Ravan and Eddie

by Kiran Nagarkar

  Shambhoonath missed Tiger and talked about him to all the customers who would listen.

  ‘There was nothing wrong with him. If Mr Dixit had not reported him, he would be fine and right here with us. Do you think they killed him? He was such a nice dog. He never asked for anything.’

  ‘Shut up and go back to work,’ Shyamjeebhai snapped at him.

  Five weeks later Shambhoonath’s moods began to swing unpredictably. He was running a fever and he was either depressed or manically talkative. He answered back, told Shyamjeebhai that he was leaving if he didn’t get a raise immediately and an hour later apologized abjectly. He became delirious.

  Once again it was Mr Dixit who diagnosed the symptoms as rabies when he was at the grocer’s to buy betel nut on his way home from the office. Shambhoonath yelled that he was dying of thirst but when he tried to drink water, his throat muscles went into a violent spasm and he couldn’t swallow.

  Mr Dixit spoke to Shyamjeebhai and told him of the danger and threat that Shambhoonath posed to everybody in the chawls.

  ‘How can it be rabies?’ Shyamjeebhai queried Mr Dixit. ‘Tiger never bit Shambhoonath.’

  ‘It’s not the rabid dog’s bite but his saliva which carries the virus,’ Mr Dixit explained to the grocer patiently. ‘You must take him to the doctor now and admit him to the Haffkine Institute. This is urgent, Shyamjeebhai. It’s more than that, it’s a matter of life and death.’

  ‘No need to get agitated, Dixitbhai,’ the grocer assured Mr Dixit. ‘I will ask my son to take Shambhoonath to Doctor Atre right away. You go home and rest your mind in peace. Everything, you’ll see, will turn out for the best.’ That night Shyamjeebhai threw Shambhoonath out and locked the doors of his shop.

  Two days later Shambhoonath returned from wherever he had disappeared. Shyamjeebhai locked him in the storeroom behind his shop for fear that Mr Dixit would see him. The grocer needn’t have worried. Mr Dixit had gone off on a seven-day tour of duty inspecting mofussil schools. Shambhoonath Pissat screamed for food, screamed for water, screamed to be let out, and screamed for pity and help. Ravan waited for the two men to return.

  ‘Will they kill him?’ he asked Parvatibai as he lay in bed.

  ‘Of course not.’ Parvatibai patted him a little too hard on his head in an attempt to convince herself and put Ravan to sleep.

  On the fourth day, there were no words to Shambhoonath’s scream but it had become much louder.

  ‘Why don’t they kill him?’ Ravan asked his mother that night. She didn’t try to answer.

  It was late afternoon the next day. Shambhoonath bit through the cords tied around his hands and feet, unlocked the door at the rear of the storeroom and began running wildly in the CWD grounds. His eyes were red and his lower jaw hung unnaturally open. He made odd noises and his movements were erratic. There was nothing human about him. He had become some strange animal that was full of hate and fear and would never be brought under control. Young men, women and children ran helter-skelter and screamed louder than him. Shambhoonath’s jaws snapped at the empty air with a force that could have bitten off heads. Suddenly the grounds were empty. There was not a sound but Shambhoonath’s breathless panting. He scanned the buildings and the sky. His head moved jerkily. There was a rage in him and he did not know what to do with it.

  Ravan sensed something was wrong as he walked in from the road between Chawl Nos. 3 and 4. His school bag fell down but he was not aware of it. He was fascinated by Shambhoonath to the point of being paralysed. Shambhoonath watched Ravan with hooded eyes, wondering if he was going to move. He looked away pretending he had lost interest, and then charged at Ravan. Ravan was struck by the reaction of the various dogs which hung around the CWD chawls. They were all petrified and had their tails between their legs, as if they too were trying to disown Shambhoonath. Ravan thought that he heard his mother yelling his name. There was a note of demented urgency in her voice. Shambhoonath too seemed to have heard it. He stopped still and gazed at Ravan. Ravan felt an overwhelming wave of pity for Shambhoonath. He was so terrified and alone. Parvatibai was screaming at Ravan now, telling him to run, run. Shambhoonath stood undecided, panting and snapping his mouth. The two Yamas were now standing behind him. They threw a fishing net on Shambhoonath. Shambhoonath fought for his life, fought for air and fought, Ravan thought, so that he could be overpowered and put out of his misery. The old man and his companion dragged Shambhoonath for fifty yards and bundled him into the same van that had transported Tiger. Shambhoonath stared out from the grill of the window in the van. He could see Ravan. His jaw snapped one last time before he disappeared.

