The speech had impressed me. Though, to be honest, the full effect, when I repeated elements of it to Ranjit, was rather undermined by the acoustics of my cubicle and the sound of Ranjit urinating thunderously, like a horse, throughout. When I got to the line ‘What’s the point of replacing one form of bigotry with another?’, Ranjit responded with: ‘Big-o – what? Can’t you speak fucking English?’ I could hear he was washing his hands. ‘You realise there are Muslims who come in here, and for them dogs are haram. The landlord is losing bare business because of your aunt.’
‘Dude. Alcohol is haram. If they’re Muslim enough to drink then they are Muslim enough to deal with a dog.’
Ranjit began drying his hands under the drier. ‘THE POINT OF DESI PUBS IS JUST TO GIVE PEOPLE A SHOT OF PUNJABI CULTURE, INNIT,’ he shouted above the whirring. ‘LIKE THEM IRISH MIGHT GO TO O’NEILLS JUST FOR A BIT OF NOSTALGIA. ’SIDES, WEREN’T LONG AGO WHEN GYALS WEREN’T ALLOWED IN GORA PAKORA PUBS.’
Irritation at Ranjit’s misogyny intermingled with annoyance at his myopism. There were, officially, fewer than half a million of us in Britain, there were more Christians than Sikhs even in India. We didn’t matter as much as he thought we did. ‘YEAH, BUT WE DON’T LIVE IN 1934,’ I shouted back.
It was at this point, as a way of changing the subject, as a result of just wanting to get my conversation with Ranjit over with as quickly as possible, I found myself bellowing, ‘ANYWAY, DID MY DAD EVER MENTION ANYTHING ABOUT APPLYING FOR AN ALCOHOL LICENCE? MY MASSI RECKONS HE WAS GOING TO APPLY AND WE WERE WONDERING IF YOU WOULD OBJECT IF WE WENT AHEAD. I KNOW WE HAVEN’T COMPETED FOR YEARS BUT WITH MUM BEING SICK AND EVERYTHING WE HAVE GOT TO THINK ABOUT THE FUTURE OF THE BUSINESS SELLING IT ON AND SO FORTH, AND EVERYONE SELLS EVERYTHING NOW.’
The hand-dryer went silent. I assumed, when I heard footsteps, that Ranjit hadn’t heard what I had said and had returned to the lounge. Perhaps, for the first time in our lives, Ranjit and I might have an adult conversation. I flushed the loo, relieved to be able to wash my hands in peace. The exchange had been typical not only of Ranjit, I bemoaned, but of Wolverhampton too. It was a village. An Indian village. You never really had any privacy or peace, even on the bog.
But as I turned around and pulled open the door, Ranjit was standing in front of me, his arms crossed, blocking my exit and asking, ‘Why?’
‘Why what?’
‘Why are you asking me about a booze licence?’ He pronounced ‘ask’ as ‘axe’.
‘Well . . .’ There was a slight pause, during which I noticed that Ranjit had a new tattoo – of a dagger, on his neck, just below the scar he had received following an assault in his shop. I felt a little short of air. ‘I am asking because . . . my aunt reckons . . . he was thinking about applying for one.’
He uncrossed his arms, stepped towards me. Ranjit was not as tall as me, but up close, his chest puffed up cartoonishly, his eyes half shut, it still felt like he was towering over me. ‘You know what your problem is? Same as your pops. He didn’t know his place in the world, ya get me.’
My instinctive response was to laugh, figuring this was a joke or another line from one of his idiotic martial-arts movies. But judging from the fact that he then grabbed me by the lapels of my blazer, remarked, ‘Once a Chamar, always a Chamar,’ and headbutted me, it was neither.
The first thing I saw when I came to was an empty milk bottle. The next thing: a bog brush, which had been discarded on the floor. Then, a grey bin, the kind reserved for sanitary towels, and a toilet, plumbed in via a hosepipe coming through the window. Ranjit was sitting on it, without his jacket, doing the one thing he did most in his life: rolling a spliff.
‘Feeling at home?’ he asked, without even peering down at me. ‘You should. This is what your people have been doing for centuries, innit. Crawling around in da shit.’
