'We've spent thirty-seven?' I exclaimed. 'In what, four days? How? On what? Isn't the EC limit twenty-five lakhs?'
Amma returned from the loo, just in time to deliver her favourite admonition, which was, of course, 'Don't be Nave, Sarojini.'
Gudia aunty drew herself up.
'If you are suggesting,' she said stiffly, 'that there is some hanky-panky going on in the accounting...'
'No, no!' I said hastily. 'Of course not.'
'God has not given me much,' she continued inexorably, 'but He has given me Integrity.'
'Yes!' I said. 'I know. We know! Amma, it's all Tawny uncle's fault, isn't it? He's the weak link here!'
Amma grunted. 'Tawny did warn us that he won't be able to do too much for us,' she said. 'Besides, he must be sending extra funds to hij son Titu in Tiloni. Can't blame him, we would do the same.'
Oh, so the Rapist had managed to get a ticket then. Good for him. Hopefully, his father, being an AIPC General Secretary and all, had got him a constituency from where he actually had a chance of winning. Unlike me.
Anyway, we will be meeting Tawny at the Numaish ka mela tomorrow. We will prejent a status report and explain how, if we are given funds to buy out Dwivedi and Vir Singh, we can actually win. That ij really all we can do.'
And with that, Amma reached for Gudia aunty's bottle of mineral water and took a deep, morose swig.
***
7
I had a throbbing headache. My right eye had developed a nervous tic. My hands were itching to close around a certain scrawny neck and squeeze. I stared at the Normal Public School English reader on the desk, open to Chapter Number One, and took several deep breaths. The name of the chapter was printed at the top of the page in big, bold, black letters:
RULES FOR READING
Rajul wrinkled his nose for what felt like eternity, a vague faraway look in his eyes. He made circles in the dust with one grimy pointed toe and finally said, with agonizing slowness, 'Aaaar?'
'Yes!' I said, almost weeping with relief. 'Yes! It's R! Now, what's after the R? What is it? What is it?'
Rajul, who had brightened up a little, immediately looked hunted again. He hunched over his English reader, small whistling voices emitting sporadically from his lips. 'Ya... ya... yooooo?'
My eyes misted over with joy. I beamed at him, thrilled beyond belief. 'Yes, Rajul!' I said, sniffing and blinking back sudden, stupid tears. 'Yes. It's U! Well done!'
He grinned proudly. 'Can I go now?' he asked.
My tears dried up immediately. I grabbed him by the collar or his shirt. 'You're not going anywhere,' I grated. 'Now join the two sounds together. R plus U. What noise is that?'
He looked around shiftily. 'Aaar... Yoo?' he said, sounding hopeful. 'Aar plus Yoo is Aaryoo?'
I shook my head patiently. 'No, baba, think a little! We have done this many many times. Fine, I'll help you, okay?'
'Okay, okay.' He nodded obligingly, hunching over his reader again.
'Bee plus Yoo is Boo,' I said. 'Em plus Yoo is Moo. So what is Aar plus Yoo?'
Something seemed to click in Rajul's light-grey eyes. They brightened. His little chest puffed up. He raised one chubby, assured arm up in the air. He grinned.
'Aaryoo?' he said.
I banged both fists on the table between us and shouted like a madwoman. 'No, Rajul! R plus U is not Aaryoo. It's Roo! ROOO! ROOO!'
His face crumpled. He cringed and started to emit a low snivelling sound.
'Oh god, don't cry,' I groaned.
He shot me an injured look, grabbed his notebook and ran into the garden, leaving his sandals behind, his snivels getting progressively louder the farther he got from me.
'Come backkk!' I yelled. 'Sorry! Let's start over!'
He ignored me at first, but when he crossed the green gate and reached the safety of MM Pande Road, he wheeled around and bellowed: 'I'm going to tell EVERYBODY in Begumbagh that you TORTURE me! That you GOUGED out my EYES! That you BROKE my BACK! NOBODY WILL VOTE FOR YOU!'
'What?' I gasped, bounding up from my chair.
He gave a little yelp when he saw me rise, and scurried down the slumbering street, yelling shrilly and waving his arms about. 'DON'T vote for her! DON'T vote for her!'
'Fine!' I yelled back dementedly from the gate, my hair in my eyes, as I hurled his forgotten sandals at him, one after the other. 'Don't vote for me! See if I care!'
'Err... Pandeji?'
