A Free Man: A True Story of Life and Death in Delhi

by Aman Sethi

  Towards the end, I knew Satish would not make it. They kept giving him his medicines, but he wasn’t getting any better. By the second month in RBTB, he had lost so much weight that his body lost its sense of proportion. His eyes bulged out from his shrunken face and cheeks, his jaw jutted out awkwardly. His head seemed abnormally large for his emaciated body and his hands looked too heavy for his twig-like wrists.

  An allergic reaction to streptomycin had worsened his condition, rendering him almost entirely deaf; antibiotics-induced jaundice had turned his nails, eyes, and skin yellow. The doctors assured me his hearing would return once he was taken off the drug, but that won’t happen now.

  Despite Ashraf’s repeated promises to see Satish, he didn’t visit him once. Every time I visited the chowk, he would ask after Satish and reveal another facet of their unusual relationship. ‘Satish was actually Lalloo’s friend,’ he said. ‘But the three of us became very close. He worked in Choona Mandi but we spent most evenings together.’

  But he never went to see Satish; never dropped in in the evening; never took the gang from Bara Tooti along to cheer Satish up. ‘Hospitals depress me,’ he offered when I confronted him. ‘We are all waiting for him to come back.’

  After a point, Singh Sahib says, Satish just lost his will to live. Three months in hospital had worn him down. Then a young boy across the room died and someone else took his place. Then Pratap Singh was discharged and went home to his village. Then Krishna, then Ammi and Salil, and finally Manoj. Only Satish and Singh Sahib remained—staring blankly at each other across the narrow aisle. And then the social workers took Satish away. Singh Sahib tells me about the Ashram; I call them, which is when they tell me of Satish’s death.

  Now there is only Singh Sahib in Bed 56. Someone else has taken Satish’s place—the same way he took someone else’s. Satish’s earthen water pot is gone from the bedside table, as is his spare underwear that used to hang on the headrest. His pink plastic bowl and steel tumbler have been replaced by plastic Pepsi bottles (now filled with water), a loaf of Harvest Gold bread, and a solitary boiled egg. The hospital authorities claim to change linen as often as possible, but the sheets still bear unwashable traces of their many previous occupants. A man-sized sweat stain darkens the length of the bedsheet—a trailing after-image of countless coughing, sweating, retching bodies.

  During what were to be his last days, Satish often vacillated between going home and staying back in the hospital. Some days he declared he wanted to leave for his hometown Bina by the next train. ‘It’s one of Madhya Pradesh’s bigger junctions, Bina Junction—everyone knows of it.’ He had a phone number: a simple six-digit number with a bulky, imposing area code. He last dialled it ten years ago; he wondered if the number would be the same—so much had happened since he left home at thirteen.

  Ashraf often wondered why Satish left home. What sin could have forced him out of the cosy sleepiness of Bina into the uncontrolled chaos of Delhi? What could he have done at thirteen? Theft? Murder? Rape?

  Satish spoke little of his motivations, but Ashraf spent hours agonizing about the past of the quiet painter. ‘He must have stolen some money from his father’s pocket, that could be the only thing,’ Ashraf concluded. ‘But how much could it have been? Now he will go home, and I will give him five hundred rupees and even if his father doesn’t forgive him outright, his mother will; and she will make his father forgive him!’

  But Ashraf never did convince Satish to go home. Satish listened quietly to Ashraf’s remonstrations—smiling grimly, and occasionally shaking his head in disagreement.

  Satish once borrowed my cellphone and dialled a number from memory: 07580 221083. The phone rang for a while, and then stopped—so the number still existed. Fortunately Bina was a small town, its phones insulated from the incessant violence of changing numbers and differing exchanges. He dialled the number again, and handed me the phone. This time someone answered the phone.

  ‘Hello, who is this?’

  ‘I’m calling from Delhi. I want to speak to Lallan Singh of Paliwal.’

  ‘Sorry, you have the wrong number. There is no Lallan Singh here.’

  ‘Wait, wait, is this Bina, Madhya Pradesh? I am calling from Delhi.’

  ‘Yes it is, but…’

  ‘Lallan Singh is your neighbour. He doesn’t have a phone. Please call him, I am his son’s friend speaking.’

