The Storyteller

by Adib Khan

  One night, after a local election, the charlatan lurched into the godown. It had been a miserable day. The rain and wind collaborated to bring us back indoors in the afternoon. The bazaars were deserted and the streets empty. Earlier I had gone out only to escape Barey Bhai’s threats about rising costs and dwindling incomes. It was a regular routine. Accusations of laziness. Suspicion of deception. He was convinced that we earned far more than we declared. We were reminded about his authority in the bustee. If he ever found that we were cheating…, he threatened. His advice never varied. Sell more charas. Pick more pockets. Target the elderly. Extend our nocturnal activities to the more affluent suburbs. How many babies had we kidnapped recently? He remained unconvinced that it was less dangerous to make a living in the older sections of the city.

  The early part of the morning had been barren. Few pedestrians. Speeding buses and cars. Recklessly driven motor rickshaws and trucks sprayed me with water. I was splattered with mud.

  After roaming aimlessly for most of the morning, I spied a white memsaheb near one of the city’s big hotels. She didn’t look like the type to be wearing a money belt. As she waited for a taxi, I moved beside her and partly sheltered myself under the blue umbrella she held. I shivered and chattered my teeth. She edged away. The trick with foreigners was to get close to them. They felt intimidated about being touched by ragged locals. Their nostrils quivered and they smiled nervously.

  I hounded her with the standard story about my miserable fate—a sick mother, starving brothers and sisters, no job, the disadvantages of being a dwarf. My size rarely failed to arouse pity in foreigners. I was deemed to be helpless. An object of curiosity. The fact that I could speak some English fascinated them. They were perplexed that a beggar could speak the rich man’s language. They couldn’t figure it out. There were questions about the satchel I carried, where I lived, my family. I smiled and remained a mystery. Often I took out a handful of dead cockroaches and offered the insects for sale as an aphrodisiac. They had to be dried and ground to a powder. A miracle cure for weak erections and watery semen. It could intensify the sexual drive in women and sometimes frighten their husbands away. That stopped the questions. Hastily they moved on.

  The memsaheb’s grip on the handbag relaxed. She looked concerned and fossicked around for some money. I was handed a ten rupees note. I seriously thought about snatching the handbag. It would have been fairly simple. Up on my toes for a quick bite on the fingers…the knife slashing the strap…across the road and under the fence. No one would have heard the screams. By the time the police arrived, I would be a confusion in her memory. But she was old…

  I looked longingly at the unmarked smoothness of the leather. The bag itself would have fetched me a fortune. And inside? A dark bazaar full of riches. Money. Perfume. Key ring, pen, lipstick, hairbrush. Disposable commodities.

  She looked down at me and smiled kindly. The way Maji did when I pretended to be apologetic about broken crockery. Reluctantly I walked away.

  The money? Well, I used it to gorge myself on savouries and chai.

  An empty field. No football or cricket. An absence of vendors. It was too miserable for daytime lovers. Irresistible. I closed my eyes and stood in the middle to feel the calm of the openness around me. I rinsed my T-shirt and tattered pants in the rainwater. I felt the power of freedom in my nakedness. I owned all that was precious in the world. Trees…space…empty benches. The silhouettes of buildings in the misty distance were no more than the shadows of a troubled mind. I whirled around like an entranced dervish. Time and memories were trampled under my feet. Bliss was being by myself, without people to stare at me. Trees didn’t laugh. No noise of ridicule from space.

  Rhim jhim…Rhim jhim. The song of the wind and the rain dancer.

  In the afternoon I returned to the dreariness of the bustee. The rain had intensified, and heavy clouds floated in from the north. Slush and puddles of dirty water. I stepped over dead rats and dissolving shit. Steam rose with a dreamy slowness from the mounds of rotting rubbish. They looked forlorn without the dogs pawing through the soft, pulpy mess and naked children sliding down their sides. The shacks cowered and shivered in the wind in a state of abject surrender. Wisps of smoke, like departing ghosts, drifted upwards and disappeared in the pall of grey.

  I missed the sacred emptiness of the field. There was a sudden tug of loneliness and a momentary weariness with my life. The rich and the loved would lie beneath the earth or be reduced to ashes, I reminded myself. The same as I. There was some consolation in nature’s scheme for humans. I began to conceive a story about a dying gravedigger.

