by Dipika Rai
‘Those city gangs, the begging gangs. You don’t have them in the village?’
‘There is no one to beg from in the village. All the extra girls get taken to the city. My father would have liked to send me to the city, but I got . . . away.’ She almost says ‘married’. The word sears her tongue.
‘The gangs make you into beggars, cut off your hands or scar your face. I think they did that to my brother. Bapu said he was sick anyway.’
‘Well, if he was sick, then it’s a different story.’ Strong, surviving children are an asset, but dying ones, well, some sort of use has to be found for them too, just like some sort of use was found for her. Should she tell him about her scar?
Suddenly she is afraid, the image of Sharma’s wife, shit-smeared and raped jumps into her mind. She wants to share her fear with her benefactor but she doesn’t fully trust him yet. ‘So how did you come here?’ she asks, quickly making him once again the subject of discussion.
‘I helped them build it.’
‘You built this building?’
‘No . . . Yes . . . No. I broke the rocks for the concrete. Then when the building was complete, I just stayed on. They inherited me. Then Chacha came.’ He uses the familiar Chacha to describe the khaki-clad man, no relative of his.
‘Chacha wrote the address for me,’ Mamta states with wonder.
‘Yes, he’s BA pass.’
‘BA?’
‘You have to study for years and years, nearly more than half your life to become a BA pass. It’s hard.’
‘My brother left to work in the city. His name is Jivkant. He said he wanted to read and write, but he can’t study half his life. I suppose he’ll never become a BA pass. I will look for him the next time I take Baby for a walk.’
‘Forget it, you can never find anyone in the city. People come here to lose themselves. How much is she paying?’
‘Three hundred rupees.’
‘Of course you’ll have to find work in another house otherwise you’ll starve, even though you have a place to sleep.’
She’s half tempted to tell him about the stolen money, but instead she says, ‘How will I find another house?’
‘Ask Mrs D’Souza to recommend you to her friends. Be very, very nice to Baby and then she’ll be very nice to you. I think it’s because she doesn’t get on with her daughter that she’s in love with that dog. Her husband died two years ago.’
‘I tasted ice today. Ice.’
‘Sleep with your head on your hand, otherwise rats will bite your face and worms crawl in your ears,’ he says, unimpressed with her discovery of frozen water.
Mamta gulps. Kalu pulls his blanket over his head and immediately sinks into a deep sleep holding his head up with the palm of his right hand.
The night falls round her drop by drop. She is tired, her night on the bus has left her hurting in places she never knew existed. She can’t switch off her thoughts. They crash in the cave of her mind, bouncing like disoriented trapped birds, gathering momentum and volume with every circuit. Why did I leave her behind? A runaway, that’s what I am now, a runaway, like Sharma’s wife. What will Gopalpur say? What will Amma think? What will Sahibji think? Where will I find Jivkant? Left alone in the night, safe for the time being, with a job in hand and a roof over her head, Mamta is simply lost.
She can just about see the edge of the sky if she cranes her neck to look beyond the stairs. It is a bluish white. The city lights have eclipsed the stars. How is it possible that men are able to obscure the creation of God? So much light for a sleeping city. If I had but one bulb at home, what wouldn’t I have done with it?
It will be months before she will realise that the city rarely offers up a moon and never in winter when the pavement dwellers light whatever fuel they can get their hands on to keep warm, adding to the smoggy sky with smoke from their sooty fires. It isn’t the same as in the village, where she took the moon for granted.
She thinks of her stepdaughter and feels the burning prick of tears. Why did I leave her behind? If she’d had a companion at that moment she would have told them her whole story, about her mother, her marriage, her kidney, her stepdaughter, the money, perhaps even about Lokend. But Kalu is asleep. His open mouth dribbles spit, making a dark patch by his bent elbow. Suddenly, too tired for thoughts, she allows the deepening night to pat her to sleep.
