by Tahir Shah
Hamilton-Waite left six hundred rupees, about twelve pounds sterling, as a tip — many weeks’ income in the eyes of millions of Indians. We moved out into the street to hail him a cab. Deformed bodies lay strewn across the sidewalk, huddled against railings in rags. Their absolute will and ardent determination to survive — the opposite of their supposed fatalism — contrasted with Hamilton-Waite’s lethargy. I felt both sympathy and condemnation for him. In his society such weakness and irresolution were sure to survive. It is an unjust world.
The concrete benches in the gardens of the Prince of Wales Museum were newly painted and very comfortable indeed. One Thursday afternoon, as I basked in the absolute humidity on bench number three, a tall man, with a pencil-line mustache and greased-back hair, sidled up. Tweaking the big toe on my right foot, he asked, “One rupee for a blind dwarf?”
“You don’t look blind to me,” I replied, noticing that the rather well-dressed man — who stood close to six foot —had a neatly furled newspaper under one arm.
“The rupee is for my blind brother,” said the giant, “he is a dwarf.”
“Go away and leave me alone!” I called, eager to be left to slumber on the cool white concrete. I shut my eyes firmly, but sensed that the chill shadow of the man had not yet moved on.
“Your sister Safia would want you to give me a rupee!” grunted the figure as I was dozing off again.
How did he know my sister’s name?
“I know other things,” continued the giant boldly as if reading my thoughts, “I know everything about you.”
The man opened his mouth and scraped his tongue. A newspaper editorial the week before had instructed the denizens of Mumbai to shun mind-readers. It had claimed that phenomenal feats of the mind, which were quite possible to genuine mystics and resulted from extensive meditation, were nothing more than a cheap stunt when carried out for money. Nevertheless, I was prepared to conduct my own investigation.
“All right, then tell me about myself!” I said.
“You were born on 16th November 1966,” began the giant firmly.
“Well, anyone could know that,” I snapped.
“You are allergic to shellfish and your family comes from Paghman in Afghanistan,” he continued.
“Go on, tell me more,” I said, intrigued by the man’s information.
“The second book you edited was called Cultural Research,” he continued... “Your blood group is O-negative, and you had your tonsils our last year.”
Fishing a single rupee coin from my pocket, I handed it to the giant.
“Take this for your trouble and now leave me in peace!”
But as I nuzzled back to sleep the deep voice came again.
“My brother has talents even more unusual than mine.”
“Ah,” I remembered, “the blind dwarf... give him the rupee and my greetings. Now if you will excuse me I really have to get back to sleep.”
But the giant was not ready to leave.
“He may have physical handicaps, but my brother’s mind can see through walls... his skills can turn your desires into reality... for he is a white swami.” The ease with which the sentence flowed from the giant’s mouth made me suspicious. I sensed that the routine had been acted out many times before. Indeed, perhaps many times that day alone.
Just what led me to seek the blind dwarfs guidance 1 do not know. But within minutes of hearing of his curious mental powers, I was bumping along in the back of a taxicab, bound for a rendezvous with the white swami.
In a suburb of a suburb in north Mumbai the taxi slid to a halt. It had become embedded in mud. The driver glanced at the photocopied map — which had been efficiently supplied by the slick clairvoyant — and pointed to a corrugated iron shack in the distance. A sign, nailed to the exterior of the building, advertized in several languages:
PALACE OF THE WHITE SWAMI:
Fortunes Told
Secrets Revealed
See Through Stone
Become Invisible
As I was about to rap on the door, it was swung open by an elderly woman who was wailing with grief. She left, and I entered the Palace of the White Swami.
The dusty wreck of a room was bisected by a shaft of bright sunlight which sliced through a hole in the roof. Sitting on a mattress, amid a clutter of peculiar medicinal odds and ends, was an apparently blind dwarf.
“Welcome!” he growled menacingly.
“Your brother said that you would tell me...” Cutting me off in mid-sentence, the dwarf said, “I know what you want to know.” He picked up a dark brown earthenware jar and held it out towards me at arm’s length. On the side was scrawled in white paint, 100 RUPEES PLEASE.
