The Complete Collection of Travel Literature

by Tahir Shah

  ELEVEN

  Metro Marriage

  The Master sat motionless in his study as I delivered my report next morning. He had placed his pocket-watch on the desk and was timing my narration. When I had spoken of discovered treasure and sublet bovine deities, he clicked the heels of his brown suede brogues together.

  “Tell me,” he said after several minutes of silence, “did you find the cow and the ghamelawallas by yourself?”

  I mulled his question over. Was there any way that he could have followed me? Could he have seen Venky? Had he dispatched a cohort of spies to track my movements?

  “Yes, I did it all on my own,” I said anxiously. “You know … like a bloodhound sniffing out its quarry … it’s all part of the job.”

  Feroze rose from his chair and stood still for a moment in classic Masonic stance: feet at right angles to one another. Then stalking across the room’s fine Herizi rug like a tiger moving in for the kill, he drew near. When within six inches of my face, he withdrew a pair of demi-lune spectacles from his shirt pocket, and slipped them on. With great care, he examined the beads of perspiration on my hairline.

  “Feeling a little bit warm, are you?” he prompted.

  “No, not really.”

  “Then please explain,” said the Master, returning to his chair, “how did you communicate with these people? My instructions forbid you from taking a translator on board.”

  Nothing would have given me greater pleasure than to run Hakim Feroze through with a blunt broadsword. Then I remembered the rubber bands. The truce was over. Turning my back to the teacher, I pretended to tie my laces. My fingers fumbled for the elastic bands under the inner sole of my left shoe.

  “Come on,” Feroze taunted, “how they related such detailed information? Did they speak Oxford English? Or have you mastered Bengali since yesterday?”

  Determined not to reveal Venky, my secret weapon, I stashed the elastic bands in my shirt pocket and fought on. It was now just a matter of deployment.

  “Well,” I proclaimed obstinately, “there was only one way I was going to understand such complex detail …”

  “All right, what is it?”

  “I used …”

  “Yes, out with it!”

  “I used sign language!”

  Feroze moistened a fingertip with his tongue and groomed back an eyebrow. I waited for him to look away. All I needed was a split second to flick the bands on to the desk.

  The magician stared into my eyes like a telepath. We both knew he was reading my mind. I swear I could sense him trawling through my library of memories. Gazing deeper and deeper, he drained the past from me until I was physically weak.

  There was no choice but to abort the attack. As I drew a deep breath into my lungs, Feroze swiveled around to pick his tea-cup from the window-sill. I rubbed my eyes. Then I took my chance. With haphazard precision, I tossed the three turquoise elastic bands on to the desk. They seemed to fly across the room in slow motion, before landing beside the precious pocket-watch. My stomach turned fearfully. The Master sipped his tea. Then he glanced over at the watch. Time stood still. Was there a gush of phobic anguish as he scrutinized his nemesis? Alas, there was not. Had he sapped the truth from the deepest recesses of my mind? His lack of stupefaction led me to believe that he had.

  Without a word, Feroze cast a silk polka-dot handkerchief over the elastic bands like a miniature fishing net. He crossed the room, locked in thought. Then he dropped the projectiles and the contaminated handkerchief in the waste-paper bin.

  “You go out today,” he said after a long pause, “and do some more of your ‘sign language’. I want two fine examples by this afternoon. When you get back: a dozen more illusions to cover and a test on everything you’ve learnt so far. We’ll be working late tonight! You may go now.”

  I rose from my seat and made for the door in silence. As I leant forward to grasp the knob, the Master called to me.

  “Oh, by the way,” he growled, “I beat all my aversions years ago. I take a dim view of humor at another’s expense. But don’t worry about that, it’s Gokul who’s to be punished.”

  * * * *

  Deep down I had known that, however high my hopes, the magician wouldn’t be conquered by low-quality stationery. I had known, too, that my best efforts the day before would be judged inadequate. The hunch had spurred me to arrange in advance another meeting with Venky. Hiring the rickshawalla may have been against the Master’s will. But then, as I rationalized it, communicating with Venky was no easy task in itself.