I spun around and saw Nulwallah looking at me quizzically.
'Shit.'
'Yeah, whatever.' He grinned and draped his lanky body against the green gate comfortably. 'Nice campaigning style. Very... different. Hey, Ponky! Dude, you're a star!'
This, because Ponky had rushed up noisily, planted his front paws against the gate and hauled himself up to grin gormlessly at Nulwallah through the spear-tipped bars at the top of the gate.
Nulwallah reached for the soft spot between Ponky's eyebrows and scratched. Ponky's large golden body quivered and he let out weird, squeaky moans of delight.
'So will you be dropping in at the Numaish ka mela today?' Nulwallah asked as he scratched.
I looked up, a little surprised he knew my schedule. But then, maybe it was just an educated guess. Because the Numaish ka mela is a Big Deal in Bittora. It's a crazy one-month-long excercise in hedonism that starts a few weeks after Holi. It began more than four centuries ago as a cattle fair, but it has mutated over time into a massive Woodstock-like gig, PP-style of course -- very hot and dusty, packed with smelly animals and people dressed in wedding finery, all running around and 'enjoying' with the single-minded intensity of traders at the Bombay Stock Exchange.
'Yes, I am going, but just as a regular person,' I was careful to clarify. 'I won't be campaigning there.'
'Of course not,' he grinned. 'That would be against the law.'
'Yes,' I said demurely. 'And I have great respect for the law.'
'Like you showed at the milad-un-nabi celebration last night?' he said knowingly. 'The IJP has filed a complaint with the election commission because you used a religious occasion to push your agenda, by the way'
'I am aware of that,' I replied coolly, a sinking feeling gripping my innards. I was aware of no such thing. Obviously, my so-called childhood friend had struck like a snake last night, while I'd been hugging my pillow, dreaming about his stormy eyes. More fool I. 'It's a baseless accusation, of course.'
Nulwallah nodded.
'I'm just going because I have great childhood memories of the mela,' I told him. 'Taking the day off, you could say.'
He raised his eyebrows. 'Confident,' he remarked. Then he cracked his usual demented grin. 'Well, see you there!'
Which sounded pretty non-combative. For Nulwallah, that is. Still, there was no way I would've confessed to him that I had no great childhood memories of the Numaish ka mela. I like my melas during Diwali or in early winter, when the weather is deliciously cool -- not in April-May, when everything is sticky and stinky and sweaty. Besides, I defy anyone with breasts - male or female -- to visit the Numaish and emerge unmolested. The place is packed with frantic gropers, out to pinch, probe or bite every fleshy body part within reach.
Amma and I were going to the mela to be seen and heard, of course. Over seven thousand people visited it every day, it would be silly to miss such a huge captive audience. We couldn't campaign there obviously, but we could smile and be charming, and give some small sum of money to the organizers. More importantly, we were hoping to close in on Tawny Suleiman and talk to him about our rapidly depleting liquid oxygen stores. Tawny uncle was the chief guest at the Bittora Annual Wrestling Day, a big event at the mela, and Rocket Singh had promised Amma that she would be seated next to him, so they could have a frank, open discussion without worrying about their phones being bugged or whatever.
A couple of hours later, we drove up to Gate No. 3, the one closest to the wresding enclosure and, with one eye on the black EC Maruti Gypsy trailing us, humbly bought tickets
like regular people. After an elaborate frisking which we underwent graciously, we walked in and proceeded to look all surprised and embarrassed as an announcement blared from the Ahuja loudspeakers stuck on wooden poles all over the four-square kilometre area.
'Ladies and gentlemen! Please welcome into our humble midst, our sister, no, our mother, national leader and three-time MP from Bittora, ex-MP Shrimati Pushpa Pande jiji! And her granddaughter, Pragati Party candidate from Bittora, Kumari Sarojini Pandeji!'
We folded our hands above our heads in humble greeting as, bang on cue, bare-chested tribal dancers appeared out of nowhere, beating their drums deafeningly. Pretty women in tricolour saris sashayed up and placed the inevitable thousand-rupee garlands around our necks. Finally, a bunch of oily men walked up coyly, hands folded, with Rocket Singh at their head, smiling constipatedly. He was dressed for the occasion in a bright red tracksuit and was wearing all three of his Asian Games medals. They clinked majestically as he walked, the sound reminiscent of the buffalo bells I heard outside my window every morning. He held up one hand, and the drumming stopped instantly.
