by Anita Desai
Immediately a babble broke out. All the drivers flung out their hands and arms in angry, demanding gestures, their voices rose in questioning, in cajoling, in argument. The truck driver stood looking at them, watching them, his face expressionless. Now and then he lifted the cigarette to his mouth and drew a deep puff. Then abruptly he swung around, clambered back into the cabin of his truck and started the engine with a roar, at which the others fell back, their attitudes slackening in relief. But then he wheeled it around and parked it squarely across the highway so no traffic could get past in either direction. The highway at that point had narrowed to a small culvert across a dry stream-bed full of stones. Now he clambered out again, then up the bank of the culvert on which he sat himself down, his legs wide apart in their loose and not too clean pyjamas, and sat there regarding the traffic piling up in both directions as though he might be regarding sheep filing into a pen.
The knot of drivers in the road began to grow, joined by many of the passengers demanding to know the cause of this impasse.
‘Dadd-ee! Dadd-ee!’ the small boys yelled, hanging out of the door their father had left open and all but falling out into the dust. ‘What’s happened, Dadd-ee?’
‘Shut the door!’ their mother ordered sharply, but too late. A yellow pai dog came crawling out of the shallow ditch that ran alongside the road and, spying an open door, came slinking up to it, thin hairless tail between its legs, eyes showing their whites, hoping for bread but quite prepared for a blow instead.
The boys drew back on seeing its exploring snout, the upper lip lifted back from the teeth in readiness for a taste of bread. ‘Mad dog!’ shouted one. ‘Mad dog!’ bellowed the other.
‘Shh!’ hissed their mother.
Since no one in the car dared drive away a creature so dangerous, someone else did: a stone struck its ribs and with a yelp it ducked under the car and crept there to hide. But already the next beggar was at the door, throwing himself in with much the same mixture of leering enquiry and cringing readiness to withdraw. In place of one of his legs was a crutch worn down to almost a peg. ‘Bread,’ he whined, stretching out a bandaged hand. ‘Paisa, paisa. Mother, mother,’ he pleaded, seeing the mother cower back in her seat with the baby. The children cowered back too.
They knew that if they remained thus for long enough, and made no move towards purse or coin, he would leave: he couldn’t afford to waste too much time on them when there were so many potential donors lined so conveniently up and down the highway. The mother stared glassily ahead through the windscreen at the heat beating off the metal bonnet. The children could not tear their eyes away from the beggar – his sores, his bandages, his crippled leg, the flies gathering …
When he moved on, the mother raised a corner of her sari to her mouth and nose. From behind it she hissed again, ‘Shut-the-door!’
Unsticking their damp legs from the moistly adhesive seat, the boys scrambled to do so. As they leant out to grab the door, however, and the good feel of the blazing sun and the open air struck at their faces and arms, they turned around to plead, ‘Can we get out? Can we go and see what’s happening?’
So ardent was their need that they were about to fall out of the open door when they saw their father detaching himself from the knot of passengers and drivers standing in the road and making his way back to them. The boys hastily edged back, and he stood leaning in at the door. The family studied his face for signs; they were all adept at this, practising it daily over the breakfast table at home, and again when he came back from work. But this situation was a new one, a baffling one: they could not read it, or his position on it.
‘What’s happening?’ the mother asked at last, faintly.
‘Damn truck driver,’ he swore through dark lips. ‘Some boy threw a rock at it – probably some goatherd in the field – and cracked the windscreen. He’s parked the truck across the road, won’t let anyone pass. Says he won’t move till the police come and get him compensation. Stupid damn fool – what compensation is a goatherd going to pay even if they find him?’
The mother leant her head back. What had reason to do with men’s tempers? she might have asked. Instead she sighed. ‘Is there a policeman?’
‘What – here? In this forsaken desert?’ her husband retorted. Withdrawing his head, he stood taking in harsh breaths of overheated, dust-laden air as if he were drawing in all the stupidity around him. He could see passengers climbing down from the bus and the bullock cart, clambering across the ditch into the fields, and fanning out – some to lower their trousers, others to lift their saris in the inadequate shelter provided by thorn bushes. If the glare was not playing tricks with his eyes, he thought he saw a puff of dust in the distance that might be raised by goats’ hooves.
