An Extraordinary Destiny

by Shekhar Paleja

  Varoon’s father, Praveen Sharma, said, “You can learn everything about business at the shop. After all, it’s where you’ll work after college. It makes sense to learn from experience rather than in a classroom from a teacher who has no real-world skills. Besides, it’s not a secret that some of the teachers are bribed by the affluent students’ families for top grades. You don’t need an education like that.”

  But Varoon begged his father. Anything to avoid his fate at the furniture shop with its musty smells of lacquers and oils, where his father seemed detached from the world, losing himself in miniatures that he created by hand. When had the hobby turned into an obsession? Wasn’t there a time when his father had been more engaged with the world? Varoon couldn’t recall. Ever since they’d arrived in Bombay nearly seventeen years ago, his father had slowly let life crush him into a quiet surrender. Varoon couldn’t help but think there was something cowardly about a man who’d given up so early. There were times when Varoon chided himself for judging his father. After all, he’d become a single parent early in life and had to raise his son alone. Varoon had been five years old at the time, too young to remember all the details of when he’d last seen his mother during Partition. Some of his memories of that time were missing. He wondered about all the things they’d left behind in their bungalow the night they fled. In Lahore, they’d been moderately wealthy, with land, a large bungalow, many servants, but now all they had was a dank furniture shop above which he and his father slept. It seemed an entirely unfair fate. Of everything left behind, Varoon wondered most about his kundali. He was certain his mother had said something to him about it, but what it was he couldn’t remember.

  As Varoon made his way into the courtyard of the college, a group of boys smoking under the shade of a large palm tree called out “Ghati! ”—a derogatory term used to describe lower working classes. The boys snickered at this. They’d spotted him from their ambassador cars or the buses that raced past him as he walked down Walkeshwar Road along with some of their servants. Varoon often had to squeeze next to working-class servants, even untouchable toilet cleaners, to avoid being splashed when the buses went over potholes. He ignored the snickering of the rich Malabar Hill boys and climbed up the stairs to his first class of the day, maths.

  Varoon had a knack with numbers. Over the years, he’d kept up with quadratic equations, algebra, calculus, and was near the top of his maths class. While most students worked out calculations on paper, Varoon was able to formulate some of the answers in his head. He had an exam to write. Along with sixty-five other students, Varoon filed into the classroom, walking past the girls who sat in the front half of the room, and found a seat in the back half, with the other boys. The classes at college were densely packed; students’ desks were only inches apart.

  Exam papers were on each desk and as students settled in, Mr. De Souza, the white-haired maths professor, said, “You may begin.” Then he opened a paperback novel at his desk.

  Before Varoon began his exam, he silently recited the gayatri mantra for good luck. It was a superstition he couldn’t do without before beginning anything of consequence. Om tát savitúr váreṇyaṃ bhárgo devásya dhīmahi dhíyo yó naḥ pracodáyāt Om.

  But instead of focusing on his exam, he began to think of his mother, of her round, gentle face, the taste of her hot salty tears that night they were hiding under the gardener’s carriage.

  His father never spoke of her, and the one time Varoon had asked, years earlier, the old man had said, “She was lost that night, with many others.” She was assumed dead, as hundreds of thousands were slaughtered by Hindu and Muslim mobs during Partition. There were stories of whole trains of murdered Hindus arriving in Amritsar and Muslims in Lahore, with blood on the floors, inches thick. However, a tiny part of Varoon believed his mother was somewhere, alive and well. But if she was, why hadn’t she found him? It’d been seventeen years now. The subcontinent was vast, but a simple call to a Bombay telephone operator would have reunited them.

  Before daydreaming further, Varoon took a deep breath and stopped himself; he only allowed himself to indulge this way at night, while lying in bed, when thoughts of his mother would make him wistful, angry, when he would cry silently, furious at life for taking her away from him.