This wasn’t, strictly, accurate. I wasn’t crawling, I was lying on the floor, on my back, with my shoes and jacket missing, one sock removed and my shirt hanging out of my trousers. Also, the Chamars were not toilet sweepers by tradition: my father’s caste were leather workers. He was thinking of another scheduled caste. But I wasn’t capable of speaking, and was rather distracted by (a) a searing pain across my skull; (b) the unfamiliarity of my surroundings; and (c) the question of why the hell Ranjit had suddenly gone postal.
Ranjit continued. ‘You want to know why playas come to desi pubs?’ Having put the roach into his joint, he rolled it between his thumbs and index fingers. ‘Cos they have pride in their culture, innit. Pride, not suttin’ you have experience of, I guess, being a cold-ass li’l Chamar.’
I had by this point managed to sit up and had pushed myself up against a wall. The tiles felt cold against my back, and cool liquid, which I assumed was snot, but turned out to be blood, trickled down my face. Slowly, I got my bearings. The bhangra playing in the distance suggested we were still in Singhfellows, while the view from the small window revealed that we were at the back of the pub. We must, I worked out, be in the disabled loo, near the banqueting suite, which I had always assumed was locked. Meanwhile, the unfamiliar look in Ranjit’s eyes provided, if not an explanation, then at least a hypothesis: he had finally lost his mind.
Just a couple of his cigarettes had sent me around the bend that night in Birmingham, and he had been smoking at least three a day for two decades. Let’s face it, some kind of psychotic breakdown was always on the cards with Ranjit. Clearly, a compulsory detention order and some time in a mental ward beckoned. But until I found a way of alerting the men in white coats, I figured the best thing to do was to keep him talking. Fortunately, Ranjit often got chatty between his second and third cigarette of the day.
‘It may not seem like much to you yo, but do you know how fuck hard Punjabis have fought through history to have some space of their own?’ He lit his spliff and took a drag. ‘First it was those motherfucking goras, who divided the Punjab in two, giving half to the fucking Muslims, and the other half to the fucking Hindus, leaving nothing – not a thang – to the Sikhs. Then it was dat sali kuti Indira Gandhi, who refused to give the Sikhs their own Khalistan and had thousands murdered just for suggesting it. And now in Ingerland, it is khotas like you and your aunt, who won’t let us be. Do you have any idea of what we Sikhs went through during Partition, just trying to get some space of our own?’
I did. But, as you would with a crazed vagrant on the street, I let him rave on. ‘Let me ejucalate you about yo’ history, Mr Pataka. The Muslims went around the villages of my father disembowelling pregnant hoes. They slammed bare babies heads against brick walls. They cut off bare breasts and noses of other hoes and stuck metal rods up their pussies. They hanged Sikhs by their hair from trees. There were so many bodies to feast on that the vultures couldn’t fly, they got so fat. That’s what the goras did for us. These are the playas you’re marryin’ into. You. Get. Me.’
Again, this wasn’t actually true. Freya and I were still tiptoeing around one another. The previous evening she had, for the first time, let me use her new flat for work while she wasn’t there, but all my things had been put into storage and she had responded to my request to see Ranjit with ‘Why should I care?’ We were far from engaged. But I picked him up on something else. ‘You know,’ I began tentatively, talking like someone who was recovering from a dental procedure. ‘The Sikhs and Hindus were as bad to the Muslims.’
‘And where did you learn that, professor? In one of your gora books? At your battyboy school?’
He was almost shouting now. And as he did so I spotted a way out of the ludicrous situation: a red cord, the kind installed for the disabled to get help in emergencies, which people who shouldn’t be using disabled loos habitually mistake for a light switch. It was tied up in a knot, but I managed to leap up and reach it, grabbing the white handles fixed on the walls as I did so, in one smooth movement.
But then. Nothing.
‘Nice try, biatch.’ Ranjit laughed like a Bollywood villain. He had not flinched as
I had thrown myself across the room. ‘You should know that nuffink in this pub works proper.’
