We that are young
Page 43
Are you a citizen of Bharat or a slave of the India Company?
Time to stand up! Time to walk! Time to run for Chandigarh, and Delhi –
where SRI DEVRAJ BAPUJI is waiting to join hands!
Come join the Everyday People! Fight against the disease that blights us! Pick
up is coming. Txt your basti ki naam to 76877. Await your bus!
Jeet makes for the square, where the men of Dhimbala, the Amritsaris, even the Napurthalis (tattooed and not), and many he does not know, who have no history, are gathering.
—What is happening? Jeet says to the nearest man.
The general murmurings amount to this: that Devraj has called to those who gave him succour three weeks ago, during the great storm. He is sending buses in the next one hour to bring them to Chandigarh to join his cause. They must be ready at the Napurthala gate.
The news sweeps through the square, sand on the wind. The people stream back through the Amritsar gate; it seems as if every circle is moving at once. Around the lanes, around the pit, to the designated place.
There are six buses – some missing windows, some with missing seats, some that have no doors. All driven by local men. Each passenger is given a plastic cup of water with a pierce-able film and a pointed straw. A picture of Ranjit and one of Devraj hangs garlanded over the driver’s wheel. This knowledge – that even his father is working against the girls, against even Radha – seeps into Jeet. He has a sudden longing to see the old man’s face, to see if he can’t fix things again. To see if, after all, there might not be some way they could be honest with each other. Just to see.
Four hours or five. The bus rattles down the highway. The women sit at the back with the children, the men are at the front. The driver stops only once, to hand out foil packets with a cartoon picture of a long armed monkey in a cap, eating peanuts and grinning. Jeet takes a window seat in the third bus. It has been years since he last went to Chandigarh. Built by a Frenchman to a socialist dream. A modern grid city realised in concrete the Company had not won the right to pour. Jeet has never cared much for the ways it picked and chose its modernity with accessories from the old Mughal city at Fatehpur Sikri, as if there was no other tradition to reference. And how will the people of Dhimbala fare in a grid system?
For Jeet the city has never been about streets; instead it is all about discrete places linked by doing time in the car. The best bar in which to find a dirty martini, the best quiet, shadowed beauty spot in Lodhi gardens in the mornings. That bookstore in the Village, of course – these places to him were (alongside the best bakeries and coffee shops and certain tailors with roof gardens in the block markets of Greater Kailash) what a city is made of. Jeet did not know how to walk in Chandigarh, he found its avenues too exposed.
The bus rattles through the suburbs and reaches the caged streets, turning right and right. Stopping. No idea where exactly – but from the bus it seems over three thousand people have gathered. There are so many banners painted with slogans: Quit Corruption, Company Quit!
Rudra slips through bodies to get to the front. He can see Ranjit’s hand everywhere – money has been spent – the people have no chairs but there is a dais with a table draped in white, there are speakers for Bapuji’s voice. The PA system plays the national anthem; the mothers calm their children with nursery rhymes. Many are not basti dwellers; they have scooters and cars; their children have nannies, private tuition, badminton lessons and plans for month-long weddings bigger than this gathering. Would any of them share out what they have equally with the people of Dhimbala? Join hands, actually touch? Or marry their daughters to the sons of that place? Of course not. And nor should they ask, he thinks. Dharma does not ask this of them; all dharma asks is that they fulfil their own destiny, as it is written.
Bapuji seems small on the dais in his vest, dhoti and cap. Behind him is a vast picture of a lotus flower, a tiger, one of Gandhiji and one of Subash Chandra Bose. To his left are twenty-five young men dressed as Bapuji. Bapuji stands at a lecturn, the bright orange of his scarf a beacon to Jeet over the heads of the crowd.
Bapuji points his finger at the sky. A hush falls. There is no breeze; even the clouds seem stuck in place. This is not the storm-tossed Dhimbala refugee, with his sudden rage. This is Bapuji, backed by his twenty-five young men; he smiles as he points his finger, points it, up, up! He opens his mouth – Jeet takes a deep breath, as if he, not Bapuji is about to speak – then, as if reciting something he learned for this moment, Bapuji says,
—What about you, the people? We deserve freedom. We demand answers from Gargi Madam. When can we expect them? Time to cut the culprit of corruption, creator of poverty, causer of displacement, builder of unsafe houses, trafficking in Kashmir for love of money, breaker of laws – The Company.
