‘Yes, yes?’
‘…delayed, further, and…’
‘Oh, no.’
‘…will, be, arriving, at, fifteen, hundred, and, thirty, hours…’
‘No ban-cho, no.’
‘…on, platform, number, seven.’
‘No!’
‘Any inconvenience is greatly regretted thank you.’
‘Atithi devo bhava’ should be replaced with ‘Atithi dollar bhava’. Or ‘Atithi hini bhava’. We have a yen for these things. If you say it quickly nobody will notice. Faster, they won’t understand. Brrrr. These are some fringe fallouts of being an ancient culture with so many tongues and an equal number of wags that hypocrisy rolls effortlessly off. Like moss. Slurp. Euro. Slip. What is culture without a little vulture, yaar.
Scavenge, but dil se. Will go unnoticed. You hope. Lie to guests, hoping they perceive it as courtesy. Guffaw when they are flummoxed. Loud, roaring laughter to hide your own absence of etiquette. Speak in your foreign tongue in their presence—it is okay, these foreigners have no idea, only money. White foreigners, mind you. Black foreigners are beggars and drug peddlers. Khirki Extension is not a Windows update, silly.
We talk so much. We mean so little.
We promise so much. We do so little.
We count so much. We give so little.
Notice next time the donation boxes at checkout counters. A tambourine slapped repeatedly on the back of the thigh would rattle less. All coins. Some no longer in circulation. Some belonging to other Third World countries. A donation box is a dustbin. They even made the boxes transparent to shame us but we saw through their evil game. A foreigner in front rolls up a hundred-rupee note and stuffs it through the slit and we eat our fist in astonishment and anger. Paise pedh pe ugte hain? Saala, firangi show-off.
It is not because we are generous that we don’t know how to say no. It is not because we are good at our work that we don’t know when to end a discussion, when to leave or when to close a negotiation. It is because we don’t know what goodies karma might deliver at the end of the next noun. Keep all options open so ad valorem and ad nauseum hang together. Kisika kya jaata hai. Killing with kindness is also good. It is the kindness that matters—see. Same to same. Say yes to all party invitations and finally decide where to go depending on which atithi and which devo will be there.
The propensity to say ‘no problem’ is directly proportional to the immediate benefits it may bring. If you don’t measure the tent, you don’t need to count the camels. One more camel? ‘No problem’. Solpa adjust maadi.
‘No problem’ to tourists asking if they can visit Uttarakhand two months after the devastating floods because tourism is down.
‘No problem’ to a taxi ride to Jaipur that progressively picks up passengers until a few are hanging out the windows and counting the stars.
‘No problem’ to a dysfunctional water heater in a dysfunctional toilet because otherwise the German backpacker will check out and check into your cousin’s quarter-star across the road.
Bless the relentless lethargy and inefficiency that compels us to say come tomorrow, next week.
Is there something especially wrong with us? No.
Is there something especially right with us? No.
Is there a common ‘we’ in a country of over 1.2 billion people? How do we build character without ego, pride without jingoism, energy without exaggeration? Jugaad, we haven’t realised, is good for electrical repair, not relationships or building an economy. Or for an industrial take-off. But countless books have been written on the wonders of jugaad and we have read them all. We smile at our jugaad like proud parents smile at their accidental creation. One day soon, we will send a charpai into space. It will have solar panels tied to its legs with the same abrasive twine that its bed is made out of and Aladdin the astronaut will guide it expertly past the final frontier while he squats on it and sucks on a hookah.
Promote tourism, promote tourism, bring facilities like foreign.
‘Kaisa laga, madam, room? It has a beautiful view of the lake and sunset when you draw the curtain.’ You draw the curtain and are left admiring a loose brick wall plastered clumsily. The view of the lake is the print on the curtain.
The speed and the confidence with which you say it is what matters. In jugaad. It has given us the ability to think with our feet.
Over patiala, to a friend, tittering: ‘You won’t believe it, yaar, the firangan actually bought my story.’