  ‘Will you play with me, Ravan?’ Shobhan Sarang asked Ravan as he stood indecisively, wondering how he could break up the gilli-danda game Chandrakant and his friends were playing. He was ready to bite her. Those two men would have to come and throw the fishing net on her and take her away. She had a soft, uncertain smile. Did she know? Know about him and the murders? It didn’t matter whether it was a child, cat or the help in the house who crossed Ravan’s path. Everything boiled down to those two questions. Talk to me. Tell me. Look me in the eye. Do you know? What do you know?

  Was Shobhan Sarang taking pity on him? Was she putting him on or trying to inveigle the details of his infamy from him? Why else would she want to play with him? She was at least ten years older than him. She had always been friendly, but there was something distinctly suspect about the timing of her invitation. And what could she play with that club-foot of hers? She tried to cover it up by wearing her sari long but that didn’t fool anybody.

  ‘Why should I play with you?’

  ‘Be … be … because I am alone and not doing anything.’ She did not have a stammer but she sometimes tripped over the simplest words. It was as if the stutter was meant to divert attention from the limp.

  ‘Do you know I can bowl over-arm?’

  ‘Really, that’s something, isn’t it?’

  ‘I can get all those fellows playing there out within two overs. And score a century.’

  ‘You must be a real asset to your school cricket team.’

  Was she making fun of him? No, she seemed genuinely impressed.

  ‘What game could you play with your …’ Ravan stopped himself in time but Shobhan completed the sentence for him.

  ‘With my club-foot?’

  Ravan looked away. Why was he behaving so crassly? Was she going to cry now?

  ‘I can play hop-scotch.’

  ‘I’ll give you a handicap. I don’t want you to think I’m unfair.’

  After half an hour it looked as if it was Ravan who needed a handicap.

  ‘Shall we go to my place now? I’m a little tired.’

  ‘If you want to. I was just about to turn the game around and beat you.’

  ‘I know.’ Shobhan smiled gently. ‘I made shankarpalya this morning. Do you like them?’

  ‘They’re all right.’ Ravan tried to sound offhand. He was sweating after all that exertion. He pushed the hair back from his forehead and involuntarily put his hand under his shorts and pulled his shirt down. Shobhan was not sweating, the hair from her long and thick plait had not come undone, and it looked as if she was wearing a newly starched and ironed sari. But her cool composure and reserve could not conceal the club of her foot. It was encased in a black leather pouch with laces and a heel. It was like a fist instead of a foot, but she could put her weight on it as easily as Ravan could on his.

  They climbed the stairs. She had to clutch at the banister to bring the defective foot up. Ravan made it a point to stay ahead of her. He was intent on proving to Shobhan that he could get the better of her.

  Shobhan produced a wicker stool from under the bed and asked Ravan to sit. Ravan wondered how the Sarang clan fit into the place. They had the same amount of space he and his family had. Maybe they took turns sleeping, or perhaps all of them slept standing up. They were, not counting the parents and grandmother, nine sisters, that’s excluding the sister who
had died some years ago and one brother who had left home four years ago and not bothered to come back.

  Shobhan went into the kitchen to get the sweets. Her sister Tara, Ravan had no idea where she figured in the chronology of the Sarang family tree, was standing in front of a small mirror on the wall and applying Afghan Snow on her face. Didn’t she remember what had happened a couple of nights ago? How could she not? Some of the sisters were sewing, two were cleaning rice and dal, one was reading a mystery novel. Tara caught Ravan staring at her and turned around to put big daubs of the Snow on his cheeks. Before he could protest she had rubbed it all over his face. ‘There,’ she said, ‘you look like a film star now.’ He was revolted by its gooey texture. Poor Ravan. It would take him half a dozen years before he grew up and learnt of the magical properties of that pearly and glutinous unguent. Perhaps he never would be enlightened.