  A few minutes after Varoon started his exam, Shankar, a large and somewhat menacing student, took a seat next to him. Shankar was the only student at the school with a full beard and could be spotted with his friends smoking around the college grounds while classes were in session. He attended classes infrequently, and no one, including some of the teachers, dared to look him in the eye. Without even trying, with his permanent frown and hulk-like frame, Shankar was nothing less than a hazard, a bully, a mawali. When students saw him approaching they would move out of his way, much like the Red Sea parted for Charlton Heston in The Ten Commandments, Varoon thought.

  As Varoon worked away on his exam, he caught a whiff of Shankar’s perspiration. The stench was off-putting. He wondered if the parents in Shankar’s building disciplined their young children simply by invoking the bully’s name: Eat your vegetables or I’ll call Shankar from the third floor. Are you going to go to sleep or am I going to have to call Shankar to come and read you a bedtime story?

  In his peripheral vision, Varoon saw Shankar leaning towards his desk to copy his exam. Instinctively, Varoon turned away and covered his paper. They were near the back of the class and even if Mr. De Souza could see them, Varoon doubted that the old professor would do anything. Mr. De Souza had probably had to endure students like Shankar for years and had learned not to bother getting involved.

  Reaching into his pants pocket, Shankar quietly produced a switchblade, flicked it open, and stabbed the sharp point of it into his wooden desk where it stuck. The black hilt of the blade shuddered slightly. For the briefest moment Varoon met Shankar’s eyes, in which he caught a cold glint, and knew he had no choice but to concede. Just as he’d lost with the bus on Walkeshwar Road earlier that morning, stepping aside so it could pass, he lost again and let Shankar copy his exam.

  Later on, while walking home, Varoon tried to summon memories of his mother in Lahore, of his kundali, but nothing came. All he could think of was how lousy his luck was. From living in a small mansion in Lahore to walking next to toilet cleaners in Bombay. As Varoon trudged uphill now on Walkeshwar Road, he made way for a rickshaw as it beeped at him. He felt useless for not standing up to Shankar, for letting him copy his exam. But he also wondered if the tiny gleam in Shankar’s eye had taught him a lesson, or rather confirmed what he’d considered: that life was entirely unfair.

  - 29 -

  1965

  FROM STREET LEVEL, THE DECREPIT Sharma Furniture Shop building seemed to only have two levels: the ground floor and the smaller floor above, where father and son lived in their modest flat. The two large godown floors were entirely subterranean and invisible from above.

  Wiping the back of his neck with a handkerchief, Varoon inspected the besmirched cloth and winced at the filthy perspiration and sawdust. He was in the first of the two godown floors, where most of the sanding was done by the dozen workers he supervised. It was a dank room with concrete walls laden with dust from years of sanding and ripe with the fug of over a dozen workers perspiring in an ill-ventilated, damp room. A window that overlooked a dense grove of lush trees belonging to the governor’s residence provided a bit of sunlight and a flicker of sea breeze. Leaning to one side of the window, one could admire a slice of the view across the crescent-shaped bay to the other side of Marine Drive, behind which lay the business hub of the city.

  One of the workers bellowed, “We need a piece of ebony brought up from the lower godown.” They were constructing a large almirah.

  The workers argued over who would scurry down for this task. The second-level godown was only used as storage due to poor air circulation. Windowless, it housed huge stacks of walnut, sandalwood, ebony, deodar, rosewood, teak, mahogany, and shesham in vari
ous piles.

  Chottu, the youngest, was picked. As he trundled below and flicked on a light switch, he yelped. The workers laughed.

  One of the workers said, “A mouse or cockroach?”

  “Chottu doesn’t know the difference!” said another.

  Good-natured and faithful, Chottu was born a Sudra. Most of his family cleaned toilets. He was also a little slow. It was rumoured by one of the sanders who came from the same village that Chottu had been dropped on his head as a toddler. Varoon had tried his best to discourage workers from spreading such gossip, but they didn’t pay him the respect they did his father.

  Varoon climbed up the stairs and went into the old man’s office. “We should have the workers construct newer styles of furniture using inexpensive materials. Our margins will never increase otherwise.”

