by Preti Taneja
Rudra thumps onto the bench. Nanu seems to have wandered from this place; he thinks he should try to find her. He looks up. A woman, her blockprint chunni a bright, fresh yellow, approaches him; she offers him a scoop of halva, wrapped in paper tissue. Rudra takes the gift; he presses his cupped hands to her. All energy leaves him.
Slowly, he eats. Warm, sweet prasad. The crowds begin to disperse. He sits for a while, watching them go. He wanders through the Banyan tree’s roots. There is Nanu, hobbling towards the doors of the Napurthala Palace. She is going back to the rooms where she once played an eight-year-old bride. Perhaps her wedding portrait still hangs in its guilded frame, above the vast fireplace in the bridge room. Among the antiques and hunting trophies, cobwebbed memories of afternoons spent drinking tea and eating sweetmeats, playing her sitar for her husband. She is going back to the home where memories wait, her tender maids, to soothe and bathe and put to bed.
It is almost noon. The sun is high in the sky. Jeet watches Nanu make her way inside, and disappear from view.
§
WHEN MY FATHER DIED, the Palace of Napurthala was mine. I was nine-years-old. The Viceroy’s missive came attached to an arm to tell me my kingdom was now an annexe of the Empire, and then, as the myth has it, Nanu entertained him with wine and stuffed peacock. She gave him boys with the paan course, and he, suffering a colonial hangover and too ashamed of himself to admit it the next morning, went back and revoked the order of possession. To tell the truth, I simply paid him in gold. As much as he could carry: he even filled his mouth. And then, for I was strong child, I gave him a kick up the backside and told him to get off my land.
After that I began to build my business and who can say if I did anything wrong? In the years of the license Raj, nothing was possible and everything happened. Some say they never bribed, did not milk connection from Mother India’s breast. Good luck to them. The time is passed for lies. I learned survival from the look in men’s eyes when they came to drink my bootleg whisky, for the country was dry back then, from Napurthala to Delhi. Who could blame them? We all got rich and why not? Cash in hand to be hidden under the bed while who knows what took place on top. Outside world go hang.
But this house. This Srinagar tinderbox house. If only I had known there were angels living here, I would have stayed. How the angel dances, so lightly above us, and the stars twinkle down on this clear, clear night. Today is Diwali, the time for homecoming. The return of Kings and consorts.
—Sita?
Good, she must have gone to bed.
When she was small, she was a girl guide. Could have taught a man to make a fire. And when she was in college, she wrote to me each week. Then she came back to the Farm, and it was time for the flower of the family to bear fruit. Where has she gone?
Nanu once said, Amass your wealth, follow your desires, search for liberation in your own sweet time. It will come, she promised me. What you deserve. It will come in some form to us all.
iv
September is passing; as the hot clear nights turn cold, the breath of the monster goes from rancid to chilled, the hotel kitchens spew butter chicken, rogan josh, Amritsari spiced fish into the basti bins. The basti boys won’t touch that last dish – they know every dirty tributary of river starts here: they will eat no fish. Nor will they eat discarded club sandwiches – they don’t trust the colour of the meat, the taste of white toastbread. They do not complain. From the dhaba TV they digest the news that Bapuji has begun a fast.
They gather for stories, telling and retelling what they saw in the grounds of the palace: stone peacocks and birds of paradise, real blue flowers growing in every crack in the stone. Their own Rudra sitting between Bapuji and Nanu. Gifts begin to appear at the Napurthala shrine:
A length of saffron fabric to wrap around Rudra’s body.
A mala of sandalwood beads.
A packet of dry masoor daal – an aluminium cooking pot – a few dung brickettes like the ones Madam uses for her courtyard brazier.
The boys climb the rubbish pile and watch as the yellow brick wall of the Company Amritsar hotel is fortified with new, red bricks, topped with glass shards pressed into wet cement. A new guard comes to sit in the box at the back of the hotel. Samir’s father, who used to sit there, can now be found in the ninth circle, singing from the rooftop of the Amritsar Minar. He has joined the drinking club of broken basti men.