The jar was rattled imperiously. I dropped a fifty-rupee note into the container, hoping the blind dwarf would not notice the lesser sum. Without a word, the white swami waved the jar once again. And, when I had deposited a further fifty rupees, he prepared to solve my case.
First, a thread was drawn from the pile of a tattered gray rug. Dividing it in two with a long, blunt talwar — an Indian sword — the blind dwarf tied one half around my left wrist, and placed the second portion under the mattress on which we both now sat. Then, foraging about, he picked up a dry white bone — probably the thigh bone of a sheep or goat. A pinch of red powder, taken from a carved wooden box, was pressed onto the bone. And, as a cloud blocked the sunlight for a moment, the swami lit a stick of incense, and proceeded to wave it in circles around his head. As the trail of scent revolved rhythmically around him, the seer began to babble the sounds of a language which sounded extremely unusual to me.
The ritual continued for almost half an hour. The white swami, who moved through familiar motions, retrieved the gray thread from beneath the mattress, tying with it the remains of the incense to the thigh bone. An old toothbrush which had been brought out was used to scrub the palms of my hands with a little water from the kettle. I began to sense, from his expression and movements, that the dwarf was acting on autopilot.
But, just as I was about to announce my boredom, the ritual came to a sudden stop. The blind swami put away the toothbrush. Then, smoothing back his jet-black hair, he said, “I can only help you if the spirits would like you to be helped. They say that you do not deserve their time, and so I must now ask you to leave instantly and immediately!”
The blind dwarf turned away and began to fumble through a heap of bleached white animal bones, as if reverting to urgent business. Feeling rather despondent, and too unhappy even to demand the return of my hundred rupees, I slunk away.
I had feared from the start that my quest for antiques would not be an easy one to complete. But the new and unwelcome news, that the spirit world was now against me, had made the task harder to bear than ever.
Reeling from my experience with the mind-reader and his brother, the swami, I began to devote a great deal of time pondering their singular abilities. Most people I consulted thought my questions had no grounds. One man, who was hawking bath-towels stolen from the Oberoi Hotel, shook his head vigorously from side to side when I told him of the mind-reader’s talent. “Is that all he could do?” he asked in disappointment.
Only when I had quizzed several dozen people, did I get an answer which seemed satisfactory. A street-barber, squatting outside Churchgate Station, was only too delighted to discuss the matter while shaving an elderly client’s head. As he moved the cut-throat razor over the stubble, he explained: “You must understand something. These mind-readers and swami types are very clever folk. For weeks they study their prey, learning all about them and tracking their movements. They hire researchers — even sometimes engaging spies abroad — and only when they believe that they know everything about you, they move in for the kill.”
Later, I emptied out my wallet to look for a telephone number. And, as I hunted through the mass of ticket stubs and scraps of crushed paper, I realized that it contained all the information revealed to me by the giant mind-reader. I recalled the continuous stream
of people who invaded my room. Perhaps the street-barber had been right.
Wing Son, the Chinese shoemaker, sat on the bare floor of his shop and pulled stitches through an old black riding boot. 1 le removed a shoe from the display, and pointed out the quality as he did so. His features had been softened by time, and a pair of pupils — frosted with age — hid behind spectacles as thick as milk-bottle glass. His father had come to Mumbai as a refugee in the 1920s from Canton, setting up business in the same shop.
Wing ran his fingers over the wooden last for a lady’s shoe.
“My father loved this one,” he said squinting with magnified eyes. “You just can’t get them any more; there have been problems in Agra.”
Wing Son seemed to be a man who understood how the city worked. Himself an immigrant to Mumbai, he might, I thought, have a tip or two for a treasure-seeker such as myself. I explained what I was searching for. He glanced around his shop: taking in the old tattered lasts, the bundles of thread, and the heap of worn-out shoes he was to repair.
“If I knew where a great treasure was,” he said shrewdly, “would you expect me to be working here day in, day out, as I do?”
