by Manil Suri
Mrs. Jalal pulled her sari firmly around her shoulders. “I’ve already told you we don’t know where the Asranis’ daughter is. If you’re so interested in knowing, go ask them, ask them where they’ve hidden her. Now go away, and don’t come back.”
Mrs. Jalal tried to close the door, but the paanwalla stuck his lathi in between the door and doorjamb. “We’re not going anywhere, Jalal memsahib, till we speak to your husband or your son. Now bring them out, unless you want us to come inside and drag them out ourselves.”
“Get your lathi out. Get it out this very instant, or I will call the police.”
“Giving us the threat of the police? Think we’re scared of them? Go ahead and call them,” the paanwalla said, though he took the bamboo out. Then, as if to compensate for this retreat, he feinted threateningly with it.
The cigarettewalla spoke again, this time in a very reasonable tone. “Look, nobody wants a fight. We’re just very concerned about Kavita memsahib. We want to ask Jalal sahib a few questions to solve the mystery, that’s all. There’s no need to call the police.”
“People who want to ask a few questions don’t knock on their neighbors’ doors with lathis. Now please leave—I’ve already said Mr. Jalal is not here.”
Mrs. Jalal was just about to close the door when from the bedroom came Mr. Jalal’s voice. “Who is it, Arifa, and what do they want?”
THE IMAGE OF the horse is still with Vishnu. The full implications of being Kalki, the last avatar, are beginning to dawn on him. All the power he has, all the people for whose fate he is responsible. How will he decide whom to cut down, whom to let stand? A vision of the burnt-out shell of the building comes to his mind.
Mrs. Pathak, for instance. For years she has wrapped her stale chapatis in newspaper and left them on the floor next to his head. Did she act nobly, save him from starvation? Or were her offerings so old, so unwanted, they were an insult, especially to a god? What should be her fate? It is not an easy question, not even for Kalki.
Perhaps he should first practice his power on something small, something less significant. That way, if he errs, the scheme of the universe will not be disturbed too much. He notices there is a line of ants meandering along the edge of the landing. There are so many ants in the building. Surely a few will not be missed if delivered from their ants’ lives. If anything, it will be a boon to them, being promoted to a higher existence.
Vishnu wills the line to be immobilized where it stands. He imagines the ants curling up one by one. He pictures all the freed souls flying to their next appointments. Perhaps he will rid the entire building of ants.
But nothing happens. The ants go on with their industry, unheedful of his efforts to liberate them.
Angered, he tries stepping on them, as Mrs. Pathak had done. But he has forgotten his weightlessness.
It is then the thought comes to his brain. What sense does it make that he is Kalki, if he cannot even dispatch an ant?
WHEN MR. JALAL called from the bedroom, Mrs. Jalal seized the opportunity, and slammed the door while people were still reacting. She went immediately to her husband. “Quick, call the police, before they come in.”
“Nonsense. Let me talk to them.”
“Ahmed, don’t be crazy. They’re armed with lathis and God knows what else. They want blood, they’ll tear you to pieces.”
As if to emphasize Mrs. Jalal’s words, the doorbell rang, first in short musical tinkles, then in a medley of chimes that would have been a pleasing background tune had the situation been different.
“Open the door, Mrs. Jalal,” the cigarettewalla’s muffled voice came through the door. “We only want to talk to him, not hurt him.”
“See?” Mr. Jalal said to his wife. “They just have some questions—I can go and clear things up.”
“If you won’t call the police, I will—I’m calling them right now.”
“It’ll really look foolish when they come and find us all chatting. But you do what you want. I’m going to the door.”
“Ahmed!” Mrs. Jalal grabbed her husband’s arm. “Don’t do it.”
Mr. Jalal turned around and held his wife with both hands. “Tell me, what would the Buddha have done at a time like this? What would Akbar have done? Would they have turned their backs and run? Would they have been too afraid to face whatever lay ahead?” Mr. Jalal shook his head. “No, they would have been grateful. That’s right, grateful at the sight of such a crowd, grateful so many people had been led to them.”
“Ahmed, don’t start that again. We just went over all that. You aren’t the Buddha. You aren’t a prophet. That was a dream, do you understand? A dream.”