His wife is dead. The night after the rally she followed her husband to the rooftop. Grieving for her son, she threw herself into the pit.
Samir.
Jeet heard the shouting from the roof that night. The men were high on moonshine, from inhaling petrol soaked rags. He could have been up there, telling the drinkers (for Samir is dead) stories of what goes on behind the walls of the Amritsar hotel, where the clever boys and girls who have been gifted tomorrow and all the tomorrows after that – who don’t need to worry about food, or water, or where their lives will lead them (protected as they are by their father’s money, their mother’s creamy, cloudy rasmalai) – will not age. They will pass, comets trailing fire, they will be reborn as their own offspring and continue to dance to top DJs spinning, spinning: the same songs over and over again, until the earth implodes to dust and becomes a burning star.
The vagrant men of the basti loved these stories almost as much as they love their petrol soaked rags. They applauded Rudra’s wilder anecdotes, as Samir used to do, they saluted him, as the boy did, they encouraged him to tell more. Jeet felt love for them in turn; he felt they were his real brothers. They burned whatever rubbish they could grab; they sang songs to the Company. Jeet danced for one night, or maybe two, through toxic smoke, flourishing the imaginary money: O drunken uncle blessing the bride! Remember the bricks of notes Jeet used to trade in? Samir was there, and turned into Vik, who he could buy whatever he wanted. Jeet drank, the men with him, as if he was their guru, and they were all young.
As for Munni, Samir’s sister, she has become the seven-year-old leader of the gang paid to grace Dhimbala with her little dances. She used to be so opinionated, Jeet thinks, now she has learned how to smile. Madam has taken her in; the few paise she earns keep her from starving. She will not suffer the same fate as her cousin-sister Sakina (not her real name), a girl who has gone mute since she was taken in multiple orifices by Amritsar and Napurthala in the chaos of the storm.
The new guard does not take much notice of the basti dwellers. No one brings him tea. All the boys can find out is this: he reports to ‘Jivan Sahib’. This arrests Jeet. His energy sinks inside him and his spirits become low. The fever has not fully left him. When it rises, there is a new central character in his visions: Jivan. Jivan, sitting in his place at dinner, at his father’s right hand. Jivan, laughing with Gargi and Radha. Jivan, drinking Cristal at an art auction in Delhi. Jivan, in the British Museum – in the Treasures of Kashmir gallery, picking out pieces for the Company Srinagar hotel. Finally, the one that makes him want to scream: Jivan and Vik, lovers. Jeet rolls himself a bidi; he climbs up the rubbish pit and sits, smoking as the night passes. So what if Jivan prefers women? So what, if he and Vik have never met, and probably never will? Vik is still there, in Delhi. Probably, he is progressing with his life. Probably he has hooked up with some writer-type who is fully out and knows everyone, who has a scene at a few city jazz clubs and never wears a tie – the kind of man, Jeet thinks, anyone would love and want to serve, who anyone would fuck with respect.
Jeet wakes before dawn in the settled stench of the basti, a starving pup pressed against him for warmth. He strokes the shivering body. The wet snout nuzzles at him. He pushes the beast away, and climbs down to the square to begin the day again.
Each day has taken on a new rhythm. Jeet wakes and sweeps his hovel; he sprinkles water on the dust. He makes his way to the field on the far side of the basti; he takes his turn to squat and shit with his phone before he goes to the square to wash his body at the pumps. Man can get used to anything, as long as there is routine
. He returns to the ninth circle shrine to say his prayers. He stirs his pot over a low fire, waiting for his mash to cook. Then goes to the square for morning Yoga, to collect water and oversee its distribution. Everyday at 9am on the dhaba TV Bapuji’s speeches are broadcast from across the country; today he is at a rally in Maharashtra, an image of Gandhiji and one of Lord Ram on the backdrop behind him. From the camera angle it looks like thousands of people have gathered there.
