At the end of the performance, Lakshman goes around collecting money – Show the joy you had from clever Raju. Give with open hearts and open hands. Give from your heart. Make little Raju happy.
As soon as the people disperse, the purohit approaches Lakshman and asks for his ‘fee’.
– Fee? Lakshman falls from the sky.
– That prime space beside the temple, you think it comes free?
– But … but you didn’t mention anything about money that day. Had I known, I would never have come here, I would have gone somewhere else.
– Gone where? Where else would you have got such a crowd in a town like this? The fee is hardly for my use, it’s for him – the priest indicates the idol inside.
Lakshman doesn’t have the opportunity to hide part of his takings and offer a fraction of the remainder to the priest, for everything unfolded right under his nose.
The priest says – Give it as an offering to the god. If you don’t, he’ll be angry. And you know how terrible his anger can be.
Lakshman capitulates, initially out of a vague sense of fear, but later, while nursing the sore from being stung by the priest, he thinks that perhaps the bribe was not such a bad thing, for it bound the priest into a certain tie of obligation. Besides, he really needs the god on his side for the rains to be delayed.
Back at the ghost building, he secretes most of the money he has managed to retain under Raju’s collar, keeping on his person only what he thinks is necessary to buy food. That evening, indoors, Lakshman feeds Raju and, in a rare moment of intrepidity and affection, strokes his neck and back while keeping up a chatting and crooning. Raju answers with his own spectrum of sounds, more eloquent than usual. Lakshman has never been able to read them, to understand the emotions or wants behind them, but tonight he takes them to be Raju’s pleasure at being stroked; the bear’s expression of gratitude and friendliness for the human who looks after him. Raju’s vocalisation of whatever he feels doesn’t let up; instead, it gets louder. Lakshman is afraid that anyone living in these buildings – so far invisible and inaudible – will pass by, hear it and come over to investigate. He tries his usual twin approach, soothing followed by threatening, but tonight Raju won’t be placated. What on earth has got into the cursed creature? It doesn’t take long for Lakshman to find out – the diminishing of the noises and the appalling stench are almost simultaneous. He swings between despair and rage: who will clean up the mess? His living quarters are now defiled. And the only reason he hadn’t kept Raju tied to a tree or post outside was because he was afraid of being discovered. Because Raju had always done his business outside, it had never occurred to Lakshman that such behaviour was not fixed or regular, governable by rules that applied to humans. What keeps him from punishing Raju is the fear that the resultant yowling might attract attention. He bites down on his fury.
The following day he has a choice: whether to set up near the temple again or find a new spot. He weighs up the pros and cons of each option and decides to go for the former. The priest wants a bigger cut of the day’s income. Lakshman has no negotiating power.
He knows he is getting good at the performances, with his patter and singing and soliciting, but his heart is not in it today. The heat and the humidity are pressing against him like a wall on either side. He wants to smash the priest’s head against the concrete stairs on which he had laid his own to worship that first time. The man’s spilt brains would be a suitable offering to the god. Lakshman gives him half of what he has made and asks him to exchange his, Lakshman’s, handfuls of loose change for paper currency. Away from the public, he hides the notes under Raju’s collar. The sky has darkened.
He is beside himself with worry. At night, he wakes up every twenty minutes or so, waiting for the sound of rain, which doesn’t happen. The mugginess is suffocating. He has covered Raju’s shit with newspapers. He worries about Raju, now tied to the nearest tree outside, being discovered. Then he catches the distinct sound of a child crying somewhere in the building, or maybe in the adjacent one, and freezes. Rustling and creaks and taps, ordinary night sounds that would have gone unnoticed before, now become magnified to his ears as preludes to imminent discovery and disaster. When nothing materialises, he ventures out to check on Raju. A low chatter greets him, as if Raju understands the need to be quiet. The moment disappears as Lakshman looks up and notices lights at no fewer than four windows in the housing complex and one on a higher floor than his in the building he is in. Fear and incomprehension jostle for supremacy inside him. How could anyone live in his building? The staircase leading to the upper floors is broken and ends in a huge yawn of suspended jagged concrete halfway up the landing above his floor. Absent-mindedly, he strokes Raju’s head, forgetting to be afraid of him. Raju raises his paws and tries to bring Lakshman’s head down. Lakshman, now alert, gently tries to move away but Raju positions himself closer to him, brings his lowly chattering head to his master’s chest and holds him in a brief hug before letting go.
