‘We slipped into the railway quarters. Lots of Anglo girls decked in nylons and jewellery and solid high heels were going to meet their boyfriends because it was Saturday evening. We watched them.’
Over and out. Eddie stopped. But Father Agnello was not going to give up till he had got to the bottom of Eddie’s dirty mind. His silence lay there with its jaws open.
‘The staircases in the Railway Colony have fretted wooden lattices from which you can see everything.’
‘See what?’
Kiss me again. What does he think people look at from under a staircase? Eddie explained the mysteries of staircase watching patiently.
‘See what they’re wearing.’
‘You don’t have to stand under a staircase to see what dresses they’re wearing.’
Give me a break.
‘Not dresses. To see what they’re wearing under them. Two of the girls had flowers on their panties. They were twins. Do you know how fantastic white daisies look on blue? Sala, Peter has no taste. He preferred the sister with the yellow daisies on red. He was really hot. Those girls were standing at the stairwell two storeys above us and he was stretching his hand to touch their panties. What would have happened if their boyfriends had seen us? Can you imagine? They would have peeled our hides off. We are not going to take Peter out again with us. The bugger gets excited and it’s difficult to control him. As it is, half the fun’s gone these days. Hardly anybody goes out without panties any more. What’s the point of craning your neck for hours and getting a terrible crick, all for nothing? It’s become boring since Mr Johnson was transferred to Bhusaval.’
‘What about Mr Johnson?’
Father Agnello was really dumb. You had to explain every single thing to him. ‘What about him? The trouble was that Mrs Johnson had to go with him to Bhusaval. Sometimes, when she wanted to get cigarettes from the shop at the corner and she was wearing a thick dress, she wouldn’t wear a slip or anything else. That was too much. We would scramble on top of each other to peer inside.’ Eddie sighed.
‘Verily, Eddie, you have sinned.’ The volcano in Father Agnello now began to erupt with a vengeance. Wave upon hot wave of lava engulfed Eddie. ‘You are so young and yet look at the number of your sins. It is conceivable, at least theoretically, to forgive all those sins after the person who has committed them repents from the heart. But you have such a criminal mind, you’ve fallen so low and your soul is so warped that you’ve been reciting this interminable litany of sins with a great sense of pride. There’s not an iota of regret or repentance in your mind, heart or soul. Instead of feeling ashamed, you have been waxing eloquent and showing of. I do not know if you are the son of man or the son of Satan.’
Oh, what relief. Eddie’s labours had finally borne fruit. Father Agnello was no longer asking for more details. Eddie’s crimes had been identified and he was about to be punished. He was beside himself with joy. He could not believe his luck. He tore the dark velvet burgundy curtain behind the confessional and rolled at Father Agnello’s feet.
Eddie’s violent reaction caught both Father Agnello and the people queuing up for confession off guard. Father Agnello did not know what Eddie was up to. The others, those just beginning to gather for six o’clock mass, watched Eddie with apprehension. One of them rushed forward and tried to pick Eddie up. ‘Someone call a doctor. The boy’s having an epileptic fit.’ Father Agnello waved him away.
‘I was wrong, Father Agnello, I’ve sinned most terribly. As God is my witness, I’ll never again do what I did in the past. Punish me, Father, punish me any way you want.’
What was Father Agnello D’Souza to make of Eddie’s unorthodox repentance? Was the boy up to one of his usual tricks? Perhaps. But it was also possible that God had smitten the child and his grief was real. If that was the case, he, Father Agnello D’Souza, would be committing the sin of presumption. Who was he to question the ways and wisdom of God? ‘Save me, Father. Save me. I am caught in the quicksands of sin. Give me your hand and help me up, Father. I beg you, Father.’
That Sunday would be etched forever on Father D’Souza’s soul. When he was next sinking in the slough of despond, he would remind himself of the golden Sunday when God wrought a sea-change in a wicked and incorrigible sinner. He suspected that God had chosen Eddie deliberately to warn him of the sin of arrogance. No one, but no one, was beyond the pale of forgiveness. No man was so fallen that he could not be raised to heaven and the embrace of God Almighty. How he had gone astray, he, who should have known better. His pride had prevented him from seeing the work of God in this child. How else could he explain what the boy had said about Jesus? It was still a highly explosive thought and he wouldn’t mention it to anyone but praise be to the Lord God and his son Jesus. How shall I thank you Lord for retrieving this prostrate child from the claws of Satan and for chastising me?