‘Mil jayega,’ is the first thing you hear from the shopkeeper. You wait for ten minutes and then, ‘Abhi out of stock hai. Arey Bunty? Note kar ley.’ And Bunty removes the pencil stub from behind his ear to make a note of the thing you wanted, one that the shopkeeper had never heard of before. But no pencil stubs and oily hands when a white atithi comes calling. Then the whole shop stands up. ‘Thanda ya garam, madam?’
The road opposite the five-star is the most potholed. The way to a million-dollar farmhouse is never paved. The approach to a grand haveli is through a patli gali. Why? Because the lotus blooms in sludge. It is our national flower. Yes, we are like that. ‘Andar say saaf hain, by God ki kasam.’ Daily bath, no dry-cleaning.
We are so funny. Wish we could laugh at ourselves. Thoda sa, at least. At that brick wall of a sunset.
It is all very well to say ‘atithi devo bhava’ and ‘dharmo rakshati rakshatah’ to the next person, but do we really follow it? How often have you seen a packed train or a bus where someone offers a seat to the old and the weak? How often do we make way for an ambulance during rush hour—any hour? How often do we stop and say thank you to people who clean our homes and streets?
How often do we smile at each other in a day?
‘Next!’
If the devil is in the details, so is humanity, courtesy, empathy, compassion and understanding. Why is it that foreigners pay more than Indians to visit the Taj Mahal? Is it normal for Indians to pay more than the Greeks, Italians and Americans when we visit their monuments? Small change, you’d say, but it is the small things that point to a character. Or the absence of it. Like being able to remember your atithi’s name. Like being on time. This is no ‘Arjunam uvacha’ category of dialogue—it is more complicated than that. You see, the atithis have stolen all the Arjuns and we have all the answers.
And how do we come across as atithis when we leave our shores? There is a name for us among international carriers. It is called the IAS—Indian Assisted Service. You will see us at airports all around the world, being pushed in a wheelchair, wheeled to the duty-free shop where we will get up, walk around with a spring in our step, spend and then return to the chair without batting an eyelid. IAS—aiyoo, the irony.
It is a status thing, jumping the queue. ‘Hum jahan khade ho jaate hain, line wahin se shuru hoti hai,’ is the one dialogue voted unswervingly one of the top ten Bollywood dialogues of all time.
People who keep quiet are not stupid. They are listening, watching, absorbing. Not necessarily judging.
There is no honour in an artificial hierarchy, no grace in servitude. Service is not servility. It is an attitude. It starts with self-respect. Stand straight. For a start. Maybe a spine will find its way eventually if you are humble enough.
We have formulated entirely new shrutis and mudras for welcoming an atithi. Soon we will market it as a new dance form. Hand gestures, feet gestures, face gestures. But in the end, what we really love is painting sunsets on walls. Embalming the truth and entombing the lake.
4
1976—Invisible Man
Warm sunlight bathed the valley and the houses that surrounded it. Pristine white smoke billowed from the chimneys of slanted roofs. Clear blue sky met fresh green pasture. Tall and strong pine trees broke through the mist and appeared to touch the few cottonwool clouds hurrying past. Horses grazed and children played around them, running excitedly after rabbits that wanted to be caught and cuddled.
A man lay cushioned over the flaming red and yellow leaves of a nearby
chinar. Diagonal to him, resting her head on his chest, with her eyes closed, a contented smile on her face, was his young love, dressed in an intricately embroidered pheran and decked in jewellery that sparkled as it caught the sun. Bimla took one last look and then, with one swift run of her right hand, switched the month on the calendar to May.
Meanwhile, outside the mud and tarpaulin shack, the morning sun beat down in all its fury, forcing even the bloodied mongoose and the gaupicchaar to abandon their fight unto death and take shelter under the pitiful shadow of the lone kikar Shimmering translucent waves gushed from the scorched earth, robbing one of all sense of depth, making the kikar amorphous and trembling. And the loo, it howled at the full sun.
Only the vultures were appreciative. They enjoyed the abrupt coming and going, rising and dipping currents and acted dead in order to glide, only to come alive abruptly and plummet earthwards to collect in swarms around a carcass. An emaciated goat scampered across the area in an attempt to ward off a few overanxious vultures, raising a cloud of dust that welcomed Amma as soon as she emerged from the second mud and tarpaulin shack.
