Q & A

by Vikas Swarup

  Shankar points at me. ‘Dz Izzao X Nkkh.’

  The maid looks me up and down. ‘Oh, so Shankar has brought you here as a new tenant? I don’t think there are any rooms left in the outhouse, but I will call Madam.’ She disappears into the house.

  Presently a middle-aged woman appears at the entrance. She is wearing an expensive silk sari and tons of gold jewellery. Her face is covered in make-up. She might have been beautiful in her youth, but, unlike Neelima Kumari, her face has lost its glow. Plus she has pinched lips which make her look rather severe. I take an instinctive dislike to her.

  Shankar gets extremely excited on seeing the woman. ‘Q Gkrz Ukj Hjhhu,’ he says with a wide grin, but the woman doesn’t even register his presence. ‘Who are you?’ she asks me, looking closely at my clothes. ‘And why have you come with Shankar?’

  I begin to wilt under her scrutiny.

  ‘My name is Raju Sharma,’ I say. There is no way I am going to use any of my real names in this city. Not after killing an unknown man in a train.

  ‘Oh, so you are a Brahmin?’ she asks, her eyes turning even more suspicious. I should have realized that a dark-skinned Brahmin would be something of a novelty.

  ‘Yes. I am new to Agra. I have come to ask if there is anywhere I can stay.’

  ‘We have an outhouse where we keep tenants.’ I notice she uses the royal ‘we’. ‘Right now no room is available, but if you can wait a week, we can arrange for a room. It will cost you four hundred rupees per month, with the rent to be paid in advance in full at the beginning of the month. If this is acceptable, Lajwanti can show you the outhouse. But you will have to manage somewhere else for a week.’

  ‘Thank you, Madam,’ I reply in English. ‘I will take the room and I will pay you four hundred rupees next week.’

  The lady looks at me sharply as soon as I speak in English. Her severe features soften somewhat. ‘Perhaps you can stay with Shankar for a week. Lajwanti, show him the outhouse.’

  That is the end of the interview, conducted at the door.

  Lajwanti escorts me to the outhouse, which is immediately behind the mansion and which I discover to be the North Indian equivalent of the chawl. It has a huge cobbled courtyard, with interconnected rooms constructed all round the periphery. There must have been at least thirty rooms in the tenement. Shankar’s room is almost in the middle of the eastern corridor. He unlocks the door and we step inside. There is just one bed and a built-in almirah in the room, and, attached to it, a tiny kitchen, just like in our Ghatkopar chawl. The toilets are communal and located at the end of the western corridor. Bathing can only be done in the centre of the courtyard, under a municipal tap, in full view of the residents of the tenement. Lajwanti points out her own room. It is eight rooms before Shankar’s. And the room I will get in a week’s time is four rooms after Shankar’s.

  Before Lajwanti returns to the mansion, I ask her a quick question. ‘Excuse me, but who is this boy Shankar? I’ve just met him in front of the Taj Mahal.’

  She sighs. ‘He is an orphan boy who lives here. We are all very fond of him. The poor fellow has some problem in his brain and cannot talk sense, just utters nonsense words. He roams around the city aimlessly all day. It is Madam’s kindness that she has allotted him a room free of charge and also gives him some money to buy food. Otherwise the mentalasylum people would have picked him up a long time ago.’

  I am shocked. Shankar appeared to me to be an intelligent boy, with only a speech defect. Perhaps my assessment of Madam is also off the mark. Given her benefaction to Shankar, she cannot be as stern as she looks. ‘And Madam. Tell me more about her,’ I ask Lajwanti.

  Like a court historian recounting the genealogy of an empress, Lajwanti explains the impressive lineage of her employer. ‘Her real name is Queen Swapna Devi. But we all call her Madam or Rani Sahiba. Her father was the King of the Princely State of Jamgarh, Raja Shivnath Singh, of the Rathore dynasty. On the maternal side, her grandfather was the King of Dharela, near Agra, Raja Ravi Pratap Singh, who is the original owner of this haveli. When she was just twenty, Swapna Devi was married to the son of the King of Bhadohi, Kunwar Pratap Singh, belonging to the Gautam dynasty, and shifted to Benares, where the family had a mansion. Unfortunately, her husband, the young prince, died within just two years of the marriage, but she did not remarry. She continued to live in Benares for another twelve years. In the meantime, her grandfather Raja Ravi Pratap Singh died, bequeathing this haveli to her. So she moved to Agra and has lived here for the last ten years.’

