Animal’s People

by Indra Sinha

  Out of the forgotten past comes a voice. “Ouf! Baap re! Don’t point that thing at me.” It’s Farouq, staring goggle-eyed at my kakadus.

  Brother, this nasha leaves no room for embarrassment. “You’re just jealous,” I say, convulsed with giggles. “You’d die for one like mine.”

  “How should I be jealous of someone who’s never had a girl?”

  “Course I have.” My voice sounds like it’s arriving from a far off country.

  “Kampani-style lie,” says he, meaning that an untruth endlessly repeated does not become true. After a time, which may have been long or short, there being no way of knowing, he asks, “So which house do you prefer?”

  “House?” In this nasha, each word buzzes with a hundred meanings.

  “That kind.” Each meaning has a hundred nuances. “Laxmi Talkies.”

  “Ah!” He means les sordides maisons de passe of which there are quite a few near that cinema.

  “You’ve never been. You lying, fucking toerag,” says Farouq. “Come on, let’s go there. To Laxmi Talkies. Right now. We’ll get you laid by some sultry bitch with tits like jars of honey.”

  “You wouldn’t be talking like this if Zafar was here.”

  “Well Zafar isn’t here,” says Farouq. “Come on, I’ll pay for you.”

  “Why?”

  “Fun of it. Come on, this is your big chance to do that.”

  “Can do that any time.”

  “Kampani-style lie.” He laughs. “Come on. Your first time. You’re feeling good. Let’s go.”

  “What will you get from it?”

  “Pleasure of making a friend happy.” Then he announces that this is the grand surprise he’s been planning all along. Tonight, this very night, I am to get my heart’s desire, I will get laid.

  After this things are a bit hazy. At some point Farouq and I go on a long bicycle trek through the chunter-munter of Holi, the jets of coloured water and powder squalls. Him pedalling me balancing on the carrier, we circle the walls of the old city, we dart back and forth through the Pir Gate, on which is written the message that Abdul Saliq shouts, telling people with dirty souls to fuck off and die. We drink chai at the RTI shop and watch the world go by.

  It’s evening, people are out in crowds, on the fruit barrows and cloth stalls bright lamps are burning. The bazaar is aswim with lights and colours and half overheard scraps of conversation which, put together, add up to revelations of great truths. But the real truth is that the nasha has deepened. This nasha is not drunkenness, it opens things up, shows their inner natures. Just by looking at people walking by I know their souls. Here’s one whose face is a history of selfish acts, money he has gorged, and squeezed lives, no mercy or pity is here, but a trap-jowled self-righteousness which is the way the wicked cloak their crimes. Here’s a woman who drowns men in her eyes, and when she looks in the mirror they’re all still there, looking out at her. This walking ditch believes no one loves him, so he in turn neglects the woman who droops at his side. And who’s this tusked swaggerer, sneering lordly down at me over his belly’s swell, fuck him, his dick’s no bigger than a rotten carrot. Kind faces there are too, in the crowd, but so many have that look common among Khaufpuris, tiredness, sickness, futility, their faces drift and dissolve like pools of cloud. Into view floats a girl whose hair falls across one eye, the other delicious as a tray of sweets. “Wah wah,” comes the voice of my forgotten companion, “her I wouldn’t mind.” I look round in amazement. What spoke?

  Farouq is sitting nearby with a leer the size of Pir Gate smeared over his face. Examining his insides I find something I don’t expect, it’s fear. What? My playful tormentor, afraid? My usual hatred for Farouq is replaced by a tender contempt. What a cunt. Exposed by his own bhang-drinking bravado. We begin playing a dirty game of eyeing up and appraising every woman who comes near, regardless of age or respectability. A waddling matron who must use at least two saris to gird her massive hips? “No way, yaar.”

  Demure housewife with small child? “She’ll do.”

  So it goes on. “No good.” “Definitely.” “Nothing doing.”

  I sort of recall Farouq pressing into my hand another bhangy glass, plus drinking as if all the thirst in the world’s in my mouth. I spit in the mother’s milk of time, which, I suppose, passes. How can you tell?

