by Anita Desai
‘He speaks well,’ Hari said, ‘very well.’
But now he was bowing and climbing down the ladder and a small man in a faded cotton bush-shirt and with wire-rimmed spectacles on his nose was climbing up gingerly to take his place. He was handed the megaphone and began to speak in a squeaky, high-pitched voice. Not only was his voice difficult to follow but Hari could not understand what he was talking about – it was all new and strange. How did these strangers, these city people, know more about Thul and the other fishing villages of the coast than he himself did? He felt more ignorant than he had ever felt in his life.
‘You have come from Alibagh,’ the man began, ‘a place that means home to you, but to us who work in the meteorological observatory, it means the home of the world-renowned Alibagh geomagnetic observatory, the only one of the type in the world. It was established here in Bombay in 1841, not far from where you are standing, but in 1904 it was shifted to Alibagh because Bombay decided to electrify its tram service which would have created a disturbance in the readings of the observatory …’
‘Huh?’ grunted Mahe, lifting his turban to scratch his head. ‘What is all this observe-nobserve he is talking about?’
‘Don’t know,’ whispered Hari, trying to hear and learn.
‘Now if the fertilizer factory is built near Alibagh, the electric currents and large masses of iron that are brought into the neighbourhood will again vitiate the magnetic observations.’
Hari frowned. He understood less and less.
‘We supply information to the Survey of India and to the ONGC – the Oil and Natural Gas Commission. It is essential that our functioning is not disturbed or interrupted. It has been uninterrupted since 1846. We cannot allow it to break down now.’ His voice broke and he gulped and stopped to mop his brow with a large handkerchief. One could see this man was used to working in an office, not to speaking at public meetings. ‘We – you – all of us should be proud of it. It must be – er – preserved at all cost.’ Then he gave up the megaphone and stumbled down into the crowd which applauded out of relief that the speech was over. The speaker himself was smiling weakly with relief.
‘Who is he? What is he trying to tell us?’ everyone was saying to each other.
‘Have you seen this observatory in Alibagh?’ someone asked. ‘I don’t know where it is.’
‘Yes, yes, it is a small white house by the sea – I know it,’ said another sagely. ‘But I did not know it was so important.’
‘World-renowned, he said.’
‘It must be if he says it is.’
‘Yes, yes, very important,’ they nodded, impressed.
But another young man, large and hefty, shouted over their heads, ‘Preserve a rotten old observatory just because it is so old? What about our farms, our crops, our boats? That is what we have come here to see about – not that man’s dusty old office or his files or his job.’
‘Yes, yes, that too,’ an older man placated him. ‘Here, have a smoke, then we will see about our land and boats.’
Now a third man mounted the pedestal. It was their own leader, Adarkar, and so they cheered him loudly although the heat was beginning to wilt them.
His speech soon revived them because it was in their own village dialect and he spoke of the things they knew best. He repeated all he had already talked of before – the richness of their land, the excellence of their crops, of how these must not be given up or destroyed for the sake of the factories, of how they must not be misled by promises of money or jobs, they were unlikely to get any – and everyone nodded and clapped.
‘We have come to tell the government we don’t want the miserable sums of money they are offering us – our land is too valuable to sell. We are not going to be turned into slaves working in their factories, we have always worked and lived independently and been our own masters. Now let us march to Mantralaya and give our petition to the Chief Minister himself. Let us march, brothers!’ and he lifted up his arms and roared the last words.
The roar spread through the whole crowd like a wave surging through it and breaking on the rocks. Suddenly confusion broke out and the crowd began to dissipate and Hari found that the men who had been standing beside him were now drifting away. He hurried first after one group and then after another, wondering where they were going and if he was meant to follow.
Catching the large, hefty young man by his arm, he begged for instructions. ‘Do we all have to march to Mantralaya now?’
