by Braham Singh
‘Or find out why the Texan was crying over the dead boy if the boy stole from him. Something very valuable, I’m told. But what?’
‘That big Texan fellow! Have you seen his cowboy hat? It’s the real deal. Incredible.’
‘True. Nothing like it. But what do you think about him trying to save the boy’s life? I mean, strange, isn’t it? That’s if the boy really stole from him.’
‘I know. Very strange. And here I always thought Texans like to shoot first! Love their movies. Wish we could carry six-shooters the way they do. But as you can see, a DCP doesn’t normally wear a sidearm. Not fair. Why are only Americans allowed to be cowboys?’ And DCP Jahagirdar pretended to quick-draw from a side holster and aimed his finger at Ernst, smiling and shooting three times, first at the head, then twice at the torso. Everyone laughed when he went bang, bang, bang, with Ernst clutching half-heartedly at his chest.
Ernst out of the way, the DCP transferred his smile to Tufan. He put his arm around Tufan’s shoulders and whispered something in his ear. Tufan buckled, as if under the weight of that arm, but then took a deep breath and was all smiles again.
Ernst, however, remained distracted. This was India, and that was a senior police officer over there, wrapping his Brahmin arm around a low caste tribal’s shoulders; a tribal with oozing blisters all over his face and head.
~
‘You know,’ Salim Ali said, observing his comrade withstand the Deputy Commissioner’s attempt at accord, ‘Until recently, Comrade Tufan had long, flowing hair. Like a silver mane. He wore it in a ponytail.’
It would suit Tufan, Ernst thought, the ponytail.
‘What happened?’
‘He started losing it in tufts since about a week.’
Ernst waited for more, but the storyline faltered because there was flint in the Deputy Commissioner’s voice now, audible past the flanking havaldars. No more whispers. Looked like he wasn’t getting his point across. One had to wonder if the senior police officer would succumb to doing a Chhote Bhai and slap Tufan around. Withered state notwithstanding, nothing about Tufan suggested it would work. Deputy Commissioner Vijay Jahagirdar however must have felt he could wait this one out. Like he could wait for dinner. His type would wait patiently on the riverbank for dead enemies to float by. The timbre in his voice may have gone up for the acid test, but his St. Stephen’s accent remained steadfast. As did his manners.
‘No worries, Tufanji. We have time. You do not. The body will decompose. Sion Hospital, after all. It doesn’t have an inexhaustible supply of ice.’
Even the queued patients appeared impressed at his demeanour. The two havaldars stood to attention for their boss, Salim Ali wavered, Tufan smiled, and this time Ernst kept his mouth shut. The Deputy Commissioner had everyone’s undivided attention, allowing Bhairavi to break free.
‘You have time?’ she asked.
Her eyes were burning coals and the Deputy Commissioner reacted with a start—trying to grapple with the toothy maelstrom staring up at him from out of nowhere. ‘Time for what, Uncle? Why not use that time to do your job?’
The Deputy Commissioner peered at her. ‘You’re Chabildas’ daughter from Sindhi Camp.’ He looked confused. More so when she asked, voice rising unwisely, ‘Who killed our Arjun, Uncle? You knew him. You watched him play cricket. Why would you let it happen?’
The Deputy Commissioner’s response was to go quiet. Tufan tried pulling her away and Ernst had this sudden urge to call out, The gunny bag, that’s why! And guess who has it now!
Then Salim Ali, the voice of reason, stayed her with a gesture. She quietened, but stood there begging for the Deputy Commissioner to visit something upon her. She was outclassed and Jahagirdar smiled instead, declining to pick a fight with someone who had nothing to lose. He wasn’t a Deputy Commissioner for nothing.
‘You want an autopsy?’ he asked, turning to Tufan with a look that said, Enough. ‘We’ll give you an autopsy. Please be here tomorrow morning for the post mortem procedure. I’ll call the Assistant Coroner myself.’ He smiled to establish his western style, St. Stephen’s College credentials. ‘At least then, Tufanji, will you agree to kindly accept the body?’
~
They waited for the Deputy Commissioner’s jeep to leave. After all, he blinked first.
