Skinner

by Charlie Huston

  He takes the gun from Raj, puts it on the table, sits. He works always since the truck came. He closes his eyes sometimes, but they open shortly after. Not even a nap. Food when it is put in front of him. There is no one else to do what he does. There are machinists and welders, mechanics, men who know how to smelt iron, men with acid burns up and down their arms who can strip corrosion, peel old chrome, burnish copper. And there are potters, Dharavi is thick with potters. The primary and historical industry of the slum. There are the Naxalites for security. There are the ship breakers, with their secret language, tireless. But no other electrical engineer. No other man with his father’s knowledge. No man of his father’s education chooses to live in Dharavi. For it must be a choice. In ever growing, ever modernizing Bombay, aspiring always to be worl -class, they must import electrical engineers to fill the need. But, still, they live here. Why has he been raised in a slum? Why must his mother live here? His sister? They could be living across the river, Bandra East. In an apartment. It must make sense, he knows. His father’s work is here. But often it feels like his father cares only for himself and his work and not for his family at all.

  His father taps a second chair.

  “I have to go back.”

  He looks at his watch.

  “Now.”

  But he doesn’t move, waiting until Raj also sits. On the table are the remains of their lunch. A few grains of rice, samosa crumbs, empty glasses with chai dregs. Raj’s mother left it for them, refusing, and not weakening her resolve, to bring food to #1 Shed. Food at home, now, go eat it. She herself at work with two of Sudhir’s men, showing them where the border has been drawn. A place, shanties, the corridors between them, the open drains, which shops are inside the border, which ones not. They have seen the lines on maps, but Sudhir said they needed to go along the border, know where they will patrol. Soon they will live along that line, spread too thin. Three more policemen have been killed. Two of them worked for the water goons. The other refused the bribe offered him to look another way, insisted he should have more. Word is leaving the slum. Something is happening here. There are guns here.

  There will be more police.

  Raj’s father licks the tip of his finger and presses it down on a grain of rice, brings it to his lips, and chews it delicately between his front teeth, swallows.

  “Some people say we should wait for the redevelopment. This is foolish, to do this with the DRP coming. We will all have housing. Very modern. There will be tourists. Why this? Madness.”

  Raj knows about these people. David’s father believes in the Dharavi Redevelopment Project. He has a brochure pinned to the wall in their shanty. Glossy computer renderings of what the slum will look like after redevelopment. An architect, Mukesh Mehta, his renderings. His plan. But after over a decade of plans for the DRP, even David’s father is ready for something else. Others say this new DRP plan will happen. Because Bombay is booming, and the land is too valuable for slummies to keep. Each resident with a voter card and an established legal residence that predates January 1, 2000, will get a new tenement. Twenty-one square meters. Water, electricity. Very modern. Why not wait? Stay in the transit tenements that will be provided while all this shit is torn down and new and modern housing is built. Slummies on the ground floor, wealthy on top of them, top-story apartments, views and luxury. Why not?

  Raj doesn’t say anything. His father isn’t asking a question, he’s explaining something. Something he thinks Raj needs to understand. Lesson.

  His father touches the gun next to his plate, fingertip on the plastic grip, tracing the letters. Ashani.

  “Your mother believes that it is simple. The DRP is all thieves. Some with hearts of gold, but thieves. Believing that they will make life better for the slummies, clean water, electricity, dignity, all these things. Believing they will bring these things to the slum cleans their conscience for anything else that happens. There will be injustices, they know, people will lose homes, livelihoods, and never reclaim them. They know. Realists, these people. But to be modern is its own end. Yes. To improve. And to make money. For everyone, money. So out of one million slummies some tens of thousands will not have a home, others will lose their businesses. But there will be progress. So this is the price to pay. They are thieves, but they believe they are in the right. This is what your mother believes.”

