We that are young

by Preti Taneja

  Nanu and her helpers stumble down the stairs. Jeet follows. On the floor below, the huddled women make room, as they would for any new arrival. They do not look to see who has come; they do not reach their arms out or pat the wet floor. A space is found. Nanu sits, and Bapuji follows. Jeet climbs over the women to a corner near the windows; it is ankle deep in water and sludge. He sinks into it. The walls are dank: they smell of acceptance.

  The rain comes in at the windows; the dark seems to shield a hundred pairs of veiled eyes. Jeet’s mouth tastes of the basti, the human meat all around. How has it come to this? With Bapuji and Nanu down among the women? With him, here?

  They sit, waiting out the rain, listening to the moans of the sick and fevered, the younger children crying.

  —Come sleep, come sleep, a mother sings.

  Hours pass; they doze, their minds washed blank by the night’s rage.

  When a gauzy light begins to flit through the windows, Bapuji rouses himself. His hair is wild around his face. Jeet watches him take in the room: see the naked children, the makeshift toilet where they have been forced to squat. Filthy water lies inches deep around them. They have been there for hours, throats parched, legs wet, yet the mothers (or are the white-haired ones grandmothers?) still hold their children above the water’s reach. Then Bapuji catches sight of a boy’s arm, a faded Napurthala tattoo. He struggles to his knees.

  The women start to murmur as they, in turn, wake. Even though Bapuji’s kurta is soaking and torn, it remains fastened by diamond studs. His shawl is wound tight around his neck. Nanu’s pearls are more luminous than any of the teeth or eyes in the room.

  —Devraj Bapuji! The whisper spreads. Nanuji!

  They straighten their saris, try to wipe their children. A woman cries out in Napurthali,

  —Give my babies your blessing!

  The woman holds out her child. Bapuji stops shivering. He kneels, reaches out his hands and rests them on the heads of the two women either side of him. In Hindi he begins to sing that tired old song that every child learns at his first teacher’s knee. Bapuji’s voice is high; for a fevered moment Jeet thinks Gargi is there. He looks around, expecting to see her smiling at him, her head tilted to one side. But there is only Bapuji and Nanu, and the flood waters lapping at them all.

  —Hum honge kaamyab, hum honge kaamyab, ek din

  O mann mein un hei vishwas, poora hei vishwas,

  Hum honge kaamyab ek din.

  Bapuji waits; the women stay silent, so many of them in the room – how can they all stay so silent? Some of them are still holding out their children. Hushed, to hear more. Bapuji seems to be considering them all. He begins again in English,

  —We shall overcome, we shall overcome, we shall overcome someday,

  Oh deep in my heart, I do believe,

  That we shall overcome someday.

  The women embrace their babies; they rock them in their laps, eyes closed. Bapuji’s words fall and scatter around them, coins cast on feast days.

  —Now that I have seen you, I will save you, Bapuji says. I will pray you have sons in the next life, and that you are born to a better time.

  The woman nearest Jeet raises her head. She gives harsh laugh.

  —How many times can we sing this song in this life? We are sitting in water up to our knees, and still we are waiting for clean stuff to drink, she says to her friend.

  —Om Shanti Om, intones Bapuji.

  A wailing cry comes from below. It reaches them, stirring the women to standing. One goes to the window; she peers out, the rest of them watch and wait – to hear – a child has been found floating face down in the water, a boy has drowned in the flood. The women struggle to their feet; steadying each other, they lean out of the windows. Who is it?

  No shirt, jeans. One brown lace up Babu shoe with a red sole. Who is it?

  In his corner, Jeet puts his hands over his mouth. He knows who it is. Samir.

  A scream. Jeet had not noticed Samir’s mother here among the poorer women; he sees her faint backwards, she is caught in her sisters’ arms. The thunder rolls a final distant tarrantarra; the women hold her, their backs to the rotten window. Their wails rip through the silk of early morning light.

  Jeet rocks himself, head between his knees. Samir. Now is the time for madmen to rise, for Sita to abscond, for Jeet’s beloved Gargi to go against her father, for Radha and Bubu to take charge. Then there is Jivan. These are the players – sitting warm and dry, eating samosa with fresh mint chutney, monsoon mangoes and hot khir. What will they do next? No matter how much Jeet prays, curses or hides: Samir is gone. This is the age of Kali.

