by Indra Sinha
“Tell me about Paulo.”
“Well,” she said, “I got to know him because both he and I would get to school quite early. I’d help him put down the chairs in the lunchroom before school started. At first it was just for something to do.”
“But you discovered you liked him? I can’t imagine what he was like.”
“He was a nice boy, not bad looking. We were friends for pretty much the whole year. The strange thing was he wasn’t in any of my classes, so I only saw him before school.”
“So how did he become your great love?”
“We had a school dance, just before Valentine’s Day, and he asked me to dance with him. It was the last dance of the evening, he probably took the entire night to get the courage up to ask me.” The memory made her want to giggle, but Nisha’s face was serious. “It was a slow dance. You have to put your arms round each other. I don’t think he dared at first. But slowly slowly we got closer, closer, until at the end of the dance, wow, we were touching chest to chest. I remember being really attracted to him and I think he was to me, because his heart was pounding like a big drum.”
“Did he try to kiss you?”
Elli laughed. “No, he never did, but you know what? On Valentine’s Day I made a card for him, saying inside ‘I like you.’ I left it in his locker, and of course I didn’t say who it was from. Later that day I found a note tucked inside one of my books that said, ‘I like you too.’ So that was that. Official.”
“But if you made a card, why didn’t you sign it?”
So Elli found herself explaining that Valentine’s Day was a day wholly devoted to romance, when people if they were lucky received cards telling them that they were loved, or, if the sender was playing it cool, “liked,” but the cards had to be sent anonymously.
“But then how does the person know who loves them?”
“They don’t know. They guess. It’s kind of delicious trying to work it out.”
“And if they guess wrong?”
“Well, not many girls would be lucky enough to have lots of admirers. I certainly wasn’t. So you have an idea who sent it. But if you started dropping hints to the wrong person, then I guess you could end up a little embarrassed.”
“It seems an odd system to me,” said Nisha. “Here we have something a bit similar, called raakhee, when a girl ties a token around a boy’s wrist. It’s made of coloured thread and glittery stuff, sort of like a flower.”
“Did you tie one round Zafar’s wrist?”
“Oh no!” she said, with a small frown. “If you like someone in that way, you would never tie a raakhee on him, because it’s like saying ‘You’re my brother.’ A sister ties raakhees on the wrists of her brothers to remind them of their duty to protect her and the whole family from harm.”
“Isn’t that also what a husband would also promise?”
“Of course,” said Nisha. “But if a woman has no one to look after her then she can tie a raakhee on a man’s wrist, and it makes him her brother.”
“Who do you tie raakhees on?”
“Nobody,” said Nisha. “First of all I can look after myself. Second, there isn’t anyone. I tried to tie one on Animal’s wrist once but he ran away.”
Oh really, thought Elli, amused, I wonder why. With her long hair loose and falling down her back, Nisha looked very charming. Elli relating this whole episode to me later, said she could see why my heart was torn.
Not very many hours later when Elli opens her doors, the lane is full of people. Coughing, lame, ill people in a queue stretching almost as far as the eye can see. At their front stands Zafar. When he sees her, he comes forward, shyly says, “We have done you an injustice. I am sorry. I apologise. These people,” with a sweep of the hand he indicates the crowd, “they would like your help.”
Now comes a time of peace, it’s the golden age of my story. Everyone is happy. All our quarrels are resolved. People are coming day and night to Elli’s clinic, so busy is she these days we hardly see her, except Pandit Somraj will go over some evenings and then we hear piano music. Used to be me who sat with her, nowadays I find myself at a loose end. Sometimes I will sit with Nisha and Zafar, until they go upstairs. Still I am crumbling Zafar’s medicine into his food, sometimes into his tea, but since the dream of the crow I’ve been giving smaller doses. Zafar still complains of stomach pains but not so much as before and these days I’ve little heart to go up the trees. Already my life has changed. To tell the truth, I am not so happy about it, plus I am not the only one who’s unhappy.
“Animal, am I a bad person?”
“Depends,” I reply, not very clearly because my mouth’s full of mango.