  Raj knows very well what his mother believes. She mutters it all the day long. Her beliefs are a chant that pours out of her mouth every minute of every day. She believes that everything must be the cleanest possible. She believes that the bus you need is never the one coming next until you have given up and decided to walk five kilometers. She believes that Raj should spend less time watching soccer games at the cafés on the 90 Feet Road and more time studying the books she rides the bus to the library to get for him. She believes that her husband is more than slightly crazy. She believes that not getting enough sleep is worse than not having enough to eat. She believes that they will never get enough sleep. She believes that life is the most difficult thing. She believes that life should be a little easier and she is often very mad because it is not. She believes that she must live at least until she sees both of her children married and with children of their own. She believes that the world must be a better place for her daughter to grow into a woman than it was for her. She believes that as if she has no choice in the matter.

  Yes, Raj nods, he knows what his mother believes.

  His father also nods.

  “I would like a modern home. We have water, electricity, a stove. Our home is well built. Our neighbors are not too loud. But I would like a modern home. Yes. Bombay will be a modern city. World class. But what that means, Rajiv, world class, is something we do not yet know. Do you know that most people in the world live in cities? Yes. It happened in two-thousand-eight. More than half the world lives in cities now. And most of those people live in slums. World class city. Why do we not get to decide what that is? This land was mangrove swamp. It was filled in by slummies, built by slummies, made prosperous by slummies, and now that it is worth something to the rich neighbors, they will decide how it should look. And who will own it.”

  He waves a hand at the door.

  “This is what I hear in the street. Why so many are helping us. What they believe. This is their home and they want it this way, as it is. They will decide how modern. How world class. Is world class New York? London? Paris? Places where greatness is an old thing that is passing. Or is it Baghdad? Tripoli? Kabul? Places where no one knows what will come next.”

  He looks at his watch again, rubs its face with his thumb.

  “What I believe. Rajiv. What I believe.”

  He rubs his own face, knuckles his eyes, looks at his son.

  “The world does not want us. The earth. It does not want us. Too many. We are too many. And men, women, they do not need to be thieves or murderers. When the earth turns against them, they need only to care for themselves more than others, and that is enough to let the others die. And all men, all women, Rajiv, care more for themselves than for others. The few who are different, they are not enough to change anything.”

  He picks up the box clip and the loose bullet and hands them to his son.

  “Show me.”

  Raj takes them, looks at the shape of the bullet and the shape of the opening at the top of the clip, how the top bullet is pressing itself upward to be released. He holds the clip in his left hand, pushes the loose bullet into the top slot, forces that top bullet down. It takes a great deal of pressure, and the two curved surfaces of the casings want to slip off one another, but he gets it in, seats the round in the clip.

  Click.

  His father hands him the .32. Raj looks at the underside, the hole in the pistol’s butt, turns the clip so that the bullets point in the same direction as the barrel, fits it in, pushes, again it is harder than it looks in the movies where clips jump into guns by themselves, but he sets it with extra force from the heel of his hand.


  Click.

  His father nods, takes the gun, pushes the safety button, and holds it.

  “They will let us die. Simply by looking to their own needs. They will contract into a ball and refuse to look out and they will leave us to die. Unless we take care of those needs ourselves. Force our place. Make room. We will not die for others to live. We were not born for that. But it is what they are counting on, Raj. Our willingness to quietly die.”

  He taps the barrel of the gun on the table, once, twice, thrice.

  “I have seen their plan.”

  He rises, gun in hand.

  “And it is not for me and my family, their future.”

  He offers his son the gun.

  “So we will make another.”

  Raj looks at the gun.

  His father pushes it at him.

  “Take it, take it. Go to Sudhir. He will show you what comes next. I will not have the time, Raj. This little gun. You need to know how it works. That is the world now.”

  He looks angry. Tired and angry, his father.

  Raj takes the gun.

  His father covers his face, there may be tears behind his hands, Raj is not sure.

  “Children with guns. That is the world now. What we made for you.”

  He lowers his hands.

  “And now I must go and work on our big weapon. To get their attention we must be loud. We want maximum attention. See what we can do. We do not need you. See.”

  His voice is raised, something rare. His father raises his voice for cricket matches, to tell a joke in a loud room, to call his son home. This angry loud voice, these tears, Raj has never seen them.

