Arzee the Dwarf

by Chandrahas Choudhury

  ‘Yes, Mehndibhai.’ Mehndi reminded Arzee of a science teacher he had had at school.

  ‘Now, one of the ideas is to have people slightly – slightly smaller than average – walk around in public places wearing…’ Mehndibhai ducked under his table to rummage in a bag ‘… wearing these.’

  He held up a lime-green suit, its arms and legs danging limply like a superhero’s costume thrown into the wash. ‘Abracadabra! It’s a Limzee suit! Once you’re inside it, you’ll look like a bottle. That’s Limzee, in a new small size.’

  ‘What!’ said Arzee. ‘I’ve got to walk around in that?’

  ‘That’s what you’re getting paid five hundred a day for, my friend. It’s good money. For ten days that’s five thousand. Is that small money, my friend? And after that we may want more days out of you, depending on how it goes.’

  ‘But Mehndibhai –’

  Arzee was interrupted by a strange snort from the other dwarf, who had jumped off his chair so abruptly that it went rolling back on its wheels and collided with the wall. ‘Five hundred a day!’ he cried, ecstatic. ‘Yes! Yes! I’ll do it. I’ve got debts to pay! Bills to pay! My mother’s in hospital. And I haven’t eaten for days, sir, I haven’t eaten for days! O Kali Maa, my prayers have been answered. Two hours, sir, two hours I spent yesterday touching the goddess’s feet, rolling in the dirt, telling her of my troubles. And her tongue was red, sir, just like your hair. And that’s a sign!’

  ‘Calm down, my dear man, calm down,’ said Mehndi, winking at Arzee. ‘Not so fast now. It’s work first, money later.’

  ‘Work first, sir! Money later! I’m an honest man, sir. But give me an advance of a twenty, sir, as I don’t even have the money to get back home.’

  ‘I’ll do that, you don’t worry. Mehndi takes care of all his flock, you’ll see.’ Mehndi turned to Arzee. ‘And you, my good man?’

  ‘I’ve – I’ve never done this kind of work before, Mehndibhai. I work as a projectionist in a cinema – at the Noor cinema.’

  ‘Experience is not a requirement,’ laughed Mehndi.

  ‘And once I’ve put this thing on – what do I do?’

  ‘Just be your usual self. Walk around, wave your arms, pat kids on the head – give out a positive feel. People should notice you, that’s all. Is that settled?’

  Settled? The only thing that was settled was that Deepak was a really cunning fellow! Arzee couldn’t tell if Deepak was his friend or his foe – whether he genuinely wanted to help him, or drown him in ignominies in return for all the times that he’d had to chase him. But when a man slid all the way to the bottom, like this other dwarf here, he had no choice. Arzee was afraid, when he saw this drooling, babbling man maddened by life, that one day he might become like this without even realizing it himself.

  ‘All right, Mehndibhai,’ he said. ‘In fact…in fact it’ll be a nice change for me. It’ll be a new experience.’

  ‘And you can stare at all the girls as much as you like from inside this, and they’ll never know,’ chuckled Mehndi, as he took out a small bottle of kerosene-coloured perfume from his table drawer and applied a dab on his throat. He winked at Arzee again. ‘There are some real hot chicks at some of these places you’ll be going to! Here – this suit’s in your custody now, and here, my good man, this one is yours. Try it on if you want to – learn to feel comfortable in it. Just be careful with the zips, as these things cost us good money to make. You start tomorrow.’

  ‘Yes! Yes! Yes!’ hissed the other dwarf, hot and giddy as a firefly.

  Time after time on that sleepless night, Arzee looked beneath his bed and saw there the shapeless mass of the bottle suit wrapped inside a plastic bag, waiting to be brought to life by himself. He felt as if he was disintegrating, and he couldn’t tell whether this would grow worse if he took up the path of the suit, or if he stuck to his crumbling life. ‘Work is work,’ he kept counselling himself; he kept pressing his forehead and ministering to himself. ‘It’s just another job.’ But it was hard for him to be persuaded of this when it was clear that the suit was his, the work was his, only because he was a dwarf. From the wings of the great beam to the prison of this bottle – how swiftly he had fallen!

