The Storyteller

by Adib Khan

  Aaah, these fellows don’t believe in being gentle. I can smell petrol fumes. Oops! Have I fallen off the edge of the world? I crash against something hard and bump my head. I think I have been thrown inside the back of a van. Should I sense danger? The fear induced by unseen tentacles crawling over me?

  So, I am being bundled out of the prison in secrecy. Long ago the judge had declared that I was a menace to the community. I was to be treated with extreme caution until the trial and the sentencing. He used words like malicious and aggressive to describe me. I was an unfortunate creature without even a rudiment of morality or a sense of obligation to society. He understood that my physical condition might have deepened my bitterness towards life, but that could not justify my acts of violence or the ways I had poisonously affected impressionable minds. In my case, compassion had to be a secondary consideration to the protection that the city deserved.

  While he babbled on, I didn’t know what I was expected to do. I fidgeted and grinned and evoked the wrath of the old man. It wasn’t defiance but confusion that made me appear as if I were unrepentant.

  Hardened. Shameless. Rude. Coarse. Wilfully wicked.

  Had he accused me of arrogance, I might have conceded that he had identified a slight defect in my personality. Now that I look back on the event that landed me in prison, I cannot deny that it was excessive pride that brought me down. But I have not been brought to trial to prove my humility. Besides, there were others who conspired to trap me…

  I lived with Manu as if it were my new home. I relaxed and became careless about the dangers that lurked in the city. I knew that Ram Lal had not given up, but my alertness to his cunning slackened and once more I became recklessly bold. I operated in small, suburban bazaars, even though it was impossible to find a sizable audience for my new stories. I refused to admit that people were not interested in listening to morbid tales of merciless destruction. My warnings about the ultimate fate of Delhi were unpopular. Fools are forever dismissive of prophetic words.

  Manu did not charge me rent or accept money for food. This arrangement of convenience lasted…well, let’s say for several weeks, probably longer. In return, I helped him in the shop whenever I could. People turned up late at night. There was little conversation. It all appeared to be prearranged. The exact sum of money was handed over in exchange for boxes of various sizes. No questions asked and no information given. A name, a code. An efficient way to conduct a business. Early in the morning we rearranged the contents of the shop and brought out more kites and coloured strings, the mock weapons and the face masks. A steady trickle of customers gave the shop the necessary legitimacy to survive in the bazaar.

  Manu taught me that a petrol-filled bottle, with a rag stuffed in its mouth, could be a potent weapon. I derived a sense of great power from hurling such a missile against a wall, or throwing it forcefully on the ground and watching the flames leap into the night sky as if a fiery genie had been released from confinement.

  I could not resist returning to the site of the bustee. Cranes, concrete, bricks, cement, iron rods and bamboo scaffolding confronted me. Mighty pillars and walls. Huge slabs of concrete lay on the ground like a gigantic cover that had suffocated our past. I threw several petrol bombs against a massive pillar without inflicting much damage. The noise and the flames woke up the sleeping guard who made threatening noises until a bottle came his way and exploded. His departure was hastened by the ghoulish noises I made. The presence of the guard was an accidental discovery. I became more discreet during my later visits.

  A vast complex was emerging, giving shape to Jhunjhun Wallah’s ambition. The structure silently mocked my attempts to thwart the demise of the bustee. The visible growth of his triumph haunted me. I felt crippled. To acknowledge that he had won was hurtful beyond endurance. Sometimes I waited patiently for the return of the bustee dwellers. I believed that curiosity would bring them back, and then rage would inflame them to unite in resistance against what was happening. It was a forlorn hope. They had abandoned their previous life with the same indifference that a snake sheds its skin.

  One night I returned to find that the mango tree had been uprooted. It was chopped up and the wood neatly piled where the wall had stood. Now, the only remnant of my past was the train that sped through the night. I sat near the track and played the flute until I heard the train approaching. It was like the reassuring sight of an old friend in unfamiliar circumstances. For a moment the atmosphere of the bustee revived. Then the noise of the clattering wheels was buried in the darkness. The unremitting drone of insects intensified the permanence of my loss. I responded with the imitative howl of a dog—a low, sustained sound from the fog-girdled cave somewhere inside me.

