by Indra Sinha
“It is a very unusual person who gives up so much.”
“No more unusual than one who hears music in frogs!”
After blurting this, she gives a guilty glance at me, who’s already turning tail to run.
“I am so sorry,” says Somraj, “this is not in my hands.” Without shifting his head he says, calm as you like, “Animal, kindly tell Shastri we will resume his lesson.”
TAPE TWELVE
I did not dare face Somraj. I left the house while the lizard’s lesson was still going on and stayed away from the Chicken Claw for two weeks. One night I dreamed that I was dragged before Somraj’s friends in his music room. Somraj said, “Now we shall hear raga Animal,” and began to whack my arse with a shoe. The musicians listened enraptured to my cries then exclaimed “Wah! Wah!” Nisha and Zafar were there too, clapping. Nisha said, “Animal, I never knew you could sing so nicely.”
One morning Farouq comes bumping up on his bicycle. “Kyoñ salé, where have you been hiding?”
“Not been hiding.”
“So why have we not been favoured with your presence?”
“Busy been, I’ve.”
“Zafar wants to see you.”
“Can’t go right now.” My one regret about staying away from the Claw is that Zafar has not been getting his pills, but the thought of meeting Pandit Somraj fills me with dread. “I’m busy.”
“Oh I can see that,” he says with full sarcasm. “What are you doing? Sitting here playing with your lund? Found a girl? Been shagging her arse off, have you?”
“Might have.”
He gives a nasty laugh. “You’ve never fucked a woman in your life.”
“I have!” It’s the old lie.
“I don’t believe you. Go to Laxmi Talkies, get yourself laid. Thirty bucks, no problem.”
“Is that what they charge you?”
“Don’t be cheeky.” Farouq gets off his bike, leans it against our wall and deliberately stands in front of me so I have to twist my neck upwards to see his face. For a moment I wonder, is he going to strike me or kick me?
Says Farouq looking down at me, “Muharram is coming, brother Animal, have you forgotten your boast? Are you going to walk on the coals? Will you have the guts?”
Well, if one thing I learned on the streets, it’s that you never back down. “Listen, you Yar-yilaqi heap. I’ll walk over your fire not just once, but twice.”
“That I would like to see,” says he.
“You shall.” I’m monitoring his shoes in case I have to leap backwards.
“I’ll hold you to this promise.”
“You can.”
“I will,” says he from above. “Come on, Zafar is waiting.”
“What does he want me for?”
“Your friend the doctress. Well, you’ll see for yourself.”
Farouq has to lift me onto the carrier, then we’re bumping over the rough track of Paradise Alley, the stony sludge of Seven Tailors, with Jara’s running along behind. “Seems the shopkeepers all love you,” says Farouq, hearing first Baju then I’m Alive yell as we rattle past.
“I am their favourite customer.”
Outside Somraj’s house, there’s a crowd gathered. On the clinic side of the street, in the shade of the mango are three tables set, sitting behind them are Dayanand, Suresh and Elli. On each table is something different.
I drop from Farouq’s bike and stand gaping.
On the first table is propped a huge drawing of a human body. On it are marked all the places where the Kampani’s that-night-poisons have damaged people, such as eyes, lungs, joints, womb, brain. These are marked in red. In blue are marked the places which have been harmed by drinking the poisoned water, breasts, again womb, stomach, skin. Blue and red spirals are coming from the head, which is also being banged by a hammer, above all hangs a dark grey cloud with lightning.
“For each harm,” Dayanand is saying, “we have a good treatment, which is free. So stop suffering. Come and get help for your pains. Don’t listen to false rumours.”
People round the table are pointing to the things from which they suffer. Hammer is for headache. Must be. I get them badly myself, often just before I’ll go mad. “Giddiness, fainting fits,” says Dayanand to a woman who’s looking at the spinning spirals.
“I thought so,” she says. “Is this treatment truly free?”
“Fully,” replies Dayanand. “It is excellent modern treatment. It will help you. Go, register with the lady inside, today itself the doctor will see you.”
So this woman has gone into the clinic, as she vanishes inside, so other people are coming out. I wonder what will Zafar and Co. be making of this? I guess we are all learning that Elli doctress does not easily give up.
“Hurry up,” says Farouq, who has parked his bike and come to find me.
“Wait. What’s the cloud?” I ask Dayanand, who looks none too pleased to see me.
“It is depression. Lightning is anxiety.”
“Oh yes? Who drew them, you, was it?”
“Don’t take the piss,” he says. “Piss off.”
“Okay,” says I, and’ve gone into Somraj’s house to meet my fate.
First thing inside is Nisha greets me with a lund-throbbing hug. “Animal, where have you been? You stopped coming for lunch. Is my cooking so bad?”
“Not at all, is your dad around?”
“No. Do you need to see him?”
“Not important,” says I. Hoo, relief.
Zafar is sitting in the garden, peeling a fruit with his knife, like the first time I met him. “Animal, good you’re here. We have this problem. You’ve seen outside, the sideshow?”
“Seen.”
“Well that’s just today’s fun. Yesterday Elli doctress was seen coming out of the office of Zahreel Khan.”
