Miss Laila, Armed and Dangerous

by Manu Joseph

  ‘I hope everyone here is not Muslim,’ Aisha said as the three girls walked from the bus stand to the hotel.

  ‘Only half the population is Muslim,’ Laila said. ‘Why do you hope that?’

  ‘Or people would think only Muslims are filthy.’

  Laila giggled but it was her unhappy giggle. She said, ‘Last year when I was walking back home, I saw a crowd of Muslim men around a roadside barber’s radio and they were listening to something. I got curious because there was so much pain in the faces of the men as they listened. What was on the radio? It was Damodarbhai’s speech. Some men laughed, made faces, mimicked Damodarbhai, but they could not conceal the pain. I’ve heard the speech only three other times, but I remember every word of the first minute of the speech. Every word of it as though it is a great poem.’

  Aisha, too, now knows the speech.

  Friends, why are Muslims so filthy? Filth is disorder. What is disorder? Disorder is the rejection of order. It is not merely the rejection of beauty, of hygiene, of the law; filth is a deliberate rejection of the state. The filth and chaos of Muslim streets, my friends, is the rejection of everything we hold dear. We know this because once we, too, sought refuge in chaos. When the Mughals invaded us, broke our beautiful temples and destroyed our way of life, we withdrew into filth and ugliness. That was how we waged our war. That is how we protested. When the British invaded us, broke our beautiful temples and destroyed our way of life, we withdrew into ugliness because to accept the beauty of the invader is to be co-opted by them. We know that. We understand organized chaos because we invented it. But today we have begun to invent our own beauty and order. But the Muslims reject that. That’s why they are filthy. They are filthy because they reject us, they are filthy because they reject India.

  ‘What a horrible man,’ Naaz said.

  Aisha threw glances around to check if any of Damodarbhai’s devouts had heard her. It is simple things like this that get people hacked on the street.

  The reception of the Majestic Hotel was disappointing. It was her first time in a hotel and she had imagined that it would be opulent. But still it looked better than home. There was a man waiting for them. His T-shirt was torn at the armpits. He probably didn’t know. ‘I am Farook,’ he told Naaz. ‘I am the director of Malegaon Ka James Bond. It’s our great fortune to receive a party from Bollywood. You look more beautiful than in your pictures. Your friends, too, but I’ve never seen their photographs.’ He said he was a tile-polisher and a poet. So many poets these days. He, too, had a hairstyle with a middle partition. ‘You girls have nothing to worry at all,’ he said. ‘We treat women from Bollywood with utmost respect, offer them only mineral water and send them back with their honour intact.’

  ‘Can you show us our rooms?’ Laila said.

  ‘We have booked only one room because of budget constraints. But it is big enough for three of you.’

  ‘AC?’

  ‘There are only non-AC rooms in this hotel.’

  ‘I hope you have brought the cash,’ Laila said. ‘Hundred per cent upfront.’

  He looked hurt, but he handed an envelope to her, which she passed on to Naaz. Naaz was worse than Laila. She started counting the cash. Farook stood there and recited an Urdu couplet about trust, money and love.

  A short man wearing sunglasses walked in. The bellboy asked him for an autograph, which the short man in sunglasses obliged. ‘He is Malegaon’s Shah Rukh Khan,’ Farook said. ‘Doesn’t he look exactly like Shah Rukh Khan?’ A few minutes later, Malegaon’s Aamir Khan walked in. Then Malegaon’s Amitabh Bachchan, and Malegaon’s Will Smith, who was dark and had curly hair. All of them wore sunglasses. Over the next one hour trickled in malnourished welders, weavers and tile-polishers, who were all lookalikes of famous men. Then a small and very frail man appeared in a black suit. He was Malegaon’s James Bond. ‘I wore the suit in honour of our guests from Bollywood.’

  ‘This is his debut film,’ Farook said. ‘He is a welder when he is not an actor.’

  On his index finger was a ring that let out red and blue lights as though he carried his work in his ring.