The sun hit her at once. She looked up to curse it but remembered it was a God and so stuck her tongue out and tugged at her earlobes. Hurrying across to the other shack, she tripped on the protruding root of a pipal stump. Now she did mumble a curse and, while dusting her sari and counting her bruises, noticed that one side wall was covered in sarkari posters. She was irritated by the vandalism of it—the posters seemed to have been pasted in a hurry. Amma could not read or write, and so could not understand what the posters meant. She could only appreciate their artistic quality—she liked a couple of them and many a time would even be thrilled that her walls had been chosen for defacement. But this collection appalled her. There was no figure or scenery, or a sunflower or even a flag—this one just had writing all over, that too in bold red. Amma could not know that it read STERILISE AND LIVE LIFE, and then in the next line, HUM DO HAMARAY DO. She went around the shack and angrily called out the name of her tenth child.
‘Kalki?’ she screamed, and then searched for the familiar response: the clang of a hastily dropped tin or a catapult, the frantic run of little legs. She paused and strained her ears, but other than the gargling drone of the loo and the brisk fluttering of a tarpaulin end, there was little else on offer. Livid, she butted the husk-and-cane door open and rushed inside.
Amma froze, then jerked back in response to what she thought was right in front of her—of all things, a snake charmer absorbed in his act, his cheeks puffed to their bursting point, swaying his ‘been’ and making imaginary infinity signs with his head.
Amma thought she was hallucinating—it must be the sun. But it was Bimla on her haunches, blowing air strenuously through a wooden pipe to resurrect the chulha.
Upon hearing the muffled drag of the makeshift door against the earth, Bimla paused momentarily and turned around. Through the dense blue smoke, she saw an imposing silhouette poised on the threshold, hands on waist, legs taut and apart, hair all over the place. Maa Kaali, no less. As the tears spread thin and her eyes adjusted, she realised it was her mother.
The silhouette approached, turning to flesh. Bimla hardened, her little palms wrapped tightly around the wooden pipe, the pipe clamped in between her teeth. Out of breath, she waited.
‘Bimla,’ cried Amma. ‘Have you seen Kalki? I am going to thrash him.’
Bimla removed the wooden pipe from her mouth and gulped some spit.
‘But, Mai, I thought he told you where he was going.’
‘Why, where has the rascal gone?’
‘Bholaji came running in a few minutes ago. Said he needed Kalki and four other musahur boys for the panchayat entertainment.’
‘And you allowed him to go?’
‘But Mai, Bholaji was adamant. He even snatched the slate chalk away from Kalki and his friends—they were all off to school, you see. I think it was Lokender and Chander and...’
‘When did all this happen? Where was I?’
‘Only a few minutes ago. All of them rushed to the Thakur well.’
‘What did Bhola say about this, this entertainment?’
‘Nothing much, just that it was a four-five minute job for Kalki and free lunch afterwards.’
Amma strode forward and caught hold of Bimla’s ear, dragging her head along.
‘You gadhi. Anyone walks in and takes my only son away and you just sit there blowing air?’
‘But, Mai, I...’
‘Quiet. Now don’t stand here like a fool. Go and find out what’s happening at the panchayat.’
‘J-ji.’
‘And listen—don’t let yourself be seen. Hide behind the kiln and just observe. And any sign of trouble, you get back here—no, first run and fetch Baba, you understand?’
‘Ji, Mai.’
‘Go, now go. This mui Emergency has come twenty years too late, I am telling you. I’d have been the first in line for my copper-T, compulsory or not. Go.’
Bimla tiptoed out of the shack, then broke into a sprint, swaying and banking like a runaway bullock. Soon, she was at the kiln. She hid behind an unfinished fortification, its protruding bricks forming precise rectangular shadows that brought her some relief from the sun. She removed a loose brick and looked through the peephole. The panchayat was underway. She could see the panchas huddled up in a semicircle on the elevated platform by the Thakur well. Below them and spread all around were their subjects, squatting and fanning themselves with their turbans. The womenfolk were in ghoonghat and sat a fair distance apart. Bimla removed a second brick; now she could hear the conversations and the chit-chat clearly. But her brother was nowhere to be seen. Bimla pressed her face in to get a better look. She could finally make some sense of Badey Thakur’s utterances, his thunderous voice sending a shiver down her spine even at this range. She listened.
