We that are young

by Preti Taneja

He asked if he could approach and I gave him permission. He came over and sat down. Sita was sleeping so deeply that when he took her pretty brown ankles in his hands, she only stirred a little. Her head was in my lap.

  —What is your name, son? I asked.

  —Punj, Sir, he said. At your service. For good.

  —Then listen, Punj, I said. You better mean that. For everyone else has left me, as the proverbial rats.

  —Sir, said Punj, I’ve been listening carefully to all you have to say. I want to learn from you.

  —Can you bring tea? Weave a shawl? Start a fire?

  —Sir the last one is possible, but only in some time. See what I have here.

  From his pheran he produced all of the materials we would need to start a fire: a small can of kerosene, a Company lighter.

  —Tell me about your young days, he said. Did you have great parties in this room?

  I thought for a while, for it is important to me to tell the story the crowd wants to hear.

  —When I was a boy, I said, we used to have such gatherings here! All the great men of Srinagar and Delhi, of Amritsar and Lahore. In this very room, Nehruji promised me he would be a father to me in our new India. I am a simple man with simple needs, and this I learned from him. I believe in ahimsa. I have never wanted to hurt anyone. I have made my name in service to this country. After he died, we gathered here to mourn. It was warmer, and you could not see the sky through the beams. It was a palace!

  —Bapuji, said Punj. Did you know that this place has now become a palace for dogs? A kuttamahal. A toothi-phoothi-jhoothi mahal. And did you know that in the basement, a bitch has given birth to a party of pups? I saw them on my rounds. I thought I would bring you one, but look, she bit me!

  He held out his arm and I could see the marks. Punj looked worried, but honestly he is here to keep me safe, not the other way round.

  —Punj, I said. Don’t interrupt. Your language hurts me. Don’t speak and you will hear the truth. Listen. Back then there were no dogs on thrones of rubble. I was a King once, and would gallop all over these hills with my dear friend, the Maharaja of Kashmir. We shot and played and he helped me progress in business. In winters, we would ski down the frozen lakes, across the snowy plains before life made me a leader and a role model for the youth.

  —Yes, you are my role model, Punj said.

  —My daughters could not learn, I said. Always too stubborn. They hurt me so badly, but have I ever cried? No, Punj, I said. I have not. Even when I found myself in the darkest of nights, in the harshest of storms, among people who behaved as demonic ghosts, I did not cry.

  —Sita’s feet are so beautiful, Bapuji, said Punj. I touch them for mercy. I promise I will not leave.

  He stroked Sita’s feet. She stirred a little but did not wake up.

  —Everyone leaves.

  —What do they leave?

  —A body, a name. I am Devraj. That I am.

  ii

  On the day of the storm he is woken early, not by the usual calls of women, the bleating of goats or scratching of pigs, or even the stench of the pots being emptied, but by a boy running through the lanes, shouting.

  —A man is chained at the back of the hotel! A man is in chains!

  Jeet pushes himself out of his hovel. His feet thump the boards; he will not slip into black sewage: he has learned to avoid this plank and that plank and this one that splinters. On raw feet he runs with the other basti men to the square, where twenty or thirty have gathered, reaching almost to the back gate of the Company Amritsar hotel. Jeet pushes himself to the front.

  A man is chained to the back gate. His eyelids are crusted almost shut, his cheeks are swollen; he is covered in bruises from some kind of beating. The chaukidar in his box shakes his head, warning the basti not to come any closer. A few of the boys run up to the fence.

  —Kya hua Chachaji? Aap haathi ho kya?

  They circle back, daring each other to do it again.

  The chained man does not speak, even when the boys shout Circus haathi, even when they throw small stones.

  —Jitinder, Nalini, Karan, Ranjitarani, Balthazaar, brother of Surmit, Shivan, Garginjali, Rita, Devisitaraj! My daughter Munni and my own son, Samir! Chal! Get back to your work, shouts the guard. And the rest of you, get lost, unless you want this man’s fate as your own.

  Jeet sidles forward, towards the gate, muttering prayers in Rudra’s voice. He feels dizzy with the race, has not eaten this morning, or last night. Water – the chained man needs water. So does Rudra, so does Jeet: none in the basti can simply give it. He looks towards the dhaba: the morning service has begun for those who can pay. There will be no help there.

