by Vikas Khanna
Choti laughed, too. “Anarkali, I don’t understand why these rich people always wait for their father to die before offering food to others who are hungry. Why does showing a generous spirit always have to be related to a loss?”
“Because of religion, my laddoo, my sweet. Religion is the most misguiding compass,” Anarkali said. “We can get away with everything in the name of religion; even murder. Just wash away your sins in the Ganga then go back and commit more sins.”
“Seems too easy,” Choti said.
“You’re right. They all come here to wash their sins in the holy Ganga,” Anarkali said. “I take part in it, too. I misguide people with the same compass, for my own benefit. My tamasha is using the same idea to scare and curse and coax rupees out of people. Given my situation, our situation, is it a sin? Who cares!”
Suddenly, without warning, Anarkali spun around, almost flinging what was left of her turmeric like Holi powder, in order to pounce on some new passersby—a middle-aged couple who were obvious devotees. “God will give you so much more! A son! A car! Your own bungalow!”
Anarkali’s repeated shrieks shrank them back in their tracks, and the man tightened his grip on his wife and fled away.
Anarkali laughed. “See the violence some see in my blessings? You’d think everyone wants the same things in life. Choti, what do you want?”
“All I want in life is for my lice to die, I am tired of scratching my head,” Choti said. “By the way, after Ram Halwai saw me running back with the rupees I didn’t have to spend, he got so worried that his belly shook, and as soon as he saw me, he held his red money box even closer to his tap.”
Anarkali and Choti had a great laugh.
The Birth of Light
Everything is born out of darkness, even the light
It was near day’s end in Varanasi and time for the aarti ritual to begin. Its ringed formations and offerings and blessings of reverent fire, flickering lamps, candlelight, flame, and song, would create a starry-eyed parade of ritual worship, individual and collective, that would send floating and lifting the soft glow of diya candles great and small throughout the ghats and all the way to Ganga’s edge. The onset of aarti even frightened away the sun, who was finally relieved of its daytime duties, and the last flocks of birds, whom the sun’s dying pink rays had illuminated into shadow, flew away home to their nests.
During aarti, every vendor’s stall switched to offer only trays containing the delightful, glowing, ghee-dipped, cotton-wick earthen lamps that cast the small grouping of flowers at their centers in hypnotic swaying light. Taken together, it was these glowing trays of many small diyas being passed in reverent circular motion that set the aarti’s resplendence aglow. Musicians and priests polished their prayer instruments, soft-drink vendors packed their bottle crates with ice, and the young boys who were training to become priests set the pedestals for the pandits—all were set for the evening aarti.
When it finally began, the ghats transformed into floating shoals and moving constellations of light, chant, reflection, closure, hope, and forgiveness, as every ghat at Ma Ganga’s edge filled with flames, flowers, and light’s devotion, like stars come to earth.
The twilight also rang the starting bell for the hordes of worshipful and not so worshipful tourists and residents that aarti at Varanasi’s eighty-odd ghats beckoned. The ghats would be overrun, and Choti, Anarkali, and others from their world, would take full advantage.
The cremations of Manikarnika continued, unaffected by the ceremonies happening everywhere, adding their own dark smoke and flame to the more charming aarti smoke and flames.
As the aarti played out, so too did the conflict between Anarkali and Inspector Raja at Sangam Chowk.
Raja sat at his desk in the police station he commanded. Behind him on the wall, among some random portraits of officers adorned with dried flower and glittering paper garlands, hung an oversized photograph of Raja’s father, Shiv, a legendary Varanasi police officer who, like Raja, had created his own laws for his own enrichment and convenience. Also like Raja, Shiv would often arrive home drunk, without any consideration for his waiting family. Shiv loved to tell his family as well as everyone else that he would one day become the “King of Varanasi,” and if he ever had a son, that son, in all ways, would be the Prince to his King. This is not to say that Shiv was being patriotic and expressing himself out of chivalry for the good of the nation. To him, and eventually his son, chivalry was defined not by courage to protect the weak, but by the ability to extract the last drop of the weak one’s blood, using both fear and the law.
