by Indra Sinha
“Plus bhutt-bhutt-pigs going by with ten hanging off the back…But you know what’s the oddest thing of all? When the sun sets the city vanishes.”
“Sorry, don’t understand.” Bhutt-bhutt-pig, it’s a big three-wheeler, carries twenty people, front’s snarled like a pig’s snout, name’s from the motor’s going bhutt-bhutt-bhutt. But a vanishing city?
“When the sun sets the streets are gone, they’re like unlit canyons with crowds moving through in darkness, at least half the traffic runs without lights, there are dozens of accidents.”
“Yes, but what’s so odd?”
“That people tolerate it. This is the strangest thing of all about Khaufpur, that people put up with so much. Take a look. It’s not just blacked out streets and killer traffic, people in this city tolerate open sewers, garbage everywhere, poisoned wells, poisoned babies, doctors who don’t do their jobs, corrupt politicians, thousands of sick that no one seems to care about. But wait, let someone come along with an open-hearted offer of help, these same citizens can’t tolerate it, in fact find it so intolerable they must mount a boycott. People in this city must be either blind or mad. I don’t get the way Khaufpuris think.”
“Don’t be angry with the poor,” says I. “Since when did they have power to change anything?” I am experiencing again those feelings of upheaval I’d had when she said the Nutcracker was erected by an earthquake.
She will change your life, says the voice inside. See her bed here on the roof, draped in mosquito netting, that’s where you and she will—Shut up, shut up, shut up. I know now how she will change my life and it is not that way. Yet, as well as the tight jeans, Elli doctress is wearing a thin shirt. Being able to catch other people’s thoughts it amazes me that she can’t see mine, which are so blatant. However I try to conceal it I’m as bad a bloblo c’est à dire lolo ogler as Zahreel Khan.
“Not the poor,” says innocent-of-all Elli. “Those who should know better.” She starts telling me about this friend, a doctor who lives in a house up by the lake, must be the one Dayanand spoke of. His neighbours are a poor family who’ve attached to his wall a plastic sheet weighed by stones to make a kind of tent. In this they sleep, cook, do needlework, outside it they wash their pots, their naked kids play in the dirt. “I felt worried about them, so I mentioned it to him. Can you guess what he said?”
She pauses, gives me a this-you-won’t-believe look. “He said, ‘Please don’t concern yourself, the police will soon move them on.’”
Well this in no way surprises me, but I’ve shaped various grimaces which satisfy her. So then she starts on about other things this friend’s told her such as how Khaufpur once had a high cultural life, and a remarkable history, famous it was for poets, politically progressive, a haven for refugees including a large community of Afghans. I think her friend must have meant Farouq’s lot, the Yar-yilaqis, who are really Uzbegs. He complained how all these things are forgotten because nowadays when the world hears the name of Khaufpur it thinks only of poison. “I curse the day the Kampani came here because its disaster erased our past.”
“Also erased thousands of people,” said Elli.
“Forget about the disaster,” her friend said. “Let it go! Let’s talk of anything but that painful night. Let go, I say, it’s been nearly twenty years. Let it rest. Maybe there are some people in the slums who want to keep the agitation going. Every year they burn effigies of the Kampani bosses, they daub slogans and chant. What does this achieve? Nothing. Meanwhile the rest of us, citizens, city council, chamber of commerce, everyone, we all want to move on.”
“But what about those people? The ones still waiting for justice? The ones who are suffering without help? Do you move on and leave them behind?”
“Please don’t think worse of me if I tell you the truth. Those poor people never had a chance. If it had not been the factory it would have been cholera, TB, exhaustion, hunger. They would have died anyway.”
“That’s such a harsh way to think.”
“I prefer to call it facing facts,” he said. “Elli, you will eat your heart out for them, but you’ll get no thanks for it.”
He’s rung a bell for his servant to bring more whisky, ice etcetera. Eyes, I should say it was night, they were sitting on his terrace, which looks out over the lake. The water was black, high above all was a cold white moon. The old doctor touched Elli’s shoulder and pointed. “Here’s something the books don’t tell you. On that night the moon was two-thirds full. It was shaped like a tear and as it appeared through the clouds of gas, it was the colour of blood.”
