by Jeet Thayil
*
She had thought about what to say, she’d prepared herself. When Mr Lee thanked her for coming back, she said, It’s nothing. How could I not come? I owe you this much. Now tell me what you were going to say the last time. He blinked at her, his impassive face flickering in the blue. She noticed tiny bubbles in the corners of his mouth. In his newly acquired accentless English he said, When my father died our lives changed for ever. My mother was sent away and I had to start working. My father lost interest in being a man. The only thing he was interested in was opium. Then he died, in that way he let us down, but I always honoured him. I attended to his rites as long as I was able. I fulfilled my duties as a son. When I became a father I was always afraid I would become like him, become a slave to opium and forget how to be a man. So I took care, I took the utmost care to fulfil my responsibilities. When I died, what did you do? Were you not my daughter? Wasn’t I a better father to you than your real father? I left you only when I had no choice. Until then I gave you my protection and shared my life and all my possessions with you. In return I asked for one thing. When you said you would do it, did you know you would not? This is the question I wanted to ask you. This is why I asked you to come back. Her reply was so soft even she could barely hear it. No, Father Lee, when I said I would do it, I meant it. You didn’t: you lied then and you’re lying now. You made a fool of a sick man. Dimple’s tears were of a slightly different colour than the water, less transparent, of a lighter blue. Old Father Lee, she said, forgive me. Please, I’m so sorry. What must I do to earn your forgiveness? And it was when she heard Mr Lee’s reply that she knew she would never be able to appease him, that he ill-wished her, that he would never forgive her and she would never forgive herself, and that grievances did not disappear with death, if anything they became more pronounced.
Mr Lee said: Smoke more Chemical
CHAPTER NINE
The Intoxicated Entity
It was 1992, which meant that she’d been living in the apartment on the half landing between Rashid’s khana and his home for almost ten years, and though she’d come across his family on the stairs or in the neighbourhood – a cause of apparent distress to his wives, who lowered their eyes and walked on without a word – she had never been to his home and knew nothing about his family life. He rarely mentioned his wives, and if he did, it was to complain about some trivial domestic matter, as if they were employees and he was disappointed with the quality of their service. She wondered if he spoke about her in the same way, and if he spoke about her at all. His wives kept his home running, laundered his white shirts and made his food the way he wanted. She on the other hand had no official standing. She could not bear children or cook; all she could provide was sex and conversation. The sex at least he couldn’t complain about, she knew, because that had once been her job and she’d been good at it. He didn’t have complaints, but she did, though she had no one to tell them to. He had an aversion to touch, to any kind of friendly touching, and cuddling was out of the question. He didn’t like to be seen with her in public. He took too long to come. Sometimes, when they were fucking, she thought of a story she’d read in which the plague arrived to a town in Europe. You sneezed for a few days and died, just like that. As soon as people were identified as sick, they were bundled into carts and taken to the cemetery, where they were dumped, alive, to await burial. In the carts, the men and women fell on each other like animals, not stopping even when they were seized by the handlers and flung onto the cemetery grounds. It seemed to her that they, Rashid and she, fucked in the same way that the plague-stricken couples did, in a frenzy, to the death.
*
She said, Tell me about your life upstairs, what is it like to have a family and never be lonely? But Rashid only shook his head. He was smoking a joint loaded with Chemical. He was happy, he said, why complicate things? Besides, talking about something is a way of jinxing it. She said, In fact talking about something is a way of not jinxing it, because if you say it, it won’t happen. He didn’t know this basic fact because he was still an amateur when it came to superstitions and she on the other hand was a master of the science, and that was were they left it. She went to the door to see him out and it seemed to her then, as she watched him climb the stairs, that he was her only contact with the living. She had seen no one else that day. The khana was closed and there was a curfew in the city and if she looked out at the empty streets she felt as if she was the only survivor of a terrible planetary mishap. She stood on the landing after Rashid’s footsteps had faded. There was a film of perspiration on her face and she let the air cool her. She sniffed herself and thought: I smell of sex. And then she became aware of someone crouched in the dark of the stairwell leading to the street below. She took a few steps forward but saw nothing. The Chemical, she thought, it’s rotting my mind. I have conversations with a dead man and I think I’m being spied on.
