The City of Joy

by Dominique Lapierre

  Numerous rickshaws cluttered the street. They were all occupied by men who had come here in search of amusement. A lot of poor fellows, coolies, workmen, men without work, were wandering about on the pavements. Calcutta is a city of men, where hundreds of thousands of refugees live without their families.

  A woman grabbed Hasari by the wrist. "Come with me, baby," she said, giving him a meaningful look. "I'll make you happy. For four rupees. That's all." Hasari felt himself blushing to the tips of his toes. The rickshaw puller came to his rescue. "Leave him alone!" he ordered the girl, pointing one of his shafts at her stomach. The prostitute replied with a torrent of invective that attracted the attention of the entire street and made the two friends roar with laughter. The puller took advantage of the incident to give his companion a warning: "If ever you're pulling a rickshaw and you happen to get a girl like that

  for a fare, don't forget to make her pay in advance. Otherwise, mind you, she'll slip through your fingers just like an eel."

  After the street with the girls, the two men crossed a square, passed under an archway, and entered an enclosed area lined with old buildings with decaying facades and balustrades, from which there hung an array of motley laundry. Buffalo, cows, dogs, chickens, and pigs roamed about among children playing there with paper kites. Dots of every conceivable color flew throughout the sky on the ends of pieces of string. In Calcutta kites were favorite toys, as if somehow those scraps of paper climbing high above the rooftops carried the children's ambition to escape their lot, all their need to flee their prison of mud, fumes, noise, and poverty.

  In a corner behind a palisade of planks, a man in a dirty vest sat beneath a tiled porch roof. He was the owner of the bar. The rickshaw puller directed Hasari to a bench at one end of the only table. The place reeked of alcohol. The owner clapped his hands. Instantly a hirsute little boy appeared with two glasses and a bottle that had neither label nor cork. It was full of a grayish liquid in which little white flakes were floating about. The rickshaw puller carefully counted out fourteen one-rupee notes, then folded them into a nice neat bundle and handed them to the proprietor. Having done so, he filled Hasari's glass. The peasant was struck by the acid smell given off by the concoction, but his companion seemed so delighted with it that he did not dare say anything. In silence, they clinked glasses and swallowed a mouthful.

  It was then that Ram Chander—for that was the name of the rickshaw puller—began to speak.

  "I had to leave my village after the death of my father. The poor man had never succeeded in wiping out the family debts that went back to his father and his grandfather. He had mortgaged our land to pay off the interest, but even that hadn't been enough, and when he died I had to borrow even more to give him a proper funeral. Two

  thousand rupees! (two hundred U.S. dollars). First there were the four dhotis and no less than one hundred and twenty feet of cotton for the pujari to get him to recite the prayers. Then there were two hundred pounds of rice, as much flour, quantities of oil, sugar, spices, and vegetables to feed the guests. Finally, we had to have one hundred pounds of wood for the pyre and baksheesh in cash for those in charge of the cremation. I very quickly realized that I would never be able to pay back all that money by staying where I was, especially since, to procure the loan, I had lost our only source of income by mortgaging the next harvest.

  "It was at that time, during the Festival of Durga, that an old friend from my younger days came back to the village. He was a rickshaw puller in Calcutta. 'Come with me/ he said, 'and I'll find you a cart to pull. You'll earn ten to twelve rupees a day.' So I decided to go with him. I can still see my wife holding my son's hand in the doorway of our hut and weeping. We had so often spoken of my leaving and now the day had come. She had prepared a knapsack for me with a longhi and a change of shirt and a towel too. She had even made me some chapatis and vegetable cutlets for the journey. To my dying day I shall still see them in front of our hut. Actually it was the memory of them that helped me to survive, because it was only after four months that, thanks to my childhood friend, I found work.