“You know what I should have said, Animal? I should have said, ‘I am a doctor, I know about blood.’ Instead I sat there drinking his whisky listening to him reduce the terror of dying people to a moon in a second rate poem.”
So bitterly does Elli tell her story about the old doctor, I’m scared she has come to hate Khaufpur and will surely go back to Amrika.
“Elli, there are many good people in Khaufpur.”
“Oh yes? Like who? The authorities who don’t care? The rich who want to move on? The poor who kick you in the teeth when you try to help?”
“I could take you to meet them. Good people. Poor people, the ones who are sick. Like me. We people need you, please don’t give up.”
“Ah, like you Animal,” she says, now softer’s her voice. “Well, I am glad I met you. Yes, you are a good person.”
Putain con! Just shows how wrong an educated person can be, but I am not going to contradict her, nor tell what memories were just now in my head of her naked, bending for soap. “Elli, everything will be okay, just you must convince people you have not come from the Kampani.”
“And how do I do that?”
“Tell them why you wanted so much to come here.”
“What? Like I heard about what’s happening in Khaufpur and thought it was shocking, I hate injustice, I felt moved, I had the skills, nothing better to do with my life, plus I was stupid enough to think I’d be welcome. Which of these reasons do you think they’ll believe?”
Full of sincere anger is this speech of Elli doctress, but again I’m getting that uneasy feeling, of something being held down beneath the surface.
“You need something they can check.” I’m thinking of Zafar.
“Or someone who’ll believe me?”
It’s now I have my brilliant idea. It can solve everything, why didn’t I think of it before? “Elli, the trouble you had making your clinic, plus these other things, there’s a very decent person you could speak to, it’s Somraj Pandit.”
I don’t know what response I’m expecting, Elli just looks surprised. “The music teacher? I hardly think so. Dayanand says it’s him and his friends behind this boycott.”
“Dayanand’s a sack of pus. Somraj Pandit has nothing to do with it, I swear on my life.”
“Truly? Is that so? Interesting you mention him. Such a serious man. I see him in his garden, we exchange hellos, that’s it. I get the feeling he’d rather not speak to me, he avoids my eye, not once has he ever smiled.”
“He never smiles at anyone.”
“Well, I guess it’s more like he’s shy, sort of clenched.”
“Shy around ladies,” says I. “Because of what happened to him. His wife.”
“I hoped it was some kind of misunderstanding,” says Elli.
I’m wondering should I tell her that Somraj spoke against the boycott of her clinic, but it would mean fingering Zafar and already there’s been betrayal enough. Instead I’ve started on how Somraj used to be a singer but his lungs were fucked by the gases on that night. Being a doctor she’s interested in this. “Maybe if I offered to help? Could nothing be done for him?”
“You’re right, nothing. Nisha, she’s his daughter, says he won’t even listen to his old records.”
“He must have been good, to make records.”
“The best. Somraj Pandit was famous. They used to call him the Voice of Khaufpur. The internest tells how he wo
uld sing cranes and waterspouts.”
“Not sure I follow you,” she says.
“Well…”
Alas, what kind of integrity have I, who’d promised Pandit Somraj not to repeat the things he confided to me and here’s babbling to a foreign doctress? Eyes, just now I mentioned betrayal, that’s what this is, but it’s happened, as these things do, without planning. You go with the heart, where it leads, but the heart is blind. I’ve jawed on for at least an hour. Elli’s full of questions about Pandit Somraj, about his wife, his fame as a singer. Some things I should not have told her.
“Frogs?” she says, “did you really say frogs?”
“Yes.”
“Bizarre. Was he joking?”
“Not he. Since the Kampani’s poisons tore his lungs, and took his wife and son, Somraj Pandit rarely laughs. Nor will he sing aloud. Out of his suffering he makes songs that he alone can hear.”
“That is so sad,” she says. “I shouldn’t laugh at the frogs.”
