by Saurav Jha
In Howrah station, the moment I got up in that Third, a firingi hollered, ‘This is for Europeans.’
I bellowed loudly, ‘There are no Europeans anyway. Why don’t you and I make use of this empty carriage?’
In a book on comparative linguistics, I had learnt ‘if you nasalize the endings of Bengali words, you get Sanskrit; and if you emphasize the first bits of English words, you get white English.’ So accenting the first syllable is like cramming chillies in awful cooking – all sins are hidden. In straight Bengali this is what is called ‘bellowed loudly English’. The firingi is a native of Taltala, and so, delighted on hearing my English, he helped me put away my stuff. I delegated to him the job of reprimanding the coolie. Their entire clan works in the railways – father–uncle–this aunt–that aunt; they are very adept at chastising coolies.
But meanwhile my enthusiasm for travel was getting deflated somewhat. All these days I was busy with arrangements – clothes, passport; I had no occasion to think of anything else. But the moment the train departed, the feeling that arose in my heart was most cowardly: I am alone, I thought.
— Deshe Bideshe by Syed Mujtaba Ali
(Translated by Devapriya Roy)
30
The Gujarati traders had not been lying. The edge of Palanpur, where we find ourselves after alighting from the bus, boasts a row of hotels by the highway. In the dark, their names glitter above steel-and-glass frontage, and inside, dim yellow bulbs cast moony shadows on highly polished floors. Within minutes, our bus is gone and as we wear the bags, we suddenly feel cold and exposed in the consistent ebb and flow of traffic. We troop into one of these hotels. I cannot, for the life of me, remember its name. But I do remember one thing – it is manically clean. The reception is polite: if we require room service, would we, kindly, let them know soonest? The kitchen closes at eleven. Since there are hardly any options at this hour, we say we will check out the menu in the room and order something.
The room on the second floor, for 350 rupees, has an abundance of sunmica on every surface. The bed, a table opposite, the wardrobe on the right, all bear that white clapboard appearance with a brown pattern of leaves and vines round corners. There is a flat-screen TV on the wall. I fling down my bag and rush to the loo. I’ve been dying to go for hours.
The bathroom is tiny but clean. As I splash water on my face, I catch sight of myself in the mirror and suddenly remember something.
‘Do you think Goradia was right?’ I ask, emerging from the bathroom in a hurry, water dripping down my neck and wetting the rim of my t-shirt.
‘About what?’ S asks. He has already switched the laptop on.
‘The hidden cameras?’
‘He could be.’
I blunder about a bit and eventually find a fluffy white towel neatly folded inside the wardrobe. ‘In that case, why are you so remarkably casual about it?’
‘Look, when the duffer said if we were a couple, what he really meant was, are you planning to have sex tonight?’
‘Humph,’ I say, rooting through my bag for clothes. ‘As though that’s all couples do in hotel rooms.’
‘Especially couples who have been married for years and years and are averaging 200 kilometres a day in filthy buses.’ He grins.
‘Quite the romantic setting,’ I submit, though I do not like the allusion to years and years. It sours my mood in some ways. For I have vowed to never allow us to become an old married couple – but S is never bothered by such subtleties – it’s as though he doesn’t even mind being an old married couple. I shudder involuntarily. ‘But then, Goradia doesn’t know the exact details of the filth and exhaustion of this journey. Maybe he thought we were eloping?’ That’s one of my long-standing regrets; that we never eloped. Sigh. ‘So you reckon, then, that as long as we crash out, give ourselves over to oblivion and not cultivate sin and base lustfulness, camera or no camera, we’re fine?’
‘If you start using Biblical imagery like that, though, I might get other ideas.’
‘Shut up and order room service.’ I settle into the bed – damn, it’s cosy. ‘I am starving.’
‘You are starving? I could eat this motel.’
I cannot remember what side dish we ordered – but it was cheap, vegetarian, and arrived quickly – but I do know the fried rice that came in a white plastic bowl was delicious and plentiful, dotted with peas and scrambled eggs and slivers of beans and carrots. We chomp in perfect silence and after weeks, give in to the TV. I overshoot the budget by twenty rupees when I refuse to submit to S’s diktats and order a coke just before the kitchen closes.
