by Tahir Shah
“I was writing about a group of people in Pulaski,” I said.
“Oh, yeah? Who would that have been?” snorted the vegans together.
“The Ku Klux Klan,” I said.
Jake comforted his wife, who had begun to sniff into a tissue. Her reaction seemed rather excessive. After all, my magazine articles had brought the full wrath of the KKK upon me.
“Honey,” moaned Matilda, “I told you – people always think of the Klan when they think of Tennessee!”
“That’s not true,” I retorted. “Tennessee’s got so much more than the Ku Klux Klan.”
Jake pecked his wife on the cheek.
“What?” he asked. “What else does Tennessee have?”
It was a difficult question. Bhalu, who had returned to grab another handful of mini soap bars, shrugged his shoulders. The other travelers in the second-class carriage looked at their feet nervously. Like me, their knowledge of the American Deep South was, at best, sketchy.
“Well,” I declared, “you’ve got catfish!”
“What else d'we have?” probed Jake.
Again, I deliberated hard. Then it came to me.
“You’ve got Elvis!” I shrieked. “Well, you had him.”
An expansive grin swept across Jake’s face. He jabbed Matilda in the ribs, and she started to smile as well.
“How did you know?” they chortled. “How d'you know “bout Elvis?”
“Um, Elvis – everyone knows about him.”
“No, no, how did you know 'bout Elvis and us?” gasped Matilda.
“You like him? Is that it?”
One could not be sure. After all, Jake and his wife were vegans. I had never known a Tennessean to condemn catfish before. But Elvis is different. No one from the “Volunteer State” would dare to speak against the King.
“Like him?” snarled Jake. “We love him!”
The Southern couple held each other’s hands and cooed like turtle doves. Then they revealed the reason for their visit to India. A friend of a friend had sent them a clipping from an Indian newspaper. Reaching into his back pocket, Jake withdrew the article. It told of how a man called V.N. Gajarajan, living in a hamlet near Bangalore, worships a photograph of Elvis Presley at his family shrine. Gajarajan also gained public attention recently for his monograph entitled “Why My Daughter Married Michael Jackson.”
I handed the article back to Jake.
“Funny, isn’t it?” I exclaimed. “Just like that temple – Karnidevi, near Bikaner – where they worship rats. I’ve heard there’re thousands of the little fellows. Devotees flock to the temple from across India. They feed the rats great trays of food. Only when the rodents can devour no more, do the pilgrims eat what they've left.”
“Worshipping rats?” quipped the Southerner. “That’s not the same as venerating the father of world music.”
“You mean …?”
I gave the couple a sharp, anxious look.
“Yes,” said Jake portentously, “I'm referring to none other than Mr. Elvis Presley.”
Jake and Matilda Dorfman had traveled across eleven time zones to pray at the shrine of Lord Elvis the Divine. It was more than a pilgrimage.
But first things first. Had they brought an offering to leave at the shrine?
Jake Dorfman squinted at his wife. She gestured back to him. Only then did he pull a scratched tobacco tin from his money belt.
“This is our humble contribution,” he said. “It’s a small token, but we feel it’s appropriate.”
He handed me the tin. Taking it from him reverently, I slipped off the rubber band. Then, very cautiously, I prized away the lid.
Whatever I had expected to be inside, was not what I found.
“It’s soil …” I said.
“That’s right,” agreed Jake tenderly. “But it’s not ordinary soil … it’s from Graceland.”
TWENTY-THREE
Duel of Miracles
At Gulbarga, the American couple shook my hand, clenched their faces in courteous smiles, and stepped off the train. I would have inquired why they were taking such an unconventional route to Bangalore, but I had asked enough questions already.
The Minar Express rumbled across the border to Maharashtra, Mumbai’s state. Drifting off to sleep, I filled my mind with images of the city, recently rechristened as “Mumbai.” I saw Churchgate Station and the Chateau Windsor Guest House, the Eros Cinema, and my cherished restaurant, Gaylord’s. As I slipped into a deep slumber, I felt something tugging my earlobe. Without even opening my eyes, I knew who it was.