The prostrate child was having a field day. The dams of repentance had burst and there was no staunching them. All his pent-up anger and grief and grievances against his mother, all the terrors of the previous night and of this afternoon were being washed clean in this deluge of weeping.
‘Get up, Eddie, get up, my son.’ Weeping tears of gratitude, Father D’Souza bent down and ran his fingers through Eddie’s curly hair.
‘Not unless you forgive me, Father.’
‘My forgiveness is of little import, Eddie.’ Father Agnello smiled. ‘I myself would not put too much faith in it. But God has forgiven you, Eddie. I know that His heart is filled with joy to see your great sorrow and repentance. For a sinner who exerts himself and disowns the devil is dearer to our Lord than a man to whom virtue comes easily. Rise, my son.’
‘Not until you tell me what penance I must do.’
‘Say twenty Hail Marys every day and pray that you will always walk in the shadow of God.’
At this, all the men and women who had watched the transformation of Eddie that evening fell to their knees and said: ‘Amen’. The next Sunday Eddie asked Father Agnello’s permission to pass the plate after mass. Father Agnello was delighted.
‘Of course, you may. You must help me in the work of the Church from now on.’
During the Eucharist, Eddie passed the golden plate on either side of the nave. It was a full house. The Sunday morning nine o’clock mass always was. On the collection plate, coins made a racket. Notes landed without a sound. Saint Sebastian’s was a poor parish. Mostly the plate rang out. Four- or eight-anna coins at the most. Two eight-anna coins so far. One from Mr Figuereido and another from Mrs Pereira. In the second row from the rear, Mr Rodrigues, the sole owner of the Happy Family Chemist, sat with his eyes closed in prayer. Eddie had to rattle the coins twice to break his reverie. Mr Rodrigues opened his eyes. He drew back his jacket and took out his wallet from the rear pocket of his trousers. He picked out a five-rupee note and set it on the plate.
‘I don’t have that much change.’
‘I don’t want any,’ Mr Rodrigues said and went back to his prayers.
On the Tuesday after he had borrowed Mr Rodrigues’ fiver, Eddie skipped school after lunch. He had done his homework. Advance bookings for the following week at cinema houses in Bombay started on Tuesdays. It took him four hours to get to the window. He got three one-rupee-five-anna tickets for the one o’clock show the following Monday. The Monday after, he was back at the Strand. He sold two of the tickets in the black market for five rupees each. With the third ticket he saw Rock Around the Clock. This time, nobody tore his shirt collar.
He was back next Tuesday with ten rupees. He bought three tickets for the following Friday, three for Monday and one for Tuesday, all for the one o’clock show. On Friday and Monday he saw the film again and sold the extras. On Tuesday, he booked for the coming week and saw the film yet again.
On Saturday morning Eddie was back at church. He prayed to God and thanked him from his heart. He got up and went to the charity box. He caught hold of the lock and pulled at it a couple of times.
‘What
are you doing?’ Father D’Souza’s voice caught him redhanded. Eddie looked back quietly and met Father Agnello’s eyes. ‘Giving God what belongs to God.’ He turned and coaxed seven one-rupee notes down the slit of the charity box. Father D’Souza suspected that Eddie had said something profound, but he didn’t quite know what it was, and he didn’t want to let on that it had gone over his head.
Eddie discovered that he had a scalper’s mind. He was good at arithmetic and had a feel for what the market would bear. On two occasions he got ten rupees per ticket. Young men who wanted to impress their girlfriends but hadn’t stood in queues for the advance booking were always more desperate to see the film than others. He also had an instinctive sense of when the market was falling and cut his losses quickly. Perhaps the black market was Eddie’s metier. From scalping he could have graduated to smuggling. The sky was the limit here. Silver, gold, transistor radios, nylon and polyester saris and dress materials, cameras, record players, TVs, the market was wide open and growing. But there were two problems. The first was that Eddie believed rock’n’ roll was his vocation and not illicit trafficking. The other was a minor mishap.