‘Take me to see, Dadd-ee, take me to see,’ the boys had begun to clamour, and to their astonishment he stood aside and let them climb out and even led them back to the truck that stood stalled imperviously across the culvert.
The mother opened and shut her mouth silently. Her daughter stood up and hung over the front seat to watch their disappearing figures. In despair, she cried, ‘They’re gone!’
‘Sit down! Where can they go?’
‘I want to go too, Mumm-ee, I want to go too-oo.’
‘Be quiet. There’s nowhere to go.’
The girl began to wail. It was usually a good strategy in a family with loud voices but this time her sense of aggrievement was genuine: her head ached from the long sleep in the car, from the heat beating on its metal top, from the lack of air, from the glare and from hunger. ‘I’m hung-ree,’ she wept.
‘We were going to eat when we reached Solan,’ her mother reminded her. ‘There’s such a nice-nice restaurant at the railway station in Solan. Such nice-nice omelettes they make there.’
‘I want an omelette!’ wailed the child.
‘Wait till we get to Solan.’
‘When will we reach it? When?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. Late. Sit down and open that basket at the back. You’ll find something to eat there.’
But now that omelettes at Solan had been mentioned the basket packed at home with Gluco biscuits and potato chips held no attraction for the girl. She stopped wailing but sulked instead, sucking her thumb, a habit she was supposed to have given up but which resurfaced for comfort when necessary.
She did not need to draw upon her thumb juices for long. The news of the traffic jam on the highway had spread like ripples from a stone thrown. From somewhere, it seemed from nowhere for there was no village bazaar, marketplace or stalls visible in that dusty dereliction, wooden barrows came trundling along towards the waiting traffic, bearing freshly cut lengths of sugarcane and a machine to extract their juice into thick dirty grey glasses; bananas already more black than yellow from the sun that baked them, peanuts in their shells roasting in pans set on embers. Men, women and children were climbing over the ditch like phantoms, materialising out of the dust, with baskets on their heads filled not only with sustenance but with amusement as well – a trayload of paper toys painted indigo blue and violent pink. Small bamboo pipes that released rude noises and a dyed feather on a spool, both together. Kites, puppets, clay carts, wooden toys and tin whistles. The vendors milled around the buses, cars and rickshaws, and were soon standing at their car window, both vocally and manually proffering goods for sale.
The baby let drop the narcotic rubber nipple, delighted. His eyes grew big and shone at the flowering outside. The little girl was perplexed, wondering what to take from so much abundance till the perfect choice presented itself in a rainbow of colour: green, pink and violet, her favourites. It was a barrow of soft drinks, and nothing on this day of gritty dust, yellow sun and frustrating delay could be more enticing than those bottles filled with syrups in dazzling floral colours. She set up a scream of desire.
‘Are you mad?’ her mother said promptly. ‘You think I’ll let you drink a bottle full of typhoid and cholera germs?’
The girl gasped wi
th disbelief at being denied. Her mouth opened wide to issue a protest but her mother went on, ‘After you have your typhoid-and-cholera injection, you may. You want a nice big typhoid-and-cholera injection first?’
The child’s mouth was still open in contemplation of the impossible choice when her brothers came plodding back through the dust, each carrying a pith and bamboo toy – a clown that bounced up and down on a stick and a bird that whirled upon a pin. Behind them the father slouched morosely. He had his hands deep in his pockets and his face was lined with a frown deeply embedded with dust.
‘We’ll be here for hours,’ he informed his wife through the car window. ‘A rickshaw driver has gone off to the nearest thana to find a policeman who can put sense into that damn truck driver’s thick head.’ Despondently he threw himself into the driver’s seat and sprawled there. ‘Must be a hundred and twenty degrees,’ he sighed.
‘Pinky, where is the water bottle? Pass the water bottle to Daddy,’ commanded the mother solicitously.
