Indian Magic

by Balraj Khanna

  ‘Thank you, Mr Swami. You have a heart of gold,’ I said, making my way to the Gents to change into a white starched waiter’s jacket and the black butterfly tie.

  ‘Raavi.’ Ranji popped his head in. ‘Greatness being thrust upon you. Calls for a duet from your downstairs marbles. No?’

  I was doing the sums in my head - how much I would be able to save every week. As I changed, I heard the boss’s friend, one of the two gentlemen who had predicted snow yesterday, come in. His name was Rameshwar. He was the opposite of my boss in appearance - endlessly tall and unbelievably thin, not the type to be walking in a strong breeze. He always wore the same things - a black overcoat, the undertaker’s black felt hat, a muffler with black and white checks and black leather gloves. He never took any of them off when he came to visit his friend, which was daily - sometimes more than once a day. I overheard them talk.

  ‘Gokul, this winter. Is going to be worse than of ‘forty-seven.’

  ‘Forty-seven was murder. Cold-blooded mass murder in India, murder by cold weather in England. I remember like yesterday.’

  ‘Gokul, you smiling. Why?’

  ‘Have made Boy waiter proper now.’

  ‘But why are you putting promotion in his pocket so soon? You gone round the crazy bend or something?’

  ‘Wife. Said issmart waiter is good for the business.’

  I was flattered. More than that, I was baffled - when did Mrs Swami see me? She was in the bath.

  Christmas came and went, bringing more snow which turned to ice, making roads and pavements more suitable for skating than walking. The New Year then brought something I had never encountered: smog. It was thick and woolly and yellowy. So thick, that if I stuck my tongue out, I could feel it and taste it.

  More snow fell, burying London. I wanted to get to know my hardworking housemates at the Subcontinental in Finchley Road. My odd working hours didn’t help. There were only the Sundays for socialising. But many of them worked even on Sundays. They were here to make money. They had plans for the future. I had only dreams. I noticed that when they spoke to me, they were as polite as the outside world - England had got into them - but somehow they bypassed me, like England. Things changed when they learned I alone of them all had an MA degree – most hadn’t gone past high school; they started taking notice of me.

  The twenty-five year old Pakistani motor mechanic, Tariq, whose room was next to the common sink in the hall, had the same bushy moustache and milk-white teeth as his Indian pal, Walia, who lived across the hall by the payphone and worked for an Indian company. The two were close friends and could have passed as brothers. Late that Sunday afternoon, I saw them taking their washing to the launderette. Hurriedly, I made up a bag of my dirty clothes and followed.

  ‘Damned nuisance, this laundry business,’ I said to them in the launderette, reminding them that back home, all that was done by others. In my case it was done by the family servants at home or by dhobis at a crystal-clear mountain stream.

  ‘No nuisance. What nuisance?’ said Tariq. He seemed to enjoy this outing.

  ‘I have a friend who picks up a girl with every other wash,’ said his lookalike, Walia.

  ‘Which launderette? Let’s go there then, you idiot. What are we doing here?’ Tariq said.

  ‘I can’t understand why you chaps have any problems anywhere. Both so dashing.’

  ‘I can’t understand either,’ Walia said.

  ‘Fact is, you haven’t yet learned the knack,’ Tariq told him. We talked. Tariq had plans of opening his own garage one day.

  ‘UK. Country of opportunity. And we are taking it.’ Walia had ‘import, export’ in mind. He knew one day he would have a company of his own. ‘Work hard, make money, save money.’

  The conversation inevitably returned to the other main issue of life - girls. There were a few of them around, doing their washing. The question of chatting them up did not arise. None of us had the courage to do so.

  ‘Next best thing to eating a sweet is having it in front,’ Walia remarked.

  ‘It’s the worst, if you ask me,’ Tariq moaned. He was a bit better-looking of the two. And more desperate where the all-consuming woman-question was concerned. He was convinced that Allah had adorned him with that extra bit ‘for things more glorious than mere drainage’, as he put it so eloquently.