'Jiji!' he said dramatically, diving at Amma's feet.
She strategically let him grovel there for a bit before stretching out a hand to lift him up. She placed a hand on his head to bless him, and he indicated the hordes behind him. 'Organizing committee, jiji,' he informed her.
The head of the organizing committee thrust himself forward and told us, in ringing accents, that we had to patronize every one of the thousand stalls at the mela, buy whatever we liked and pay for none of it.
'Thanks so much!' Gudia aunty said breathlessly. 'I'll just-now start...'
But the invitation turned out to be purely rhetorical. Because, right at that moment, Rocket Singh gestured, the tribal dancers restarted their defeaning drumming, and Amma raced ahead, hands held in a namaste over her head. She sped through long lines of seated spectators to the podium in the centre, smiling and nodding, her pallu fluttering like a banner behind her. Everybody jumped to their feet as she passed and then sank down again in a blissful omg-I-saw-Pushpa-Pande-now-I-can-die-happy swoon, so that she ended up creating a huge Mexican wave in her wake.
Tawny Suleiman sat on the podium, behind a long white table, looking sleek but cornered. His three moustaches (You always know what I mean, Jinni, I remembered with a pang) were drooping in the sweltering heat.
'Tawny!' said Amma loudly, flashing her gap-toothed grin. 'We are so happy to see you!'
Looking infinitely unhappy, Tawny said resignedly that he was ecstatic to see Amma too.
She sat next to him, bent her head and began a whispered conversation.
I turned to Rocket Singh.
'What's the next event?' I asked him, peering down at the mud-floor circular wrestling ring below us. The whole scene had a vaguely gladiatorial feel.
The ring was huge, and empty for now, cordoned off by thick jute ropes. Beyond the ropes milled a massive crowd - among them Gudia aunty, looking distinctly disgrunded because, on top of being done out of a complimentary shopping spree, she hadn't been invited to sit on the dais with Amma. I smiled down at her, hoping meanly that the gropers in the crowd would be unable to resist the lure of her bulbous posterior.
'This is the free-style final!' shouted Rocket Singh, his mud-coloured, bubblewrap textured skin gleaming in the sun. There was a huge roar from the crowd below. I looked down and saw a smooth, hairless, spectacular specimen of manhood striding into the ring, clad in a red chaddi, festooned with a golden rocket over the crotch.
'My best boy,' whispered Rocket Singh. 'You'll not believe it -- I used to look exactly like that when I won the Asiad in '82.'
'He looks very... uh... well-developed,' I said faintly as Red Underwear slapped his humongous thighs, causing them to ripple impressively in the bright sunshine. He also let out aggressive cries of Ghheeeaaah! Ghheeeaaaah! and flashed large tombstone-like teeth.
Another roar rose from the crowd as a guy in black underwear strode into the ring from the other side. He was bigger, brawnier and hairier than Red Underwear. There was a huge, droopy-eyed python wrapped around his cliff-like shoulders. It was not a pretty sight.
'He is from the Purana Bittora akhada,' Rocket Singh bellowed above the roar of the crowd, little bits of saunf flying out of his mouth and peppering the lobe of my ear. 'Altaf Khan's area.'
'He looks pretty mean,' I yelled back.
Rocket Singh grunted dismissively, 'Andar se phat rahi hogi. Such WWE stunts means he is actually feeling scared inside. You just wait and see.'
Black Underwear strutted around the ring, stroking his python, waggling his tongue and hissing threats at Red Underwear, who responded by yawning deliberately and cleaning the inside of his ear with his pinky finger. Finally, Black Underwear handed his snake to a sidekick and the referee, attired in a Kolkata Knight Riders T-shirt, blew his whistle. The two lunged at each other instantly. Black Underwear wrapped both arms around Red Underwear in a crushing bear hug, while Red Underwear grabbed Black Underwear's neck and rotated firmly in an anti-clockwise direction.
'Go, Red!' I shrieked out of solidarity with Rocket Singh, who smiled in a gentle I'm-too-buzurg-to-take-sides manner.
They stood locked thus for a while, Black Underwear's grip getting tigher and tighter while his face got redder and redder. Then suddenly, the referee blew his whistle and the two disengaged. As the roaring of the crowd died down, I realized that somebody was talking into my ear.