  §

  SITA WAS STILL SLEEPING; it was getting really, unbearably cold. Past hunger and on to pure thirst. Punj said he couldn’t leave us to fetch water, that someone is coming to bring us to the party.

  —You must be immune to hunger, Punj said. Didn’t you fast for days? I read that in the papers, headline news. How did you survive in the basti?

  Punj got up and made to light the fire. Sita stirred as he moved and raised her head.

  —Papa, she said, what is happening here?

  —Shh, I told her, go back to sleep.

  —Who is this? she said. It is so dark, I can barely see.

  —Don’t worry, just that serving man, here to keep company, I said.

  She struggled to her feet. Punj tried to stop her. He put his arms around her.

  —Punj! I said, just tie her with my shawl. She will stay if we bid it.

  —Papa, she said. What are you doing? We have to get out of here.

  —Sit! Sit with Punj, my Sita, and play along, while I ask you a question.

  —Don’t you tie me, she said to him, just as she should have. I’ll give you one tight slap! Leave me alone, I will sit.

  —Good girl, I said. So. Both of you tell me, which brand of tomato sauce do you prefer? I like eating finger chips with sauce. I remember when, after years and years, Heinz began to trade in India. Did you know they sell their sauce in two variations? The Standard Tomato and the Chilli Sauce. Who prefers what?

  —Standard, said Punj, grinning. All the way.

  —No, Sita said. Chilli.

  —Wrong, I said. All like all. Caste no bar. This is the danger of tomato sauce.

  Sita told us that even in the UK she ate Tomato Chilli Sauce. She said she used to put it on her Angrezi breakfast. She said she ate eggs, and pork in rashers and sausages, and even a pudding made of pigs’ blood. Now I am not a Mussulman but this I cannot endure. I willed her to go back to sleep. Even Punj looked shocked. And to think, I was trying to design and develop her a car. So all could ride her dreams!

  Whose daughter does she think she is? Time for her history lesson. I drew her a diamond in the dust.

  —Here, I said. We have campaigned from Amritsar to Napurthala, Napurthala to Chandigarh. Chandigarh to Delhi and from there to here. Srinagar. Across and back and up and down. The world keeps turning, turning. There are no straight lines but those of lineage, and on maps and spider’s webs. This is where you belong. It is written.

  iii

  The storm becomes a prologue to the scoop on Bapuji, rolling out across the country, felling share prices and raising banners to his newfound cause. The men in the dhaba watch the small TV and read yesterday’s newspapers; they quote Barun J. Bharat, who reports exclusively on how Bapuji left the Company Amritsar on the night of the worst rains to lash Punjab since the British left, and then made his way to Dhimbala basti to give succour to the people there. What happened next? In the morning, Barun writes, local men came looking for him, handing out bottles of Company water, packets of sweet, dry biscuits. They found Nanu and Bapuji on a flood-soaked parapet, Nanu squatting on a small cane stool, reciting shlokas to a rapture of women. Bapuji was in another corner, teaching a song to a group of happy children. The men tried to bring them back to the hotel, but they would not come.

  Instead, they insisted on being escorted around the pit to where t
he untouchables of Napurthala lived, wading through alleyways choked with stagnant sludge, past broken hovels and fearless rats, dispensing blessings and wisdom as they went. Bapuji did namaste to the men, low caste, no caste, sweepers, the un-tattooed Napurthali Jhimbas who once gutted fish. They were busy clearing the storm’s dead, carrying bodies to the basti cremation site in a corner of the pit. Yet Bapuji shook their hands; he invited each and every one of them to be his guests at Napurthala Palace as soon as humanly possible.

  That last part of the story (about the invitation) was true. But no one who reads the rest of the article while sipping on bed-tea brought to them late on Sunday morning – who, selecting between the weekend supplement (Hot now! Saying you’re an Artist or a Photographer is the coolest tag to have), the property ads (Unitech Nirvana Country – the gateway to Paradise – Gurugram!) or the matrimonials organised by caste, creed, geography, sex (not gender, never that, no) – will read that the men who came for Bapuji were locals. They were not sent by Gargi or Bubu, but someone else – Ranjit. That the water was in resealed Company bottles, that the biscuits were out-of-date. Or that Devrajji was actually found, after a long hunt-and-seek and numerous cash bribes, not teaching a song to grateful children but raging on the rooftop of Naph Minar with a twenty-pack of sharabis from all nine circles (since intoxication does not discriminate), who had managed to save their moonshine from the storm.

