‘Who knows what he’ll do? We’ve never been able to tell what goes through his head. He says he’s going to come back in two years.’ Pause. ‘Two more years of sending money,’ she said, then quickly tried to dispel the burden of the last few words by her usual dismissive tics.
‘I said to him: stay as long as it takes to finish what you’re doing, you don’t need to think of money … But who listens to me?’ The shift in tonal gear this time was to mock-carping, a time-honoured Bengali way of expressing deep affection.
Then, another shift with: ‘He says he’s going to come back and build me a house. We shall see.’ She said it shyly, almost coyly, with a touch of self-deprecation, as if it was his fault for choosing her, of all people, to be a beneficiary of his generosity. But there was a grain of disbelief in there, too: would she be so lucky to have that come to pass, in reality?
‘I’m going back home day after tomorrow,’ I said.
She turned her face away but not before I saw a dimming on it.
There was a long silence before she said, ‘You’ll come again when?’
‘After a year. Maybe before that. I don’t know. Shall I give you your money now?’ I left money for her, Milly and the driver after every stay at Ma and Baba’s.
She nodded; she had, refreshingly, never been coy about money. I took out two five-hundred-rupee notes and stretched out my hand. She indicated the big tin of puffed rice on top of the fridge and said, ‘Leave it under that, I’ll take it on my way out.’
She came in the next day, my last evening in Bombay, cooked in total silence except to say to me, while I was giving her my usual instructions, ‘You come back home. Nothing doing, all this living far away.’
On her way out, she turned at the threshold to face me, said, ‘Travel safe. Dugga dugga’ and shut the front door behind her.
I call my mother on a blowy, wet November afternoon. We talk about nothing in particular for a while. I tell her about things from my life in London that she will find interesting. I ask her what they had for dinner, something I always do when I call her at this hour, just as they’re about to go to bed. Soup, she says; chicken soup.
‘You’ve taught Renu how to make chicken soup?’ I ask. ‘That’s quite an achievement.’
‘Renu doesn’t work here any more.’
‘What?’
‘I had to let her go.’
I can’t speak; Ma, it seems, isn’t inclined to, either.
‘But why? When?’ I ask.
‘Last month, just before Pujo.’
Contrary to her character, she isn’t volunteering any information.
‘But why?’ I repeat.
‘She was behaving very badly with me.’
Silence. I have to wring everything out of her.
‘What do you mean, behaving badly?’
‘Shouting at me. I’ve been putting up with it for a good while now. Even the minimal dealing that I have with her, telling her what to cook and, sometimes, how to cook something … she managed to be hostile and unpleasant even about that.’
‘God! This is unbelievable.’
‘One Sunday she came in to cook lunch and had some kind of a meltdown, shouting that I had messed up her whole day. Bringing things out of the fridge and setting them down with a clatter, banging the fridge door … it was quite something. I was speechless.’
‘But why?’ I’m a damaged vinyl, the pin stuck on a scratch on the surface.
‘Who knows? Maybe because I asked her to come a little later than usual? I was really taken aback. And you know what her voice is like … Your Baba came out of the room and … and just asked her to leave, said: All right, if this doesn’t suit you, leave – leave right now.’
My chest is hammering.
‘And?’
‘She left. She looked shocked, as if she had been slapped. She hadn’t expected what was coming.’
‘Then?’
‘Then what?’
‘What happened after that?’
‘Nothing. I rang a few days later to ask her to come collect her outstanding salary, she didn’t pick up her phone. I sent a message through Milly … apparently she slammed her door shut on Milly’s face.’
I can tell Ma is uncomfortable talking about this. How is she reading my silences, I wonder? I can spare her. I shouldn’t put her through this. I change the subject with ‘Anyway, what’s happened has happened, no use thinking about it now’ and talk about other things.
But it is she who asks, ‘How’s the book coming along?’
I can’t answer but I must say something, talk. The November late afternoon has darkened and I need to turn the lights on.
III
No one knows where it has come from. Some children discover it against the big burunsh tree on the corner of the track that turns behind Sattu’s house and leads eventually to the paved road going down to the valley.
– Look, a puppy, someone says.
– No, that’s not a dog, it’s too big, look at its face, someone else says.
– Look at its paws, another one.
– It’s shivering, he says. No, it’s too young to walk, it hasn’t learned how to walk yet.
They throw stones at it, sticks and pieces of twig, to see what it will do or if it can run off. It shivers and looks at them, then frantically away, left and right and forward, as if searching for an exit. Its confusion tickles the boys – they laugh and jeer and throw more stones at it. It wobbles, runs a few inches, then stops, runs another few inches, stops again and shivers. The boys laugh and laugh.
They pick it up – will it bite? will it scratch? – and take it to Puran’s father because he will know what the creature is. It trembles and whines and nearly leaks out of the large, shallow bowl of Puran’s enclosed arms.
On the way they see Lakshman returning to the village down the path from Deodham, carrying a load of kindling on his back. The boys have a name, the whole village has a name, for Lakshman and his brother, Ramlal – shyal jyonlya, the fox twins. There is a rumour in the village that their mother, now dead – she died shortly after childbirth – was a witch, or had some kind of unhealthy relations with animals, which is how the brothers had come to resemble pointy-faced foxes.