  The others had returned to the godown. Only Barey Bhai was away, undoubtedly bullying and extracting money from the bustee dwellers, instructing his thugs to use violence on those shopkeepers who were behind with their rent.

  We pooled our collection of cigarette butts and lit them with a lighter that Chaman had pinched from a taxi driver. We talked about the futility of our morning’s wanderings. Empty bazaars and surly shopkeepers. No foreigners. Not a paisa to be made. There was a pervasive note of mutual sympathy in our lies.

  We anticipated Barey Bhai’s response. Yelled abuses. A beating for whoever was slow enough to be caught. Threats to abandon us. The following day he usually behaved as if nothing had happened.

  This time we were wrong. There were no angry words or violence. But he refused to provide us with a meal. We had to earn our food, Barey Bhai said quietly.

  ‘He has had a profitable day,’ Lightning Fingers observed shrewdly.

  Whenever we were hungry, we talked about unknown experiences—marriage, children, the security of parents, love. We speculated and pondered on things we could not experience and didn’t understand. Sometimes Chaman cried for no obvious reason. Somehow the commonality of our bewilderment dulled the pain of hunger.

  Boredom hovered over us as the afternoon slipped into darkness. We watched Chaman as she prepared for the night. With deft touches of her fingers, she transformed herself. Among the shadows she looked distant and exotic, unwilling to speak to us. Chaman was ready for work.

  Barey Bhai watched her with brooding eyes. In the light of the hurricane lamp that hung over his specially made platform, he ate lamb curry and chappattis provided by the restaurant he owned. He devoured food in huge quantities, belching, grunting and farting with an explosive potency that made us thankful for the roominess of the godown.

  There was no light for me to read. Besides, I couldn’t risk revealing my cache of magazines and stolen books. They could all be sold easily for a few rupees. I lost myself in the story about the gravedigger and the worms that he nurtured and caressed at night to ward off loneliness.

  Sri Pandey had arrived quite unexpectedly. His face was flushed with the triumph of the local election result, and he talked in a shrill, loud voice. We were given bottles of cheap whisky. ‘Gifts to celebrate our win! Jai Hind!’

  The night redeemed itself with this sudden stroke of generosity.

  ‘Jai Hind!’ he cried again, expecting us to echo the call of patriotism.

  Eagerly we broke the seals and unscrewed the bottle tops. Chaman led him inside the partitioned space. We drank greedily. Throats burned and sensations sharpened. The world wasn’t a bad place after all. It was full of swirling colours and unending music. I began to feel numb. It was an immense relief to be free from pain.

  Lightning Fingers suddenly decided that Chaman was in danger. He lurched around in a circle, insisting that she had to be rescued from the clutches of the foul politician. Nimble Feet disagreed. This was to be our only earning for the day, he argued aggressively. I managed to distract them by suggesting a sword fight on top of the unstable timber frame. In his state of drunkenness, Nimble Feet needed no encouragement. He grabbed a stick and managed to climb up a makeshift ladder.

  ‘I am Raj Kumar! Prince of Swordsmen!’ he boasted.

  Lightning Fingers followed. Farishta and I clapped our approval, ignoring Barey Bhai�
��s whispered warning. Instead of entertaining us, the two drunks were distracted by Pandey’s antics. They began to laugh and abuse him, gesticulating with their sticks.

  Their insulting intrusion upset the politician. Alarmed that his kinkiness had been witnessed, the fat man made a move to leave. The situation quickly spiralled out of control. Chaman demanded full payment. Pandey refused. Provocatively he fished out a wad of one hundred rupees notes from somewhere and waved it above his head.

  ‘You could have had some!’ he shouted.

  Even Barey Bhai gasped at the opportunity we sensed. Luxury beckoned me. I saw myself in a huge mansion with a wife and children. My children. Servants in attendance. Wardrobes crammed with clothes. A new car. Acres of gently undulating land with gardens and fruit trees.

