by Tahir Shah
“Why do you put ash in your coffee?”
The hunchback looked at me with contempt.
“It makes the coffee taste more bitter,” he said with loathing.
It was obvious that I had much to learn in the way of local etiquette. Allowing him to savor his caustic drink in silence, I turned to the hunchback’s companion.
The gentleman seemed to be out of place in the dilapidated Albert Hall. Leaning back on his chair, he spoke about Calcutta’s history – of its role in the nation’s cultural life, of its peoples, and of its abiding artistic legacy. In return, I explained about my doomed journey on the Farakka Express. The gentleman appeared to know the accursed train well.
“Tell me,” he continued, as if ready to move the conversation on, “what has brought you to our little city?”
“Oh,” I began to explain rather uneasily, “I’ve come here to meet someone. But that’s the problem, I can’t find him.”
“Who exactly have you come to meet?”
“Um,” I stammered, “a well known illusionist, actually.”
“An illusionist, really?”
“Yes, that’s right, it’s a great interest of mine.”
“You mean, like Houdini and all that, conjuring?”
“Well, Houdini and many others.”
“What’s his name … the man you are looking for?”
“Oh, I’m sure you’ve never heard of him …”
The suave figure smoothed back a stray hair with the index finger of his right hand.
“Give it a try,” he said.
“I’m looking for a man called Feroze … Hakim Feroze.”
The hunchback looked up in silence. The sophisticate studied my face for a few moments.
“Have you heard of him?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact I have heard of him. But tell me, how did you hear of this illusionist?”
“He was the teacher of a family friend.”
“Whose name is …?”
I speculated why the gentleman was concerned with the precise details of my search.
“His name is Hafiz Jan.”
“If you find this Feroze,” continued the man, “how will you prove to him all these things?”
“I’ve got a letter of introduction and a locket to show him.”
I was supplying information far too freely to these complete strangers, but the well-dressed man seemed to draw answers from me.
“How will you know Feroze when you find him?”
“Oh,” I said thinking hard, “I’ll know Feroze because he’s the master of illusion. He can make things appear and disappear at will.”
I broke off to take a sip from my glass of tepid mint tea. But the glass was missing. So was the sugar bowl, the milk jug, the ashtray, my street-map of Calcutta, the stamp album, and even the miniature pile of Brazilian stamps. The hunchback slurped his coffee once again. As he slurped, his debonair friend burst into laughter.
“How do you do?” he smiled. “I am Hakim Feroze.”
SIX
Renting Babies
“How is Hafiz Jan?” Feroze asked fondly. “I hear the boys are growing up well, and that his wife’s sciatica is no longer as painful as it was.”
“That’s right; but how did you know? Hafiz Jan said he hasn’t been in touch with you in years.”
“Quite so,” murmured Feroze. “But you know how it is … I keep my ear to the ground.”
The hunchback stared across the table at his companion and raised an eyebrow.
“Hafiz Jan was one of my finest students,” Hakim Feroze persisted. “Did he tell you that? Please show me the letter and the locket … it must be the bezoar I gave him.”
I passed over the letter and the amulet. Feroze opened the envelope with great care. Before deciphering the Pashtun’s almost illegible writing, he touched the paper to his nostrils and inhaled lightly three times. Then, grinning through sharp teeth, he clasped the amulet in his fist and breathed in once again. I might, at first, have doubted that this was indeed Feroze. But having seen what the tokens meant to him, my doubts melted away.
Despite the one in ten million probability of such a chance meeting, Feroze – like any Indian I related the story to – was unfazed by the improbable encounter.
“So,” said the Master at length. “What can I do for you?”
My heart throbbed a little faster as I anticipated how my single question would be answered.
“Respected Feroze,” I uttered nervously, “I have heard you are the most accomplished illusionist alive. Sir, I would like to learn from you … Mr. Feroze …” I faltered, “I would like to become your student.”