  Early morning, Farook came to fetch his female lead. Laila and Aisha went along. They walked to a playground where a crowd of spectators had assembled. James Bond, in his suit, was watching some activity around a bullock-cart. A man was tying a small video camera to the yoke of the cart. The ox was grazing a hundred metres away. The excitement in the crowd escalated when they saw Naaz and Laila walk towards them. Farook told the crowd, ‘If I hear one disrespectful word about our guests from Bollywood, I’ll turn into a monster.’ That made Laila giggle. She probably liked him a bit. But she would never ever have a crush on a man whose T-shirt is torn.

  The crew was going to shoot all the scenes involving Naaz in the film over the next two days. In the shot that they were setting up, Naaz would be abducted by four goons and James Bond would rescue her. Malegaon’s Bond is very scared of fighting goons, crossing the road and swimming. He ends up rescuing people by chance. When Farook said ‘action’, James Bond began to run. A mob of spectators pushed down the rear end of the bullock-cart hoisting the cameraman sitting in front, on the crosspiece. Bond grew tired after running just twenty metres and stopped. It was not clear whether it was part of the act or the little frail man just could not run.

  A day later, after all the scenes involving Naaz were canned, ‘the Bollywood party’ went back to Mumbra. A week after their return, Laila said that the shoot of Malegaon Ka James Bond had been suspended. The financier of the film, a lineman who worked for the electricity board, had thrown in a sudden demand: he wanted his son to be Bond.

  ‘So why didn’t the director agree?’ Aisha asked.

  Laila didn’t know why. But she found out a few days later. Malegaon’s puny Bond had lung cancer and he was dying. He probably had just a few weeks to live. It was not a secret apparently. Death is never a secret among the poor. Starring in the film was the greatest thing Bond had ever done in his life, and the tile-polisher director did not wish to replace him even if that meant losing the film.

  ‘Maybe you should call James Bond and chat with him,’ Aisha said. ‘He liked you. He was tongue-tied when he would talk to you.’

  Laila looked lost. She was very affected by the news. ‘It would cost just fifty thousand rupees to make that film.’

  ‘That’s it? That’s like five small TVs.’

  Laila said she would convince Jamal to invest in the film.

  ‘He will do that for you?’ Aisha asked.

  That annoyed Laila. ‘This is not a favour,’ she said. ‘He can actually make money from producing Malegaon’s films. This is business.’

  Jamal sent the cash, the film was completed. A few weeks later, the director sent a CD of the film that also had a five-minute video of the première night when the entire local crew had assembled to watch the film. James Bond arrived on a cot in his black suit, holding a toy gun. He was too weak to walk. His cot was carried by the crew from his home through the narrow alleys of Malegaon. Great crowds cheered him all the way to a small video hall. He looked so happy, a puny, frail, happy dying man. Six hours after the première, he died. He was twenty-five.

  After watching the film, which was horrible, and the footage of James Bond’s journey to the première, Laila and Aisha went for their usual walk on the terrace.

  ‘Spoofs, all spoofs,’ Laila said. ‘Everything that the poor do are spoofs. Welding, tile-polishing, weaving, hawking, running a tiny store, fixing bikes, taking calls, and every single thing I do, every single thing Father did – these are just spoofs of the big games of big people.’

  19

  Damodarbhai

  SOMEWHERE IN A colony in Gurgaon where the per capita income is higher than Britain’s, a plump fourteen-year-old boy sets out to play tennis. A scrawny dark maid is carrying his tennis kitbag, which probably weighs half as much as her. He walks free, a metre ahead of her. He cannot bear to see the sight of the mule swaying
under the burden though the kitbag looks particularly expensive on her.

  The boy is in a good mood. Everybody at home is in a good mood. A new government is coming. Father was dancing when he was watching the election results. ‘God,’ Father said many times, ‘Damodarbhai is my God. Our God.’ The boy has not seen his father so happy in the past five years. The Gandhi dynasty has ruined the nation. Father’s chemical import business has almost sunk. And they have been unable to sell any of their six flats in Gurgaon. The family had to cancel its annual European holiday for three successive years. They went to Malaysia, instead. Malaysia. What next – Thailand? Father says the Gandhi dynasty has also made low-caste people talk back to those who feed them. His factory is full of them, so he knows. And they have become expensive, too. That is because of ‘the socialism of the Gandhi dynasty’, Father says. ‘The employment guarantee scheme for lazy farmers is making these bastards bold.’