“Well do you have any advice to give me?”
Wing Son thought for a moment.
“If you want to find fantastic riches,” he said in a silky voice, “you will need a pair of Chinese shoes.”
So, taking Wing Son’s advice, I placed an order for two pairs of brogues, one black and the other in brown suede. A piece of string with inches marked in ballpoint pen was slid around the arches of my feet. Wing Son read off the scale in Cantonese and noted numbers in the order book. His eyes glazed over as he spoke with slow dignity.
“I have people all over world who come to me,” he said. “They always remember Wing Son.”
* * *
There were problems moving around the city at night. For a fortune in notes of several currencies was strapped tightly to my waist. After weeks of flattering high officials, and coaxing their servile deputies, I managed to open a bank account. First, I had chosen a backstreet bank in Colaba. The director of new accounts was so overjoyed to have a customer with cash that he treated me to a slap-up lunch.
We chewed at chicken bones in his office and wiped the grease on figure-covered sheets of paper. It was all very satisfactory. I thought it a good moment to tackle the question of a safe deposit box in the vault. Could I have one? Certainly, of course I could. Stamps with crests and tigers’ heads were dug out of drawers and licked. They covered my signature which had been etched into quadruplicate sheets.
“Can I deposit the money in the box this afternoon?”
“It might be a little longer than that,” was the vague reply.
“Could I see your vault?”
I expected to be led to an underground strong-room. The director clapped his hands and a stooping accountant beckoned me to follow. He walked around chairs and desks taking a distinctly indirect route. Then he stopped in front of a filing cabinet and hovered with unease.
The bottom drawer was missing and a dabba box had been stowed in its place. The smell of curry and lentils wafted upwards. I weaved my way back across the room around the stacks of papers and waiting regulars.
“Wonderful!” I exclaimed nervously. “Would you expect that I could get a box tomorrow?.”
“Perhaps,” said the director as he sucked at the ball joint of a chicken’s leg.
“What exactly does the availability depend upon?” I was determined to get fundamental answers to basic questions, and cut through the layers of uncertainty.
“It all depends if someone dies.”
I slid a fifty-rupee note — known throughout India as Inkpot Money — under the desk blotter and pretended to tie my shoelace. I could just see a hand digging for the note from the other side of the desk. It foraged with mole-like experience. Then I directed a simple question, “In your estimation, is a client likely to pass away today, Sir?”
“Positively if not certainly!” were his words, his head wobbling from one side to the other as he spoke.
But my efforts had been in vain. The manager of the branch had heard that a foreigner was trying to keep his money within his establishment. He drew a deep unbribable breath and boomed from his office:
“There are no provisions for such a situation to exist. You must close your account immediately!”
I was more demoralized than ever. Prideep and Osman insisted on hanging around me like flies around butter. They just wanted, following true eastern tradition, to make me happy. Osman began to tell jokes. The punchlines were obscured by indirect and terrible translating. Even Prideep frequently fell to the ground, cackling with hideous laughter.
I was getting a little nervous that both assistants might become reconciled and unite against me: was a possible mutiny underway?
I began to track down a vault with lockers to rent. Osman had a plan. He had a distant cousin who worked at a bank near Akbarally’s Department Store. The relative cleaned all the offices and would be able secretly to pencil in an appointment for me with the manager. It seemed a cunning ruse and I sent Osman off to contact the cousin. Alas, it turned out that the man had been laid off because of restructuring and decorations.
I was inspired by Osman nonetheless. Handing Prideep a tie, I swung my pleated coat over my shoulders with the aplomb of a ring-master. With Osman towering on my left and Prideep scurrying like a mouse to keep up on the right, we stormed into the building and I strode into the manager’s office — pretending to be an old friend.
My assistants waited outside the door with crossed arms and straight backs. I had told them to look intimidating. Osman pulled faces and showed his teeth. The manager greeted me so warmly that I thought for a moment that we had met before. He presented me with six forms to complete and promised me a box in the strong-room in one week’s time.