  A Short Digression on Snow

  To be fair is to be God’s chosen. Fairness was more precious than immortality, nirvana or moksha. It was on a par with virginity. It was more desirable than all the treasures of the Mughal emperors and the inspiration of the poets. Admittedly, not more sought after than wealth and power, but just as potent and indispensable. For truly what are wealth and power without a fair skin?

  There is no doubt about it. There is justice on earth. Justice and a sense of fair play are at the root of reincarnation. Those who walk the righteous path in their previous life are born fair. It mattered little if you were plain as whitewash and had a sick haemoglobin count of 2.7. If you were fair, it was obvious you were beautiful. The rest of humanity was condemned. To be dark was to have committed original sin. (Even our gods had to undergo colour shifts. Since black would not do for humans, how could Lord Krishna be permitted to be dark? They turned him blue.)

  Then the House of Patanwala invented Afghan Snow. A patina of Afghan Snow could never never substitute or pass for fairness but for those of us who are deprived, discriminated against and desperate, Afghan Snow was till the early 1960s the next best thing to being fair. It was second skin and second nature. It was inconceivable to leave the house without smearing it on your face. It filled craters and levelled the mounts of acne. It stood out like barium in an X-ray plate of the lower abdomen. It was so effective and noticeable, even the fair of complexion would not dream of being seen without it. It was every man and woman’s Phantom of the Opera, the Kathakali mask that made you larger than life. It was your public persona. Without it you merged and disappeared in a grey mass. It gave you presence. It was society’s stamp of approval. But, most important of all, it made you acceptable to yourself. Truly, artifice alone could now vouch for the real thing.

  Nobody knew what the secret of Afghan Snow was. It had a glittery sheen on it and it transcended the gender-gap long before unisex came into fashion. It cut across caste and class barriers. Men and women, young and old, sank their index and middle fingers into a bottle of Snow (the label outside showed perennial snow-capped mountains supposedly from the Hindukush ranges in Afghanistan) and returned with a gob of the silvery butter and rubbed it into their faces. Having prepared the ground, it was time to overlay it, as Tara was doing just now, with Himalaya Bouquet, or if you could afford it, Cuticura toilet powder.

  Ravan tried to wipe the Snow away with his hands. His face still felt sticky. He pulled out his shirt and scrubbed his cheeks hard with it. Tara was laughing at him. Had she really forgotten their last encounter? It was barely a fortnight ago. Maybe it was nothing special at all and he was making too much of it. But he remembered the surprise on her face. It was as if she had wanted him to be struck blind at that moment.

  He had got up in the middle of the night with diarrhoea. The alarms to wake up the chawls’ men and women to fill up water hadn’t gone off yet and it was a long time before the milk vans would come. ‘Didn’t I warn you not to eat so many shrimps? Did you listen?’ His mother woke up briefly, delivered her routine remark on such occasions and went back to sleep. Ravan stumbled out grumpily and walked towards the end of the corridor where the toilets were clumped together. Suddenly Tara and that boy from the ground floor of Chawl No. 22, who was doing a mechanic’s training course, the one they called Shahaji Kadam, unlatched the door of one of the toilets and stepped out. Why were they using the toilets on Ravan’s floor and not on their own? What was she doing with that man anyway? Didn’t she know nobody spoke with the people from the ground floors of Chawl Nos. 7, 11, 22, 23 and 29, neither the Hindus nor the Catholics? It wasn’t a taboo or anything of the sort, you just didn’t. Full stop. You gave them as wide a berth as you could.

  Two people in the same toilet at the same time, it didn’t make sense. He was obviously three-quarters asleep and hallucinating. But Ravan realized that the expression in Shahaji Kadam’s eyes could not be a figment of his imagination. It was not that of a thief caught in the act, or of a pariah dog cornered by the squad from the municipality. It was that of a man relieved to find that his days of fear and terror were over. He stood there waiting for summary judgement and execution of the sentence. Both he and Ravan waited in an agony of indecision until Tara pulled Shahaji away with a laugh. ‘He’s sleepwalking. He won’t remember a thing.’

  ‘Don’t you want to be a film star? Dev Anand, Dilip Kumar, Premnath and now Ravan Kumar?’ What was it about Tara’s laughter that made him feel uneasy? He did not know how to respond to her. He wanted to be in her company and touch her but didn’t know whether or not his hand would be singed.

