Indian Magic

by Balraj Khanna

  ‘Always knew there was something great about me.’

  Ranji asked me to guess how many pairs of socks he wore. The answer was two - ‘at least’.

  ‘Englishman’s winter, this. But himself he don’t feel it. I have seen him walking in the street only in this vest I wear under my shirt. Sometime I think he is mad.’

  It was Ranji who told me what ‘upstair’ called me:

  ‘Posh Balls.’

  ‘Why?’ I laughed my head off.

  ‘Because Jagan and Prohit get the hot chilli of jealousy up their arse.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Because you are educated. Because you speak English English-style. Because of the way you dress and stand. Jagan says it’s not Gokul Swami but Posh Balls’ own Indian Magic.’

  This worried me. I decided to go out of my way to befriend them and called them Jagan-ji and Prohit-ji out of respect.

  ‘Work. Work,’ they barked at me each time I tried to draw them into a friendly chat. ‘We pay you four bob an hour for what - to yap like the other good-for-nothing downstairs?’

  ‘Huh, better is call them Joker-ji,’ laughed Ranji. ‘Leave the fools with their chili where it is.’

  ‘Ranji, miss home?’ I asked one day.

  Ranji became sad, almost tearful. He looked up at the ceiling for a long moment. I did not press for an answer. Next day he flashed a little passbook at me.

  ‘I have two fifty in the post office. The day I have two thousand, I’m footing back.’

  ‘You’ll miss England. It’s lovely shops and lovely girls.’

  ‘English girls - I am already missing them. And the shops too. Especially Harrod. Shop of shops. Go look. Your posh balls will start singing. But useless waste of time.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Indian not allowed, that’s why. Only Maharajah type.’

  One afternoon after a visit to my favourite museum – the Victoria and Albert, in South Kensington, I turned up there all the same. I was convinced there wouldn’t be notices saying Blacks and Indians not allowed. But I wasn’t sure. After all, I had seen them in every bay-window when I was looking for a room. It made my day not to see any in Harrod’s mouth-watering windows with lights leaping with joy. I still needed some courage to walk into that shop of shops, however. Christmas shoppers packed the place. It was like the ten-yearly kumbha mela throng of worshippers at Benares on the Ganges - a mass of humanity compressed by the common fervour and devotion to acquiring. I wasn’t there to buy anything, only to look. I moved around like a thief, looking through the corners of my eyes to see if I was being watched. I even felt like one. That is, I felt as if I had stolen something from there, but I hadn’t stolen a thing - only glances at that collection of beautiful things. I was in Ali Baba’s cave on so many floors. How did England become so rich? Was it all real? Would people back home ever possess the things my eyes devoured? I was struck by awe and crushed by shame that I was.

  That evening, I told Ranji I had been to Harrods.

  ‘My balls sang a duet. Everybody clapped silly. Honest.’

  Ranji laughed and confessed that he had lied.

  ‘Was only testing to see if you had any shine in them downstairs marbles.’

  Then the conversation took the natural turn.

  ‘Boy! European girl. She’s different.’

  ‘From who?’

  ‘From Indian girl, you fool.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘She like to lend if you know how to borrow.’

  ‘Have you done much borrowing from English girls?’

  ‘English girl doesn’t lend to Indian. Thinks she is Queen’s niece and turn her nose up. Thinks you are infie.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Inferior. Continental girl is best. You her equal.’

  ‘So you?’

  ‘Many time.’

  ‘How did you meet them?’

  ‘You catch her from café and shops. She work for English family who treat her too as infie. So she is lonely and likes Indian boy. One time a Dutch Delight take me home because the family is on holiday. We have bath together. We do it in the bath. Then we do it in bed. Not her bed, because it is single. Husband-wife’s bed who employ her. Kingsize. We make it kingsize. And laugh kingsize. My best experience.’

  ‘What a singular experience.’

  ‘Don’t give me your posh ball shit. I never tell you of another and I have many.’

  ‘Please, Ranji. Let’s hear another. I beg.’

  By ten in the evening, it could be very quiet sometimes. Then often there was a sudden influx of customers. As that night.