  Venky was quaffing a bottle of murky bootleg liquid at the place of rendezvous. Without discussing the day’s plan at all, he knurled his face as the hooch corroded his insides like battery acid on a sheet of zinc; tapped the seat for me to ascend, and set off at a furious pace.

  Stopping once, to pull a shard of glass from his foot, Venky headed east to Bhawanipur Metro Station. He covered the short distance in a few minutes. Even when drunk, he was a man of startling physical endurance. The years of postal running through the wilds of Purulia had been good training. When he had recovered his breath, Venky stared directly at the sun.

  “Early,” he said.

  I looked at my wristwatch.

  “It’s nine-forty … Early for what?”

  Venky leant over and peered at the dial.

  “Clock no good,” he said firmly. “Sun good … sun no breaking down!”

  “Venky, what are we waiting for?”

  “Wedding-man.”

  “What do you mean?”

  The rickshawalla splayed the fingers of his right hand and pushed them back and forth like a lunatic trying to wave. Look at this, Feroze – I thought – here’s sign language in action.

  As we waited for the wedding-man to arrive, Venky told me about himself.

  “Name Venkatraman … Born in Tamil Nadu. Father moving to Bihar,” he said. “My wife in Gomoh, near Dhanbad.”

  “Do you have children?”

  “Four sons,” replied the rickshawalla proudly. “Go home one time in year. Seeing children … seeing wife. Very nice.”

  “When do you go back to Bihar next?”

  “Easter.”

  “Easter? You’re a Christian?”

  Venky, who had turned his attentions to another sliver of glass in his foot, concurred that he was indeed a Christian.

  “What about your life here? What’s it like working in Calcutta?”

  “Hard work,” said Venky, tensing the muscles of his face until his cheeks shone like mirrors. “Calcutta hard city. Paying fifteen rupia for rickshaw renting … working all day making forty-five rupia. Sending money to wife.”

  “Do your family friends come and visit you from Bihar?”

  Venky rubbed at a callus on his right hand.

  “Friend come here,” he said softly. “But friend see me … make me sad … Friend laughing at me … me rickshawalla only.”

  Calcutta can be a lonely place. Venky had found one true friend in the city. It was called chullu.

  “Liking drinking fenny,” he remarked shyly. “Fenny good … you liking fenny?”

  “Well, actually, I don’t drink. And you should take care – fenny’s very strong stuff,” I said. “Besides, my stomach isn’t in very good shape … too many emetics – it got ruptured when I was swallowing stones.”

  The rickshawalla’s brow furrowed as he translated the words ‘swallow” and ‘stone” into Bengali. He gave me a stern sideways glance.

  “You eat stone?” he inquired apprehensively.

  “Only on special occasions,” I said. “I don’t eat them every day.”

  Venky smiled. He stared at the sun again.

  “Is time now,” he said. “We go in.”

  We crossed the street to the Bhawanipur Station. Leaving his rickshaw with a stall-keeper, Venky led me down into the Metro. He descended the marble stairs with unsure footsteps. I sensed he had not been in India’s only underground railway before. I purchased two tic
kets at three rupees each and we strolled down a staircase on to the platform. Deep in the bowels of Calcutta, with the city’s traffic raging above, the underground was like an urban Garden of Eden.

  Calcutta’s single-line Metro was constructed in 1984 against all the odds. The cost is said to have been an estimated $300 million. In a land where three hundred pounds – let alone a million times that – is a monstrous sum, it’s hard to imagine why so much cash was required. But cast an eye around this, the pride of West Bengal, and you can’t deny that money has been spent.

  The Metro is everything one would expect it not to be. It’s cool, spotlessly clean, silent as a grave, soothing on the senses, and it smells of lavender oil. The platforms, with their fresh, chilled air, boast satellite television and piped muzak. The train carriages, which are free from chewing gum and graffiti, exhibit original paintings of local artists.

