The Complete Collection of Travel Literature

by Tahir Shah

  “Happy Christmas, Sahib!” said the rickshawalla.

  I looked at the calendar on my watch. He was right, it was Christmas Day. I thanked God I was in a Hindu nation – Christmas and I detest each other.

  I read out Feroze’s address.

  “Haa, jadoowalla,” the rickshawalla sniffed. “Want magician house?”

  I was surprised he knew of Feroze, and that he spoke some English.

  “How do you know this man?”

  “Everybody know jadoowalla!”.

  “Mr. Feroze?”

  “Yes, Mister Magician!”

  Later, I realized that, although few people knew Hakim Feroze by name, virtually every rickshawalla knew him as jadoowalla, the magician.

  The rickshawalla reeked of chullu, bootleg alcohol made from distilled grain. He was sleek, fine-boned, without an ounce of fat. His legs were slender as sunflower stalks, his hands rippled with muscle, and his back gleamed like a burnished sheet of newly hammered copper. Despite his inebriated condition, the rickshawalla moved through the traffic with hushed concentration, covering the distance of about three miles in less than thirty minutes. He pulled up outside a large, traditional Calcutta home in the Alipore district, just south of the Zoological Gardens.

  Before he left, I asked him how he had learnt English.

  “Sahib,” he said, tucking the ten-rupee note into his lungi, “was runner – Purulia post office, West Bengal.”

  At first the explanation meant nothing. Then I understood. A throwback to colonial times, West Bengal is the only state in India which still employs a relay of postal runners. They carry cumbersome sacks of mail through the jungles and wilds of outlying areas. Over their left shoulder hangs a rounded ax – traditionally a defense against dacoits and wild animals. Across the right shoulder is slung a sack of letters. As with so many Indian professions, runners’ routes tend to be hereditary. But in recent times, the younger generation has preferred to leave the forests for work in Calcutta, where they become rickshawallas.

  Before ringing the bell of Feroze’s home, I checked the time. It was exactly noon.

  An elderly servant staggered to the front gate. Apologizing that Mr. Feroze was not yet home from his late-morning stroll, he invited me in to wait.

  The manservant led me on a short cut to the house: past the kitchen, which was located in a vine-covered outbuilding, through its vegetable patch, and across the central courtyard to the veranda. The main house was a cross between a Mediterranean villa and a Regency mansion. It was square with two stories, a flat roof, and imposing lichened walls. The veranda, which spread out like a grand stone doily, was shaded by a simple tiled portico. On the upper floor, set back above the veranda, was a wide balcony, replete with a molded balustrade. Either side, twin sets of French windows, fitted with wooden jalousie shutters, looked out across the courtyard. Below them were more windows, their glass mottled and sagging like distorted carnival mirrors. A century or so of Calcuttan wear and tear had exacted a heavy toll on the mansion. Random lumps of plasterwork had fallen away, revealing ketchup colored bricks. The pronounced cornicing of the window-ledges had crumbled; and the granite lintel above the front door was split at one side.

  Once in the main building, the bearer led the way through the vestibule and down a long, book-lined corridor. At the far end of the passage, I was forced to negotiate an overwhelming accumulation of unneeded odds and ends – a number of men’s suits, – tennis rackets, a bicycle, three crude wicker chairs, and a gate-legged table. The manservant apologized for the hazard, noting that the bric-a-brac was waiting to be taken away to a charity sale.

  Feroze was obviously a man of considerable cultivation. The sitting room was well-appointed, its walls lined with lacquered shelves; its floor, an exquisite Arenberg parquet, was partially concealed by a Baluchi rug. A revolving bookcase in one corner of the room stored oversized books. A Steinway upright piano stood on the far side, with a folio of Chopin waiting to be played. The center of the reception room was dominated by three Bergère chairs, upholstered in off-white leather and complete with lace antimacassars.

  The servant shuffled ahead methodically in a pair of worn out mule slippers. Ancient and asthmatic, he was bent like a billhook, his expression benumbed with age.

