No Presents Please

by Jayant Kaikini

  Maganbhai and Bhalekar had been there long before Indranil had started working at Opera House. They knew how to run the projector too. Although they lay like fallen trees, and it would have been cruel to wake them, it would be even crueller to deny them their tea. ‘Chai, chai … hot, hot chai!’ Indranil shouted. The two men sat up suddenly. Between sleep and wakefulness, smiling a little foolishly, afraid that they were late for work, they jumped up and started folding their bedding. ‘Hey, it’s only two thirty. You can sleep for four more hours,’ said Indranil, and they sat down again. They sat quietly like obedient little boys as Indranil poured the tea into two glasses from the counter. As they drank the hot tea, they smacked their lips appreciatively and exclaimed how good it tasted. They lay down again, pulled their sheets over their bodies, and were asleep and snoring in less than two minutes.

  Indranil went near the lamp and looked again at the slip of paper with the address. That address and this night were not connected in any way. The Opera House theatre and this address were not connected in any way either. These sleeping men and the address were not connected in any way. Saavli and her friends and this address were not connected in any way. Perhaps the address would acquire meaning only in the daytime. When shops and banks raised their shutters, when people started moving about in their well-pressed clothes, the address would come to life. The person who opened the door would ask with raised eyebrows what the caller wanted. Would say thank you. All this in the daytime though. Now he couldn’t take the flask anywhere. It had to stay here, like the spirit of Opera House, speaking to the carved wooden ceilings, sewing the silver projection screen, cleaning the smudges left on Saavli’s face by her eyeliner, blowing at the flame of the channawala’s burner…

  Having nodded off to sleep where he sat, Indranil woke with a start. A burning new day was prowling through the empty theatre like an angry leopard. The other men were not to be seen. The empty flask sunbathed in a beam of light. Indranil picked it up and went into the foyer. There were a large number of people there. Maganbhai was gasping as he shouted loudly. It seemed as though he was weeping. Bhalekar came running up to Indranil saying, ‘Indoo, everything is gone. They’re closing Opera House from today. Everything’s finished. Finished. Pack up your things. They’ve locked the gate. No, they’re not building a shopping mall here. It’s an old building, a heritage building, so they can’t touch it. Where do we go? Where do we go?’ he embraced Indranil as he sobbed.

  Indranil was startled to think this situation wasn’t affecting him at all. In the bright sunlight, everyone looked old. The peacock at the fountain was missing the glass marble that was its eye. The posters of the film that was showing until yesterday seemed suddenly happy and liberated. Two policemen stood outside the locked gate, rubbing tobacco into their palms.

  ‘Indoo, go and get some hot tea. Let’s drink to our destruction!’ shouted Maganbhai.

  Indranil walked towards the small gate next to the curving metal staircase, told Bhalekar that he would be back soon, and stepped out. He had no trouble finding the address in the daytime. Sonawala Building was opposite the twin Ganga-Jamuna theatres, and the door of B 12 stood open. In the ten square feet of that apartment was a cot, a small teapoy, a sewing machine in the corner, two metal chairs, one folded easy chair, a cupboard, a kitchen counter and, between two drums, an old woman with white hair who was cleaning rice.

  Seeing Indranil, she stood up. ‘Come, come, aren’t you Anand? I’d seen you when you were just a little boy. Come, sit down. Why did you bring the flask? Is your mother still angry with me? Do sit down, you’ll understand everything, I’m sure you will. My husband – you used to call him Daya Kaka – he fell ill and was in the hospital for a very long time. We had a hard time, just like now. Because I had to take milk and gruel to the hospital and didn’t have a thermos flask, your mother – Kundatai – gave me this one. My bad luck. Daya Kaka never came back from the hospital. They brought him home in the ambulance, showed me his face, and took him away. What could I do alone? I should have returned your thermos, but didn’t. If the flask was sent from a house of mourning, I thought your mother might not accept it. I kept quiet, thinking Kundatai would understand. After that she came to visit me many times. But I couldn’t bring myself to mention the flask. And then you moved away to Parel. And we lost contact. Much later someone told me that Kundatai was going around telling everyone that Nandabai had kept for herself the flask given to her in times of trouble. I felt really bad. I didn’t know how to trace you. And suddenly yesterday I met Mr Parulekar, who told me Kundatai was seriously ill and in Bhatia Hospital. I didn’t know how to help or what I could do. This is another flask, not the one she gave me. This was left here by my sister. I begged a young fellow in the street to take the flask to Bhatia Hospital and give it a woman named Kundatai Ghoghre who had been admitted there. And that’s all it was, Anand … I didn’t mean ill. Why did you bring it back, my son? How is Kundatai?’ The old woman began to sob quietly.

  Having pasted handwritten posters all over the railings saying ‘All shows cancelled from today’, Maganbhai sat in a tired silence. Seeing Indranil approaching with the flask, he shouted, ‘Hey, the chai is here!’ Without noticing who was near him, Indranil handed the flask to Bhalekar and climbed the stairs to his stairwell corner where there was a single beam of sunshine. The sun was cuddling the whole cinema hall, and this beam seemed to have come inside specially to console him. He stroked it softly with his fingers. The night which was hiding inside Opera House rode out on the beam to mingle into the daylight.