  I thought of ways to hurt Jhunjhun Wallah. I didn’t forget Ram Lal, but my bitterness towards him was tempered by the memory of his children. The glimpse of him as a father had diluted my desire for revenge. And Meena—she was impossible to forget, despite my continuing interludes with other women in the privacy of my sanctuary. Geeta did not last beyond a few days. Shakila refused to believe my intentions. Rasheka and Saleema were silly and unworthy of prolonged pursuit. None of them offered unqualified love. They said little that I wished to hear. I figured that they knew about Meena and the special affiliation I sought with her. Inflexible, unforgiving women!

  I encountered a growing sense of betrayal as I wandered through the streets at night. Abandonment by those who had cushioned me from rejection. I slept on the bank of the Jamuna and spent nights near the hearth where Chaman had been cremated. I returned to the cemetery. Not a hint that she had drifted that way to remember me. Was she angry?

  One night, at Nigambodh Ghat, I sought forgiveness and tried to justify myself. I did all I could about the flowers. I didn’t even keep the bottle of ashes so that the river could have your wholeness. I only kept the leftover coins. You hurt me with your lack of trust. Is there anything that I haven’t done? The night gaped at me as if I were a sorry spectacle.

  Reluctantly I turned to Jesu in the church. I was relieved that he didn’t appear. Walls sprang up inside me and blocked the pathways to the familiar retreats I inhabited. The mountain caves where I was not an oddity. The grotto where the fountain of words gushed unabated. Those orchards and groves where fantasy became the obedient servant of desires. I was unable to reach inside for any comfort. I was locked out of my own houses and forced to seek the sanctuary of a desert. And what could I plant in the sand?

  I rested during the day—an empty sleep. A pervasive blankness as the sun changed positions. Sudden assaults of rain. I drifted in the quietness of clean afternoons caressed by a rainbow’s arc. If only I could find its beginning, climb and ride on its curved surface, slide down to the promises stored at its end. Could it be that there was a steep track to take me to the oasis of little people, a place to retire, somewhere to stand on a peak and dream like a benevolent god? To be among my own. How often have I felt that I was not of this world?

  Night dragged me deep into the tortuous entrails of a sinful city pulsating with the remnants of its monumental past. Sad people. Women with shrivelled breasts and despair coiled in the hollowness of their eyes. Whores with stained teeth and blemished skins, their garish looks luring lost souls into their charred lives. Bruised children. Men without pride. I stopped to see and listen. Of what use were their miserable lives?

  I chipped, smashed and burned—monuments and statues, walls, doors, windows and lights, vehicles, and those rapidly multiplying eyes of the devil. Holy…Holy…Holy. Rain was my ally. There was little danger of being pursued or apprehended. The hands of Vamana could have been the monsoonal storms. The odd police van passed by, a night patrol filling in its time without searching for work. Policemen with their eyes glued to their feet, fat, lazy and deliberately ignorant of nocturnal mischief. I grew bold. A daunting challenge germinated and unfurled into a plan of revenge. I sniffed the change of season.

  An autumn night. I expected guards to be hovering i
n front of Jhunjhun Wallah’s house. Was he inside? Fearful and cowering? Awaiting a dreaded attack? I slipped around to the back where the wall had been topped with barbed wire. To breed fear and panic was my intention. Layer upon layer. Each incident was meant to reach into his mind and nourish a vengeful monster. Even before I threw the petrol bombs against the wall, I decided to return with the full moon.

  I visited Baji the next evening and interrupted her dinner. Gulbadan opened the door and stifled a scream as the point of my knife pressed against her crotch. The amazement on her face! A ghost had escaped from the recesses of her memory and assumed a stunted, human shape.

  ‘The grave is the place for a permanent rest,’ I grinned. ‘I am not that tired.’

  She didn’t appreciate the remark. Her lips tightened into a slit of disapproval and she looked at me with unfriendly eyes. ‘We thought you—’

  ‘Wrong!’ I pressed the knife a little further into the folds of her sari. ‘The police didn’t catch me! Won’t Baji be delighted to see me?’