“Who very much admires her bloblos,” says I, myself recalling them.
“Leaving aside the bloblos,” he says wearily, “that was yesterday’s fun. Since you vanished we have also had the music wars.”
“Music wars?”
Says Nisha, “Every evening. Whenever my dad plays any music, or if he’s giving a lesson, there comes this loud music from across the road.”
“Elli doctress has a thing called piano,” says I. “I have seen it. She learned it because her mother was ill.”
“Well it’s making my father ill,” says Nisha. “I have never seen him in such a state. Walking up and down he’s, like a fishguts, holding his head.”
“Oh that’s terrible!” says I, certain now of an arsewhacking by the angry pandit and his mates.
“Papa says that his brain is being chewed by this Elli doctress.”
Says Zafar, “I think that not until the moon starts spinning backwards will we understand what’s going on in Elli doctress’s head. Until then, Animal, there’s you.”
“Me? What can I do? I know, I’ll make you a cup of tea.”
“Namispond,” says he.
“Jamispond,” says his adoring echo. “You are friendly with her, find out why she went to see Zahreel Khan.”
I’ve managed to slip one of the black golis into Zafar’s tea, then gone back outside, where are sat Elli doctress and her staff trying to convince the Khaufpuris. On the second table are picture leaflets about tuberculosis and how to stop it spreading. Here’s Suresh explaining that TB is contagious, yes, but with a few precautions you can easily protect yourself, plus you can help those who are suffering. “We will teach you. All treatments and medicines are free. Just go inside and register.”
“How can this be a bad thing?” someone asks.
Others agree, “So many will benefit.” “It’s just what’s needed.”
By now there’s a regular stream of folk coming and going from the door of the clinic. At this rate the boycott will soon be over.
On the third table are many sheets of paper, Elli doctress is waving a pen at people. “Come and sign!”
“What is this?” a man asks.
“What should I do?”
“Just sign your name, write a comment, if you have one.”
The man makes a mumble, he jabs at the paper then moves off.
“Doesn’t know how to write.” Hidden as I am by the edge of the table, it takes her some time to see me.
“Animal! Thank goodness, I’ve been wanting to talk to you. Wait right there, don’t go anywhere.” She looks over to Suresh. “At least one hundred have signed. How many registered inside?”
“Madam, seventy, more than.”
“Good.” She’s turned back to me. “Animal, can you spare me a few minutes?”
“Elli doctress, what are you doing?”
“I am telling these people that Pandit Somraj is unfair. He should not be stopping them from getting treatment.”
“Good morning, Doctor Barber,” says a voice like death. Somraj is standing right there beside us.
People around kind of hold their breath. All heads turn to Elli doctress, she is looking like what old folks call a duck on thunder. So the heads turn back to Somraj, stood there grim as ever.
“Pandit Somraj,” says Elli, collecting her wits. “Since you are here I would like to present you with this petition.” She’s gathered up all the sheets of paper and thrust them at him.
“I will be happy to receive it,” he says politely, not taking the sheets. “Before that, there is something I would like to do.”
A crowd of Khaufpuris presses close. What a rabble of turbans, dhotis, burqas, saris, a wave of Khaufpuri breath, perfumed with betel and supari.
“Get back you scum,” I’m shouting, “you will step on my fucking fingers.”
Says Somraj, “I would like to sign it.”
Then people are goggling, because for the first time anyone can remember, Pandit Somraj is smiling.
“What do you mean, you would like to sign it?” asks Elli, who’s gone like a cut beetroot.
“Like this,” he says. He picks up a pen and signs. “Collect more signatures. When you have finished, please bring them to me.”
Then he’s gone into his house, still smiling, leaving behind a babble of voices plus one astonished doctress sat holding her papers.
“Elli doctress?”
She says at last, “That horrible man, he’s just making mockery. How dare he? Suresh, did you see what he just did?”
“Madam, Somraj Pandit has signed the petition.”
“I know he has signed the damn petition.” Her voice has gone high. “Can you believe it? The petition is aimed against him, and he has signed it himself.”
“Madam, Pandit Somraj has a reputation for fairness, maybe he feels he is being unfair.”
“But if he feels he is being unfair, why doesn’t he just be fair? I give up with this town, I don’t think I will ever understand it.”
Next she’s ghurr-ghurred me. “Animal, will you sign?”
“Not I.”
“Why not? If even Pandit Somraj can sign it, why can’t you? Come on, sign your name.”
“It’s not a proper name,” says I. Somraj can do whatever he likes, never will Zafar say anything to the man he calls “abba.” But me?
“Sign!”
“When all’s said, what kind of a name is Animal?”
“Have some guts.” It’s like she’s read my thoughts. “You’re a free human.”
“I am not a human.”
“You’re always saying that. You don’t really believe it.”
“Of course I believe it, because it’s true.”
“So then, what else is true?”
I’ve thought about this for a moment, then said, “Give me the pen.” Under all the signatures and crosses, I write:
Je ne suis pas un homme, mais un animal
dans cet hôpital je ne trouve rien de mal
“There, Elli, I’ve made you a poem.”