All morning it drizzles weakly. Lakshman avoids the temple and walks in the direction of the school. He is surprised to discover that the loudspeaker broadcasting the latest film songs, which he has been hearing since waking up, is located within the school premises. Preparations for some kind of a festival or function are under way. There are more snack-sellers, balloon-wallahs, drinks-sellers, sherbet-wallahs than he had noticed the first time he walked past it. Raju is overexcited, as are the vendors and other people who see them arrive. A stage has been set up beside the school building. In the wings of the stage, entirely open to the view of people on the road, a girl, in garish costume and make-up, is trying out dance moves, oblivious to being watched. She looks very pleased with herself, then she breaks into a grin and a giggle, as if she is about to play a big prank on someone. She disappears into the building. A gaggle of girls comes out next, each one dressed to the nines. They, too, dance to the song that’s blaring out of the sound system – ‘Aankhen do’ – until an adult, presumably a teacher, comes out and admonishes them. They scatter, helpless with giggles, and run inside. Lakshman discovers from the cold-drinks-seller that it’s a three-day festival to celebrate the founding of the school.
Raju and Lakshman are a huge hit when they perform. The crowd is the largest they’ve ever had. Lakshman throws himself into the act, singing along to some of the songs that are playing on the public address system, much to the delight of the girls, their teachers and guardians. People buy Raju all kinds of things – chana garam, ber, cucumber, peanuts – to have the pleasure of watching him take them in his paws and eat them.
For three consecutive days, Raju and Lakshman repeat their gig. The takings are beyond any of Lakshman’s previous imaginings. Raju’s collar band swells; Lakshman thinks he will need to replace it soon with a wider, tougher one. He wonders if he has enough to send home – he will have to take it all out one evening and do a count – but how is he going to send it? Through whom? Someone once told him that a post-office could arrange these things.
On the third day, as they walk towards a roadside eatery on the way back to the housing complex, a day almost tremulous with the weight of the stillness and waiting that come before the skies open, someone calls out to him. He turns round. A man he doesn’t immediately recognise is saying to him – Salaam, ji.
Then the wave of recognition crashes over him. Salim Qalandar. Salim says – So. He’s grown big, hasn’t he? But he doesn’t make a move to stroke or pet Raju, only looks at him intently.
Lakshman still hasn’t managed to gather his thoughts.
Salim says – Yes, very big.
Pause.
– And I see you’ve put him to good use. He’s making good money for you. Here he hums a line from one of the songs that Lakshman has sung in the most recent gig – My name is Lakhan, mera naam hain Lakhan – and lets out a great cackle. It sounds so sinister that Lakshman loses what few words he had scrambled together inside his head.
– You owe me money, S
alim says. The transition from laughter to business is like the crack of a whip.
– I can’t give you the entire amount, Lakshman at last finds himself able to speak.
– Why? For three days you were raking it in with both hands.
– It’s not as much as you think. Most of it is loose change, in coins. You know well how it works.
– You can pay me some of it. You can be sure I’ll come back for the remainder.
Lakshman does a quick calculation. It defeats him: he cannot be certain of the amount he has stored under Raju’s collar. Then another thought strikes him, more terrifying: does Salim know about his hiding place?
Just to be rid of Salim as soon as possible Lakshman says – You can have everything I’ve earned today. Here you go. I’m keeping back ten rupees for chai-paani, here, see.
– I know these tricks, you forget that I was a qalandar. A real one. This is not everything you’ve taken today.
– On my mother— Lakshman begins.
