paid a few visits to the stock of bangla procured for the reception. He steered his guest of honor in the direction of the groom's hut. Kovalski hardly recognized the vile shed. The lepers had repainted everything in honor of Anouar's marriage. Garlands of flowers hung from the bamboo framework and the beaten earth of the floor sparkled with a rangoli carpet. Expressions of popular joy on occasions of celebration and great solemnity, rangolis are marvelous geometric compositions outlined in rice flour and colored powders and are designed to bring good fortune.
In the middle of the hut stood a solitary charpoy, it too decorated with garlands of flowers and covered with a superb Madras patchwork quilt made out of dozens of little striped squares. Seated on this regal bed was Anouar. Next to him was the throne on which he would soon have himself carried to the site of the ceremony. He received his best man with effusive tenderness. Then, quite abruptly, his expression became one of gravity.
"Stephan, Big Brother, have you got a bit of medicine for me?" he asked in a low voice. "I'm in terrible pain this evening."
Stephan Kovalski had learned from experience never to go visiting the lepers without taking a dose of morphine in the bottom of his pocket. That evening, however, he could not help but wonder what effect the powerful sedative might have on his friend during the ceremony and particularly afterward when he found himself alone with his young bride. As a precaution he injected only half the vial. Hardly had he restored the syringe to his pocket than half a dozen married women garbed in long dresses of many colors, their hair adorned with diadems, and their necks and arms covered with costume jewelry, entered singing bhajans, religious hymns. Beneath all their makeup and finery their infirmities were forgotten. Despite the fact that Anouar was Muslim by origin, they had come to carry out
one of the rites that was essential to all Hindu marriages, the holud-nath, a purification of the groom.
They took charge of Anouar's body and rubbed it with all kinds of unctions and yellow pastes which exuded a strong smell of musk and saffron. The scene would have been comic, had not the object of all these attentions been a body that was half destroyed. Their anointing completed, the matrons went on to the groom's toilet, sprinkling him with water. Then they undertook to dress him. Anouar let himself be treated like a child. They slipped on a long kurta, a superb shirt in green silk with gold buttons. How could a man who dragged himself through the mud on a plank on wheels ever have dreamed of such a garment?
"That crippled leper all dressed up in so festive a setting suddenly brought a knot to my stomach," the Pole was to admit.
In the absence of any religious authority, it fell to the master of ceremonies to direct the evening. No theologian of any religious creed would ever have found his way through the ritual imbroglio of the lepers of the City of Joy. Puli, however, was a star and, in any case, the marriage closely concerned him. There was nothing, therefore, that he left out, least of all the sacrosanct custom of which he would be the indirect beneficiary: the fiance's sending of presents to his betrothed.
"Stephan, Big Brother, you are the best man, so you'll be the one to take the presents from Anouar to Meeta," he announced. The invitation was accompanied by a wink which was to say, "With you at least, I can be sure that nothing will disappear en route."
Anouar proceeded to take out of his mattress a collection of small packages wrapped up in newspaper and secured with elastic bands. Each packet contained some article of finery or ornament. Apart from three real silver rings, the remainder were cheap trinkets from the bazaar, a toe ring, earrings, a stone for her nose, an amber necklace, and a matika, the diadem worn by married women. In any event, the choice of these presents had been negotiated between Puli and Anouan In addition to the jewels there were two saris, a few tubes of cosmetics, and a box of cinnamon sweetmeats. Puli deposited everything in a bas-
ket which he handed to Kovalski. Then he summoned the escort.
Eight lepers crowned with red cardboard shakos and dressed in yellow jackets and white trousers entered the hut. They were the musicians. Two of them held drumsticks between their consumed fingers, two others cymbals, and the two last dented trumpets. Puli raised his top hat and the small procession moved off amid the hubbub of a carnival. As fftajestic as King Belshazzar proceeding to Jerusalem, Stephan Kovalski stepped out with his basket of gifts balanced upon his head, taking care not to slip into a drain with his gondola-shaped mules.