“Only one joke has Pandit Somraj. Sa, Re, Ga, Ma, Pa, Dha, Ni, Sa, these are the notes which all recognise. Somraj says that for him the octave now runs Sa, Re, Ga, Ma, Khã, Si, Khã, Si.”
Eyes, this is the pandit’s joke, he tells it against himself. It’s not meant to be funny, it’s a way of spitting in the eye of fate, of saying fuck you to the world which so carelessly mangled his life. Of course this joke is wasted on you, dear Eyes, first because no one has ever mangled you, but chiefly because you don’t speak our language. Khã and Si are not really notes in the scale, if you join them they make khaañsi, which means “cough.” What Somraj is saying is, every time I start to sing I begin coughing and can’t stop.
No need to explain this to Elli, so good’s her Hindi. “That poor guy,” she says. “How bitter he must be. Maybe I should go across there and take a look at that cough.”
Next day near lunchtime Nisha and I are in the kitchen, preparing food. Her dad is giving the lizard a singing lesson. We can hear him trying a phrase sochha samajha mana meetha piyaravaa over and over again. Comes a knock on the door. Nisha’s hands are floury, so I’ve gone.
Outside is Elli with a serious look on her face. No greeting for me even. “Is Pandit Somraj in?”
“Elli doctress, he’s teaching.”
Says she, “It’s important.” Only then does she give a small smile and ask, “Animal, please fetch him here.” So I’ve knocked on the music room door to deliver the message, in a little while Pandit Somraj arrives.
“Good morning, Pandit Somraj, I need to talk to you.”
“Doctor Barber, good afternoon.” Doesn’t look like he wants to let her in.
“Animal tells me you’re a decent person to whom I can speak openly. As you know I’ve opened the clinic across the road. People are staying away. Can you throw any light on this?”
My god, how devious is Elli. No wonder she showed such an interest in Somraj. Conned me, she’s. Does believe he’s the villain of this affair.
Somraj Pandit looks taken aback. Such a brash approach to discussion, it’s not the Khaufpuri way. Says he, “I’m sorry, I know nothing of your clinic. Was there anything else? I have a student here, we are in the middle of a lesson.”
“Why are people being told not to come? Whoever’s done this, they’ve done a bad thing.”
“I’m sorry, I can’t help you,” he says, and starts to close the door.
“You must.” Elli’s sounding kind of desperate. “You must, please. At least tell me why it’s happening. Why do you believe I am connected with that Kampani? I detest it as much as you do.”
“If people are not coming, that is their affair. It is not for me to tell others what to do.” He turns. The lizard Shastri’s in the hall behind, staring. Somraj gives him a nod, I guess he thinks this is the end of the conversation.
“Wait,” says Elli. “I’m sorry, too, but that’s not good enough. I think you know why people are staying away. I think you know exactly why. And you’ve misjudged me. You have treated me most unfairly. I have given up everything to come here and do this work.”
Somraj’s turned back again. The look in his eyes, it seems almost like pain, but could be contempt or pity or any number of shades of annoyance. At last he sighs. “You had better come inside.”
He leads her into the music room, where he was giving Shastri his lesson. There’s a harmonium on the carpet. “Please,” says Somraj. “Sit. Will you have something? Tea? A glass of squash?”
“Look,” says she, “this isn’t a social call. I haven’t come to pass the time of day, or ask after your health, although I have to say you don’t look at all well. In fact if you have any sense you’ll let me find out what’s wrong with you, and you’ll…you’ll stop stopping other people…”
“Stop stopping?”
“You know exactly what I mean,” snaps Elli in Inglis.
All this time Shastri and I are peering in through the door. Nisha’s there too by now, shooting hostile glances at Elli from her big brown eyes. “Dad, is everything all right?”
Says Somraj to Elli, “If you’ve a problem let us discuss it sensibly. Not shouting. All right, I’ll be frank with you. When we heard there was a clinic to be opened by an Amrikan, an Amrikan person about whom nothing was known, people here became fearful.”