Hakim Feroze seemed not to be listening. He was watching the waiter as he wove between the tables with S-shaped maneuvers, like an ice-skater. He sighed twice. I waited for an answer.
“I regret to tell you,” he revealed softly, “that I retired some time ago. I no longer take on students.”
“But I have come a long way to meet you,” I snapped selfishly. “I have been drugged and robbed; have bathed in a dhobi’s cauldron, and am still suffering from severe trauma from the Geetee.”
“Geetee!” winced the hunchback, distorting his face. “Very nasty.”
“Well,” rejoined the great conjuror, “it sounds as if you’ve had quite an adventure already. But again, I must advise you that I am retired, and am enjoying my retirement.”
Any further outbursts seemed futile. I was at a loss for words. I cursed myself for having pursued the ridiculous quest for so long.
Leaning forward, making ready to storm out from the Albert Hall like a prima donna, something made me pause.
“Could I beg one small favor of you?” I asked.
“Of course you may,” answered Feroze, his green eyes staring at me like bottle-glass beads.
“As a favor to your old pupil Hafiz Jan, would you let me know if you change your mind?”
Feroze smiled. He withdrew an antique orange fountain-pen from the welt pocket of his vest. Then, scribbling a few words on the back of my Calcutta street-map, he handed it to me.
“Come to this address tomorrow at noon,” he said. “If I have changed my mind, I will tell you.”
* * * *
While hunting for Feroze, I had stayed at a guest house near the main Park Street area in central Calcutta. Dingy as an oubliette, the hotel was packed with a tour group of Glaswegians. Downing bottle after bottle of local beer in the reception, they disclosed that they had come to Calcutta on a pilgrimage in honor of their champion – the legendary Bengali film-maker Satyajit Ray.
Only one of the groups stayed away from the drink. Unlike his companions, he was extremely reserved. As the others lurched about clinking bottles together rambunctiously, he perched primly on a high stool, like a cockatoo. His face was long and very pale, with bristly graying sideburns and a sharp nose; his eyes were magnified by clumsy black-framed spectacles. When I asked him if he was an admirer of Bengali films, he affirmed in a Yorkshire voice that he was. Leaning his torso towards me, he said his name was Horace, and that Calcutta was his passion.
A retired schoolmaster, Horace funded his annual trips to West Bengal by conducting cut-price tours for people with an interest in Bengali cinema. Surprisingly, there appeared to be no shortage of customers. He had spent years studying Calcutta’s history – but Horace’s preoccupation was with the present, not the past. In his twenty visits to the city, the former prep-school master had gained a rare understanding of Calcutta, one that eludes most foreigners.
“Calcutta’s indescribable!” he called, clearing his throat. “Not because it’s reprehensible – it certainly isn’t. But because it’s an astounding mixture of every element of humanity. Westerners dwell on the sordid aspects, blinkering themselves to the city’s secrets. Focus only on the beggars, the diseased, and the collapsing buildings, and you miss the sheer ingenuity.”
“Ingenuity?”
“It takes an Eastern mind to decipher Calcu
tta,” said Horace, peering over the black frames which had slipped down his nose. “Ask a room full of Bengalis to look beyond the city’s day-to-day routine and, without hesitation, they grasp its reality.”
“What about foreigners?” I asked.
“Calcutta has a strange effect on them,” said the schoolmaster, glancing nervously round at the group of rowdy Scotsmen. “It tends to destabilize them.”
“What does?”
“Everything … but most of all the buildings. The sight of the once-majestic architecture, which now lies derelict, is too much for them. Haven’t you seen tourists tearing their hair out in the streets?”
I shook my head. But Horace wasn’t interested in feedback. He was only halfway through his lecture.
“Calcutta has moved on,” he mused. “The facades may be crumbling, the streets may be a mass of potholes, and the traffic a frenzy of heaving buses and suicidal driving. And, granted, it may be dark as night at three in the afternoon – but this is Calcutta, the ‘genuine article’.”
