by Anosh Irani
He wants to tell Sumdi and Guddi this, but Guddi slips away, starts walking in another direction. Sumdi does not seem to mind. Chamdi feels Guddi’s mind is on Moti. He likes that she cares about a sick stray dog even though she hardly has any food for herself.
Soon, Sumdi and Chamdi come to a halt just outside a jeweller’s shop called Shree Satyam Jewellers. The shop is closed for the night and the streetlights cast tall shadows on its brown doors. Its steel shutters reflect light grudgingly, and Chamdi can see that an iron padlock binds the shutters together. Sumdi leads him into a narrow alley beside the shop. Electrical wires and the building’s pipes are exposed, and water drains out of the thickest one. It falls onto a human head.
As Chamdi’s eyes adjust to the dim light in the alley, he discerns a man with very little hair on his head, and absolutely none on his body. This man has no arms or legs. He is merely a square piece of human being. He lies flat on his back on the ground and he has no choice but to let the water, or whatever it is, fall on him. When he hears his visitors, he turns his head sideward and opens his eyes. A foul smell emanates from him.
“Dabba,” says Sumdi. “Food.”
The moment he hears the word “food,” Dabba’s mouth opens. His eyes closed tight, he waits. Sumdi puts a mutton ball in his mouth. Dabba chews on it quickly and swallows it. He opens his mouth again. Sumdi puts the second piece in. A scrap of cloth is wrapped around Dabba’s waist. It is filthy, but it prevents him from being naked. He is simply a head and a breathing torso. Dabba has finished eating the third and final piece of mutton. He licks his lips and opens his eyes wide. A few drops of water fall onto his chest.
“Can you move me?” he asks Sumdi. “Since yesterday this pipe has been leaking and torturing me.”
Sumdi nods at Chamdi. “Help me lift him,” he says.
Dabba looks to be about fifty. His eyes are kind, thinks Chamdi. Perhaps that is because he is forced to stare at the sky all day. They have even acquired some of the blue-grey hue of an evening sky.
“Hold him and lift him up,” commands Sumdi.
Sumdi holds onto one side of Dabba, the side where his head is. Chamdi holds Dabba from below the waist. They lift up the torso. Chamdi holds his breath—the smell is unbearable.
“We’ll keep you here only,” Sumdi tells Dabba.
They place him back on the ground, only a foot away from the leaking pipe. Chamdi checks his hands. They are clean.
“Who’s the new boy?” asks Dabba.
“My friend Chamdi.”
“Thank you for lifting me,” says Dabba.
Chamdi nods. He cannot look into Dabba’s eyes, even though they remind him of the sky.
“Sumdi,” says Dabba. “Please scratch my chest. I’m going mad.”
“Where?”
“Anywhere, please. I can’t bear it anymore.”
Chamdi looks at Dabba’s dirty torso and wonders how Sumdi will get the guts to scratch him.
“There’s a soda cap next to my face,” says Dabba, as if he could read Chamdi’s mind.
Sumdi picks up the jagged steel cap and scratches Dabba’s chest.
“Aaah …” says Dabba. “Harder, harder.”
“Tell me where.”
“Everywhere! Tear my skin apart, I beg you.”
Sumdi continues to trace the cap along every inch of Dabba’s torso. In some areas, he uses more pressure than others. Chamdi realizes Sumdi has done this before because Sumdi can tell which of Dabba’s groans are ones of pleasure and which are those of discomfort. Chamdi wonders how Dabba goes to the bathroom. But then the cloth is so filthy …
“Now the face,” says Dabba, and closes his eyes in anticipation.
As Sumdi lifts his hand from Dabba’s torso, Chamdi notices that the steel cap has left lines of blood.
“Anand Bhai sends a message,” says Sumdi.
“My ears are open,” says Dabba as he turns his face to the side he wants scratched.
“He will come tonight to meet you. He wants information.”
“I have good news for him. Yes, good news. But I’m fed up. This time I’m going to bargain. I can’t do this anymore. I want to live in peace.”
“I understand,” says Sumdi.