“Depends, does it?” says Nisha. “On what does it depend, Animal sahib, down whose chin juice is dribbling?”
“Want to lick it off?” So fickle are the emotions, you’d never know this is the same Animal who was so recently engulfed in despair about the tyranny of the lund. My visit to Anjali seems like ancient history, it no longer has power to shame. Besides, I did nothing, what’s to regret?
“Get lost.”
“You and me, sweetheart, it’s a matter of time,” I tell her, gnawing at the stone. Just lately I’ve started this light-hearted banter, it’s to make sure she realises I am a candidate, one of these days I will be walking upright. Just to show how casual I am, I’ve thrown the tooth-scraped seed into the garden, sucked my fingers slowly, one by one, with a little pop at the end of each.
“I feel like a bad person,” says she, ignoring my attempts to flirt.
“The only bad thing about you is you’re besotted with Zafar and cannot see the virtues of your humble servant meaning myself who’s ready to die for you, so think again please, it’s me you should marry.”
“Animal, do you ever listen to anyone else? Talk talk talk, is all you do. How you chunter. Honestly, if talking’s what makes people human, no one is more human than you.”
Well this is a dirty dig, but I adore Nisha, and content myself with giving her a reproachful look like one of Jara’s, all big eyes. This does the needful, never is she cross with me for long. She sighs, “You idiot, I’m trying to tell you something important. I’ve just been to Ghanshyam’s to have my photo taken.”
Eyes, this Ghanshyam has a shop in Iltutmish Street with pictures in the windows of people with hairstyles from twenty years ago. They’ve gone yellow, these pictures, and there is flyshit on the corners, but people go to him to have their babies photographed and, oh my god, for wedding pictures.
“You are not getting married?”
She bursts out laughing. “No, fool, I am getting a passport.”
“Passport?” In times of surprise, Eyes, maybe you do it too, I transform to a parrot. “A passport? What for do you need a passport?”
“Going to Amrika,” she says, no longer laughing.
“Amrika? Why are you going to Amrika?”
“Elli is going, she is going with my dad. They are taking me to meet Elli’s family.”
“Elli and your dad? But why?” Hardly am I able to breathe, it’s like a heavy stone is crushing my chest.
“My dad and Elli, they’re going to be married.”
“Animal, won’t you speak? Please say something. You were the first to suspect this. Why are you looking so upset?”
Upset? Eyes, I’m gutted. How can I tell Nisha that it was me that was supposed to go to Amrika with Elli? She was taking me for my back, somehow we would find money for the operation. She was going to show me New York, dinosaur museum etcetera. Now she will go with Somraj and Nisha and what’s to become of me?
“Nisha, this is very fine news.”
“Is it?” she asks. “I wish I did not feel so miserable.”
“Why miserable? You are going too.”
“I never expected him to fall in love.” She utters the word “love” as if it tastes of dung. “He’s told me since I was small that he would never marry again.”
“Twenty years is a long time to be
alone.”
“I know, I know,” says Nisha, with her head in her hands. “It is wrong of me to feel this way. I should be happy for them.”
So the story comes out. After Somraj and Elli discovered they were in love, Elli asked him and Nisha to go with her to meet her family. Tickets she has bought for the three of them to travel by plane to Amrika.
“When is this happening?”
Nisha told me they would wait until the big hearing when the Kampani would have to show up in court, then for a month they’d be gone.
“The hearing, it’s when?” I’ll be counting the days.
“It’s about three weeks away. Elli has arranged for some old doctor she knows to stand in for her while we’re gone.”
“What does Zafar say?” Strange it’s, although I’m jealous of Zafar, plus I’ve nearly killed him with Faqri’s pills, in a crisis I feel it’s him we must turn to. Zafar will see what’s right, he will tell us what’s best to do.
“Oh Zafar’s thrilled,” says Nisha bitterly. “He says our case against the Kampani will be strengthened because Elli will report the truth about people’s illnesses, it will help us when we get them into court.”
So Zafar has gauged this, as he measures everything, by how much good it will do for the cause. What a selfless man, such singlemindedness is rare, and Zafar shines with it.