He drank from the plastic bottle, tilting his head back and letting the water spill into his mouth. But it was so warm it was hardly refreshing and he spat out the last mouthful from the car window into the dust. A scavenging chicken alongside the tyre skipped away with a squawk.
All along the road with its stalled traffic, drivers and passengers were searching for shade, for news, for some sign of release. Every now and then someone brought information on how long the line of stalled traffic now was. Two miles in each direction was the latest estimate, at least two miles – and the estimate was made not without a certain pride.
Up on the bank of the culvert the man who had caused it all sat sprawling, his legs wide apart. He had taken off his bandana, revealing a twist of cotton wool dipped in fragrant oil that was tucked behind his ear. He had bought himself a length of sugar cane and sat chewing it, ripping off the tough outer fibre then drawing the sweet syrup out of its soft inner fibre and spitting out, with relish and with expertise, the white fibre sucked dry. He seemed deliberately to spit in the direction of those who stood watching in growing frustration.
‘Get hold of that fellow! Force him to move his truck,’ somebody suddenly shouted out, having reached the limit of his endurance. ‘If he doesn’t, he’ll get the thrashing of his life.’
‘Calm down, sardarji,’ another placated him with a light laugh to help put things back in perspective. ‘Cool down. It’s hot but you’ll get your cold beer when you get to Solan.’
‘When will that be? When my beard’s gone grey?’
‘Grey hair is nothing to be ashamed of,’ philosophized an elder who had a good deal of it to show. ‘Grey hair shows patience, forbearance, a long life. That is how to live long – patiently, with forbearance.’
‘And when one has work to do, what then?’ the Sikh demanded, rolling up his hands into fists. The metal ring on his wrist glinted.
‘Work goes better after a little rest,’ the elder replied, and demonstrated by lowering himself onto his haunches and squatting there on the roadside like an old bird on its perch or a man waiting to be shaved by a wayside barber. And, like an answer to a call, a barber did miraculously appear, an itinerant barber who carried the tools of his trade in a tin box on his head. No one could imagine from where he had emerged, or how far he had travelled in search of custom. Now he squatted and began to unpack a mirror, scissors, soap, blades, even a small rusty cigarette tin full of water. An audience stood watching his expert moves and flourishes and the evident pleasure these gave the elder.
Suddenly the truck driver on the bank waved a hand and called, ‘Hey, come up here when you’ve finished. I could do with a shave too – and my ears need cleaning.’
There was a gasp at his insolence, and then indignant protests.
‘Are you planning to get married over here? Are we not to move till your bride arrives and the wedding is over?’ shouted someone.
This had the wrong effect: it made the crowd laugh. Even the truck driver laughed. He was somehow becoming a part of the conspiracy. How had this happened?
In the road, the men stood locked in bafflement. In the vehicles, the tired passengers waited. ‘Oo-oof,’ sighed the mother. The baby, asleep as if stunned by the heat, felt heavy as lead in her arms. ‘My head is paining, and it’s time to have tea.’
‘Mama wants tea, Mama wants tea!’ chanted the daughter, kicking at the front seat.
‘Stop it!’ her father snapped at her. ‘Where is the kitchen? Where is the cook? Am I to get them out of the sky? Or is there a well filled with tea?’
The children all burst out laughing at the idea of drawing tea from a well, but while they giggled helplessly, a chaiwallah did appear, a tray with glasses on his head, a kettle dangling from his hand, searching for the passenger who had called for tea.
There was no mention of cholera or typhoid now. He was summoned, glasses were filled with milky, sweet, frothing tea and handed out, the parents slurped thirstily and the children stared, demanding sips, then flinching from the scalding liquid.
Heartened, the father began to thrash around in the car, punch the horn, stamp ineffectually on the accelerator. ‘Damn fool,’ he swore. ‘How can this happen? How can this be allowed? Only in this bloody country. Where else can one man hold up four miles of traffic—’
Handing back an empty glass, the mother suggested, ‘Why don’t you go and see if the policeman’s arrived?’