After picking out the last three grains of the delicately oily rice with his spoon, S pokes me. ‘Do you think Goradia’s friend was actually Goradia?’
We are so psyched we cannot sleep.
The truth about this journey is, in fact, inscribed in the peculiar grainy feel of the bare hours. We spend these hours in strange rooms where we are not supposed to get attached to bedsteads or shelves, in the silence that engulfs us when we are neither talking to each other nor to other people. Or there are the other kind of hours – hurtling along roads where the eye processes a rush of images and files them away somewhere: pigtailed girls in school uniforms, trees shedding leaves, thin dogs sleeping in the sun, clothes fluttering on flat terraces, ruins of a fort in the distance, all viewed from broken windows of long-distance buses. These bare hours are just as important as the busy ones filled with stories and trekking and photography and conversation, and far more numerous. They leak out of us at night when we sleep and swirl around our heads as we bathe.
Sometimes, bare hours suck. They leave us lean and wasted on beds, fighting each other, questioning the very vanities that propelled this project. Everything seems fraudulent, the past, the present – the elaborate narratives about our lives. Sometimes the bare hours oscillate neatly between fear number one, that authenticity is impossible to achieve, and fear number two, that we are but the reversed reflections of our friends and batchmates in office rooms and university labs, so though we claim we have left these lives behind, essentially, except for a few details, we are as insubstantial as mirror images. And then, there are finally the obscure, contented sunny hours, poised on hope. That ultimately we shall discover meaning; that the conversations we have with people and the conversations we eavesdrop on will help us understand the country, and ourselves, better; that later, buoyed by our sublime lessons on the road, we shall become better people, better citizens, better writers. That we might learn to speak of the nation, not like the studio experts we so detest, but like humble, sensitive, new post-global Indians. (Do note, that of all these, it is this last that is embarrassing to admit in print. Much cleverer to admit to the haunting pull of ennui and failure and terror of the future, than confess to the earnest optimism of national ideals. And yet, if that too is not the truth, what is?)
I am so psyched, I must go over the landscapes and conversations in my head, though I cannot calm down enough to take notes. I am buzzing. I feel I have glimpsed some truth – and have returned to tell the tale. I feel my temples throbbing with the memory, the peculiar mix of the comic and the authentic. And though my feet ache, my back hurts, my shoulders feel wooden, I wish to discuss the implications of all that we learnt just now.
Underneath the banal configurations that occupy us as we settle into the room – the comfy bed, the oily food, news on TV, the chilled drink that runs fiery down my throat – I can feel things getting unsettled. A clink, a pull, a tug, a whirr, and then a dim blue glow. I am loving it. I can feel the burgeoning of hope, and it is infectious. So now both of us feel wired and alert. It seems impossible to relax. After much fidgeting, and talking, we agree to watch a movie.
It is around one-thirty in the night, and S is finally asleep. He snores gently. I switch off the light and stand by the window. In the dark, I cannot see anything clearly. The next day, when dusk will unf
old, I will memorize the view from the window. Just outside the hotel is a large dusty pavement where several cars and buses are parked; then the wide roads, heavy with traffic; and across the roads, a series of hotels with funny names and beyond, hundreds of houses. But in the dark, only two things are visible. A large sign marking a petrol pump, and far in the distance, a glittering Ferris wheel against the inky sky. It must be a mela ground. Later I realize it is to celebrate Uttarayan, the kite festival. Now, from the quiet room, I wonder lazily if the mela will be on all night – and if people are still milling about, crowding and eating, bustling in the grounds, the perfect counterpoint, a few metres away, to my quiet room. Almost in answer to my question, the Ferris wheel begins to turn – and through the darkness, the jewelled lights wink and dazzle as they splice the Gujarat sky with neat fluent swipes and I wonder if people in the top booths shriek out as zero gravity approaches.
At some point, I go to bed.
