The Walls of Delhi

by Uday Prakash

  Astrologer Pandit Deendayal Upadhyay set up shop to the right of Sanjay’s, and just a few steps away from Madan’s. He spread out his square of cloth on the sidewalk. I approached him and told him the whole story, changing what needed to be changed to remain discreet. The astrologer-ji told me this: If Jupiter, in the third house, aligns with Mars, while in the sixth house, Mars first aligns with Venus, then Jupiter, and then, by luck, it’s the fourth or ninth lunar day of the waning moon, and a moonless night, and Delphinus is visible, then Kuvera, the god of wealth, will stir the senses of a man, and what this all adds up to is that there’s a great likelihood of stumbling on some buried treasure, or major wealth.

  Pandit Deendayal Upadhyay, originally from Baliya but now living next to the Naharpur sewage runoff in a rented tin shack, warned me. All planets and constellations were conspiring against me in the most dreaded alignment; Saturn was rising and casting a dark seven-and-a-half year shadow over my life, and I would soon face the full wrath of the government.

  I think that Kuvera must have been in the right position last year, on Tuesday, 23 May, that made the change in Ramnivas’ luck possible. Think about it: a simple whisk broom sweeps up the trash. The twine holding the bristles together gets loose, and the bristles need to be righted, so he beats the broom against what looks like a normal wall. And he finds a huge cache of cash. How? Think about it: for a few months he entered a fantasy land, getting everything his heart desired. He was able to give his wife, Babiya, and two kids, Rohan and Urmila whatever they wanted to eat and whatever clothes they wanted to wear. And he was able to take his teenage mistress to the other side of a shimmering, technicolour rainbow, where they got to see the Taj Mahal and have their pictures taken in several different poses.

  That may be the case. But the astrologer-ji was quick to add that if the manna was, in fact, dark and dirty from the stain of sin, the result would be disastrous. What do I believe? I believe that somewhere around midnight on 26 June 2001, the sin, or vice, or bad karma attached to that money caught up with Ramnivas once and for all, bringing him and his dreams to a violent end.

  And you ask me: so what’s the big secret you want to tell me? Why use this story as a cover, and hide the secret behind it?

  You already know that only a few lakhs of rupees were recovered from the trunk after Kuldip aka Kulla and Ramnivas were killed on Ridge Road that night – and a large part of that cash was counterfeit too. And yet, we know that there was at some point three billion rupees taken out of that wall.

  The police officer who supervised ‘Operation Ramnivas’ is a respected and powerful cop who owns a few homes and has one of those farm houses outside Delhi perfect for all-night parties. And when he throws one, he invites politicians, high-ranking cops, journalists, top intellectuals, and a few senior literary figures. They drink until they fall down on the floor. I’m sure you’ve seen their photos in all the local Delhi papers. These people are no longer like you or me – they’ve helped turn each other into name brands. If you read any poetry or stories coming out these days, you know what I mean when I say that you can smell the stench of liquor coming from the words they write. And underneath their sentences lies a pile of chicken and goat bones, and the skeletons of the innocent ones. If you poke the head of your broom into contemporary literature, you’ll find a hollow wall stuffed full of money – impure, dirty money.

  I’ve been in Delhi for some twenty-five years, and I’m scared. I suspect that Ramnivas told the cops that he’d told me the secret about the hollow wall in Saket, and you know how much danger that puts me in.

  It doesn’t matter how many days I’ve got left in this sorry life before I also disappear – but I, too, would also like to enter into a world of my dreams, just like Ramnivas did.

  So that’s why every night at midnight, when all of Delhi is asleep, I put on some black clothes, sneak out of the house with a pick in one hand, trowel in the other, and spend the rest of the night scraping out the walls of Delhi. Treasures beyond anyone’s wildest dreams are hidden in the countless hollows in Delhi’s countless walls. I’m sure it’s there, and I’m sure all of it is unmarked. My only regret is that I’ve wasted the last twenty-five years of my life. Even if I’d only taken twenty-five days to see what’s inside the walls of Delhi, I’d be a billionaire by now, and I’d be able to live my life with a little respect.