  We reacted instinctively. I grabbed the politician’s right leg and bit into the calf muscle. His howl of pain goaded us to greater efforts. Lightning Fingers and Farishta attempted to snatch the money. Chaman pulled his hair and Nimble Feet punched him in the face. Even Barey Bhai joined the struggle.

  The pelting rain muffled the noises. We were too giddy with the absurdity of our dreams to think about the sobering consequences of our action. I pulled his other leg. There was an awful sound as the politician’s head hit the floor. We scrambled for the money. I barked and bared my canines like an angry dog. There was a knife in my left hand. The others backed away. I had every intention of distributing the money evenly, provided I had my fair share.

  The rest of the night remains blurred in my memory. I was told that someone informed Sri Pandey’s bodyguards. They threatened us with truncheons and knives, and managed to recover the money we had taken. Sri Pandey was carted away. He did not regain consciousness. There was no police investigation. The matter was hushed up, until the judge mentioned the incident as though I were the only one responsible for the politician’s death.

  ‘Liars…thieves…illegitimate offspring! They are like sores on a weak body. The country must rid itself of these blemishes!’ The angry words swarmed around me. The government was dedicated to the promotion of spiritual enrichment. Artistic excellence. A new moral order. The forging of a national identity. A revival of a glorious past. Those were the priorities of this new democracy.

  I know, I know. My laughter was inappropriate. But it was merely a reaction to what I was unable to comprehend. I couldn’t help myself.

  I was lectured on propriety. ‘It is essential to respect the icons of the law…reverence for our visionary leaders…’ The judge lingered on the necessity for honesty, prayers and a simple life devoid of greed. ‘It is the duty of every citizen to strive for a clean mind and a pure soul.’

  The old man paused and eyed me sternly. Whatever he saw revived his enthusiasm for purgation. There was a renewed vigour in his voice. Fires and knives would expunge and purify. Guns, tanks and aircrafts were in readiness to silence the dreaded enemies of the country. There was also a new weapon. Terrible and wonderful. In the name of Indra, it was a moral imperative for Bharat to rediscover itself and seek the purity of its origin. But first the cancerous afflictions of Hindustan had to be destroyed. Surgeons had to apply knives. It was necessary for patients to bleed. Regrettable but essential. A wellestablished principle—first chaos, and then the emergence of order. Peace. Harmony.

  ‘Crap and damnation!’ The words burst through my lips. ‘Liars and crooks sit in judgement of the poor. Spot the honest people on the roads! What? No one? The government must employ them all. The nation has a great future with so many skilled surgeons.’ An uneasy titter rippled across the room. Several guards rushed towards me. I remained defiant. ‘Fear, hatred and threatening promises! They are weapons more potent than the arsenal at the army’s command!’

  ‘History is evolving us into a powerful entity. Our decisions will be upheld by posterity as the necessary steps in the rebirth of this great nation.’ The judge’s eyes were venomous with contempt. ‘But what would you know? You are a lying, slimy, little vermin! A freak! A piece of deformity! An apostate and a blot on the land! You have no sense of this country’s great destiny.’ His eyes radiated the hatred he felt for me. ‘Why must I deal with this piece of hopelessness just before I retire?’

  An attendant slipped behind the chair and placed a steadying hand on the precariously perched wig that was beginning to slide off the judge’s head.

  ‘Get a bigger head!’ I piped. ‘One that has more room for shit!’

  The silence in the courtroom exploded into a crescendo of noises. Boos and applause. A guard belted me across the face. Hands grabbed me.

  ‘Order! I will not permit unruly behaviour in the court!’ The judge glared at members of the public. Gradually everyone quietened down. He turned to me again. ‘There is no place for you in this country…on this earth! You are no more than an odious parasite. A cursed creature without faith! Certainly not a Hindu! Nor a Jew nor a Christian. Not even a Musulmaan. What are you, I ask? Hah? No, let him answer!’

  The grips slackened. Air rushed back into my lungs. Now that was a silly question, even for him. What was I? Didn’t the man have eyes? A mind? A heart? Was there a drop of blood in his veins, or were they filled with the toxin of prejudice? What was I?

  The guards stood on either side of me, watching intently for my reaction.