A cheer sweeps back through the crowd. Forgiving Bapuji, founder of the Company, shifting the blame to his daughters. And drugs and violence and hotels must coexist, Jeet knows, Bubu knows, Radha and Gargi know – this is how their elders taught them to maintain the delicate balance of life in the forest – and now Bapuji wants to overturn it.
Jeet could tell them. He knows, he knows – that Bapuji is speaking the truth. He has worked the drug route, seen the gun stores; he knows every back lane in Srinagar; every houseboat secret deal. Terror holds within itself the promise of a prosperous future. He wants to stick his hand up and shout, I know! As if he is the best boy in the class.
He looks at the dais – one of the young men is standing there in Bapuji’s place (it could be Jeet if he had stayed that night, he would have had every single one of these people eating from his hand).
—The Company was begun by Bapuji to thrive within India’s borders. Decades have passed since Bapuji gave his daughters every opportunity that any loving father would. Yet they have been siphoning off money from the businesses, paying off with gifts and bribes, trading on their father’s name. Are any of you shareholders?
—Us! Company bricks division! A group of Sardarjis in front of Jeet shout.
—Yes, many of you are, Bapuji’s man says. Check that your bonds are not being stretched to breaking. The love between fathers and daughters, Company and customers is sacred as the farmer’s for our beloved prithvi. This is one of the reasons why Bapuji is here today: more than even his own family, he loves you. He demands the government investigate his daughters, to end their stranglehold on democratic India.
A woman in white jeans and a pale, woven shirt is standing near Jeet, her arms hooked around her small daughter. A Munni-look alike, but for her fairer skin. The child has delicate silver clips shaped into butterfly wings in her hair; they flutter as her mother, hands on her shoulders, rocks her side to side.
—How bad those girls must be to make Bapuji hate them so, the mother says to her daughter. See what happens when you misbehave?
Around them a sudden cheer rises. Jeet looks to the dais; Bapuji is shaking his joint hands at the crowd, including all of them in his grip. He releases, and points at the sky again as he walks off with his men.
See Rudra? thinks Jeet. What a man can do to inspire, with a pointing finger and a mastery of words!
The last of Bapuji’s men stays behind, waiting for silence. The space behind him looks a little desolate now, littered with half-drunk bottles of water and empty chairs.
—Until the government takes action against the Company, and removes those ministers who have enhanced and benefited from its bad deeds. Not one word more will come from Bapuji’s mouth. He has taken a vow of silence and will drink only water straight from the tap, purified by nothing more than fire.
—Devraj Bapuji zindabad, shouts Jeet. Jumping, jubilant, he punches the air with the others around him – and in the jostling crowd takes a moment to pick himself a BlackBerry from a turbaned businessman’s backpocket. Phone upgrade toh karna hai, no? Devraj Bapuji zindabad!
—Devraj Bapuji Zindabad!
The crowd is joyous around him. Company Cut-off! they shout.
*
Jeet boards the bus with his new BlackBerry, ready for the long journey home. What a thing it is to hold the life of Prem Singh in his hand. He has Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, hundreds of pics of Prem’s lovely wife, his three studious little girls and the Punjabi Aunty XXX app. He has 3G. And an Instagram full of cars and bars and watches and bowls of homemade daal garnished with half a boiled egg.
Jeet feels breathless as he scrolls through Prem’s Twitter feed. He loses hours on the road as he stares at the phone – as #CompanyCutoff! begins to trend. He checks @MrGee, which he loves, but there is nothing, nothing, nothing, about the rally. Around him, children doze, clutching their new toys. The women, sitting together at the back, crunch roasted chana and pick over all they have seen. The men at the front make a plan: they will go and occupy the Company Napurthala grounds, they will work on the gardens and restore the building – payment to be forwarded to time of completion – for has not Bapuji promised rewards to all who support his cause? Yes!