  So if you read this story, go and pick up a little pickaxe and trowel and get yourself to Delhi right away. It’s the only way left to make it big. If you would rather live by hard work, the straight-and-narrow, following your dreams, using your talent, believing in yourself, keeping faith – if that’s how you want to lead your life, you’ll die of hunger, and the cops will never leave you alone. You probably don’t know about that judge in Maharashtra who declared that the Indian police and the criminals and goons of the land are one big lawful family.

  In the meantime, I’ll settle down with the beggars, the lepers, the smackheads, the transients, and the other forgotten ones, I’ll stretch out, and sleep among the dismembered statues of the old English rulers that lie scattered in Coronation Park. I’m broken in the same places, with my bad back and bone tuberculosis. Whenever I have free time, I go to the shrine of Hazarat Nizzamuddin, just past the Delhi Zoo, and sit for hours on the marble floor of the dargah, repeating the words that the sufi saint, Auliya – Hazarat Nizzumaddin – once spoke to the then ruler of Delhi, Ghayasuddin Tughluq. Delhi is still far away. Tughluq summoned Auliya to explain why the sufi saint was visited by more people than was Tughluq’s court. Delhi is still far away. Auliya declined the summons, just as he had with all the other kings he’d seen come and go. Delhi is still far away. Tughluq left on a military campaign in the south to let Auliya think it over. Delhi is still far away. Auliya’s followers warned him to leave Delhi; Tughluq had threatened to behead Auliya if he disobeyed the summons. Delhi is still far away. The night before returning to Delhi, Tughluq and his men set up camp just outside the city. Delhi is still far away. That’s the night Auliya uttered the sentence I keep on repeating. After he spoke it, Tughluq, drinking and carousing, died right at the Delhi border when the tent he was in collapsed. That place is now known as Tughluqabad.

  Amir Khusaro’s tomb is also at Auliya’s shrine – the man who wrote the first lines of poetry in what we now call Hindi – and who, in his own lifetime saw eleven kings, their courts, and their hangers-on, all come and go. If you go and look at the guest book that Sayid Nizami keeps at the shrine, you’ll see my name.

  Believe me when I say that I am praying not only for me, but for the well-being of all of you, and for that of my dear country. Have faith that my prayers will reach all the way to Auliya’s ears.

  So long as the police or other powers-that-be in this city don’t frame me for something, I’ll use my pickaxe and trowel to find the wealth hidden in Delhi’s countless walled hollows.

  And if you want to get lucky, come to Delhi right away – it’s not far at all. Forget about being a millionaire; coming to Delhi is the only way left to scrape by.

  The other ways you read about in the papers, and see on TV, are rumours and lies, nothing more.

  MOHANDAS

  For comrade Virendra Soni, with the hope that he will stand with Mohandas ’til the end

  ‘[T]the most glaring tendency of the British Government system of high class education has been the virtual monopoly of all higher offices under them by the Brahmins.’

  (Mahatma Jotirao Phule, ‘Slavery’)

  ‘The British ... validated Brahmin authority by employing, almost exclusively, Brahmins as their clerks and assistants.’

  (Arthur Bonner, Democracy in India: a Hollow Shell)

  What is the colour of fear? Is it the colour of dirt, or of stone? Is it yellow, charcoal? Or the colour of ash left over from a burning coal – ash that coats the coal still glowing red-hot, that still has its heat! Or a colour that masks a terrifying silence behind it? A small tear that exposes a frightful scream s
uspended behind.

  Have you ever seen the bloodshot, dying eyes of a fish thrown from an ocean or a river, onto a sandy bank or shore? That’s the colour.

  The most talented actor, no matter how hard he tries, can’t quite make the whites of his eyes or his pupils imitate the colour you see in the face of a living, breathing man who is scared clear out of his wits. Like a man going home after a hard day’s work, exhausted, satchel in hand, penny candy and cheap toys for his kids in the bag, along with a few pills for his wife’s cough. The man turns the corner into a deserted alley to find himself caught in the middle of a riot – and, unfortunately for him, he’s the wrong religion or race as far as the gang or mob that’s surrounding him is concerned.