  ‘I hate you. I hate you,’ Ravan told her venomously.

  ‘I think your boyfriend wants to snap my head off, Shobhan,’ Tara said.

  ‘Has she been teasing you, Ravan?’ Shobhan was quick to come to his rescue. ‘Stop it Tara.’ She put the plate of shankarpalya on the floor next to him and held out a glass of milk. ‘Take your time. Tara’s going out. Drink your milk after you’ve had the sweets.’

  Tara put vermilion on her middle finger and drew a perfect circle in the centre of her forehead without looking into the mirror.

  ‘How do I look Ravan?’ Would she never stop laughing? ‘Won’t I make a lovely bride?’

  ‘If only someone will marry you.’ Mr Sarang walked in. ‘You or any one of the women in this house. Frankly, I don’t mind if a single man takes the lot of you and opens a zenana just so long as you are off my hands.’

  ‘I do mind.’ Mrs Sarang stood in the door of the partition between the kitchen and the front room.

  ‘Then I’ll leave it to you to find them husbands. We can start with Ravan here.’

  Ravan knew Mr Sarang well. He was often the conductor of the BEST electric tram which took him to his municipal school. When the tramcar service was discontinued he was shifted to a bus on the same route. He was an absent-minded man whom the children from Ravan’s school harried and harassed till he started to scream and rave. They crowded him, all fifty or a hundred who had boarded the tram and clamoured for tickets while preventing him from moving. That way half of them could get off without paying their fares. Ravan never managed to do this because Mr Sarang knew him by name and they stayed in the same chawl. ‘Nine and a half?’ he would ask Ravan. ‘But you were nine and a half yesterday too and the day before. You should be at least eleven today. Didn’t they teach you how to count? You’ll be a grown man with children and you’ll still tell me I’m ten and demand a half ticket.’

  ‘And pray where are you going, Miss Tara?’

  ‘To see Albela. Sandhyarani’s bought a ticket for me.’

  ‘Are you sure this Sandhyarani whose name you’ve been quoting rather often in the last few weeks is a respectable girl and not a man?’

  ‘Yes it’s a boy and I intend to elope with him.’

  ‘Just don’t come back, that’s my only request.’

  Tara left.

  ‘So, Master Ravan have you got a ticket? You can’t expect to get a free ride in the Sarang household while I’m around. Shobhan, has he bought a ticket?’

  ‘O
h, Father, stop it.’

  Ravan couldn’t figure out how Mr Sarang could joke and laugh. One of his earliest memories was of Mr Sarang standing in the open space of the chawls with his daughter Meena in his arms at six in the morning. Parvatibai had pulled Ravan back from the kitchen window before he could see Meena’s limp form but Mr Sarang’s words rang out loud and clear. He was crying uncontrollably and saying, ‘Why did you take her away? My innocent, sweet Meena? Don’t you have a heart? I’ll never forgive you. Never. I’m washing my hands of you. You are of no use to me.’ Mr Sarang’s outpourings subsided. Ravan was confused. Was Mr Sarang talking to his dead daughter? If her death had upset him so much, why did he say he would have no truck with her? ‘Why is he angry with Meena?’ he asked his mother.

  ‘He’s not. He’s angry with God.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because God took her away.’

  ‘Will he take you away too?’

  ‘Better me than you,’ Parvati said with grim determination. Mr Sarang was off again.

  ‘Oh, Meena, where have you gone? I could do nothing for you. The doctors said it was late, too late by the time they found out. What kind of doctors are they? Why are they doctors if they don’t know their job? What if it had been their own child? How can I live without you, Meena? Every breath I take will remind me of you.’

  Ravan never forgave Mr Sarang for crying and frightening him so badly. His pain and loss stuck in Ravan’s belly like shrapnel that no surgery could remove. Did he have to bring the dead Meena home from the hospital and make a show of his grief? Thanks to Meena, he and every other child in the chawls had to have an anti-diphtheria injection. He was five and he was sure he was going to die just like Meena. It was Shobhan who took him to the municipal dispensary and buried his head in her breasts because he didn’t want to look at the injection and kissed his arm where the doctor had given him the shot so that it would not hurt.