‘Am I to go up and down looking for a policeman? Should I walk to Solan to find one?’ the man fumed. His tirade rolled on like thunder out of the white blaze of afternoon. The children listened, watched. Was it getting darker? Was a thunder cloud approaching? Was it less bright? Perhaps it was evening. Perhaps it would be night soon.
‘What will we do when it grows dark?’ the girl whimpered. ‘Where will we sleep?’
‘Here, in the car!’ shouted the boys. ‘Here, on the road!’ Their toys were long since broken and discarded. They needed some distraction. The sister could easily be moved to tears by mention of night, jackals, ghosts that haunt highways at night, robbers who carry silk handkerchieves to strangle their victims …
Suddenly, simultaneously, two events occurred. In the ditch that ran beside the car the yellow pai dog began a snarling, yelping fight with a marauder upon her territory, and at the same time one of the drivers, hitching up his pyjamas and straightening his turban, came running back towards the stalled traffic, shouting, ‘They’re moving! The policeman’s come! They’ll move now! There’ll be a faisla!’
Instantly the picture changed from one of discouragement, despair and possibly approaching darkness to animation, excitement, hope. All those loitering in the road leapt back into their vehicles, getting rid of empty bottles, paper bags, cigarette butts, the remains of whatever refreshment the roadway had afforded them, and in a moment the air was filled with the roar of revving engines as with applause.
The father too was pressing down on the accelerator, beating upon the steering wheel, and the children settling into position, all screaming, ‘Sim-la! Sim-la!’ in unison. The pai dogs scrambled out of the way and carried their quarrel over into the stony field.
But not a single vehicle moved an inch. None could. The obstructive truck had not been shifted out of the way. The driver still sprawled upon the bank, propped up on one elbow now, demanding of the policeman who had arrived, ‘So? Have you brought me compensation? No? Why not? I told you I would not move till I received compensation. So where is it? Hah? What is the faisla? Hah?’
The roar of engines faltered, hiccupped, fell silent. After a while, car doors slammed as drivers and passengers climbed out again. Groups formed to discuss the latest development. What was to be done now? The elder’s philosophical patience was no longer entertained. No one bandied jokes with the villain on the bank any more. Expressions turned grim.
Suddenly the mother wailed, ‘We’ll be here all night,’ and the baby woke up crying: he had had enough of being confined in the suffocatin
g heat, he wanted air, wanted escape. All the children began to whine. The mother drew herself together. ‘We’ll have to get something to eat,’ she decided and called over to her husband standing in the road, ‘Can’t we get some food for the children?’
He threw her an irritated look over his shoulder. Together with the men in the road, he was going back to the culvert to see what could be done. There was an urgency about their talk now, their suggestions. Dusk had begun to creep across the fields like a thicker, greyer layer of dust. Some of the vendors lit kerosene lamps on their barrows, so small and faint that they did nothing but accentuate the darkness. Some of them were disappearing over the fields, along paths visible only to them, having sold their goods and possibly having a long way to travel. All that could be seen clearly in the growing dark were the lighted pinpricks of their cigarettes.
What the small girl had most feared did now happen – the long, mournful howl of a jackal lifted itself out of the stones and thorn bushes and unfurled through the dusk towards them. While she sat mute with fear her brothers let out howls of delight and began to imitate the invisible creature with joy and exuberance.
The mother was shushing them all fiercely when they heard the sound they had given up hope of hearing: the sound of a moving vehicle. It came roaring up the road from behind them – not at all where they had expected – overtaking them in a cloud of choking dust. Policemen in khaki, armed with steel-tipped canes, leant out of it, their moustaches bristling, their teeth gleaming, eyes flashing and ferocious as tigers. And the huddled crowd stranded on the roadside fell aside like sheep: it might have been they who were at fault.
But the police truck overtook them all, sending them hurriedly into the ditch for safety, and drew up at the culvert. Here the police jumped out, landing with great thuds on the asphalt, and striking their canes hard upon it for good measure. The truck’s headlights lit up the bank with its pallid wash.
