We that are young

by Preti Taneja

  *

  At night the circles of the basti turn to the sound of Madam’s bell. Jeet creeps to the fourth circle to watch her in the courtyard, taking money from the clients before they pass into her house. It rings once for the Hindus on the Amritsar side, who come at half hour intervals as far as Jeet can count it, in order of employment, circle, or family near the brothel, though sometimes this seems reversed. It rings once for the Muslims, who come in order of age and sometimes wealth, though Jeet has seen the less well off boys go before their uncles. Every fourth day of the month, he has been told, between the hours of 3am and 4am, it rings for the Napurthali men of any age, who come for the left-over girls. Jeet hears the bell. There is only one door – it is impossible to know who is visiting the whores, one way in, one way out. Which of the boys he now gathers around him will enter that place one day? Jeet thinks she knows he is there: the next morning when she sees him under his tree on her way to the water pumps, she raises an eyebrow and shakes her head, she smirks, bitch smirks at him – even he, who is meant to be Rudra the Naph, and without desire – even he can see her teeth bared, lips curling, pulling every last drop from a man. The cries Jeet hears at night sink into his body. Why do women, he thinks, always scream? He cannot hear the men. They say nothing as they arrive, as they leave. They sound nothing inside.

  Under his tree, all he has are the questions of the boys to dwell on. His own sins come back to him. To kill a man – Rudra tells the boys – Once, late at night when his driver was dismissed, Jeet was sixteen. He was drunk on his moonshine, high and speeding between parties in his white Mercedes jeep. Then a swerve for a dog – only to mount the curb – or was that a sleeping body on the pavement? He watches the basti boys as he tells them this story; they bite their little lips, they look at each other to check every body that should be, is still there. What happened next? Nothing. Jeet kept driving. At home, Jeet’s father took Jeet to his sarkar. The two men sat him down. They told him that such accidents do not count. They are just target practice. It is simply one of those things – that so many puppies get run over by cars.

  What about to properly, intimately, kill someone? As a sacred act or a matter of life and death? Could Jeet plan it, or, if necessary, would the ability come to him without thought? Everyone imagines his own death. All of us wonder what it is to die. But to kill – and then to live? Gargi knows all about this, Jeet thinks. When she got married, Jeet had watched her circle the fire, tied to Surendra. She killed something that day, voluntarily, without thinking twice. Jeet was a jungli at his best friend’s wedding; it was nothing like that Julia Roberts movie where the gay gets the girl, and they waltz.

  Jeet knew his Gargi was gone. A week later, when he saw her again, she refused to talk about Surendra, or her wedding night. Not even one detail, as if she now knew more than Jeet ever would about sex with men. All she would say was, he’s very spiritual – as if Jeet wasn’t; as if he hadn’t always made Gargi the heroine of his life. Gargi, who he told every secret to, the only person who said,

  —Don’t cry, have some popcorn the movie will be over soon.

  Sitting under the neem tree, Rudra tells his basti boys that once upon a time Jeet Singh died at a glittering party, even bigger than the ones that take place behind the walls of the Amritsar hotel. That Jeet committed a sin so bad he has been reborn to this life to make amends. That his karma has rebirthed him, as Rudra, and brought him to Dhimbala basti, to this moment beneath the neem tree. By Rudra’s third week, the boys want the full story of Jeet’s life.

  —Please, Baba, please.

  He makes them all do three adho mukha svanasana. Then tells them that Jeet was a man who loved wealth and parties and being pampered: that in his world (he points to the Amritsar hotel), even the dogs had baths and doctors to attend to them. That Jeet was beloved by a very rich man, and he had a wise teacher – she taught him the Bhagavad Gita, the Vedas, the Upanisads, the first nineteen laws of Manu from Chapter Nine of the Manusmṛti (translated by George Bühler in 1886, with the patronage of the Rani of Napurthala, which Jeet made his own versions of when he was twelve). This text, he tells the boys, is the foundation of all society, the living code of the Naphs. All boys should learn it if they want to be to be grown men, particularly the first four.

  (1) Day and night woman must be kept in dependence by the males (of) their (families), and, if they attach themselves to sensual enjoyments, they must be kept under a boy’s control.