– What do you have there? Lakshman asks Puran.
– An animal. We don’t know what it is.
– Let me look, let me look.
– It’s a puppy, he says.
– But it has very big claws, a boy says.
Lakshman notices that they are unlike any puppy’s claws that he has ever seen. The nails are huge and curved, like miniature swords, but its face could be a puppy’s. Or even a calf’s, yet it is smaller than a newborn calf. Then it strikes him – could it be a bear cub? He is so surprised that he thinks it out loud.
The boys are thunderstruck. Bhaloo? they keep saying.
– Where did you find it? In the forest? Lakshman asks. – Here, give it to me, he says, setting down the stack of kindling.
The trembling, blinking creature is slightly larger and weightier than a fat dog. The pelt is dark grey and short, hugging the skin close. The snout is white in a line up to the bottom of the forehead. The animal will simply not stop squealing, despite the calming sounds that Lakshman makes.
A dog with a tail like a pennant comes barking and circles Lakshman, its head held up, its barking turning more and more manic. He knows this dog – her name is Jhumru and she belongs to the people who have built the new guesthouse on their plot, separated from their own home by a section of terraced land. They spend the larger part of the year in Morabadi, where they have another house. He orders the dog to stop barking, but the smell of the bear cub is stronger than a human shout. He takes a stick and threatens her but she retreats only half a dozen paces, barking continuously. Then she follows Lakshman, a few steps behind him.
The boys speed off to herald the approach of something different from the ordinary run of their lives. Minutes later, Lakshman reaches the old baanj that pa
sses as the centre of the village; there are about a dozen people congregated there and more keep coming, once the cub is set down. Two other dogs join Jhumru and the chorus of barking becomes maddening. He has to shoo them away several times, but they position themselves outside the circle of people and continue to bark. Opinions, questions, comments fly about.
– Haan, haan, bhaloo hain. I know it, I saw one like this a few years ago.
– Where did it come from? It’s too far up in the hills for these animals.
– Where is its mother? It’s too small … do you think she lost it?
One of the children breaks off a little stick from Lakshman’s bundle of twigs and prods the cub repeatedly. This gives the other boys an idea and they too make for Lakshman’s stack, but he barks and waves them away. The cub mewls for a bit, tries to shift about, then gives up on both.
– Do you think its mother is looking for it? Will she come in the night to get it?
– It sounds like the mewing of a cat. It’s a cat, pretending to be a bear, ha ha ha ha …
– How did it survive the night? How come a panther didn’t get it?
– We saw it near Suraj’s home, just outside it, one of the boys pipes up, hoping this is going to help others answer the big question.
– A bear is a good omen, no? It’s a gift from Golu.
– It must be hungry. Give it something to eat.
No one can spare anything for the animal. Someone at last manages to get hold of a dry chapatti, tear it up into little bits and throw it in front of the cub. It doesn’t react. This is a trigger for one of the boys to start poking it anew with a stick, while indicating the pieces of bread with the reiterated words – Eat up, eat up. The cub remains where it is, trembling, uninterested in the food being offered.
The woman who had asked about its mother now says – It’s too young to eat bread, it doesn’t have teeth, it only drinks its mother’s milk.
– Mash up the roti with water then, someone suggests.
Once again, this gives the children something to do. A glass of water is found, the fragments of the roti brought together on the ground, and the water poured on it. The boy wielding the stick uses it to prod the bits of bread to mix with the water and turn it into pulp. But the earth has already soaked up the water, so his efforts yield only a muddier version of pieces of chapatti. The prodding of the cub and the mantra of ‘Eat up’ begin again.
– You are a fool, someone scolds the boy – the mashing needs to be done in a bowl. How can you do it on the earth? You have now wasted a perfectly good roti.
A woman frees herself from the swelling loose ring of spectators, slaps the boy and drags him out of the circle to lead him home. Ramlochan’s son collects the soiled remnants of the bread pieces and runs off to mash them in the proper way. More observations are made.
– The bear could be a bad omen. A lost young one, with no sign of its mother … this is not good.
The dogs try to nose their way past the human legs into the clearing in the middle. A kick is delivered to the most persistent one; it runs away, yelping.
– What if the cub brings bad luck on our village?
– How can it bring bad luck? Lakshman asks.
Ramlochan’s son comes back and sets down a dented plate in front of the cub. In it is a dark-grey pulp. The cub moves its head away. The boy keeps turning its head to the food, sometimes forcing down its mouth on to the muddy sludge on the plate. The cub lets its snout be held against the plate – it has no option – but it won’t eat.
– Let it go, it’ll eat when it wants, Lakshman says.
Then there is a breakthrough. Ramlochan says – Some qalandar could have left it behind.
– Qalandar? There are no qalandars in these parts.
– Maybe the animal poachers working for them passed through our village and left a stolen cub behind by mistake.
No one can respond with anything to this possibility, but the mention of qalandars sparks off a chain of ideas in Lakshman’s head.
– I could sell him to a qalandar. Where do I find one?