He stood up, opposite me, and, taking a final drag of his cigarette, blew smoke directly in my face. I pushed him away, surprised for a moment to find his torso was soft to the touch; he looked like he was carved of iron, but was of flesh after all. ‘What’s wrong with you, you crazy fuck? Weed has made you deranged.’
He prodded me with a finger. ‘That where you wrong.’ He removed his tie and broke into a rendition of ‘I Can See Clearly’. ‘How the fuck ’bout we make a go of this, battyboy?’ He rolled up his sleeves. ‘Like old times. Street Fighter II.’ Hands behind his back. ‘I’ll give you a head start. Go on, motherfucker, hit me first.’
Now, maybe my brief foray into street fighting during the riots had boosted my confidence, or maybe I thought a slap would snap Ranjit out of his psychotic episode, because I called his bluff, took up his insane invitation and hit him. Hard. I’m not claiming it was a supercombo move worthy of Chun Li. But it was pretty ‘fierce’, as the Street Fighter II manual would have put it. Ranjit’s head snapped back, and a flash of blood spattered out of his large nose down his starched white shirt. He stepped back, put a hand to his lip, and there was a hiatus as we both digested what had happened. His eventual reaction, when it finally came, was, like everything that afternoon, a surprise.
‘Oh teri,’ he remarked, looking down at his shirt. ‘What the fuck are you doing? I’ve got a fucking wedding party to go to.’
I laughed nervously. He kneed me in my groin. As I doubled over, he punched me on the side of my head. Looking up at him from the floor, my ears ringing, my stubble rubbing against the tiles, with no ideas to hand, I made a pathetic attempt to buy some time.
‘Hey, Ranjit,’ I coughed. ‘Tell me, what is this bhangra song about?’
I didn’t, in truth, think he would engage me, but he actually smiled and answered.
‘Good question, Chamar boy.’ He listened and then sang along. ‘Either I will die today/ Or crush someone. Cos when I get tired/ I whack heads open.’ He sucked his teeth. ‘Quite expressive, bhangra, wouldn’t you say? Better than that tutty Coldplay shit you’re always listening to.’
He bent over, lifted my head up with the gentleness of a masseuse positioning a pillow for a client. Then he smashed it against the floor.
When I came to the next time, I did so to the sound of running water and a hand-dryer blasting out hot air. I could open only one eye, and that eye only a fraction, but when I finally managed it, I could make out that Ranjit had washed his shirt clean of blood and was drying it.
I may have passed out again, for the next thing I recall is Ranjit sitting on the loo once more, with another cigarette. He was still topless, his shirt hanging on a radiator. Ranjit had washed his face, the only sign of having been punched two small breaks in his upper lip. But this didn’t seem to hamper his desire to talk.
‘You and yo’ ejucation, Mr Banga,’ he resumed, when he sensed movement. ‘You and your fucking auntie think you’re mo’ better than everyone else because you have books. And your big lyrics and dat shit. But you ever think ’bout how your Chamar father paid for your ejucation?’
My head and body, wracked with the conflicting effects of pain and sleep, succumbed to the latter. I closed my eye. Ranjit bent down, grabbed my face and forced me to look up at him.
‘Who do you think paid for your private schooling, Pataka?’
‘He sold the house,’ I mumbled, my mouth having gone dry. ‘My father sold the house.’
He let me go and laughed. ‘Let me guess, you weren’t too dope at maths. You know how much he got for that house? How much scrilla he was making in the shop? Take a guess who made up for Daddy’s shortfall in the school fees, eh?’
Shortfall? Since when did Ranjit use words like ‘shortfall’? The sudden improvement in his English was as surreal as the violent turn in events.
‘What?’
‘We paid your school fees.’
I didn’t want to hear this. ‘Fuck off.’
He laughed. ‘My pops. Paid. Your. School. Fees. And. For. Your. Time. At. Uni. Ya get me?’
It was ironic, I suppose, that in that moment, lying on a bathroom floor, I felt an intense need to go to the toilet. I didn’t want to accept what I was hearing, wanted to dismiss it all as the nonsensical rambling of a disturbed man. But it made sense, in a perverted way. It explained why my father could never seriously bring himself to compete with the Dhandas. Why my mother was so sycophantic towards them. Why my aunt thought money was regularly going missing from my father’s accounts. God, it even explained why he was so devastated when I dropped out of my medicine to study design. My legs went cold.
