Q & A

by Vikas Swarup

  Dharavi is not a place for the squeamish. Delhi’s Juvenile Home diminished us, but Dharavi’s grim landscape of urban squalor deadens and debases us. Its open drains teem with mosquitoes. Its stinking, excrement-lined communal latrines are full of rats, which make you think less about the smell and more about protecting your backside. Mounds of filthy garbage lie on every corner, from which rag-pickers still manage to find something useful. And at times you have to suck in your breath to squeeze through its narrow, claustrophobic alleys. But for the starving residents of Dharavi, this is home.

  Amidst the modern skyscrapers and neon-lit shopping complexes of Mumbai, Dharavi sits like a cancerous lump in the heart of the city. And the city refuses to recognize it. So it has outlawed it. All the houses in Dharavi are ‘illegal constructions’, liable to be demolished at any time. But when the residents are struggling simply to survive, they don’t care. So they live in illegal houses and use illegal electricity, drink illegal water and watch illegal cable TV. They work in Dharavi’s numerous illegal factories and illegal shops, and even travel illegally – without ticket – on the local trains which pass directly through the colony.

  The city may have chosen to ignore the ugly growth of Dharavi, but a cancer cannot be stopped simply by being declared illegal. It still kills with its slow poison.

  I commute daily from Dharavi to Jimmy’s Bar and Restaurant. The only good thing about working in Jimmy’s establishment is that I don’t have to come to work till at least midday. But this is more than offset by the late nights spent serving drunken louts from all over the city and listening to their pathetic tales. The one conclusion I have reached is that whisky is a great leveller. You might be a hot-shot advertising executive or a lowly foundry worker, but if you cannot hold your drink, you are just a drunkard.

  After my traumatic experience with Shantaram, I thought I would never be able to tolerate a drunk. But Jimmy’s was the only establishment that offered me a job. I console myself with the thought that the smell of whisky is less pungent than the stench from the communal latrine near my shack, and that listening to a drunkard is less painful than listening to the heartrending stories of rape, molestation, illness and death that emanate daily from the huts of Dharavi. So I have now learnt to fake an interest and say ‘Ummmm’ and ‘Yes’ and ‘Really?’ and ‘Wow!’ to the tales of cheating wives and miserly bosses that are aired every night at Jimmy’s Bar and Restaurant, while simultaneously encouraging customers to order another plate of Chicken Fry and another bowl of salted cashew nuts to go with their drinks. And every day I wait for a letter to arrive from the W3B people, to tell me if I have been selected to participate in the show. But the postman delivers nothing.

  A sense of defeat has begun to cloud my mind. I feel that the specific purpose for which I came to Mumbai is beyond me. That I am swimming against the tide. That powerful currents are at work which I cannot overcome. But then I hear my beloved Nita’s cries and Neelima Kumari’s sobs and my willpower returns. I have to get on to that show. And till that happens, I will continue to listen to the stories of the drunkards in this city. Some good. Some bad. Some funny. Some sad. And one downright bizarre.

  It is past midnight, but the lone customer at the bar refuses to budge. He has come by chauffeur-driven Mercedes, which is parked outside. He has been drinking steadily since ten pm and is now on his fifth peg. His uniformed driver is snoring in the car. Perhaps he knows that his employer will not come out in a hurry. The man is in his early thirties and is dressed in a smart dark suit with a silk tie and shiny leather shoes.

  ‘My dear brother, my dear brother,’ he keeps repeating every two minutes, in between sips of Black Label whisky and bites from the plate of shammi kebabs.

  The manager snaps his fingers at me. ‘Thomas, go and sit with him and ask him about his brother. Can’t you see the poor fellow is distraught?’

  ‘But . . . Manager Sahib, it is past midnight. We should tell him to leave or I’ll miss the twelve-thirty local.’

  ‘Don’t you dare argue with me or I’ll break your jaw,’ he snarls at me. ‘Now go, engage the customer in conversation. Get him to order the Scottish single malt which came in yesterday. He has come in a Mercedes.’

  I glare at the manager like a schoolboy at a bully. Reluctantly, I return to the bar and slide closer to the customer.