—Then you tell me, who is the chor and who is the Saint? Bapuji asks. Dress a dog in a sari and teach it to nod – who can tell the difference? Madam Kuti is running the Company and who can tell, indeed? None of us should be punished for this state of affairs. Who is your master? I tell you: clean your own houses. Look at your daughters. Ask yourselves, choli ke peeche kya hai? Then check beneath their lengha skirts. Find what stinks there. Filth. I am India. I am you, I am you, I am you, you, you – he jabs his finger through the screen.
Feroze Shah brings Rudra a cup of masala chai.
—What did he say, before this? Jeet asks.
—He talked sense, Shah shrugs. As all husbands know, if there is corruption, it is because women promise so much, and men will do anything for them.
—Gargi Madam, did he mention her?
—He said, ‘A mouse feeds the cat, the cat feeds the dogs, the big fish eat the small fish. This is the nature of the world.’ He has seen into our hearts; he knows our lives, says Shah. Rudra bhai, you were close to him. Is it not the case that he changes the common man’s life for good?
Bapuji’s words lubricate the basti from the Amritsar side to the Napurthala Palace. Slowly, the circles begin to move. Napurthali men of the sixth come with stones to the Amritsar side. They start pelting the Muslims in the fifth, shouting they must relocate to the far curve of the seventh or come work to clear the heaviest stones from the old Palace site. The Muslims in the fifth displace the castes of the ninth, they flood the Amritsar side, causing the circles to turn the other way. They plan to use the debris to build a wall between the circles, and the left over rubble to fortify their dwellings. The Amritsar side boys from all circles come to Rudra under his tree; they demand he replace his made-up stories with Bapuji’s latest sayings. They don’t want to imagine old worlds, they want to recite new ones. The key dates of the Company. The Yoga Sutras and the Vedas. And, of course, the Manusmriti. Jeet gives it to them. He gives it to them in Sanskrit for the schooled ones, Hindi for the rest, Napurthali for the boys who need basic letters first.
The classes grow. Boys he has never seen begin to join in. Jeet divides them by fathers, faith and basti circle, blurring the difference between Amritsar side and Napurthala side boys in favour of caste and sect, something more natural. He sets each group tests for a tournament he plans at the end of each week. He tasks them all to compete in Yoga positions and to sing the national anthem before doing eka hasta bhujasana in the dirt.
Then Jeet circles the lanes with a select crew of boys, a stick in each hand, advising the elder ones to divide up the watch, to ensure every last basti female obeys a curfew of 6pm, that they always wear salwar kameez and do not come out when bleeding, even in their own hovels, for anything else is called a disgusting shame. Jeet oversees the plans of a rival boy’s group, headed by the son of the marble-wala in the second circle; they have heard his whispered suggestion to bring the city cows into Dhimbala square, designating new Company Amritsar wall a place to tether them. They plan to care for them and gather their dung for cooking, just as they once did with Haathi the elephant. Some of the boys form a gang to pelt the Christian moonshine makers with wet rags tied around stones; Jeet sends reinforcements from the resettled Muslim kids to help them tie their rocks more tightly and to admonish those who do not join in. The Katarias do not interfere as Rudra walks the circles, chanting his mantras with his boys. The Watch, they call themselves. Counting steps and hours and changing guard at Madam’s bell, which she allows them to use for her own protection. Dhimbala is one half naked, one half mad. Rudra will keep it true to his vision of civilisation. The highest.
By the last week of September, Bapuji has been fasting for almost three weeks, devouring the headlines state by state. On the dhaba TV, his supporters appeal for the end of Company market domination, a return to a time when local traders were kings of their own affairs. Jeet watches this as – in the cold evenings, on the street corners all over the city – night-watchmen huddle, sticks trying to spark. The days get shorter. A curtain falls: a yellow smog that scours the eyes. Oil lamps are lit across the basti. The fumes burn the slum dwellers’ lungs.