  ‘Opera House’, 2004

  A SPARE PAIR OF LEGS

  Just a few feet away from the crossroads in Farmagudi village in Goa, six-year-old Chandu was jumping up and down, shouting ‘Mumbai, Mumbai’, while his father Narasimha and his mother Meera packed a bag in silence. Tiring of Chandu’s mischief and the hundreds of complaints about him across field and town, Narasimha had been left with no option but to take the boy to a remand home in Mumbai. Even the threats of the schoolmaster and the village police had had no effect on the boy.

  It was already several months since they had written to Katkar Kaka who had been living in Mumbai for many years, and got the address of the remand home from him. Even after beating Chandu severely, the parents looked at his small body, thin arms and legs every night while he slept and were filled with affection for the child. In the dark, the husband and wife would whisper to each other that Chandu would become better behaved as he grew older. But with each new day, Chandu leaped to new heights of mischief. Beating up his classmates was the least of it. There was the time when he jumped out of the mango tree on top of Seetha Teacher and rubbed her face with raw mango sap; or when he mixed up the small change of all the flower sellers in front of the temple and heaped it up in a corner, thus setting up a fight between them; or when he shoved the pilgrims dressed in trousers and shirts who were standing with folded hands just outside the inner sanctum so that they fell into the sacred spot and cracked their heads, still clad in the clothes they were forbidden to wear inside; or pushed Savitrakka’s infant into a bucket of water and tried to hold it down – hundreds of such terrorizing acts were Chandu’s handiwork. The townspeople called him Gabbar Singh, after the villain in Sholay.

  If they saw Chandu coming, the other children would flee as though they had seen a tiger. If anyone saw a child howling on the street, accompanied by a mother shouting curses, they would immediately know that Chandu had been at it again. Sometimes Chandu would run all of a sudden, like an arrow released from a bow, through the women who were picking stones out of rice, or rolling out papad, or weaving coconut leaves together, followed by the person who was chasing him. Even when he was running at that speed, Chandu did not forget to kick the heaps of rice or the wet papad dough, or hit the shaven heads of the widows or stick a finger in someone’s eye. Every night at lamp-lighting time, Narasimha and Meera waited as though for their punishment. Like searching for a missing ox, they wandered throu
gh the town calling through strangers’ yards, ‘Chandu … Chandu…’

  Sometimes, Chandu would come in quietly whimpering like a wounded animal and go straight to bed. Even if he had been beaten, he took it in silence. When his mother applied coconut oil on his wounds, and cuddled him, saying, ‘Why do you behave so badly, little one? Why behave like a demon? You sweet little baby…’ he hid himself in her bosom, sobbing. They tried not feeding him. They dragged him to the police station and got a policeman with a big moustache to shout at him. It was no use. During a wedding in Kesarkar’s house, when the guests were eating their lunch, there was a huge commotion in the kitchen. Chandu had peed into the pot of saaru and was being beaten by the cook with a ladle. He ran out, stamping on all the banana leaves spread out to serve the food. Narasimha and Meera, who had come for the wedding feast, had to return home quietly without eating.

  They felt the entire town was turning against them. ‘Kali has entered into the child – he is a demon. If you leave him as he is, there’s no knowing what might happen,’ said the townsfolk. So Narasimha wrote to Katkar Kaka: ‘It’s become necessary to put Chandu in a remand home. I’m coming to Mumbai with him.’

  When Chandu came to know about going to Mumbai, without bothering to find out why, he began to jump with joy. He ran to the temple to where a group of boys sitting in a row sold flowers to the devotees. Among them was Kunta Mangesha, called Kunta because he was lame, who sold bunches of hibiscus. The boys surrounded him chanting, ‘Chandu is going to Mumbai’. Kunta Mangesha was the beloved older brother of all the boys, adored for the way he waved his arms about as he told them stories. Chandu was especially fond of him. It was from him that Chandu had heard about the magical city of Mumbai. There were many versions of how Mangesha lost his legs. One version was that he had lost them as a soldier in a battle. Another version was that he had lost them in Mumbai. That he fell in love with someone whose husband cut off his limbs was another story. Kunta Mangesha had tied black rubber sheets to his amputated limbs, and stood like the disfigured idol outside the temple, waving his arms about and calling out to the tourists. Pretending to run fast even as he stood in one place, he pumped his arms and amused the children. And although the entire town hated Chandu, Kunta Mangesha always greeted him with pleasure.