Raja had learned his policing from watching his paternal hero speak and wield his police power among his enemies and friends, and of course the local citizens, whom he referred to as his “subjects,” and whom he would beat down and kick like dogs, abusing children and elders alike. Before embarking on any new exploitation, Raja always glanced back at the photograph of his father for inspiration and approval.
Raja called for tea and went through his files. The one atop his pile pertained to some men who had been racing around, siren blaring, with a fake government security light affixed to the roof of their car. Three out-of-towners had been arrested for the crime, and Raja asked his constable, “Ameer ghar kay ladkay hain, kya?” (Are they the sons of the rich?)— to which the fidgeting constable replied, “Yes, yes, Inspector Raja, they are just a bunch of young kids from decent homes who were having fun and made a foolish mistake.”
Everyone laughed when Raja signed the file with his orders to set them free.
Raja signaled to his constable. “Get your partner, it’s time to go out and collect the weekly fines. We’ll hit Sangam Chowk first,” Raja said in a low voice, and his constable nodded.
It was the holiest of holy days—the best, most lucrative day for the police to shake down very beggar, sadhu, street vendor, tour guide, really anyone who was alive, and whom Raja’s forces could get their hands on to collect their weekly “fines.” All were guilty of something, and the fines served as commissions to the police that bought the citizens freedom to see another day. After his father had died, Prince Raja had become the new king, and no one dared ask him about what his fines were for, and so far, the Prince and his minions had never failed to collect.
Raja was a true force of penetrating evil—the heartless-blessing his mother’s many visits and offerings to Lolark Kund had produced. Like many other women hoping to beget a son, Raja’s mother, Nandini, had ascended and descended the steps of Lolark Kund for ten years, praying for a male child before she gave birth to him; all so that her son might one day continue the Pandeys’ proud family tradition.
Inspector Raja sped along on his motorbike flanked by two junior officers in triangular formation. They saw Anarkali and slowed to a stop behind her. “Anarkali, there are too many complaints piling up against you. You are becoming a menace to society.”
Anarkali had been forcing her usual blessings on a couple bound for the evening aarti in the back of the rickshaw; an overture that had not pleased the rickshaw-puller or the couple, and now they were all engaged in a heated argument. When they escaped Anarkali’s stillrupee-less grasp, Anarkali turned around to glare at Raja and his boys. “You scared them away!”
Raja sneered at her, and he and his boys shook their heads.
“You know who the real menaces to society are?” Anarkali said. “You and your goons, your brainless chamchas!”
Inspector Raja became angry enough to dismount his bike. “I’m no snake-charmer, but your tongue is becoming as venomous as a cobra’s,” Raja said. “And I’d be happy to cut it out for you.” The inspector crossed his arms, laughed and looked at his boys, who laughed and folded their arms on cue. The bigger of Raja’s chamchas interrupted: “We know where you live,” he said, and the three chamchas continued to trade condescending glances, smirks as sharp as knives cutting across their mouths.
Raja’s words made Anarkali nervous, and she started to quiver inside her sar
ee. It didn’t help that she had only eaten a corner of a samosa that day.
“Look, just leave me alone,” Anarkali said. “You always create unnecessary trouble for all of us who have to scrounge the streets or walk the air for our livelihood, and it’s you in particular who brings out the worst in me. Just seeing your face or hearing the buzz of your motorbike makes me absolutely surly.”
Raja lifted his chin and narrowed his eyes, leering at the eunuch.
“And you hit me so hard yesterday that my arm can barely move anymore. How can I survive with one arm? Just tell me who I can report you to, and I would be pleased to do so. Anything so you will bloody just leave me alone,” Anarkali said.
Raja folded his arms across his chest and laughed with all his arrogance, wielding his stick. At the sight of it, Anarkali flinched and winced.
