“I am, I am. Give me your clothes then, I’m sure you have more,” I replied.
A murmur of disapproval passed through the crowd.
“Hey, hey. Just joking. I’m getting off at the next stop, promise,” I said placatingly.
Hearing this, the conductor leaned out a window and banged hard on the side of the bus. But the driver didn’t react. He’d just built up a head of speed which he wasn’t going to lose till the next scheduled stop.
Now it was my turn to smile and the bus conductor’s to feel stupid.
“Have you no shame? Get off this bus now,” he ordered.
“But how can I? The bus is moving. Have you no pity?”
“Pity-shitty chodo, that’s not my problem. You cannot be in this bus without a ticket, that is all.”
We’d just passed the Lodhi Road Crematorium at this point, and I was hanging onto the railing on the top step when the bus came to a crashing halt, squealing brakes and all. We peered out of the windows to see what had happened, expecting to see a dead man.
And that is exactly what we saw—but not quite as freshly dead as we expected.
A dead man was crossing the street along with an enormous cortege of the living, that’s why the driver had been forced to stop. Inside the bus, everyone’s lips began to move in prayer and fingers clutched at lucky charms hidden under shirts and sari blouses.
I had an idea. The dead were generous people. They didn’t need their clothes.
The bus began to move slowly. I didn’t wait. I leapt off it and joined the marchers. They pretended not to notice me, or perhaps they were so lost in their grief that they really didn’t care about the naked man in their midst. Or perhaps death made them look at such things in a more tolerant, philosophical light.
As soon as I was through the gates, I was quite literally pushed aside by an even larger mass of mourners who had obviously been waiting for the deceased. Must have been an important man, I thought. But he was dead now. Luckily for me, he wasn’t getting an electric cremation, for then I would have lost the clothes. Instead he was being given the full treatment, with priests and incense and oil and wood. I climbed a nearby tree and watched.
Beneath me, the cremation ground was a sea of white. The man’s family, who’d been standing at the entrance greeting everyone, arrived—two sons in their forties, and a sister or wife who took one look at the body on its bed of wood and fainted.
The sea of white parted as the woman was carried away. The pundits began to mumble and the sons, their flabby bodies pale in the smoggy light, began to throw ghee on the pyre. The smell made me hungry and sick at the same time and I wished they’d hurry up. I watched the cloth anxiously. If my calculations were right, while the top cloth would be a goner, the sheet on which the body lay would be all right.
The flames rose high. It struck me suddenly that the dead man and I were similar. We had both been robbed of our clothes while we were defenseless and dreaming. I wondered what would happen if the man came alive after the crowds had left and found his body half-burnt and naked. Would he lie back down and ask for more wood and oil, or would he demand some clothes? I knew what I would do. I would demand clothes and go a.s.a.p. to find my son.
But the man didn’t move a muscle. The smoke thickened and grew bitter and people began to drift away. The pundits finished their work and the family moved to the entrance to say goodbye to the guests. Soon there was only an attendant left, a grizzled old man with coal-black skin who was no doubt paid by the family to make sure the body burnt till the end. Bones, I vaguely remembered, took a long time and a lot of oil and wood. The body would take four or five hours, and then the family would return for a box of ashes that they’d carry to the polluted Yamuna, where they would pay more money for more prayers.
Up in the tree, I shifted uncomfortably, the bark rough against my skin, the mango leaves filled with dust and diesel exhaust, praying that the old watchman would leave to take a pee or have a smoke. But to my surprise, he didn’t. He remained where he was, morosely watching the pyre, the white hairs on his beard and head getting picked out by the flames.
The fire burnt well. The ghee, it seemed, had not been adulterated. I heard the bones crack and a new, truly awful smell filled the air. I began to cough and the old man looked up in surprise. But the leaves of the tree must have been dense and plentiful or his eyes were weak, because he didn’t spot me. I decided to abandon my post and rescue my sheet straight away. What if there were secret caches of oil in the wood that were even now destroying it?