She wakes before light. The under-surface of the staircase climbs over her like a cave. She shrinks into herself. ‘Amma?’ She calls to her mother to make some sense of her situation. Then she sees Kalu’s bed all rolled up and tucked to one side. She knows where she is and what she must do. She climbs out from under the stairs. One side of her body is polka-dotted with mosquito bites. The morning brings new fears and new guilt . . . she left her behind. Mamta scratches her bites; her body, pricked with itching sores, brings her back to her senses. She checks between her breasts, her money is still intact. She makes her way to the waterline. The tap runs dry three women before her.
‘Here, take this. You have to wake up earlier next time,’ says Kalu, handing her a single clove. She bites down, savouring its nascent astringent flavour.
‘Keep it till this evening. She’s bound to talk to you. She loves to talk. Talk, talk, talk. That’s what she does. You don’t want to give her stinky answers, do you? Get yourself some neem sticks. Three roads up and to the left by the little temple is a neem tree. If you aren’t afraid of heights you can pick your own, but early in the morning, otherwise buy them for fifty paisa at the grocers. Don’t let him overcharge you. He’ll be able to tell you’re a country mouse with his one good eye.’
She returns with Kalu to the building.
‘Go look for other jobs. Ask Chacha. He might have something. I have to get going.’ Kalu steps out of the gate and melts into the city. Mamta stays watching him till the last possible moment. When will she be able to simply step out of the gate and melt into the city like that?
Go look for other jobs. Ask Chacha. She’ll have no luck with Chacha the Taciturn who won’t give anything away, but Mrs D’Souza of the stretch pants, now that might just be a possibility. But first she must buy herself a new sari.
She wanders through the market, clutching her filthy sari pallav in her hand, her hidden money chafing her skin. There are so many customers in the shops, why would anyone attend to her? ‘Come, Didi, want to buy a sari?’ a little boy calls to her. He has been placed at the doorway of the shop by his blind employer to snag wavering potential customers, be they any caste or creed.
‘Yes, yes,’ she replies, breathless with excitement, stepping into the shop’s cool interior.
‘Masterji, she wants to buy a sari.’
‘So what do you want? Nylon, cotton, silk, polyester . . . it is a new material, very popular . . .’ The blind Masterji invites her to sit on the white sheet-covered bench. ‘What colour? We have everything. You just tell me and I take out for you. No hurry, you see as many as you like.’ Masterji’s sightless eyes, jutting out like pieces of mutton fat from his pockmarked face, pierce right through to her giddy, spendthrift soul. This is the first time she has bought clothing, dyed and patterned by someone else. Suddenly she is unsure, and tries to leave the shop. ‘Nothing yet, Masterji, I will be back,’ she says, as he opens up a stack of saris, trapping her with their colours.
‘Orange, pure silk, brocade from Benares; green one from Bombay, good wash, polyester, latest fashion . . . and this one cotton . . .’ He runs his hands over the cloths, feeling for both material and colour. The blind old man knows his merchandise, and his customer. She is the type who will want a good-value sari, something she might be familiar with from the village, but nothing like one she might have been able to buy at a place like Saraswati Stores.
‘I have the perfect one for you, good value cotton, very strong, here – smell it.’
She places the new fabric to her nose, it smells of wheat fields and wet earth. That’s what gets them every time, the smell of new fabric. He laughs
on the inside because he has her now, she can’t escape.
Mamta takes hours to decide on the sari the blind man has chosen for her, a good-value cotton of bright blue with an orange border.
Dressed in her new sari, she pops the clove in her mouth, and runs up the stairs, touching nothing.
Mrs D’Souza, in her floral pink-and-white nightdress with a tiny pink bow at the neck and black curlers in her hair, is a sight to behold. Her fat arms are bisected by the tight elastic of her sleeves. The lower halves attend to buttering bread in the kitchen. Her door is wide open to let in fresh air.
Mrs D’Souza’s bright loud voice greets her. ‘Cynthia,’ she shouts, ‘time to wake up.’ She sips her tea, wincing as it burns her tongue. Mamta will never get used to the falsetto of a mother talking to her child. She’s never heard it before. There’s no time for childish games where she comes from. The business of living in the village does not tolerate lightheartedness.