  ‘And nobody knows!’ he thought. ‘My brother’s sleeping right here, and he doesn’t know a thing, and Mother’s just across that wall, and she doesn’t know a thing either. My secret life grows bigger by the day, like a shadow in which I lie concealed. Ah, Noor! It was a great wall protecting me from abjectness, indignity – from the scraps thrown by the rest of the world. Let this night not end – let the day never come! But I know it will.’

  And when, the next afternoon, after changing into the suit in a shop run by a friend of Mehndi’s, Arzee stepped out out onto the pavement outside a row of department stores in Breach Candy, he would have given anything to fall into the gutter and die. A headache was pounding on his brow, and his throat was dry. He was wearing his clothes and then the suit, but he felt as if he was stark naked. Every time someone looked at him with interest, it seemed as if their eyes were boring all the way through his cover to see that it was him, Arzee, projectionist of the Noor, now reduced to this pathetic buffoonery, like a monkey taken from its home from the forest and taught to dance. ‘Limzee, Limzee!’ he croaked, hoping that nobody would notice. It was so hot that sweat ran in rivulets down his body. He wanted to take off his headpiece for just a minute, but he couldn’t, because that would expose him. The minutes went by so painfully, the sun slipped down the sky so slowly, that it seemed as though by day’s end the suit would have fused to his skin, and that was how he would wander the world for the rest of his days. When his time was up, Arzee tore the vile green off himself, and then he sank down in the changing room, trembling, and surrendered to tears.

  And that night was the same as the previous, and the next day the same as the day just past.

  But two days later, Mehndi sent Arzee to a mall in distant Dahisar. No one in Dahisar had ever seen Arzee, and after this day no one would: he was a stranger arriving in a small town for a day’s work. The youth in charge of the shop at which he was to change was only nineteen, and when Arzee told him he was a film projectionist, he asked lots of questions about the cinema, and even wanted to visit. He seemed to assume that Arzee was doing the work for his own pleasure, and this pleased Arzee. Everybody thought differently in Dahisar!

  For a few minutes Arzee padded quietly among the afternoon shoppers. But then some rude, spoilt children spotted him and came over to inspect him, and they kept tugging him from the back and trying to pull his eyeholes down so that he couldn’t see. Arzee’s protests were ignored, and he began to growl, thinking this would scare them off. But this seemed to amuse them even more, and finally they were all over him like red ants over a crumb. Arzee broke free of them, but as he slipped onto the escalator he lost his balance and went bumping all the way down on his bottom.

  To his surprise, he found that the hoots of laughter all around did not rile him; instead, he jumped up and did a bow. Then he gave a screech, and repeated the sound. At the cinema he had often thought about comedians and their guises, but for the first time he experienced how a mask frees a man of the burden of himself. Arzee managed to work up a sweat as he scuttled from floor to floor, shaking out all the worries that had accumulated inside him like clouds, and, as a little Limzee, freely taking liberties with the body-proud.

  And so, for the first time since the month of India’s victory over Australia in the Sharjah Cup of 1998, Arzee did not give the best hours of his day to the Noor. Sometimes he was there for one show, and sometimes he gave it the miss altogether, leaving everything in the hands of Phiroz and Sule. And he was pleased to see that Abjani couldn’t work up the courage to utter a word of reproach to him, because Abjani knew he didn’t have any ground to stand on.

  For the first time in nearly a decade Arzee was not there to observe, from his high station above the world, in the intervals between reels, the faces and bodies of men an
d women passing on the street, eyeing one another, talking on their phones, thinking and dreaming, not knowing they were being watched. He was not there to see the red sun being drawn down into the embrace of the sea behind cover of tall buildings, as people and birds headed for home. He could not be seen at the tea stall at six o’clock having a cup of tea and a quick bite, or in the courtyard of the Noor just after, winding through the crowd of unmoored men waiting for the evening show to begin. He did not walk stealthily from one level to another in the Noor’s eternal gloaming, talking to the ladies, the walls, or to himself; nor did he run into old Phiroz, fiddling about with the Babur and with his gods in typical Phirozian manner. For so many years the two men had kept the great beam going, but now they fell away from each other like travellers at a fork in the road. And it was all right. Just as the Noor was receding from this world, so Arzee was receding from the Noor.