  Clothes washed and dry, we dangled our bags over our shoulders and walked home like thieves after a good night out. It was quite dark outside now, and fiercely cold. The old snow had become black ice. The roads and pavements were black glass. A freezing wind blew in our faces. It was coming straight up the Finchley Road, from Swiss Cottage, as if it had rolled off an Helvetian glacier there. Two girls passed us and a funny thing happened. They turned their heads to inspect the three funny-looking thieves, and the three funny-looking thieves turned their heads to admire the two lovely-looking girls - and for no reason at all five of us slipped simultaneously and fell flat on our backsides on the black pavement. We laughed and laughed and laughed - it was a divinely delicious moment. We had made two beautiful girls laugh like that. It would not have mattered a bit had we broken a bone or two in the process.

  ‘Are you all right?’ I slithered up to the girls and offered them my hand to pull them up, which wasn’t easy. Tariq and Walia came over and helped, the girls still in hysterics.

  ‘So sorry, we made you fall,’ I told them.

  ‘It was not your fault.’ The voice was English.

  ‘We are very sorry,’ Tariq and Walia said.

  ‘Not your fault at all. We slipped like you.’

  ‘This blasted weather,’ I said.

  ‘So cold.’

  ‘How about a coffee?’

  ‘How about it?’

  ‘Will you drink a cup with us?’ Tariq said. The girls looked at one another, then at us. ‘All right, why not.’

  Now the three of us looked at each other - which two? The decision had to be made in one split second, otherwise it would have looked unnatural. All three of us were dying to get to know English people, especially girls. But it was clear what was required of me. Without a word, I took my new friends’ bags in my hands and slung them over my shoulder.

  ‘Aren’t you coming?’ the girls said.

  ‘I would love to, but I realise I have things to do.’

  ‘See you tomorrow morning,’ Tariq said in Punjabi. But they were back within an hour at the Subcontinental.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘English bitches. No chemistry,’ Walia moaned.

  ‘I didn’t want chemistry. I wanted physics,’ Tariq said.

  Over the next couple of days the smog became so bad that, reluctantly, Mr Gokul Swami had to shut down. For a whole week, most of London remained shut and my Subcontinental mates had the week off, fully paid. This brought us all together, all twelve of us. I could not cook – young men from my kind of background never needed to. But the others could. We had breakfast together – piping hot parathas with fried eggs on top. We had lunch together – tongue-burning rogan josh. We had dinner together – chicken biryani. The works. We ate and drank and sang old Punjabi folk-songs and, in threes or fours we went for long walks in Golders Hill Park close by, or on Hampstead Heath a little further away.

  Tariq and Walia came to Indian Magic the night it reopened. We did not recognise each other. I couldn’t fiddle the bill, but I managed to serve them double portions. They left me the princely tip of ten bob, the price of a good average meal. This was done for the benefit of Jagan and Prohit, who loathed Indian customers - they mean, they complain and return dishes, they tip with their toes. To ensure the sight of Posh Balls neatly pocketing that brown note would, I hoped, push the red or green chilli of jealousy a little further up where Ranji said it was. The note would be returned the next day to its owner in the ‘Sub’.

  Then, in twos and threes, all my Submates came - carpenters plumbers, everyone. Of them all, the poet-philosopher and newspaper-seller, Melaram Mela, was the closes
t to my heart. Although another Punjabi, Melaram always spoke in Urdu. It was the Urdu of the Nawabs of Lucknow - a princely treat for the ear. But he was different, aloof. He alone of us all did not have a pained face, and Tariq told me, ‘He hides it.’ Melaram was tall like me with finely chiselled features. He was forty but still single. Although he was only a newspaper-seller, we all held him in high esteem and called him Mela-ji, like Gandhi-ji, out of respect.

  Melaram wrote poetry in Urdu and manned a newspaper-stall at Golders Green station. Like me, he had odd working hours. He left home at the crack of dawn and did not come back till after eleven a.m., just when I was leaving for work. He returned to the station to catch the 4-6 p.m. rush hour, then came home - again, just when I was going back to the Magic for my evening shift. There were hushed rumours about a woman, someone with a face ‘made by a dream’. His verses were apparently addressed to her.

  The reel of life spun on. The weeks were a long wait for the weekends.