“Are you looking forward to seeing Amrika?”
“I don’t want to go. Know why they’re taking me? My dad’s feeling guilty, plus Elli wants me to like her. She says her father will take me fishing.”
This raises a pang, when Elli talked about taking me to Amrika, she had said the same thing about fishing to me. “You should go, Nish. No one can see the future. It might be the best thing.”
“I asked her if she really loved my father. You know what she said?”
“Well, how should I?”
“She said, ‘He has the purest soul of anyone I have ever met.’”
“So that’s good. Why does it upset you?”
“I don’t know. I’m selfish. It means my childhood is over.” Poor Nisha’s dabbing her eyes with a kitchen cloth. “Ever since I can remember, it’s been me and my dad, and I’ve looked after him and the house. Now those days are over.”
“A new time is beginning, darling, it’ll bring a new kind of happiness.”
An odd look she gives me. “Animal, you should not go around wearing just shorts. Times’ve I told you? Let me buy you some proper clothes.”
“I won’t be parted from my kakadus.”
She sighs. “This news is still secret. Don’t tell anyone. Not a soul.”
“On my life.”
Well, I am feeling sick and betrayed, but I keep my promise to Nisha. Only two people do I tell, Ma and the Chairman of the Board, alias my little two-headed friend. His advice proves that he too is a selfish cunt and that everyone in this world is out for number one. “This is good,” says he, “when Elli doctress is in Amrika, it will give you a chance to get us out of here.” Some days later he informs me he has told the other members of the Board, they’ve passed a resolution welcoming the merger between Somraj and Elli.
Somraj and Elli, Elli and Somraj. What else does this news mean? Eyes, I’ll gulp down old remembered bitterness, be a ringmaster of the imagination. When it is announced, the news means celebrations. A party. Not just a party, a grand party. It means a big tent in the street under the mango tree, yes, a coloured shamiana just like the one Elli’s opening ceremony was held in. It means drinks, snacks, barfis in silver paper, supplied by Ram Nekchalan who claims to have hired a sweet maker from Agra. It means a feast of biryani and kheer with plenty of cream and raisins. Everyone is there. Musicians come from far away to celebrate the engagement of their great hero. Elli has asked me to make sure Ma Franci is there, so the party is enlivened by her tonton lariton and crazy etceteras.
“Je connais tes oeuvres, ton amour,” she tells Zafar, smiling blessings on him, taking his face in her hands. “Ta foi, ton fidèle service, ta constance.”
“Ma, it is Somraj who is getting married. Not Zafar.” How I hope this remains true. The music and reciting of poetry continues deep into the night, each of the city’s poets trying to outdo the next.
“Chalo dildar chalo, chand ke paar chalo. Somraj-ji, let’s all go to the lake. Right now, yaar. You must take a boat. Look, there is a moon, it’s a night made for love.”
Love, what a charade. Too much of it in the world. Everyone is in love. Elli with Somraj, Somraj with Elli. Nisha with Zafar, Zafar with Nisha. Everyone except me. This world no longer pretends to be made of such things as music and promises but announces its true nature, which is love.
The happiness wished on all sides is endless and ever deepening. Thus do we spin and spin, trying to turn a moment’s pleasure into forever, but why not, let’s make the most of it, because it never lasts long. Always, there’s something along to spoil it.
TAPE SEVENTEEN
The Kampani lawyers arrive in Khaufpur with no warning.
Timecheck sees them first. Four Amrikans, leaving the Collector’s office, getting into a car. “They met senior persons,” Timecheck tells us, “their leader is a big fellow dressed peculiar.” Well, no one knows what this might mean but alarming information is soon flying in thick and fast. This very afternoon the Amrikans will meet Zahreel Khan, tomorrow the CM.
Says Zafar to the gang assembled at Chunaram’s, “The big hearing, it’s less than two weeks off. They have come to Khaufpur to strike a deal. Has to be.”
“What kind of deal, Zafar bhai?” someone asks.
“What kind? With politicians there’s only one kind. Out of court, into pocket. What else?”