Saurav
Palanpur is a busy town, and by the time we leave the hotel for the day – late – and reach the bustling central part with busy streets and brisk businesses and girls on scooters, the sun is hot and people are scurrying in different directions with a great sense of purpose. Even shoppers who stop by the corner shops that display hundreds of varieties of kites do not dawdle. They come in many kinds – women in burqas, women in saris with scarves around their heads, young men in garish trousers and sweater vests, children in jackets accompanied by old people – but they all choose kites quickly and have them packed up in swathes of newsprint. We walk through a narrow lane where bougainvilleas have built a pink arch and enter a restaurant with a high pink ceiling, fans hanging from long rods and plenty of old-world charm. We stuff ourselves with ice cream and jalebis. (Gujarat is, of course, famous for ice cream.) And after the sugar high has been achieved, we begin to wander through the streets again.
‘Remind me why we’re in Palanpur?’ D asks.
‘Why,’ I say, attempting to be opaque, ‘I thought any town would do?’
‘Do not be opaque,’ she instructs. ‘Something must have triggered the choice of this town in your head. What is that?’
‘Some of the most famous diamond merchants of India come from Palanpur. Bharat Shah, for example. Now, Surat is the hub of the diamond industry. But I thought we might as well visit Palanpur.’
‘Then let us pursue a diamond story,’ D tells me. And as though diamond stories grow on trees, she begins to march smartly towards the end of the street.
‘Business has been bad,’ Babubhai Patel says, dispensing with the initial caginess that has characterized our unannounced visit till now.
A couple of streets from the restaurant, we had chanced upon a discreet signboard above the closed shutters of a shop, and though the signboard was entirely in Gujarati, there was a diamond sketched on either side. We took the narrow flight of stairs next to the shutter and reached a nondescript corridor overlooking the road. Down the corridor was a door, and when we entered (read: barged in), we suddenly came upon a workshop floor where many men were sitting on low tables lit by tube lights and working away on diamonds. We introduced ourselves, said we were travellers, and in minutes we were sitting in front of the proprietor of Moolchand Bhai Patel & Co. Ltd. Come to think of it, the caginess was perfectly in order. They did not know us from Adam.
‘The industry has been in recession for most of last year. We were actually shut between February and November in 2009. Our job is to process diamonds that come from Bombay and Surat, and only 10 per cent of that is sold to jewellers locally. The rest of it goes back to the source. So obviously our business is quite dependent on the state of demand outside. And I mean demand outside of India, specifically the United States and Japan.’
‘So how are you coping with the recession in America?’
‘Like I told you. We were shut for ten months last year. And now we have only about a hundred workers. Down from 750 in 2008.’
‘That is considerable downsizing?’
‘What to do? There are ten such big processing units left in Palanpur and all of them are in the same state. The situation was so bad till recently that many workers left the diamond-cutting business altogether. There is now a shortage of skilled workers even for the reduced demand we face. And this is a highly skill-intensive business.’
Both D and I nod our heads in near unison at the last line.
‘There are some fifty-six separate steps involved in cutting a rough diamond to something that can be set. And some 50–75 per cent of the initial stone gets wasted.’
‘Is Palanpur a major centre for diamond cutting?’
‘Well, not any more. Almost 90 per cent of the diamond-cutting business is in Surat itself. Of course, it is another matter that Palanpur has produced most of the big diamond merchants of Surat and Bombay. Like, you know, Bharat Shah. But nowadays small factories like the ones you can set up in Palanpur, given the level of outsourcing from Surat, are not that profitable. Most of the profit is in retail. It is true that you can set up a mill with much less capital than it would take to make a big showroom. But the rate of return is much lower.’
‘So how long have you been in this business?’
‘I started when I was seventeen and it has been twenty-two years. I learnt the trade in Bombay.’
‘This isn’t a hereditary business, then?’
‘It is, but we tend to spend time in other people’s factories to cut our teeth.’
There is a pause.
Babubhai adds, ‘I am not going to let my son get into this, however.’
‘Why?’