“Did you forget my name?” Raja said. “My name is Raja and I am the king around here. You haven’t paid my men going on four weeks now. If I don’t get what you owe me by tomorrow, you can no longer beg in this chowk, you hear? Like my officer said, ‘We know where you live,’ secretly and illegally.”
Anarkali straightened herself. “Really? And does your pumpkin wife know the secret of what you do? At night? Besides illegally extorting and beating all of who have to survive out here? You’re not even a complete man, you know…” Anarkali said.
At once Raja told his goons to leave and then said, stroking his mustache, and leaning into Anarkali: “Listen, you whore, I’ll be waiting for you behind the gym later, as soon as the aarti ends and the security guards leave the ghats. You’d better be there. My advice for between now and then is to shut your mouth and stop talking like some kind of snake. Hear me?”
Anarkali nodded, just barely.
“That’s a good girl,” said Inspector Raja, and he revved his bike and sped away with his goons in tow to hassle any other beggar they came across.
Anarkali muttered to herself: “I wish the myth that a simple curse could destroy a dynasty were true. I curse you, Raja, and those you serve, every minute I am alive.”
Anarkali limped under the nearby bypass holding her bad arm and sat down on the curb. She opened out her cloth bag and fingered the turmeric powder and what remained of the extra samosa that Choti, in all her gruff sweetness, had forced her to take.
Anarkali continued muttering to herself, this time reciting a little poem:
While the immortal gods camouflage themselves in temples,
And mortal humans in their homes,
It’s the atheist creatures on the streets
who need the strongest belief…
The aarti had was in full swing across the ghats. The crowd chanted and lit their lamps and fires, and soon the throngs of people on the banks of the Ganga ebbed and flowed like a land-bound sea. Hundreds of traditional, brightly-colored wooden rowing boats led by the tour guides, set their anchors on the far banks for the best views.
Now it was time for the other children from the Nameless House with Pink Walls, who Choti still had to reckon with on the streets sometimes, and who often dressed up as Shiva, Parvati, Hanuman, Krishna, or Lakshmi—the major deities of the Hindu pantheon—to fan out and beg from tourists and devotees alike. Choti believed the guises her former peers wore earned them more rupees not because the donors necessarily held any positive belief in that certain god or goddess, but out of the fear that if they didn’t pay up, they would be branded with a curse. They paid out of fear, not reverence.
The god-orphans had themselves stitched the vibrant clothes they wore to match their masks, from the fabric that the relatives of the deceased had pinned and knotted or wrapped their loved ones in for their final journey to Manikarnika Ghat. It was also quite easy to find fake hair pieces, ornaments, and crowns the dead had been dressed in here and the orphans used these to embellish their Hindu god costumes. The ornamentation her peers preferred did make the begging life more dream-like—both for the beggar and “begee”—but now that Chintu had disappeared from her life, Choti believed more firmly in Anarkali’s opinion that, “…dressing up in the clothes and masks of gods takes too much energy, and allows the lines that form across the sweating human faces underneath to expose the real masks, so all the effort goes to waste.”
Whether Anarkali was right or wrong, even without a mask, Choti was exhausted. She begged near the tourist buses, which she knew would spit up tourists headed for the ghats and Ganga to witness the thousands of flickering golden flames of aarti. She saw a seemingly blissful, beautiful family walk by; the kind of family where the grandparents try to hold the hands of every family member, as if affectionately attempting to impart the depth and richness of their family culture to them just by touching hands.
During aarti, the spirituality and peace-seeking visitors, especially families like the one she had been admiring, would many times offer her their children’s unfinished chips or food or half-drunk bottles of soda, so, naturally, Choti approached, because she was always hungry.
What upset the young tight-rope-walker was that sometimes, before she could reach her hand out or utter one word or flash one pathetic face to this family—before her shadow had barely approached—the mother would draw back her kids: “Don’t, you’ll catch a disease!” Once, when this happened, one of the children, about Choti’s size and age, turned back to look at her, and for a second she and the child held each other’s eyes. Choti assumed this to be a “moment of understanding,” but how could that possibly be true and how could she ever know?