  Most unexpected of all is that the Metro is desperately underused. Whenever I asked Calcuttans why the pride of their city is so empty, they grinned tensely. Some put it down to the fact that Bengalis like to have their feet firmly planted on the ground. Others said the Metro was too cold; or that people were terrified that it would collapse. Judging by Venky’s response, it may have been a mixture of the three reasons. Even standing on the platform made him restless.

  After waiting on the south-bound platform for twenty minutes, I started to wonder what was going on. Trains came and went. But Venky made it clear we had not come to ride the tracks.

  Instead, he held up his hand, motioning for me to be patient.

  “No traveling,” he explained. “Waiting for wedding-man.”

  “You still haven’t told me who the wedding-man is …”

  At that moment, a rotund figure with eyes like peeled green grapes sidled up. He was dressed in a tailored bran-colored suit, with wide lapels and six buttons on each cuff.

  “Hello,” he said in faultless English. “I was delayed. Been arranging the wedding.”

  When I had introduced myself, I explained that Venky had not told me why we were meeting.

  “I organize weddings,” said the man casually. “Finding the right spot is getting very difficult, especially right now, in the marriage season. Families get very desperate. They want somewhere cool and relaxing away from the noise, the pollution, where there aren’t too many people. The place has to be easy to get to, clean and large enough to take the full wedding party. So,” said the man blithely, “that’s why I hire out Metro platforms.”

  “I’m not sure if I understand.”

  His grape-like eyes scanning from right to left like an iguana’s, the broker continued:

  “Where better for a wedding than a Metro platform? It’s clean, cool, and convenient to get to. It has toilets, televisions, and speakers all around. What place could be more suitable?”

  “But do you work for the Calcutta Metro?”

  The man rubbed his belly, and laughed.

  “Oh course not!” he said. “I tip the station manager something, and that’s all taken care of.

  “We have a wedding here this evening,” he said. “I’m here making a few arrangements. The wedding party will come in from here …” He pointed to a turnstile. “The wedding ceremony will take place here …”

  Puzzled that the rickshawalla had managed to line up such an impressive entrepreneur, I had one final question to put to him.

  “Is there one secret that has made all this possible?” I asked.

  The man shuffled his feet on the marble flooring. Then, grooming his spiv’s mustache, he leaned over the tracks to peek down the tunnel.

  “Yes,” he said plainly, “there is one thing that ensures I don’t have any problems.”

  “What is it?”

  His wily features reflecting the neon lights, he whispered:

  “I always make certain the wedding party have valid Metro tickets.”

  * * * *

  The best thing about the search for insider information was that I could roam wild far from the magician’s compound. The emphasis might have lapsed from illusory science, but at least I could eat what I liked, when I liked.

  Venky became agitated when I offered to treat him to an excellent lunch.

  “We’ll go to eat at a place on Park Street,” I said. “It serves quite good tandoori.”

  The rickshawalla wiped his mouth with the comer of his shirt. Then he wiped the festering wound on his barefoot.

  “Good eat Sealdah Station!” he replied.

  Park Street’s snobbish set may have put Venky in an awkward position.

  “To Sealdah Station we go,” I said.

  Venky raised the twin poles of his rickshaw and lurched into the traffic of A. J. Chandra Bose Road. The prospect of eating at his favorite cafe seemed to put a bounce into his stride. As we jostled along – with Venky dinging the ghanti, a small bell, against the pole – I took a deep breath. Calcutta’s vintage blend of monoxides, mercuries and toxic trace elements swelled my lungs. My thoracic cavity tightened as I strained to exhale the cocktail of poison gas. For the first time in my life, I found myself falling victim to asthma.

  By the time we reached the outlying railway station at Sealdah, I could hardly breathe. Observing my distress, Venky pressed his burly fingertips into the soft flesh at either side of my lower jaw. As I concentrated on the pulse above my left eye, my breathing slowed to a more regular pace.

  “How did you know to do that?” I gasped, as my breath returned.

  Venky grinned.

  “Rickshawalla trick,” he said.