  We arrived at Feroze’s private study. The orderly escorted me to a cabriole chair. Closing the door behind him with a bang, he left. The room was dark, the windows shielded by wooden Venetian blinds. It was filled with an unnerving chill, as if someone was watching me. The chair on which I sat was adjacent to a walnut writing bureau. Three precise piles of correspondence lay upon it. A cylindrical brass box held down one of the piles. Damascened in silver, with Islamic lettering, it had been crafted from part of an artillery shell. The base was inscribed, Berndorf, 1917.

  There were books everywhere. Not novels, but volumes of substance, in many languages. Many were bound in quarter Moroccan leather, and numbered on the spine. About half were concerned with illusion, conjuring and magic. One complete shelf was devoted to the work and life of the eminent American illusionist, Harry Houdini. Another was concerned with the feats of India’s religious ascetics and godmen. A third held the teacher’s numerous stamp albums.

  Opposite the Houdini books, adjacent to the study’s main door, a two-foot section of Kiswah hung framed on the wall. The Kiswah, an immense black cloth mantle, embroidered with gold calligraphy, is crafted each year for the Kaaba at Mecca. Weighing more than two tons, it takes a hundred craftsmen a whole year to weave. That a strip of the revered cloth hung in the study suggested that Feroze was a pious Muslim, a Haji, who had attended the Pilgrimage at Mecca.

  Leading off from the study was a storeroom, filled floor to ceiling with papers, journals, and more books. Beside this was a second door. I rotated the cool brass handle. It appeared to be locked.

  As I turned my attentions back to the papers on the writing desk, I heard the soles of leather shoes scuffing across the parquet of the sitting room. The study door flew open. I spun round. Standing to attention in the door’s frame was Feroze.

  He was dressed in a black astrakhan hat and a spinach-green Ulster coat of Irish frieze. And on his feet were brown suede chukka boots. Curious attire, as it was seventy-five degrees outside.

  “I see that you’re having a good poke around …”

  “Excuse me,” I replied. “I’m inquisitive by nature.”

  “What else are you by nature?”

  “I am modest,” I said, immodestly.

  Assuming my place again on the cabriole chair, I waited for Feroze to take the lead. He hung his astrakhan cap and coat behind the door. Then, without looking at me, he sat at the great leather-topped writing desk. He collected the papers from the surface of the desk, shuffled them into a single wad, and locked them away in a cupboard beside the desk.

  “Why do you want to learn illusion?” he asked.

  “I’ve always been interested.”

  “Are you only ‘interested’, or are you passionate?” Feroze’s teeth chewed on his words.

  “I’m passionate,” I said, “but I realize that to be superlative, one needs an extraordinary teacher, and,” I said, hoping to make an impact, “I understand you are an extraordinary teacher.”

  Feroze was not interested in whimsical flattery.

  “Tell me,” he growled, “do you do as you’re told? Are you obedient?”

  “Yes … I think l am.”

  “If I became your teacher,” he said, “would you ever question me?”

  “Would you want me to?”

  “Answer my question.”

  “I would question you if, by questioning, I could advance my understanding.”

  The Master nodded.

  “If I told you to do something,” he went on, “would you do it, even if it were painful?”

  What tortuous designs had he in store? I sensed Hafiz Jan watching from afar, chewing on his fingers. Then I answered with circumspection.

  “Si
r,” I said, “if you asked me to do something, I’d make every effort to fulfill the command.”

  Getting to his feet, Hakim Feroze picked a pair of navigational calipers from his desk and fingered them as he contemplated. Gazing out of the window to the central courtyard, with its mature mango tree, he forced the ends of the calipers together.

  “Hafiz Jan was, as I told you, one of my best pupils,” he said. “He had passion; he loved illusion. It’s always saddened me he had an ancestral position to fulfill.”

  Feroze broke off and stared at me. While he stared, I could feel him scrutinizing not myself, but my own ancestors.

  “I know Hafiz Jan would not have sent you,” Feroze continued, “unless you meant a great deal to him. For this reason,” he said, again glancing into the courtyard, “I will give you one chance.”

  I smiled, rearranging myself on the confined seat. Outside I could make out the shrill voices of carol singers at the property’s gates. The servant was calling for them to go home.