Jeet only half listens to the hum of chatter, the road noise; he decides he won’t use the phone for more than reading and spying – and on every platform are pictures of Bapuji, on the stage, finger pointing, his orange scarf so bright and looped around his neck. What would Samir say if he could see this beautiful device, given as if by Bapuji himself? Rudra would give Samir the old phone, and then they could call each other. Jeet holds the smooth black plastic to his forehead. He finds his eyes are wet.
As they pull up at the Napurthala gate, Jeet checks through the accounts one last time. A new post on Facebook – Prem Singh offering a reward of Rs 1000 to have the phone back – a new tweet from his account says – #CompanyQuit! And my phone back too – Jeet checks @MrGee again – all there is to read is a cynical tweet about the rally, Bapuji’s pointing finger, girls and skirt lengths. Shame, Jeet thinks, clearly Mr Gee wasn’t there.
*
That night the moon is obscured by smoke. Jeet keeps the phone tied in his putta, next to his head. He cannot sleep. He spends some time scavenging on the dump, looking for implements for his fighting boys.
Then Madam’s bell begins to ring nonstop. A group of boys come running from the first circles, down the basti’s boards, screaming about an eyeless demon making its way to the fourth. They are followed by waves of sound as if the earth’s heart is being ripped out and emptied onto the dump.
The whores’ bell rings through the lanes, bringing sleeping men out of their shacks; Rudra, who is scavenging on the fourth circle slope, hears the sound of the monster and the bell. He scrabbles back down into the lane, the smog is so thick, he thinks the sound is coming for him. He follows the oil lamps to Madam’s courtyard, where one electric light bulb hangs suspended over a group of men: bandwallahs, boys, have gathered around something in the yard. When they see Rudra, they let him through.
A figure is at the centre; its shirttails hang loose over the rolls of its belly, it has soiled itself. What is left of its face is wrapped in blood-soaked rags. A man, blinded – a Company guard beside him. This is the two-headed beast the children are running from.
The prostitutes whistle and call from their balconies. The blind man’s hands grope towards Madam, who is bringing more light outside. She stands in the centre of the group – Jeet can see – he knows those shoulders, that head. From the back – he knows the man – he moves around him, reaches forward and grasps at him. His stomach heaves. Ranjit. He opens his mouth, and to stop himself laughing he begins to chant:
—Om, Om, Om.
Ranjit scrabbles for the sound. Jeet kneels; he finds his cheeks and ears being pinched and pulled, his dark beard yanked. Around him, voices demand to know what has happened – who this man is, who has hurt him, who? Chanting leaves Jeet’s body shaking – Ranjit does not know him. He wants to say, I’m here.
Then a group of Madam’s women push into the centre of the circle, surrounding Jeet, his father and the guard.
—It is our duty to take care of the blind, says one. Half her face is covered in a burn; the rest is obscured by her chunni.
Ranjit makes a sound. A whimper. He holds one arm out to keep them away, the other on the bandage over his eyes.
—Take him to old Mumtaz, she will heal him, says another girl, pushing the first aside. She also has burns, Jeet sees – from chin to neckline, as if the acid had dripped into her mouth and spilled from there down her throat. The gathered men are staring at the women, at Ranjit – all of them caught under the light.
—Back off. This from the Company guard; his tone carries a warning, and he raises a hand up against the women.
Jeet can see the guard’s face. It seems streaked with blood, his shirt is missing. He realises it was used to make the strips covering Ranjit’s eyes.
—Put on curd and ghee, or egg whites, says a whore; two small children hang around her neck like mufflers.
—Eggs? Are you, crazy? Who has eggs to waste right now? shouts a bandwala. (The French horn, or is it the cymbal?)
Now Rudra is pushed this way and that; he falls back, someone steps on his hands; if he gets close to Ranjit again, he must speak, he must tell him the truth, he thinks – but then all of the basti will know that for all these weeks he has lied. Sick to his eyes, his throat dry, he lets the men push past him, listens to them dispute what to do.
—He cannot stay here; more trouble for us.
—We already have too many blind – and this one is not even young!