  The cafe at Sealdah Station was unlike any restaurant I had visited before. Leaving his vehicle with another rickshawalla outside the station’s reservation office, Venky escorted me over the criss-crossing railway tracks to the diner. As we grew closer, his titillation mirrored my apprehension.

  The eating house was located next to an overgrown points signal. It was already brimming with regulars. About thirty mendicants lolled about waiting to be fed. Shunned by society, scorned for their handicaps and afflictions, they were the destitute whose name is synonymous with that of Calcutta.

  A large, boisterous woman in a fluorescent fuchsia-pink sari was in charge. She barked directions at half a dozen young helpers. One was busy chopping vegetables; another was stirring a bubbling pot with a spade-like spoon; a third was fanning the charcoal beneath the vessel. Venky murmured that the raucous woman was the owner. Her name was Sharmila Roy.

  We sat on the grass-covered island beside the railway points, and Venky told me about this, his favorite eating place. Regrettably, the highlights dulled my appetite. Every morning, he told me, Sharmila Roy sends her children out to scavenge for food in the refuse heaps around the city. They gather as many unwanted and partially rotting ingredients as they can, hauling them back to the open-air railway diner. Using her considerable culinary skill, Sharmila Roy brews up a buffet of delectable dishes. Beggars and rickshawalla come from miles around to sample the food.

  I had once seen a television report on a similar kind of cafe in Washington DC. An entrepreneur sent scouts to forage through the dustbins of the wealthy. The result was a menu which boasted a smorgasbord of epicurean delights – the finest caviar from the Caspian Sea, tournedos of beef with goat’s cheese and grilled pine nuts, a terrine of langoustines, roasted quails – all washed down with Japanese plum wine.

  Although enthused by such tales of garbage banquets, I found myself growing increasingly uneasy. I sensed that a refuse meal in Calcutta may lack the elevated standards of the American capital. In the United States, a product is deemed dangerous thirty seconds beyond its sell-by date. But in Calcutta, a little surface mold or ingrained pestilence is considered to add to the taste.

  Scrounged ingredients were only half the secret of Sharmila Roy’s diner. Most restaurateurs focus on feeding those with money to spend. But the Sealdah Station cafe had overcome the hurdle of destitution. The answer was simple. Clients were encouraged to pay in kind, rather t
han cash. Even for Calcutta – home to baby rental and gold-sweepers – the system deserved applause. If you can’t scrape together three rupees for a heavy lunch, no problem. Bring a knot of rags, a crumpled ball of telephone wire, an old shoe, a jam-jar, a used toothbrush, a light-bulb stolen from a commuter train, or a handful of rusty razor blades … and a lavish helping of fish-head curry will be placed ceremoniously before you.

  Obviously one of the diner’s regulars, Venky was greeted tenderly by Sharmila Roy. As she welcomed us, some of the other clients voiced concern that a foreigner was amongst them. The rickshawalla passed me a mound of rags, a makeshift cushion on which to sit. One of Sharmila Roy’s daughters – a girl no older than about six – scurried over to us with three banana-leaf plates. As the tattered banana leaves were brought, I caught my first waft of the curry.

  Venky’s eyes lit up like candles burning on a dark night.

  “Good eating,” he said loudly, demonstrating his command of English.

  Before I could say a word, a heap of fish-heads, stewed chicken bones and mixed vegetable was slapped down on the banana leaf. The food smelled highly spiced. I realized later that this was a precaution to mask the flavor of decay. Despite the strong aroma of chili, the pungent odor of rotting fish rose to the surface like oil in water. When my leaf was piled high with tempting morsels, Venky thrust his hand into his own food, stirred it around, and began to feast.

  Vagabonds of all descriptions were in attendance. Those who could walk had formed a circle around us. On one side was half a dozen lepers. Beside them were squatting survivors of road accidents – two men with no legs between them, two more crippled by polio, and another, a victim of acute elephantiasis. In contrast to the lame were the dozen or so rickshawallas. Like Venky, they were hale almost beyond words.