  The look in the doomed man’s eyes, on his face, the posture of his body right at that moment, just a second or two before his murder – that’s the colour I’m talking about, and that was the colour of Mohandas’ face that day.

  I’m sure you’ve seen films like Schindler’s List or others that show German trains being sent somewhere far away. You remember the faces of the Jewish women, children, and the old men, pressed up against the insides of the railway cars, peering out. Or, more recently, the faces of those looking out from windows and rooftops in the cities and towns of Gujarat.

  That’s the colour.

  ‘Is there any way you can get me out of this, uncle, please!’ Mohandas stood in front of me pleading in a weak, wavering voice. ‘I’m begging you, think of my kids, my father’s dying of TB, just give the word and I’m ready to go to court right away and sign a sworn statement that I am not Mohandas. I don’t know anyone by that name. Just help get me out of this!’

  The first thing you’ll feel when you look at Mohandas is pity, but soon you’ll also feel fear. It’s a frightening time, and people are getting more and more fearful every day.

  I’ve known Mohandas for a long time, along with several generations of his family. That’s how it is in little villages like ours. You wouldn’t guess by looking at him that he was a graduate of our government M.G. Degree College, located right here in the Anuppur district, or that he graduated at the very top of his class; ten years ago, his name was number two on the list of the University’s ‘toppers’. The way he looked now gave no indication whatsoever of his past. He wore a torn, patched-up, washed-out pair of denim pants that had once been blue, and a cheap poly blend shirt with a frayed right sleeve. The faintest trace of a checked pattern remained on the shirt, but the lines had long since vanished. His cheap rubber shoes had been so ravaged by mud, dirt, misery, time, water, and sun that they sometimes looked as if they were made from clay, other times from skin.

  Mohandas is probably around forty-five, but he looks as if he’s at least my age or older.

  I found him discombobulated, in the grip of terror. I had never seen him idling in the village, shooting the breeze, playing cards, or sitting around watching TV. He was driven by a kind of harrowing restlessness that wouldn’t let him sit still for a second. People said he always found something to keep him busy, some job or chore. He needed to dig a new well every day for his water, and plant a new crop of wheat every day for his bread. And it wasn’t just one member of his family he had to provide food for – there were five, five mouths and five stomachs. Mohandas’s father was Kabadas, who’d been suffering from TB for eight years. His mother Putlibai had gone blind after a cataract operation she’d had at a free eye clinic, and now saw nothing but darkness. His wife Kasturibai was a mirror image of her husband: she helped Mohandas with his work, and kept the stove warm at home. The people in the village claimed the two had never been seen fighting or quarrelling. It seemed there had been nothing but trials and tribulations for husband and wife – things that either strengthen or weaken a union between a man and a woman.

  Devdas is one of the two remaining people, and Sharda the other. Mohandas and Kasturi had two offspring. One was eight, the other six. Devdas went to primary school in the village; after school he worked as a helper at Durga Auto Works on the town bypass road, where he put air in tires, fixed flat ones, and did minor repair work on scooters and motorcycles. For this he earned a hundred rupees a month. In other words, Mohandas’s son Devdas, through his own hard work, took care of feeding himself while he was at school; he was self-sufficient. The teachers at his school said he was one of the brightest kids in fourth grade.

  But something caught Mohandas’s eye when he was told this, and his gaze wandered. Maybe he noticed something far off in the sky. The wrinkles tensed on his face and the sparkle vanished from his eyes. A gruff voice emerged as if out of some deep cavern: ‘I finished my BA, with honours. Studied day and night. Look where it got me.’

  And then the twinkle would return, and his cracked lips broke into a smile. ‘I’m learning computers now. I go to the Star Computer Centre near the bus stand. Shakil owns the computer centre, he’s the son of Mohammad Imran who runs the building supply and hardware store, and he told me, “If you can learn how to type well, do layout and printing, I’ll pay you more than six hundred a month.”’ Mohandas continued, ‘This month I’m up to thirty words per minute. I’m working a few small typing jobs, but the thing is that it takes a lot of time to correct the mistakes, and I make a lot of them.’