Then, just as soon as the cycle of giving and forgiving and everything associated with aarti had commenced, it dwindled to its end, at least for that day, leaving another cycle to commence, as the chaos and bustle of traffic again overwhelmed the daily dose of spirituality, patience, and tolerance, which had rapidly faded away after everyone dowsed their flames and left the ghats.
Choti had left the Nameless House two weeks after Chintu’s disappearance. She had waited for him, her anger turning to worry, but there was still no sign of him. When she lay down to sleep at night, Chintu’s empty bed made her think of the most horrible things. She knew in the back of her mind that Chintu was in trouble with the police but she didn’t want to acknowledge it. She would deliberately imagine herself walking her tight-rope, feeling lighter and lighter… till she could close her eyes and her tiny body went to sleep. Finally, one day, she had felt his absence so acutely that she decided not to stay there anymore. The usual irritants too were more unbearable without him.
What she had hated most was that the Nameless Man always had the children form a line-up so the Privileged Ones, the guilty-eyed visiting Westerners, could stand amid all of them, smiling while having their photographs taken with the orphans.
It was all so pretentious.
One time, when Chintu had been around, the children had been feasting on some fried breads and chickpea curry they had collected from the devotees at the ghats when suddenly the Nameless Man shouted down at them from the attic, “After your morning Ganga bath, you all have to come back to meet the social workers!”
Chintu had groaned aloud. He had especially disliked this photo-op with the social workers—the visits could also be from Western tourists, devotees, or locals—because he resented the surface lies, fake promises, and feel-good commitments that were always made but never led to anything. They’d arrive bearing their genuine smiles but false promises to see these kids in their tattered clothes, their voices echoing through the courtyard as they cautiously tiptoed around the angry cow to greet the assembled children.
“You are so pretty and nice,” one might say. “So, so sweet, can we adopt you?”
“Mama, we should take them home with us,” the child of another visitor would say.
“I will come back here every day. Will you be my friend?”
No, Choti would think.
“I will bring you a cake on your birthday, what flavor do you like?”
These types of comments, which always last
ed until the last photo was taken, always made Chintu cringe. These instant friendships and put-on sympathies never lasted beyond the photo-op, he told Choti his face red with anger. It was all a show—no one would come back, no promises were kept, no cakes were delivered, and no saving adoptions transpired. Though she and Chintu didn’t believe them one bit, the smaller kids were genuinely hurt when the visitors never kept their promises.
Even at that age, Choti had sensed that what the visitors really wanted was to ease their own guilt, a guilt that was somehow alleviated by being surrounded by poor, invisible children. To Choti that idea was just plain weird.
A few days after Chintu’s disappearance, Choti had been herded in with the rest of the children to get their picture taken. “I won’t be having my picture taken, I hate it! I hate standing there like a sad and lifeless pathetic prop without a voice or a heart. I want to fly!” she shouted.
The Nameless Man replied, “Choti, how do you think we pay for letting you stay at The Nameless House with Pink Walls? If you won’t line up for a photo with the rest of the children, then you might as well leave.”
All the Nameless Man’s sharp words did was convince Choti she was not coming back the next morning. That same day, when Choti returned from her frantic begging with Anarkali to the Nameless House with Pink Walls, she lay on her aching back with her tired legs and sore feet stretched out, and said to herself, “All I want to do is walk on my rope, like birds fly in the air, free and fearless.”
That was Choti’s last day at The Nameless House with Pink Walls.
That evening, a dejected Choti climbed up a tree into her “sky nest,” the new little aerial dwelling she had built in a sprawling Banyan across from the ghats, a veritable nest made of rags, cardboard and a sheet of plastic, and littered with the discarded possessions of the deceased she had scavenged from Manikarnika Ghat. She had built her dwelling in a tree—no one in Varanasi could climb a tree as fast as Choti, she was a tight-rope-walker after all. The tree she had chosen overlooked the open-air, police gym and wrestling pit that spread out across a courtyard behind the police station.