‘Course, my father was aiight about the dosh. That’s how the fuck tha oldies hit dat shizzle up dem days. Help out a brother, innit. And know what, was worth it, just as an investment. Wiped out the competition, innit. My old fella was even rappin’ ’bout ending the payments, cancelling out the loan.’
If I wasn’t already on the floor, I would have laid down on it anyway, to lament my existence. ‘Don’t worry, I will pay you back,’ I grunted. ‘However much it is. My aunt will pay you back.’ I thought of her wedding jewellery. ‘She has the money.’
‘You think this is about money? This is not about chedda, you wasteman. My little shit-sweeper friend.’ He placed the tip of his shoe on my right hand and increased the pressure as he continued. ‘This is about izzat, ’bout the fact that after decades of our generosity and support, yo’ daddy decides to repay our asses by sayin’ he wants to compete. Calls me up, says he wants to talk. Just like you. Wants to start pushin booze fo’ realz. Asks if I would object to his ass applyin fo’ a licence.’ The pain across my hand was now making me weep. ‘Guess what, I had bare objections.’
At this point Ranjit released my hand and walked around the room, as if he was stretching his legs before a run. In agony, I put my hand between my legs, and through the corner of my one open eye I saw him pick up the plastic bin next to the toilet, empty the contents on the floor – a load of tissues – and pull out the plastic orange bag that lined it.
‘You know what’s so sick about shops? Always plastic bags about.’ He flicked the bag in the air so that it inflated. ‘And you know what’s so sick about plastic bags? They don’t leave a single mark on the body. Though helps when someone like your Chamar dad has heart probz anyway.’
For a moment, I froze. And it could only have been a moment. But I lived it more intensely than any moment I had lived before. The preceding year suddenly made sense, as I realised that this was why Ranjit had been so keen to ‘help’ me get my mum out of the shop. At the same time I sensed my future and knew I wanted to live it. I had told myself several times in the preceding months that I didn’t want to carry on, that I was holding on only for my mother. But it wasn’t true. Somehow, aided by adrenalin and anger, I got up, and with my one good hand grabbed the plastic bag from Ranjit’s chunky hands, tugging at it until it ripped in two.
Then I went at him with everything I had: wild kicks and slaps and swings and tugs of the hair. It was the computer game equivalent of pressing all the buttons on the keypad at once and hoping for the best. But the best was not what I achieved. The pain and the dizziness returned and soon I was on the floor, Ranjit having absorbed my blows with the indifference of a punchbag.
Bored, finally, of toying around, he pushed his kara down his wrist and on to his knuckles and punched me in the head. He followed it with a kick in the gut, not even blinking at the vomit and blood that spurted across the floor. Then, as I whimpered, he picked up the largest remnant of the plastic bag from the floor and stretched it taut. I remember his face seemed eerily calm through the orange plastic: it was not twisted or contorted. Then, thinking I didn’t want this to be the last thing I saw, I switched my blurred focus to the one attractive thing in the room, a bleach bottle decorated with a picture of a meadow.
He knelt down. A
nd I imagined it happening: the world going orange, and then red, my chest tightening as it did so. But then something fantastically banal occurred: the door opened slightly.
God. He hadn’t locked it.
Ranjit stood stock still. And, perhaps sensing movement in the room, so did the person on the other side. Ranjit coughed and, putting on his best English accent, shouted, ‘Excuse me!’ It was a rather good impression of polite outrage, and seemed to have the desired effect when the voice on the other side responded with, ‘So sorry, this toilet isn’t usually occupied,’ and began closing the door. But then Ranjit undermined his work with, ‘I’m having a fucking shit.’
The door stopped closing. A voice in the corridor responded with, ‘Well, do you know, there’s no women’s toilet in this godforsaken establishment,’ and then a small dog darted through the opening, walked up to the vomit and blood which was plastered like a child’s painting across the floor, and started lapping it up.
Marriage Material Page 29