“Bhalu, go and sell your damn soap bars and leave me alone!”
“Sorry,” said the Trickster, “unexpected stop. We’re getting off at the next station … Sholapur.”
“What are you talking about? What about Mumbai? Only ten hours to go now … let’s go on to Mumbai!”
“Hurry and get off the train – it’s slowing down for the station.”
“I’ll meet you in Mumbai,” I said. “I’ve got nothing to do in Sholapur.”
But the Trickster had already made the decision for both of us. He was hauling his grubby pillowcase sacks down from the luggage rack, and pulling them to the door. With great reluctance I followed him down on to the platform.
After hiring a convoy of taxis at enormous cost to bear our combined luggage to Hotel Khajuraho, Bhalu disappeared, leaving me to pay off the drivers. It was unlike him not to pay his way, and was even more unusual for the Trickster not to insist on supervising his loot himself. Without giving his irregular behavior much thought, I checked into the hotel. As it was late I was forced to pay an eighty per cent surcharge.
* * * *
Next morning the door of my room arched inwards as a fist struck its outer side. The overly zealous bell-hop announced that a guest was waiting for me in the reception. I wondered who it could be. It certainly wasn’t Bhalu, who had not yet reappeared – he would have come through the window.
After the taxi ride and hotel surcharge, word would surely spread through Sholapur that the world’s most gullible man had come to town. My curiosity heightened by the prospect of an unexpected guest, I hurried down to the reception.
Before I could ask for the visitor, a man sidled up and shook both my hands. Aged about forty, he was of average height, average build and average of appearance: except for a rather splendid Vandyke beard.
“Hello hello hello,” he said, continuing to waggle my hands in his, “I have come to meet Mr. Shah.”
“I am Mr. Shah.”
The Vandyke beard twitched with delight.
“Can we sit together?” asked the man, gargling as if there were marbles in his mouth.
“Excuse me for being so forward … but do I know you?”
Vandyke twitched again.
“I am Goadbaba,” he said.
I ran the name around my mind. Even with my inexpert grasp of Marathi – the language of Maharashtra – I could decipher the name.
“That means Mr. Sweet,” I said.
“Precisely!”
Goadbaba lured me out on to the terrace of the Hotel Khajuraho. A contingent of gardeners and their lackeys were watering plants, scrubbing the flagstones and repotting seedlings. With the monsoon well under way, it was a busy time in the garden. Goadbaba and I sat in silence under a large parasol, shading our eyes from the bright morning sunlight.
A waiter pranced over, laden with a tray of tea. He unloaded the teapot, spoons, two cups, slices of lemon, and a jug of milk. As he stooped to place the sugar bowl at the center of the table, the man with the Vandyke beard brushed him away.
“Do you mind?” I said pertly. “I’d like some sugar.”
Goadbaba wrung his hands together. I had the feeling I was about to learn the reason for his visit.
“How many spoons do you take?” he asked.
“Two … I like two spoons of sugar in my tea.”
Without hesitation, the self-invited guest dipped the thumb and forefinger of his left h
and into my tea. In the East, where it’s important to observe conventions of courtesy, a guest can get away with a lot more than in the West. But in the East, there’s another convention that’s followed rigorously. Everyone wipes their posterior with the left hand. This second custom led to distinct misgivings. Where had Vandyke’s left hand been?
As his fingers were withdrawn from my tea, I craned my neck to inspect the man’s fingernails. An ebony-black crescent of dirt was concealed beneath each one.
“Go on!” sniffed Goadbaba. “Try it. Taste your tea!”
I mumbled a range of feeble excuses. The guest lifted the cup to my lips like a chalice of Eucharistic wine. I gulped down half a mouthful of the straw-colored liquid.
“Darjeeling,” I said. “I like Darjeeling very much.”
“But what about the sugar:” said the stranger.
“You’re right: it tastes very sweet – maybe it’s a freak batch.”