Later, Mohan Driver held open the Fiat’s front passenger door for Tufan, but he declined. He planned to stay on a bit, maybe shine more light around with his smile. He thanked Bhairavi, calling her ‘Our Joan of Arc!’ She clasped him and would have remained that way forever with her head buried in his chest; wouldn’t let go until he gently disengaged. Ernst felt he was in the presence of a Chinese-looking Mahatma.
‘Do you still practise?’ Tufan asked her.
‘With a kitchen knife.’ She pouted. ‘Promise to lend me your sword when I perform again.’
‘My sister taught these two rascals our tribal dance for their school annual day,’ Tufan said. ‘Salim Ali was a reluctant performer. Claimed his Kerala martial arts to be superior. But he would practise the sword dance anyway. Maybe because of her.’
His dark skin saved Salim Ali from turning pink. Turning his gaze towards Bhairavi, Tufan said, ‘It’s a good exercise, the sword dance. But don’t do it on stage anymore. You’ll scare the men away and we want you married.’
Hearing her peals, Ernst thought, the Ingrids never laughed like this. As for Tufan, he just smiled and smiled.
When Ernst looked back after Mohan Driver sped off towards Sion Circle, Tufan’s smile had switched off. The gentle tribal’s forlorn gaze tore into Sion Hospital, through the crumbling concrete and past the corridors of misery to seek out and caress his nephew lying in there, decomposing. Ernst didn’t want to picture the location. Wherever it was, he hoped there was some ice.
‘The gunny bag at my place?’ Ernst asked. ‘The DCP may sound friendly and all, but I know his type. He won’t give up. Why not just return whatever’s in it? Leave the damn gunny bag somewhere they can find it? ’
‘No.’
‘Want to tell me what’s in it?’
‘No.’
Up ahead and holding a meaningless grace from another era, Sion Circle lay past Sion Hospital and a few more Sion-Trombay potholes. It stood stupefied with the turn of events since Independence, paint flaking off its colonnades in surrender, and looking on as more and more cars, trucks, and buses twirled around in it. Even this late at night, it appeared confused. Not ill but not well. It reminded Ernst of Tufan. ‘That you’re involved in something shady doesn’t surprise me,’ he said, ‘But where does Tufan fit in?’
‘You saw him. What do you think?’
‘I think he looks ready to drop dead.’
‘Oh,’ Salim Ali said. ‘How did you know? I was telling you about his hair.’
~
Some two weeks ago, Tsering Tufan was passing by the CIRUS nuclear reactor at Bhabha’s AEET where he works, when a fountain gushed up from the lawns. That whole area is a labyrinth of underground pipes, some carrying seawater for cooling the nuclear core inside CIRUS and others discharging from the reactor. A pipe had burst. It was a hot day, so the Lambadi women working on the lawns ran to douse themselves under the high-pressure leak.
‘Seeing them do that, Comrade Tufan started yelling, stopped the bus, and got out to shoo the women away. They thought he was crazy. No one had protective gear and no dosimeter badges. There was nothing to see or smell, and therefore nothing to worry about. He got them out of the fountain with some difficulty, but he stayed on taking soil samples and getting soaked to the bone in the process.’
Ernst didn’t want Salim Ali to continue.
‘When the test results returned,’ Salim Ali said, ‘the water he had stood in showed up to forty Becquerel per millilitre. The soil tests were equally conclusive. Anyone under that radioactive shower received the equivalent of fifty chest X-rays in under thirty minutes. Within the week, Comrade Tufan started showing symptoms from exposure to radiation.’
Anyway, when Tufan returned to the radioactive lawns the following day, there was no Lambadi labour and no signs of any pipe bursting, or anything like that. As if nothing had happened. That’s what AEET maintained—nothing had happened. The Lambadi gypsies being casual labour, there were no employment or union records, no addresses, nothing. They didn’t exist. But Comrade Tufan did, so the AEET Brahmins hit the panic button.
‘I mean, total panic. Tufan said all they wanted to know was, how many roentgens. How many did he absorb? More than 400? Meant they were all fucked because he’d have to be quarantined. Meant, something happened. Meant the radioactive water leakage was official; heads would roll.
‘You can imagine their relief learning he only absorbed around 200 roentgens. Sure, he’d probably still die, but slowly. No need to quarantine. Their jobs were safe.
‘Comrade Tufan didn’t care either way. His only worry were the tribals who had the radioactive shower. If the management took immediate action, those women could be traced, provided medical attention and saved. The AEET Brahmins gave him blank looks. With no one listening, he approached God.’