‘Memsahib . . .’ Mamta faces Mrs D’Souza’s pink-and-white night-dress, stretched tight across two perfectly round buttock cheeks, each a complete circle in its own right.
‘Cynthia, church.’ The falsetto calls to the daughter again, but it is a token demand. The daughter won’t emerge from her room till the day is nice and ripe.
Mamta stands in the doorway, half in half out. That’s the state of her life now, half in half out. Displaced.
‘Memsahib . . .’ Mamta looks with awe at the curlers in her memsahib’s hair. Then she grabs the kitchen broom and starts sweeping the landing. At last she has a purpose.
Mrs D’Souza turns around, blowing at the teacup in her hands, a faint smile on her lips and a single eyebrow arched condescendingly. She has judged her new servant well. This sweeper will never think of saying no to extra work without extra pay, not like the thieving boy. She could never have asked him to clean the landing; he would have been standing on her head with his hand held out for a big tip if she had.
She tugs the curlers free. ‘What is it?’
‘N-nothing.’
‘Well, if it’s nothing, then come with me.’ The door locks behind her with a click. Short of taking Mamta by the hand, she pulls her down the stairs with her will. ‘Bloody people, call themselves civilised. Just look at these walls. That Mrs Nath, filthy woman, should be shot. Most of this is her mess. My Cynthia has to pass by this every day.’ The woman waddles laboriously down the stairs.
Mamta can see nothing on the walls that might upset Mrs D’Souza. ‘Paan stains, piss, and just look at what these uncouth gundas have scrawled. My God, I blush at my age.’
Mamta has seen too many betel-juice stains to be offended by them. In Gopalpur it was mostly the men who chewed betel-leaf, a woman chewing betel-leaf meant she was the boss in the family. Betel-juice stains are a good thing where she comes from. And the piss, yes, the ammonia goes up her nose too, but it isn’t as delicate as her memsahib’s. The smell offends Mamta too, but she may not hold her nose, that is the privilege of memsahibs. Mrs D’Souza marches Mamta downstairs. ‘Give her a mop and broom. Let her clean the stairs. I will pay for it myself,’ she commands Chacha. Sunday may not be a day for any good Christian to work, but a Hindu Sudra can work on any day . . . or night. Mrs D’Souza is not one to meddle in another’s religion. ‘Come find me when you’re done,’ she says, turning quickly to climb back up to where she came from.
Chacha hands Mamta a pail, mop, plastic bristle brush, coconut husk, ash. It is a desperate stairwell requiring robust cleaning.
Mamta wraps her new sari pallav across her face . . . wheat fields and wet mud. She smiles into the blue fabric and starts on the walls. Three hours later she is done. The stairwell has exacted its toll: the skin feels raw on her hands. But what does she care? She is free, clothed in fineness, she would scrub a hundred such stairwells if it kept her away from her husband.
‘Cynthia, the church won’t wait,’ she hears her memsahib say as she comes upstairs to return the broom.
Chapter 10
DAKU MANMOHAN IS TRUE TO HIS WORD. There isn’t a task they can set for him that he doesn’t complete with care and passion. He has turned, not just the corner plot, but the whole area round his cell into luscious fields. Asmara Didi half expects the barren mango trees overhead to start producing fruit just to be a part of the fecund cycle he seems to have put into motion. Reluctantly her admiration for the man she hates is growing.
Each day the bandit is let out of his cell. He hitches the yoke across his shoulders and with measured steps reaches his field. He has transformed that parched and stony earth into prolific greenery through sheer will. All along the edge of his field stand precise rows of marvellous roses in glorious bloom. Heads of flowers as large as cabbages – his personal undeclared gift to Asmara Didi – drop occasional petals to the turned earth below.
But the novelty of the prisoner is wearing thin, and now only the staunchest hecklers – Gope and mute Kanno – remain. Time has made them still and silent. The only one who remains keen as a ripe chilli is Singh Sahib himself. His heart still reverberates like a tuning fork in unison with the bandit’s daily prayers. Subconsciously Singh Sahib knows that their entwined destinies will bear a profound fruit.
He finds himself humming one of the prisoner’s tunes:
‘Oh innocent heart,
oh innocent heart, What is your desire, what is your destiny?