Just then he heard a voice shout over the megaphone: ‘Friends, make your way back to the Sassoon docks where our boats are waiting for us. Only five farmers will go to Mantralaya with the petition. I am one of them. When we have seen the Chief Minister Sahib, we will join you at the docks and travel back together …’
‘There, you’ve had your answer,’ said the young man, shaking off Hari’s hand from his arm and walking off.
Hari stood watching the crowd fade away down the road. He felt deserted and friendless. None of his friends from the village had come – they were the ones who were sitting happily at home waiting for the fertilizer factory to come up and employ them. He had left them to join the march in order to get away from Thul and get to Bombay, and he knew he did not really belong to the march, he had no fields or fishing boats to fight for, nor did he know any of the marchers who were mainly farmers and fishermen, not the sort of people who would know his landless, boatless, jobless father. He felt now that he belonged neither to one group nor the other. He belonged to no one, nowhere. The others had left him behind. He was alone in Bombay.
In the little hut no one gave a thought to the march or even to the launching of Biju’s boat. After Hari had run out of the house, the girls had turned to their mother’s bed and taken turns at sitting beside her through the night, giving her sips of water to drink and putting damp cloths on her forehead. Sometimes Bela or Kamal, half asleep, would murmur, ‘Is Hari back?’ and Lila would shake her head silently.
They were all so worn out by that long night that they fell fast asleep just before the sun came up. There was no Pinto today to rush out into the dewy grass and chase the heron into the marsh, barking. Even Lila slept with her head on the edge of her mother’s bed, quite forgetting about the rock in the sea or her usual dawn prayers.
Waking up, she was aghast to see how bright it was. The white morning light was a shock, and so was Pinto’s silence and Hari’s strange disappearance. She thought he must surely have come back in the night after walking off his anger but he was nowhere around. She frowned a little as she got up, then turned immediately to see her mother and the pale, still figure on the bed, still burning with fever, drove every other thought and worry out of her head.
‘Kamal, Bela,’ she told her sisters when she had woken them up and given them tea. ‘Go to the bazaar and get some ice for Ma. See if Hari is there. Call him, he may have stayed in the village at night to see the drama in the temple. Tell him to come home and bring some ice.’
The girls found a few coins on the kitchen shelf and set off down the beach at a run, not even stopping to watch the efforts being made to launch Biju’s boat. In any case, most of the villagers appeared to have lost interest in it – there was hardly anyone there except the boys Biju had hired to control the winches and drag the ropes. Bela and Kamal did not linger but went straight to the ice shop in the market. There they ran into Lila’s friend Mina who was carrying home a bag of vegetables.
‘Have you heard?’ she called to them. ‘All the men have set off for Bombay with a petition to the government. Someone told me Hari has gone, too.’
‘Hari?’ they asked, stopping to stare at her. ‘Hari gone to Bombay? Oh no, of course not – he must be here somewhere.’
‘Where? I haven’t seen him. You can ask Raju – he’s the one who told me.’
‘No, we have to buy ice for Ma. We have to run, she has fever,’ they cried, and hurried on.
When they got home they found Lila had just finished burying Pinto in a shall
ow ditch she had dug behind the frangipani tree. She was smoothing the earth and tramping it down. When she heard them come running up the path, she got up from her knees and dusted her hands and her sari. The girls stopped and watched silently as she walked back to the veranda and sat down slowly on the steps. They could see she had been crying and did not know what to say to console her. They felt their eyes swim with tears as well.
Then Bela gulped and said, ‘Lila, Mina says Hari has gone to Bombay with the other men. Raju told her.’
Lila frowned as if she could not understand. Could Hari have been so angry and so upset as to leave home and run away? She could not understand that; she would never have run away herself. She shook her head. It was all very frightening and difficult but she was here, her sisters and her mother were in her care, and somehow she would have to manage. Without saying a word, she got up and went into the house. If Hari was not here, she would go herself to Alibagh to see a doctor and fetch medicine for her mother. Her mother could not get into a bus and go so she would describe everything to the doctor and ask for help. She sighed, thinking how much easier it would have made things if Hari had been here and could be sent to Alibagh instead.