  Hearing a knocking in my brain I open a door that leads into a room in which is a long table of dark wood polished like glass. On this the Khã’s jar stands balanced on its own upside-down reflection.

  “I’ve been waiting for a good moment,” says he, “to remind you of your promise to us. Ladies and gentlemen, say hello to our good friend Animal.”

  Further along the table are other jars in which are small forms floating in fluid, I can’t make out their features.

  “Evening, evening,” they chorus, in little voices that sound like bells.

  “Animal, meet the other directors of the board.”

  “Board of what?” The children in the flasks all have terrible injuries. One has a single huge staring eye in the middle of the forehead, another has three arms, a third lacks nose and mouth.

  “The Kampani of course,” says my friend, as if I’m a fool to ask.

  Well, this is shocking news. “So you are the evil-minded, greedy—”

  “No, you idiot,” cries my two-headed mate. “Everyone on this earth has in their body a share of the Kampani’s poisons. But of all the Kampani’s victims, we are the youngest. We unborn paid the highest price. Never mind dying, we never even got a fucking shot at life. This is why, Animal miyañ, we are the Board of Directors of the poisonwallah shares.”

  I am thinking that this is a very strange turn of events which nobody could have predicted and how life is stranger than stories and these little creatures in their round long-necked flasks, even they have found some purpose in the web of things.

  “Not only have we never lived, but so long as we are stuck in this situation, we will never die. You see our problem. After some time we realised that the Kampani also never dies, so we formed the Board.”

  “And what is your work, exactly?”

  “To undo everything the Kampani does. Instead of breaking ground for new factories to grow grass and trees over the old ones, instead of inventing new poisons, to make medicines to heal the hurts done by those poisons, to remove them from the earth and water and air…”

  At this I start laughing. I say, “You are fooling yourselves if you think you can ever change the Kampani. It is too big and powerful, it cannot die, it will go on for all eternity.”

  In the jars some transformation is taking place. Around the small forms of these youngest of the Kampani’s victims the soft light of moons and stars begins to shine and symbols of justice appear. As I watch they grow tall and change into shining beings of such terrifying beauty that I want to fall on my face for surely they must be angels.

  “Release us,” says my friend, “and then Animal, you may rest your troubled mind, for even eternity does not last forever.”

  Back to this life in a small room, sunlight creeping under my eyelids. I’m lying on a narrow cot. Curled to me is a girl, naked as the day she emptied from her mother’s womb. The dark skin of her back and arse is a shocking sight, it appears to be split, as if she’s been whipped, or some beast has raked her with its claws, but then I see it’s thick streaks of colour. Her body bears amazing markings, stripes of orange hug the curves of her ribs. Who is she? I’ve no idea. Checking myself reveals more mysteries. First of all, I too am naked. Stained I’m with the colours of Holi, my kakadus are gone, plus my lund-of-lunds, lying thick and floppy between me and the girl, is fully covered with bright powder-blue dots. What the hell has been going on?

  Failing to remember, I crawl to the window. Outside, dawn is breaking over Khaufpur. It’s a morning of bright, cool air. The tops of the houses are just catching the sun and in the distance pigeons are circling the minarets of the Taj-ul-masjid. At the corner of the lane below, I c
an make out a sign,

  L

  A

  X

  M

  I

  T

  A

  L

  K

  I

  E

  S

  My god, so Farouq kept his word. It’s a bordello.

  “So,” says a sleepy voice. “His lordship is awake.”

  The girl’s eyes are open. Slanting they’re in a face daubed with green leaf shapes, looks like she’s peering through a jungle.

  “Say good morning, Animal. How is your head? Remember last night?”

  Full of consternation, I’m. Often I’ve thought of coming to such places, but never dared. The girl’s staring at me.

  “How do you know my name?”

  “Pretending you don’t know me? Ogled often enough, you’ve.”

  So then it comes to me that this is Anjali, the friendly girl who used to tease me in my street days. Hard it’s to recognise her under all the colours’ve changed the way she looks, completely different she’s.

  “What? Lost your memory? You don’t remember coming in shouting to make way for the lord of beasts, you’d show us something we’d never seen before?”

  “No.”

  “You’d have every girl in the house. You do remember saying that, after your friend left?”