—Hospital – take him to the hospital.
—Are you stupid? Do you want to bring the police down on your head?
—What is your name, old man?
—Chup! snaps the Company guard. The men draw breath. Who are you talking to? This is Ranjit Sahib, who owns your sorry skin!
The babble stops. Madam shakes her head from side to side. The torch bobs in her hand. Shadows splinter the smog and Rudra’s laughter spurts up in him again: the men haven’t even recognised Ranjit. Lord Krishna, Jeet thinks, has a wry sense of humour.
The men and the girls, now silent, stare. Jeet can see disbelief on their faces. For the second time Bhagwan has brought a Babu here: a man with so much wealth. This one, their own Sarkar, is weeping blood in front of them. Jeet looks up: the younger girls shrink back on their balconies, awed, fearful.
Should he speak?
—Ayo! Madam shouts.
Two girls bring more lanterns from inside the brothel; three carry out a low cane chair, they guide Ranjit to sit. The men watch as Madam herself goes back inside; she brings a bowl of warm water, she kneels next to Ranjit in the dirt. As if she does this often she dips the corner of her dupatta in it and gently wipes Ranjit’s pulped face.
—I had a son! Ranjit moans. He left me to this – may his punishment be to see what he has done.
Rudra turns hot with grief and rage. He squeezes his own cheeks; his breath melts into the fog.
—Who did this thing, who? A basti man asks loudly.
—I tried to help, the Company man says from behind Ranjit’s chair. I tried to intervene. My dear friend Ramchand also did, now he is dead.
Ramchand, Radha Madam, Ranjit Sahib, Bapuji – the names pour from the guard over Ranjit’s head into the group; Ranjit begins to wail again and Madam soothes him. Jeet can only hear snatches – tiny piercings on his skin – until the Company guard pauses. Smoke rises from the dung burning in the brazier; it chokes the Company man, he coughs. Then he tells them more: he tells them to look at Ranjit Sahib’s bandaged eyes, to look at his own chest, in a singlet under his jacket on this cold night.
—My own shirt, I tore, he says. I bound Ranjitji’s head. He wipes his face with his hand. It would have been just one eye. But Radha Madam demanded ‘The other, too.’ As if selecting bangles for her wrists.
The man coughs again, he looks around at the
m all.
—And now Bubu Sahib is dead. I know, says the guard. I killed him.
Jeet feels the Dhimbala men take a few steps back. They stare at the guard; a fresh sense of fear hangs suspended in the fog. Then, a spitting out of something – rage, excitement? Jeet feels it in their bodies, their tone. The shouts begin: Burn the Company Amritsar! The replies come: We should not! A whore calls down from her balcony, Hey you! Why are you trying to be Amir Khan?
—Someone should take Ranjitji to the hospital, the Company man says. Or to the police station, and leave him there.
—Would you? says Madam. No. And neither will any of us. The people of this basti do not need town justice. We do not go voluntarily to them.
Rudra remembers Samir telling him stories of those places: a cousin who suffered a near-fatal beating for the smallest of crimes (the stoning of the CCTV camera, the cutting of its wires). There were rumours of cattle prods and electrodes. He drops to his knees at his father’s side again. The broken body is trembling; somehow, through his bandages, Ranjit is weeping. His body is drenched in a pain so visible, Jeet thinks of the night he crawled through wire to escape the Farm. Of that life, now absolutely gone.
—Quiet, quiet, Madam shouts. She flicks her shawl around herself; her bangles chime up her arms, glass bangles, the kind brides give to their women. The sound reaches the men’s ears. Look at them, how it calms them all. Every man here – except Jeet.
—He should go to Delhi, to the Campaign. He should go to Bapuji, the only one who can protect him, Madam says.
The men stay silent.
—Yes. Let him go to Delhi, to Bapuji, says the Company man.
The men around Jeet murmur. Yes.
—We have a bed here, Madam says. Mumtaz can come tend Ranjitji among my women, and he can rest until he can walk. He is not the first blind man she, or any of us, has seen. Any dissenters? Any of you think Lord Ranjit Singh should not enter into our house?