  ‘Pub-released crowd like cars at traffic lights when it turn green. Four five pints down then rush here for an arse-splitting Magic curry. Night out for one pound - drink and all. Then guess what please - thok, thok, thok in bed. National habit. How Britain become Great I don’t understand.’

  ‘Ranji, why do they call our food curry?’ Ranji did not know.

  But Mr Gokul Swami did. He said he liked people.

  ‘And vice versa.’

  This was how he had started - as ‘an honest dishwasher’. He had arrived in England without a passport or a penny.

  ‘My pockets were empty. But the rest of me was full. Times were hard. But I had great expectations.’

  ‘So you know Dickens then, sir?’ I interrupted, surprised.

  ‘Who he? I talk of myself, Mr Gokul Isswami. Yes. Pockets were empty - total - but the rest of me was full.’ Of conviction - he was in the Land of Hope and Glory.

  Mr Swami had come as a stowaway on board an Indian merchant vessel HMS Jwalamukhi, named after an extinct volcano in Northern India. He was not found out till the ship had gone round the Cape of Good Hope. The Second World War was in full swing. All Allied shipping had to take that ancient and romantic route. It was first discovered by the Portuguese sailor, Vasco da Gama more than a hundred years before Elizabeth I had granted a few English merchants permission to trade with India, then the world’s richest country.

  ‘How come you were not found out earlier, sir?’

  ‘Ahha!’ That said it all - Indian Magic!

  One sweet night HMS Jwalamukhi entered the harassed English port of Tilbury. And Indian Magic happened again. Hitler dispatched a couple of squadrons of choice war planes to welcome Mr Gokul Swami. Perfect timing. Screaming Stukas, blinding searchlights, mighty ack-ack. There were hits in the gentle seaside night sky; there were hits on the land and sea. The extinct volcano first erupted, then it sank.

  ‘It was Pearl Harbor Number Two you could say,’ Mr Swami said, as if he had been at Pearl Harbor Number One.

  In the chaos that followed, Mr Swami found his freedom. Next morning he and his friend took the train to London.

  ‘From then on, my life was in my own hands.’

  A friend of his friend took him in. When the time came, he had him fixed up as a dishwasher in another friend’s restaurant off Commercial Road in the East End.

  ‘In the meantime was German bomb and Anderson Shelter and ration card and I didn’t have one.’ Mr Swami paused.

  ‘Then?’ I asked after a suitable pause.

  ‘Then was no work. Then was hard work. Twenty-one years. Thing is when we Indians want to do something, we can.’

  ‘Boss-ji, why Englishman call all our food curry?’ Ranji asked him now out of the blue.

  ‘His habit to lump everything when he know nothing. Anyway, why you want to know?’

  ‘Not me, I don’t care. Him. He cares.’

  ‘There are only three real kinds of food in the world - Indian, French, Chinee. The rest is in between.’

  ‘Mr Swami, may I make an observation?’ I said.

  ‘What observation? Make.’

  ‘Sir.’ I wanted to say something about his food - it was awful. But I chose my words carefully. ‘It is most interesting, but it is unlike the food back home. I mean, it hasn’t the same character and flavour.’

  ‘Englishman don’t want chara
cter and flavour. He want mild, medium or hot. That’s what he want. He can’t tell the difference between cumin seed and watermelon seed.’

  ‘But, sir, it is not really Indian. I mean Indian Indian.’

  ‘Mild, medium or hot. Plus fire brigade lager. That’s what Englishman want and that’s what he get here.’

  ‘Sir, attract more Indians. And more and more of them have started coming here. The papers are full of it.’

  ‘UK is going to regret the decision to let us in,’ Ranji said and Mr Swami dismissed him with the flick of his index finger as if he was talking bullshit. But he told me to stay on by wagging the same finger.

  ‘What you talking about the real thing, boy?’

  ‘Mughal cuisine. Tandoori cooking. Out of this world.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So get a special chef from India, sir.’

  ‘You don’t know what you talking.’

  ‘I am talking of a special chef.’

  ‘Who he?’

  ‘Balli Shah from my home town Simla, sir.’

  ‘But who is he?’

  ‘King of chefs, sir. Works in my best friend’s father’s restaurant called the Savoy of Simla. I can pinch him.’