Puli was so proud to be able to show off his guest of honor to the colony that he had the procession do the tour of the neighborhood before entering Meeta's compound. The spectacle that awaited the Pole in this wretched hole of a colony where he had spent so many hours comforting the condemned of the slum was so extraordinary that he found himself wondering whether he was not in fact the victim of some hallucination. The entire courtyard was covered with muslin veils and strung with garlands of marigolds, roses, and jasmine blossoms. Powered by an electricity generator especially hired for the occasion, dozens of light bulbs illuminated the courtyard with a clarity that it had never known before.
Kovalski surrendered his basket of offerings to one of the matrons standing guard at Meeta's door. Then, led by Puli and the band, who did their utmost to compete with the bellowing of the sound system, he returned to Anouar's hut. By this time it was almost midnight, that auspicious hour when in the heavens "the day straddles the night." The ceremony could commence.
There were no white mares caparisoned with gold and velvet to conduct the crippled man to the muslin-draped courtyard where his fiancee Meeta awaited him, her face veiled with a square of red cotton. Nevertheless, his chair decorated with flowers and borne like a palanquin by four other lepers, was equal to the most glorious of mounts. Crowned with a golden turban and preceded by the indescribable Puli, who greeted the crowd with waves of his top hat, Anouar traversed the neighborhood like a Mogul
emperor processing to his coronation. Behind him, Kovalski carried the piece of folded cloth which in a moment would veil the face of the leper, before he entered the courtyard appointed for the marriage. Amid all those noises, all that laughter, all the smells, among the disfigured and the crippled, the Pole experienced a "fantastic lesson in hope" and marveled once more that "so much life and joy could spring from such abjection."
Puli raised his hat and the music stopped. They had reached the entrance to the courtyard and the bridegroom's face had to be concealed. Two matrons took the piece of cloth from Kovalski's hands and pinned it to the dome of Anouar's turban. The groom's fine bearded face disappeared from the gazes of the onlookers. Puli's top hat rose then above the surrounding heads and the procession set off again to the sound of trumpets and cymbals. "In the kingdom of heaven their faces will be the most beautiful of all," reflected the priest as his gaze encountered the range of distorted humanity waiting all around the little courtyard.
In a cupful
of oil placed in the center of the rangoli flooring burned a flame. This was the traditional sacrificial fire offered up to the gods, so they might bless the union about to take place. The frail Meeta was seated on a cushion, her head inclined forward, completely hidden by her veil. She looked as if she was meditating. On her hair shone the gilded diadem which Anouar had sent her in his basket of presents. The smell of incense impregnated the air already heavy with smoke.
When the procession had made its way around the courtyard three times, Puli made a sign to Kovalski for him to take his place to the left of the bride. Then he directed the bearers to place Anouar on her right. With his top hat planted firmly on his skull, his chest thrust out under a morning coat that was too large for him, he then began to oflficiate.
Dear Puli! No one could imitate a Brahmin the way he could. Assuming an attitude of inspiration, he began to pronounce in his rasping voice an interminable series of formulas. The assembly appeared to be spellbound by the monotonous chant, punctuated at regular intervals by the clash of cymbals. After this preamble he finally came to
the main body of the ceremony. The Panigrahan was the essential rite of Brahmin marriage. Puli pulled a small violet cord out of his pocket and, taking the right palms of the bride and groom, tied them together, repeating their names aloud. Thus was celebrated the first physical contact of man and wife. While Puli recited further prayers, Kovalski gazed at those two mutilated limbs bound together, and wliat he saw made him think of a sentence he had read one day in a book by a French writer named L6on Bloy: "We do not enter paradise either tomorrow or in ten years time. We enter today if we are poor and crucified."
Next came the most intense moment of the ceremony. The band and congregation fell silent as Puli invited the newly weds officially to make each other's acquaintance. Slowly and timidly, with their free palms, they each removed the other's veil. The joyous bearded face appeared before Meeta's large eyes, slightly sad and blackened with kohl. Stephan Kovalski leaned forward to capture all the emotion of that moment, to try and guess too the thoughts of the young leper woman whose husband had sold her for five hundred rupees. Meeta's eyes were bright with tears.
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