– They don’t live in our part of the country. You’ll have to travel far to find one. Down in the plains, the towns there.
Someone says – But we have seen them pass through our village, with their dancing bears. I don’t remember how long ago. These people are always on the road, that’s how they earn money.
– What are you going to do with the bear until we find a qalandar to take him off your hands?
– Where are you going to keep him? What are you going to feed him?
Lakshman’s bright plan to make money from the bear has put in the shade the middle stage between now and that future: how would he afford the animal’s upkeep when he struggled to feed his wife, Geeta, and his three small children, Sudha, Munni and Ajay, and now his brother’s wife and two children, too, since Ramlal had gone to the plains to seek work on building sites. It was Suraj from the village who had planted that idea in the brothers’ heads; not that any planting was needed, since a handful of men had already left to find jobs elsewhere, either in nearby towns and villages in the hills or much further down in the big cities of the plains – work as housekeeper, or security guard, driver, cook, and if any of those didn’t pan out, there was always a job in construction. So Suraj had said – a job in construction.
– They are always building in the cities. Roads, houses, shops, building work was constant, one after another, it never ran out, never stopped. There was always work to be had, even in the monsoons. Buildings coming up everywhere, in every available space or land, nothing empty for long, the thirst for buildings was unending. So many people, you couldn’t count them, they were beyond numbers, they all had to live somewhere.
– Year-round work? Ramlal and Lakshman had asked in wonder.
– All round the year, year after year. So much money to be made that your begging cloth will tear from its weight.
In one month Ramlal was gone.
That was two years ago. In that time, he hadn’t returned to visit his wife, Radha, and his children, Jeevan and Meena. He had sent money – two hundred and fifty rupees once, five hundred another time and four hundred another, all three times through someone Suraj knew in a neighbouring village on the other side. Just over a thousand rupees in two years – he might not have bothered to move to the cities if that baby’s-piss trickle was all that he had to show for it in two years. And how was Lakshman supposed to feed three additional mouths on five hundred rupees a year?
There are times, especially at nights, when Lakshman’s youngest, two-year-old Ajay, and Ramlal’s youngest, Meena, born two months before Ajay, start up every couple of hours, unable to sleep with hunger, or pain, or whatever bothers them, and the thin, angry wailing, like the rain during the monsoon that does not let up for days and days, becomes a fist that pummels and pummels Lakshman until he, too, is screaming, his lungs and throat white-hot with the will to stop that fist of noise coming down upon him and flattening him to husk. He screams curses and abuse at Ramlal for saddling him with the yoke of two families and wishes a painful death on him.
His children are indifferent at first – no one knows what a bear is. His oldest, Sudha, asks Lakshman if it’s going to become a dog when it grows up. His two other children stare at it for a bit, then get bored – the creature doesn’t seem to be doing anything. Ramlal’s oldest, Jeevan, a boy of four, desultorily throws whatever he can pick up from the ground – bits of straw, leaves, snippets of twigs – at the squealing cub; most of them don’t make it anywhere near.
Lakshman’s wife, Geeta, asks in despair – Where will you keep it? There’s not enough space for us inside.
As if in response, the cub pisses – a brief dribble, over before anyone can exclaim – and from its arse lets out an equally brief squirt, which lands on the floor and runs. The children laugh in scandalised horror.
Geeta says – Put it in a box and keep it outside. We can get a rope tomorrow to tether
it. Without a box, a panther will get it, maybe even a dog.
An empty fruit crate is found. The cub is put inside and three heavy logs placed on it to keep the animal confined. It does not have the necessary strength to push against them from the inside and escape, but Lakshman worries that the logs won’t pose much of a challenge to a big dog or a panther intent on getting to it.
– If we raise it, I can go around the towns here, or even to the cities, and make it dance on the streets and get money. There is a lot to be made in the cities, there are many, many people, more than you can count. They will all pay to be entertained. There is no work here in the monsoons and winters.
Geeta is sceptical – How will Radha and I look after the children and the home? How will we feed them?
– I will send you money, and Ramlal will, too. He stops, hearing the wrong note that he’s struck, and tries again – I will send you money, I will come back in the summer, it’s too hot in the cities then. And at other times as well.
All night he has his ears pricked to catch the sawing, rasping sounds that give away the presence of a panther on the prowl. In the morning the cub is still in its tiny wooden cage, which reeks of excrement.
A month after this, Salim Qalandar arrives; the local veins of news have worked successfully and fast. It’s almost as if he’s sniffed out, like an animal on the hunt, the presence of a bear cub in one of the precarious huts perched on the outer rim of a village in the hills.
– Yes, it’s a bear cub all right.
Salim’s eyes are round with wonder and something else. He has a confident and seasoned way of handling the animal – the way he holds it, lifts it up by the skin of its neck, carries it, stretches it out, all speak of experience and ease. There is a white ruff under the cub’s neck. Lakshman thinks it looks as if the animal is wearing a garland.
– It’s a boy bear, Salim says – just a few months old. Any other time, we would have paid you good money for him.
He cannot stop touching and stroking and playing with the cub, but with a kind of absence of intent or concentration.
A State of Freedom Page 9