  ‘And who will pay his ticket money? You don’t know what you talking. Downisstair.’

  I got a seat in the tube next to a large and slovenly woman. Her silvery hair was tinted blue. Her cheeks were BBQ red, her ears translucent pink. An unlit cigarette dangled from her half-open mouth and two loosely packed plastic carrier-bags rested between her feet. She smelled of chicken and tobacco.

  ‘Flippin’ hell,’ she yelled, darting a caustic soda glance at me, making me feel I had stepped on her foot or something. ‘Flippin’ hell.’ She turned her head away in disgust.

  Why had she shot away from my side like that? Because my ears were opaque brown? Or did she think I stank of curry?

  I did not know what to think. Nor how to react - feel angry, insulted or what? For no reason at all, I began to feel apologetic too. Then, as I tried to recompose myself, I noticed my other neighbour, an elegant lady of around forty.

  ‘Silly old bag,’ this person said, without looking at the woman with blue hair and bad odour. ‘Don’t take any notice of her, dear,’ she added, turning to me.

  ‘It’s you lot what in-courage them,’ the other woman snapped at my fashionable neighbour.

  ‘Stupid cow. Don’t listen to her,’ my defendant said.

  I obeyed. Like everyone else in the compartment, I buried myself in a paper. The other woman ranted on: ‘It’s you lot,’ Et cetera. I could not understand the rest of it because I could make neither head nor tail of her cockney. But I didn’t have to be a language expert to get the message. Madam did not care for ‘fuckin’ forriners’ who should go back to their ‘bloody cunt-rees’ or ‘you lot’ would have to face the ‘bleedin’ consequences’.

  The tube was crowded. But not a single person paid any attention to her speech. It was as if they hadn’t heard a word. I knew they were on my side, each one of them. I felt the whole of England on my side. It lifted an enormous weight off my chest. I felt happy, I felt proud. So happy and proud, I forgave the woman.

  The next stop was very long in coming. But it came.

  ‘Why don’t you get lost, woman?’ said a man who had been intently devoted to his newspaper, causing everyone else in the compartment to look at her.

  ‘It’s you lot,’ the woman started up again, jabbing a finger at him.

  Apparently, it was her stop. As people got out and in, everybody in my carriage returned to whatever they had been reading. Then a hand rested on my shoulder - somebody had come in and sat in the seat on my left.

  ‘Brando boy. Where did you disappear to that night?’

  ‘Bish? Or should I say Shuk?’

  ‘Say what you like. But put it here.’

  Bish had invited me to lunch that Sunday morning. He came to meet me at his tube station, Gloucester Road.

  ‘I knew we would meet again. Even told Ingi,’ Bish said, hugging me like a long-separated lover, inviting looks from people around. ‘These damn fools think we are queer.’ Bish was blessed with classical good looks, reminding me of a famous film star whose name I couldn’t recall.

  ‘Cary Grant to your Brando,’ whispered my obliging friend.

  Bish lived in a room three times the size of mine with its own little bath, kitchenette and phone. I was impressed.

  I was even more impressed to see his walls festooned with certificates of his prowess at karate, Black Belt awards and photographs of him lashing out at chaps twice his size. Then I was treated to a ‘finger-licking hotty, hotty’. Everything about Bish was ‘finger-licking’. Only after we had finished eating did he say that in his humble opinion, Scottish beef was the best meat in the world.

  ‘You mean?’ Panic struck, I realised I had broken the second promise I had made to my mother: I had eaten the flesh of the most sacred of beings to us Hindus. It was a heinous crime. I felt my face throb with guilt and self-disgust.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ I whispered.

  ‘What did you think was in the hamburgers you’ve been living on since you came here?’

  I had never felt more foolish.

  ‘India!’ he laughed, ‘has world monopoly in producing nuts.’

  As the afternoon deepened, Bish took me to meet Ingi.

  Ingi’s home was a large comfy bedsit nearby. Her hair was the colour of white gold. Her eyes were swimmingpool blue, her cheeks honey-hued and her lips blood red – a cardiac arrest.

  ‘I hear you nearly got a film role, Raavi.’ She gave us tea and laughed and laughed. ‘And you really not know what it mean?’ Then she went to the hall to make a phone call. An Indian girl would not have talked like that to a stranger.