“Call it what you will, Arifa, but look how everything is suddenly making sense. Everything I’ve been trying, and now all these people being led here to hear me. It’s all bubbling up inside, it’s all coming together. I feel like Akbar must have in the jungle all those years ago.”
“Ahmed, listen to me.” Mrs. Jalal tried not to let the panic crack her voice. “Listen to me. You just stay in this room. Read one of your books. Just stay here till the police come.”
“Take my hand, Arifa. Be by my side. I want to share it with you. You come before all these other people. You and Salim.” Mr. Jalal took her hand urgently. “Call Salim. Let’s all hold hands, here, in this room. Let’s all concentrate and try to see.”
“Yes, Ahmed, I’ll go call him.” Holding his hand, Mrs. Jalal led her husband to a chair, and sat him down.
Mr. Jalal seemed lost in thought for a moment. Then the doorbell chimed again, and he jumped up. “No. I can’t keep them waiting. They might go away. Let me answer that. This is such an opportunity. You and Salim and I can talk right afterwards.”
“Ahmed,” his wife shouted. “Don’t go. If not for your own sake, then mine. Answer the door and something awful will happen.”
“Don’t be silly, Arifa. Nothing’s going to happen.” Mr. Jalal patted his wife’s hand as if reassuring a child. “You know I have to talk to them. They’ve come here all confused. I’m the only one who knows about Vishnu. I can tell them about him. Think of how rewarding it is. To set someone’s mind free.”
“Stop, Ahmed, stop. For the sake of Allah, have some fear. Don’t open the door. Don’t let my hand go, just stay here.” Mrs. Jalal started sobbing.
“Come now, go call Salim, and you can both listen as well.”
Before Mrs. Jalal could protest further, Mr. Jalal strode to the door and threw it open.
VISHNU IS UNEASY about his powers. The riddle of the ants haunts him. What if he is not a god after all? He reminds himself again of the evidence. Willing himself up the stairs, gazing through walls as if they were glass. Surely only gods can do that.
But could he have squandered too much of his power on such acts? Drained it before he was fully infused? Should he return to climbing once more like a mortal?
Climb he must. The answer, he is convinced, is waiting at the top. He does not know exactly what he will find there. Perhaps the white horse, who will thunder away somewhere with him. Perhaps Lakshmi, who will transfer to him the energy that he needs from her own body. Perhaps Krishna, whose flute-playing will invigorate him. There is not so much further to go—soon he will have the strength, soon he will have Kalki’s power to kill the ants.
There is a commotion below. It is the mob at Mr. Jalal’s door. Vishnu realizes he need not concern himself with it anymore. He has risen above it, risen to the landing between the second and the third floor.
He looks around. This is the landing of Thanu Lal. The one they say can sleep for days on end. In fact, he is here now, curled up and snoring on his mat. When he is not asleep, Thanu Lal stands by the pipal tree in the courtyard of the church and chews paan. Nobody has ever seen him work, no one knows where he gets any money. All people know about him is the story. About the day his forehead was brushed by the fingers of God.
It happened, the cigarettewalla says, when Thanu Lal still had a wife and daughter, when he was living in a
hut in the Ghatkopar slum. He awoke one morning to find his forehead covered with ash. “A miracle,” his wife, Jamuna Bai, declared, getting him a mirror, “just like those pictures of Sai Baba.”
By the time he came out of the hut, the news had already spread, and a crowd had gathered in front of his door. Thanu Lal sat down cross-legged on his rope charpoy and turned his face to his audience. On his forehead, his cheeks, his neck, and even his arms was the ash—chalky raised patches of it, that looked like the mounds left behind when insects bore through wood. As people watched, the ash above his brow started welling up and dropping to the ground in clumps, where it lay in powdery contrast to the dark earth.
One of the onlookers broke from the rest and advanced to the bed. He ran his fingers through the ash on the ground and smeared it on his forehead, then scurried back. A second person was about to do the same when Jamuna Bai charged at him. “Stay away, you hear? Don’t touch the ash. Do you think he is doing this for your sake, so you can come here and loot us like this?”