  He looks at the gun in his hand, sets it on the table.

  “I don’t want a gun.”

  “Then I will carry it.”

  They both look. Raj’s father, yelling, he has been so loud that they did not hear the door open. And now here is Raj’s mother. Taji in her arms, picked up from David’s shanty, where his big sister has been watching several of the neighborhood babies, the mothers working at #1 and #2 Sheds. Modernity, the women working. And here is his mother, coming inside, picking up the gun.

  “I will carry it.”

  Raj’s father has four fingers pressed to his cheek, as if propping up his own tired flesh.

  “Damini.”

  But her name is the only word he can muster for whatever argument he may have wanted to mount against this new abomination. His wife with a gun in her hand. She steps near to him, presses Taj against him and lets her go. His hands come up and take her without thought, his baby daughter. He puts his face against the top of her head, thin black hair, closes his eyes.

  Raj’s mother looks at her son.

  “Go to the shed and tell them your father is coming soon. Go, go. He needs a little rest but will be there soon.”

  Raj nods, goes to the door, stops to watch his father holding his baby sister, and his mother starting to clean up the plates and glasses from lunch, one-handed, the gun in her free hand, where she usually carries her child.

  Outside it wants to rain. Sky bulging down over everyone’s heads. A desire to stoop. There is activity everywhere. Well, every day in Dharavi is like this, full of activity, energy, the frantic scramble to survive, improve, climb. But it is different. Some people are packing their things to leave. Others are closing up the many openings in their homes, cardboard and corrugated steel over windows, tin, plastic bags. Some of the shop men, the welders and carpenters and lathe operators from the industrial sectors at the southern tip of the slum, are working on the wire, stringing it as high as they can on the walls, running it through shrouds of cut-up bicycle tires, taking it to everyone. Electricity humming.

  The tires remind him that he needs to check the computer. Classicsteelbikes.com. The message he left. There has been no reply. Not yet. His father wants him to look at other things now. News sites. Indiatimes.com. Aljazeera.net. CNN. Mumbaibrunch blog. Twitter streams for President Patil, her brief messages always focused on the economy. The GOC in Chief for the Southern Command. Bombay commissioner of police. Some others. Tedious. Raj does as he’s been asked, but he also looks at what Salman Khan has to say to his fans, and also Kareena Kapoor, and Kalki, whom he is a little in love with.

  So he hurries to #1 Shed. It was once home to many tiny factories. Plastic recycler, potters, readymade rain ponchos, hairpins, glass tinting. Others. All shut down and moved out, making room for the truck trailer and its contents. And more, much more. There has been another truck, down the 90 Feet Road. Contents offloaded to smaller trucks, rickshaws, human backs. Crates, nothing but crates. All of them heavy. The contents. Old. So much work just to make these things work. Can it be done? Yes, his father says, yes. But in time? His father shakes his head when asked.

  Raj does not believe his father.

  He does not believe what his father says about people. Only for themselves. He does not believe that his father thinks this way. Because he cares for other people. He is working for the whole slum. This is why they are there. Living in the slum. Yes, Raj sometimes thinks his father is selfish, but he knows it is not true. It is just that he thinks of so many people other than his family. Planning for them.

  How long?

  Raj knows that his grandparents struggled to push his father from the slum and into an education. But for how long did Raj’s father know he would never leave? For how long did he have this plan? Their own plan, Raj’s paternal grandparents’ plan for his father, began before he was born. When Grandfather made daily sojourns to the suburb of Anushakti Nagar, township home of the Bhabha Atomic Research Center. Twelve kilometers, hazards of highway traffic that must be crossed on foot while pushing his rusty Hero Roadster bike on its much-patched tires. And then, in the suburbs, the hazards of private security and police, recognizing a Dalit from the slums when they saw one and eager to send him back where he came from. A journey that ended in the dormitory kitchens that served the Atomic Energy Junior College, working in the place of his cousin Harish, whose intestine was occupied by a pork tapeworm that was revealed to be nearly four meters in length when it was finally purged. A detail in the family mythology that was always related by Grandmother with a grimace of disgusted relish. Once fit to return to work, cousin Harish kept his promise to do everything in his power to get Grandfather a job at the college or anywhere else within the Department of Atomic Energy facilities that dominated all of Anushakti Nagar. A plan that could only be faulted in that Harish, scullery boy, had no power whatsoever.