  ‘Swedish.’ The way Bish said Swedish sounded like sweet dish.

  ‘She comes from the land of long nights and no hang-ups.’

  By our second cup, Ingrid and I knew a fair amount about each other.

  ‘Homesick?’ she asked.

  ‘A little,’ I lied.

  ‘You are much. I can tell,’ Ingrid said, looking deep into my eyes. It sent chills through me. ‘You be all right. Like Beesh. He too was, he say. But look at him now. All he think of now is only one thing.’

  ‘At my age a man has the right to.’

  ‘I come here to study English. I was au-pair in English family.’ Now she was working in the Swedish Centre in the West End.

  ‘I not like English peepole. You like?’

  ‘I haven’t met any yet.’ It was true. I had been here a full three weeks and hadn’t yet talked to a single native - man or woman. They were everywhere – this being their country - but somehow they bypassed me, as if I was invisible to them. Polite England dealt with me in ‘thank you’s’ - thank you for applying, thank you for telephoning and for the bus ticket I had bought from the conductor, four ‘thank you’s’.

  ‘Englishman boring. Englishwoman cow. You got one - English girlfriend? No? Good.’

  Two cups of tea was legitimate. Three was over-staying my welcome. I rose to leave.

  ‘Sit down. Where are you going?’ Bish barked.

  ‘I have my laundry to do, Bish.’

  ‘Do it another day. You have nothing to do in the mornings.’

  ‘But.’ My laundry was a serious matter for me.

  ‘Sit, you Brando fool. We’re going to have a party.’ A party of three? What kind of a party was that?

  ‘My dear Bish, it is my duty to inform you as a friend that you are rude, bad and mad,’ I said.

  ‘Ingi, you tell him.’

  ‘Brigit is coming. My best friend. You like.’

  ‘Yes, you like. Now get off your hairy backside and let’s go buy something to drink. Seven - opening time. Ingi, Honey Lips, what else shall I get?’

  ‘I haav everything. But you get what you want.’

  ‘I want lots of things.’ Bish cupped his hands near
the front of her turquoise blue polo-neck and tried to help himself.

  ‘Raavi is right. You are bad,’ Ingrid said, but let Bish treat himself to a good fondle while I turned my back on them. Then we went to the open-on-Sundays Europa and walked out of the shop both carrying a full carrier bag.

  ‘Who is this Brigit, Beesh, or should I say Shook?’

  ‘Wait till you see her. Your b’s will light up like hundred-watt bulbs - if you got any b’s, that is. Have you?’

  ‘Only two. Already lit. And you?’

  ‘Tell you later, Brando boy.’

  It was seeing and believing - the same gold, the same turquoise and the same honey. The two girls were identical replicas of each other - Nordic Magic! I had no idea what wattage or luminosity was generated in me where predicted by my friend. But the motor inside my ribcage had begun to malfunction. I knew that my fate was sealed.

  ‘Still want to go to do laundry?’ my friend whispered in my otherwise deaf ear - I had missed every single word of the introduction. I had a sudden inner intimation that I had met she to whom I wished to surrender that which I had been guarding for so long and so unwillingly - my virginity. A murmur told me that the time for it had come. But how? Oh, how? Practical advice was prompt in coming.

  ‘Don’t rush. Play it cool. Be laid back, but be attentive. And be very charming. Like me,’ Bish said in Punjabi.

  ‘Imitating someone like you can’t be easy. But I’ll try.’

  ‘English spoken here only. Or you lose something you not like to lose. What Raavi say to you, Beesh?’

  ‘Only how heavenly Brigit looks,’ Bish said on my behalf.

  ‘Why he not tell her himself?’

  ‘Shy fool.’

  ‘Ohh. I like shy boys. I loff shy boys.’

  ‘What about me? I am also shy,’ Bish said. He gathered both the girls in his arms and pressed them to his sides.

  ‘You - shy?’ The girls roared with laughter. I saw Brigit look sideways at me and slip out of Bish’s embrace, her eyes still on me. She was saying something through that look and that gesture - I am keeping myself for you. I was sure she was.