  And one afternoon, ten minutes out of Malad station, Arzee came across the place suddenly – came across the place, and stopped and looked at it for the longest time. It was a big, grey house, three floors tall, on its own grounds, with a high boundary wall running around it, and barbed wire on the wall. The windows were all of tinted glass, and none were open; a big dog barked from behind the inhospitable gate, and there were a number of dish antennas on the roof. A stone plaque on the wall said ‘The Retreat’ and in smaller letters below it ‘Rajneesh Sharma’. This was the home, built two decades ago when Malad was mostly wilderness, of the owner of the Noor – the owner who lurked mysteriously behind all these gates, walls, and doors, passing his decrees, playing with lives, hiding his face.

  ‘It’s because of you that my life is broken, and I’m here in your neighbourhood, to make people laugh when I myself am sad,’ said Arzee as he looked up at the mansion, and it was as if he was speaking to the God in whom he had no trust. ‘But what do you care? You’re having a good time where you are.’

  He spat at the gate of The Retreat, picked up the suit again and walked on.

  And often, on these days of solitude, travel, foolery, and rumination, Arzee found himself thinking about the great comforting darkness he had left behind for the bright glare of this lower world. But he also thought about a darkness that was new to him – that of the world of Phiroz’s daughter Shireen. Her world was as dark as the Noor’s great vault; no beam ran through it; it was all sound and no picture. And yet how beautifully she talked! What a person she was! But debilitated, broken from the start, just like him. If only they’d met before, they might have meant something more to each other. They’d become friends on the very first day they had met, in the very first minute of their meeting. But now the girl was getting married. What had her husband done to deserve her?

  ‘She did say, “Do come again”, and so I’ll go,’ he said to himself one evening, and so he went back to the Old Wadia Chawl, back to Building Number 1, up to the first floor, and past the hole above the well. This time the doorbell did ring loud and clear, but no one answered it, and nor could he hear any voices within. A neighbour told him that Phiroz and his daughter had left that morning for Udwada, to visit the sacred fire temple of the Iranshah. Arzee had nothing else to do, so he went up to the terrace and sat for an hour on top of the water tank with the suit at his feet, smoking cigarettes and looking at the big illuminated NO in the distance.

  He didn’t bother to drop by at Deepak’s, because he was upset with Deepak. He was beginning to suspect that Deepak was playing a game with him. Deepak had promised he would call when he had some news for Arzee, but when a few days had gone by, Arzee had grown impatient and so he called. But Deepak only said, curtly, that he hadn’t been able to find anything out yet. How was the work going?

  ‘Oh, it’s going fine, Deepakbhai,’ said Arzee. ‘I thought I wouldn’t like it, but I like it, Deepakbhai. Please keep trying, Deepakbhai. I need to know where she is.’

  ‘Keep trying, Deepakbhai!’ echoed Deepak. ‘Think I have nothing else to do but this? Shall I go off myself in search of her, leaving all my other work behind? It’s not as easy as you think, little man. And I’m telling you, be happy that she’s gone. You’ll remember my words later.’

  ‘I won’t trouble you any more about this, Deepakbhai. It’s just that I – I feel that I –’

  ‘Stop right there! We’re not entering the theatre of your feelings once again, because it’s hard to find a way out after that. Call me next week.’

  ‘I wasn’t really going to say anything, Deepakbhai,’ said Arzee, deeply hurt. ‘Thank you, Deepakbhai.’

  No, Arzee wasn’t really going to say anything, because he knew that he wasn’t supposed to say anything. He wasn’t supposed to say anything to Abjani, even though the Noor was going to its grave. He wasn’t supposed to say anything to Phiroz, as Phiroz was busy preparing for his daughter’s wedding, which was only going to come once in life. He wasn’t supposed to say anything to Deepak, as Deepak was tired of hearing his complaints. He couldn’t say anything to his mother, as that would only mean all his troubles being doubled. And he couldn’t say anything to his friends: he avoided them now just as he used to avoid Deepak. He took back all the things he was going to say, with his deepest, most heartfelt apologies for the trouble he had caused, the time he had wasted. Where was he left? To whom could he speak? Why, to himself! He was his own concert and his own audience.