I got down on the ground and armed myself with a piece of wood from the pyre. Then I crept around the old man and hit him on the back of his head. He turned just as I swung, perhaps his hearing was especially sharp or else it was pure coincidence, and the branch smashed into his face, breaking his nose. He let out a cry and then fell slowly, like in a movie. I dropped the branch and dashed around to the other side of the pyre, scrambling up the unburnt logs even though the heat was something terrible.
Through the smoke and my tears I saw the edge of a sheet gleaming whitely just above my left hand. One more foothold, and I had the sheet grasped firmly and pulled.
I hadn’t thought it out at all though. I could have saved myself the trouble by simply stealing the clothes of the unconscious guard. Instead I burnt my hands and feet and almost got myself killed. When I used a burning branch to free the sheet, the body came along with it. We both tumbled to the ground, the body’s half-burnt face on top of me. I don’t know how but his eyes were open and staring into mine expressionlessly.
I threw the body off me—it was unbelievably heavy—and grabbed the sheet on which it had lain. The sheet still smelled sweet like rose water, and I wrapped it around my waist like a lungi, taking care to conceal the burnt bits. Then I ran, I ran as fast as I could out of that place of death.
I made it to the Lodhi Hotel compound on the other side of the road. Of course, there was no Lodhi Hotel left. It had been bought and torn down, Russian kitsch to be replaced by modern kitsch. Back in the old days the hotel had belonged to the government and was filled with pretty Russian hookers. I had liked it then—the idea of a government building filled with hookers always managed to stir my desire. Now it was a construction site.
At first no one bothered me. I wandered amongst the screens and piles of rubble, drinking in the sweet music of many chisels hitting stone. Then I heard a voice behind me. “Hey, what do you want? This is private property,” it barked. I ignored the bark. That’s what you do, ignore dogs that bark. I had a lot of experience with dogs.
The music of the chisels stopped. Everyone was looking at me.
“This is no dharamshala, this is a hotel. You will get no money or food here. Get going!” the guard shouted, banging his stick. I noticed that his uniform was black and red and he looked out of place in that world of sandstone and cool white marble.
“You get going,” I said calmly, “you don’t belong here.”
The man raised his stick and would have struck me but I was saved by the appearance of a pretty blond creature in a kurta and hippie skirt. “Stop, stop!” she called.
The guard immediately became deferential.
“What does this man want?” the woman asked.
“I don’t know, madam,” he replied dubiously. “But don’t worry, I’ll chase him away. He’s probably a thief.”
“I am no thief.” I said scornfully, “I was just looking.”
She turned to me, and to my surprise she actually looked at my body and my face. And I felt them respond to her.
“Work, I want work,” I said in English.
She seemed taken aback. Her eyes narrowed in suspicion. She was no fool. She had seen the junkies in the park by the Nizamuddin Bridge underpass. She looked at my lungi. “But you have no clothes,” she muttered.
“They were stolen,” I replied.
She peered at me sharply, suspicion hardening into conviction. “Then go get some,” she said coldly, “an
d we’ll consider you.” The wall that all white women had inside them had gone up. It felt harder than stone.
The guard wasn’t following any of this, but he understood, like all good guard dogs did, her change of tone. Grabbing me by the shoulder, he hustled me out. At the gate, maybe because he had a sense of humor or else because he was genuinely sorry for me, he picked up a sheet of pink plastic and handed it to me. “Here, you can make this into a shirt,” he said.
I clutched the plastic to my chest, tears blurring my vision. Once outside, I found I was right by ground zero, the place it had all begun. But this time I decided not to go back into the park. Instead I walked along Lodhi Road, past the church, past HUDCO where Sharmila sat each day on the twelfth floor, giving misguided middle-class couples extremely expensive housing loans, past the gas pump that sold Norwegian smoked salmon and pork chops, past the Islamic cultural center and the Ramakrishna Mission, past Tibet House and the Habitat Center—all the landmarks of Delhi’s cultural life.
I came at last to Lodhi Gardens. The sun was almost gone but inside the gardens the privileged continued their leisurely parade—ayahs with children, bored overweight mothers, joggers, sedate couples, bureaucrats, cell phone–wielding politicians, upwardly mobile businessmen. No one gave me a second glance as I slipped into the garden. They were all too interested in watching each other. The ministers and bureaucrats pretended not to see anyone. The others watched the ministers and bureaucrats. I walked amongst them till I came to a hexagonal tomb encircled by palm trees and slipped inside. There I would wait for darkness to fall, thinking about my old life and what a sad mess I’d made of it. Footsteps interrupted my thoughts. Voices, giggles.