*
She sat on the floor and opened the book she’d found at the raddiwallah’s. She was sure it was the author she’d read a long time ago, S. T. Pande, but previously he’d described himself as a professor of history, not theology and symmetry, and he’d been affiliated to some other university. How could there be two professors with identical names writing textbooks for school children? It had to be the same man, and yet, how was he an expert in so many disciplines? Was symmetry a discipline at all? She opened a page at random, which was the way she liked to read, and started from the first line:
. . . what use, then, the machinations of desire? Since God created each felicity of body with a concomitant object of gratification, the desire for immortality is in itself the evidence of immortality, as is the existence of its sister state, immutability. Cf. the Katha Upanishad: ‘When that self who dwells in the body is torn away and freed from the body, what remains? This is that.’
She flipped back to the beginning of the book and it struck her that Some Uses of Reincarnation was not part of the school examination syllabus. The title page, page iii, had only the name of the book and the author’s name: it said nothing about being a textbook. Facing it, on page ii, were printing details, This edition published 1987 by STP Enterprises. New Delhi * Madras * Bhubaneshwar. Page iv gave a Haryana address for STP Enterprises and at the bottom of the page India Educational Services was listed as the publisher. On the facing page were the title and author’s name, this time in an old-fashioned woodcut design, and overleaf, the Contents. Pande had divided the book into two sections, ‘An Introduction to Aggressive Reincarnation’ and ‘The Algebra of Being’. The first section listed ‘active reincarnation practices’ in the case of those who died strange, violent or painful deaths and it began with a prologue, which had a précis of each of the sections to follow:
Immortality
Guilt & Consequence
[sections 3-6 are omitted]
Premonition
Revenge
Tonguelessness
She started at the beginning and read slowly all the way through.
IMMORTALITY. In which the author posits the idea that reincarnation, as a way of prolonging indefinitely an entity’s earthly existence, is nothing short of a curse. The author contends that only intoxicated entities, forgetful of God, wish for unlimited lifetimes in which to prolong their pleasures. The author suggests that such entities should actively take their afterlife into their own hands and seek out the shape in which they wish to return. If they want to eat and drink to their hearts’ content, they should ask to be given the body of a pig; if they wish to lie in the sun and move very little, they should ask for the body of a lizard; and if they wish to copulate all day and all night, they should ask for the body of a monkey. The author is by no means contending that these three body types are the limits of the intoxicated entity’s available choices, certainly not, as there are manifold conditions, for example: inward envy, sleepiness, prideful urination, aversion to heights, devotion to heights, aversion to water, devotion to water, & etc. (See Fig. 8).
&nbs
p; GUILT & CONSEQUENCE. In which the author posits the idea that there are no innocents and no bystanders, because all living things play an active role in their incarnations, reincarnations and subsequent existences; that each entity is born carrying sins and memories from its previous existence, and the stronger the memories, the more dynamic the play of hope and power in its early life; that these memories fade as we grow into adolescence, a loss that occurs despite our own best efforts, because we are encouraged to do so by our families and the society we find ourselves struggling to fit into; that those who die painfully, through no apparent fault of their own, are in fact paying for past errors; that the question therefore of God’s cruelty is moot, for God has no hand in the way we conduct our births on our upward or downward trajectories, as is our course and our curse; and that there is no action without its immediate or delayed consequence.
PREMONITION: In which the author provides an example from his own life. Days before her death, his dear wife was engaged in a strenuous discussion with the author, the details of which he is unable to recall at the present moment. It had something to do with the author’s work habits, which his wife termed obsessive and isolating. She said she felt lonely and cut off both from her husband and the world. The author, irate at the intrusion and the time he was wasting, time that could profitably have been spent at his desk, was about to tell his wife in the strongest language that she had to find her own obsession and could not look to him for happiness, harsh words he had flung at her before, when he became aware of a figure standing immediately behind her. The figure, dressed in stereotypical loose white cotton, told the author, or he didn’t speak exactly, but managed somehow to communicate very clearly that the author should not say the words that were already positioned in his mouth, aimed and ready for launching. The figure said his wife was not long for the world, and that he, the author, should be as kind to her as possible or he would be guilty for the rest of his life. At this moment, his wife moved to the window, where she lit a cigarette, and her invisible companion moved too, so he was always immediately behind and above her, like some kind of broken shadow. As the reader has correctly anticipated, the author did not follow the white-robed figure’s advice. The author uses this anecdote to consider the question of premonition in reincarnative episodes.