  “Where’s my friend? You say he left?” The two of us are naked, covered in colour, this is a very bizarre situation.

  “Right after he dropped you off. Don’t blame him. I’ve never seen anyone as out of it as you were. Can you remember what you were wearing?”

  Ah, it’s coming back to me now, that deep nasha, the world breaking up into points of light connected by coloured shapes, in the alley of tinsmiths that winds down from the Pir Gate, I am with Farouq. Despite the fact that it’s night and Holi night too, the smiths are doing their stuff, working the metal, pouring it into their moulds white hot flaring so bright it hurts the eye. Farouq for some reason is wearing shades and asks if I would like to borrow them. Good idea, now the furnaces are easier to look at, so many colours there are in flame, it’s like they too are playing Holi. Next thing Farouq has draped a cobra round my neck. Well I know he’s a desperate man, but this is too much. I leap back screaming in terror, the bastard just laughs. “You moron, it’s a tie.” Well, never have I seen one loose before, how was I to know they were so long and shaped like that, like a snake with a fanned out hood, like the cobra that garlands Siva? Farouq, giggling, knots it round my neck. “Wah, a fillum star you look,” says he, standing back to admire. “Shah Rukh Khan, step aside, here’s Animal Khan.”

  No more than this do I recall.

  “You came roaring in,” says Anjali, “some of the girls were terrified, others were laughing at you. You demanded drink, when it came you spilled it on the floor and said you would not touch such vile daru. Some were for throwing you out, but madam said no, you’d paid, or at least your friend had. Then they ask which girl you like, you’ve said, ‘My old and dear friend Anjali.’ Difficult bastard, you. Madam asks your name, you say ‘Animal!’ in a fierce voice. So I said, ‘Always boasting, men. What are you going do, Mr. Animal, bite me?’ ‘Talk to me like that, I will,’ you said, so I grabbed you by the tie and led you up here like a dog, the rest of them were falling about hooting. Do you really remember none of this?”

  I don’t but a big question is burning in my mind. “Excuse me asking, Anjali, but after we came up here, what exactly happened?”

  “What happened? That too you’ve forgotten?”

  “Please tell me.” Surely it can’t be. What vile and malicious fate would give me my first fuck then completely erase the memory?

  “Did we…do anything?”

  “Last night,” she says, “you wouldn’t stop talking. You talked of old times, when we knew each other before, all your friends. Oh don’t look worried, it was interesting, I enjoyed it, we had a laugh. Then you got all dowly, said you were the only animal that never would find a mate because there’s only one of you, no female like you there’s. I said, not surprising have you seen how you look, well, you resembled a wild rainbow, so then I got this idea, I found some Holi colours, we painted each other.” Leaning there in bed she seems quite happy to chatter, I become aware of her bare breasts, hanging near my face.

  “So we didn’t do anything?”

  “Darling, don’t look at me like it’s my fault.”

  “Well, did we or didn’t we?”

  “You fell asleep.”

  Seeing my dejected expression, she says, “Aha, so you’d have liked it? I did wonder whether your friend was taking the piss.”

  What can I say? Of course I wanted that thing for which I’ve been lusting so long, plus I used to be fond of this girl. Almost pretty she’s, her face is fully pocked, what in Khaufpur we call naqsheen katora, an engraved bowl, but her smile is certainly friendly, plus of course she’s naked, never have I been so close to a naked woman.

  I think maybe she has guessed what’s going through my mind, for a look of mischief comes to her face, she says, “O ho, so now after all you’d like to do it? Today is a new fee, let’s see your money. Give.”

  “I haven’t any.”

  She bursts out laughing, “I am teasing you. Your friend paid, you’re still owed. I guess I could throw you out if I wanted, but you know what, Animal, I always liked you, I used to wonder what it would be like to do it with you. And that was even before I saw this thing you’re toting around.”

  “Please, I am so embarrassed,” I’ve mumbled. This sets her off in fresh peals of laughter. “Wah, hark at this gentleman. Comes to a place like this and wants to show off his Lukhnawi manners. Come on, do you want it or not?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “Well, what are you waiting for? Oh my!” Suddenly she’s got it. “You haven’t done it before. Your first time.” She’s laughing at me.

