by Sakiv Koch
But a hand much heavier, much more powerful than Smast’s smacked the back of Pintu’s head twice, in rapid succession, with enough force to make the bully cry out. Raj’s head and shoulders were jutting out of the motorcar’s window like an angry turtle projecting out of its shell.
“Never dare treat my princess like that again!” he snarled in a tone of voice as cold as the air, reinforced his warning with another slap to Pintu’s head, and drew himself back into the vehicle.
A number of servants, including the pretty maid, were carrying and stowing luggage in the motorcar’s trunk — all of them saw Pintu’s humiliation with as much satisfaction as Smast felt.
“Mohan Ram chacha will meet you in Devgarh,” the maid, her eyes beaming with pleasure, whispered to Smast, perhaps taking an immense risk in speaking with him. Smast suspected that she was not supposed to divulge this important, heartening piece of information. He believed she wouldn’t have done it if she hadn’t been treated with the marvel of Pintu being slapped multiple times.
The terrifying time that lay ahead suddenly didn’t seem entirely terrible anymore. Smast stopped wishing that their motorcar would have a horrible accident in that accident-manufacturing fog. “Come here, Rat Prince,” Darshan Singh called him in sickly-sweet tones, “make yourself comfortable amongst us lesser beings.”
Smast got into the front seat and sat wedged between the two beasts, both of whom went out of their ways to squeeze the thin boy as painfully tight as they could. The motorcar started with a loud roar. Its wheels began spinning, bearing Smast upon his first ever out-of-town journey.
Chapter 2: Love and Loathing
The sun asserted its incalculable power and the fog began to recede, swirl by smoky swirl. Released from captivity, the myriad beauties of the motorway started to flash through the windshield, tying silken knots around Smast’s spirits and lifting them up by degrees.
Smast’s physical discomfort was considerable — the pains from last night’s assault were still alive and healthy. Darshan Singh was using him like a living pillow, crushing the boy and keeping him incessantly half-suffocated. Upon his other side, the vicious driver, who Smast was now convinced was a mute, kept his left elbow jammed into Smast’s right side almost permanently, even while changing gears.
Smast’s stomach, which had gotten used to lavish breakfasts over the past several weeks, rumbled continually about two missed meals. Besides, he couldn’t look out the windows, framed as he was by two rather ugly specimen of base humanity.
But, in spite of all this, in spite of the continuous, unpleasant tingling at the back of his head, (rising from the vile, menacing presence of Pintu behind him), and above all, in spite of the intensity with which he was missing his mother and worrying for her — in spite of the hard frost of so many troubles, little shoots of joy and excitement were sprouting in his heart.
These tiny plants started growing rapidly when the party stopped for lunch after nearly five hours of driving. Climbing out of the sedan and then getting upright was an ordeal for Smast, but he was so dazzled with the beauty of the place that he heard his own groans as though they were issuing out of someone else’s mouth.
His eager gaze ran up the green, rolling hills that adorned the horizons. He lovingly traced the course of a rivulet that flowed into and fed the lake at whose banks he stood. There was a wide strip of velvety green grass between the edge of the road and that of the blue lake. A number of waterside eateries were doing brisk business selling food and tea. Dozens of people took their meals and their leisure on the grass, delighting in the warm sunlight that had finally broken through and driven away the menacing cloud army.
Smast stood by himself, already feeling like a new person, feeling as though the sparkling sheet of water at his feet and the majestic hills in the far distance were respectively drowning and burying his difficulties and worries.
Some of the members of his party had proceeded towards the grandest of the eateries. The remaining persons were inside some wooden shacks that served as public lavatories. Smast also needed to use one of those bathrooms rather desperately, but he made the most circuitous way to the farthest one, putting as much distance between himself and his co-passengers as he could. When he got out after a few minutes, he saw the others sitting down with big platters full of hot food. Smast’s hunger, already very sharp, deepened considerably more.
Raj sat with his children on a table, where Pintu was simultaneously reducing the contents of two huge plates — one placed to his left and the other to his right — with his usual belief-defying speed. Cat was nibbling some rice at a pace inversely proportional to her brother’s.
