The Cripple and His Talismans

by Anosh Irani

  I position myself under the arm just like Baba has. It is slender, not bone-thin, and has hair only on the forearm. The wrist and bicep are clean. I feel very uneasy. It has a face whose name I cannot remember and I wonder if I should be calling out to it.

  “Any idea?” he asks.

  “No.”

  “Even after noticing its behaviour?”

  “But it does nothing. It just hangs there.”

  “Exactly. It is your arm. The one you lost.”

  “What?”

  “All its life it has been good for nothing. So I took it.”

  “You took it?”

  “In one clean cut.”

  “That’s a lie. I can prove it.”

  “The photograph they showed you in hospital was not of your arm.”

  “How do you know about the photograph?”

  “I took it.”

  I look at the arm that hangs in the middle of the room. There is no burn mark on it. Baba walks to the arm and pulls it down from the hook. He takes it out of its plastic sheet. It is coated with the oily substance for preservation. The hair on the forearm sticks to the skin. This cannot be my arm. There is no burn mark on it. Baba places his thumb over the bicep and rubs vigorously. As the oil starts to come off, a mark appears like the winning number in a lottery ticket. When it is fully formed, he stops rubbing and points it out to me.

  “Is this what you’re looking for?” he asks.

  “Yes,” I say.

  “How did you get this mark?”

  “I cut myself when I was little,” I say. “On purpose.”

  I reach out to touch my arm. But Baba puts it back in the plastic sheet and hangs it from the hook once more.

  “The only way you recognize your own arm is through a self-inflicted wound,” he snarls. “That should tell you something.”

  “What right did you have to take my arm?”

  “You asked me to.”

  “I gave you permission to cut off my own arm?”

  “To cut off your past.”

  I know what I must do. I will not buy back my arm. And nor do I wish to renounce the world and become a saint, or suffer silently like some poor village girl who views her sad reflection in a river. But I do want to go out with dignity.

  “I don’t want my arm back,” I say. “Destroy it.”

  “What?”

  “Burn it, cut it into small pieces, feed it to vultures. I don’t want it.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “That arm is my past. If you attach it, you are giving me back my past and I may return to its ways.”

  “Your arm may be lost, but you have begun to regain its wisdom.”

  “Then I must leave now. Before I change my mind.”

  “My dear cripple, you will never be able to leave.”

  “What?”

  “You will work as my apprentice. When I die, this vast empire of limbs will be yours. You will carry on my work.”

  “You must be mad!”

  “I thought you wanted to repent.”

  “I do.”

  “Then you must help others by ridding them of their rotten, misguided limbs.”

  “But we must end suffering, not add it.”

  “The world can be changed not by ending suffering, but by a more judicious distribution of it.”

  I look at myself and realize that he is absolutely right.

  I will make a fine apprentice. Like I did with Goonda, I will spot sinners from a mile, for in their eyes I will see mine. Through their useless limbs, I will detect the familiarity of a lost, misguided brother. I will hunt them down. But the cutting I will leave to the master tailor.

  “I accept the position,” I say.

  “But you are still not ready,” he replies. “Bring yourself onto the same side as me.”

  “Baba, I thought I did.”

  “Take a look at your arm again.”

  “What did I miss?”

  “It’s not what you miss. It’s what your arm misses.”

  It misses being with the other one. Andha and Daru had given me the answer, but I was too afraid to take it.

  So I extend my right arm.

  “What are you doing?” Baba asks.

  “I must give up this arm as well,” I say. “Take it.”

  “You want me to cut the other one off?”

  “Donate it to someone who deserves it more.”

  “You have made me proud, my cripple.”

  I lie down on the floor, directly under the arm that hangs.

  Baba towers above me. As I look at his beard, I realize that each hair holds the wisdom of the ages. He resembles the prophets of old, strict and unforgiving at first, but turning more and more human as time goes by. The blade of a butcher’s knife gleams in his hand.

  I close my eyes and wait.

  Suddenly a strong wind starts to blow.

  It is Malaika. She flies toward me in a golden sari that spans the entire sky. The wind blows her long black hair as she lands. She sits besides me and takes my head in her lap. Then she touches my face and looks down at me as if I am her only child. I wish I were paralyzed in this position for life. I beg her to take me with her. She opens her mouth and speaks in gold — of fire, and rain, and wind, and of all that is far away and that I must cross, streets and streets, deserts and deserts, before I get to her. Then she places my head back on the ground and leaves. The sky follows her.

  I cry out to her: Wait until I come. And don’t even look at another man.

  She turns my way one last time and whispers: Tonight when the stars come out, I will spray them with silver and then go blind.

  EPILOGUE

  This city is a widow. It is always mourning a loss.

  Songs pour from its walls, water taps, roofs and chimneys to blanket our heads and faces like a slippery veil.

  A song is a treacherous thing. It lifts your soul to a height and then watches it descend. I have heard the song of this city. It is over now as I bend over a small shrub in the dark. It is unusually cold, and everything is quiet. I am in a sad place.

  A little boy walks toward me. I try to remain calm, but the closer he gets, the more I sink to the earth.