  This was not the first time Varoon had tried to talk to his father about this. The old man kept sanding away at an edge of a miniature rococo chair and without looking up finally said, “I won’t cut corners. We’ve always used quality hardwoods and joinery. Our workers here are highly skilled. That gives us distinction. You should be proud of that.”

  Varoon walked out for a cigarette—a pastime he’d picked up partly due to boredom. He saw an old matchmaker enter the shop and followed him in. Varoon remained outside his father’s office, where he overheard him say to the matchmaker, “Varoon is of marrying age now. There’s the Modis’ daughter—sturdy and beautiful—she would bear plenty of children. Then there’s the Dalals’ daughter—fair, skin like milk, and the Jogias’ daughter . . .”

  A year ago Varoon would have jumped at the chance to choose. Like all the young men he knew in college, Varoon was a virgin and desired to know a woman’s touch. He’d gone to see the seductive Asha Parekh in Ziddi five times at the cinema (an unusual heroine with beautiful eyes and yet tenacious enough to use a slingshot, even a shotgun, if needed). And although he wasn’t rich like many of the students at Wilson College, there were plenty of families with less who’d be elated to have their daughters marry someone like Varoon Sharma, whose family owned a furniture shop in Walkeshwar. And like a prince picking his consort, Varoon was tempted now as he overheard the matchmaker say, “He’s nearly twenty-three. He’ll have to be married soon.” But Varoon wondered if living above the dank furniture shop in the small flat with his father and bride was all that was to be in his life. Somehow it seemed unsubstantial. He could vaguely remember a time in Lahore when they had so much more—a bungalow, servants, some land. He was meant to have more. Wasn’t he? Or was he just remembering the past with rose-coloured glasses?

  His best friend, Manu Advani, was away in Delhi, climbing up the ranks of the military. But that was never an option for Varoon. Unlike Manu, Varoon did not have the fortune of coming from a military family, which would make substantial ascent through the ranks nearly an impossibility. Besides, he didn’t like the idea of having orders barked at him.

  Pacing around the office, Varoon caught a view of the city on the other side of the bay and then found himself outside. At the bus stop just up the road, the number 36 bus’s diesel engine revved and exhaled a billow of black smoke as Varoon sprinted towards it, pumping his arms. A random hand from the crowded bus was offered. Varoon clasped it and leapt on board.

  The blistering sun prompted Varoon to cover his head with a discarded newspaper as he walked the streets. The newspaper’s headlines said something about the threat of war looming. Pakistan had recently been trying to invade sections of the Indian state of Gujarat near the border. Manu had recently sent a letter to Varoon confirming the rumours about how the Pakistanis wanted to gain control of Kashmir, and the lengths they were willing to go to seize the tenuous state. The Muslims, Manu wrote, are spreading lies and fear, and in some cases torturing and raping innocent Hindus. Outlying detachments of both armies have engaged in sporadic gunfire near the border . . .

  Every day now it seemed the papers were full of stories speculating on the imminent threat of a full-scale war. With memories of Partition less than two decades old, the country was more on edge every week.

  But Varoon had more pressing things, such as marriage, on his mind. He weaved through the crowded side streets of the city, among the public and the hawkers with their carts of wares for sale. “New shipment! Brand-new bags from Singapore!” “Batteries from Hong Kong!”

  Spotting a fresh fruit stand, he ordered a plate of pineapple, which the fruit walla sliced deftly with a sharp machete. It made Varoon think of the dhobi walla being stabbed, his wife screaming while Varoon and his mother hid under the gardener’s carriage. He felt guilty for not being able to help. But what could he have done? As he ate the pineapple, Varoon told himself to snap out of it. The fruit was ripe and sweet, satiating his thirst, but the citric acid felt like tiny shards of glass in his mouth, inflicting a slight twinge of pain inside his cheeks.

  As he paid the fruit walla, Varoon asked, “Do you know where the Port Authority office is?” He’d had the idea of applying for an import/export licence for a while now but had lacked the courage to follow through. With the rate that new technology and products were coming from overseas, he thought it might be a good business opportunity.