I looked around desperately for somewhere to hide
The only place I could see was between the two tombstones in the middle of the room. I had barely squeezed myself in there when the lovers arrived. She had a terrible shrill sort of giggle which was nasal and unmusical. His voice was okay.
“Ao na,” he was saying.
Giggle, giggle. “Na, na.”
“Ao na.”
“Na, na.”
“What are you scared of? Do you think your mother will jump out from behind a pillar?”
Giggle, giggle again. “Na, na darling. I was just—” She stopped.
“Just what?”
“Thinking.”
“Let me do the thinking for both of us, okay?”
“Okay, darling.”
Naturally, thinking is the last thing a man does when he is with a woman he desires. Women are different. They can think anytime because nothing rears up between their legs to block the forward march of their brains.
Footsteps. Giggle, giggle, silence. I raised my head carefully. Long hair, plastic heels, socks with sandals. A silly pink woolen hat with bunny rabbits and a pom-pom dangling from the top. Take it off, I begged the man silently, she’ll be much prettier without it. And sure enough, as I watched, the man lifted his hand and swept the hat off. But that was only the beginning. Before my astonished eyes, the coat came off too, and the shoes. And then the rest. When they were down to their underwear, the clothes in a heap beneath them, the woman made a feeble protest which was just as soon disregarded. Then I was watching the man’s naked butt go up and down, up and down, between her naked knees, and I swear to you they both seemed far more naked with their underwear around their ankles than I had seemed with nothing on.
Afterwards, she cried a little and he held her in his arms looking bored. Then, while she finished dressing, he went outside to smoke a cigarette.
Night fell and the tomb went silent. Just as I was about to get up and go look for food, another couple arrived. They were quicker than the first, more experienced. They didn’t even bother to take off their clothes. After they left another pair entered. This time they were both men. I didn’t look. When they were finished, I dashed to one of the open arches and leapt out. All that copulation was beginning to stress me out.
Now, a different Lodhi Gardens met my eyes. Gone were the self-important bureaucrats, the children, the ayahs, the sedate lovers, the exercise freaks, and the tourists. In their place, under each halogen lamp, there stood a couple in a perfect Khajuraho pose.
Soon I began to feel really cold and a little uneasy. There were only men left, many of them alone, and they seemed to know I was wearing nothing underneath. One approached, expensively dressed.
I had an idea and let him follow me into the Mughal sentry tower beside the rose garden. When he arrived, I told him abruptly to take off his clothes. “How much?” he asked first.
“Free if you take off all your clothes first,” I replied.
“You want to see my jewels then?” he asked.
I didn’t know what he meant, so I nodded.
He began to take off his clothes.
I didn’t move a muscle until they were in a pile on the floor and he was naked before me. Then I took off my dead man’s sheet, threw it over his head, kicked him in the groin a few times, and stole his clothes.
Decently clothed once more, I said goodbye to my days of consulting and ventured into the hospitality industry. Lodhi Gardens’ lovers paid me to ensure an uninterrupted session in a tomb. I provided a bed, water, and talcum powder for after, and I even charged those who were waiting to watch.
After all, they were one big family of lovers, weren’t they? And watching others gave them ideas. So everyone was happy.
As for me, I invested in the stock market, stopped taking drugs, and grew rich. My son and wife eventually moved back in with me and we all lived happily ever after in a brand-new flat on the right side of the Yamuna.
And every once in a while, when I find myself on the Japanese Bridge to NOIDA, I think about the man whose clothes I stole. And I wonder whether he ever realized the gift I’d given him or whether he simply wrapped the dead man’s sheet around him, crawled back into his car, and drove home to his empty life.
LAST IN, FIRST OUT
BY IRWIN ALLAN SEALY
Delhi Ridge
Awise man would have gone home when he heard the tube light smash, but my wife calls me an unwise man and I must be, since I smoke as well as drive an autorickshaw on Delhi roads, and I butted in.