  ‘Oh, my dear brother, I hope you will forgive me,’ he moans, and nibbles at the shammi kebab. He is behaving like an ass, but at least he is in the lucid phase, with a couple of pegs in his system and words bubbling out of his mouth.

  ‘What happened to your brother, Sir?’ I ask.

  The man raises his head to peer at me with half-closed eyes. ‘Why do you ask? You will only increase the pain,’ he says.

  ‘Tell me about your brother, Sir. Perhaps it will lessen your pain.’

  ‘No. Nothing can lessen the pain. Not even your whisky.’

  ‘Fine, Sir. If you do not want to talk about your brother, I will not ask. But what about you?’

  ‘Don’t you know who I am?’

  ‘No, Sir.’

  ‘I am Prakash Rao. Managing Director of Surya Industries. The biggest manufacturer of buttons in India.’

  ‘Buttons?’

  ‘Yes. You know, buttons on shirts, pants, coats, skirts, blouses. We make them. We make all kinds of buttons from all kinds of materials. We use mostly polyester resins, but we have also made buttons of cloth, plastic, leather and even camel bone, horn-shell and wood. Haven’t you seen our ad in the newspapers? “For the widest range of buttons – from fastening garments to pulling drawers – come to Surya. Buttons R Us.” I am quite sure that the shirt you are wearing has buttons manufactured by my company.’

  ‘And your brother, what is his name?’

  ‘My brother? Arvind Rao. Oh, my poor brother. Oh, Arvind,’ he starts moaning again.

  ‘What happened to Arvind? What did he do?’

  ‘He used to be the owner of Surya Industries. Till I replaced him.’

  ‘Why did you replace him? Here, let me pour you a peg from this single malt which we got direct from Scotland.’

  ‘Thank you. It smells good. I remember going to Mauritius for my honeymoon, to Port Louis, and there I had my first taste of single malt whisky.’

  ‘You were mentioning replacing your brother.’

  ‘Ah yes. My brother was a very good man. But he had to be replaced as MD of Surya Industries because he went mad.’

  ‘Mad? How? Here’s a fresh bowl of cashew nuts.’

  ‘It is a long story.’

  I use one of Rosie’s lines. ‘The night is young. The bottle is full. So why don’t you begin?’

  ‘Are you my friend?’ he says, looking at me with glassy eyes.

  ‘Of course I am your friend,’ I reply with a toothy grin.

  ‘Then I will tell you my story, friend. I am drunk, you know. And a drunken man always speaks the truth. Right, friend?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘So, friend, my brother, my dear, dear brother Arvind, was a great businessman. He built Surya Industries from scratch. We used to sell beads in the Laadbazaar market of old Hyderabad. You know, the one near Charminar. It was he who painstakingly built up the business empire which I have inherited.’

  ‘But you must have helped your brother in his business.’

  ‘Hardly. I was a failure. Couldn’t even complete my matriculation. It was my brother’s greatness that he took me under his wing and employed me in the sales division of his company. I did my best and, as time went by, my brother’s confidence in my abilities increased. Eventually he made me Head of International Sales and sent me to New York, where our international office is located.’

  ‘New York? Wow! That must have been great!’

  ‘Yes, New York is a great place. But I had a tough job, going out every day, meeting the dealers and distributors, processing the orders, ensuring timely delivery. I was busy from morning till night.’

  ‘OK. So what
happened next? Just hold on for a minute while I bring you another plate of shammi kebabs.’

  ‘Thank you, friend. It was in New York that I met Julie.’

  ‘Julie? Who is she?’

  ‘Her real name was Erzulie De Ronceray, but everyone called her Julie. She was dark and sultry with thick curly hair and pouting lips and a slim waist. She worked as a cleaner in the apartment block where I rented my office. She was an illegal immigrant from Haiti. Have you heard of Haiti?’

  ‘No. Where is it?’

  ‘It is a tiny country in the Caribbean, near Mexico.’

  ‘OK. So you met Julie.’

  ‘Well, I would occasionally exchange a greeting with her. One day, the INS caught her working without a green card. She begged me to show her as my employee so that her stay in the US could be regularized. In a fit of generosity I agreed to sponsor her. In return, she gave me love, respect, and the most mind-blowing sex I had ever had. Believe me. I am drunk. And a drunken man always speaks the truth. Right?’