  ‘No, I’m sorry, Lallan Singh’s not my neighbour. You have the wrong number.’

  ‘No, wait, one last question. I’m calling all the way from Delhi. Is this the kirane ki dukaan near the doodhwalla?’

  ‘No, it isn’t. I’m sorry.’

  Bina is a small town, and the numbers don’t change. But people do. People change and people move—from one house to another, from one mohalla to the next. Boxes are packed, trunks are brought out from under the beds, telephone numbers surrendered, security deposits collected, and the numbers, just like hospital beds, are transferred to other homes and families. They are circulated among new sets of relatives, new colleagues at work, new sons in different towns, new daughters now married and settled. But the old numbers are never forgotten; they lie in a tiny pocket diary carried in the inside pocket of a shirt worn in Bara Tooti. A phone number in a small town near a big railway station—waiting to be dialled once more, ten years too late.

  ‘Hello, I’m calling from Delhi, can I speak to Lallan Singh?’

  ‘I’m sorry, but this isn’t his number any more.’

  •

  My phone rings.

  It’s Ashraf.

  He has heard about Satish.

  He’s crying.

  I had gone straight to Bara Tooti once I left the hospital, but Ashraf wasn’t there. Kaka told me he had gone looking for work with Lalloo. Kaka gave me a cup of tea. ‘For free,’ he said, ‘in memory of Satish. He was a good boy, a nice boy, a quiet boy. Always paid on time. He was a polite boy—never did danga, never did gaali-galoch, never drank and got into fights.’

  Ashraf found good work that day. He bought mangoes. ‘Maybe I’ll take some to Satish,’ he told Kaka. ‘I’ll sit with him for a while and give him a mango.’

  Then Kaka told him; so he’s called me.

  He wants to go away from Delhi, far, far away. When will I come next to Bara Tooti?

  I will come tomorrow. Goodnight, Ashraf.

  Goodnight.

  •

  ‘Electric crematorium at Rajghat? Not bad, Satish, not bad at all.’ Ashraf forces out a smile between drags of his beedi. ‘Rajiv Gandhi was cremated there, wasn’t he? He must have gone straight up to heaven.’

  ‘These things are important.’ Ashraf is slipping into one of his monologues. ‘If you are cremated in the wrong place, who knows where you might end up. I was personally present when Dr Hussain was buried. I bathed the body. There was no one else. Who would wash him and dress him? We called a qazi; he said, “Ashraf, you were like his son. You do it.” So I did it.’

  ‘How is Lalloo? I haven’t seen him in a long time.’

  ‘Lalloo is upset. He is drinking somewhere. You know what Satish did to Lalloo, don’t you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Satish was a young boy, but he drank like a bastard. At the time, Lalloo never drank. He had a small stand at Choona Mandi where he sold parathas and sabzi for five rupees a plate. Satish was the one who got him started on drink. One time they sat down and drank for two days straight, non-stop. They ran out of money, so they drank on credit at one shop in Choona Mandi itself. Then they ran out of credit there, so they came to the corner shop at Bara Tooti. Then they ran out of credit there, so they moved to Kalyani’s and drank there. By the time Kalyani threw them out of her house on the morning of the third day, they were in debt for about a thousand rupees, maybe more. But when they got back to Choona Mandi, Lalloo’s stand was gone! Everything. The plates, the spoons, utensils, kerosene burner, even the stale atta and sabzi—all gone. That’s when Lalloo went a little crazy, and he’s been
like that ever since.’

  ‘You never mentioned this before. You told me Lalloo lost his shop at cards.’

  ‘Yes, yes. He and Satish and this other man were playing cards together. And then they started drinking. Anyway, it doesn’t matter now, does it?’

  ‘Why were they still friends? Didn’t Lalloo hate him after that?’

  ‘It wasn’t all Satish’s fault. He didn’t force Lalloo to drink; there must have been some reason why Lalloo drank like that. Kuch toh majboori hogi/yun aadmi bewafa nahin hota/raat ka intezaar kaun kare/din mein kya kya nahin hota.’

  This was one of Ashraf’s favourite sayings, ‘There must have been compulsions/For a man to go astray/Why wait for nightfall/When anything can happen in the day.’

  If Lalloo really was selling parathas in Old Delhi when he could have been living with his estranged wife and wealthy father-in-law in Gorakhpur, I can imagine him suddenly cracking one day, but why was Satish drinking like that?