  "In this damned city, the fight to forage out a job is so hard that you could very well wait for years and die twenty times of starvation in the meantime. And if you haven't anyone to help you, then you've not a chance in hell. Even at the very lowest level it's all a matter of connections, and of cash too, of course. You've got to be ready to pay out at every instant. This city is an ogress. She creates people whose only aim is to strip you of everything you have. How naive I was when I arrived here from the countryside at home! I was quite convinced that my friend was going to lead me straight to the owner of his rickshaw and ask him to take me on. The individual in question is a Bihari who owns more than three hundred carriages, at least two

  hundred of which operate without a license. He simply slips a percentage to the cops and that settles it. But as for the idea of getting myself employed right away, I soon got over that. The Bihari was never anywhere to be seen. No one even knew where he lived. He is a real boss. He couldn't give a damn whether it was you or Indira Gandhi who pulled his rickshaws, provided he got his dues every evening. He had a special employee to collect them and only through him could you get a rickshaw to pull. Now, don't imagine this guy is any more approachable than his boss. You had to be introduced to him by someone he appreciated, someone who could tell him who you were, what caste you belonged to, what clan, what line of descendants. And you better salute him with your most respectful 'namaskar,'* address him as a 'sardarji,'t invoke the blessing of Shiva and all the gods upon his person and not forget the customary baksheesh, because, for a guy like him, baksheesh are almost as important as the dues. You've got nothing, you're just a poor bum, you work your guts out to earn a few rupees and feed your family, but you have to spend your entire time getting out a coin for the cop at the crossroads because you have no legal rights to operate in that street, another coin for another cop because you're transporting goods when you're only supposed to carry people, a note for the proprietor so he'll let you sleep in his cow shed, another for the guy in the workshop to have him repair a spoke in your wheel, another for the former holder of the rickshaw who palmed his ramshackle vehicle off on you. It comes down to your being sucked dry all day long and then, if you don't watch out, you could well find yourself back without a rickshaw in any case, because the police have confiscated it or the person who hires it to you has fired you.

  "As for me, I waited more than four months for the gods to decide to give me a break, and yet every morning I used to go and put a little rice, marigold buds, a banana, or some other delicacy in front of the statue of Ganesh in

  ♦Namaskar: hello, greeting. tSardar: chief/boss: term of respect.

  the temple near the hut where I was staying. Three rickshaw pullers lived in the same hovel in the courtyard of a tumbledown old building behind Park Circus. They too had left their families behind them in their villages. An old carpenter carved spokes and repaired cart wheels there. As they were all Hindus, they took their meals together. The old carpenter prepared the food. He cooked it over a chula which he fed with wood shavings from his work.

  "It was there that my friend had given me shelter when I first arrived in Calcutta. Between two bamboo joists in the framework, he set up a plank for me to sleep on, just under the tiles of the roofing. In the pise wall, a niche had been hollowed in which there presided a papier-mache statuette of a Ganesh with a pink elephant head. I remember thinking that with a god like that present under our roof it must surely all turn out okay for me in the end. I was right. One morning as I was coming back from the temple, I recognized the representative of the rickshaw owner on his bike. I had seen him several times before when he came to collect the dues, and my friend had spoken to him about me. He was quite a small man with shrewd eyes so piercing they might have been throwing out sparks. As soon as he put a foot on the ground, I launched myself at him.

  44 'Namaskar Sardarji! To what honor do we owe the visit o
f a person of your importance? You, the son of the god Shiva!' He could not suppress a smile of satisfaction.

  44 Tve a fellow with a broken leg. Would you like to replace him? If you would, you can give me twenty-five rupees immediately and you'll have to pay the disabled puller two rupees a day. That's on top of the regular six rupees' daily rental, of course.'

  44 He warned me, just in passing, that the carriage did not have a license to operate, which meant that in the event of my being caught by the police, I would be the one to have to pay the usual bribe. It was highway robbery. And yet I positively dissolved into expressions of thanks. 4 I shall be eternally grateful to you,' I promised him.

  4 From now on I shall be as the very youngest of your brothers.'*

  "The dream for which I had left my village had at last come true. I was going to earn a living for my family between the shafts of a rickshaw."