  The loudspeaker crackles Feroze Shah’s voice across their heads,

  —All those for langar today, board the Dhimbala bus!

  The basti turns away from the chained man; now begins the familiar race.

  —Come on Rudra bhai! shouts Samir.

  They run towards the highway. Jeet overtakes – the bus is almost full – it is starting. Jeet catches a rung of the ladder soldered to the metal body; he climbs, he clings, someone’s foot in his face; he holds his hand to Samir, grips him and pulls him up; they grip the rungs while men clamber over them to the roof. Jeet clutches another man’s hips as the bus picks up speed, they swish down the highway towards the old city. The hot morning, so bright, passes in a blur of pale sand and blue sky; Samir grinning below Jeet, both of them eating the dust as they go.

  On Railway Road, the sun, a traffic jam, turns the bus into a roasting tin. Jeet and Samir climb up to the roof, using their elbows to make others give room. Now Jeet can see: they are nearly at the train station. People are getting out of their cars to walk up the line, men are standing on the roof of the bus infront, as if something is happening in the station courtyard itself.

  —Devraj is coming, Bapuji will be here—

  —By train, because he is a great, great man—

  —He is at the station!

  The cry sweeps back to them from the road and from the bus in front. People begin to jump down from their own bus, walking through the traffic towards the station. Jeet and Samir follow them.

  —Can it be possible? Samir clears his throat, coughs. Says, with excitement, Rudra bhai I have never seen Bapuji – and now, with open hands he has come to Amritsar! Maybe he has come to chose the next Hundred from the basti boys! Maybe he will give dan, for is he not a Maharaja, whose dharm it is to ensure that the hungry do not starve? Is that not correct, Rudra bhai?

  —Anything, everything is possible. Jeet must shout to be heard. His feet burn on the tarmac but he does not stop. Past the cars and jeeps and buses, the sound of horns. His mood is higher than the 10am sun. Samir and he jog towards the station and into the forecourt. There, they see a crowd of ninety or more, the noise blurs into heat – Bapuji has arrived, on a train coloured in reds and blues, the Mughalpura Shatabdi. When it runs, it terminates in Amritsar.

  At last! Bapuji has come to address the common man!

  Men, women and children stand on tiptoes. I can see, I can see – I can’t – lift me! Now Jeet’s stench is an advantage. Starched kurta’d females move aside for him. Some of the men are young, wearing white T-shirts; most look to be middle-rankers – clean turbans, trimmed moustaches, tummies full of proper food. These are the men whose lives Bapuji has transformed – with jobs in his businesses or as links in the supply chain. They have come from office to pay tribute – they shrink from Jeet’s approach. He moves forward, chattering teeth and dirty hands, naked legs. He loses Samir to the crush. He can see stalwart Company supporters: family types, small shareholders; even the matriarchs, the real householders, have come. Jeet feels his body rub against them and grins. His heart swells under his blackened skin, even as the crush around him almost stamps on his feet – even though the people look at him with disgust before they see he is a Rudra, and move to let him pass. He giggles high and sharp; it ends on a spluttering choke.

  �
��Voo hoo, he mutters, make way, make way, intermission.

  The crowd parts – for a second he sees: his Godfather in an ivory kurta pyjama fastened by tiny diamond-drop studs that catch the light, wink at the crowd. And his beloved Nanu, flanked by five of the Hundred and two or three local dignitaries – waiting by a makeshift podium draped in saffron and white. Nanu is clasping her – Jesus, her Kelly bag – to her chest. Jeet blinks. Her sari is apple green; the pearls around her throat are as big as Jeet’s knuckles, Grandmother, what big pearls you have – he never really noticed that before. Her hair is coiffed and held with ivory combs, her eyes hidden behind dark glasses.

  —Nanu! Jeet shouts. His voice is drowned by the chattering crowd, who are pointing, waiting for Bapuji to speak.

  Barely lifting a hand to them, Bapuji makes for three black Mercedes, parked to one side, clearly waiting for him and Nanu. But Nanu stops. With the help of one of Bapuji’s boys, she mounts the five steps to the podium. She reaches for the microphone; she waits while it is adjusted for her; she grips the stand. When she speaks, her voice is stone on stone.