I gazed across to the guest house’s front door and wondered how I could escape through it. The teacher clapped his hands to regain my attention.
“We British doted on a city which didn’t really exist,” he said. “We put up monuments to our heroes, whitewashed everything in sight, enjoyed our liveried servants and our airy bungalows on the banks of the Hoogly. We got everyone speaking English, and saluting our kings and queens: all in desperation to create a Kensington in West Bengal. But as soon as we steamed away, after Independence, Calcutta – the real city – began to burgeon forth.”
Horace drew a deep breath. I sensed he was reaching the crux of his lecture.
“Fifty years on,” he said studiously, “and the true character is still percolating forth. Every day Calcutta becomes a little more rounded, more lived in and loved. Spend time here, and what at first seemed like utter chaos reveals itself as quite methodical. Calcutta has a way of arranging systems. As they develop, they provide security for those who need it. Open the mind to the wider picture. Scan about for a minute or two, and these systems become visible … they’re everywhere.”
* * * *
As I sauntered past Flury’s, a cafe which was the height of fashion in about 1922, I mulled over the schoolmaster’s remarks. How could he see systems in what was, for me, a random jumble of people? I hoped that one day I, too, would learn to decipher the city’s secrets. Although I tried to make sense of Park Street, all I saw was the endless blend of cars and beggars.
I did notice a respectable man fraternizing with the beggars across from Flury’s. He appeared to know them well. Feeling lonely, I went over and struck up a conversation. Calcutta’s the only city I know where you are actively encouraged to stop strangers at random for a quick chat.
The man was dressed in a blue coat, with leather suspenders, a silk handkerchief in his top pocket. His face was swarthy, his ears protruding, and his hair shiny as greasepaint. When I asked him about Calcutta’s mysterious underbelly, he – like Horace – was eager to share his information.
Known locally as Nondan – everyone in Bengal goes by a nickname – he had made it his business to help out some of the beggars living in central Calcutta.
“The streets are a window into a million lives,” he recounted, poetically. “Beggars are a part of our society. We mustn’t shun them, but help them whenever we can. Who knows what will happen to us next week, or next month? We may end up out here, begging for a living, too.”
Nondan led me down Park Street. Outside the affluent shops and expensive restaurants, weaving between the yellow and black Ambassador taxis with their fish-mouth grills or squatting in the deep monsoon gutters: there were beggars everywhere.
“Ask yourself why others don’t come to beg here, too,” Nondan said, pausing outside the Moulin Rouge – Calcutta’s version of the celebrated Parisian nightclub. “No beggar would turn down the chance of working on Park Street. But you see, the homeless here aren’t positioned randomly.”
“Of course they’re random, they’re wandering around!”
“No they’re not,” contested Nondan firmly. “Take that woman over there …” He pointed at an elderly woman, her head veiled with the end of her lilac-colored sari. “Like all of them, she stays within the area that she rents.”
“Rents!”
“That’s right – she pays about half of the money she makes directly to the Dadas.”
“Who’re the Dadas?”
“The ‘Big Brothers’ – the men in control.”
“A Mafia?”
“Well,” said Nondan hesitantly, “you could call it that. They demand protection money from all the beggars working this area. Anyone who doesn’t pay is beaten up.”
“There can’t be much money in it for the Dadas,” I said. “Why don’t they go and get into some more profitable line of business?”
Nondan rolled his eyes.
“Not much money in it!” he choked. “Are you mad? Calcutta’s beggars are a multi-million-dollar business.”
“Nonsense …”
“Do the math,” said Nondan. “Calcutta has at least eighty thousand full-time beggars. If each one’s making about twelve rupees a day and, say, they’re working every day of the year …” Nondan gesticulated wildly, counting on his fingers. “Well, I make that about … about three hundred and fifty million rupees … that’s about …” Nondan thought for a few seconds. “That’s about ten million American dollars a year between them. And that’s only Calcutta – all Indian cities have lots of beggars.”
As I went over the figures myself, Nondan gave a stern caution.