'I've been trying to explain to your stubborn grandmother, but she is just not listening,' Tawny uncle was whispering loudly. 'The party is reluctant to sanction you more funds. They are asking why to throw good money after bad?'
My heart sank.
'Never mind the party, what do you think?' I whispered back fiercely.
He spread out his hands helplessly. 'Arrey dear, who am I? I have to do what I'm told. All local reports -- you know I don't trust the surveys -- clearly say that IJP has the upper hand. Khan's chances of winning are ninety per cent. My advice to you, frankly...' He turned to look me in the eye.
'Yes?' I asked, squaring my shoulders.
He blew out his cheeks, making first one pop out, then the other. Then he shook his head and pursed his lips. 'My advice to you is to quit,' he said. 'The IJP has made this seat a prestige issue. They are spending money like water.'
Down in the ring, Black Underwear, displeased with the referee's alleged preference for Red Undie, had grabbed him by the scruff of his Knight Riders T-shirt and was shaking him violently. The referee was screaming, his limbs fluttering about like prayer flags in a high Himalyan wind.
I knew exactly how he felt.
'I'll never quit,' I said vehemently, my voice trembling. 'And if the hawa is so anti-Pragati, whyn't you get Tits to withdraw from Tiloni, huh?'
'Titu is not facing a tough candidate. You are,' said Tawny uncle gently. 'Jinni, you are like my daughter, so I am telling you - don't make this an ego issue.'
'Why?' I demanded.
He blew out his cheeks again, contemplatively, turn by turn. Pop swelled up one, pop swelled up the other. He swung the air from cheek to cheek, pop pop pop pop. Then he exhaled gustily.
'My dear, I know you are very idealistic, that you want to contribute. So why don't you help my Titu, hain? Together, you will be unbeatable.'
I blinked. 'What?' I said blankly.
He leaned closer to me. 'Let me announce your engagement,' he said eagerly. 'People will love it! Then you and he can both campaign from Tiloni. Let Bittora be.'
'So Titu's in love with me?' I said in disbelief, my head spinning.
Tawny uncle looked a little shifty. 'Oh, yes,' he said.
I snorted. 'I don't believe you.'
'Well, he thinks you are nice. That's a start. And I think ki you are too cute,' he said loyally.
I couldn't help laughing. 'Uncle, that's neither here nor there!'
His eyes twinkled, but just for a moment. Then he sighed
, lowered his voice and said, 'Arrey Jinni, try to understand. Your seat is hopeless. If you withdraw, nobody in the party will hold it against you. Especially if you convince her,' he nodded exasperatedly at Amma, 'to fake a heart attack. And in Tiloni, you could help Titu score the Brahmin votes.'
I looked at him. He'd always given me good advice. Looked out for me. Gotten me my first cell-phone. Talked Ma into letting me do animation.
'Tawny uncle,' I said, taking both his hands in mine, 'you're seriously telling me to quit?'
He looked at me. 'Yes.'
'In fact--' he began and stopped.
'What?'
He shrugged. 'It could even be profitable for you to do so.'
I stared at him, stunned. What was he suggesting?
He smiled, stroking his third moustache, the one above his right eye, with his index finger. 'You have well-wishers everywhere, dear,' he said meaningfully. 'Even in the IJP camp. They will look after your financial interests if you withdraw. Think about it.'
Oh.
Like that.
Down in the ring, Red Underwear had just shoved a hand straight at Black Undie's crotch. And was now proceeding to squeeze as hard as he could, his face frozen in a wide, toothy rictus of unadulterated pleasure. Black Undie howled in impotent rage, hopping about, slapping Red Undie on the head to no avail.
'Surely that's unfair?' I leaned over and shook Rocket Singh, who was dozing gently in the heat. 'It's against the rules. He can't do that!'
Rocket Singh shrugged. 'He should have thought of that before beating up the referee. Now the referee will take a nice long time before blowing the whistle.'
'Still...' I muttered. 'Rules are rules, right?'
'It is free-style wrestling.' Rocket Singh winked at me. 'No holds barred. No rule-shool. Anything goes.'
Hmm. I looked at the ring, mulling over what Tawny uncle had just said. Maybe it was time I tried a little free-style too...
***
'You look like you are marrying the wrestler in the red chaddi, Sarojini,' Amma said in disgust over the early morning papers the next day, as she sucked on a kalmi mango. 'Why are you putting a garland around his neck?'
Battle for Bittora Page 16