  These thoughts glowed within Arzee so brightly and angrily that they seemed to be written on banners upon the roofs of shanties, or strung out on the sky just over the tops of the mountains, as he stood cocooned in silence at the door of train compartments, his lower lip stuck out glumly and the bottle suit between his feet.

  And just as he was shrinking at the cinema, so was he at home, to which he returned late every night without enthusiasm, and changed into his shorts in darkness and silence. He woke up grim in the mornings, and took a long time to get out of bed. He tried to speak to Mother as if everything was just as it always was, but his heart was not in it, and he could rarely meet her gaze. When the subject of his wife and wedding came up, he tried not to say anything incriminating at all, whether for or against, hoping that the matter would die down by itself. In his own home Arzee tried to lie low like a mouse or a lizard, hoping that no one would disturb him, that they would just let him be.

  Bandra, Mahim, Malad, Borivali – it came to Arzee one day that, with these expeditions, he was actually carrying forward a family tradition. In his time his late father, too, had wandered the far reaches of the city like this. Father hadn’t really needed to. He could have stuck to a beat and a zone, as other salesmen did. But he’d gone ahead anyway. Father was just Father. He wore out a pair of shoes every six months, Father, and his feet were always crusty with corns and calluses, like the moon was with craters. Just as old Phiroz always smelled of sandalwood soap, Father always smelled of detergent powder, because that was what he sold. In fact, the favourite childhood game of Arzee and Mobin had been blowing bubbles from their window down into the street with a straw and a bowl of Sunshine detergent solution. How those bubbles used to catch the sunlight, changing colour as they bobbed idly upon the air!

  In those days Father would set out every morning, his breakfast in his stomach, his big black bag on his shoulder, his train pass in his pocket, and his pencil behind his ear. But the train only took him from station to station – thereafter it was all legwork, as it was with wearing the bottle suit. Street to street, building to building, door to door – it was a hard grind. But Father never complained – he was a man of peace. Even when Mother went on a prolonged harangue over something, which was often, Father was always quiet, and listened with a faint smile upon his lips, waiting to supply the close with a single sentence. Father probably saved his breath for his Sunshine speeches to customers.

  Arzee had once been given a map of Bombay in geography class, and Father had just bought him a fluorescent-green marker pen. That evening he’d presented Father with the map, now with swirls of little green footpr
ints all over, extending left and right off the rail corridor like the veins off a leaf ’s rib. It was a map of Father’s journeys. Father had been so pleased! He’d folded it in half and put it away in his bag, and he said that he took it out and looked at it on train journeys, or when he was having lunch, to figure out where exactly he was leaving new green footprints, fresh like cow pats. And Arzee laughed to think that, in a way, he himself was now leaving footprints all over the city with his two green bottle legs. He was walking in the footsteps of Father.

  ‘I miss Father,’ he thought. ‘Months go by without me thinking of him, and then suddenly he pops up again, still young, because of course he never grew old like Mother! Father would have understood everything – I wouldn’t have had to hide anything from him. And he’d have found some way to heal my wounds, and I wouldn’t have had to worry for him either, like I do about Mother.’

  It’d been so many days since Father had left them, on that journey from which no one ever returns. The year was 1986, but Arzee remembered the day as clearly as yesterday.

  He had been setting out for school, and Father for work. Mobin was home that day because he had a fever. Mother’s face was still spotty from chicken pox.

  Father walked him till Grant Road Bridge, carrying his water bottle for him. He gave Arzee four annas to buy himself a kala khatta ice at recess, and they parted ways.

  A butterfly was floating over the top of the bushes lining the bridge. Arzee ran after it, admiring its silky wings from up close when it alighted upon a leaf.

  Turning back, he saw that Father was still at the same place where he’d left him. He was picking up his big bag now after tying his shoelace. Father saw him looking back, waved, and set off. A bus was coming from one side and a truck from another, and so he stopped in the middle of the road to let them pass.