REVENGE: In which the author provides a procedural for thwarted entities who wish to exact satisfaction from those who tormented them during their most recent lifetimes. The author makes special mention of brides set on fire by their husbands’ families as a punishment for bringing inadequate dowries. The author enumerates the steps by which such women can be reincarnated within the very families that destroyed them, so as to decimate said family from within its own bosom. First, the author recommends that reincarnation is delayed until such time as the husband’s new wife is pregnant, usually a period of around nine or ten months, because the husband’s remarriage most often occurs immediately after the death of his previous wife; second, the reincarnating entity enters the womb in question and assumes the foetal shape, a process that requires deft manoeuvring and practice; third, she must focus on her task throughout her subsequent childhood, as there will be many forces working to undermine her resolve; and last, she must take pains to disguise any physical signs, for example scorched birthmarks on the skin and a marked aversion to fire, that may signal to an astute enemy that she is the prodigal wife returned. The author contends that will is the paramount faculty to ensure successful reincarnation, particularly when the purpose is revenge. The techniques described in this section can be applied by any entity, i.e. it is not the sole prerogative of murdered housewives.
TONGUELESSNESS: In which the author explains the phenomenon known as partial reincarnation, and contends that partially reincarnated entities, also referred to as ghosts and spirits, are an example not of reincarnation but of delayed departure. The delay is usually caused by an abnormality in the transition of an entity from the world of the living to other worlds. The author posits the possibility of engineering the delay, so as to ensure that there is a chance to say goodbye to the departing entity. Again, the author provides an example from his own experience. When his wife died, suddenly and tragically, he carried out a ritual experiment in an attempt to communicate with her. The author removed his tongue by means of a minor surgical procedure. He is not at liberty to divulge the details of said procedure, because its legality may be open to interpretation; but he will go on record as saying, so to speak, that he was extremely pleased by its efficacy. As a result of his mutilation, the author was vouchsafed several conversations with his wife, who appeared not the least bit daunted by his tonguelessness. Indeed, the author suggests that far from hampering their ensuing interactions, the lack of a tongue may in fact have enhanced them. While he does not recommend such a course to his readers, he offers it as one possible answer to the question: why do you write? And also: why do you never answer your phone? He suggests too that headlessness be considered, but only by advanced entities skilled in self-decapitation. (See Fig. 9).
Dimple flipped to the back of the book hoping to find a picture of Pande, but where the author photo should have been there was a line drawing, a self-portrait. The book was very slim and in the middle was a glossy insert section with more line drawings that corresponded very loosely to the passages they were supposed to illustrate. Fig. 8, for example, which was meant to be an illustration of the section on immortality, had nothing to do with anything in the book, as far as she could see, other than the fact that the words ‘devotion to water’ appeared as a sort of caption. She realized at that moment that Pande was a fraud, that he had printed the book himself (STP was his company, named with his initials), and she knew too that the only part of the book that was not fraudulent was the cross around the author’s neck in the self-portrait at the back. He believed in the Christian God, that much was plain to see, and as she looked at the drawing she realized she did too and she wanted, for the first time in her life, to go to church.