  No one passing the time with the papers and cups of first flush Darjeeling in the hotel lobbies – or the rain freshens their gardens and terraces and window boxes – would hear about how, the morning after the storm, Nanu and Bapuji went largely ignored as they made their way through the circles of the basti. The people were busy with their ruins, their families, their water and food. This was no time to be blessed by a madman or duped like a politician’s fool. Their constant work enraged Bapuji: he shut his ears against the women singing to their babies, hoping to scare off the dysentery that would wring small bodies dry. In the square, the dhaba and the moneylender reopened: queues began to form – for if anyone had cash in the basti, it had drowned. Madam demanded that Kataria 1 open up the women’s press: she wanted to print pictorial pamphlets on how to stay clean without water. He asked her: What is it worth? So, no one had time to stop and listen to Bapuji lecture. Some, out of love or duty, offered food and shelter, but Bapuji only wanted to drink and talk, and for people to sit and listen. Soon even the small children stopped following them.

  No one outside Dhimbala knew that – after Bapuji and Nanu could not be persuaded to go with them – the security men simply left them there. They promised they would come back with aid – that is, if the people kept themselves loyal, if the people kept their mouths shut about Bapuji and Nanu in that eyesore of a shit-heap.

  A day passes, and another. A violent seam of mosquitoes invades the lanes; threatening to spread malaria, to bring and feed on death. The boys are warned to keep off the most toxic parts of the dump. The more they are warned, the less they listen. They dare each other: deeper, deeper. They say they are diving for Samir’s other shoe. They hate to go home and they love the dump: it is where they find food and bits of scrap to trade; they play in it and shelter in it; it whispers to them words no one else can catch. It is their motherland.

  The storms leave behind a blood-spitting fever. Jeet is ill. He swarms and shivers in the ruins of his hovel; visions appear and dissolve. He sees a man stab another man, and eat him; then a man eats another man, who is screaming; then a man eating another man, who is soundlessly screaming – and he wakes up making the face of someone drowning. His arms are around a puppy, one of the few that survived the storm. Then Nanu (Nanu?) appears, a small Goddess in his hovel. He hears his own voice, high, gibbering, words spilling out of him until the vision disappears. Then Bapuji (Bapuji?) himself is there, and the night seems to rise again behind him.

  When Jeet wakes up he finds that some of it is true, and he has not been dreaming. The storm happened; Bapuji and Nanu were there; he is in Dhimbala basti, still. Above his head, the blue sky is flapping – so blue – no – it his sheet of blue plastic, a corner loose in the wind. The middle sags under the weight of water, it seems to be closing onto his head. Nanu is here, Bapuji is here, crouching with Jeet in his hovel. He feels hands caring for him, cradling him, calling him Radha, then Gargi. Bapuji pinches Jeet’s ear and twists it to burning. Through the slow haze of fever, all Jeet can remember are rhymes from his youth. Ek, do, teen, char, panch; Row, row, row your boat. He hears himself beg Bapuji to save him from a demon called Vikram who has been chasing him through the rain. High laughter whips around him; his naked body shivers with it, he realises it is his own voice.

  —Are you Rudra? Bapuji asks him. Do I know you? I think I know you.

  Jeet buries his face in his Godfather’s lap. He is Jeet. However much he wants to be Rudra, however much he tries to escape himself, he is Jeet: a man who loved Gucci, and all the things made with money. Jeet: who wore skin-lightening cream and waxed his chest, put khol in his eyes to make himself beautiful for beautiful boys. Jeet: who was proud to pay for sex, who drank whisky and could match any man at poker. Jeet: who was at his best with high-class women fawning over him; he let them lick his cock and take his money for dinner. No one had ever been able to match Jeet for flirting, except Vik – who follows him, eyes on him, pleading love.