  —There was once a man who lost a key in his house, she says.

  Jeet smiles; he wipes his eyes. He knows this story – it was her best one for teaching him, as a boy, how to school his will; to achieve his desires.

  —And he came to Amritsar to find it, says Nanu. A fox came along who had eaten the key and smiled at the man, who was surrounded by seekers, all looking for the same. In the heat they searched, far from the man’s house. The fox asked the man, ‘Why are you searching here, when you lost your key at home only?’ The man said, ‘Because there is more light here.’

  She finishes her story with hands open to them all.

  —If I could exchange a knife for my jewels, I would slaughter that fox as a lamb to the pot.

  The crowd cheer as if she has announced a holiday in their honour.

  —Nanu, Nanu, Bapuji, Bapuji! Drowning the sound of microphones.

  And that is it. Nanu turns from the podium, giving her arm to the aide. He helps her descend. He shuts her into the car, salutes; the engine starts. Forward, forward, forward; they push against the cars. Jeet pushes too – forward, forward; for a second he is pressed to the outside of the car window, he can almost touch his Godfather’s face. But Bapuji does not look up. They drive off, leaving the crowd salaaming.

  *

  Jeet forgoes the Temple meal. Clinging to the back of a public bus, he returns down the highway to the basti. All the excitement of the morning has dissolved in the heat haze, glimmering over the earth. Sitting with his back under the neem tree he observes the chaukidar come out of his box, to kick the chained man. In the square, a few eager dogs wander around, investigating every little thing for food. The basti men are all gone to the fields or the city, to work or look for work, the others are still at the temple. There are only four or five women sitting veiled on their charpoys, perfectly still except for hands on makeshift looms, spinning plastic into thin, tense strips. A few drunken kubhatas roam around, shouting every so often. The chained man is slumped, facing the hotel, his fingers burned around the gate; Jeet, his own body a husk, his mouth dry, gives him a brief namaste as he passes.

  Jeet sits cross-legged under his tree, sharing the meagre shade with a few small girls and a boy – Devinder, he thinks, a crippled second cousin of Samir. Devinder crouches in the mud; he has no pants on, he wears only a filthy vest and an adult sized chappal slotted onto his fingers, as if his hand is his foot. He is using this weapon to squat the lazy flies that land around him. Every time he kills one, the three girls scream in delight and push each other closer to him, unsettling more flies. Swat goes the chappal, a cripple’s thunder on the ground – and the fly dies – to be flicked into the air by its boy killer. The girls scream again.

  Jeet’s thoughts sink low. Vik comes to him fleetingly, laughing in a bar full of backlit coloured glass bottles. It feels as if Vik happened to someone else, in some festival film. The sun beats down; Jeet scratches at the earth. The hotel wall hides the gardens, the kitchens, the lobby, the lift where a hologram goldfish swims back and forth. Inside the hotel the air is so cool. In the restaurant, the scents will be cinnamon and clove; titillation for the noses of silk-wrapped women. Cold coffee, ice cream, make it fast. On Ranjit’s terrace, some of Jeet’s most precious Kashmiri pieces are displayed. Relics of his old life. Beauty. A small pond reflects the sky. Tonight, in some room, a game of dice might take place; there will be more money on the table than the boys in Dhimbala will see in any lifetime. Of course, Jeet has always known this. Only now, when his body has become a husk, when it is too hot to even raise a hand to wave the flies away, when the knowledge that such an action is as futile as imagining one of these children a king, does he begin to understand what it means.

  Live or do not live. Each person must choose for themselves. This child will sort waste, this one, sell flowers. Each must enhance his parent’s pride. Then procreate and multiply. Build a house better than your father’s. The ancient order of the universe has its foundations here. Weeks living as Rudra alongside the basti dwellers has brought him the realisation that all of them, fly killers to poker players and the masses in between, are doing nothing more than this; working out of life until death. Under the sun’s glare, their troubles are merely steps on the road.

  The girls get bored of the game of flies. They look to Jeet for entertainment. Their leader is about seven or maybe eight or nine, Jeet cannot guess; she is too dark, thin as the neem twigs men chew to clean their teeth. Her hair is plaited, held back with pink, polka dot Minnie-Mouse clips. Jeet has noticed her before: a small Gargi, she marshals the females and the younger boys, scolding them this way and that.