Jamuna Bai instructed her daughter, Vasanti, to hold a stainless-steel thali under Thanu Lal’s face. She carefully harvested the ash onto the plate. “I don’t want it flying away or falling to the ground. The newspaperwalla is on his way—he’ll want to see it.”
By the time the Loksatta reporter came, however, Thanu Lal had stopped producing ash. In her zeal to conserve it, Jamuna Bai had brushed too much off onto the plate, and the reporter, disappointed by the faded patches on Thanu Lal’s face, asked his photographer to take only one photograph.
“Come tomorrow,” Jamuna Bai said. “He will bring forth even more ash. Fresh for you. It will happen every day.”
The next morning, an even bigger crowd gathered to witness the miracle. At ten o’clock, Thanu Lal came out of the hut and had his wife and daughter wash his feet in a large thali. Jamuna Bai announced that those who had brought offerings of flowers and coconuts should put them in another platter, which she placed at the foot of his charpoy. They began the wait for the newspaper man to come. At eleven, when he still hadn’t shown up, Jamuna Bai asked for silence from the crowd. She announced the ash would be produced anyway.
Thanu Lal closed his eyes and concentrated. But nothing happened. His skin remained clear. There were whispers in the audience, which became louder as Thanu Lal’s forehead contorted, as his cheeks turned dark with effort. Finally, he burst out in tears and ran inside the hut.
For many mornings after that, Thanu Lal sat on his bed outside and tried to produce ash. The crowds came to watch at first, but gradually thinned, until it was mainly a gaggle of children who gathered in front of the hut. In an effort to attract an audience, Jamuna Bai brought out the thali of ash she had saved, and allowed onlookers to mark their foreheads with a fingertip’s worth. One day, when the ash failed to materialize again, Thanu Lal took the thali from her hand and beat her unconscious with it.
The cigarettewalla says that Thanu Lal actually killed Jamuna Bai, and spent many years in prison for the murder. But according to the paanwalla, once Jamuna Bai had been beaten, she was the one who started producing ash, and became very rich after she opened a shrine to herself. Vishnu does not know which version, if any, to believe.
He feels the urge to wake Thanu Lal now, and ask him. Talk to him about God and ash, about looking through walls, and being able to kill ants. Thanu Lal, wake up, Vishnu says, but the man does not stir.
Wake up, wake up, it’s Vishnu. I have something to ask you. Thanu Ram keeps sleeping.
Vishnu goes over to shake him awake. But of course he can’t, not without his sense of touch. Thanu Lal turns over on his side, and remains asleep. Vishnu notices another line of ants, taunting him from the wall behind.
The questions descend again to torment Vishnu. How can he be a god if he has no power? Could he just be a man, the man he has been his whole life? If this isn’t divinity he is looking at, if it isn’t immortality, then what is it?
This is not the time to think of answers, Vishnu tells himself. His task, for now, is to keep ascending, and not waver until he reaches the top.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
WHEN HE WAS first told the seriousness of Sheetal’s illness, Vinod was devastated. Not only by what the news meant for Sheetal, but also for him. The future he had constructed so painstakingly over the past few years in his mind would crumble, now that the person around whom he had built it was to be taken away. He sat in the hospital waiting room and felt the resentment grow underneath the sorrow—why had he been treated so unfairly by fate? He found his mind wandering to thoughts of what his life might have been had his parents married him to someone else.
By the time he started caring for Sheetal at home, Vinod’s inital shock had subsided. As the weeks went by, he found he was able to look deeper into Sheetal than ever before, to glimpse into her very soul, and see the strength that, even as she wasted away, held up the spirits of everyone else. “When I get well, I want to go to Kashmir,” she would say. Or, “We’ll go to Nepal for our second honeymoon.” It was always some place in the north, some place cold, some place far away from the Bombay where she knew she would be spending her remaining days.
The month she died, Vinod felt his love for his wife had become so strong that a part, maybe all, of him would die with her. He wondered if he would want to live after Sheetal. What if he decided not to? How would he kill himself? He started appropriating some of the sleeping pills the doctor had prescribed for Sheetal, taking one or two at a time, and storing them in an opaque brown bottle that he hid in the dressing table.
A few days before her death, Sheetal saw him take one of her pills. “I know what you are doing,” she whispered, her eyes half closed. “But it’s not your turn yet. Wait until your turn comes.” She fell asleep.