One afternoon, Feroze Shah flicks through the TV channels and finds Gargi on FemmeIndiaTV (590, Starplus syndicate). Jeet sips his tea. He watches her on the dhaba screen. She has aged; even through her smile Jeet can see new lines set around her mouth and eyes. She has cut her hair; it makes her look tired. The grey streak at her left temple has gone undyed for the first time. God, has she no image consciousness? Jeet is almost insulted by how old she looks. She’s in saris – is that homespun? Each time she appears wearing heavier and heavier jewellery. Her pearl earrings sit, two extra eyeballs on each side of her head. Gargi! Jeet remembers her fat tears on her fat cheeks; he wasted his youth trying to teach her beauty, she had a tendency to think that she always knew best.
It is not just the way she looks that offends Jeet. Uppal is always pictured in the background, nodding and smiling at every line Gargi says. It’s the news reports, too. How she has renamed all the Company women with Western names; how she refuses to negotiate with any of the labour unions; how each of her hotels, each mall, each hospital has been built by workers brought in from out of state – because that way they don’t have their traditional support systems, they don’t know their rights. They are made to work without helmets, without shoes, without proper hours. And also how many have died, or were never compensated for their labours.
Scenes of utter normalcy now make headline news. Here is one, of the Company brick kilns in Chattisgarh: men, women and children barefoot and covered in bright red dust working for less than eight rupees a day. The metro building sites where women crouch, breaking stones with their hammers, scaling scaffolding made of bamboo while the yellow, metal maws of Chinese diggers gorge on the land around them. Yesterday’s newspapers announce: No hard hats! No shoes! No highvis safety-wear! These headlines on the front pages – against pictures of the rearing, seven-star splendour that is the Company Kashmir, being built while Bapuji is fasting. And on the back pages – ads for the winter season there. And God, thinks Jeet – to go the mountains, to the white quiet, white pool – just to swim in it. Then Rudra shuts this thought away.
The newsreaders call Gargi Devi, for she never cracks. There she is, inscrutable, always smiling, speaking in considered tones about how she only became aware of the problems when she was given trust of the Company by her own father, just three months ago. How she has always believed in Bapuji, no matter what he did.
—How could a woman running her father’s vast household and taking care of human lives across such a big company, be aware, let alone party to, such terrible abuses in other offices of the Company? This is what Gargi asks. And how could my dear simple sister Radha – who has never done more than support our father, who is known for her tender nature – be party to such intricate corruption?
—All I do is a matter of Company izzat. I have the ultimate respect for my father. She begins and ends every interview like this.
Rudra wants to gather up the basti shit and smear it in her face. The coverage swings from Gargi and Radha to Bapuji and his campaign. The men in the dhaba jeer at her, even those drunks in the ninth start kicking against her name. Only a few reports mention that under Gargi’s watch, the Kashmir hotel is the first eco palace in the world – powered by solar energy, sustainable laundry, all furniture made of repurposed bamboo. Instead, the better magazines run exposés: Cash for contracts! MPs Eashun Sahib, Vijay Sahib, Priyam Sahib under pressure to resi
gn! Did they gift state building contracts to Bubu Balraj? Government secretaries are named and three state ministers: transport, home and Bandha Pradesh. A roll-call begins: those who made sure Bubu got the contracts to build malls in the megacities; who looked away as Bubu paid over the odds; who submitted budgets of four times what each state project would cost. Who, who, who. Even the basti boys who once begged Rudra for stories of the fine, fine life he was last born to know that there isn’t a light bulb on earth that costs three thousand rupees.
The mornings are brutal. Jeet crouches in the shitting field; he cradles his simple phone and rocks with it; he hums to himself, to block the sense of his bowels emptying. How has he got used to doing this? So used to it as if he was born this way and returned to the origins. Something about that thought makes his muscles clench and his calves shiver – he almost drops the phone. He scrolls through the spam messages in the INBOX folder, reading about offers for sure-fire lottery wins and big breasted girls with wet wet * takeaway Punjabi desi khaana just text BALTI. He hums, warming his voice before class with the boys. Until one cold morning the phone vibrates gently in his hand. He stares at it – around him the other men’s phones are doing the same – but still they don’t look over at each other, even though what they have read has them all finishing up, on their feet, washing, wiping, pulling:
What, do you want to remain in the filth of corruption?