  “I am not a patient man,” quipped Feroze. “If you fail any order, any task, I will ask you to leave.”

  “Thank you for having faith in me.”

  “My friend,” said Feroze derisively, “please note that I have no faith in anyone at all! Tell me, where are you staying?”

  “Near Park Street, in a guest house.”

  “Go and get your things. You are moving in here where I can keep an eye on you. This house is run along precise lines. Do you understand that?”

  I gave a thumbs-up. Hakim Feroze glowered disapprovingly at my gesture. Toying with the calipers, he crossed the room. I noticed he was now wearing a pair of sturdy Oxfords. Odd, as I hadn’t actually seen him remove the stylish boots he’d arrived in.

  “Once you’re within the walls of this house, you do as I say. You get up when I tell you to; eat what I tell you to; and follow my exact orders.”

  “How am I to address you, Mr. Feroze?”

  The magician ran a fingertip across the top edge of a picture frame, checking for dust.

  “People like to call me ‘Master’,” he replied.

  “When am I to begin lessons?”

  Feroze snipped the calipers like castanets. Then, scowling across at me, his green eyes shimmering like fire-opals, he shouted:

  “Immediately … We start immediately!”

  PART TWO

  The public see only the accomplished trick;

  they have no conception of the tortuous

  preliminary self-training that was necessary

  to conquer that fear.

  J.C. Cannell, The Secrets of Houdini

  SEVEN

  Calcutta Torture

  At the center of Feroze’s courtyard, beneath the boughs of the mango tree, I stood to attention like a sentry. Chest out, heels clicked together; spine straight as a ship’s mast: frozen to the spot, like a hare before a car’s headlights. This was a proud moment. It was the moment for which I had longed. I felt accepted: secure in the knowledge that my apprenticeship with a famous tutor had finally begun.

  Arms outstretched like those of a crucified convict, I awaited further instructions. Despite initial confusion at the odd training, I complied with unflagging respect: anxious to make a good impression on my first full day.

  Lesson One: stand in the yard with arms extended sideways; palms turned upwards; fingers splayed outwards like a starfish; ten grains of rice on the left palm; a single peeled grape on the right. The drill’s relevance eluded me. But with one misplaced foot or questioning glance enough to merit expulsion, I obeyed in what soon became silent agony.

  Every quarter of an hour I was permitted to rest both clenched fists on my head for a single minute. Each bout would be timed by Feroze’s precious silver pocket-watch; a possession which was never far from his hand. The respite’s end was signaled by three clinks of a teaspoon on an enameled mess mug. The cup hung from the Master’s belt like a rabbit-foot talisman. Every so often he left the shade of the mansion’s impressive veranda. Haughty as a llama, he would step over to ensure the grape was dust free, and that the ten grains remained as he had placed them.

  The weather was unusually hot for late December. The heat of the winter sun seared down through the branches of the mango tree. I bore what I believed was unbearable. Twigging with electric spasms of pain, my arms quivered as if about to snap. Little did I know that, as the austere initiation into the magician’s world progressed, I would soon be craving the grape and rice ordeal.

  The drill came to an abrupt end. With talons slashing like bayonets, a buzzard swooped down from the mango tree and seized the grape. As the colossal wings flapped around me, I tumbled to the ground. Feroze dropped his newspaper and marched over. I exhibited the gashes on my forearms, moaning loudly, hoping for pity. But the magician was not the sort of man concerned with trifling flesh wounds. He preferred broken bones.

  “Did you see that?” he said.

  “See it? Didn’t you notice me wrestling with it? Look at my wounds.”

  I held out my arms once again.

  “Butastur teesa, the white-eyed buzzards … don’t see those in Calcutta very often …” sniffed Feroze. “I think he might be making a nest up there. Better start keeping an eye on it.”

  Yanking the mess mug up from his belt, he struck it thrice with the teaspoon. On to the next task.

  Lesson Two: strip down to your boxer shorts and crawl around the courtyard on your stomach, picking up fragments of sea-shell. Stop only when you have found two hundred fragments of shell.