For that matter, a wise man would have finished his BCom and gone into marketing, but I thought: No office for me, no boss for Baba Ganoush. And this looked like the life back then, not that I’m saying it isn’t still, some days, maybe even many days. But autorickshawry has its own traps and it’s always tempting to get that last fare, just one more, and that’s the one that takes you out of your way—when it doesn’t land you in trouble.
God knows there’s trouble enough by day on Delhi roads. And three wheels aren’t the steadiest undercarriage when the going gets rough. Better than two is all you can say, and probably not all the time either. You see some sights on the road that you’d like to forget, and when it comes to the crunch, the guy with the least steel is the loser. I’ve seen some two-wheeler accidents where the helmet didn’t help much more than the severed head. Bastard Blue Line buses! people screech, me too, but might is right in the jungle.
Keep well in, I tell my passengers, and they do. (As if it would make a whole lot of difference when the bus rams you.) But a wraparound shield is better than nothing—even if the dents are starting to join up on my Bhavra. The Bee is what I named her in the good old black-and-yellow days before this greenie shift.
You could say I own the buzzer. I’ve paid back most of the deposit on her to the Punjab National Bank, and I can usually go home by 9, maybe 10. Mornings I start early with schoolkids, twelve monsters packed in with a little removable wooden bench, schoolbags outside. And I don’t always work late. I’ve saved a bit of money in term deposits at the PNB. If I overdraw on the current account, they automatically take it out of the next deposit: last in, first out.
Most days I wear a clean white polyester safari to work. Impractical, I know, and the wife never fails to remind me, though
secretly she likes me in it. No pen in my pocket, no comb either. Good Agra sandals, size eleven, and I don’t tuck one foot under me as I drive. It’s hard enough having to double over just to get into the driver’s seat. No holy pictures along the top of the windscreen, just the Shah Rukh poster at the back on the one side and Deepika on the other. I have noticed men sit right up against my life-size Deepika, the shot in the black negligee that got everyone going. Women cozy up to the King.
Anyway, this night I was cruising along the busy Mall Road in Civil Lines looking for a last fare when something about the peace of University Road pulled me in toward the Ridge. I left the rat race behind and sailed along past those sedate college gates in top gear, engine purring. All the walls have gotten higher since I was a student—maybe that’s saying something, if only that I haven’t gotten any shorter. I switched off the stereo.
I was one of the first to install a system back in the twentieth century when the vehicle was new. There was always a Sufifat-boy tape rolling to drown out the noise of the day. Nights nowadays you want to listen to the silence, when you can.
Directly opposite the main gate of Delhi University, where the road goes straight up to Flagstaff House, the hill stretch has been closed to traffic and an autorickshaw stand has sprung up at the barrier. A handful of peanut vendors and ice-cream carts congregate there during the day. At night, of course, it’s deserted, and so it was this night, but sometimes you can pick up a late fare. I did a U-turn and drew up beside the gate. Ten or fifteen minutes under the entrance lights might be well spent, I thought. People don’t like to walk along the Ridge.
The Delhi Ridge is a wilderness of rocks and thorn trees, nature’s last stand in this gray city, the nearest thing we have to a forest. A hundred years ago they planted this barren upland with a Mexican tree that ran amok. Up along the crest are paved paths the municipality has laid in an attempt to tame the manmade jungle. Monkeys use the watershed as a safe base for raids down either side; peacocks honk at first light and then retire, leaving the field to a treepie with a harsh call—half heckle, half jeer. Morning walkers do their laughter therapy up there, and power joggers go by in pairs, tugging at the elastic bands of their tracksuit cuffs to consult expensive watches. But a careless jogger could ruin a pair of Nikes on the broken glass of last night’s rumfest, if he’s lucky. If he’s unlucky, say he was working late, there’s a higher price he could pay among the syringes and condoms and gutka sachets that lie strewn in the red-brick dust. Even by day you’d jump if someone came up behind you on those paths. You don’t go there after dark unless you have a minder. Or unless you are the minder.
Delhi Noir Page 5