“No, Sahib.” Goadbaba sniffed again. “This is not freaky, this is my talent.”
“What talent’s that?”
The man dried his fingers on his beard.
“I make things sweet!” he said.
My fears had been realized. Word had spread that Tahir Shah – the most ingenuous person in the world – had arrived in Sholapur.
Goadbaba touched everything on the table and begged me to verify his skill.
“Taste this spoon,” he said, “or taste this, the cup, or the table itself!”
I licked a couple of random objects. Sure enough: they were all unusually sweet.
“So, how did you acquire this talent?”
Goadbaba pressed his magic fingertips together and explained:
“I was an office clerk here in Sholapur. Last year, after a big meal, I picked something from my tooth. To my surprise, I tasted sweetness. Suddenly I realized that anything I touch goes sweet.”
“What other things have you touched?”
“I have touched so many things,” he said innocently. “I touched a bowl of rice, a loaf of bread, a cigarette, my friend’s shoe, a wallet, a car …” Goadbaba’s list was certainly extensive.
“And?”
“And … they all went sweet … like sugar.”
Mr. Sweet pulled up his sleeves in the middle of the conversation. He was keen to prove there were no sugar cubes hidden up his arms. This put my mind at rest. I had expected the talent to be nothing more than a sleight-of-hand illusion, like vibhuti pellets.
“Thank you for sharing this,” I said. “But what do you want me to do?”
Like the man with the Midas touch, Goadbaba stretched up and pressed his thumb to the parasol … turning it sweet.
“I was hoping you could take me to London,” he said optimistically.
“What ever for?”
“I want to prove my skill to The Guinness Book of Records,” said Goadbaba, breaking out into a broad smile. “I am thinking they will be liking me very much!”
Not again, I mused. Why can’t I get away from the Indian preoccupation with The Guinness Book of Records? Every other person one meets in India seems to be perfecting an outlandish skill, in the earnest hope of getting their name into the venerated book.
One fifth of all Guinness’ mail comes from India. The records book is deluged with material from the subcontinent on a daily basis. One can only sympathize with the chaps at Guinness. What could life be like at an office bombarded day and night with letters from deserving Indians? One single “greetings” fax sent by a Delhi man to the Guinness headquarters was supposedly a hundred meters long. There’s so much interest that The Guinness Book of Records is published in four Indian languages.
But whereas many nationalities concentrate on breaking the more meager records, Indians prefer to perform extraordinary feats. The obsession may, I suppose, have resulted from the tantalising records of endurance set by the nation’s holy men.
Dozens of ordinary Indians are world record holders. Surendra Apharya, for instance, has the record for inscribing a grain of rice. He burned 1,749 characters into a single grain using a magnifying glass. Others hold records for limbo dancing on roller-skates (5 1/8 inches); for crawling (870 miles); for milk bottle balancing (more than 64 miles); for continuous standing (17 years); and for needle threading (11,796 times in two hours).
Con-men tour small Indian towns masquerading as agents from the sacred Guinness Book of Records. For a steep charge they judge the applicant’s entry, promising to include it in the book.
I told Goadbaba I would inform Guinness of his exceptional talent. He was thrilled and, clenching my hand in his, shook it up and down vigorously. When he was gone I licked my palm. It was very sweet indeed.
* * * *
Soon after my meeting with Goadbaba, I was talking to an Indian journalist. When I mentioned the queer skill, the reporter cited half a dozen other Indians claiming the same ability. He told me how the trick was done. Most Goadbaba’s, he said, were nothing more than copycat illusionists. They wash their hands in a strong solution of saccharin – which is five hundred times sweeter than sugar. Within seconds they go from being ordinary people to men with the Sweet “N” Low touch.
* * * *
Bhalu had still not reappeared. He often vanished for a day or two at a time. But this time he was gone much longer. Six days passed. Each day I became more and more irritated, especially as he had coerced me into stopping at Sholapur in the first place.
