by Farahad Zama
The cleaner looked at them with ill-concealed disdain. 'There are no waiters here,' he said. 'This is a self-service.' The last word was in English.
'Self...' said Ramana, stumbling on the unfamiliar words. 'What's that?'
'You don't even know how this place works and you come over here to eat. Illiterate villagers.' The cleaner turned away to swipe the surface of a neighbouring table.
Neelima plucked at Ramana's sleeve and pointed with her head towards the door. Her face looked grey and Ramana felt angry. 'My money is as good as anybody else's here,' he said. 'If I pay fifty rupees for a chicken piece, those rich people pay exactly the same.' He shoved the cleaner out of the way. 'You missed that greasy bit over there,' he said. 'Clean it properly before you piss off customers.' He walked over to the counter. There was a queue and as he waited, he got more and more irate. When he finally reached the front of the queue, he was stewing with righteous anger.
'How can I help you, sir?' said the young girl behind the counter, smiling brightly.
'That cleaner...' he said, twisting at the waist to point. The cleaner was not there, but as Ramana watched, Neelima stood up, staggered two steps and collapsed to the ground.
'Akka!' he shouted, and ran towards her, pushing people out of the way. When he reached Neelima, she was unconscious. He sank to his knees and cradled her head. 'Help,' he said looking around.
People looked at them curiously and then turned their faces away. Ramana suddenly realised how out of place they were in this place. All the ladies in this place wore jeans and t-shirts or North Indian churidars in pale colours unlike Neelima who wore a brightly-coloured sari – like a parrot amongst a flock of pigeons. Ramana wore the same clothes as the men – a shirt and trousers, but whereas they all wore sneakers or shoes, he was wearing rubber flip-flops. Their hair was dry, his was greasy with coconut oil. On his Adam's apple, there was a red vermillion mark that Neelima had put on before they left the house after praying to the Gods. And most important of all, everybody spoke in English while he and Neelima spoke Telugu. In a hundred different ways, their poverty and rustic background were clear.
'Help, please!' he shouted. Young children looked at him curiously, but the adults turned their faces away. He turned back to Neelima and lightly patted her cheeks. 'Akka, wake up,' he said softly.
She didn't respond. He gave one despairing look around and seeing no assistance forthcoming, he scooped her up in his arms and walked to the door. Years of lifting large cans of milk had built up his muscles and he carried her easily out of the door and on to the pavement. A dozen drivers were congregated on the other side of the road. They rushed over as he stood, looking this way and that along the road. 'What happened?' several of them asked together.
'She's fainted,' he said. 'I don't know what to do.'
'You need to take her to a doctor,' they said. 'Do you have a car?'
'Do I look like I have a car?' said Ramana, raising his voice.
'Sorry,' said one of the drivers. 'You look like one of us, but you came out of the restaurant, so we thought...'
'What if they don't have a car?' said another driver, clearly a Muslim from his white clothes and lace cap. 'We have several here.' He turned to Ramana. 'Come, I'll take you.'
'You'll lose your job,' said one or two other drivers to the man.
The Muslim man shrugged. 'Then I'll find another job. There is no shortage of cars that need driving in this city.'
The government hospital wasn't too far away and Ramana stammered his thanks to the driver, whose name, he had found out, was Khader. The driver waved the thanks away with a sweep of his hand. 'Come with me,' he said. 'The doctors don't usually see poor people like us in any hurry but my wife's sister's husband's brother is an attendant here. Let me see if he's there.'
They made their way through depressing corridors smelling of disinfectant and desperation with Khader leading. He asked a couple of people and found his wife's sister's husband's brother, Abdul. They greeted each other and Abdul led the three of them to a small room where two nurses were having a coffee. More hurried explanations later, the nurses looked at Neelima, took her pulse and one of them went to find a doctor. Ramana turned to Khader and said, 'You have been a great help to us. Please don't lose your job on our account. May be if you leave now, your owner won't find out that you've been away.'