  “I saw you from a distance,” says the boy. “I had to come.”

  He is made only of light. This boy is pure light.

  “Can I help you?” he asks.

  “Help. Why, I know what that is,” I answer.

  “Do you need it?”

  “Yes,” I say.

  He puts his arms around me. I stand extremely still.

  “Look at you,” he says. “You are still entangled in your own embrace.”

  I look at myself. I do not have any arms to entangle myself in.

  “Put your arms around me,” he says. “Even if you have none.”

  I lean against his warm body. I close my eyes and send myself outward, without shame, until I know I am embracing him. I feel so much love that I might burst if this continues. He senses this and breaks away from me.

  “Do you know I can fly?” he asks.

  I remain quiet. I do not wish to dispute light.

  “What am I thinking of right now?”

  “Of flying?”

  “Of flying, of tigers, of flying tigers.”

  I have heard these words before, a very long time ago. I remember seeing a warm, gold light above my head. I think back, very far back, to when I was at this same spot. As I look at this boy, I know what his next words will be. But I still wait for him to speak them.

  “This place,” he says. “It is very strange. There is magic, poverty, thievery, music, pollution, dancing, murder and lust.”

  “Yes,” I say. “But this time there will also be prayer.”

  “What is this place called?” he asks.

  “Bombay,” I say.

  “There is no other like it,” he says.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  First of all, I am grateful to God, the Bhavnagris (especially Khorshed Aunty), my par
ents and Shiamak. I would like to thank George McWhirter for his guidance and encouragement throughout the writing of this book; my editor, Lynn Henry, for making suggestions with insight and thoughtfulness; and my agent, Denise Bukowski, for believing in my writing. There are also many of you who have helped me in ways too innumerable to list. I thank you all.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ANOSH IRANI is the author of the acclaimed novels The Song of Kahunsha, a finalist for Canada Reads and the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, and Dahanu Road. His play Bombay Black won four Dora Mavor Moore Awards, and was nominated for the 2007 Governor General’s Award for The Bombay Plays: The Matka King and Bombay Black. Irani’s most recent play, My Granny the Goldfish, premiered in 2010.

  A READING GROUP GUIDE

  EXTENDED SYNOPSIS

  “There is an unwritten rule, or, if it is writ, it lies sculpted on God’s arm. Once your journey begins, you cannot end it. You can propel yourself off track, skid in different mud, but it will only make your journey that much longer. There is another rule, that of widows and mad dogs. It lies under their beds. God has never read it for he does not visit their homes. I will find out which rule holds true.”

  —from The Cripple and His Talismans

  An unnamed narrator wakes in a Bombay hospital to discover that he is missing his left arm. How it was lost he cannot recall, but he is now wrecked, a pariah to the upper-crust society to which he once belonged. He moves away from his white marble apartment to a dark and squalid cockroach-infested flat and soon encounters Gura the floating beggar, who lives under the egg-seller’s cart and with whom he feels a stronger kinship than he ever did with his wealthy, miserable parents. Gura advises the narrator that to find out the story of his arm, he must first locate the In-charge, a beedi vendor who referees lepers in grotesque fighting matches. The In-charge is one of many bizarre guides along the narrator’s quest, all directing him to the notorious avenger Baba Rakhu, whose dungeon is stocked with hanging limbs, a “dealer of arms” in the most shocking sense.

  Carrying a leper’s dismembered finger, donated as a weird compass for his journey, the narrator encounters a dead woman selling rainbows. Lighting a thousand oil lamps to burn for the duration of his travels, she warns him that a sworn enemy will try to end his journey before it is over. Given the narrator’s antisocial past, there are any number of candidates. Perhaps it is Viren, a school mate whom the narrator abused despicably. Or will it be Horasi, the eunuch he smokes hookah with, and whom he has betrayed in a hallucinatory vision/memory? And then there is Malaika, the prostitute with whom he is engaged in a perpetual tussle of love and hate …

  Joining literature’s pantheon of anti-heroes, our protagonist may be Bombay’s answer to Roskolnikov or Humbert, Gollum, Gregor Samsa or Grendel, the mad narrator of Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart, or Burrough’s Bill Lee. And yet he remains wholly distinct. For while he can be a frustrating mess of opposites, capable of cruelty and compassion, recklessness and regret, madness and acuity, he is also earnestly, heart-rendingly, in search of redemption.

  With The Cripple and His Talismans, Anosh Irani makes his powerful debut as an up-and-coming star in the absurdist literary tradition. At the centre of his novel’s darkly comic narrative lurks a powerfully charged and deeply perceptive moral outrage, illuminated by hope.

  ANOSH IRANI: EXTENDED BIO

  ANOSH IRANI was born and raised in Bombay, India. He moved to Vancouver in 1998, and received his Masters in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia in 2004.

  First published in 2004, The Cripple and His Talismans was Irani’s first novel, earning him critical acclaim and a spot on Quill and Quire’s “writers to watch” list. The novel has also been published in the United States, Germany and China.

