by Braham Singh
Salim Ali’s sword cut deep across Chhote Bhai’s stomach and with an ease that didn’t do justice to the muscle it shred like gauze. It looked easy, probably because Chhote Bhai didn’t make a peep. Salim Ali slowly brought the blade back to Chhote Bhai’s navel and stood erect. One would think he did this every day. A surprised Chhote Bhai looked down at the sword sticking into his black, dead centre, then at Salim Ali, standing in front of him just shy of five feet tall. The security, caught up in their chitchat, failed to notice the artistry underway. Chhote Bhai, though, watched mesmerised as the sword then cut upwards through his diaphragm; something like what a Japanese committing seppuku would do to himself. Only Chhote Bhai was having it all done for him by his tenant with a bandaged head. Several long and silent seconds after organs and messy bits and pieces started falling out from his stomach, Chhote Bhai decided to follow suit without protest. Salim Ali pulled the sword back, allowing the huge body enough space to land with a thud. Bhabha continued with the Allegretto in the clubhouse and it was Gomes who began yelling as if he was stabbed.
He must have felt a lot like Salim Ali; like a man who had had enough. This was it. No more. First, Ernst with his straight razor, now this. Gomes appeared to have had it with arseholes welding sharp objects. He jumped to avoid Chhote Bhai’s entrails slithering toward him. Then with a cry, almost plaintive and no other way to describe it, Gomes the gorilla headed for the gates. Turning left, he took off down Trombay Road and kept going. The last thing Ernst saw before returning to Tsering Tufan was an also-screaming Murli Chowkidar following in hot pursuit. Their two banshee wails came together to wax before dying off into the distance.
By now the police registered something may have happened and they froze, fixated on a bloodied Salim Ali looking back at them. Salim Ali surveyed the battlefield and his eyes seemed to gravitate towards the old banyan behind Murli Chowkidar’s abandoned guard post. Its base was at an elevation; a neat circle of bricks packing mud around the thick bole with its dreadlock of vines that became trunks on touching ground. It was a massive banyan, competing with the one over at the Krishna Temple. Salim Ali walked over to the tree as if not a care in the world; probably true. The little Marxist then hopped up and ritually circled the trunk three times. No one else budged. The police remained frozen, rock-solid. Salim Ali had their undivided attention.
He could be performing some tribal ceremony. Salim Ali walked back to Ernst with the dripping sword in hand and came to a standstill, a foot from his face. Then he raised the drawn weapon and reached up to tug at Ernst’s hair with his other hand, running his fingers through it. From behind eyes shut tight, Ernst was surprised how a fistful of his blonde hair parted company with a single swipe; Salim Ali holding the hair with barber-like aplomb. Something wet trickled down Ernst’s face. Opening his eyes, he saw Salim Ali now holding the sword to his own head. There was a red smear on the little man’s forehead, like a caste mark. The black tuft he took from his head stood out against Ernst’s gold.
By now, Tufan had stumbled inside the compound and had the same look of calm panic from when Arjun died. He pulled himself together as Salim Ali approached and the two men folded hands in namastes as part of whatever was unfolding. Salim Ali whispered something into his comrade’s ear. The Smiling Buddha’s body heaved with silent sobs. This was the same man who observed his nephew’s post-mortem with the equanimity of a Buddha.
‘On behalf of Arjun’s dead father,’ Salim Ali said to Ernst, as if explaining some arcane ritual. ‘I had to use his sword for this. It’s a Golog, tribal thing. One has to do it.’ Whatever it was Tobi Basar had whispered in his ear earlier by the police chowki, it must have been a complete education.
What did she tell you, Ernst asked, and Salim Ali looked to make sure Tufan was out of earshot. ‘Bad things,’ he said. ‘That Chhote Bhai did bad things to our Arjun.’