As she was getting ready to go, there was a commotion outside – the unfamiliar sound of a motor roaring up the narrow lane and then the astonishing sight of a car bumping over the grass to the white bungalow, Mon Repos.
‘Oh, Bela, Kamal, look!’ cried Lila. ‘The de Silvas have come from Bombay!’
7
For several hours Hari wandered around the Black Horse, not daring to leave it since this was the only place he had come to know. The villagers had melted away down the many roads that led back to the docks. No one had asked him to come with them, no one had noticed him at all. He was left behind.
Now that he was alone he became aware that he was dreadfully thirsty. He saw a man sitting beside a barrow heaped with coconuts in front of one of the large buildings around the square, and he went towards him, feeling in his pocket for the few coins he had brought with him. ‘How much?’ he asked. Never having bought a coconut before – at home he could climb a tree and bring down a whole bunch whenever he wanted – he had no idea of the price and nearly fainted when the man said, ‘Two rupees.’ The man had a sharp, blackened face and spoke from around a cigarette, but when he saw Hari’s face, he laughed in quite a kind way. ‘What’s the matter? Don’t you know how much these things cost in a city? No, I can see you don’t. Here, I’ll find you a cheaper one,’ and he searched in the pile for a small coconut and cut off the top with one blow of his curved knife and handed it to Hari. While Hari drank, he watched, amused, and said, ‘You look as if you haven’t eaten or drunk all day.’
‘I haven’t,’ Hari admitted, wiping his mouth and reaching for the top of the coconut with which to scoop out the sweet white flesh and eat it. ‘I am hungry and thirsty.’
‘I can see that,’ nodded the coconut man. He had no other customers at that time of day and could chat a little with the youngster. ‘Run away from your village, have you?’
‘I came with the procession,’ Hari said proudly. ‘You saw the procession that was here just now? We came from Alibagh this morning.’
‘Oh? To ask the government for what – food, palaces, jewels?’
Hari tried to explain what their demands were but the coconut seller did not seem to be very interested. Lighting another cigarette, he only said, ‘Ask, ask, ask the government all you like. Do you think the government has ears and can hear? Do you think the government has eyes and can see? I tell you, the government has only a mouth with which it eats – eats our taxes, eats our land, eats the poor. Take my advice and keep clear of the government. Don’t ask it for anything, don’t depend on it for anything. They tell you the government is your father and your mother. I tell you my father and my mother threw me out when I was six years old to go and earn my own living. I don’t need them – I fend for myself – I’m a man and depend on myself. That is the best way to be, boy – free and independent. Don’t say please and don’t say thank you – take what you want. Be a man, be independent.’
Hari listened and nodded. He thought the coconut seller was wise, strong and admirable. He was ready to sit at his feet and learn more but the man did not seem to be interested in teaching Hari: he did not want a pupil or a follower any more than he wanted a father or a mother. He had turned to cut open coconuts for a young man and a woman who came laughing down the steps from the big building and stopped before his barrow, feeling for money in the bags they wore slung from their shoulders. Hari knew he ought to move his rags and his starved face out of the way.
As he moved on down the pavement, walking slowly and carefully to avoid all the filth that was scattered on it in piles and puddles, he heard a voice say, ‘Don’t listen to that Billu. Keep away from him; he is dangerous. By day he uses his knife on coconuts but by night he uses it on –’ and turning around, Hari saw the speaker, a beggar seated on a tattered mat, draw his finger across his throat and stick out a betel-stained tongue to show Hari what he meant. Hari was so startled that the beggar laughed, opening his mouth wide and showing that all of it was stained red with betel juice.