  ‘Weekend society, this,’ Mela-ji said to me once. ‘People become people only during these shortest days of the week. During the other five, they are exchangers and shifters in haste. Haste is the name of the game, a soulless game, for when hearts dwell in others’ pockets, wherewith the soul?’ he mused.

  ‘So unlike back home where the hour, the day, the week, the month rolled into one and you live without thinking about it, and there are people who love you and you love them, and that is good and you are happy, and are never, ever lonely.’ This was the first time he had used the word. I felt grateful that it was to me he said what he had said.

  ‘You know, Raavi,’ he went on.

  ‘I’ve been here two summers and two winters - and yet I do not know a single English person.’

  ‘How come, Mela-ji?’ I was staggered even though I didn’t know any myself.

  ‘How come? You’ll find out.’

  I went to Golders Green station to meet Bish. He was coming to eat with me but he would be cooking our meal. I was not made for cooking, only serving.

  ‘Promise not to grill me over Ingi,’ he warned me. ‘Or I’m going back.’ I promised.

  ‘How about a pre-lunch pint?’

  We had one at a pub by the station. As we came out, I realised I should have visited the pub loo before leaving. But there was a public one outside the station. Bish decided to join me and in we went together. This loo had a very long white porcelain wall, the sort you’d see in the Gents at a sports’ ground - long enough to accommodate ten to twelve men. While we peed, a man in a grey mackintosh and black felt hat came in and, even though the place was empty but for us two standing six feet apart, he came and stood right between us. This seemed odd, to say the least. Then he fumbled with his fly. Without actually opening it, he leaned over to peep at the source of the line of water shooting out of mine, then at Bish’s.

  ‘Have a good look. Have a good look,’ Bish shouted, then turned around and sprayed the man up and down. Transfixed, the fellow didn’t know what to do for a second or two. Then he collected himself and ran. We laughed our lungs out.

  Bish was like that - always up to something, usually unexpected: - ‘Can’t resist what the spur of the moment brings.’

  The very next afternoon, at one or so, when the Magic buzzed with Monday Luncheon Voucher pinstripe-suited workers from nearby offices, the telephone rang. Jagan took it.

  ‘Indian High Commission,’ he whispered urgently to Mr Gokul Swami, his eyes wide open.

  ‘Indian High Commission?’ Mr Gokul Swami breathed back in utter amazement, snatching the phone from Jagan. Prohit and I heard that. We stopped in our tracks. The Indian Embassy telephoning the Indian Magic?

  ‘Gokul Isswami owner-proprietor himself on the line, sir,’ we heard our boss say with a ras malai voice - sweet, creamy and cool. ‘What? His Excellency the High Commissioner wants to isspeak to who? His nephew? His nephew who, sir? Raavi Kumar who? Ah, Mehra? Yes, of course, sir. Here he is.’ Mr Gokul Swami put his hand on the mouthpiece and turned to me. ‘Why you not disclose you are high-related?’ he said, handing me the phone.

  If my boss was shaken, I was flabbergasted.

  ‘This is your Very High Commissioner uncle, ringing to say Hello.’ Phone calls were strictly forbidden. This was the only way Bish could reach me. The heights on which he had placed himself made me dizzy. Worse, I knew I was about to fall.

  ‘So say hello to your uncle.’

  I spoke to my Indian uncle. ‘A thousand thanks, Uncle. I bow to touch your feet. Auntie’s too. I know I’ve been a bad boy not coming to pay my respects. I’ll hand you your slipper to punish me when I arrive.’ I went on to have a good chat with my uncle.

  ‘Why you never tell?’ Mr Swami demanded, shaking his head and looking painfully puzzled. I was going to tell him the truth, that I had a prankster friend. But something in me said: Don’t, RKM - you will be booted all the way to hell.

  ‘Mr Swami, there was nothing to tell.’

  ‘Nothing? So high-related and washing and waitering? What’s the matter with you? What sort of nephew are you?’

  ‘You can say I am an estranged nephew.’

  ‘Deranged, if you ask me,’ the boss said disgustedly. ‘The young of today! Wonder where their brain is if they have any.’

  Bish’s phonecall had done me no harm at all - the looks I now received from my colleagues, even from the boss himself! They made me feel I was my uncle’s nephew.