  ‘Right. Why don’t you take another peg? This single malt from Scotland is really good, isn’t it?’

  ‘Thank you, friend. You are very kind. Much kinder than Julie. She really manipulated me, you know. Preyed on my weaknesses. I was a lonely man in a large city. One thing led to another and I ended up marrying her.’

  ‘And then you went for your honeymoon to Port Louis, correct?’

  ‘Correct. But when I returned from the honeymoon I discovered there was a different, darker side to Julie. I visited her flat for the first time after we got married and found it to be full of strange stuff – rum bottles decorated with sequins and beads, a whole bunch of weird-looking dolls, stones of various shapes, crosses, rattles and even parchment made of snake skin. She also had a black cat called Bossu, which was very mean and nasty.

  ‘The first time I discovered that there was more to Julie than met the eye was when I was attacked in the Bronx by a mugger with a knife. I was lucky to escape alive, but received a deep gash in my arm. Julie wouldn’t allow me to go to the hospital. Instead, she applied some herbs to my arm and recited some chants, and within just two days the wound was completely gone, not even a scar remaining. And then she told me that she was a voodoo priestess.’

  ‘Voodoo? What’s that?’

  ‘You don’t want to know, my friend. Voodoo is a religion in Haiti. Its practitioners worship spirits called loas and believe that the universe is all interconnected. Everything affects something else. Nothing is an accident, and everything is possible. That is why people who know voodoo can do all kinds of amazing things. Like bringing a dead man to life.’

  ‘You must be joking.’

  ‘No, not at all. These dead people are called zombies. I told you I am drunk. And a drunken man always tells the truth, right?’

  ‘Right.’ By now I am drawn completely into his story. I forget to ply him with more whisky and cashew nuts.

  ‘Julie turned my life upside-down. She had been a poor cleaning woman, but now she wanted to be a part of high society. She forgot that she was married to the brother of a rich industrialist, not the industrialist himself. She wanted money all the time. Money which I couldn’t give her because it didn’t belong to me. It belonged to my brother, to the company.

  ‘She forced me into stealing. It started with trifling things – a few dollars pocketed from a false taxi claim. Then it moved on to bigger things. Money received from a client and not shown on the ledger. A contract signed, the advance received and not sent to head office. Over time, the embezzled amount became half a million dollars. And then my brother, who lived here in Mumbai, discovered it.’

  ‘Oh, my God! What happened then?’

  ‘Well what do you think? My brother was furious. If he had wanted to, he could have got me arrested by the police. But blood is thicker than water. I begged for mercy and he forgave me. Of course, he transferred me from America, put me in a small office in Hyderabad and insisted that I repay at least half of the embezzled amount over a twenty-year period out of my salary.

  ‘I was quite happy to accept these terms. Anything to avoid going to jail. But Julie was furious. “How can your brother behave with you like this?” she egged me on. “You have an equal stake in the company, you must fight for your rights.”

  ‘Over time, her constant nagging began to have an impact. I started thinking of Arvind as a devious and cunning man who had given me a raw deal. Then one day Arvind came to Hyderabad to visit my small office. He found evidence again of some petty thievery and lost his temper. In front of all the staff he abused me, called me names, said I was good for nothing and threatened to terminate my association with the company.

  ‘I was devastated. For the first time I felt like hitting back at my brother. I recounted the incident to Julie and she became incandescent with rage. “The time has come to teach your brother a lesson,” she told me. “Are you ready now to take your revenge?” “Yes,” I replied, because my brain had been numbed by his insults. “Good, then get me a button from one of your brother’s unwashed shirts and a little snippet of his hair.” “Where will I get a snippet of his hair from?” I asked. “That’s your lookout,” said Julie. Hey, why don’t you give me another peg?’

  I hastily refill his glass. ‘So how did you get your brother’s hair and a button from his shirt?’