  *Given the power and authority with which the eldest son is endowed in the traditional Indian family, this is a special mark of respect and submission.

  At that time the City of Joy had only about ten wells and fountains for seventy thousand inhabitants. The nearest fountain to Stephan Kovalski's room was near a buffalo shed at the end of his alleyway. By the time he got to it, the neighborhood was just waking up. Every dawn there was the same explosion of life. People who had spent the night, ten or twelve to a single rat-and-vermin-infested hovel, were born again with the daylight as if at the world's first dawning. Their daily resurrection began with a general process of purification. There, in alleyways awash with slime, beside the disease-ridden stream of a sewer, the occupants of the City of Joy banished the miasma of the night with all the ritual of a meticulous toilet. Without revealing so much as a patch of their nudity, the women managed to wash themselves all over, from their long hair to the soles of their feet, not forgetting their saris. After that, they would take the greatest care to oil, comb, and braid their hair, before decorating it with a fresh flower picked from God only knew where. At every water point, men were showering themselves with tins. Young boys cleaned their teeth with acacia twigs coated

  with ashes, old men polished their tongues with strands of jute, mothers deloused their children before soaping their little naked bodies with a vigor undiminished even by the biting cold of winter mornings.

  Stephan Kovalski continued on his way, observing everything about him. Before reaching the fountain, his eyes were suddenly attracted by the beauty of one young mother swathed in a red sari, sitting in the alleyway, her back firmly upright, with a baby placed on her outstretched legs. The infant was naked, with only an amulet on a thin cord around his waist. He was a chubby child who did not appear to be suffering from malnutrition. There was a strange flame in the way mother and child looked at each other, as if they were talking to each other with their eyes. Captivated, Kovalski put down his bucket. The young woman had just poured a few drops of mustard oil into her palms and was beginning to massage the little body in her lap. Skillful, intelligent, attentive, her hands moved up and down, actuated by a rhythm as discreet as it was inflexible. Working in turn like waves, they set out from the baby's flanks, crossed its chest, and climbed back up to the opposite shoulder. At the end of the movement, her little finger slid under the child's neck. Then she pivoted him onto his side. Stretching out his arms, she massaged them delicately one after another, singing to him as she did so ancient songs about the loves of the god Krishna or some legend that stemmed from the depths of epic ages. Then she took hold of his little hands and kneaded them with her thumb as if to stimulate the blood flow from the palms to their extremities. Thus his stomach, legs, heels, the soles of his feet, his head, the nape of his neck, his face, nostrils, back, and buttocks were all successively caressed and vitalized by those supple, dancing fingers. The massage was concluded with a series of yogic exercises. The mother crossed her son's arms over his chest several times in succession to free his back, his rib cage, his breathing. Eventually it was the legs' turn to be raised, opened, and closed over his stomach to induce the opening and complete relaxation of the pelvis. The child gurgled in sheer bliss.

  "What I was witnessing was a real ritual," Kovalski

  was to say, enthralled by so much love, beauty, and intelligence. He could well imagine how much intangible sustenance the massage could bring to a little body threatened by so many vital deficiencies.

  After this glimmer of light amid so much ugliness, the drudgery of collecting water seemed a very banal formality. Several dozen women and children were standing in a line and the fountain's output was so feeble that it took an age to fill a bucket. Still, what did it matter? Time didn't count in Anand Nagar and the fountain was a focal point of news. For Kovalski it was a marvelous observation ground. A little girl came up to him, gave him a big smile, and with great authority took charge of his bucket. Placing a finger on his wrist, she said to him in English: "Daddah* you must be in a great hurry."

  "Why do you think that?" asked Kovalski.

  "Because you have a watch."

  When he got back to his house, the priest found several people outside his door. He recognized them as the occupants of the Christian compound to which, on his first evening, the envoy of the rector in charge of the neighboring parish had taken him. The young woman who had asked him to bless her child was now offering him a chapati and a small bottle.

  "Namaskar, Father," she said warmly. "My name is Margareta. My neighbors and I thought that you might not have anything with which to celebrate Mass. Here is some bread and wine."