  I cannot survive on nothing. No one can. However much he tries – he wants, he wants. He begins to sob. Bapuji rocks him gently. Shh, shh, be a good boy, Jeet thinks to himself in the basti. Say nothing, chup chup let the rain come again. Let it wash all life away.

  Rain falls in a light sheen over everything; it drips through the holes in Jeet’s plastic roof; it washes his face as he tries to look up. He sees Bapuji so clearly: every line on his face, every pigment mark. The man he has worshipped all his life is really there, looking at him with pity. Jeet thinks he says Tat tvam asi, but he cannot be sure. Then the fever takes over. Jeet remembers little after that. Until night comes, the second after the storm, and Bapuji is in some new sort of frenzy. He tears at his filthy kurta; his diamond studs fall off. Jeet scrabbles for them but Bapuji kicks them into the sewer; he rents at his shawl and drops it in the mud.

  Legs tremble, arms ache, but Rudra raises himself up and falls on it; he wraps it between his legs and around his hips. Nanu wakes up from her corner, a bundle of torn chiffon and sodden papier maché skin, as if she is waiting to be formed. She tries to stop him, calling to Bapuji not to allow a madman to wear his clothes, not to turn the world ulta seedha upar neeche, risk each becoming the other.

  He feels Nanu’s hands at grab at him and slap him; his limbs twist with fever. He retreats to a corner, stroking his new covering, nursing himself.

  —We that believe in India shining – he whispers it into his shawl. We that believe we are better than all others. We that are the youngest, the fastest, the democracy, the economy, the future technology of the world, the global Super Power coming soon to a cinema near you, we, hum panch, that are the five cousins of the five great rivers, everybody our brother-sister-lover, we that are divine: the echo of the ancient heroes of the old times, we that fight, we that love, we that are hungry, so, so hungry, we that are young! We that are jigging on the brink of ruin; we that are washed in the filth of corruption, chal, so what? Aise hi hota hai: we that are a force all that is natural – slow – death – to Muslims, gays, chi-chi women in their skin-tights, hai! We that sit picnicking on the edge of our crumbling civilisation, we that party with shots and more shots, more shots as the world burns beneath us, as the dogs bark, as the cockroaches crow, as the old eat their young and the young whip their elders all wearing the birth masks of respect, we that present only the shadows of our selves behind our painted smiles, we that protest for the right to drink whisky-sours served to our beds at noon, we that eat our beef with chopsticks, we that twist tongues to suit our dear selves, we that worship the ancient religion of Lakshmi, of Shiva, of wealth crea
tion and ultimate destruction, we that will be born strong in the next life and in a party that never ends, we that are the future of this planet, we that begin with this beloved India, will endure, yes it all belongs to us, and we will eat it all. All of it is ours, we that are India and no longer slaves: We that are young!

  —Who do you think you are? Nanu says. Where? This is the world where pundits take bribes for blessings. Do not shiver. When thieves don’t come to the market, when gandus and hijras get married in Krishna mandirs, then humara apna India will shine, heh? Somewhere it rains every day, whether you feel it in your palace or not.

  Midnight comes: almost the third day. Jeet shivers in his hovel as the sun beats down. He hears a noise and crawls to see. Outside in the lane, Devraj and another man – Jeet thinks it is his father (his father!) – are together. Arms locked around each other, they are doing some kind of ring-a-roses dance. Why isn’t Rudra there? He sees himself hopping about around them – Voo hoo, Voo hoo! – he feels the softness of toosh warm his cock. His Godfather’s head is lit against the night. The two men roll in the mud and Jeet laughs – he catcalls, he claps – until finally Ranjit has Bapuji pinned down. How the prisoner struggles! A slippery fish, gaping.

  Jeet feels cold, although he is wrapped in a fine, forbidden kingly shawl. He slithers through the mud to take his Godfather’s hand. He begs not to be left behind. Hands grip him, pushing him back into his hovel. He buries the piercing confusion that Ranjit does not recognise him, doesn’t even seem to see him, touches him with disgust on his face. He wants to say, Don’t you see me? Your only son, Jeet. No – I am Rudra, against desire. No – Jeet.

  But words will not come. Jeet has forgotten how to speak, is afraid that if he says anything it might only be, Vik, Vik, Vik, Vik, Vik.