  ‘What about children?’ I ask her.

  Lajwanti shakes her head. ‘No. She does not have any offspring, so she keeps herself busy with charitable activities and social occasions. She is probably the richest woman in Agra and very well connected. The police commissioner and the district magistrate eat at her house every week, so you’d better not entertain any ideas about staying here and not paying the rent. If you don’t pay her rent on the first, you are out on the second. Better get this straight.’

  That evening, Shankar cooks food for me and insists that I sleep in his bed. He sleeps on the hard stone floor. This kindness brings tears to my eyes. The fact that he is also an orphan like me gives rise to a deep bond between us. A bond beyond friendship. Beyond companionship. Beyond words.

  That night it rains in Agra.

  I had to pay four hundred rupees to Madam within seven days so I wasted no time in acquiring the knowledge relevant to my chosen vocation. The fifty rupees I had with me got me admission to the Taj for two days, and Shankar lent me ten rupees for a third day as well. I would hang around groups of Western tourists, listening to English-speaking guides and trying to memorize as many of the facts and figures mentioned as possible. It was not very difficult, partly because I took to the Taj Mahal like a pickpocket to a crowded bus. Perhaps it was in my blood. Mumtaz Mahal could have been one of my mother’s ancestors. Or my father might have been of Mughal descent. Anyway, by the fourth day I had picked up enough knowledge about the Taj Mahal to aspire to join the ranks of the hundreds of unlicensed guides in Agra. I hung around the red-sandstone entrance and offered my services to the foreign tourists who came to see the Taj even in the stifling June heat. My first ‘clients’ were a bunch of young college girls from England with freckles, sun tan, travellers’ cheques and very few clothes. They listened attentively to me, didn’t ask any difficult questions, took a lot of photographs, and gave me a ten-pound note as a tip. It was only when I converted the note at the forex bureau that I realized I had got seven hundred and fifty rupees, even after deducting the three per cent commission the shop charged me. Almost enough to pay rent for the next two months!

  I shifted to my own room in the outhouse after a week, but in the seven days I spent in Shankar’s room I learnt many things about him. I discovered that his language was not just meaningless gibberish. Although the words sounded nonsensical to us, for him they held a peculiar internal coherence. I also learnt that Shankar’s favourite food was chapattis and lentils. That he hated aubergine and cabbage. That he had no interest in toys. That he had superb artistic skills and could draw a person down to the tiniest detail, simply from memory. And that, like me, he dreamt of his mother. On two nights I heard him cry out, ‘Mummy, Mummy’ in his sleep. And I knew that deep within him he did possess the ability to speak more than nonsense syllables.

  Living with him must have had a psychological impact on me, because I recall dreaming about a tall young woman clad in a white sari with a baby in her arms. The wind howls behind her, making her jetblack hair fly across her face, obscuring it. The baby looks into her eyes and gurgles sweetly, ‘Mama . . . Mama.’ The mother opens her mouth to reply to the baby, but the only sound that comes out of her lips is ‘Q Gkrz Ukj Hu Wxwu.’ The baby shrieks and tumbles from her lap. I wake up, and check whether I still have a tongue.

  During the next year in Agra, I acquired a wealth of information about the Taj Mahal. I learnt intimate details about the life of Mumta
z Mahal, such as the fact that her fourteenth child, during whose birth she died, was called Gauharar. I memorized detailed accounts of the construction of the Taj, such as that the State Treasury supplied 466.55 kilograms of pure gold, valued at six lakh rupees in 1631, and the total cost of construction came to 41,848,826 rupees, 7 annas and 6 pies. I delved into the controversy of who really built the Taj and the spurious claim of Geronimo Veroneo, an Italian goldsmith. I found out about the legend of a second Taj and the mystery of the basement chambers and a probable third grave. I could hold forth on the art of pietra dura, used in the floral patterns on the walls of the Taj, and the gardens modelled on the Persian Char Bagh style. The fact that I spoke fluent English immediately gave me a headstart. Foreign tourists flocked to me and pretty soon the fame of Raju Guide had spread far and wide. But this did not mean that I became an authority on the Taj Mahal. I had information, but no knowledge. Raju Guide was no better than a parrot who faithfully recited what he heard, without really understanding a word.