  There is nothing quite as unpleasant as wearing a pair of briefs which have been trailed through a Calcutta courtyard. Nothing, that is, except having one’s elbows and knees lacerated by unseen slivers of glass and discarded razor blades. As I fumbled forward, whimpering, shards of broken bottles pierced my skin, and I struggled to think righteous thoughts.

  Scholarship, my conscience cautioned me, is about making sacrifices. Success in any field always depends on forfeiture. Although unorthodox, the trials must be preparation for my studies in illusion. Without these basics, I told myself, I’ll never get through the course.

  After three hours of crawling in zigzags like a maggot, I had managed to locate only three pieces of shell. One of them was questionable.

  Feroze came over to inspect my work.

  “Put them in this,” he said, dropping a rusty tobacco tin next to my bloodied elbow.

  The sound of shells falling into the box displeased the teacher. Instead of a hailstorm, there was a dismal ting, ting, ting.

  “Oh, dear,” Feroze said gruffly, “that won’t do. That won’t do at all. Better keep on at it.”

  “There aren’t very many shells round about here,” I lamented, my nose pressed into the dirt.

  But Hakim Feroze did not hear me. He had already marched back to the shade.

  Three hours later, I had located another seven pieces of sea-shell. As I probed about haphazardly, I wondered how many other poor neophytes had been subjected to the same ordeal. The lack of shells implied that I was not the first. Had Hafiz Jan been forced to do this, too? I felt sure he had. Was this the terrific baptism by ordeal of which he had so persistently warned me? The more I thought about the regime, the more questions remained unanswered. Was the shell-picking a ritual to which all initiates of magic are subjected? I suspected not.

  When afternoon had turned to evening, the magician returned from taking a nap. He was clean-shaven, dressed in a crisp gabardine shirt, herring-bone breeches and honey-yellow brogues. He looked down at me slithering around on my stomach, like an alligator. The front part of my boxer shorts had virtually disintegrated. Like a newly evolved chameleon-mole hybrid, my weary and injured body attempted to adapt.

  Feroze pulled out his pocket-watch, studied it for a moment, and put it away. I gaped down at the muck and then back at the Master. A second before he had been standing tall, inspecting me like a drill sergeant on parade. Now he was reclining in a deckchair. I hadn�
�t seen him sit down, or even set up the seat.

  “You’re pretty filthy!” he sneered as if surprised at my condition. “It’s almost eight o’clock. You better go and wash. Ask Gokul to give you something to eat and get you a mattress. We’ll begin early in the morning. Make sure you sleep well.”

  “Thank you,” I said meekly, unsure of what exactly I was giving thanks for.

  Gokul, the frail manservant, appeared from nowhere and helped me to my feet. After spending much of the afternoon on my belly, the abrupt transition from slithering reptile to Homo erectus was not an easy one to make. Sensing the problem of readjustment, Gokul instructed me to lie on the veranda. He removed his sandals, and climbed on to my back. Prancing up and down my spine like a gymnast on a beam, he nudged his toes into the dips between the vertebrae. Then, after I’d had a steaming bath in the servants’ antique cast-iron tub, he applied tincture of iodine to the raw wounds on my underside.

  After this, he led me to the kitchen.

  “Hot all day on stomach,” he said, cheerily.

  “Yes, it was quite hard. Quite dusty.”

  He opened a steaming pot and served me a bowl of daal and sukto – fried, diced vegetables.

  “Tomorrow will be a nice day,” he said, as if hoping to elevate my spirits.

  “Yes? Do you know what Mr. Feroze has planned for me tomorrow?”

  A nervous expression crept across the manservant’s face.

  “Eat more daal,” he said. “It make you strong.”

  * * * *

  The first phase of the initiation continued for seven days. Each evening Gokul would straighten out my back with his rubbery feet, apply iodine to my lacerations, and darn my boxer shorts. When Feroze’s piercing gaze was not upon me, the good-natured servant would throw over a chunk of coconut, or slip me a mug of bracing tamarind juice.

  Each day seemed to bring a new and more horrible trial.

  Lesson Three: dig a hole in the courtyard – two feet square, two feet deep – using a dessert spoon. The spoon may only be held in the left hand.