According to Salim Ali, Dr. Homi Bhabha, Mastermind, Father of the Indian Atom, and a deity to so many Indians, heard Tufan out. He assured him they would locate the Lambadi, knowing full well he couldn’t. The gypsy women had vanished into thin air. Dr. Bhabha however, did set up a formal reactor safety committee. Their recommendations were published worldwide.
‘And adopted by the AEET?’
‘Of course not. But the achievement was recognised in all the newspapers. Bhabha’s committee also undertook a complete audit of the incident as a learning lesson—to be read and put into practice. However, the audit report was deemed secret under the Official Secrets Act and sealed to ensure no one reads it.’ Ernst hadn’t seen Salim Ali look this miserable in a while. Like one of his Terylene shirts; just when you were confident it couldn’t look any worse, it surprised you .
‘Unlike the Lambadi, Comrade Tufan is a permanent employee and entitled to full medical treatment. It’s become quite the quandary. If he is treated, it means something did go wrong that day. So he has to sign over his integrity in return. Put in writing that nothing had happened. They are still waiting for him to sign. He maintains if nothing had happened, how can he be sick? Sick or not, his hair keeps falling out in tufts. No one knows what the fuck to say and what the fuck to do, so no one does anything.’
Salim Ali then said Tufan’s sister—the dead Arjun’s mother—was taking care of Tufan. Or at least she tried. ‘Have you met her? You should. She can take any amount of crap, and it would never show. The strong and silent type.’
There was silence in the car, then Mohan Driver farted. Bhairavi covered her nose with the hem of her sari.
‘You said he looks ready to drop dead,’ Salim Ali said. ‘He is.’
The girl Bhairavi shifted her slim frame, and Ernst’s heart lurched like the one-eyed Fiat when she reached across him to hold Salim Ali’s hand.
15
Sindhi Refugee Camp
I won’t deny Iqbal,
He gave me the Tarana-e-Hind.
He did love his mullahs though,
And took away my Sind.
—Translated from the Urdu, by Kirti the Poet
White people can’t simply walk into Sindhi Camp. It creates wrinkles in the fabric and gets Mumbai into Bombay’s face. So why even venture in there this time of the night? Mohan Driver posited, chooth ki pukaar was why; still thinking, after all these years, that Ernst didn’t understand the crap he muttered in Hindi.
It was late and Jhama Sweetmeat’s neon lighting was done for the day. The darkness enveloped Salim Ali, but Ernst shone like a white beacon. He had a fidgety Mohan Driver park the Fiat in the Golf Club compound and wait. Mohan Driver looked miserable seeing his employer make a fool of himself over a chawl girl. If Ernst wanted desi phudi this bad, just order home delivery from the whorehouse upstairs and be done with it. Even Foras Road whores were better than subjecting everyone to this.
Seeing the bile on Mohan Driver’s face, a man in white dhoti walking by barefoot quickened his pace. The dhoti was knotted Marathi-style and he carried a lota in one hand. He looked like an E.M. Forster Brahmin carrying Ganga jal to sprinkle after ablutions. The man held up an open umbrella to complete the picture. Ernst caught himself checking the skies.
Golf Club’s Murli Chowkidar stood to attention and still not fully at grips with the situation. Until five minutes ago, he was crouched asleep on his stool, belt unbuckled and one hand comfortably cupping his crotch. The car’s single headlight sent him stumbling for the gates holding up his trousers with one hand. His martial mask fell on seeing her dark face in the rear seat with Ernst. It was back in place now and so were the trousers, fly still open. He stared straight ahead, ears on the alert.
‘Thank you,’ she said to Ernst, ‘but I can walk home from here. It’s my neighbourhood.’
‘I’ll come along. It’s not too far.’
‘Okay,’ she said and smiled with those teeth. It was irritating how the whole place lit up. ‘You can meet my father. You both must be the same age.’
Ernst stepped out from the gates and on to Trombay Road, his mind lingering on that unnecessary comment. Salim Ali followed, accompanied by a dirty look. A white man walking into a refugee camp with an unmarried Indian girl as if nothing to it. She was already across the road, eyeing the gully next to Jhama Sweetmeats.