Darshan Singh and the driver were sitting cross-legged on the grass, near their masters’ feet. Upon seeing Smast, the driver got up, his features twisted in a grimace of displeasure. He was holding a platter stripped down to near emptiness. One gnawed-looking roti and a diminutive bowl of daal leapt up in panic as the driver slammed down the plate on the surface of an empty table.
He growled soundlessly at Smast and went back to his lunch. Smast turned his head away in disdain, but a full minute hadn’t elapsed before his hand broke a part of the roti, dipped it in the bowl of daal, and conveyed the morsel to his mouth. By the time Smast finished his paltry meal, the others were finishing their dessert, with the notable exception of Pintu, who kept a large contingent of servers and cooks frantically busy.
Raj got up, perhaps to go to the lavatory, and barked something at his gluttonous son — evidently a command for him to finish eating and get going. Pintu’s face fell; he looked as though he was the one who had been given food barely enough to fill a bird’s belly.
Smast walked down to the edge of the water. He gazed lovingly at the green splendour of the Himalayan foothills, which were casting an uncanny spell over him, beginning to convey a promise of unimaginable magic and untold strength. He felt as though the hills were beginning to talk to him —
Something hot and sticky fell on his head, trickled onto his face, and broke the beautiful spell. Smast turned around with a jerk, his gasp of pain and surprise mixing with a twin-braided sound of chuckles — one issuing from the hilly belly of Pintu and the other, from the mountainous blob that belonged to Darshan Singh. The driver stood grinning his silent, horrible, crooked-teeth grin.
Pintu tossed away the empty bowl whose contents he had just poured over Smast’s head. “A house-fly fell into my daal, O Rat Prince. I couldn’t eat it, so I put it to the next best use. Ha! Ha!”
Uncharacteristically, Smast uttered a dirty swear word and, characteristically, jumped at Pintu. The driver caught him effortlessly with one hand and tossed him back as though he were a small stack of old newspapers. Darshan Singh pretended to cower in fear and then the hyena in him laughed hysterically.
“Go, pollute the lake by dipping your head in it,” Darshan Singh commanded. “Quick, before Master comes back!” Smast showed no signs of complying with this order, whereupon the vile driver grabbed the back of Smast’s neck and forcibly dunked his head in the icy cold water. Smast was instantly transported back in time and space to the morning of his ninth birthday, when Pintu had performed a similar operation upon him.
Smast’s impotent fury was boiling white-hot when the mute man pulled him upright again. Every person, including the personnel manning the various eateries, had thronged there. They watched as the thin boy spluttered water and shook with what they took to be cold, but was actually rage.
A small, soft hand clasped Smast’s arm, but let go immediately. Smast saw tears flowing from Cat’s eyes. She stepped away from him and ran towards her father, who was returning from the bathroom. The driver relinquished his hold on Smast’s neck and moved away from him. Smast raised his fists in air.
“I’ll break your jaw the next time you dare play any dirty trick on me!” he shouted at Pintu, spattering him with a veritable rain of spittle. Smast did not care that fifty people were gathered there and watching the spectacle. He did not
care how Darshan Singh, the driver, or even Raj would react to his threat. “I swear it upon my mother’s head!” he added in the heat of his passion and then immediately regretted his terrible oath. There was no undoing, no diluting, no escaping this promise.
He felt the sudden, premonitory weight of an impending doom added to the other burdens crushing him. His head bowed down, his shoulders slumped, and his fists uncurled. The fat bully and his cronies took these signs of dejection to be the signs of defeat, signs of the acceptance of defeat. They couldn’t have been more wrong.
Raj scolded his son and his servants for their mischief perfunctorily, without any force or conviction — which neither surprised nor hurt Smast. After a minute during which Smast dried himself as well as he could with a dish towel a kind waiter lent him, they started upon the second and the last leg of their journey.
◆◆◆
Dusk was stealing the gold of the weakening, westering sun when the motorcar entered into the municipal limits of the great city. Smast, once again tightly wedged between the two men, wiggled his body to sit up. He fought to lean forward and take a better look. It was not without reason that the city was called ‘the abode of gods’ and ‘the place of gardens.’ He had heard that Devgarh also had a proportionately ugly underbelly, like all metropolises do, but nothing unpleasant was in evidence at that point in time and space.