  ‘He was young. People do stupid things when they are young. Satish also played a lot of cards. And I think he sold his kidney.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I think so. That boy was capable of anything—even selling his own kidneys. He must have done it for the money. The problem with Satish was that things always worked out for him somehow, so he kept doing stupider and stupider things. Then of course, he got TB.

  ‘Even now, look at what’s happened: Ram Avatar died last week; the police took his body to the Baraf Khana and will probably donate it to science. Satish dies; he goes to the electric crematorium in Rajghat where Rajiv Gandhi was cremated. So Ram Avatar’s spirit wanders from one medical school to another where college kids tear out his organs and put them into jars. Satish goes straight to heaven.’

  5

  ‘Aman bhai, you need to send Ashraf away,’ Lalloo shouts into my ear. ‘Since Satish died, something has broken inside him.’

  ‘Where do you want me to send him?’ I yell back over the noise of my motorcycle. ‘We can’t just push him onto a train.’

  ‘Why don’t you ask him? I’ve tried, but he told me to mind my own business.’

  ‘What about Patna?’ I slam the brakes and up-shift frantically as a scooter nips out of a side lane. I’m not quick enough on the clutch; the engine gargles and stalls.

  ‘Oho, sorry, sorry,’ Lalloo apologetically wipes away the white powder he has spilt all over my back. ‘I don’t think he will agree to go to Patna.’

  We are headed to Kasaipura, a ten-minute ride away from Bara Tooti. I spotted Lalloo at a paint store in Sadar Bazaar and offered him a ride. Ashraf is already there, paring the wall down to its base coat. Lalloo is taking along the ingredients for the patti—a paste of porbander mitti and paint that they shall slather onto the naked wall and leave to dry overnight.

  As I struggle to kick-start the motorbike, Lalloo explains the purpose behind the various powders stuck to my sweater. ‘The patti works like a binder between the wall and the paint; without it the paint has nothing to hold on to. Tomorrow, we’ll arrive early to smoothen the wall with emery paper and then slap on the paint.’

  ‘What colour does the maalik want?’

  ‘Pink.’

  ‘Why pink?’

  ‘Wait till you see Kasaipura.’

  The smell of blood is overwhelming; it prowls along the alleyways of Kasaipura like the ghosts of the buffaloes that lie dismembered before me. The floor is sticky—a chip-chip texture that holds my shoe soles just a fraction more than the tarmac road outside, but could as easily turn slick and treacherous. It’s a bit like walking on congealed blood—in fact, that’s exactly what it is.

  Lalloo walks alongside, pushing me out of the way as a young boy pulls a wagon loaded with buffalo heads through the narrow passage. Just behind him, a wagon of hooves, a wagon of haunches, a wagon of ribs—and Mohammed Ashraf.

  ‘What are you doing here, Aman bhai?’

  ‘Lalloo brought me.’

  ‘Lalloo’s a chootiya. Come, I was stepping out for a beedi anyway.’

  ‘What’s the problem? I just want to see the place.’

  ‘There is no problem, but you don’t always need to go everywhere and see everything.’

  ‘True, but…’

  ‘This is a butcher’s area. It’s sensitive, Aman bhai. People get nervous when you presswallahs walk in with your recorders and cameras and ask all these questions. Now let’s go!’

  He calms down once we are outside. ‘People are worried that you will write about how you saw a thousand heads of cattle in a cart. All you need to do is mistake a dead buffalo for a dead cow and tomorrow a mob will burn the place down.’ He looks like he’s upped his drinking again. I realize, not for the first time, that a significant number of my conversations with Ashraf are when he’s either slightly maudlin or hungover. It could explain why my timeline is still incomplete.

  Ashraf shivers and hugs himself; he’s obviously working his way out of a week-long binge. ‘It’s a horrible time in Delhi,’ he offers by way of explanation. ‘It’s the todh-phodh. The demolition.’

  •

  ‘Mr Kutty? Is Mr Kutty present?’ The judge looked up from his desk, the lawyer appearing on behalf of the Municipal Corporation nodded his assent.