In this material world,
You are a lost soul,
Oh ignorant heart, oh ignorant heart
What is your desire, what is your destiny? . . .’
. . . and realises that since he abducted the bandit, he hasn’t once thought of his lovely late wife Bibiji. Singh Sahib has begun to take apart the thick skein of his prisoner’s life and now thinks of him as a person, a family man with a history; and it is with building acceptance that he sees his son squat beside the cell to chat with him.
Each day Singh Sahib listens for their conversation, but the words elude him because they talk softly. In their loose postures he sees a familiarity that he lacks with his own son.
Ram Singh still comes to his father’s room nearly every day. He smells of alcohol and his manner is accusing and brooding. He talks of nothing but getting rid of the bandit. The elder son wants his father to act through him, he wants his father’s approval to kill the bandit. Singh Sahib’s approval would represent a conscious choice, a choice in favour of him over Lokend.
Today Prem’s thoughts are more with Mamta than with Daku Manmohan. Where are you now? Mamta, take care of yourself. I always thought I would be next in line for the city, but it turned out to be you. He is disappointed, but not as much as he thought he would be. Looking after Daku Manmohan seems almost better to him, much more dangerous, much more responsible, much more exciting. He turns around to face his charge.
‘Come here, boy, I have a story to tell you, but first one question: do you think people are defined by their deeds?’ asks Daku Manmohan.
‘No,’ replies Prem cautiously.
‘So, could you accept me as a man, instead of judging me for what I have done?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I like your honesty. Did you know your uncle was my right-hand man for many, many years, and that’s why your family was spared?’
‘Yes, we suspected as much.’
‘He was a good man. I trusted him with my life.’ Daku Manmohan thinks back to a different time. His eyes sweep past the bars of his cell into the brightness beyond without focusing on anything. ‘You remind me very much of him. He was just a little older than you when he went on his first raid.’ The boy is entrapped by the story made personal for him. ‘Shall I go on?’
‘Yes, yes.’
‘Then listen. My family used to be farmers too, just like your family. We too had debts with the Big House, just like your father does. My father was one of the farmers interested in forming a panchayat to regulate things like repayments and interest on loans. They would have got their panchayat i
f our crops hadn’t failed that year. But because our crops failed, we weren’t able to make our payments to the Big House. Singh Sahib’s father sent his henchmen to destroy us. They said that because we hadn’t paid what we owed them, they owned everything we had. So first they took our grain, then they burned down our hut and after that they took all my sisters away and sold them to a brothel in the city. My eldest sister was to be married one week later. She killed herself.’ The bandit’s eyes are red and burning.
‘Go on, go on,’ says the boy, unabashedly showing a morbid interest in the tragic tale.
‘My mother went mad after that. You may know her. She is the one who grabs the feet of all the temple-goers.’ Prem knows the woman well. She lies by the steps, breasts exposed; sometimes a passer-by will throw a rag over her. Lata Bai always put some food in her thali, cursing the bandits as she did so.
‘But we thought . . .’
‘Yes, everyone thinks that we did that to her. But I didn’t do that to my mother. As for my father, he disappeared that night, leaving us three brothers alone. We knew they would come for us the next morning, so we ran away. We went into the mountains and ravines where more like us lived. There we learned to shoot straight and sever a head with one blow. We learned to ride fast and hide in seconds.
‘The year of the drought, that’s when we hit. Hit the village as hard as we could so it would never recover. At that time, I was just a little older than you are now. After the success of that raid, there was no looking back. We raided all the villages from Gopalpur right up to Begumpet, adding to our numbers by kidnapping young boys. That’s how your uncle came to us. He begged us to spare his family, and I honoured that pact.
‘I became a senior in the gang three months before we looted Sonpur. The bandits always thought that Sonpur had the best-looking girls; most of our women came from there. The ones who didn’t eventually stay with us of their own free will became prostitutes, traded amongst the men. That’s where my wife is from, Sonpur.’ Daku Manmohan, the proudest, most feared bandit in the whole of India, allows tears to form in his eyes.