Holding the sword under an armpit, Salim Ali then proceeded to braid his black strands of hair flocked with Ernst’s gold. Moving around the gore at his feet, Salim Ali walked towards the tree again. The policemen backed off in a hurry, competing with each other to get behind the sturdy rear fin of the Seth’s Impala. Selecting a slim vine from the banyan—one not yet touching soil—Salim Ali knotted the braided hair around the strand, in whatever conclusion this was to his ritual sword performance. To do that, he had to grip the sword under an armpit once again. That still wasn’t reason enough for Bombay’s Finest to act, and they remained protected behind the Seth’s American armour.
‘Hands up!’ one of them did say however, peering up from the Impala’s fin. He sounded tentative.
Salim Ali ignored the order and smiled at his friends as Gautama Buddha would. It had taken a murder for the man to become serene like never before. You could say the same for his disembowelled landlord. Ernst noticed the dead man’s face lit up with pure relief. He had never before seen the bored, brooding Chhote Bhai this positive and upbeat.
‘I’ll be at the police station next door,’ Salim Ali said.
37
Girl on Fire
We tribals had no idea we were low caste, until the Hindu informed us.
—A.Z. Phizo, Naga nationalist leader
The constipation welled up again soon after Salim Ali’s sword dance and the cork back up his arse, along with a slight fever that came and went like the cork. He felt feverish even when the thermometer confirmed there was nothing of that sort. A phantom fever. Like the phantom cork. To him, both as real as Schwester Ingrid—also popping in and out at will whenever he was alone. He led a full life these days.
The cork loosened in surprise when Bhairavi opened the door to Tufan’s flat at Atomic Energy.
‘Do come in,’ she said.
Frankly, he was a bit taken aback. As if that other day at his place never happened, as if he didn’t make a fool of himself, as if she did not walk away bereft. Seeing her made him pucker up, down there. He tried to relax and pushed downwards. Relax the sphincter, then try again. The cork didn’t feel figurative at all. If he reached into his pants from behind, it would be there.
Tsering Tufan was reclined in a chair amidst a floor full of Ernst’s Goregaon workers. They had taken over the room. They straggled up to wish him and collapsed back into a squat one by one. Ernst settled amongst them and was soon squirming on the tiles. Compared to the constipation, his recent on-off fever was nothing. Tufan leaned back against the chair like an enervated Buddha resting up. If Salim Ali’s personality had done a volte-face after Chhote Bhai, so had Tufan’s—his equanimity was now a thing of the past. Along with the luminosity from his eyes. Looked like he was dying some more every day and too lost to care. The trade union man by his side looked equally lost. His soda glasses displayed big earnest eyes and his spindly legs folded up like a grasshopper.
The balcony doors were open, allowing the sea breeze to enter with a whoosh and the curtains bellowed like sails. They were on the fourteenth floor of Alaknanda, one of Atomic India’s many high-rises and named after a Himalayan river. The flat was spacious, modern, and with the living room wall straight from Salim Ali’s flat. The same charcoal portraits of Lenin and Fidel Castro hung at eye level. Vietnam’s General Ngyuen Von Giap too, resplendent in green uniform and red stars. Here though, there was also a black & white Bhabha, who would never have looked this satisfied with things over on Salim Ali’s wall. Castro too, appeared more comfortable pondering a ceremonial sword instead of holy, Arabic calligraphy. The Golog sword was in its hewn, leather scabbard, inclined on two thick-padded nails in the wall. Coloured threads trailed down from the nails.
The grip was familiar. Ernst had seen it on the weapon Salim Ali used to fillet Chhote Bhai the other day. Salim Ali had borrowed that sword—one just like this—from Tufan’s sister and it was now in police custody as Exhibit A. Ernst could visualise Tobi Basar teach Bhairavi all the right moves; have her dance the way Salim Ali had with the sword in hand. He went hard instantly and was ashamed.
‘You thin
k Salim is okay in the police chowki?’ Tufan had the look of a little boy seeking solace.
From what people said about that place, who could say? And after what Salim Ali had done, who could tell?
‘He’ll be fine.’
‘I hope he’s getting some sleep.’
Henry Gomes had stabbed young Arjun in May. It was almost August and Salim Ali had only just carved up Chhote Bhai. He was behind bars, surprisingly serene, and arguably, Gomes the one not getting any sleep. Ernst wondered if Henry Gomes had at least stopped running .