*
The khana was back in business the next day. Late in the afternoon, she put on a dress and went to Salim’s to buy Chemical. Bits of rubble and the shell of a burned taxi lay strewn on the street. She noticed there were no dogs to be seen, not a single one. Where had they gone? There were no cattle or birds either. Salim told her he was out of cocaine and to give Rashid his apologies and to tell him that garad was available and would continue to be available. Chemical, in particular, was available in plenty. Why was that, she asked him, where did it come from that it wasn’t affected by what was going on in the city? Salim smiled at her with sudden affection. It had been a long time since he’d had sex with anyone, he thought, much less a woman, and a hijra-woman at that. What the Lala did to him wasn’t sex, it was payment. The Lala took his ass in return for the job opportunity he provided and the pleasure in the exchange was entirely one-sided. Salim could barely remember what an erection felt like, but at that moment he felt affection for Dimple and he would have liked to fuck her, a friendly or nostalgic or tender fuck. Sit down, he said, and I’ll explain it to you. Garad comes from Pakistan. Garad, you know what it means in Urdu? Waste. This is the unrefined shit they throw away when they make good-quality maal for junkies in rich countries. Even the worst junkie in America-Shamerica wouldn’t touch garad. That’s why the Pakis send it here. We buy it happily and ask for more. And to give it a special kick we add more shit to it and call it Chemical. Now you might say this is some kind of special ingenuity, a skill, to take bad shit and make it worse. But I’ll tell you what it really is, we’re katharnak sisterfuckers, all of us on Shuklaji Street, we deserve to die, we’re only happy when our heads are touching the floor and we’re praying to the god of garad. We deserve to die. Dimple told him to speak for himself. I don’t want to die, she said, not today. I’ve got things to do. Tell me why Chemical is freely available when there are no tomatoes in the market. Because, Dimpy dear, the city belongs to the politicians and the crooks and some of the poli
ticians are more crooked than the most crooked of the crooks. Garad sales are protected, it doesn’t matter that it comes from Pakistan. They’ll make speeches about Mussulmans and burn our homes and shops but this is a multi-crore business and in Bumbai money is the only religion. They’re not stupid. Now you tell me something, what are you doing here? Dimple nodded. The world is ending, she said, anything can happen to anyone at any time.
*
From Salim’s she went toward Novelty Cinema. All along Grant Road, the shops were closed. There were groups of men, always men and always in groups, who stared at her as she walked and she felt a difference in their attention. It wasn’t the usual staring; it was more businesslike, as if they were weighing her for meat, guessing how much she would fetch in the market. Everywhere was rubble and the smoke of recent fires. She saw smouldering taxicabs and trucks. She saw a woman’s slipper, one slipper, in the exact centre of the road. It was in good condition, imitation leather with blue and yellow flowers on the straps. She saw two men who were armed for medieval warfare; one carried a sword and the other a trident. They held their hands to their mouths and kissed the tips of their fingers. White smoke lifted from their cupped palms. They watched her without speaking until she turned the corner. She wasn’t sure where the church was and she hurried down the street until she found it, hidden between a police station and an electrical store. The police station was closed. Why wouldn’t it be, on a day when the city was burning? The police and the dogs, it seemed to her, were always the first to smell trouble and disappear. As she went up the stairs to the church, she had the feeling she was being spied upon. But it was so recurrent these days, the feeling of being watched, that it no longer bothered her. The doors were closed but unbolted and she pushed them open and went into a small room with metal chairs and a statue of Christ Jesus. The only light came from a bulb burning in a cage above the statue, which seemed to float in the air above her, one hand pointed at the ceiling. She smoothed her dress, a long one that hung to her calves. It was the first time in months that she’d worn something other than a burkha. She smoothed the dress and curtsied to the figure. Where had she learned to curtsy? Then she pushed a chair in front of Christ Jesus and took off her shoes and climbed up. By standing on her toes she was just able to reach his hand and place her forehead to his index finger. She noted that his lips were pink and blue, strange lips, like those of someone who had died and been inappropriately made up for viewing. His hair was unwashed and his eyes were tired. There was no hint of a smile on his face, no suggestion that his life was anything other than a titanic struggle. Against what? Against himself, his own cowardice and unworthiness, and, above all, against his shame. She knew his life was a trial from the moment he woke to his last thoughts before sleep, if he slept at all, because there were small bruises under his eyes and it didn’t look like he got much rest. His wounds were dramatic and glossy, movie-star wounds that would not heal, that would stay forever raw, and the circle of thorns on his head dripped blood into his eyes and colourful lips. She felt a sudden gratitude that made her sit down and cover her face with her hands. Then, when she looked up again, she saw the words leave his mouth though his dead lips didn’t move, and the words appeared to her like smoke writing, English words she had no trouble deciphering: Love me because I’m poor and alone like you.