Sixteen
Aunt Lalee and Ravan had long since made up. Ravan was not going to hold it against her that she had lost her temper and thrashed him. After all, he had to admit that he had gone overboard with that tae kwon do demonstration on the attar bottles. Besides it was not possible to nurse a grudge against this aunt who was so worldly-wise and knew so much more about life than either of his parents or anybody in the chawls. She had a host of rich friends. She had been driven around in cars, stayed in palatial houses where the beds were round and the size of his home. She had smoked cigarettes, been to a film studio where she had watched Raj Kapoor shooting with Nargis for some film called Aah and had been asked by the dance director whether she would take part in a dance sequence. She had politely refused. She had standards, she said. Ravan didn’t quite know what she meant. Did Raj Kapoor, the dance director and Hindi films not have standards? Were her standards better or theirs? But he had said, ‘Yes, of course,’ and nodded his head vigorously.
‘If I had taken that role, I would have been a heroine today, with my smile, my musical voice, my looks and, needless to say, my exceptional figure.’ Ravan was not about to dispute such fundamental truths though he had some reservations about the gaps in Aunt Lalee’s teeth and her voice which tended to be a trifle affected and high-pitched but maybe that was the way women in high circles spoke. As to looks, she certainly stood out, with that trick of her hips which seemed to tell you to follow her, the angled elbow and the hand at her waist and the sari pallu always falling down, but he had to confess that while his mother was not his favourite person these past few months, his father’s sister was not in the same league as Parvatibai. Aunt Lalee certainly was more casual about her figure. There was an invitation and challenge in her eyes to check out the goods. Ravan was getting curious about female anatomy of late and tended to linger in the kitchen when his aunt was having a bath because she didn’t draw the curtain all the way and came out with a wet sari draped lazily around her but his mother always yelled at him and asked him to get the hell out before he was able to get a clear picture of the Red One’s topography.
Was he expected to affirm what Aunt Lalee was saying or comment or improve upon it? That was one good thing about her. She was not really interested in anybody else except when she wanted something. Ravan was struck by the curious observation he had just made. He had not meant to be unkind but if there was any truth in his perception, he would have to find out how he could possibly satisfy any of his aunt’s needs. Sure he was at her beck and call but so was his father. He too ran down to get paan and betel nut for her, have her saris pressed by the man in Chawl No. 21, buy a Roger’s carbonated ginger for her when she had indigestion or see her off at the bus-stop on Thursdays which was the day she visited her mother whom no one had seen.
What did she want of him? Why was she cultivating him? A month ago she had taken him to the Gateway of India for a boat ride. Ravan had dipped his hand in the water. If they kept going in a straight line, the wake of their boat could reach all the way to America. His history teacher had said that the Elephanta island which the boatman was pointing to must have been a thriving Hindu outpost and had some very fine caves and rock-carvings. The Portuguese had come there four or five hundred years ago across four thousand miles. Imagine touching the same water and being in the same sea as them. Was Vasco da Gama in that lot? What clothes had they worn? They were Catholics just like Eddie. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if he could take over the wheel and pay a return visit to Portugal? They wouldn’t believe their eyes. ‘Indian boy-captain lands on Portuguese coast’ the headlines would scream. If he hadn’t already decided to follow in the footsteps of Raju from Dil Deke Dekho, he would have joined the navy and travelled all over the world like Vasco da Gama and Columbus.
In Praise of Audacities
or
The Shortest Survey Ever of the Portuguese Adventure in the Old World
(Skip it if you want and move on with the story.)