‘It is just too tension prone. I have high BP and blood sugar.’
‘Because of the cyclical nature of the business?’
‘That and other things. You have to be alert all the time. Every day we tally records to ensure there is no theft. Workers often have to be hospitalized as they ingest highly dangerous diamond dust. We keep vehicles ready at all times for this. Safes have to be updated.’
A large imposing Godrej safe stands behind Babubhai’s seat.
‘I was wondering how the diamonds come here from Surat?’
‘Via courier. It is the safest means with insurance cover.’
‘And this is a proven method?’
‘Totally. But again, this trade is a little too strenuous. Also, the merchants dominate this business and control mill owners. The marble business, which has steady demand, is more worthwhile.’
‘Have you diversified into that?’
‘Yes. It is running side by side.’
31
The sky is lavender when we check out of the hotel. On the horizon, there are four distinct stripes: a thick purple band, made jagged by roofs of houses that interrupt the skyline, above which is a luminous orange band, and straddling that, a weary yellow-gold strip. Finally, between the lavender and the yellow-gold, a slight pink funnel. There is a little breeze and occasionally one can spot a fine spray of dust lifted from the ground, along with old newspaper sheets that flutter and get crushed underfoot. We walk to the stand from where jeeps leave for Ahmedabad. It is on the same side of the road as the hotel. Across the road, one by one, tube lights begin to gleam in people’s windows, their white fluorescence contrasting with the deep yellow of the street lamps.
‘Do you think this is a good idea?’ S asks.
‘For the final time, yes!’ I say. ‘You’ve been blathering on about the budget continuously but now, when we have a chance to save money on a hotel, you begin to have second thoughts?’
‘But I don’t like staying in people’s houses,’ he mutters.
‘But this is Diego for crying out loud,’ I say, so loudly that two or three people, clutching kites, turn to look at us. S glowers at me. His jaw hardens. There is nothing he hates more than a public scene. I lower my voice and widen my eyes but do not compromise on the
tone. ‘We know him forever. Plus, Jiya wants us to stay at his place. It’s important for her.’ (Jiya, as you know, is my best friend from college. And Diego is a decent Bengali boy with a flowery Tagorific name. His father, like many other Bongs of his generation, was crazy about Maradona – and though he had no control over the matter of the ‘bhaalo naam’, he had put his foot down on choosing his only son’s pet name. And somehow, the name stuck. Through school and college, Diego was always Diego.)
‘Don’t get me wrong. I have always been fond of Diego. But we might be imposing on him; he may not have a place large enough for guests.’
‘Jiya says his flat is not that small. Also, I don’t really understand your attitude. He is a close buddy from college. Someday, he’ll marry one of my closest friends. We’re Indians – jodi hao sujon, tentul paatay no’jon (If your heart’s in the right place/ Nine people can be accommodated on a tamarind leaf). There is absolutely no reason why we should not stay over at his place. Especially when we’re doing a budget journey.’
‘Years have passed since college,’ he says finally, and lapses into a prickly silence.
I’m suddenly cranky. I want to go to the loo but we are not even sitting in the bloody jeep yet. Do I want to walk back to the hotel and explain to the reception I want to use their bathroom? By then the jeep may have come and gone. ‘Not that many years,’ I counter, irretrievably contrarian now.
Roughly around the same time I met S, Jiya met Diego. In fact, come to think of it, those days S used to go around calling Diego his ‘protégé’. Ours was that kind of a college. Seniors were always mentoring juniors. Jiya read English with me, Diego studied in the physics department. It was our first year in college. Whether we did Bengali honours or botany honours, we had all come to Presidency with a similar sense of entitlement – the entrance examination was tough and fair – and similar opinionated views on the arts, two things that were quickly sharpened into similar-looking spear tips. We wore them on our heads like horns. The college, one of the oldest colonial institutions in the country, had a great tradition of exclusivity our seniors introduced to us with one single pompous word: meritocracy. And in this meritocracy, there would never be any ragging. It was all about mentoring; and these cynical-as-hell seniors helped us imbibe the clubby vibe.