“Now even the ears please, do the ears.”
“I must go,” says Sumdi. “I have to feed Amma.”
“Okay. Before you go, come here. I want to tell you something.”
He whispers into Sumdi’s ear, then lets out a heavy sigh.
“Promise me you will do as I have asked,” says Dabba. “In case Anand Bhai does not agree, I need your help.”
“I … I will try,” says Sumdi.
“Thank you, Sumdi. I can sleep now, I can sleep.”
Sumdi throws the steel cap away and pats Dabba on the chest. He leads Chamdi out of the lane. Chamdi looks over his shoulder as Dabba twitches like a worm on the ground.
“What did he tell you?” asks Chamdi.
“Leave it.”
“He smelled very bad. How does he go to the toilet?”
“Wherever he is, that’s the toilet.”
“So who washes him?”
“Anand Bhai does not want anyone to wash him. The more he smells, the more people will leave him alone. When Anand Bhai allows, we take a bucket and throw water on him. Make him fully wet, that’s all.”
“Poor man.”
“He may be poor, but he makes a lot of money for Anand Bhai.”
“Through begging?”
“Anand Bhai’s real money comes from robberies. He put Dabba next to the jeweller’s shop so that he can hear conversations, any important information. As long as no customers can see him, the jeweller does not pay attention to Dabba because he’s like a leper. Soon he finds out exactly when the consignment comes, what time, where the money is kept, everything. Each time Anand Bhai wants to rob a place, he will pick up Dabba in a jeep and keep him at that location.”
“So Dabba works as Anand Bhai’s ears, like you are his eyes?”
“Right.”
“So why does he not look after you all well?”
“Because if one Dabba dies, he will make another.”
“What do you mean?”
“You think he was born like this? Dabba was a normal man. He was a waiter in an Irani restaurant. One day a taxiwala rammed into him. Dabba lost both his legs. Till today he says the menu out loud to pass the time.”
Chamdi is about to ask how Dabba lost his arms too, but realizes he has some idea of how that happened. He understands now why the man is named Dabba.
Anand Bhai makes boxes out of human beings.
EIGHT.
Chamdi is unable to sleep. He keeps imagining Dabba wiggling on the ground to satisfy an itch.
On the main road, the streetlights are harsh. Their light falls on the bus stop, on a poster of a politician dressed in white. A taxiwala has parked his taxi halfway on the footpath and has gone to sleep in the back seat. Only the soles of his feet are visible, poking out of the rear window. A group of poorly dressed children runs past the taxi. A small boy leads the pack. He carries a packet in his hand. He has quite a lead over the rest of them. Then he stops and sits down on the footpath. As he pants heavily, he opens the packet to reveal biscuits. The rest of the girls and boys join him and start eating. He gets hit on the head by an older girl, but he does not hit back. Instead, he gives her a smile full of mischief.
Chamdi is about to cross the street and talk to these children when he hears a voice.
His body tightens and he stays very still just to make sure that he did indeed hear it—a voice as warm as the night itself.
A song is alive.
He follows that song. It pulls him past the burnt building. As he walks, he takes note of the hole in the cement wall that he entered only a few hours ago to get to Anand Bhai’s adda. Through the hole he can see the gravel of the small school playground. It could be a ghost-child who is singing, one of the schoolchildren perhaps. She misses her fri
ends so she sings songs at night that will linger till morning and leave only when the school bell rings. He slowly passes through the hole in the wall. But the song escapes him as soon as he enters the playground. Instead, there is Guddi, sitting on the ground, leaning against the wall.
“What are you doing here?” she asks.
“Oh, it’s you,” says Chamdi.
An abandoned rubber chappal lies on the ground. A red hair ribbon crawls on the gravel. The branch of a tree scrapes against the glass window of a classroom.
“Was that you singing?” he asks.
“No,” says Guddi.
“But no one else is around.”
“Why are you awake?”
“I couldn’t sleep,” says Chamdi. “You have a beautiful voice. I know that was you singing.”
He sits down next to her, cross-legged just like her.