The streets were wide and clean, their broad pavements adorned with trees — rows of Gul-mohars upon one side and Milk-wood pines upon the other. Lamplighters were at work, enlivening ornamental lamp-posts with pleasant yellow-golden glows. Gardens, big and small, rich with ponds or fountains or little canals, flashed past the windows on either side every other minute.
There were great marketplaces thronging with more people than Smast had ever seen at one time before. He couldn’t wait to explore the wonders he was glimpsing at such a great cost to his straining neck. The motorcar finally stopped, after having journeyed for almost another five hours. Smast was once again so lost in the grandeur of his surroundings that he barely noticed the painful stiffness of his joints.
They were parked under the porch of a magnificent mansion — a house much smaller than the one in the hometown, but almost similar to it in terms of its architecture, its predilection for fountains and bodies of water. Father obviously built this house, too, Smast thought with the mix of pride, heartbreak, and anger he always experienced whenever he saw anything related to his father.
The house fronted a beautiful garden with manicured lawns and old, sprawling banyan trees. There were the lights and the bustle of a bazaar on the other side of the garden. Smast rose to the toes of his feet in his eagerness to see more, unmindful of the important personages standing a few feet behind him.
A hand grasped his shoulder and pushed him down to his heels. “Help us poor menials with the luggage, O mighty prince,” Darshan Singh said in silky tones. Smast turned around and saw that Raj, Pintu, and Cat were no longer there. Apart from the driver, there were two men lifting suitcases and bags out of the motorcar’s trunk.
The men were casting curious glances at Smast; the older of them even smiled and nodded at him, as though he knew Smast personally. The manservants then started to walk towards the main door of the house, carrying a suitcase and a bag each. The one who had smiled at Smast suddenly stumbled and fell. The fall was a bad one, as the man’s arms hadn’t been free to prevent him from hitting his face on the floor. Smast had seen the driver’s foot move deftly and trip the man up. The facial injuries the old man sustained were the price of having shown kindness to Smast.
His companion bent to help him, but then thought better of it and stepped back. “I think it’s time for you to retire, Lakhan,” Darshan Singh started scolding the still-prostrate man, although he was moaning loudly and finding it difficult to get back on his feet. “You can’t even carry little things anymore without dropping them. Look man, if you have broken anything, you’ll have to pay for it! You’ll have to sell off your little house and all your cattle and all your wife’s trinkets. Even then you will still not be able to pay half the value of half the things you must have smashed in Master’s suitcase. Quit playacting now and get up!”
Lakhan got up with a great deal of effort, begged Darshan Singh’s pardon, picked up the luggage he had dropped, and staggered into the house. Once the man was out of sight, Darshan Singh and his soundless crony looked at each other and laughed an evil laugh. “That old bastard, Mohan Ram, gives these cockroaches all these fancy ideas of warming up to worthless bastards.” The two men then simultaneously transferred their hateful gazes to Smast. “We serve our masters,” Darshan Singh said, “and you serve us — a servants’ servant. Now pick up our bags and carry them to our quarters at the back of the house. Double quick, Rat Prince! You’ve to finally stop being a parasite and earn your keep!”
Smast somehow managed to keep a lid on his anger and thereby succeeded in avoiding a suffering that would have been considerably worse than Lakhan’s. He did as he was bid, although every pore of his sore and cramped body screamed while he carried out Darshan Singh’s orders.
When Smast returned from the servant quarters at the back of the house, the fat man was lolling on a large diwan in the front veranda, yawning continually. Smast, too, wished for nothing more than a bed and some little food.
“Be a good rat now and run an errand for us,” Darshan Singh said mischievously. His intent was clear — not to let the exhausted boy rest. The air was getting colder with the deepening darkness. “Go across that garden there,” Darshan Singh pointed towards the front gates of the mansion and, inadvertently, lifted Smast’s spirits. If he could have chosen one element more preferable than rest and food, it was an outing.