At the panchayat, Badey Thakur was getting restless.
‘Arey, Mahender Singhji, enough of chai-shai. Shall we wrap up this panchayat business, this heat is just too much.’
‘Ji, Badey Thakur.’
‘And will someone ever replace the gobar in this hookah?’
‘At once, Badey Thakur. Arey Gajraj, you heard.’
‘And wh…Arey, Panditji, looks like our entertainment has arrived. Are those the five boys my son had asked for?’
‘Oh, they are here already? Ji, Badey Thakur, they are the ones.’
Badey Thakur was not impressed. ‘They look tiny to me, pandat. Why Baldev, what exactly do you have in mind? Your last entertainment special with the bhangi kids didn’t exactly set the house on fire, did it?’
‘All in good time, father, please be patient. I give my word. You won’t be disappointed.’
‘I certainly hope so.’
Baldev tried some patter. ‘Have heard a little about that boy on the right, there. His name is Kalki—same age as our Judev. Judev spotted him catching fish late one night in the Thakur pond. The little rat punched Judev in the face and shot off like lightning. This is going to be good fun.’
‘Alright, then. Bring the boys closer, make them stand in line.’
‘Yes, father.’
Badey Thakur shifted his attention to other matters.
‘Arey, Mahender Singhji, Rajwardhanji.’
‘Ji, Badey Thakur?’
‘Bhai, what is to be done with this sterilisation business?’
‘Hmm, it’s a little tricky, Thakurji.’
‘What is it you say, Rajwardhan?’
‘I said it could be a little tricky, Badey Thakur. I mean, we do need to show the sarkari babu that we have carried out 200 voluntary nasbandhis—if we need that seed and fertiliser subsidy, that is.’
Badey Thakur let go of his hookah. ‘Of course we need it, Rajwardhan. Do you even know how much loss I incurred from the failed crops last year?’
‘Absolutely, Thakurji. We are all with you on this. It’s just that...’
‘Just what?’
‘Just er...’
‘I will tell you, Badey Thakur, Rajwardhan’s maybe feeling shy,’ Mahender added in the awkward pause.
‘Shy? Of what, Mahender Singhji?’
‘Badey Thakur, there is no problem as such. We can have 200, even 400 nasbandhis. It’s just that, er, do we, I mean, do Thakurs need also to participate in this?’
The pandit saw his chance. ‘And if you allow me to speak, even pandits and banias too, Mahender Singhji. Please don’t forget us.’
‘Of course, of course, pandat. Yes, so as I was saying, Badey Thakur, our women are very scared of this, and so, too, are our men. Gajraj was telling me nasbandhi causes terrible after-effects in virile men.’
‘So you mean…?’
‘What I mean—we mean, Badey Thakur, is…can I suggest something?’
Badey Thakur sucked on the hookah robustly. ‘Go on.’
‘I have the last census records with me. It shows there are forty families of bhangis and twenty-four families of musahurs residing in our village.’
‘Not in our village, Mahender Singhji, not in a thousand years!’
‘No no, Badey Thakur, I meant residing on the outskirts. They are well away, you know that. Anyway, that gives us sixty-four families. Each family has at least two adults—that makes it one-twenty, not to mention the many girls and boys between twelve and seventeen. We are looking at no less than 200, 250 nasbandhis. No need to touch Thakurs, pandits and banias.’
‘But would these people agree? Mother and father are alright, but what if they create trouble for the twelve to seventeen year olds?’
‘You don’t worry about it, Badey Thakur, that’s our problem. No Rajwardhanji?’
‘Indeed, Mahender Singhji.’
Badey Thakur scratched his stubble. ‘Hmm. But we have to be smart about this. We’ll start with a pay raise, reduced working hours, free dispensary visits, free school books, that sort of thing.’
‘Pay raise, Badey Thakur?’
‘Don’t start panicking, Mahender Singhji, it’s just a promise, what. Yes, it could work.’
Mahender Singhji thudded his fist into his palm. ‘It will work, it must work, it has to work.’
The Rat Eater Page 6