Khader hugged Ramana and said, 'I am sure everything will be all right with your sister. Come to Nampally area on Friday afternoon; I'll be at the Banu Begum Sahib Dargah there and we can give thanks to the saint for her recovery.'
Ramana eyes filled with tears as he saw the good man walking away. He knew that such men were rare. The doctor arrived. Within minutes, the doctor turned to Ramana and said, 'Her BP is very low. She needs a transfusion. Get a bottle of saline. I'll get her transferred to the ward.'
Ramana looked at the man helplessly – not understanding. Abdul came to his rescue and said to the doctor, 'Please write out a prescription, sir. I know where to get it.'
He steered Ramana out of the ward. When they were out of earshot of the doctor, Abdul said, 'The hospital is supposed to provide medicines free of charge, but they always tell the patients to provide their own so they can sell the government-supplied medicines and pocket the money.' He glanced at Ramana. 'But don't worry. I know the sister in charge of the pharmacy and we can get it officially.'
Ramana sat by Neelima's bed on a stool for hours, uncomfortably hunched and sick with worry. In the early hours of the morning, just as Ramana was nodding off, she woke up. Ramana ran to find a nurse. Neelima wanted to go home immediately but the nurse said that the doctor had to check Neelima first. Ramana too said that Neelima should stay. Neelima reluctantly agreed but then worried about the milk. 'Our customers are depending on us,' she said. 'We can't let them down.'
Ramana nodded. 'You stay,' he said. 'I'll go and distribute the milk. I'll come back as soon as the milk is distributed. The café will be closed.'
Neelima smiled. 'All right,' she said. 'Anyway, God help our customers if they have to eat your cooking.'
Ramana scowled at her, then felt a rush of tenderness towards the woman he had known longer than his own mother and hugged her. 'Ouch,' she said. 'Don't touch the needle.' The drip had been removed but the needle was still taped into her wrist in case she needed more fluid. 'Go before you cause any further damage,' she said. But the smile on her face belied her words. Her voice was gentle as she continued, 'I'll be fine. Be safe.'
Ramana found out that Khader Bhai was a liar. They were sitting in the yard outside Banu Begum's tomb. 'You told me you would easily find another car to drive if you lost your job.'
Khader shrugged. 'Allah gives and Allah takes,' he said. 'If He has put us on this earth, won't He take care of us too?'
'God was taking care of you,' said Ramana. 'But you threw the job away.' It was six months since Neelima's scare on the Sunday afternoon. By the time Khader had got back from the hospital, the car-owner's family had come out of the restaurant and had been waiting for fifteen minutes on the pavement. Most of the other drivers had maintained the fiction that Khader had not found a parking space nearby and was circling the block but one sneaky man had been enough to spill the beans and Khader had been fired the next day. Despite Khader's breezy assurance that there was no shortage of cars to drive, it turned out that it was actually quite difficult for Muslim drivers to find jobs. Most nouveau-riche people who bought cars and needed drivers were Hindus and did not want to hire an overtly Muslim man like Khader who was dressed in a white sherwani, had a (neatly trimmed) beard and always wore a lace cap on his head as a mark of piety. He occasionally got work for a day or two as a replacement driver but was otherwise unemployed. 'Anyway, things have changed,' said Khader. 'I've been offered a job with a Gulf-returned Muslim family who've just bought their first car.'
'That's great news,' said Ramana enthusiastically. He had been feeling guilty about Khader Bhai. 'Akka wants you to come to the café. She
wants to talk to you about something.'
'I'd better do that tomorrow then. Once I start the new job, it'll be more difficult for me to come to your place.'
The following day Khader turned up at the café in the mid-morning lull between breakfasts and lunches. Ramana had just finished his breakfast and Neelima was sitting down for hers – they never ate together in case some client turned up and had to be served. 'Will you have breakfast with me?' asked Neelima and Khader protested that he had already eaten, but was eventually persuaded to sit down. Ramana served them both with idlis and got them glasses of water. Two men walked in just then and Ramana went over to take their orders.