By then a shining new key had been cut for box number 88. It was passed to me in a small green envelope and I turned it in the lock for the first time. There is nothing so satisfyingly perfect as the click of a well-fitting key in a steel lock.
The vault was the most idyllic place in Mumbai. There was a certain smell of documents and industrial detergent. In its cool and dehumidified atmosphere I felt secure and hidden from the world.
Prideep and Osman became used to finding me in the vault where I would sit for hours and read or sleep. In London one might look upon someone who habitually snoozes against the back wall of a steel-lined vault as eccentric. In Mumbai it seemed a perfectly normal way to behave. The bankers were delighted that I made such complete use of their facilities.
On one such day I was taking a nap in front of my locker. There was a thumping of feet and Osman bounded into the strong-room. His cries echoed about the chamber like those around a tomb.
“He wants to meet you! He wants to meet you!”
I resented being woken so suddenly.
“What are you on about, Osman? Who wants to meet me?”
“The Dervish does.”
FOUR
Send the Fool Another Mile
Some took sticks and some took stones,
Some took clods, and off they scurried
After Warche, King of Squirrels,
Hip-cloths streaming out behind them.
Lines of black taxicabs with yellow roofs waited opposite the Opera House. Each driver had turned his engine off and was jamming down his horn in the hope that it might clear the way. An electric bugle sound radiated from under the bonnet of our taxi. The driver had just been to the horn bazaar and picked up the latest little number in public harassment.
The Opera building must once have been a wonderful sight. I wound down my window to take a better look. A hand brushed across my face and poked about inside the taxi. With no fingers, just concave stumps, it was attached to a blind baba, led by a young lad. It is common to see old men with advanced eye conditions being led about. The couples have a symbiotic relationship, each compensa
ting for the other’s weakness. Before I had a chance to produce a coin, the blockage cleared and we sped on towards Foras Road and our appointment with the Dervish.
Foras Road has a sordid reputation. It is the red light area of Mumbai. The taxi driver had chortled when Osman, Prideep and I leapt in and told him to hurry. Although it was still early morning there was enormous activity around the lodging houses.
Children carried pots on their heads, and water sloshed over the sides. A two-year-old would scrub at a baby’s back, and her sister would, in turn, pour buckets of brown water over her. Old crones sat in doorways, while their daughters were pushed out to earn money. It is intriguing that a society which is very covert with sexuality should be so straightforward about prostitution.
Leaving the taxi, we stumbled deeper into the filth and I felt ashamed for complaining about my life and conditions. A boy had fashioned a blade of sorts from a tin can’s edge. He was sawing at the horn of a dead goat which seemed to have been killed by a passing vehicle. The boy screwed up his face with effort and began to jump on the horn, trying to make it snap.
The community existed by selling reused goods. All the plastic bottles and cardboard boxes from uptown homes served new purposes. On Foras Road it did not matter what something had been, only what it could be used for now.
Pimps surrounded us and offered us girls. “You want a young one, real pretty?” Osman was getting very agitated and I was nervous he would attack the next pimp who bothered him. A child of about twelve called to Prideep, her face had been bleached and was white as snow. But her neck and hands were dark brown, and they moved from side to side hoping to coax Prideep to join her.
Osman had been given orders that we were to contact the Dervish through the manager of the underground bar somewhere in the locality. We walked up and down asking all types of people where exactly the bar was hidden. Some pointed left and others shook their heads dolefully. Did it mean they did not know, or that our quest was dangerous?
Osman plucked up a shoeless lad, and dropped him onto his shoulders. Squinting with Nepalese almond eyes, the boy had assured us he could show the way to the bar. He laughed so loudly at Osman’s jokes that his face seemed to split in two. Steps led down from the street into a subterranean cavern. We descended. Girls with elaborate costumes and ankle bells danced to the tune of a sitar with the grace of ancient styles. Prideep was happy and began to twitch. He always twitched when he was happy. Yet I was nervous of the revolving red lights and anxious for the impending rendezvous.