‘Are you surprised? Don’t you know that is how the people of the pavements live? A safe job as a front to fool the police, and a dangerous one behind it with which to make a living? Do you think a man can keep body and soul together by selling coconuts or by begging? I tell you, he can’t. If you want some tips on how to make your way in the city, ask me and I’ll tell you – for a small fee,’ he added, winking and moving to one side of the mat to make room for Hari.
But Hari had no wish to learn such dangerous tricks from anyone and walked on hurriedly, shaking his head. He did not see the beggar laugh and take out a bottle from under his rags and lift it to his mouth to drink. He had not come to the city to be a beggar, crook or murderer. He did not really know what he had come for except to run away from home and find out what the future held for him. Now he was in Bombay at last and he would find out.
He began to feel afraid of this huge square with its dangerous characters lurking in every shadow, as it seemed. Even the empty pedestal began to look ominous, the absence of the emperor’s statue a kind of message for Hari. His fear gave him the courage to turn down a side street and hurry away from it. He saw a long, broad park lined with palm trees and thought he would go and sit on the grass in their shade to rest, watching the footballers and cricketers play, but when he got close, he saw ahead of him, at the end of the road, the bright glitter that he recognized as coming off the sea. He could smell the sea, too, and a powerful whiff of fish.
Suddenly very homesick and longing for something familiar, he forgot about the park and hurried on. When he got to the sea he found that the road curved around the bay in a great swoop. It was the grandest sight Hari had ever seen and he stood staring at the large buildings that lined one side of the road, side by side and taller than trees, and at the sea that lay across the road from them, calm and shining and bright as polished metal. There were no boats and no fishermen here, though, only the traffic pouring down the road and along the sea with a continuous roar.
He walked along between the sea and the buildings till he came to a small sandy beach so crowded with people and stalls of coloured drinks, coconut and food that it was more like a fairground than a beach. In fact it looked as if a fair were on right then – there were balloons held up on bamboo poles, pavement stalls selling flower garlands, plastic toys and magazines, excited children running across the sand to the sea, and people crowding around the stalls and eating strange food that Hari had never seen at home. As he stood on the edge, staring, a car stopped behind him and a large family burst out with cries and shouts of delight – children in bright clothes, women in lovely saris and men who laughed and led them to the stalls to buy snacks and toys.
Seeing them, Hari suddenly remembered that he had in his pocket a piece of paper with the Bombay address of t
he de Silvas who had offered him a job once. The relief of remembering that he had an address in Bombay and knew people who might help him flooded him like a wave from the sea, cool and friendly and refreshing.
Turning to the nearest stall-owner, a man who was selling balls of ice on which he sprinkled colour and essence – rose, banana, orange and lime – before handing it to excitedly clamouring children, Hari asked him if he knew the address on the piece of paper.
‘Oh ho,’ laughed the man, rolling his eyes at him comically from under a small white cap. ‘Very good address you have there, boy. You must be a prince in disguise.’ He held out a bright green ice ball to a child, pocketed some coins and then told Hari, ‘Go straight on up the road. It will take you to the top of Malabar Hill and there you will find your palace, just short of the Hanging Gardens. Perhaps there is a princess waiting for you with a garland,’ he laughed, and winked.
Hari did not like his laughter or his joke and walked off with as much dignity as he could, his face as serious as always but his heart pounding with excitement.
The road swooped uphill as the man had said it would, with great houses crowding either side of it, beyond which he could see the trees and terraced gardens of a park. The city was bigger and grander than anything he had ever imagined, and he could hardly believe that in it there was a house where people lived who knew him.
His hopes did not last very long. It was evening: the sun sank rose-red into the bay, darkness fell upon the city that was built on an island in the sea. The lights came on as he climbed and the whole hill glittered like a great mound of jewels against the sky, quite outshining the stars. Looking back, he could see the road swooping down and around the bay, lined with a double row of electric lights. Was this the famous Queen’s Necklace of which he had heard? He supposed it must be. As he gazed, the neon advertisements above him winked on and off and flared green and blue and orange. His heart beat with excitement and dread.