Khader looked around. 'You have made a lot of improvements,' he said, nodding approvingly at the fresh coat of paint and the new chairs. The shop no longer looked dingy. It was bright and clean.
Neelima nodded with a smile and they started eating. Neelima said, 'Do you know that Ramana is not my brother?'
Khader looked at her in surprise. 'No,' he said. 'You two are so close and you even look alike, with similar eyes. And the despair he felt that day when you were sick was not feigned. He was genuinely upset.'
'He was a stray I picked up,' she said. 'Or may be he picked me up. I don't know. He was a small boy who was lost in the city and I was a recent widow who needed some affection, I guess.'
Khader said, 'Allah moves in mysterious ways. He knows what we need better than we do ourselves. You have both been very lucky.'
Neelima nodded. 'I know that,' she said simply. 'And every single day I pray to Ammoru thanking her for bringing us together.'
Ramana went into the kitchen, smiling at them on the way. Neelima continued, 'I wanted to speak to you. Ramana is a hard worker. He has never complained about waking up early and having to labour all day. Without him, I would have still been on the footpath, at the mercy of the police and local goondas with their demands for weekly protection money. Because he was there to help, I got the milk dealership. Now it provides us a stable income and I don't have to worry how many customers turn up at the café. Rain or shine, hot weather or cold, people always need milk, don't they?'
Khader nodded, vaguely understanding why he had been invited over. 'How can I help you?' he asked.
Neelima was silent for a moment, breaking a piece of idli, dipping it in the ghee-infused gunpowder and popping it in her mouth. Khader waited. What did he want? He wasn't sure. He had an elderly mother, a wife and two children under ten to look after. Despite his breezy assurance, the continued unemployment had put a great deal of stress on him. He didn't regret helping these two people, of course. Humanity came before anything else. But still...
'If it was left to me, I was happy once I moved into the café. Dingy and dark it may have been, but I was off the street and that was enough for me. But Ramana has suddenly become ambitious. Ever since we visited that chicken place, he is buzzing with ideas. Do you know that every Sunday, after the movies, we now go to a different fast food place? Pizza, Fried chicken, burger – I don't enjoy that kind of food, but he says it's not about the food, it's the surroundings, the atmosphere, the people...'
There is no precise word for ambience in Telugu, but Khader understood what she meant. 'The boy is doing market research,' he said. Despite leaving school after Year 12, Khader was an educated man. He could read, write and speak in Telugu, Urdu, Arabic and English. The job of a driver entailed hours of waiting and he read everything – from the Qur'an to trashy magazines about Bollywood celebrities. His previous employer, the director of an advertising agency, had subscribed to national and international magazines like India Today, Outlook, Newsweek, Economist, Forbes and Business India. The man used to skim through the magazines on the way to work in between calls on his mobile phone and then left them in the car. Khader used to read through them all.
'Market res...' said Neelima hesitantly. 'See I don't know these things. Ramana needs a knowledgeable man with a steady hand to guide him. I want to offer you a job.'
Khader didn't say anything for a moment. 'I am a driver,' he said finally. 'How can I help you?'
'We are both so busy that we have no time to breathe, let alone think. If you join us, we can do more. We can't offer you much initially, but with three people rather than two, we can expand. The cycle repair-wallah's business next door is not doing well. He says that the city has become so big that everybody is now using motorcycles that he doesn't know how to repair. A politician came over the other day asking for votes and he said that he could get me a loan from the bank under a Women's Equality Through Entrepreneurship programme. I am scared but if you say yes, then I will go to the bank. With your guidance Khader Bhai, Ramana's drive, and the goddess Ammoru's help, I am sure we will be successful.'
Khader thought for a moment. 'It's a big responsibility you are placing on me. You could lose this shop if things don't work out.'
Neelima shrugged. 'Don't get me wrong. I am terrified,' she said. 'But the worst that can happen is that I am back on the streets with my little brother. We survived that once, and we can do it again. But at least I will feel that I have not held him back.'