  ‘Mr Kutty, Additional Commissioner, Engineering, Municipal Corporation of Delhi, is present in court today,’ continued the judge. ‘He has placed on record the details asked for by us. According to him in 2001 there were 2,765 cases of unauthorized construction; in 2002 there were 4,385 cases of unauthorized construction; in 2003 there were 3,749 cases of unauthorized construction; in 2004 there were 4,466 cases of unauthorized construction; and in 2005 there were 2,934 cases of unauthorized construction, making a total of 18,299.

  ‘We find that there has been a steep rise in unauthorized construction each year… What does it show? It shows that the officers of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi, its engineers, are hand in glove with those who indulge in unauthorized constructions and that without their active or passive connivance it was not possible for such mushrooming of unauthorized constructions in the capital of this country.

  ‘We make it clear that in terms and on the basis of the said report unauthorized construction in the area should be demolished forthwith by the MCD at the expense of the owner/occupier of the property concerned. Status report of the Committee appointed by this Court be filed within a period of two weeks.’

  The gavel falls with a bang—and two weeks later, the city is aflame.

  •

  Looking back now, it’s hard to map out everything that happened after the 14 December 2005 Delhi High Court order that called for the demolition of all unauthorized constructions in Delhi. The todh-phodh, as the regulars at Bara Tooti called it, spread rapidly across the city as the Municipal Corporation’s demolition teams fanned out into markets and residential colonies. Some colonies, like Seelampur in the east, went up in flames as rioting traders and workers flung stones at policemen and the police responded by opening fire. A fourteen-year-old schoolboy was shot through the throat as he made his way home from school. The newspapers bemoaned the disruptions to traffic. The Delhi Police offered its security cameras to spot illegal construction in real time. The Minister of Science and Technology contemplated the use of GIS mapping to keep a close watch on the fast mutating city.

  In January of 2006, the todh-phodh appeared in Sadar Bazaar as a creeping silence that made its way up the radial roads from Connaught Place. First the markets closest to the railway station shuttered their shops; further west, safediwallahs in Choona Mandi near Ramakrishna Ashram dropped their brushes and picked up their bottles and went on a prolonged drinking binge. Fearful of the circling bulldozers, Kalyani declared her place off-limits till further notice and went back to her main business of sifting grains. In Bara Tooti, Kaka contemplated doing the same—his shop was of dubious legality as well. An uncle had promised to help him out in case the police came, but had then stupidly aligned himse
lf with Madanlal Khurana, a former Delhi Chief Minister who now had neither a party nor a support base. ‘If only Tauji had stayed with the Congress,’ Kaka would say with every cup of tea he poured, ‘my children wouldn’t have to worry about my health. I am an old man, Aman bhai, I can’t keeping taking stress like this.’

  For Ashraf and Lalloo and Rehaan and everyone else who sat around at Bara Tooti, the todh-phodh meant that no one in Sadar wanted any work done at all. Not very many labourers in Bara Tooti built a house from the foundation up; large projects like those were usually given out to contractors who brought their own mazdoors, supervisors, and foremen. At Bara Tooti, Ashraf and Lalloo converted balconies into bedrooms, divided a large living space into two bedrooms using partitions, or made subtle encroachments onto the pavement by extending the front of the house to the footpath.

  After the todh-phodh began, no one was willing to risk additions to their already overburdened homes. No one even wanted any paintwork done, fearing that a bright new coat would draw attention to the architectural peculiarities of their home. For the two months, mazdoors lived off their meagre savings, assuming that the demolition drive, like most sarkari drives, would slowly run out of steam and stop. But as the drive continued, many left for home. Others, like Ashraf and Lalloo, walked the bylanes of the bazaar in search of work. The only work to be found was where there was a wedding in the family, or in places like Kasaipura.

  ‘Kasaipura is one of the oldest parts of this area.’ A chai and beedi have loosened Ashraf up. He waves away the offer of a milk rusk, but bites into a fen. ‘It is run by a very powerful clan—the Qureshis. Good connections with all the political parties. The butcher wanted pink—he said the blood doesn’t show up so much on pink. I suggested red, but he said, “Isn’t there enough red around you already?’’’

  I see the butcher’s point.

  ‘And pink is a good shade for summer,’ says Ashraf, displaying his delicate sense of aesthetics, ‘light pink and light green. But with these light colours matching is very important.’