  But this was old news. A serious calamity had now befallen Mohandas, who kept repeating:

  ‘My name isn’t Mohandas. I’m ready to go to court and sign an affidavit. Whoever wants to be Mohandas, let him be Mohandas. Please, do whatever you can to help! I beg all of you!’

  What sort of dire straits was Mohandas in?

  But before getting into that, I’d first like to finish describing the fifth member of Mohandas’s family, his six-year-old daughter, Sharda. Six-year-old Sharda goes to school in the government primary school in the village, and is a student in the second grade. After school, she sets off for Bichhiya Tola, another village that’s two-and-a-half kilometres away, crossing two ponds on the way. She doesn’t get back home before half past nine or ten at night. In Bichhiya Tola she looks after the one-year-old son of Bisnath Prasad, and does household chores like sweeping and cleaning. In exchange for her services, she’s fed supper and given thirty rupees a month.

  Nagendranath was one of the major farmers of Bichhiya village. He was also a manager in the life insurance company; his connections reached everyone from the district collector to the local MP. He’d been head of the local panchayat twice and the district director once. Bisnath Prasad, whose one-year-old was looked after by Sharada, was one of the sons of Nagendranath, one of the village elders. Even though his real name was Vishwanath Prasad, everyone in the village called him Bisnath, and said behind his back, ‘He’s a real viper, a first-rate poison pusher. One squirt from his mouth and the show’s over! The father’s Cobranath and the son’s Vipernath. If he spies you and starts to smile, words dripping with honey – better watch out! That means he’s ready to strike.’ Of all the things Bisnath possessed, honour was not among them. Sometimes he’d get drunk and say, ‘Pull the wool over someone’s eyes? That’s fun, but what’s more fun is pulling down the skirt of your wife and finding her wool, ha!’ No gentle words were ever spoken about the people he consorted with, either from within the village, or without.

  Bisnath was from a high caste, Mohandas a low Kabirpanthi weaver. Many of Mohandas’s brethren still wove mats and rugs and blankets. Mohandas wasn’t merely the first member of his community from the village to get a college degree, but the first in the entire region. And he not only finished his degree, but also graduated second in his class.

  (Please stop for a moment and tell the truth: did you begin to get the feeling that I’d gone and started telling you some kind of encoded, symbol-laden tale? The main character of the story is called Mohandas, the wife is Kasturibai, the mother is Putlibai and the son’s name is Devdas...?

  Kasturibai reminds you of Kasturba – and, well, Mohandas couldn’t be more clear. If you read Mahatma Gandhi’s autobiography, al
so known as The Story of My Experiments with Truth, you’ll discover that his father, Karamchand, was also called Kaba. And His mother was Putlibai ... and who doesn’t know the tale of his son, Devdas? Look at Mohandas, his build, and the state he’s in: he shares the same history as the Mahatma. The difference is that Mohandas looks the way he does not because of Porbandar – the place where Gandhi was born – or Kathiawar, Rajkot, England, South Africa, or Birla House, but as a result of the hunger and heat, sweat and sickness, insult and injustice in the fields and pastures, caverns and caves, jungles and marshes, of Chhattisgarh and Vindhya Pradesh. Otherwise, all the rest is the same.

  I’d also like to stop the story right here and now to solemnly affirm that the similarity of names is honestly and truly just a coincidence. When I sat down to write this, I had no idea these sorts of echoes could possibly be hidden in the story of Mohandas and his family from the village.

  You’ll have to take my word, and don’t read too much into it. It isn’t some symbolic story or allegory or coded fable. It’s totally on the level. Though, truth be told, it’s not really a story. As I’m wont to do, I wind up detailing the real life of a real person – someone alive now, living among us in our society – concealing it behind the veil of a story. Mohandas is a living, breathing human being, and his life is at this moment in grave danger. Though you can count on my having played a little fast and loose with the truth, as I always do.