They both fell silent and Ramana joined them. 'Why the long faces?' he said. He turned to Neelima. 'You kept asking me to bring Khader Bhai here and now that he is here you are silent.'
Khader smiled at the irony of fate – did Allah have a sense of humour, he wondered. He must do, the pious man thought, given all that went on in the world. Six months he had been trying to find a job and now, when he had just found one, he had been offered another. The first job would be steady. He knew the family he'd be working for through relatives of relatives. He would be a driver, something he knew how to do well. These two people were offering him, what? They didn't know themselves. The salary would be a pittance, there would be no job security – it was highly possible that the whole business would go bankrupt in a few months. What should he do? He agonised for minutes and then shrugged. Allah would not forsake one of his servants. 'All right,' he said. 'I'll join you.'
Neelima's face broke into a wide smile. Ramana looked confused. Neelima had not told him what she wanted to talk to Khader Bhai about. And destiny had played its next hand in Ramana's life – bringing together three diverse people together, all of them honest and hardworking, and knowing that they could depend on each other's integrity and industry. It's rare for non-blood relatives to have such a bond, especially in this Kalyug India, this India in the age of deceit and selfishness, and that's why stories like this are rarer than mangoes in winter.
It can be argued that Neelima's innate feminine caution, sharpened by her bad marriage and the years of struggle afterwards, combined with Khader Bhai's auto-didactic knowledge and Ramana's youthful optimism and fizzing ambition would have brought them success in any place and any time. But there was one final twist to destiny's play. After decades of incompetent rule by 'leaders' whose only qualification was how sycophantic they could be to the party leader in Delhi, a dynamic local politician called Chandrababu Naidu became the chief minister of the state around the same time that Khader Bhai accepted Neelima's offer.
Naidu was the son-in-law of a popular actor-turned politician and came to power in a palace coup – hardly auspicious portents for good rule. But once he took power, Naidu proved to be a surprisingly able administrator and over the next seven years bureaucrats were actually made to do their jobs and Hyderabad was turned from a backward state capital to a huge software hub, with the likes of Microsoft and Bank of America opening big IT centres. Gatchibowli, the suburb where the trio had their café, became Cyberabad and tens of thousands of software professionals from all over the state and elsewhere in India flocked there.
There is a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune – so said the bard and so it proved for Ramana and his friends. Thanks to Ramana's ambition, they modernised their cafés and expanded it into a chain called Idli Express just as the bigger changes in the economy were taking place. Mo
ney started rolling in and Neelima and Ramana moved first into a small, but modern, one-bedroom flat with Ramana sleeping in the living room, then into a bigger three-bedroom apartment with a modular Italian kitchen and Rajasthani granite floors. Neelima who had never owned more clothes than could fit into a small suitcase, now had a wardrobe full of silk saris and a safe full of gold jewellery. Ramana went to the most fashionable saloons for his haircuts and wore the latest Levi's jeans, Ralph Lauren polo shirts, Ray Ban sunglasses and soft leather moccasins. Sartorially, the least changed was Khader Bhai. He still wore sherwanis though they were now more crisply pressed and were sometimes silk rather than cotton, and he still had his skullcap. He built a big house and drove a high-end Mercedes Benz, though.
A few years later, Neelima said to Ramana, 'It's time you were married. What kind of girl would you like?'
Ramana thought for a moment. 'Somebody who knows English,' he said. 'And somebody who's good with numbers.'
Neelima frowned. 'Are you looking for a wife or an accountant?' she asked.
'Both,' he said, laughing.
Neelima decided not to tell anybody that Ramana was an orphan of unknown parentage. He was her brother and she gave him her parentage and ancestry. Their low caste was a barrier for some people, but Ramana was young and cut a dashing figure, and they had millions of rupees in the bank and that always helps in finding a good bride. She found a sweet girl from the same caste as hers who had studied in an English medium school and was working in a call centre after doing her B.Com. The girl moved in with them, and filled a void in Ramana's life that he had not thought existed.