  The fruit walla wiped his blade on his lungi and said, “Try down that road.”

  It was a busy place with men lined up in various queues, jostling and elbowing each other to get to the front. He realized the city had the largest port in the country, and that India had been exporting textiles and spices for centuries. With the recent influx of imports such as plastics and electrical machinery (Varoon had tried to convince the old man to order an electric sander from Singapore), he reasoned now that shipping was where the future lay. It was impossible for supplies to come by road. To the north lay the Himalayas—impassable; to the sides were East and West Pakistan, the latter with which India had fought a war, and another was likely imminent. And to the south, India was surrounded by sea—the port of Bombay would have a considerable amount of traffic in the future.

  If only he had the start-up capital or some way of getting into the game. If only his father had diversified some of the family money into other businesses rather than sinking their entire savings into a dusty old furniture shop. There were always too many if onlys with his father. Would his old man lend him the money? It seemed so unfair to Varoon that despite the fact the family had once had wealth in Lahore, he now had to live in the scantiness of the middle class.

  And even though his father never spoke of those times before Partition—before his wife, Varoon’s mother, had been lost—Varoon often found himself wondering what his life might have been like if Partition hadn’t happened, how he’d have stood to inherit much more than a dusty furniture shop. Not that he wanted things handed to him on a platter; he was happy to work and disliked the entitlement rampant among the wealthy, but he’d be a landowner who employed dozens and had the respect of the upper crust of society. Is that what his kundali had said? The one that was left behind that night they fled Lahore?

  Varoon decided to keep his mind focused on the task at hand as he approached the front of the long queue of men applying for shipping licences. Could he accept that the rest of his life would be spent overseeing woodworkers in a damp and dingy godown? But why should he accept a life he loathed? Wasn’t he better than that? Or did his kundali tell of a plain life? Is that why it was left behind?

  As he checked his watch Varoon felt time pressing down on him, pinning him under its thumb. It wasn’t only the shop that he felt burdened by, but also marriage to a young woman he’d never met.

  When he finally reached the front, the man behind the wicket declined Varoon’s request for an application and said, “Please come back when you have the necessary paperwork.”

  “But that’s what I need from you,” Varoon said, confused.

  Men behind him became impatient and jostled him out of the way. One man explained, “Brother, you can’t get anything done with empty pockets.”r />
  - 30 -

  1965

  VAROON GAZED OUT THE WINDOW at nothing in particular after the 36 bus departed Flora Fountain. Not having enough money to bribe the clerk at the Port Authority office, he was overcome with despondency, rendered immobile by the fact that the furniture shop was where his whole life would be spent.

  “Where to?” A conductor rapped on the metal seat frame with his ticket puncher, irritated at Varoon for not having the fare ready.

  But the bus was empty; there was no reason for the conductor to be in such a hurry. While searching his pockets for coins, Varoon mumbled, “Walkeshwar.”

  “What?” the conductor asked, annoyed.

  Varoon repeated himself a little louder, glaring at the conductor, who was shorter than him and twice his age. The conductor was wearing a Muslim kufi.

  Among the small shrapnel of coins in Varoon’s pockets, he could feel a fifty-paisa coin but he didn’t want change from the Muslim conductor’s filthy hands, so he continued to trawl his pockets for the serrated edges of ten-paisa coins. He needed three for exact fare. He found two and plunked them onto the conductor’s open palm without touching him while continuing to search for the final coin with his other hand.

  The conductor rapped on the steel seat frame with his metal ticket puncher again, louder this time. “Chal, chal! If you don’t have enough you’ll have to get off!” he barked, as though Varoon were no better than a servant wanting a free ride.

  Why don’t you go to Pakistan and live with your own filthy people, Varoon nearly said out loud, still searching his pockets and returning the conductor’s glare. So lost in despair was he that he muttered the rest of his thought out loud, under his breath. “Why are you taking a job away from a Hindu? Bastard.”