  Irani’s second novel, The Song of Kahunsha, was published in 2006. It is a tale of children in Bombay struggling for survival amidst the violence of the 1993 racial riots. It became a Canadian and Italian bestseller, and was a 2007 CBC Radio “Canada Reads” selection. His 2010 novel, Dahanu Road, is an epic love story about three generations of the Irani clan: Zoroastrians who fled from persecution in Iran to Bombay.

  Irani is also an award-winning playwright. His first full-length play, The Matka King, premiered in Vancouver in 2003. His 2006 play Bombay Black won four Dora Mavor Moore Awards including Outstanding New Play. He was a 2007 Governor General’s Award nominee for Drama for The Bombay Plays. His most recent play is My Granny the Goldfish.

  Irani divides his time between Bombay and Vancouver.

  Irani says of his birthplace: “In the Commedia dell’arte, there was a tradition of sending clowns on stage during a play whenever the audience was bored. They performed physical comedy sketches called lazzi which had no real connection to the actual story of the play. At times, Bombay’s like that. It’ll be a normal day, with eggs and traffic, that sort of thing, and then suddenly, out of nowhere, something absurd will happen.”

  READING CLUB QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

  Discuss the unreliability of the unnamed narrator. Does he have any moments of lucidity? Can you ever trust what he says? Why do you think Irani chose to keep him nameless?

  “There is an unwritten rule, or, if it is writ, it lies sculpted on God’s arm. Once your journey begins, you cannot end it. You can propel yourself off track, skid in different mud, but it will only make your journey that much longer.” (this page) What do you think the narrator is saying here? Read what he says next, about widows and mad dogs. What does he mean? What do these words indicate about his state of mind?

  Discuss the many pairings of opposites in the novel (for example, light/dark; left/right; good/evil; rich/poor). What effect do they have?

  What is the meaning of the narrator’s encounter with the woman who sells rainbows?

  This novel is structured as a classic quest narrative. What is the unnamed narrator really in search of? Does he achieve his quest?

  Irani has said in an interview, “There are certain stories that simply cannot be told in a realistic manner. They need an element of the absurd, the illogical, to arrive at a deeper understanding.” What do you think of this statement, in the context of this book? Does Irani achieve this goal? Can you think of other ways in which humans use allegory and symbolism to engage with truth?

  What do you think is the deeper meaning of the story of Gardulla, the giant who lives underwater?

  What does the narrator learn when he smokes the hookah with the eunuch Horasi?

  What do you think is the root cause of the narrator’s troubles?

  Discuss the impact of the dark humour throughout the book. What does it contribute to the novel? What, for you, was the funniest part?

  Hieronymous Bosch was a Flemish painter known for his bizarre depictions of paradise and hell. Why do you think Irani chose this as Viren’s middle name? Try looking up Bosch’s most famous work, The Garden of Earthly Delights. Does it remind you of any passages in the novel?

  Discuss the prologue and the epilogue, considered together. How has the narrator’s quest impacted the world in the epilogue? What do these allegories mean?

  Near the end of the book, Baba Rakhu says, “The world can be changed not by ending suffering, but by a more judicious distribution of it.” (this page) What do you think of this philosophy?

  Literature throughout history has featured flawed heroes. Did you ever find yourself rooting for the narrator, despite his despicable acts? Why/why not? Do you think literature allows for a heightened capacity to empathize with someone who does terrible things, as opposed to real life?

  AUTHOR Q & A

  The Cripple is set in Bombay, the city of your birth, yet you wrote it while living in Vancouver, your new home. Did the relocation help you to write about Bombay?

  I’ve said in interviews before that Bombay is a cross between a nightingale and a vulture — beauty and death. It inspires and haunts at the same time. When I moved to Vancouver, the impulse to write was driven by this strange
mix that Bombay offers. The distance from Bombay, in terms of both time and physical space, certainly gave me perspective and the room to invent. If India is the catalyst, Canada is the canvas.

  This novel is filled with vivid, extraordinary characters. As the author, do you have a favourite? Who was most fun to write?

  The Cripple. He’s psychologically disturbed, and yet has a delicious sense of humour. And when he meets Baba Rakhu, the hacker of arms and legs, he meets his nemesis, someone who has rejected society’s moral code and created his own. The interaction between the two, as it emerged, was fascinating for me. Are the allegories in The Cripple — for example, the genesis story of the flying boy and the tree, or the underwater giant — taken from mythology, or did you invent them? Have you always been interested in mythology?

  They’re all inventions. The underwater giant, for instance, was a story I had told my class when I was in grade 3 or 4. I still remember that day vividly. The teacher asked if someone would like to tell a story, and I just got up from my chair, went to the head of the class and started talking about a giant who lived underwater, whose only wish was to see the sun. But he was not allowed to emerge from that river. I can’t remember why.

  You are an accomplished playwright, in addition to being a novelist. How are the literary forms different for the writer?

  When I’m writing a play, I always think of an audience. Even if it’s not through direct address, I’m aware that the characters are on a stage and people are watching. When I’m working on a novel, I never think of the reader. At least not in the early drafts. When I am closer to a final draft, I think of the reader, but only in terms of how clear the story is to him or her. What are some of your favourite books?