“Go ahead,” she says, “I’m listening.”
“Leave us please,” says Somraj to the three of us in the doorway. Two obey, the third, whose head lower to the floor’s not so easy to spot, remains.
“Is it difficult for you to understand?” asks Somraj. “Amrikans don’t have a good reputation in this town.”
“Wait one moment,” says Elli, holding up a hand. “Whatever you’re about to say, I won’t have that dumped on me. I’m not ashamed to be Amrikan, there’s plenty to be proud of in Amrika, there’s good and bad, like everywhere else. In this world there are two kinds of people, those who help others, and those who don’t. Me, I’m the first kind, I can say this because I’m here to help. Yet you, or someone you know, has told people to stay away from my clinic, and that’s a wicked thing to have done. So before you start on about me being Amrikan, you better decide, which kind of person are you?”
“Mrs. Barber…”
“Mrs. nothing,” she interrupts. “It’s Doctor Barber if you must, but since we’re neighbours I’d prefer it if you called me Elli.”
“Doctor Barber, the fact is people here know nothing about you, where you came from, who is funding you, whether you are working for someone. If you understood this place better, you would know why such questions matter.”
“That’s the second time you’ve mentioned understanding, Pandit Somraj. Understanding is a two-way thing. Usually it’s the result of something called conversation, which takes two. If you wanted to know about me, you could have come and asked. But you did not. And as for justice, you put me on trial without informing me you were doing so, trumped up stories and played on people’s fears without knowing anything at all about me, you found me guilty of what I do not know, and you passed your sentence. I have put my whole heart and everything I own into that clinic, and I’m not going to let you or any other prejudiced bastard fuck it up.”
“Now please calm down,” he says. As for me, how I am wishing that Elli was saying these things to he who deserved to hear them, not the poor pandit, who although she doesn’t know it is on her side.
“No I will not fucking calm down. It’s about time you heard a thing or two. I know all about your committee. What you might not know is that many of those people, the same people you claim to represent, really want to come to my clinic. Some of them as you well know, are very ill. I tell you, if there is a single death in this neighbourhood that I could have prevented, it will be on your head and your conscience.”
Why won’t he tell her he opposed the boycott? But now there’s an even grimmer expression on the face of that grim man. “Since you are being blunt I will also be blunt. I will not swear at you, as you ha
ve at me, but let me tell you that if you collected every swear word in every language, every filthy term of abuse, melted them together to make one word so hateful, so utterly revolting, so devoid of goodness that its mere utterance would create horror and loathing and hatred, that word would be…”
“Amrikan?”
“…No, it would be the name of that Kampani. Have you been to the square where the court is? Yes? You must have seen, no matter what time you go there, that there are always a few people outside, with banners. If the court is in session, they may chant. You have been here long enough to have seen this.”
“I have seen it and I’ll gladly join you in those protests, but what the hell has this got to do with me?”
“Everything,” says he. “It has everything to do with you. You see, the Kampani—” One of those bad coughs begins fighting its way up from his lungs, he struggles to quell it but can’t.
“You should really let me see to that,” says Elli.
“For years,” says Somraj when he’s got back his breath, “the Kampani has been saying that the damage to people’s health has been exaggerated, it would like to have studies which show that things here are normal, that the last effects of the disaster are vanished.”
“Yes,” says Elli, “I know all about this idiotic theory that I have come to do some sort of health survey, but surely you realise that a proper study can’t be done in weeks, it’s impossible, besides which we all know what the result would be. Things are not normal here, anyone with eyes can see that.”
“The studies need not be real. All they need’s someone willing to fabricate them. A doctor, for example.”
“That’s outrageous and unfair!”
“Then why did you come here? What sort of woman gives up her life in Amrika and comes to a place like this, to help people for no reward? Either you are a saint, or someone with a different purpose. So which are you?”
“I’m no saint, but how can I prove to you or anyone else what my motives are? You’ll believe me or not as you choose.” Elli’s turned bright red, her hands are shaking. “This is not fair, you’ve already decided I am guilty!”