  The mule who is carrying his tennis racquets has been talking back. Last week she said she wouldn’t wash the family’s underwear any more. ‘You wash your things yourself,’ the woman told Mother, ‘I won’t wash yours. And I won’t wash the panties of your daughter. She’s not a kid any more.’ The maid said ‘panties’ in English. Father got upset when he heard that sister wore panties. The boy agrees there is something very vulgar and sexual about the word ‘panties’. Father ran out of his room, clenched his fists and screamed at the maid, ‘Never ever say that my daughter wears panties.’

  20

  A Patriarch’s Review

  THE HIGHWAY TO Mumbai passes through vast flatlands. Professor Vaid gapes at the rice and millet farms, which look glorious and self-important, but they are only waiting for the day when they will become real estate. The village romantics, who usually live in the cities, cannot bear the thought. The romantics wish everything to remain the same because it is aesthetic that way.

  Miss Iyer has harmed several village romantics, chiefly in a set of pranks called the ‘Nobel Series’ in which she fools the pious socialists into believing that they have been chosen for the peace Nobel. It is fascinating to see how the nice chaps behave when they are told they have won the good-behaviour award.

  For one of the pranks she deploys three white men and two white women, all of them middle-aged tourists she had collected from a cheap hostel in Colaba. She takes them to meet P. Sathya, whose malady of interest is rural affairs. He is a serious humanitarian with an accidentally fashionable hairstyle. Like every philosophical thug of Miss Iyer, he despises large corporations, agriculture reforms, land reforms, biotechnology, and the fact that rich men wish to acquire land. He wants small farmers to remain small farmers, half-naked in their tiny hamlets. He has, of course, won the Magsaysay.

  Sathya is alone in his office when Miss Iyer herds the foreigners in. She has concealed a tiny high-resolution camera in her spy-bag, which has an aperture for the camera’s lens. Sathya’s assistant, a thin, excessively reverential man, ushers them in and leaves the room. Sathya is gracious. He is under the impression that a group of professors from a Norwegian university wishes to meet him to understand the traumas of Indian farmers. He is good with traumas, he loves traumas.

  ‘We have been a bit disingenuous,’ Miss Iyer’s voice says with an accent that she wishes to pass off as Scandinavian. ‘We are not from a university. This is an unfortunate custom we need to follow in our line of work.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Sathya says, still gracious.

  ‘We are in reality from a committee set up by the Norwegian Parliament. I am just a regional facilitator. I live in Oslo but I was born here, in Mumbai. These are not the members of the committee, but representatives of the members.’

  Sathya looks bewildered but he is an informed man. A great but elegant excitement begins to descend on him.

  ‘Mr Sathya, we are from the Norwegian Nobel Committee,’ a solemn man says.

  Sathya, still pretending that he does not know what is going on, throws a glance at the window, at a distant time, as though in quiet reflection of his whole life.

  ‘Mr Sathya,’ a woman says, ‘the Norwegian Parliament and the Norwegian Nobel Committee are honoured to confer the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize on you for your lifelong dedication to the welfare of Indian farmers.’

  Two remarkable things occur. Sathya believes them at once. It is as though he always carried in his heart the hope or conviction that this moment would arrive. The other remarkable event is that he begins to cry. Upon receiving news of an extraordinary recognition, the selfless weep in joy, inadvertently revealing the impossibility of selflessness.

  The woman requests Sathya not to break the news to anyone until four hours later when an official statement would be issued from Oslo.

  ‘In about four hours, the working day in Oslo will begin,’ Miss Iyer says. ‘We will convey the news to the world then. We just wanted to meet you to confirm that you accept the award.’

  ‘I accept,’ Sathya says, wiping his eyes with a kerchief, ‘I accept.’