  Stephan Kovalski surveyed his visitors, quite overwhelmed. "They may not have anything to eat, but they've managed to get hold of bread and wine for the Eucharist." He thought of the first Christians of Rome's catacombs.

  "Thank you," he said, concealing his emotion.

  "We have set up a table in our courtyard," added the young woman with a smile of complicity.

  "Let's go," said Kovalski, this time showing his

  joy.

  *Bie Brother.

  These people belonged to the few families—there were about fifty of them—who together formed a tiny islet of Christians in the midst of the seventy thousand Muslims and Hindus in the City of Joy. Although they too were poor, they were slightly less destitute than the rest of the population. There were several reasons for this advantage. Firstly and paradoxically, it was due to the fact that they were in such a minority: the smaller the number of people, the easier it is to provide aid for the least fortunate. Whereas the Hindu priests and Muslim mullahs in the area had to deal with more than three million faithful, the Catholic priest at the local church had less than a thousand parishioners. Secondly, to distinguish themselves from the majority of other sections of the community and improve their chances of securing white-collar work, many Christians made the effort to conquer that key instrument to social ascent—the English language. Finally, if they managed to elude the clutches of extreme poverty a little more successfully than most, it was also because their religion did not teach them to resign themselves to their fate. For Hindus, misfortune was the result of the burden of acts carried out in previous lives; this karma must be accepted in order that one might be reborn under more auspicious circumstances. Exempt from such taboos, Christians were free to haul themselves out of their lot as best they could. That is why India is sprinkled with institutions and small groups of elite that endow the Christian minority with a degree of national influence which far outweighs the number of its members. The same was also true in the City of Joy.

  The Christians in the slum came from the Bettiah region, an agricultural area of Bihar, which until the nineteen forties had harbored one of the most important Christian communities in Northern India. The origins of that community form an outstanding chapter in the great saga of the world's religious migrations. It was initiated toward the beginning of the eighteenth century when, persecuted by a bloodthirsty sovereign, thirty-five Nepalese converts fled from their homeland together with their chaplain,
an Italian Capucin. They found refuge in a princely state where the Capucin Father "miraculously"

  healed the wife of the local rajah. By way of thanks the latter gave them land. This tradition of making Christians welcome was perpetuated by the rajahs who succeeded him and so the small community prospered and increased. A century later, it numbered two thousand souls. With its white-washed houses, its narrow streets, its patios, its squares adorned with flowers, and its large church; with its men in wide-brimmed hats and its young girls in skirts and mantillas, the Christian quarter of the town of Bettiah looked a little like a mediterranean village. One day a strange calamity was to strike the area. The British called it blue gold; the peasants called it indigo. The intensive monoculture of the indigo plant to be used for dye was to provoke, in 1920, Gandhi's first great action. It was here, in the region of Bettiah, that the Mahatma began his campaign of nonviolent action for the liberation of India. Indigo was eventually defeated in 1942 by a synthetic substitute. Blue gold did not, however, die without first taking its revenge: it had drained all the goodness out of the land and condemned thousands of peasants to exile.

  The small number of families about to assist Kovalski's first Mass in Anand Nagar all came from those massacred lands. There were about twenty people in all, mainly women with babies in their arms and a few old men. Nearly all the heads of the families were absent, an indication that this compound was privileged, for others were full of men without work. In the congregation there was also an individual dressed in rags, whose wretched appearance was instantly forgotten because of his compelling radiant expression. He was known as "Gunga," the Mute. He was simpleminded and deaf and dumb, and nobody knew where he came from or how he had come to land in the City of Joy. One day Margareta had picked him up in an alleyway flooded out by the monsoon. He was on the point of drowning. Despite the fact that she was a widow and there were already eight people in her household, she had taken him in. One morning, he had vanished. For two years nobody had seen him. Then he had appeared again. He used to sleep on a few rags under the porch roof and seemed always quite content. One month ago, howev-