  (2) Her father guards her innocence, her husband guards her flowering, and her sons guard her hunger when she is old; a woman is never fit for independence.

  (3) Bad is the father who does not give his daughter in marriage when she is ripe; worse is the husband doesn’t get on his wife when she is clean, worst is the son who does not keep his mother from the world after his father has died.

  (4) Women must be guarded against evil inclinations of every kind, including eating sweets and wearing paint. If they are not guarded, they will bring sorrow on two families.

  Jeet looks around his small class. The boys have stopped listening. They are knee-twitching, dirt-scratching, sticking flutters of white plastic back onto each other’s eyes and ears. So he will not disclose that as a boy, Jeet learned the grammar of the old Napurthali language from Nanu, who spoke it with all the precocious entitlement of a child, schooled in performance from the moment she was born. Sitting in her inner room, without Gargi or Radha there, she told Jeet tale after tale of the Naph sect: how they were the sacred warriors of governance, advisers to Kings; how they worshipped Lord Shiv – and in later days knew how to mix a perfect Martini while quoting the sonnets and Kabir.

  Instead Rudra makes his eyes wide. His shadow grows over the boys. He tells them that in a land far far away, he was a Bengal Tiger of rare type, hunting only when he was hungry and to maintain the balance of life in the forest, for that is the dharma of such animals. Then the slippage, and he became human: he was called Jeet Singh, a name given to millions across our great land. Now they listen, they are absolutely still.

  He does not say he was the son of their own Ranjit Singh (drug of choice: Ecstasy); favourite Godchild of Devraj Bapuji (half-brother of Jivan Singh); rakhi brother to Gargi, Radha and Sita (first kiss: Gargi, aged eight, on a joint family holiday in Pahalgam in the Kashmiri mountains, which was also the first time they experienced snow); dater of some of the richest girls in the city (lover of a Muslim boy); heir to his father’s fortune (smuggler of antiques for the greater good); Sikh (wearer of kajal); scholar of D Catholic Convent for Boys, St Stephens College and IIT (pierced in three places); brilliant debator, class orator, prodigious economist (secret poet), scholar of the sacred texts (the Napurthala tattoo on his left butt-cheek – a lotus and a snake); eligible bachelor (penchant for receiving blowjobs from bourgeois Jat boys met at certain parties); speaker of three living Indian languages and two European, reader of one that is ‘dead’; thinker, ghazal and opera buff (lover, liar and dirty cheater at cards or dice); owner of some of the finest handmade shoes known to man (an in and out gandu) who thought that fulfilling his duty would only mean attending the parties, squeezing the cheeks of the girls, telling them they are looking so tired, a little plump, should not wear this or that label (he would still pick out one or two females to be his pets for the evening while he assessed the men even if it lead to marrying a woman; giving his dad a couple of kids). This, surely, would be enough, he thought – not coming here to become a husk of nothing, in the hovel at night. The taste in his mouth is of tamarind; it reminds him of new-moneyed semen after too much rich food.

  The basti boys are afraid. They believe that Jeet actually died and was reborn as Rudra, who somehow remembers that life. They make a new game: ‘What I was in my past lives’. Some choose a movie star and some decide a rich man, and some say a politician with a five-door jeep and four shining wheels. For half an hour each evening before they go home, they play at being hotel guests with shopping bags and flower garlands and ta
xi-carriers bigger than their own shacks. All of them dream of attaining the life Jeet once had, even if it leads back to this.

  —Wake up! What are you doing here? My son says you have been sitting since morning, watching our boys work.

  On that first day, he was woken by a woman, demanding answers as he sat, under the tree. Her voice, her foot kicked him awake. She stood over him, Samir behind her, and a bundle of women, holding their dupattas over their foreheads. Jeet had blinked up at a thin face: black-skinned, kohl-rimmed, gold ring pierced through her nostril. Her pink cotton sari was bandini printed – it had a parrot motif with black sequins for eyes; there was one, at his eyeline, right over her breasts. She looked young but her arm on his shoulder was wrinkled, as if she were wearing opera gloves.