Growls the blood-tuskery voice before I can stop it:
Mere muñh se nikli insaan ki zubaan,
qurbaani ke jaanvar ki aakhri qurbaan
My lips have uttered human speech, the last sacrifice of the slaughtered beast.
“I am so sorry,” she says later, when we are inside her clinic. “I should never have said that about frogs. It was stupid.”
To this I’ve replied nothing. I may be pissed off with Elli, but I’ll never criticise in case she gets angry and stops my treatment. If your mission in life is to look after number one, sometimes it means biting your tongue, but there’s usually another way to get at a person.
“Elli, how do you expect people round here to trust you, if you go visiting people like Zahreel Khan?”
“How do you know about that?”
“Namispond Jamispond.”
“Well, I got nowhere with the gentleman across the road. He’s got quite a nerve, hasn’t he? Listen to this.”
She sits at her piano, opens the lid and thumps her hands down. There’s a sound like rumbling thunder. Jara lifts her head and yips. Elli makes more great crashing sounds.
“What are you doing?”
“Ever since that day I had the row with him, whenever I play the piano a loud music starts up from inside that house.”
“I know nothing about it,” says I, with perfect truth.
“Wait and see.” She begins to play her favourite, that piece that sounds like bells. Sure enough, after hardly a minute, comes the full throat of someone singing a raga.
“How long has this been going on?”
“A couple of weeks. I don’t mind, I just play even louder. The piano can easily drown him out.”
So, both sides of the road it’s the same complaint.
“Animal, your friends.” Her fingers are still jumping around the keys. “They are not much liked in high places.”
“Really?”
“The minister said they were ‘professional activists.’”
“Ha ha, is that all?” “Agitator,” “trouble-maker,” “ring-leader” etc., these are the words the politicians usually use to describe Zafar.
“Worse.” So then she stops playing and tells me what happened.
Eyes, I don’t have difficulty recalling her words. Even after all this time, I’ve only to think of Elli, imagine her standing in front of me with her slightly too-close-together eyes plus too-tight blue jeans, it gives a throb to my zabri plus I can hear her voice speaking in my head.
Elli goes to the government building where Zahreel Khan and the other Khaufpur politicians have their offices. It’s in the posh part of town, by the shore of the lake. It looks clean from outside, but inside it’s filthy. She says, “At first I thought the reddish criss-cross streaks up and down the stairs were some sort of decoration, but then I realised that they were made by clerks letting fly betel-spit.” They send her to an office filled with steel cupboards, on top of them are toppling stacks of brown paper folders. Hundreds more folders are stuffed in sacks on the floor. Everything wears a thick shawl of dust.
Zahreel Khan’s secretary does not seem pleased to see her. “The minister is rather busy. It’s not possible to see him today.”
From inside Zahreel Khan’s office she can hear a murmur of voices.
“But he’s expecting me. I rang to say I was coming.”
“Nevertheless.”
“Then when can I see him?”
“Tomorrow he has a cabinet meeting, then he is gone to Delhi for three days. After this…”
“It can’t wait that long,” Elli says. “There are sick people who need my help, they’re being stopped from coming to my clinic. Some might die.”
The official points at the heaped up files. “Madam, we are dealing with claims that go back twenty years, what difference will a few days make?”
“I am s
ure the minister must have a few minutes free soon. I will wait here until he is able to see me.”
“Madam, you are wasting your time.”
“I’ll be the judge of that,” says she. “What are all these files?”
“Each one is the claim of a person who was injured on that night. What you see here is just a few. We also have a godown full of dossiers, we have processed more than half a million.”
“May I look at one or two?”
“They are confidential.”
“They are public health records, I am a doctor, your minister personally assured me I’d have access to whatever information I wanted.”
“Madam, go ahead,” says the harassed secretary. Fed up he’s with this pushy foreigner, but dares not be rude for his minister had opened her clinic. An hour passes. Elli is deep in the depressing records of Khaufpur’s tragedy, when from behind Zahreel Khan’s door comes a loud yell, plus a kind of a roar. It then strikes Elli that for quite some time she’s been hearing strange tok tok sounds. In a flash she’s up and at the door.
“Wait!” shouts the secretary, “you can’t go in!”
Too late, she’s in. First thing she sees is a tele screen on which are white figures of celebrating cricketers. A guy with some kind of bat, says Elli, who knows nothing of cricket, is walking off the field. Zahreel Khan is dozing in an armchair, a newspaper is spread on his lap. He wakes to find Elli smiling down at him.
“So sorry to disturb your meeting, minister,” says she. “I need a quick word.” Before he can protest, she’s pouring out her problem.
“Arré, why are you still there?” says Zahreel Khan to his secretary, who’s wringing his hands in the doorway. “Can’t you see I have a guest? Send tea plus cake for two. At once.”
Then Zahreel Khan tells Elli she should not worry, in Khaufpur things move slowly, people are cautious, they stick to what they know. “Give it time and they will come crowding, you’ll see.”
“It’s not caution,” says Elli. “People have been told to stay away. The only reason I can get is that they are afraid I have come from the Kampani. You know that’s not true. Can’t you tell them not to worry?”