  In the kitchen a blind eye had been turned to the sudden physical transformation of Harish from a skinny boy of fifteen into a stocky man of nearly twenty. These things happened. India, country of miracles. No less miraculous, when Harish transformed back into himself after several months. All that had been required for this transformation to be universally accepted was a large tithe on Harish’s small wages. With the much-depleted net amount delivered dutifully by Grandfather into the hands of his aunt, Harish’s mother, with none of it sticking to his own. The promise of future employment had been the only profit of his labor. A promise that could not be kept. But his hard work did not go unnoticed by the man who oversaw the kitchens and catering facilities on the DAE campus. Nor did he fail to notice Grandfather’s willingness to part with a large measure of his earnings without raising a stink like so many of the filthy kitchen wallahs.

  And so Grandfather and Grandmother’s plan for their yet to be conceived children was advanced by Grandfather’s purchase of a job cleaning the toilets in the Nilgiri Canteen on the DAE campus, bought for the price of half of all his future earnings. A price they reckoned a bargain as it included the guaranteed acceptance to the Atomic Energy Central School that was granted to the children of all DAE employees. Toilet wallahs included. And even though only one of their four children lived long enough to enjoy that privilege, Grandfather and Grandmother never voiced any regret at the years of indentured servitude that followed. When Grandfather’s pay
effectively doubled after the facilities manager died in the twentieth year of this arrangement, they spent a portion of the windfall on temple gifts for the man’s remembrance. The rest they put in a hole in the floor of their shanty to save for their son. However, the newly inflated paychecks lasted only a few months, as Grandfather finally paid for two decades of close calls crossing the Eastern Express Highway with his Hero bicycle, when he was run over by a flatbed Tata painted in vibrant orange, blue, yellow, and red, hauling a tarp-covered load of fertilizer. Part of the cost of the job, his life. He’d never been willing to spare the price of a bus ticket for his daily commute. Tickets for his son when he began school, yes, but not for himself. Details that Grandmother considered essential to communicating the scope of God’s sense of humor in these things. A man’s working life spent cleaning toilets, ended by a truck loaded with shit. The reward, an educated son, electrical engineer, degree from University of Bombay, Veermata Jijabai Technological Institute. A degree her son then refused to put to work. Refused to take into the world to find a job suitable to such a well-educated young man. Refused to leave the slum at all. Married a local girl from around the corner. A dark girl! Began birthing a new generation of slummies almost instantly. And though she died in her sleep, a ripe fifty-five, one son, one grandson, cause of death, heart failure, she felt very much as if she, too, had been flattened by a truck loaded with shit. This one driven by her inexplicably ungrateful son, who had always been the light of her eye and a perfect model of obedience and effort until his great betrayal of her and of his father’s memory.

  Thinking of this story that Grandmother had told him, not infrequently, before her death, Raj wonders again, How long? How long had his father planned to keep his knowledge in the slum? To live here doing small jobs, rewiring the tiny factories for greater efficiency, bringing the current from the lines that crazed through the slum into the shanties of his neighbors, cutting deals with the electricity goons to make the haphazard exposed wiring harnesses they ran from their generators and power line taps marginally safer. He was on constant call to the goons, servicing the generators, bringing them back online when there was an outage, rerouting their taps when the Maharashtra State Electricity Board linemen found and disconnected them. Receiving, in exchange, some cooperation and extra hands as he made their infrastructure more robust and less likely to short-circuit and start fires, or fry anyone who might brush an exposed wire with his fingertip. His father, the electrician of Dharavi, handyman, appreciated for his skills and generosity by almost all, respected by those who did not account him a fool. Fool or sage, he was known throughout the slum, could talk to anyone, and he did talk. For years, his mantra of change and independence. Power was what was needed. Nothing more.