  ‘I am Delhi’s hottest and shortest virgin, sir! A small package. But!’ My vanity surfaced and contributed to my carelessness. ‘Not a small mind. Huge desires. Monstrous appetites. Greedy senses. The spirit of an indestructible adventurer. I roam the entire universe. I have the awesome power to create people and invent places. Structure events, fill the gaps and give the past a shape. I am rich! Words are my wealth. What am I? A juggler. A sorcerer. Yes, a liar to make my life more bearable. What am I? Everything that is foul and enchanting. I live in poverty and among filth and decay. I dream of the beautiful and I also defecate in the streets. I am a composite of blood, sweat and semen. Flesh and hair. I hurt and can be happy. I can hate intensely and yearn for love. I am human! Do you understand that, you carcass of a goat? What am I? Human! Deformed and hideous? Yes. But human and alive!’

  ‘Take him away.’ The judge sounded weary. ‘There is no hope for him.’

  An evolving history, the old man had said. History without compassion or imagination, at the mercy of an ugly idealism. A synthesised pattern of bigotry, hatred and revenge. We…Oops! I forgot that I was to be excluded from this shimmering future. This was to become a moral country, a spiritual repository for the rest of the world to admire and envy. A land draped in sombre grey, where the sky was to be an empty field without the sounds of winged creatures. By decree the sea would remain silent. Here the human mind was not permitted to create other worlds and savour the pleasures of imagined lives. A place where the body was to be hosed down with discipline and the soul fed with prayers and chants. Restrictions and deprivation were to be paths to salvation. People had to see what lay straight ahead. Not backwards, sideways or beyond. The imagination was to become the common enemy. An evil force. It had to be captured and sentenced to languish in the shadows of a perceived perfection and…facts. FACTS. FACTS!

  But I could not utter my serious thoughts. It was assumed that I was illiterate, and such people were deemed to be incapable of uttering meaningful words. I had to preserve my precious secret. There was nothing I could have done to influence the judge’s decision.

  ‘This…this thing is a grave danger to the community. He is to be held in custody and brought to a full trial at a future date.’

  3

  Torn, broken and decaying

  Night has fully awakened. It is deep and resonates with many voices. They gather around, old acquaintances who have never failed me, defying time and swirling in the depth of space. Their echoes filter through the darkness of the layered chambers, seeping into consciousness. They assume human forms.

  I am not alone.

  I see myself in the revolving mirrors of history, emerging from t
he dynastic ruins of an ancient city. I will not die. Imagine a simurgh rising from the ashes, its memory carrying the burden of other lives it has known, compelled to speak about heinous deeds and unimaginable suffering. Ah, Mother India is a powerful sorceress. She squeezes the imagination to throw up sights and sounds too strange for belief, slashing her womb and spilling the unwanted misfits she has bred to unleash their mischief in the streets.

  I surface here. Suddenly I appear elsewhere. Ha! Ha! Ha! They think that I will soon be broken. Bah! Why should I bother with explanations? The fools…

  Where shall I go today? Such choices confront me. So many beginnings. I have one favourite. Fly my imagination. Ride on the freedom of precious darkness. Live again. Experience those rare strokes of kindness. See and listen to your own story…

  ‘One, two, three…’ The voice was restrained. Patient and gentle. ‘A, B, C, D…B-A-D…bad. G-O-O-D…good.’ Her hands ruffled my hair. ‘Did you hear that, Vijay? He has such a talent for language!’

  In the evenings, the kitchen was a warm sanctuary in the harshness of Delhi’s winter. The burning charcoals spoke to me. A red mouth hissed and spat out messages from unknown worlds. On the walls, the shadows penetrated the recesses of my mind and germinated there. Maji sat on a low stool and rolled out the dough for puris, cajoling me to repeat the lessons.

  ‘The numbers now, Vamana. You know the letters of the alphabet. You are very good with words. Let us try some numbers. Vamana!’

  Vamana, the dwarf in mythology, traverses the sky and bounds across the earth in three strides, armed with the power to send demons to hell. Possessor of the entire universe. Such vision and energy! Vamana…Vamana. Why did he need numbers?

  ‘A, B, C, D, E…B-A-D…’

  ‘No, the numbers, the numbers—one, two, three…’ She never lost her temper in those futile attempts to teach me the basics of arithmetic.