Not bothered about Gomes or much else, Tufan looked done with this, and that, and everything else. The grasshopper next to him hiccupped and turned his head to the wall. Tobi Basar stood behind Sindhi Camp Bhairavi in her Thai-style, shiny silk sarong and a green blouse.
‘Did you make him do it?’ Ernst asked her.
‘Are you asking about Salim Ali?’
He wanted to say, yes, but chickened out. He was sorry he asked. It didn’t matter. You whispered in his ear, he went tribal and whatever happened, happened.
Standing there by the corridor, she looked like the Statue of Liberty in a sarong with a Jacqueline Kennedy haircut.
‘You’re blaming me? No, no, it’s okay. I can see that you are.’ She paused to crank up the voltage. ‘Being European, maybe you don’t know about this country. What these Indians do to us. That man Salim Ali killed, do you know what he was doing to my boy?’ She looked at her dying brother. ‘We should all have run amok like Salim Ali long ago.’
The room was not expecting this. Putting aside his Marxism, the grasshopper unfolded his legs. ‘Aunty, this is your country too. You’re Indian, just like us.’
‘I am? They say we are Indo-Mongoloid. What is Indo-Mongoloid? Do you know even a single case of an Indian Hindu marrying a tribal? I mean proper marriage, not rape. There is no such thing. Hindus are too racist for that. They actually enjoy it, being openly racist. It allows them to look down on others, be like the British. Our people came to the region from China and East Asia. India colonialised us, like the British before them. There is no Indo. We are not Indian.’
When Tufan hawked, collecting his phlegm and folding the handkerchief neatly back into his trouser pocket, she went somewhat bitter. ‘Don’t try telling him though. He couldn’t understand why Arjun refused to play cricket with Hindu boys in Atomic Energy. Why he preferred playing in the slums with Salim Ali instead. They were kindred souls, Salim Ali and Arjun. Both victims of India. How many times I pleaded with my brother, “Let’s go. Let’s get out from here.” He refused. Said he was Indian. He preferred to stay in Bombay with his Bhabha instead and get irradiated, see his own nephew murdered. Now he can die with my dead boy on his mind.’
With that, she went back to deadpan calm. Tufan looked confused at the attack, and the grasshopper’s face had contorted. Some people should never cry.
Still speaking to Ernst, she nodded toward Tufan. ‘You know, I woke up at night a few weeks ago, and came to the kitchen. He was sitting there, pen in hand and staring at the waiver papers they wanted him to sign before allowing him medical treatment. I watched him, God knows for how long. He kept looking at the papers, unable to sign them and save himself.’ She paused once more, and Ernst understood that her dislike for India wasn’t like the one Bombay Ingrid held so dear. Or like Willie’s, for that matter. With Tobi Basar, the hatred had developed one wound at a time.
‘It’s best you die,’ she said to her brother. ‘You may love this country, but it has no use for you. They’re waiting for you to go. Everyone knows it.’
‘These same people also know the soil around the CIRUS reactor is contaminated. If radiation were visible to the naked eye, the glow would light up the skies. They employ Lambadi gypsies as daily wage-workers and not one dosimeter badge between them. The Lambadi children play on the contaminated lawns where their mothers work without protective gear. If that’s the value the Indian Government places on Indian lives, what can those like us expect?’
She was done. The Smiling Buddha and the grasshopper looked ready to slit their wrists. She turned to Sindhi Camp Bhairavi and said, ‘We have dance practice.’
~
‘I am sorry about the other day,’ he said.
They were alone for a bit, standing by the corridor; Tobi Basar back in her bedroom, the grasshopper gone with the rest of the trade union gang, and Tufan staring out into middle space from his chair.
‘Why sorry?’ Sindhi Camp Bhairavi’s eyes weren’t ablaze anymore. ‘You were right not encouraging me. ’
No, he wasn’t. He knew women enough to know what had happened. They gave themselves with the same absoluteness with which they tuned off. She was past him now, and it showed. He was an idiot. He waited for her to ask about Salim Ali. What are you going to do about him? By now, she would know he could do nothing.