“But they can’t stop the case, can they?”
“Charges could be dropped, if a settlement is reached.”
Well, people are horrified. “No! How can they do this to us?” “After we’ve waited so long, they should let justice take its course.” “What can we do?”
As ever, all eyes are on Zafar. Gone are all doubt and indecision, this is Zafar the Great, war leader and legend. “The politicians are going to betray us, but we will wreck their plans. We’ll bring thousands to protest, right there at the CM’s house.” These few words are the entire plan for what Khaufpuris would come to call the CM demo.
Next day the Khaufpur Gazette runs a big headline DEAL IN THE WIND? The Amrikan lawyers, says the paper, are to meet the CM and the Minister for Poison Relief. The writer speculates that a deal may be struck between the Kampani and the government. Its timing is just before the long-awaited and crucial hearing, as a result the charges against the Kampani and its directors are likely to be dropped. “There is something rotten in the wind,” the Gazette writes. “Not just the smell from the factory. This is the stench of a deeper evil. To drop charges relating to the deaths of thousands of our fellow citizens, with no attempt to establish who was responsible, without applying to the law for a just remedy, is contrary to democracy and people’s rights. If this deal goes ahead it will prove that the odour in our nostrils is justice rotting in Khaufpur.”
The city’s anger blazes up like a huge fire. On the same day as the Gazette article is published, small presses in the Claw and Jyotinagar are working overtime printing posters, WE WON’T LET YOU BURY JUSTICE, plus LIFE POISONED IS LIVING DEATH, plus NO SELL OUT. Nisha wants one to say LAW DIES, HELL IS BORN, but Zafar says that the court case is still alive, to say that law is dead is to accept in advance that the Kampani has won.
“And if they do?” demands Nisha. “Then it will be too late. We must show the politicians what the consequences will be.”
“What do you think, Elli?” asks Zafar. Elli’s been quiet, grieving almost, since the lawyers arrived, as the joy of her plans is suddenly submerged in the old and endlessly foul stream of Khaufpuri politics.
“I do not know what to think,” she replies.
The smell of ink clings to us as we rush from place to place pasting th
e posters wherever we can find space, on the Pir Gate, on the courthouse. Next morning walls all over the city blare their messages.
On the night before the demo, new slogans appear alongside the old ones. They’ve been painted by other groups, but Nisha must have talked to them. In tall red-dripping letters the wall shouts, IF LAW DIES, HELL WILL REIGN.
There are four lawyers. Bhoora sees them next morning leaving their hotel, which is a white palace on the hill above the lake. Jehan-nabz, this place is called, meaning the pulse of the world but we Khaufpuris always refer to it as Jehannum. This has been its nickname for a hundred years or more, since the time of Ghaalizali Khan, the Little Nawab as he was known for two reasons, one, he was short, two, he was fond of sodomy which he performed with equal zest on both sexes, including the wives of his friends who were summoned to the palace and given the royal four inches up the bum. Thus it earned the name of Jehannum, or Hell. Jehannum is not far from the Chief Minister’s house. Sure enough that’s exactly where these four lawyers fetch up. Their chief, reports Bhoora, is a white-haired man built like a buffalo.
Says Zafar, “Someone must follow wherever they go.” Of course everyone wants to get a look at them, but in the end Farouq goes on Zafar’s motorbike to the CM’s house, while I’m sent to watch the hotel.
I ride up to Jehannum with Bhoora, who’s in a good mood and gives me a beedi. He stops where all the autos wait, by the big gate of the hotel. A loudspeaker booms “Auto!” when one is wanted, who’s first in line chugs up to the entrance which is of marble with fountains and glass doors. Everyone in the city has heard of Jehannum, but hardly any have been inside. To stay there costs more in one night than someone in the Nutcracker earns in a hundred days of work. Bhoora knows the duty doorman, he vanishes for a while, comes back to say that the lawyers’ rooms are on the garden side, near the swimming pool.
“Do you know how much such rooms cost? One night, six and a half thou! Baba, what a waste! Two weeks in there you could buy a brand new auto!”