Salim Ali came up to remind him that the twenty-eighth was Salary Day, as if Ernst needed the reminder. ‘My salary can wait,’ Salim Ali said. ‘It’s the workers. There’s a famine brewing the other side of the Ghats. They have to send money back home.’
Salary Days were touch and go, but the Seth’s cheque would be there to support him this time; the Seth’s Lala had squeezed Ernst’s hand and promised it would be fine.
So Ernst said, ‘Should be fine.’
Way past Sindhi Camp’s dinner time, its refugee population was fast asleep and jhopadpatti slum dwellers feeling safe to encroach. They were India’s toe fungus—the lowest in any pecking order, be it class or caste. The reason why Sindhi Camp refugees, however destitute themselves, understandably didn’t want slum dwellers around. On the prowl for their evening meal, the jhopadpatti crowd spread through Sindhi Camp with singular purpose. From where the jhopadpatti garlanded Sindhi Camp, cow dung smoke rose into the air waiting for the ones foraging for food. Some of them chased a kid goat across the road and the legless beggar-on-wheels kept berating or encouraging them, one couldn’t be sure. A slum boy rummaged through the garbage heap outside the Krishna Temple and the distaste on Bhairavi’s face grew on behalf of Sindhi Camp. The look fortified her and made her the superior person. The road was unlit and no vehicles around, except for a Tata Mercedes truck turning the corner from Vashigaon Road.
Taking the turn like Jagannath, the truck came hurtling towards them. It rattled loud enough to wake the dead but Ernst was preoccupied. What with her comment on his age, and then Salim Ali with his Salary Day bulletin, conjuring scenes around the famine brewing behind the Western Ghats, and of people dying next to bags of indigestible American wheat. Then there was the dead Arjun, the dying Tufan—all at the same time as if the Furies from his school textbooks had decided to go real on him. He almost didn’t notice the truck going for Salim Ali. When he did, it was clear what was about to happen, and also there was this loud bleating sound.
Seeing the Tata come at him, Salim Ali had pirouetted but didn’t fall, not until Ernst tackled him from the side, going for his legs in a manner unseemly for someone his age. The tackle had them both drop into fresh cow dung, desperately grabbing each other as if going at it. The truck braked to a halt, mulled a bit, and a handlebar moustache appeared from the driver’s side to see a white man and an Indian lying in cow dung holding each other. The man also saw Sindhi Camp Bhairavi, Murli Chowkidar and Mohan Driver rush over while slum dwellers gathered in what lo
oked like the makings of a lynch mob. Bystanders routinely turned into one in Bombay, even over minor accidents. So rule of thumb when you hit, run. TATA OK BYE BYE said the truck’s fleeing bumper, as does the rear bumper of every Tata-Mercedes truck across India.
The goat being chased earlier now lay on the road behind the disappearing truck, with Bhairavi on her knees next to it. For a moment there, Ernst thought she too was hit, but then saw her lift the kid goat’s head to her lap. There was blood on the animal’s white coat and Bhairavi looked stricken. Being Sindhi, she probably had mutton that week, but this was different. She stroked its head even though the kid goat was too far gone. Its eyes went opaque with a placid acceptance and there was none of that fleeting panic Ernst had witnessed in Arjun’s eyes. Lying there in cow dung holding Salim Ali, it dawned on him, Hinduism was all about what a goat already knew.
Bhairavi put the kid goat’s head down with a finality of sorts and was getting up, when something on wheels broke from the slum dwellers. Coming up at the speed of sound, the beggar-on-wheels snatched the kid goat and careened down the road towards the jhopadpatti slums. They heard him whoop, as he sped away with the dripping animal bobbing on his broad shoulders and leaving a trail of blood.
~
The girl, Mohan Driver, and Salim Ali, watched Ernst get to his feet, all self-conscious from the cow dung on his shoes, shirt and everywhere.
‘Sorry about that,’ he said to Salim Ali who just kept staring at him while he tried dusting off the man’s Terylene shirt caked with everything India could throw at it. They watched him pause and rub his own shoulders. No one uttered a word; they just looked at each other.
‘The way you tackled me. Learnt that in prison too?’ Salim Ali finally asked.
Bhairavi went with, ‘Are you all right?’ He eyed the perfection of her silhouette in the dark while she lingered over his state of affairs. ‘Have the driver walk you back to your car,’ she said.