Mario de Lima Leitao. Henrique de Meneses. Jorge de Almeida. Alfonso Lopes de Sequeira. Garcia de Noronha. Francisco Antonio da Veiga Cabral da Camara Pimentel. Bernando Jose Maria da Silveira e Lorena. Luis de Mendonca Furtado e Albuquerque. Wake up at four in the morning, finish your ablutions, face the east and chant these marvellous names. Their wondrous sonority is as elevating as that of a Sanskrit shloka. Open the Bombay or Goa telephone directory and you’ll find that the names have got drastically shortened. The poetry of chains of names and place-names has been severely cut down to D’Sa, Da Cunha, Saldanha and Mascarenhas. And yet they are among the last reminders and vestiges of a civilization that has left the shores of India. Whatever the injustices of colonial conquest and rule, fortunately one can still be beguiled and entranced by the beauty and lilt of an alien language and its culture. Who were these strange men—and they were almost all only men—with strange names who dared to cross unknown and unmapped seas, voyage for months over four thousand miles of dangerous and stormy oceans to come to India?
In 1494, John II of Portugal and Ferdinand of Spain signed the treaty of Tordesillas under the aegis of Pope Alexander VI, one of the most dubious Borgias and popes in history. Their rapacity, greed and avarice were no more and no less than that of any other European or Asian potentate of the 15th century. What was staggering was the sweep, megalomania and intemperateness of their appetites. Columbus had just crossed the Atlantic and discovered America for Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, though to his dying day he did not give up his obstinate belief that he had found a new sea-route to Asia. (It would take another 200 years, 1726 to be precise, for the West to realize that Asia and America were not joined together in the region of the Bering Straits.) The two kings, however, did not aspire merely to the ‘new world’, they wanted the whole world. There was not much of a difference between the earth and a cake. They divided it. The earth was still Ptolemaic and flat then. Portugal took all lands and, even more critically, all the seas east of a line running between longitude 30 and 20, 370 leagues west of Cape Verde. Whatever was west of that line went to Spain.
The Portuguese half of the earth was a happy but academic concept until Vasco da Gama went round the Cape of Good Hope and landed in India in 1498. The division of the abstract spoils then began to have concrete implications. Immediately after the discovery of the sea passage to India, Dom Manuel I of Portugal appropriated the title ‘Lord of the Conquest, Navigation and Commerce of Ethiopia, Arabia, Persia and of India’. The Portuguese Crown had encapsulated its aims with astonishing clarity and articulation.
If the Portuguese king was the self-proclaimed Lord of the Sea in Asia, it followed logically that he was entitled to control all sea trade in Asia, and for that purpose police the coastline and the seas as well. In Europe as in Asia until then, the seas and oceans were free-trade zones open to all. It may have come as
a bit of a surprise to Middle Eastern, Indian and East Asian sovereigns, seafarers and merchants that the Portuguese had walked away with the Indian Ocean. The Portuguese were among the first empire builders to teach us that it is always prudent not to consult those whose interests are likely to be damaged the most by your actions, a lesson that was learnt well over the centuries by Hitler and Stalin when they divided Poland or when America enunciated the Monroe Doctrine.
Talk of audacities, talk of originality of thought, talk of sheer gall, no one could beat the Portuguese. They reinvented the ancient concept that the right of ownership belonged to the one who made the first claim. It was a marvellous idea. Only the Portuguese Crown could trade in spice to Europe or between eastern ports within Asia. No one except those licensed by the Portuguese could ply the waters. No private trade even by the Portuguese, at least that was the official position.
The procedure was this: a trading ship got a pass or cartaz for a small fee from the Portuguese which stated the destination, nature of the cargo, name of the captain and crew strength. The money, however, was in the customs duties. A ship was under obligation to call at a Portuguese port both on its way to and back from its destination. No cartaz meant that the ship could be confiscated and its crew killed or sent to the galleys. Even a cartaz was not enough if the conditions were not fully met. You could not build or maintain a fort as the Sultan of Gujarat was to discover at Surat, unless it was approved by the Portuguese Viceroy. In return your ships were given protection against piracy. When the threat from the freebooters became more serious, the Portuguese organized convoys of trading ships guarded by an official fleet. The customs duties in Goa on an average amounted to 60 per cent of Goa’s total revenue collection in the 16th century. In the rest of the empire it was close to 65 per cent.
Ravan and Eddie Page 24