  The reason why Miss Iyer met him so early was probably to ensure that the real Nobel Committee would not be in a position to deny the news if Sathya leaked it in his excitement. After all, he has been a journalist for decades and has close friends in the profession.

  The prank has a second part, which is its core. She sets up a Skype appointment with him, claiming that the Nobel Committee, sitting in Oslo, will formally break the news to him.

  Four hours later, the Skype interview begins. Sathya’s face, which has acquired extreme compassion, appears on the screen.

  ‘Yes, I’m here,’ he says. ‘But I can’t see any of you. I think your video is off.’

  ‘That’s unfortunate,’ the voice of Miss Iyer says. ‘The whole committee is present, they can see you from Oslo. The group who met you today in your office, sir, we are in a conference room at the Taj Hotel. We can see you, too.’

  ‘Hello,’ Sathya says meekly, wondering what he must say to invisible influential Norwegians. ‘Hello, Committee.’

  ‘Something has come up, sir,’ Miss Iyer says with reverence. ‘There is an issue, sir.’

  ‘What issue, ma’am?’

  ‘You’re a propagator of a concept called “farmer suicide”.’

  ‘What do you mean by “propagator”, ma’am?’

  ‘You’ve propagated the idea that Indian farmers commit suicide because they are in debt.’

  ‘I’ve not propagated anything, ma’am, I’ve been…’

  ‘But several studies have disproved this. It appears that Indian farmers commit suicide for the same reason why many millionaires commit suicide: they are suicidal, they are depressed. It’s a mental health issue, it appears to us, not a debt issue.’

  ‘What is it that…’

  ‘Maybe poverty is one of the many factors that push the depressed to take extreme steps.’

  ‘I don’t see how this…’

  ‘In fact, if we look at the matter statistically, sir, poor Indians in the agricultural industry are least likely, I repeat least likely, to kill themselves than richer Indians or even South Koreans in general or Australian farmers in particular.’

  ‘Ma’am, there is a…’

  ‘Also, if you’re portraying farmer suicides in economic and sociological terms, what explains the fact that the number of male farmers who commit suicide is many times higher than female farmers, who are the most oppressed creatures on earth? The skewed ratio, sir, matches perfectly with a global phenomenon of depression-induced suicides where the number of men who accomplish suicide is many times higher than women.’

  ‘Ma’am, what are you trying to say?’

  ‘There is a concern that you have created the myth of farmer suicide to milk it for your activism like other fucker-doodle-do-gooders.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘And why did you cry when we told you that we are giving you the Nobel. You want it much?’

  ‘What’s going on? What the hell is going on?’
/>   ‘You sound angry, sir.’

  ‘What the hell is going on?’

  ‘Sir, this call may be recorded for quality and training purposes.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘This call may be recorded for quality and training purposes.’

  ‘Is this some sick prank, you semi-literate corporate bitch…’

  ‘No Nobel for you.’

  Sathya’s lips tremble. He looks to his left, and to his right. Some words escape his mouth but it is not clear what he says. As Miss Iyer would put it, we are unable to follow his dialect any more.

  21

  Miss Laila, Armed and Dangerous

  IS SHE AN accomplice? What if they are in this together? Mukundan asks that question only because he needs to. He knows there is no way he can find an answer by just sitting in his car and observing her.

  The sun has lit the breeze. It is as though someone is holding a hairdryer to his face. He has parked the WagonR on the shoulder of the highway, about two hundred metres ahead of the entrance to the restaurant complex. He has a clear view of the Indica in the massive parking lot, which is largely vacant. Jamal and the girl step out. She covers her head with her dupatta and walks with brisk steps, her young slim figure defining her kurta.

  All she has to do is keep walking, without a word, away from the parking lot, keep walking away from that man and not return to his car, that is all she has to do to reclaim her life. Or, if they are lovers, they should have a fight like good lovers. She must ask him to abandon his wife and children, and surrender to evil pussy; and he must blurt out that she is not so important to him; then she must start crying, she must give him a tight slap, and he must slap her back like a true Malayalee; and she must walk away to a bus stand. All she needs is the luck of a bad day.