  ‘Gulbadan, who is it at this time of the night? The mutton curry isn’t hot. Can you warm it again?’ Baji was sitting on a charpai in her customary position—legs crossed and hunched over a tray of food. She tore a piece of chappati and wrapped it around several pieces of meat before popping it into her paan-stained mouth. I had always been fascinated by the extent to which her mouth opened to accommodate large morsels of food. She reminded me of a picture of a hungry rhinoceros I had once seen. It was a greedy mouth, one that was intent on swallowing all the pleasures of the world in a gulp if possible. Baji looked haggard. Her face was puffed, and without make-up she was an unattractive sight. If she were afraid and displeased to see me, she hid her reactions behind a welcoming smile.

  ‘Vamana!’ She stretched out her hands.

  Was that the way Death reached out to people at the end of their lives?

  ‘We have often wondered about you!’

  ‘Whether I was still alive, starving in a prison? What was the arrangement you reached with Ram Lal?’

  She did not attempt a clumsy cover-up. Wearily she wiped the fingers of her right hand with a towel. ‘Necessity makes us cowards. For survival we will do anything. Anything! You must know that. That is the education of life. I am bound to its harsh rules.’ She saw the knife in my hand but did not flinch. ‘Have you come to kill me?’

  Her question startled me. It was asked in a peculiar tone of curiosity and wistful longing.

  A prince and a thief. Politician, businessman, a lover or a magician. Wealthy people. Those without flaws and those who were happy. To such people, I could wish harm. Be malicious, aggressive, drag them into my world and torment them and curse their ancestors. But a murderer? An extinguisher of life? I didn’t think so. I had intended to kill Dilip. But my hand couldn’t be directed to target his back. I stabbed him repeatedly on his legs, thighs and arms. My rage was a stormy night—thunder, hail and sheets of rain. The immensity of life’s dark passions. At that moment my mind and body brimmed with the black, viscous filth of hatred. But killing, I discovered, was beyond my power. I slipped the knife back into the satchel.

  Baji sighed, pressing her forehead with the tips of her fingers. ‘If you knew,’ she mumbled. ‘If only you knew how it feels to live in the emptiness of hell, surrounded by its dying fires. What could be more lonely than being abandoned by the Devil himself?’

  She gestured with her hands. Vacant verandahs and dark rooms. The only sounds were those in the memory. Gulbadan sat quietly in a corner, knitting a pink sweater.

  ‘What do you see?’ Baji pushed the tray to one side and threw the towel on the floor.

  ‘I don’t see any more. My mind is a blank. An entire country is now unpopulated.’

  ‘They have all left,’ she brooded. ‘Abandoned me. The lure of films in Mumbai. A man came and offered us work for a month. I didn’t accept. Only Gulbadan listened to me. The others? The fleeting dream of money and fame was too much. All the love, affection and care I bestowed on them. Nothing!’ I felt embarrassed watching tears crawling down her cheeks like transparent worms. ‘Age has crept upon me with a malicious slowness. Why doesn’t it engulf me like a sudden fire sweeping through a house? Each day the sun grows weaker. The shadows lengthen slowly. So slowly. Nothing comforts me.’ She dragged the tray back on her lap and continued eating.

  I wasn’t prepared to be distracted. ‘Baji, what did you say to Ram Lal? I caused trouble for you, but to allow the police—’

  ‘You can go now.’ She refused to look at me. ‘Go!’

  I did not move. ‘Jhunjhun Wallah destroyed the bustee.’ Gulbadan stopped knitting and looked at me with a troubled face. ‘My home. The wall and the tree. The entire community.’

  Baji squinted and smiled. A smile of satisfaction and immense cruelty. ‘We were born to be destroyed.’

  ‘He took what was mine.’

  ‘Nothing in life can belong to anyone.’ She sounded harsh and remote. ‘Whatever we own has to be surrendered at some time.’

  It struck me that no one could possibly be close to Baji. She wasn’t one person. Man, woman, saint, villain, God, Devil—they all possessed her.

  ‘You betrayed me.’

  ‘I betrayed myself a long time ago. What could be worse?’

  I left reluctantly, certain in the belief that I would not return. I walked on an ill-defined path between regret and resentment. She was a liar and a manipulator, someone who demonstrated generosity to delude herself and others into believing that hers was a noble and selfless spirit. And yet how could I forget her acts of kindness despite the darkness of her motives?

  Just before Gulbadan closed the door behind me, I heard Baji’s strained voice. ‘Aarey Gulbadan, are there any more chappatis left?’