“Why are you sitting so close to me?” she asks.
“It’s so dark, I … I can’t see.”
“Don’t worry, I’m not going to eat you.”
“If you want me to go, I’ll go.”
“Up to you.”
“Then I’ll stay. Will you sing for me?”
“No.”
“Please.”
“I don’t sing for anyone.”
“Then I’ll eat so much that I become balloon-sized. Then you’ll have to find some other thin boy to do your work.”
“Are you threatening me?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll knife you, you bloody dog. I’ll cut you up into small pieces and sell them as Chamdi-meat. Don’t ever threaten me again.”
“My God …”
Guddi puts her hand on the gravel. The red hair ribbon blows near her and brushes her knee, but she does not touch it. She picks up a twig and makes gashes in the gravel.
“Please sing for me,” says Chamdi.
“If I sing for you, will you promise to get that money from the temple?”
“No, I can’t.”
“Look at me,” she says.
Chamdi looks at Guddi. She is probably the same age as he, but she seems older. She has lived under more sun, more dust, she has heard more truck horns than he, and she is the only girl he knows who has seen her father crushed by a car.
“Look into my eyes,” she says. “Make a promise that no matter what, you will get that money for us. Once you look into someone’s eyes and make a promise, it cannot be broken. Now look at me.”
Chamdi looks into her brown eyes. He feels a tingle in his stomach. For a few seconds their eyes meet, and even though Chamdi wants to lower his, he is unable to do so until the promise is made.
“I promise,” he says. I promise I will get that money for you. But I don’t think I can steal.
Guddi throws the twig away and wipes her hands on her brown dress.
And begins to sing.
What follows is something Chamdi has never imagined.
Guddi’s voice suggests that her throat contains magical things, impossible things. It is as though colours are singing, and each colour is a note. Chamdi’s skin breaks into ripples, and if he could fly he would go straight into the glass windows of the nearby classroom and come out unharmed. Such is the beauty of Guddi’s voice.
The leaves in the trees move gently, as though the trees have felt her song, and dust rises in the air, and swirls about in a playful dance.
By the time Guddi finishes, Chamdi knows that this song is the beginning of something unearthly. So he will use unearthly words to tell her how lovely the song is. He leans towards her and whispers in her ear, “Khile Soma Kafusal.”
“What?” she says, slowly catching her breath.
“Khile Soma Kafusal,” he repeats softly.
“What does that mean?”
“It is spoken in the Language of Gardens. Someday I will tell you what it means.”
“Where is that language spoken?”
“In Kahunsha.”
“Kahunsha?”
“The city of no sadness. One day, all sadness will die, and Kahunsha will be born.”
As Chamdi whispers his secret to Guddi, he forgets, for a second, that it is night. Everything around him is luminous—the leaves, the red hair ribbon, the gravel is waiting to burst.
Guddi flicks the hair off her face and her brown eyes widen. Her eyelashes seem to lengthen—they stretch out as if to reach Chamdi.
“Don’t be an idiot,” she says. “How can such a place exist?”
“Because of your song. Your song is so beautiful that it has the power to create a whole new city.”
“Have you lost your mind?”
“Yes. And I will lose it again, and again, and again, until we are happy. You, me, Sumdi, Amma, the baby, even Dabba. Someday, we will all live together in Kahunsha.”
NINE.
A group of boys sit on a handcart and smoke. Sumdi is amongst them, seated next to the smallest boy, whose head is shaved. Chamdi watches the boys pass a cigarette from hand to hand, and wait for it to come back to them. One of the boys has a tin can and he drums on it. The bald one who sits next to Sumdi starts drumming too, but he does so on Sumdi’s polio leg, and then puts his ear to it, as though he expects it to emit a sound. The boys have a good laugh. Then Sumdi starts to speak and Chamdi realizes that Sumdi is telling them a story. It is about how his ribs will one day turn into tusks. Chamdi chuckles because Sumdi is doing a terrible job of telling the story.