– Cut it out. Who’d believe a fox like you? All right, I’ll take this now, but don’t forget … He leaves the rest unsaid.
When he is gone, Lakshman feels that the whole encounter was a dream. He has only the disappearance of the day’s income to show that it was real. As he walks past the low stone wall, he cannot tell if it is the wall’s shadow, cleaving to it, on the road, or a shadow-coloured stain running alongside it.
At night, he hears the crying of a child again, followed, shockingly, by the muffled sounds of a couple quarrelling. All kinds of tumultuous thoughts go through his head: has Salim informed the authorities? Are they already on his tail? Are they biding their time, waiting for the perfect moment to catch him? Is he being watched by some of the people who live in this complex? Has the crooked priest shopped him, out of spite because he moved his act elsewhere, depriving him of his cut? How will he ever find Ramlal? Is he alive? Everything is curdling.
In the morning, he and Raju go to the school. There is no music over a loudspeaker today. The number of itinerant vendors has halved. Inside, there are men dismantling the stage – the bright-orange cloth that was its outer skin has already been removed, exposing the skeleton of bamboos and planks. Chairs are stacked in discrete piles all over the dusty ground that is the school’s playing field. There are no girls, no teachers, no guardians, only the silence of their absence.
– It’s closed today. The school’s closed today. Nothing for you here – the tea-stall owner tells him.
He makes his way with Raju to the temple, anxiously, reluctantly. A thin drizzle begins, more fine spray than rain. The purohit ignores him. Lakshman has no energy to do his usual prelude to drum up business, no interest in making Raju dance. He hopes that the sight of the bear tied to the tree will be enough indication to passers-by to gather.
The spray becomes more substantial, a proper drizzle. The tamarind tree, in resplendent leaf from the killing summer sun, offers them a comforting circle of protection. He notices the trunk of the tree for the first time: there is a strange pattern of huge eyes, much like Shiva’s on the slope of Nanda Devi, on the bark, eye above eye above eye. The trunk is watching him with dozens of those eyes. His world cants around him. After an hour, or two, or three – Lakshman loses track of the unmoving mass of time – he has made only ten rupees, and his clothes and hair are damp. When the priest pokes his head out of the temple chamber and hollers – You bring bad luck, you look like a jackal – he knows that it’s time to go. Everything is curdling.
And, as if in confirmation, the skies really do open this time and the rain comes down in lashing sheets with such force that the drops seem to perforate the ground on which they fall. Before he knows it, he’s soaked. Raju looks shrunken, with his dripping wet pelt. He lets out a set of low squeaks and grunts and keeps opening his jaws wide, as if yawning, and shaking his head repeatedly. The road turns into a swift-flowing stream in no time, and the earth margins dissolve and flow into it. The trees offer little shelter from the strafing; in any case, the movement towards home, from one tree to another, gets them so drenched that it becomes pointless to seek shelter any more.
At the housing complex, Lakshman cannot decide whether to bring Raju inside or leave him out in the rain all night. Maybe it’ll stop, he thinks, and leaves the bear tied to his tree outside.
All night it rains. The sound of it, first loud, then musical, ultimately monotonous, keeps Lakshman awake. Then he hears the drips inside, over that unchanging background of water pounding everything in its way with steady, focused obstinacy. Rain is coming into the flat through unseen cracks and holes, a few of them seemingly quite near him. He lights the candle to investigate. At first, nothing, except the sound of two sets of drips, out of step with each other. Lakshman discovers them after some strenuous searching – one at the threshold, from the top of where the doorframe had been, and one from the ceiling, a few inches away from where Lakshman sleeps, but near his feet. He goes out to bring Raju in – the animal is a sodden hulk, which keeps shaking itself vigorously and spraying huge quantities of water around him – and while rushing back, soaked himself now, he notices the lights at exactly the same windows where he has seen them on previous occasions. Who are the people behind those windows? Why has he never seen them outside? Do they know he is here? Have they noticed Raju? He wants to scream into the pouring night and ask them to come out and show their faces.