  At that moment a voice had sung out across the square. Jeet shook off the woman; with difficulty, he stood. The voice was coming from a loud speaker attached to the dhaba post.

  —TEMPLE BUS, LANGAR BUS, DEPARTING FIVE MINUTES.

  Samir turned from his mother as men, women and children poured from the slum through the Amritsar gate. Some ran, some walked quickly across the square, to the lane that led to the highway. Jeet wanted to go with them, he had to: at the Golden Temple, he could wash his face, cool his broken feet; he could sit for a while in its sacred grounds, would be served a fresh, hot meal with the thousands of others who fed at the Temple each day. He might rest, undisturbed, in its merciful calm. He watched Samir run for the bus; he tried to push past the woman, she tripped him. She was, he found out later, Samir’s mother (wife of the Company back gate guard), who lives in a brick house in first circle.

  —I am Rudra, the Naph, he told her. En route to join the pilgrimage to Amarnath.

  —Naph? She turned to the other women. He says he is a Naph! Come with us, we will see if you are telling the truth. Don’t think to get out on the langar bus; first you follow me. I will give you rice, just come.

  He obeyed; he followed her feet, smack smack smack in black plastic flipflops, through the Amritsar gate, the taste of burnt aloo parantha rising back to his throat as he passed cages of diseased fowl, as Madam ignored him, as the sudden, strange cleanliness of the fifth circle made him stumble. He tried not to gag or show any fear as the houses grew lower; he took his first steps onto the boards; his feet almost slipped, blackening, from earth to roofs, all the children inbetween – and walked behind the women all the way to the ninth.

  It felt an hour’s walk or more on his swollen feet. For some of it he felt that he was almost back at school, being led to the boiler room for a round of Midnight Martyrs (You’re such a fucking wimp, you little gay asshole); at other moments he felt himself back in the lanes of old Delhi, where he used to go, to go, to go to heaven via the stench of sewage, of stagnant drains, skirting the dippers with their steaming vats of dye, the hung carcases of goats skinned raw, the beings thin as dandas who smiled despite their dusty hair and blackened eyes; the flea bitten dogs – still cleaner than the girls. He went – he went there in the old life, as Jeet. He tried not to think of it, but how could he not? Or wonder whether Old Delhi was simply preparation, for this.

  Then, on the other side of the pit, Samir’s mother stopped so suddenly, Jeet almost slipped into sludge.

  —Here we are, at the Napurthala mandir, she said. If you are a Naph, show us.

  The shrine’s plasterwork façade was pink, once. Its three alcoves held chipped, painted icons: a five-headed Shiva for the five elements, his two eyes the sun and moon, his third eye for the fire that destroys the universe for rebuilding in future forms. Jeet reached up. He pointed to the snake around the God’s hips – then to the tiger skin, painted with bright orange oils and dark black spots, for desire, for craving that covers the surface of the world. He mimed this to the women – hands, teeth, tongue – a gesture that had them retreating.

  The second statue was a lemon, cut open, its seeds representing the atoms that constitute the universe; he cannot express this to the women. And finally: Saraswati for the once-great rivers and lakes of the lost Indus civilisation, who live in a state that borders Amritsar.

  Jeet felt the women watching him. The shrine was so crude; he waited to feel God around him, to feel transformed. It had to come – he was born a Sikh and schooled as a Catholic but this was his true form; Nanu promised him so, when he was no more than five-years-old.

  On a low shelf, an oil wick diya in a rough terracotta pot burned a steady flame. A real snakeskin was looped around a garland of fresh blue flowers, the pale colour of sky. Flowers! Here! An incense stick, stuck in the cracks, was burning; the smoke smelled of amla oil, bitter and sweet. Jeet’s eyes filled with tears. He joined his palms; he intoned the first words of Napurthali he ever learned. The Naph prayer Nanu taught him – which was only told to very special boys, those destined to be the Birbals of the Napurthala court:

  Na tuevahaparam jatunusam

  na tuenemek janadhipahra

  Never was a time when I did not exist

  nor you, nor all these kings;

  —What are you gibbering, fakir? said Samir’s mother. You are no more a Naph than I am.