Smast had to immediately mask the look of eagerness that must have appeared on his face. “Hmm,” Darshan Singh pondered, “I think I’ll send someone else. In the meantime you can clean —”
“Yes, please,” Smast said, “let me do other things here at the house. I am afraid to go out alone in the dark.”
“Ha, ha, ha, you are afraid, Rat-heart, are you? Very good. Here —,” he extended his gargantuan arm — its excessive flesh pooled downward and trembled disgustingly. He handed Smast two tubes of tightly rolled-up money along with a chit of paper. “Run through that garden and you’ll find a bazaar on the other side. Buy a packet of tobacco and a bottle of whiskey. I have written the names of the brands I want on that bit of paper. The second roll of money is for buying —,” Darshan Singh paused and his small, hard eyes gleamed like that of a beast’s. “— three kilograms of fresh mutton. You’ll find all the three items in two adjacent shops when you take a right turn after exiting the garden. Be sure to tell the butcher — he is a one-eyed man — be sure to tell him that Darshan Singh sent you — be absolutely sure of that. That half-blind bastard can’t read any more than his goats can — ha! ha! — so I haven’t included any note for him. Go and come back as quick as the wind blows. Keeping me hungry and thirsty longer than necessary wouldn’t be good for your third-class health. Go now!”
Smast turned and started walking down the driveway, as happy about getting to go out as he was unhappy about the purchases — particularly the meat — that he would have to make for Darshan Singh. A crescent moon was rising amongst a spattering of stars, turning the young evening into a beautiful, bejewelled maiden. Smast wanted to tarry in the moonbeams-kissed garden, but he was concerned about maintaining, if not improving, the current levels of his health, bad as it was.
Smast walked as fast as he could, exited the garden, and entered the bazaar, which, in its own bustling, bright way, was as attractive as the garden had been. There were shops and stalls selling clothes, shoes, cycles, toys, flowers, radios, grocery, utensils, jewellery, books, vegetables, fruits, and spices.
A sight mesmerised him so completely he stopped in his tracks, gaping up at a gigantic billboard showing an intriguing image. They show moving pictures here! Smast realised with an in
credible thrill of excitement. He drank in the perpetually festive atmosphere of the movie theatre until someone jostled him on the busy pavement.
He began to move, but stopped again after a few steps, this time outside a meat shop. They had butchers’ shops in his town, too, but Smast had never ventured near one before. He now found himself in close proximity to the hanging carcass of a goat and stepped back hastily. He looked in the back of the shop and saw that the butcher was looking back at him with just one good eye, while the other one was curtained off behind a heavily-stained eyepatch of indeterminate colour.
He was a short man with broad shoulders, muscular arms, and a thick, bushy moustache. He was holding a large cleaver in his hand and his apron, once white, was smeared with old and new blood. Smast had never seen him before, and yet there was something vaguely familiar, hugely repulsive about the way the man was smiling to himself. The butcher was winking grotesquely and playing with his cleaver in a rather dangerous manner.
Smast hurried on to the next shop — also selling the kind of merchandise he had never bought before — and waited in a long queue of customers. When his turn came, Smast handed the shopkeeper the bigger roll of money along with Darshan Singh’s chit of paper. The liquor-vendor — an old, genial looking man wearing thick spectacles — looked at the note, counted the money, and wrapped a glass bottle in a sheet of newspaper. He then picked a pouch of tobacco from another shelf and handed both the items to Smast. The vendor looked as though he wanted to say something, but he merely patted Smast’s hand, and then turned to attend to the next thirsty person’s needs.
Smast went back to the butcher’s. “Run away, skinny urchin,” a deep voice rumbled at him, “I cut up loiterers and feed them to my dogs and my hogs! Ha, ha, ha!”
Smast had no choice but to venture in. “D-Darshan Singh sent me,” he stammered, getting away from the line of carcasses swinging slowly from their hooks, but on the other side were cages crammed with live birds. The butcher’s manner changed as soon as he heard Darshan Singh’s name. An expression made up of joviality and menace in equal parts dawned upon his face.