  ‘Simple. I visited him for a day in Mumbai, stayed at his house and pulled a button from a shirt he had just put in the laundry basket. Then I found the barber he used and bribed him to give me a lock of his hair the next time he had a haircut. I told him I needed it for an offering to Lord Venkateshwara in Tirupathi.

  ‘So within a month I got Julie both the button and the hair. What Julie did next was amazing. She took a male doll made of cloth with all kinds of funny black lines on it. She stitched the button over the doll’s chest and stuck the hair on the doll’s head. Next she killed a rooster and drained all its blood in a pan. She dipped the doll’s head in the rooster’s blood. She then took it into her room, uttered various incantations and applied strange-looking herbs and roots to the doll. Then she took out a black pin and said, “The voodoo doll is ready. I have infused it with your brother’s spirit. Now, whatever you do to the doll with this black pin will happen to your brother in Mumbai. For instance, if I press this pin on the doll’s head, your brother will have a splitting headache. And if I stick it deeply into the button, your brother will have severe chest pain. Here, try it.” I thought she was joking, but just to humour her I pressed the black pin into the white button on the doll’s chest. Within two hours I received a call from Mumbai to say that Arvind had had a minor heart attack and had been admitted to Breach Candy Hospital.’

  ‘My God! That’s amazing,’ I cry.

  ‘Yes. You can imagine my shock. Not because Arvind had had a heart attack, but because now I knew that Julie had indeed created a black-magic voodoo doll.

  ‘Over the next two months, the doll became a little secret toy for me. I poured all my frustration, all my latent resentment against my brother into it. I took a perverse pleasure in causing him pain and suffering. It became a source of demented amusement for me. I would take the doll to Mumbai and watch Arvind squirm on his lawn while I gently teased the button on the doll with the black pin. Gradually I started employing the doll on occasions when others were also present. I took it with me to a five-star hotel where Arvind was entertaining some Japanese clients. I sat unobtrusively at a corner table. I heard my brother speaking. “. . . Yes, Mr Harada, we do have plans to open a subsidiary in Japan, but the response from Nippon Button Company has not been very positive. We are also—” Suddenly I inserted the black pin into the doll’s head. “Owwwwwww!” my brother screamed and caught his head with both hands. His foreign clients left without having dinner.

  ‘I took the doll to a family wedding in Bangalore to which I had been invited with my brother. Just when Arvind was about to bless the bride and groom, I used the black pin. “May God bless both of ow
wwwwwwwwwwww!” he screamed, and head-butted the groom to the chagrin of all the guests. Many people commiserated with me that evening, saying how sorry they were that Arvind was slowly going mad.

  ‘I took the doll to a function where my brother was to receive an award for best entrepreneur. Arvind was giving his acceptance speech with the gleaming crystal trophy in his hands. “Friends, I feel really very honoured to be holding this beautiful trophy. All my life I have believed in the motto that hard work and owwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!” The glass trophy slipped from his hands and broke into a million pieces.

  ‘Arvind went to a doctor, who did an MRI scan and found nothing physically wrong with his head. The doctor advised him to consult a psychiatrist.

  ‘Finally, I took the doll to the annual shareholders’ meeting, and sat in the very last row. Arvind was giving the MD’s report. “And my dear shareholders, I am happy to report that our company’s performance in the last quarter represented a significant increase in our gross owwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!” There was utter pandemonium thereafter, with the agitated shareholders demanding an immediate resignation from the mad MD. He was forced to resign within a week. I became the new MD and my brother was locked up in a mental institution.

  ‘My brother remained in the mental asylum for two years. During this time I became wealthy beyond my imagination. Julie finally had everything she had ever wanted. She summoned her mother and brother from Port-au-Prince to come and live with us in Mumbai. But as I acquired all the trappings of a rich man, I also started contemplating my life, the means I had adopted to gain all this wealth. And then I met Jyotsna.’

  ‘Who’s she?’

  ‘Officially she’s just my new secretary, but actually she is much more than that. She is my soul-mate. I have so much in common with her that I will never have in common with a foreigner like Julie. She’s the exact antithesis of Julie. It is Jyotsna who made me realize the terrible injustice I had done to my elder brother. I resolved to get Arvind out of the mental asylum.’

  ‘So were you able to get him out?’