At dawn on the seventh day, I rose early to get ready to take the bus to Mumbai. As I emerged from the shower a rustling noise startled me. I spun round. It was Bhalu. He was climbing in through the window.
“Come on and follow me,” he called, climbing back outside and shinning down the outside of the hotel.
“Bhalu, where have you been?”
“I’ll tell you later. Just follow me.”
With great unwillingness, I followed the Trickster out of the window. My room, which was on the third-floor, enjoyed a fine view across the southern portion of Sholapur. But as I grappled for a hand-hold, the city’s sights were the last thing on my mind.
“What the hell are you up to? You don’t just turn up after a week away and get someone to risk life and limb scurrying down a drainpipe. Why don’t we use the stairs like everyone else?”
“Don’t be lazy,” he retorted, lighting up a biri. “There’s something you’ll want to see.”
Bhalu led me at break-neck speed through the main area of the town. As we hastened past boarded shops, stand-pipe bathers, and tea-stall attendants, I wondered what the scam du jour was to be. The week without Bhalu had been a welcome break from my new role as a conman’s accomplice. Every day, the Trickster encouraged me to turn my hand to another and more unlawful activity, hissing that such knowledge might be useful to me in the future. But when would I need to concoct beauty products from bleach, spent tea leaves, and grease scraped from the door hinges of a first-class railway carriage? Or, for that matter, when would anyone ask me to create aphrodisiacs from dried mango skins; turn all-purpose miniature bars of Lux soap into medicated suppositories; or pass putrescent drainage liquid off as holy Ganga water?
Bhalu’s childhood had molded him into an incorrigible con-artist. He may not have known the key dates of Indian history, or the correct way to eat peas with a knife and fork: but he had no need for such profitless information. A professional scammer requires far more practical expertise. The Trickster’s qualifications were unsurpassed for life on the street. He had a salesman’s tongue, a forger’s fingers, a gambler’s nerve, the million-dollar smile of a chat-show host, and the mathematical artifice of a Nobelist. He spoke faultless English, passable Italian and German, and could communicate in a dozen Indian languages. On their own, none of these attributes may have been enough to survive on the streets of Calcutta. But Bhalu had been blessed with a far scarcer virtue – natural charisma.
And so, as on many other occasions, I found myself hurrying behind him, wondering what depravity was t
o be next on the agenda.
Twenty minutes after being bundled from the window of the Hotel Khajuraho, we were walking on grass. Bhalu had brought me to a wide hockey pitch on the outskirts of Sholapur.
As I was about to declare my disapproval, I heard voices coming from the far end of the hockey ground. To be more precise, I heard what sounded like a gargantuan, bloodthirsty demon. Screeching as if its baby demons had been snatched by another monster, it was severely distressed. Bhalu said to take no notice of the noise. We had come for a far more important encounter. More important than a female demon robbed of her babies? The Trickster nodded ominously. The demon was trifling in comparison to what he had arranged.
The monster’s shrieks did not subside. Instead, they became louder and more aroused. I peered over to where the sound was coming from. Even when narrowing my eyes to focus better, I could see no demon. The pitch was flat, with a large, dense bush bordering it. Telling Bhalu to send for help if I were attacked, I went over to investigate.
When it comes to bewilderment, India has its own scale. No other country on Earth can mystify a foreigner so utterly. Sometimes, when traveling in the subcontinent, one has no choice but to concede total defeat. This was one such instance. I leant forward to peer round the shrub, prepared for anything. Standing behind the bush there was no weeping demon: but something far more unexpected.
Ten men and women, each dressed in sports clothes, were exercising.
Yet instead of performing familiar training drills, they were laughing. It was no timid tittering … rather, it was a puissant, hostile form of laughter.
“Excuse me,” I said, “what are you doing?”
Hearing my question, the leader of the group abruptly stopped guffawing. He pulled up his white cotton ankle socks.
“We’re members of the Sholapur Laughter Club,” he said grandly.
“Members of what?”
“The Laughter Club … We meet here every morning to laugh.”
“Forgive me for my ignorance … but why do you laugh?”