  Jeet looked at her, then turned around. He pulled down his pyjama, flashed the women his left butt cheek, adorned with the Napurthala tattoo.

  Which was how Rudra the Naph came to be given a shelter near the shrine. It is a patch of mud no more than three metres square (he can lie down, either curled or diagonally) facing the tail end of the dump. A full half hour from the neem tree, he thinks. His body is ash. He has scavenged for cardboard to line his walls; he has found, to the muttering jealousy of the basti-boys, a blue plastic sheet for a roof cover. That first night his nose wept for the stink. He was terrified of himself, of what he had done.

  He could not sleep, of course, and stumbled around the circle in the dark, trying to get to the Napurthala Minar. A strange, square half-finished brick tower that stood glaring across the pit at its Amritsar twin. Three storeys each, no windows, no doors, only empty rooms and a flat roof, where Jeet thought he might be able to shelter – to imagine himself in something like a house, and sleep.

  Who built them? Samir tells him, Kataria 5. It was before local elections took place – Samir was six. He could not remember what they were voting for. But he knows that as part of his campaign Kataria 5 promised the Napurthali Jhimbas, the un-tattooed scavengers and those on the Amritsar side, these minars for their weddings – at last, proper spaces for the community – not just one, but one for each side. No. 5 chose the sites, though Samir believes that he was warned: Jhimbas only marry in their own villages on the far side of the state, where they return to get their brides. In any case, said Samir, who would want to marry at the edge of the stinking pit? The boy had fallen about laughing: imagine the stinking wedding, the miserable, stinking bride! Needless to say the election bid failed; construction stopped.

  Kataria 5 lost a finger when he tried to stop sixth circlers moving into the buildings. Blood was spilled for the sake of inanimate bricks: of all things the Napurthali Jhimbas consider this the worst stain a man’s dharma can accrue. When he hears this, Jeet realises why no one lives there, why he cannot make the minar his place.

  Instead, a hovel is carved out for him in a corner of basti that belongs to a family of nine, who pay the highest rates of rent in Dhimbala: RS 185 per month, decided by ratio of boys and men to women and square meterage. Because he is a Naph, they partition it for him with whatever stackable material they have. There, he huddles at night, listening as the men next door, all different ages, take turns to sleep, to eat, to have sex. Jeet stops his ears, repeating his new name: Rudra, Rudra, Rudra.

  Soon, I will go to the pilgrimage, and join the brothers on the way to Amarnath. Soon, soon, soon.

  His space stinks: his body cannot easily take the scraps he can scavenge. His bowels churn endlessly. Shit runs from him as sweat. In the first week, he could not make it to the field on the far side of the dump, where each morning
, the men of working age take the first turn to squat and shit under the sky, phones in hand to pass the time. Rudra finds a patch on the edge to squat in, almost sheltered by the dump. He feels that his hide has never been clean. He holds the memory of white tiled bathrooms, genuine artefacts, the feeling of scented soap lathering. Water. Dhimbala has strict rules on the rationing of water from the pumps – water he cannot afford. Then leave. Go inside Jeet – go knock on the door of the Amritsar hotel and find softness and rest in those safe walls. He squats, looking anywhere but down. The other men don’t look at him, they are too busy on their mobiles. They all have them, except him.

  Jeet learns how to avoid his eyes turning red with infection. That first week, they oozed and then they wept. He crawled through the lanes of the Napurthala side of the basti, directed by Samir to a woman called Mumtaz, who was born without a fully formed tongue. She is known for her skill with herbs. Mumtaz treated his eyes, his belly. He let her touch him.

  He strengthened and began to explore. The Napurthala side – it is darker than the Amritsar side. After a certain hour, only men walk the lanes. The younger boys all carry sharpened sticks at night. The Napurthali women are rarely seen outside their hovels, the girls do not undertake paid work. They are busy all day doing what Jeet does not imagine. Bleeding somewhere, he thinks, some girl is always bleeding. He asks around, and finds they mostly stay inside until the bi-annual market one in April one in December when Kataria Senior comes with job possibilities from states across the country. What pride to send a girl to work in Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata – names, Jeet thinks, that evoke what their lives could become.