  Over time, I learnt to say ‘Konichiwa’ to Japanese tourists and ‘Dasvedanya’ to Russians, ‘Muchas gracias’ to Hispanic tippers and ‘Howdy’ to American rednecks. But, to my everlasting regret, I never had an Australian client whom I could slap on the back and say, ‘G’day mate, I’m gonna give you the good oil about this rip-snorter of a tomb!’

  I also started earning good money from the tourists. Not a fortune, but certainly enough to pay my rent, eat in McDonald’s or Pizza Hut once in a while, and still manage to save up for a rainy day. Except that a rainy day ceases to have meaning for a person who has lived in the open under a monsoon cloud most of his life. I had experienced too many misfortunes, and with the constant fear at the back of my mind that a jeep with a flashing red light could come any day to arrest me for the murder of a nameless dacoit or Shantaram or even Neelima Kumari, it felt pointless to make long-term plans for the future. I treated money, therefore, like I treated my life – as an expendable commodity. Easy come, easy go. Not surprisingly, very soon I became famous in the outhouse as a soft touch.

  The residents of the outhouse were a motley collection: poor college students from far-off villages, government clerks who were illegally renting out their official accommodation at exorbitant rates, train drivers, laundry workers, gardeners, cooks, cleaners, plumbers, carpenters, and even a poet with the mandatory beard. Many of them became my friends. Living in their midst, I came to realize that Emperor Shahjahan and Mumtaz Mahal’s story was not the only one in this sleepy little town.

  Lajwanti was the official ‘news supplier’ of the outhouse. She had an ear to the ground and knew exactly what was going on in the neighbourhood. She knew the wife-beaters and the adulterers, the drunkards and the misers, the rent-evaders and the bribe-takers. Despite her obvious loyalty to her employer, she was also not averse to sharing some titbits about the palace. It was from her that I heard the gossip about Swapna Devi’s colourful past. It was rumoured that she had had a torrid affair with her late husband’s brother, Kunwar Mahendra Singh, but eventually fell out with him and poisoned him to death. It was also said that her liaison had resulted in an illegitimate daughter in Benares. What happened to the daughter nobody knew, and nobody seemed to care.

  Shakil, one of the poor students living in the outhouse, approaches me one evening.

  ‘Raju bhai, if you don’t mind, can I ask you a favour?’ he asks diffidently.

  ‘Yes, Shakil, what is it?’ I reply, sensing the purpose of his visit.

  ‘Actually, my father has been unable to send me the money order this month because of the drought in the village, and unless I pay the university fees by Monday I will be rusticated. Can you please lend me one hundred and fifty rupees? I promise to repay you as soon as I receive the money order next month.’

  ‘Of course, Shakil. I have already lent fifty to our great poet Najmi and a hundred to Gopal, and I had been keeping a hundred to buy a new shirt. But your requirement is greater than mine, so take it all.’

  Shankar and I have been invited by Lajwanti to her room for dinner. She is unmarried and lives alone in the outhouse, but has a younger sister who lives in a village approximately thirty kilometres from Agra. The first thing I notice about Lajwanti’s room is its obsessive tidiness. It is the cleanest room I have ever seen. The stone floor has been polished to a sparkle. There is not a speck of dust. The bed is very neatly made, with not even a crease on the cotton bedspread. There are little decorative objects displayed on a mantel with geometric precision. Everything is painfully neat. Even the kitchen looks so sanitized that I can almost imagine the soot from her chulha being white rather than black. Shankar and I sit on chairs; Lajwanti sits on the bed, wearing a pink sari. She seems very excited and tells us that she has started searching for a suitable bridegroom for her sister, Lakshmi, who is now nineteen years old.

  ‘But what about you?’ I ask her. ‘Shouldn’t the elder sister get married first?’

  ‘Yes, she should,’ she replies. ‘But I am not just a sister to Lakshmi, I have been her father and mother ever since our parents died five years ago. That is why I cannot act selfishly and think only about myself. Once I have married off my sister, my responsibilities will be over and I can then look for my own prince.’

  ‘So how are you going about searching for suitable grooms?’