  “Never mind,” says I, whose head is full of pain. Naked, covered in colours as I am, let’s try to recover whatever dignity a person like me can have.

  “Don’t be that way,” she says. “I’ll show you what to do. Look, you could touch me if you want. Here, like this. And I could touch you, so. See, if we lie like this, if I’m like this and you are there…”

  Well, I would like to touch her. I reach out a hand but at the last moment hesitate. She takes my hand and presses it on the breast which is warm and full, the nipple’s tickling my palm.

  “Take more.” She offers the other one. “Do you want to kiss them? Or lick? Do you like to suck them? You can bite too, if you’re gentle.”

  “I just wanted to touch. To see what it’s like.”

  At last I take away my hand from her breast. I’ve made no further move, after a while she begins stroking my back. “So strong, beautiful the top half of you, such a fine chest, strong shoulders. So good-looking a face. And this thing of yours…” She’s reached out and taken my heavy monster in her hand, “If only the rest of you matched, you could marry a princess.”

  So then she begins doing stuff which, Eyes, I don’t want to tell, nor is there a reason why I should. Let it be enough that at this moment, when at last I could have my desire, enjoy that pleasure of which I’ve so long dreamed, you know what, my big, boastful, out-of-control lund won’t wake up. Deep asleep, it’s, or else cringing in fear.

  “Don’t worry,” the girl says. “You and me, sweetheart, our life is tragedy. Come here.” She gives me a cuddle, this I like a lot. We two rainbow-coloured animals lie curled together in the dawn light of that small room.

  “Anjali, did you really like me? Before?”

  “Yes I did.”

  “But why?”

  The cot’s narrow, our bodies are touching. My hand is on her side, I let it slide to where her waist narrows and on over the high curve of her hip.

  “We were both in the shit,” says Anjali, “but you were always laughing. So I laughed too.” She looks so sad, it comes to me that she’s
hardly older than I am.

  “Anjali, how did you come to this life?”

  Her story’s the same as so many you hear. She had gone to the fields near her village to cut grass. A woman came, accompanied by two men. They took her to Lucknow and put her in a kotha. “That’s where I learned the trade. From there I was brought here. I can’t escape, it’s my life now.”

  “Sounds like you hate it.”

  “What’s to hate? Automatic it’s as namasté. Undress, close your eyes, after that, what can I say, time passes.”

  “You want to leave? Walk out of here. Come, we’ll go together.”

  “It’s not that easy. I have no money.”

  “You don’t need money,” I told her. “I can show you how to live without it.”

  “Dreaming, you’re,” she says with a bitter sigh. “Madam paid money for me. Think she’ll let me go just like that? A girl tried to run away, the pimps caught her, they beat her, then they threw acid in her face.”

  “Don’t worry. I have friends who can deal with those bastards,” says I.

  “You’re crazy. Better not even to think of such things.”

  We lie in silence a while, each with our own thoughts. At last she says, “Sorry I couldn’t do anything for you.”

  “There is one thing I would like.” I whisper and she looks amazed.

  “Just that?”

  “I swear, nothing else.”

  So she lies back and obliges. Now this is the third naked woman I’ve seen, this one has a figure like a Coca-Cola bottle, and plump brown legs. When I spied on Elli and Nisha all I saw really were dark shadows, never did I get a good look. Now at last I’m seeing from close up, just a few inches, in all its detail, this mysterious thing, this alluring grace of which I have dreamed, for which I’ve lusted, over which I’ve disgraced myself and behaved like an idiot.

  Dark it’s, the outer parts look like the swelled lips of a large cowrie, within it’s more like a canna lily, two whorled petals whose edges are almost black, tinged with purple like the bloom on a grape. These edges are also somewhat frilly, do not join below, at the top they collide in a small peak that resembles a woman with her head veiled. This is it, the most powerful thing in the world because all men go crazy for it, more precious than gold since for its sake rich men lose fortunes, sweeter than power because craving for it makes leaders of countries risk their jobs, more powerful than honour because it makes fools of respectable men. What is this thing? It feels wrong to call it a thing, from nowhere the word grace jumps into my head.