  Chef Bandhu always made the dough for the chapattis and parathas himself. This was serious business - the dough had to be perfect and he alone knew how to get it that way. But Ranji also knew the secret. One day, he begged ‘Bandhu-ji’ for the privilege and beckoned me over: there was a treat for me.

  ‘Watch.’

  First, he made a Mont Blanc of the flour. Then he dug a crater in it with a clenched fist. Into it he gradually poured some lukewarm water, and started kneading with both hands. After ten minutes the dough was ready to be put aside and covered with a cloth. Instead, Ranji tore two lumps off and moulded the sensuous dough into exquisitely lifelike breasts complete with nipples, hissing, ‘Marilyn Monroe’s.’ Then he rolled out a thick snake, joined the two ends and turned the dough into unbelievably real buttocks.

  ‘And now what we have all been waiting for so patiently.’ He crafted a stunningly true-to-life pudenda.

  ‘Ranji the artist,’ I said. ‘The cricketer would have been envious.’

  ‘I am joining,’ he said, jerking his head.

  ‘What are you joining? The Army or the Navy?’

  ‘Art class, you fool. And you are joining with me.’

  ‘Am I? Why?’

  ‘Because I want you to.’

  ‘But why? I can’t draw for toffee.’

  ‘You learn. That is the centre of the point. For just one pound a month you look at naked woman for two hours every Sunday. What more can you ask for?’

  ‘I’m not asking for anything.’ But Ranji was determined. He told me about the class. ‘Old woman Lieberman giving lessons in her studio with yum yum models. Not tempted?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then you join for art’s sake, if not for naked women’s.’

  Because he didn’t speak much English, Ranji made me phone up. The teacher sounded heavily Germanic and mildly flirtatious. She said the beginners’ class was full up. But perhaps she could take one more pupil.

  ‘But come with your friend and we’ll see. It will be a little crowded, but so what. I like the sound of your voice.’

  Miss Lieberman’s studio was in a tall redbrick house nearby: A large room with a high ceiling. Twenty-odd easels and stools were arranged in a three-quarter circle, facing a platform with three electric heaters glowing at it from different angles. Our fellow pupils were men and women of all ages and sizes. The atmosphere was relaxed. If there was tension, it was concentrated in us – we were about to make fools of ourselves.

  ‘Raavi, I want to go, run,’ Ranji whispered.

  ‘
Why?’

  ‘I am not wearing any underwear.’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘What if my chap stands up when she comes in front?’

  ‘She who?’

  ‘The beautiful naked model with tits and all.’

  Ranji was saved, although he would have preferred to have suffered. For in walked a seven-foot charcoal-black Othello of a fellow. Yes, Ranji was saved, but amused he was not.

  ‘Paid a bloody pound for what? For this negro cunt?’

  ‘Life-class, Sonny Boy. Full of surprises like life itself.’

  We made several drawings in charcoal and pencil. Our art teacher circulated freely amongst us, correcting our drawings. Miss Lieberman was impressed by us both, especially by Ranji.

  ‘Not bad. Not bad at all,’ she said to him. ‘Keep at it. Draw anything and everything. Draw all the time. Make fifty drawings a day – large or small. Hmm?’

  ‘I don’t want a Negro next time,’ Ranji said in Hindi.

  ‘My friend doesn’t speak much English. He says he loved it.’

  ‘If you enjoy what you do, you do it better next time.’

  ‘I want a woman next time.’

  ‘What does he say now?’

  ‘He says he’ll make fifty drawings every day.’

  ‘Good. See you next Sunday then.’

  Come next Sunday, Ranji didn’t even look up when the model walked past our easels. Then suddenly he did so, and gasped. For our model was a tall, beautiful blonde. She wore a long woollen wrap which she pulled off herself as if she was in her own private bathroom or bedroom. She then sat down eight feet from us, legs akimbo, revealing her curly golden pubes and the pencil lines of her vagina. We were stunned.

  ‘Raavi it has happened.’

  ‘What has?’

  ‘My chap is up. Out of control. Riot down there.’ I, too, had a similarly delicious problem.

  ‘Twenty-minute pose,’ Miss Lieberman announced. ‘Begin.’