  ‘I placed an ad in Dainik Ujala, the Hindi newspaper, two months ago, and due to the blessings of Goddess Durga the response has been very good. See how many letters have come.’ She holds out a bundle of letters and envelopes. From these she extracts six photographs and shows them to us. ‘Tell me, which one of these boys will be suitable for Lakshmi?’

  Shankar and I examine the prospective grooms. We find fault with almost all of them. This one looks too old. This one has a wicked smile. This one is ugly. This one has a scar. This one picture looks like a prisoner’s mugshot. That leaves only one photo. It shows the face of a handsome young man with stylish hair and a thick moustache. ‘Yes, this boy looks to be the best of the lot,’ I tell Lajwanti. Shankar also nods his head in fervent approval. ‘Q Gqfz Pdz Wku,’ he says.

  Lajwanti is delighted with our selection. ‘He is my choice too. Apart from being the best looking, he is also the most qualified and comes from a very respectable family. Do you know that he is a very high-ranking government officer?’

  ‘Really? What does he do?’

  ‘He is the Assistant Sugarcane Officer in the District. Lakshmi will live like a queen with him. So should I commence negotiations with his family? Take Goddess Durga’s blessings to move the process forward?’

  ‘Of course, without any delay.’

  Lajwanti serves us an excellent meal that evening, of puris, kachoris, potatoes, lentils and muttar paneer, on steel plates so clean they could double up as mirrors. I feel almost guilty eating off her spotless crockery, worried that it might get scratched. I cannot resist asking her, ‘Lajwanti, how come your house is so neat and clean? Do you keep a maid?’

  She appreciates my noticing. ‘Don’t joke with me. How can a maid employ a maid? I am the one who keeps this house in tip-top order. This has been my habit since childhood. I cannot live in an unclean house. My fingers start itching the moment I see a speck of dirt on the floor, a piece of food sticking to the dining table or a crease on the bed cover. My mother used to say, “Lajwanti cannot tolerate even a leaf sticking out wrongly from a tree.” That is why Rani Sahiba is so happy with me. I overheard her telling Commissioner Sahib’s wife the other day that Lajwanti is the best maid she has ever had and she will never let me go.’ She beams with pride.

  ‘Yes, I agree, you must be the most efficient maid in the whole world. But you’d better not visit my room, otherwise you will get sick.’

  Shankar also agrees that Lajwanti is the greatest. ‘Q Gkrz Gxesxipq,’ he says with a wide happy grin.

  My last patrons today are a group of four rich college students from Delhi. They are a young, boisterous lot in designer jeans an
d imported sunglasses who make flippant remarks about the Taj Mahal, rib each other incessantly and crack vulgar jokes. At the end of the guided tour they not only give me my fee but a fat tip as well. They then invite me to join them on a night out in their chauffeur-driven minivan. ‘Raju Guide, come with us, we will give you the time of your life,’ they implore. I decline at first, but they are insistent and I am so beholden to them for their generous baksheesh that I cannot say no. I hop into the vehicle.

  First we go to the Palace Hotel. This is my first-ever visit to a five-star hotel. I sit in its air-conditioned restaurant and take in the gleaming, softly lit chandeliers, the liveried waiters, the light instrumental music and the well-dressed clientele exuding wealth and influence. The men speak in confidential low tones, the women are like delicate dolls. The food is mouth-watering. One of the boys passes me the menu. ‘Here, Raju. Order whatever you fancy.’ I take a look at the menu and almost choke on seeing the prices. A plate of butter chicken costs six hundred rupees! At the roadside stall near the outhouse I can buy the same thing for a mere fifty-five rupees. But I realize that here you do not pay simply for the food, you pay for the ambience as well. The boys order practically everything on the menu and two bottles of Scotch whisky.

  The sight of all this opulence makes me uneasy. In Mumbai, Salim and I would gatecrash the weddings of the rich for free food, but we never grudged them their wealth. But seeing these rich college boys spending money like paper, I am gripped by a totally new sense of inadequacy. The contrast with my own imperfect life pinches me with the force of a physical hurt. Not surprisingly, my hunger just shrivels up and dies, despite the mounds of tempting dishes lying on my table. I realize then that I have changed. And I wonder what it feels like to have no desires left because you have satisfied them all, smothered them with money even before they are born. Is an existence without desire very desirable? And is the poverty of desire better than rank poverty itself? I think about these questions, but do not arrive at any satisfactory answers.