‘Parvati says you are going to Germany.’
‘Yes.’
‘Anyone still there?’
He thought of Schwester Ingrid, and he remembered Siegfried, and he remembered his mother. ‘No.’
~
It took the German in him to understand his father’s genius: going straight to the nearest police station after he buried Ernst’s mother—Betty, the Aryan.
With her gone, the Gestapo would have sooner or later come for Siegfried anyway. Betty, the Aryan, had held them back all those years. Hitler didn’t know how to deal with mixed marriages and there were a lot of them in Berlin. Jewish men were, after all, a catch—didn’t get drunk, didn’t beat their wives, had jobs. So, the Gestapo would wait until the Aryan spouse died before boxing and shipping off the Jewish catch. Siegfried pre-empted them by surrendering as soon as his Aryan wife was buried. Not to the Gestapo, mind you, he went to the police instead. His crime? Being a Jew, he explained. While they mulled over him walking in like that, he informed them that besides being Jew, he was ill and needed medical attention. He coughed a couple of times and the police station went, Aaah Ha! At least now they knew where he was coming from. Unlike the Gestapo Manual, the Police Handbook pre-dated Hitler and was crystal clear: sick detainees to be hospitalised before any legal proceedings and / or incarceration. They knew what he was up to, but they were Germans, and law was law. The boxcar would have to wait until the Jew recovered.
The Jüdische Krankenhaus was the one hospital still accepting Jews. He was admitted into the Polizeistation police ward and remained there for four years. Schwester Ingrid wrote that Herr Doktor Doktor Lustig would have covered him for four more. After all, he was doing it for others. The Jews behind the hospital walls included genuine patients and doctors and nurses of course, but also those pretending to be patients and doctors and nurses. Schwester Ingrid was an outstanding example. If only Siegfried hadn’t been such an arsehole.
After saving his life by declaring him too sick to be killed, four years later the Jüdische Krankenhaus would declare Siegfried Steiger fit enough to die. By doing so, Herr Doktor Doktor Lustig gave up on him and Siegfried gave up on everything to go dance to Emmy Destinn from his open window.
‘Do you think of your father a lot?’
‘Every night.’
‘Do you think of your wife?’
‘They come arguing in the same package.’
‘You never told me what happened to her.’
‘I don’t know. I never saw her again after she returned to Berlin.’ A lie. She was all over him last night, going on and on about his father. Sindhi Camp Bhairavi cocked her head and squinted as if peering through to the other end of the galaxy, at Berlin.
‘You said she didn’t like India.’
‘Yes. The heat, the dust, everything was wrong.’ He pointed at the Hindu swastika hanging from her neck. ‘Even that upset her.’
She rubbed the pendant. ‘Does it upset you?’ she asked.
‘No.’
‘Do I upset you?’
‘No. Of course not.’
‘Why not?’
H
e felt himself shrivel. No guts in the face of a bunny rabbit half his age.
‘No reason.’
‘That’s not a good reason. It means, no feelings at all. Not even dislike. Who wants that?’
There was finality in the way she said it. Who wants that? He wanted to ask her not to give up on him. He didn’t mean what he just said. He hadn’t meant it that last time either. Of late, when he thought of what’s missing from his life, he saw her face with the buck teeth, not Ingrid’s perfect beauty. He wanted to tell her that.
Fall back in love with me .
That, like escaping cancer, was not going to happen. There was something almost triumphant about the way her eyes glittered while she stood there, reading his heart. She was back on fire. The word he was looking for would be: victorious. She was done with him. It was over. This was closure. They were through. She was victorious.
‘How’s Kirti?’ he asked, acknowledging a lost cause. Did she know about her brother? The cross-dresser?
‘She’s fine. Why?’
She knew.
‘And your father?’
‘Kismet. All he wanted was a son…now he has two daughters. One isn’t his, and the other isn’t one.’
Tobi Basar was signalling from the bedroom. ‘Coming!’ Bhairavi said, and reaching around her neck she took off her pendant with that swastika.