  —Apka naam kya hai? Jeet asks her.

  —I am Munni. The sister of Samir.

  That is all they stay for. They move, a flock of ragged peahens to the next game: tag, where one of them, Devinder the runt, of course ends up standing stock still. One by one, the little girls take turns to hit him and go. Tears run down the child’s cheeks, he lifts his fists to wipe his eyes; his shrivelled penis stares sadly at the ground.

  Dazed with hunger and thirst, Jeet feels himself as a brother to the chained man, who at least has the promise of freedom. He watches Samir and Munni’s mother cross the square, bringing three glasses of steaming chai in a wire holder. She passes one through the window of the guard box. She gives another but the guard shakes his head, he empties the cup at her feet. As Jeet watches she clicks her fingers in her husband’s face, a gesture of disgust. Then she turns; walking back towards Jeet, her face is obscured by her cotton pallu. She reaches him, she stands over him, and hands down the last glass of chai. He can barely thank her. He drinks it; it is too sweet. It could be water mixed with mud. He sits, eyes closed, letting the flies settle on him.

  Afternoon creeps into evening. The sun dissolves through the smog, casting a jaundiced light as the wind picks up and eddies of sand lift along the dhaba, skidding loose rubbish into the lanes. The women rise from their charpoys, packing up their work.

  —Toofan aaraha hain, bohut bada toofan, one says.

  —A punishment will come tonight, says another. And she calls to the children on the rubbish heap.

  Jeet gets to his feet – at the dhaba, men are putting out their bidis, telling each other Toofan aaraha hain; they disappear into the gullies to tether their animals, to strenghten the plastic over their shacks. Jeet takes it all in with no sense of its meaning. They are worried, that is all he can tell.

  The working boys climb down from the heap; they come to Rudra under his tree. They don’t care about the warnings; they sit, begin to shed their plastic skins; they ask for their evening story.

  —Ooo ooo oop! Watan ki fikr kar nadan, museebat aane wali hai. Teri barbadiyon ke mashware hain asmano mein, tumhare dastan bhi na hogi dastanon mein!

  Jeet raises his arms; he jumps to his feet in a monkey pose, he roars at the boys. Thrilled,
terrified, they shriek and scatter.

  And whisper it, in English, whisper it, Jeet: Worry about the country, O native ones, trouble is afoot! The skies fortell your destruction, nobody will remember you even in stories!

  Then the boys change direction, swooping away from the basti towards the highway. There are black cars with darkened windows lumbering down the lane, pulling up outside the dhaba. The men get up from their tables; they spill into the square.

  Jeet goes forwards, to see what-all is happening now.

  Three sleek Mercedes, the ones from the train station. Doors open, Bapuji and Nanu are helped out by their men. They do not acknowledge the basti men and boys, the women who have appeared from the lanes as if someone has whistled. The crowd swells; there is murmuring and nudging as Bapuji and Nanu stand in the square. On the plain the hoardings show their own faces grinning down on them in blessing.

  Jeet presses forward with the others. Bapuji’s aides, divine monkeys in suits and dark glasses, hold them back. Bapuji picks across the square, Nanu follows, slowly, holding the end of her sari over her mouth and nose. How can Jeet, or any of them from Dhimbala understand what they are seeing? Though he knows Nanu would trail Bapuji anywhere – still, Jeet wants to go to her, to lead her back to the car. He looks at his hands; they are black with dirt. His kurta streaked with dust, his skin grimed. Months here have thinned him, almost to bone. He touches his beard; it fills his hand. The shape of his chin is lost beneath hair. Bapuji passes close; he does not see Rudra, he cannot see Jeet.

  To watch him, Jeet stands on his swollen toes. Look at Bapuji – his beautiful kurta, its diamond fastenings are so clean, so bright. His hair is freshly greased down on his head. Look at Nanu – the fresh apple of her sari hurts Jeet’s mouth. He watches with the crowd, wondering how a group like this, who speak of nothing but Bapuji when they want to admonish their children or encourage their work, can now keep silent.

  The guard is waiting inside the gate. He keeps his hands pressed together, the keys between them. He does not unlock until Bapuji and Nanu reach him and the chained man. There is rattle of iron against iron.