  Should I have wondered about Manu’s unending generosity? Queried his acts of kindness—food, a place to sleep and even some clothing? Money? That wasn’t a problem. I picked pockets and kept everything for myself. For the only time in my life I was able to buy bidis or cigarettes and eat whenever I pleased. The appeasement of greed induced a drowsy complacency, a feeling that at last life had opened its hands to provide for me. My senses dulled, and I stopped thinking. My mind was like a placid sea on a foggy day. Baji’s betrayal had numbed me. Exhaustion had drained my anger and desire for revenge. I began to walk the streets without furtive glances. I turned corners without hesitation. The police had given up and forgotten me. Ram Lal had admitted defeat.

  Now I ask, with whose eyes was I seeing the world? With whose mind was I perceiving safety? My appetites increased. I ate as much as Manu provided and whatever I could buy. I continued to follow those who attracted me. Alas! Nothing had changed. My closeness chased them away. Those I dared to touch looked at me with revulsion before they shrieked for help. I propositioned a few who were timid and pursued them as they scrambled for safety inside a shop or to a crowded part of the bazaar.

  ‘Beast!’ the women cried. ‘Shameless creature!’

  My appearance and lack of height were of considerable advantage. By the time the shoppers had recovered from shock and contemplated some form of retaliation, I was beyond reach. There were some, blinded by indignation, who immediately swung the open palm of a hand that scythed through the emptiness in front of them instead of making contact with my face. A knee-lift to the groin was impractical, since it would have missed the intended target and passed over my head. A well-directed kick might have connected, but then the sari-clad women were restricted in the movements of their lower limbs. I didn’t approach the females who wore jeans, slacks or shalwar. The men were less outraged. Some grinned with embarrassment. Others pretended to overlook my fleeting presence. Once I was abused and chased. Occasionally the odd piece of brick or stone whizzed past my head. But I can say with absolute conviction that there was never a remote possibility of losing my virginal status.

  I trampled on caution and returned to Meena’s flat one afternoon. A glimpse of her woul
d have thrilled me. I was the forgiving kind. My anger ebbed away after I purged her of her fleshly sin.

  The previous night I had dreamt of her. One day at dawn, I bathed her in the river, rubbing her body with sandalwood soap. Her skin was smoothed with perfumed oil. Dressed in white she stood on the riverbank where I forgave her and restored her innocence. In the coolness of the early morning we chanted mantras and offered fruits and flowers to the flowing river. It gurgled and swallowed our gifts. Forgiveness. Reconciliation. She was pure once again, worthy of inhabiting the sanctity of my private world. A priestess devoted to her god. I woke up in the tranquillity of a sun-lit morning and decided to visit her.

  A pushcart stood near the entrance. A bare-bodied man was tying together a pile of furniture with coils of thick rope. Another man appeared to give directions. Good fortune stuck with me. I assumed that the pushcart would lead me to Meena’s new address. I followed the cart from a distance. A short walk led me to a narrow lane where the cart stopped in front of a cluster of dilapidated houses. The sweaty man began to unload the furniture, placing the pieces in front of an entrance. The noise attracted a fat woman with a baby in her arms. She appeared in the doorway and rebuked the breathless fellow for his lateness.

  I approached the woman who tightened her hold on the baby and stepped back. My question made no sense to her.

  ‘Meena?’ Her eyes were fixed on me. ‘Who is this Meena? Are you some kind of prankster? Manoj!’ she turned and called, ‘Manoj! There is a troublesome midget here. Manoj!’

  I left before Manoj appeared.

  I wandered aimlessly for the rest of the day, stopping to strip fruit trees of guavas and jamuns, trampling and uprooting flowering plants, and throwing stones at the walls of big houses. I chased stray goats, dogs and hens onto the streets and created confusion with the traffic. I growled at people and made suggestions that made them quicken their steps. With the money in my satchel, I bought lollipops and amsat. Near the steps of Jama Masjid there were beggars who loitered regularly for alms. I picked on those who bullied the maimed and the weak beggars. I crept up from behind and knocked the bowls from their hands, scattering their collections over a wide area. I kicked a beggar who faked lameness. He recovered quickly and ran up the steps. I rubbed my hands against the devotees heading for the mosque to pray. I touched them and licked their hands, making them unworthy of kneeling before their God. I retreated at the appearance of a policeman.