In the morning, he catches a split-second’s glint on one of the walls in the front room where Raju is. It’s on that stretch of dark slime, explaining its presence – water is thinly and steadily seeping down the wall. He looks up at the rust-coloured stain on the ceiling: could that be the point of entry? But that means that the water could be penetrating through the floor of the flat above and, in this manner, all the way up to the roof of the building. When will it all cave in? While they are here? On him and Raju?
It is raining relentlessly, his world now trapped between mud at his feet and unbroken grey above. From now on, there will be no hope of regular work. He’ll have to take his chance in the gaps, if any, between downpours, and it will be the most difficult thing in the world to set up, solicit, get a crowd in this weather, because it is against the vital thing his trade needs – time.
Over the next seven days Lakshman and Raju manage two shows; or, rather, one, because it starts raining one-third of the way through the second gig and what few people there are run off to find shelter without paying. He spends the last of his ready money buying tea, samosas and sweets at a shack inside which he waits for the rain to let up. The woman behind the huge kadai does not allow the bear to come inside. Lakshman goes out to share his food with Raju. He comes outside and stands beside him, holding his leash, in the sliver of mud under the narrowest of awnings formed by the jutting tin roof. It offers almost no protection from the pelting rain. The runnel of dirty dishwater at his feet swells with the steady, generous run-off from the roof until the sliver of mud on which he is standing begins to be swallowed by the drain. He will have to break into his savings under Raju’s collar band if they are to survive. The thought of nibbling away at the packet, which he has been meaning to send home, does not bother him as much as he thought it would. Different sorts of calculations go through his head, such as how much he would save if he were to buy a chulha, a pot, rice and dal, and cook for himself in the room that used to be the kitchen in his flat. He would have to check how much money he has saved. The thoughts of housekeeping instantly summon up, as if they are words of magic, the presence of his old friend – that invisible boulder, lately absent from his life, presses down on him. It’s that familiar feeling of being buried alive, of light and air all around him being squeezed out inexorably. Would it have been better without Raju if, for whatever reason, he had been sheltering in these ghost-haunted ruins on his own? He knows the answer, but denies it in the argument he is having with himself – Raju is not a burden to him even though being chained to an animal, who is his responsibility, is burdensom
e on a day-to-day basis. Instead, it’s the only freedom he has ever known.
It’s dark and still pouring when he and Raju return home. He strips off all his clothes, wrings them and hangs them out to dry. He will need to buy another pair of trousers and a shirt, maybe a large sheet for lying on or covering himself with.
Raju tries to get away from the small puddle that has dripped off him, but four feet of rope will only allow him so much manoeuvring space. Lakshman ties him to a different spot and loosens his wet collar band to take out all his money. What comes out on his fingers are wet shreds, almost a pulp. Incredulous, he takes off the band entirely – Raju is free of his leash for the first time since he was found by humans. Lakshman runs his hand first along the inside of the collar, then along Raju’s neck. The paper money has disintegrated into wet confetti. Even the notes that seem to be whole come apart in his hands the moment he tries to lift them out of the soggy mass. The band lies on the dark floor, knotted to a length of rope, which is tied to a metal bar on the window. Raju sits beside it obediently, not yet aware that he can move around at will. Lakshman shifts through the chyme of paper – how meagre it seems now – looking for something, anything, to salvage; even a ten-rupee note will do. No, nothing.
If he doesn’t sit down, he feels that he will be blown away, out of the barred window, like a mote of dust or a feather. He holds his hands to the sides of his head and sits on the floor. Then he howls. Unmindful of who may be listening, whom he awakes, what unwelcome attention he may be attracting, he screams. He screams not from his throat but from his lungs, his navel – the sound comes from somewhere deeper than where the voice is. He screams and screams and screams until there is no sound left in him. It is only when Raju, chattering lowly, comes up to him with hesitant steps and tries to take his head between his paws that Lakshman comes out of himself to realise that Raju is free.
A State of Freedom Page 16