That evening, he flushed all the pills down the toilet. He went down to the rocks at Breach Candy and threw the empty brown bottle into the sea. In the days that followed Sheetal’s death, he often regretted his decision. But he did not try to reverse it. Sheetal’s command had been one of the last things she had said to him, and he would obey it.
His mother tried several times to get him remarried. But he had closed the door to this possibility. He felt he had already experienced whatever there was to be experienced between a husband and a wife, that he had shared a part of himself with another person in a way too profound to be duplicated. There was a reason fate had brought him to this spot. It would be up to fate now to lead him somewhere else.
With nothing else to do, Vinod immersed himself in his work. Over the next fifteen years, he was promoted to manager and then senior supervisor. The flat had already been paid for by his father, and with the simple needs of his single life, he didn’t need much. Then, one after the other, his parents died, leaving him their old apartment, which by now was worth a large amount of money. At the age of forty-five, Vinod found he had enough wealth to last him his whole life. He resigned from his job.
AT FIRST, VINOD stayed home. He found it a relief to stop pretending he was really interested in his work, that his job was anything more than activity with which to fill his day. Colleagues from the bank called in the beginning, but the phone soon stopped ringing. He began spending his days in bed, getting up for food, or to play his record.
What would happen, he started thinking, if he just remained in his flat? Ate less and less, and waited for his existence to end? Who would find his body, how long would it take? Probably Tall Ganga, he decided—she still stopped by occasionally to ask if there was something he needed. He wondered if this was what had been ordained for him—if tired of forging the corridor that was his life, the stars had simply decided to seal it off.
He was surprised to feel guilt at these thoughts, guilt at the listlessness in which he had allowed himself to be enveloped. All around him were reminders of activity—the knock of Tall Ganga at his door, the smell of tar from the resurfaced street outside, the call of vegetable hawkers, the dust and din of traffic. What gave him t
he right to stop, to surrender his existence to such self-indulgent rumination?
On the other hand, what did he have left to pursue? What goal could he conjure up to validate the rest of his life? Perhaps it was outside himself that he should seek the answer—some external cause, a good and noble one, in which he could discover meaning again. He had never thought of himself as an altruist, a social worker, but the idea began intriguing him. Surely a city like Bombay must be teeming with unmet needs, waiting to bestow well-being on the person who filled them. He contacted Mr. Wazir, an old philanthropist friend of his father’s. Upon Mr. Wazir’s recommendation, Vinod was invited to join the board of the Greater Bombay Social Cooperative.
The motto of the GBSC was “Through united hands we uplift the life of the slum-dweller.” The first meeting Vinod attended turned out to be a field trip to the Dharavi slum, where a project had been underway for several years to improve the water supply. Several of the residents were presented shiny brass taps, and Mr. Kailash, the GBSC president, promised pipes to attach them to, very soon. The slum children went around and garlanded each of the board members (including Vinod), after which the board retired to the bus for cold drinks.
“The beers are in the icebox in the back,” Mr. Kailash explained, as Vinod was trying to decide between a Limca and a Gold Spot. “We can’t take them outside because of the alcoholism project we’re sponsoring here.” Mr. Kailash introduced Vinod around the bus to the other board members, most of whom were industrialists. A few looked puzzled when Vinod said he had been a bank manager.
“But that’s why Wazir sahib recommended you,” Mr. Kailash said, pouring himself a Kingfisher beer. “We need someone we can trust. These bloody contractors are all thieves. They deserve a good thrashing, every last one of them.”
It seemed natural for Vinod to volunteer for the task of dealing with the contractors. With the nose he had developed at the bank for detecting irregularities, he was able to intercept and put an end to some of their tricks. But detective work was not enough. Vinod was eager to do more, to experience the satisfaction of labor, to distance himself as much as possible from the inertia of his month at home. He started spending his days at the construction site, busying himself with checks and inventories, offering assistance where needed, even helping to lay pipes once in a while. Night after night, he returned exhausted to his flat and put on a pot of water to boil for his bath. As he watched the grime from his body swirl across the tile and vanish into the drain, he tried to think of the day when water would flow just as freely for the residents of Dharavi.