Under a streetlight, Guddi stands with her hands by her side and smiles at Chamdi. The streetlight plays the part of the sun as it reflects light off Guddi’s head. There is a dim glow from the room above Muchhad’s bakery, and Chamdi is glad that he can hear no sounds from the room. He hopes that Muchhad and his wife are fast asleep, and that Muchhad’s wife travels far in her sleep, goes to places she dreamt of as a child.
“Come with me,” says Guddi.
“Where?”
“For a ride.”
“What ride?”
Guddi starts walking, and Chamdi likes how she waits for no one. He is no longer scared of her. He knows that anyone who can sing like she can must have the lightest heart in the world.
Guddi does not look at him. She continues to walk past the closed shops. Chamdi walks a little faster to catch up with her, but then decides to let her lead him. The traffic lights are blinking red—on and off like eyes without sleep, he thinks. As they reach an intersection, a taxi swerves dangerously close to the footpath. Men are asleep on the footpath in a row, and even though the taxi’s headlights flash on their faces, they do not stir.
Soon they pass the closed doors of a liquor bar. A dark man stands outside the entrance with his hands folded, and his fierce manner suggests that he is guarding the door. Two men smoke outside the bar, and it is obvious from how they struggle to stand that they are drunk. Chamdi notices the flimsy tin roofs of the shops. Large stones are kept on top of them to prevent them from being blown away by the wind.
Now Chamdi spies three children asleep on the steps of a pharmacy. Guddi kicks one of the boys lightly. The boy wakes up with a jerk, but the moment he sees Guddi, he smiles, hurls a curse, and rests his head back on the hard stone. This must be what Sumdi meant when he said that Bombay itself was an orphanage, thinks Chamdi. There are children just like him strewn all over the city. Chamdi wishes the streetlights were colourful—pink, red, purple, orange. Why not? They bend like trees anyway.
Guddi stops in front of a taxi that has smashed into a tree on the sidewalk. She bends down and hides behind the car. Being careful to watch out for glass, Chamdi takes the same position.
“What are we doing?” he asks.
“Hiding.”
“From what?”
“Horses.”
“There are horses here?”
“Yes. You like brown or black ones?”
“I … I’ve never seen a horse before.” “Tonight we’ll go for a horse ride.” Is she teasing him? It is entirely possible. Later, she and her brother will
have a mighty laugh. The fool believed me when I told him there are horses on the street, she will say.
“We’ll have to wait. But they’ll come for sure,” says Guddi.
“Horses will come galloping on their own?”
“Not by themselves, you idiot. Ghoda-gadi!”
“A horse carriage at this time of night?”
“Yes. They do the rounds of Marine Drive by the sea. Once they’ve made their money there, then late at night they rest. The stables are nearby so the old man comes this way. We’ll have to walk back to our kholi from the stables, okay?”
“Yes.”
“You’ll have to jump on. If he catches us, he’ll use the horsewhip on us. So be careful.”
“Have you done this before with Sumdi?”
“No, Sumdi cannot run.”
“Oh … yes …”
“Anytime now he’ll come.”
Chamdi is excited at the thought of jumping onto a horse carriage. At the orphanage, the bravest thing he did was sneak out of the orphanage in the middle of the night and walk about in the courtyard. But he did not have the guts to venture into the city. Now, not only is he in the middle of the city but he is also about to ride through the city on a horse carriage.
As the two of them wait, crouched behind the smashed taxi, Chamdi feels renewed. He is in the middle of a dark road, and there are only buildings and shops and liquor bars around him, but Guddi’s song has given him strength.
“Your song … it was really beautiful,” he tells her. “Where did you learn it?”
“I made it up,” she replies.
“Your song will start a whole new city and …”
“No,” she cuts in. “It won’t.”
“Why not?”
“I made that song up after my father died. The day he died, as he was crossing the road, I called out his name and he turned back to look at me and that was when the car hit him. He was waving at me. I made the song up because of his death. So how can something like that start a new city?”
Chamdi stares at the tire of the taxi. The hubcap is smashed in. The dent on the door of the driver’s side gives the impression that the body of the car is made from black cardboard.