“Be warned,” he remarked. “When in Calcutta, never underestimate what looks simple.”
“What do you mean?”
“All right,” said Nondan, surveying Park Street. “Take a look at that woman over there. What do you see?”
“I see a woman – like any of the others – holding a screaming baby.”
“How old would you say she is?”
“About fifty. That must be her grandson in her arms …”
“Wrong!” exclaimed Nondan.
“Then perhaps it’s her friend’s child.”
“Wrong again! Remember – in Calcutta, nothing’s that simple. I know that woman. She hires the baby.”
“Impossible!”
Nondan regarded me with an austere glance.
“My friend,” he said gruffly, “this is Calcutta. Nothing is impossible. That woman doesn’t have young children, they’re all grown up. It took her years to get a spot in this part of town. She knows that people pay more if you’re crippled or have an infant – so she rents the baby. It costs her about three rupees a day. She looks after it very well.”
The arrangement seemed back to front.
“In the West,” I said, “people pay to have someone baby-sit their child.”
Nondan shook his head from side to side, as if condemning such a primitive system.
“Does the woman have to feed the baby?”
“Of course not,” he declared, irritated at my stupidity. “The baby has to wail – if it doesn’t, no one will give money. What better way of ensuring a baby cries than not feeding it?”
One had to admit that, although a little on the ruthless side, the system was ingenious.
Nondan knew his way around the secret world of Calcutta’s streets. His information was inspiring, yet one question bothered me.
“There’s one last fact I need to know,” I said.
“What is it?” asked Nondan, greeting some street urchins.
“Where do the beggars hire their babies from?”
Nondan looked at me as if I were an imbecile. Then, answering what was to him the most elementary question of all time, he replied:
“From the baby dealer, of course.”
* * * *
Throughout the night, the fleas gnawed at my ankles like hyenas ripping at a carcass. Unable to stand any more of the hostel, I
rose early and went out into the sleeping city.
First, I explored the maze of New Market. Even at dawn the air was heavy with the aroma of breakfast, simmering on a hundred sidewalk stalls. Puchkawallas, Calcutta’s fast-food merchants, were busy cooking up snacks to tout to the mass of commuters who would be along shortly.
Chowringhee Road, the main thoroughfare, which skirts the east perimeter of the Maiden, was virtually deserted. Like an eighteenth century etching of imperial Calcutta, the scene was stark: with just enough locals to give perspective to the opulent buildings of the British Raj.
Indeed, at first glance, little seems to have changed. The occasional rickshaw, pulled by a barefoot Bihari, rattles past. A groomed yellow labrador strains at a servant’s leash. A bhishtiwalla, water-carrier, pauses to fill his damp goat-hide sack from a hand-pump. But a second glimpse reminded me that the British left long ago.
The facade of a classical pavilion is now racked with billboards, advertising facial bleaching cream. Its Corinthian colonnades are crumbling; its walls are stained with algae, devoured by acidic rain, splattered with torn posters of Marx and Lenin; and the pair of granite lions which flank the gates are headless and forlorn. I felt a sudden pang of sorrow that such imposing buildings are in decay. But then, as Horace had made so clear, Calcutta is a city with a firm agenda of its own. It’s an agenda of survival. What good is a pavilion the size of Buckingham Palace to an office worker or a rickshawalla? The sumptuous palaces and mansions of the Raj have been shed, like a great slough. Like snakeskins, they lie discarded: an empty reminder of the departed serpent.
* * * *
At eleven-thirty I hailed a rickshaw. Calcutta is one of the few cities in the world where traditional hand-pulled rickshaws still exist. The first ones were brought to the city by the Chinese, around the turn of the century. At the time, the method of transport was considered far more humane than the palanquin, an enclosed litter suspended on poles and carried by bearers. Calcutta’s authorities – who realize that rickshaws add to their city’s negative image – are phasing them out. But although humanely motivated, their abolition will put more than thirty thousand rickshawallas out of a job.