  On festival days if Meera prepared any special food, she sent some for Mangesha. If he met Narasimha, Kunta Mangesha always said, ‘Your Chandu is a little terror. Very brave. Fit to join the army.’ Wherever there was a village fair, in Mangeshi, Madkai, Ramanathi or Shantadurga, Kunta was there. Chandu wondered how the lame man got to these places. One day he had seen Kunta being lifted out of a bus at the Ponda bus stand. Once on the ground, Kunta crawled to the soda shop and drank a lime soda. On harvest festival days, trucks and tempos went through the town, displaying tableaux of various scenes and masked men in fancy dress. Kunta would be on a truck too, being the Appu Raja who couldn’t walk, grabbing the band’s bugle to play ‘Raja re Raja’. On rainy days, he tied plastic bags to his stumps.

  One night Narasimha said to Chandu, ‘Don’t jump around with that Mangesha – if you keep on making mischief, someone will cut off your legs too.’

  The schoolmasters, who used to complain that Chandu was not attending classes, had reached a state where they wanted him to stay away. When Mangesha heard that Chandu was going to Mumbai, he began to sing the Hindi film ditty ‘Yeh hai Bombay Meri Jaan,’ cackling, ‘I have thousands of wives in Mumbai.’

  The night before the journey, neither Narasimha nor Meera could sleep. Meera leaned against the wall with Chandu in her arms. Both parents worried that Chandu would get beaten up in the remand home.

  ‘Anyway, Katkar Kaka is there. Let’s put him in the home for a few days. Then we can bring him back,’ said Meera.

  ‘No, no,’ said Narasimha, swallowing. ‘We must be strong. This is all for him, or else he’ll become a complete rogue. Let him learn a little discipline. Let’s be strong…’

  ‘Poor child, he won’t eat a single morsel unless he has his piece of fish,’ wept Meera, kissing her son’s arms and legs.

  She went until the Farmagudi crossroads to see them off. The temple’s flower-selling boys had walked beind Chandu as though they were in a victory procession. Kunta Mangesha smiled and called out to Chandu. Meera asked her son to fall at Kunta’s feet. Feeling shy, Chandu bowed and joined his palms together in front of Kunta, who stroked his head and said, ‘You get very fine legs in Mumbai. You must bring me a pair. If you get a coloured pair, that would be even better.’

  Throughout the bus journey, Chandu could only think about the coloured legs Mangesha had mentioned. Were they really available? Mangesha always spoke the truth, so maybe they were. So Chandu would definitely get a pair for him. As the bus approached Mumbai before dawn, Narasimha sat up straight. Chandu, who had been sleeping on his father’s lap, also sat up. By either side of the road, thousands of men had squatted like children for their ablutions. It was more frightening than disgusting. Trucks stood around, heavily laden with bags. At Dadar terminus, Katkar Kaka was waiting to receive them. Carrying their luggage, they walked a long distance to Kaka’s kholi, which was in an old railway chawl in Parel.

  ‘Chandu, my boy, why do you harass your parents so much?’ Kaka asked gruffly, but Chandu was lost in gazing at the city’s sights. In that old part of Mumbai, bankrupt textile mills were everywhere, looking like ruined fortresses. The blackened and cold chimneys seemed like hands raised up to the sky, crying. In Kaka’s one-room home, Narasimha looked here and there to see where he could put down his luggage.

  Katkar Kaka’s wife was not around. Narasimha suspected that she had gone to her mother’s house so as not to inconvenience the guests. More than three would certainly be a crowd in this kholi. Kaka made tea for them, and heated water in a large aluminium vessel for their baths. In the adjoining mori, Chandu splashed about like a sparrow. On the mirror hanging on the wall were a bunch of sticker bindis. Chandu couldn’t tell whether Kaka had children or not, since there were no small-sized clothes hanging anywhere. Katkar Kaka went downstairs and bought some bread for them. ‘I’ll go to my office and come back early. Don’t wait for me to eat dinner,’ he said, and left.

  Suddenly Narasimha and Chandu were left all alone. Narasimha lay down and tried to nap, while Chandu stood in the doorway, looking out. All the kholis had a small verandah in front, enclosed by an old-fashioned wooden grill. Each verandah had, in a small used tin of palm oil, a tulsi plant, and perhaps a money plant in a bottle. Women sat in front of their kholis, combing their hair or cleaning rice. Men were setting out to work, holding small tiffin boxes. Children in uniforms of different colours were heading for school with their backpacks. It seemed as though the kholis were places where people only came to change their clothes. And even in that tightly packed neighbourhood with those people walking so close to each other, no one seemed to have the time to look at these newcomers. The woman in the next kholi threw the fallen hair she had wound around her finger while combing it to one side. The ball of hair shuffled a little in the breeze, fell from the fence onto the verandah, and came to a halt in front of Chandu. Chandu looked at the woman and laughed. She did not even smile back, but just blinked at him and went back into her nest.

  Narasimha went out and brought batata vada and biscuits for them to eat. ‘There’s a hotel down there,’ he said. ‘We’ll go there for lunch.’ They spread out the paper packets on the bed and ate straight from them. Afterwards, they stood at the main entrance of the chawl and looked at the bustling market outside that had suddenly come to life. The Parel railway station, from which hordes of people erupted when a train came in, was close by. Blind men wearing dark glasses stood selling lottery tickets. In front of a little shop that was closed, hundreds of small boys were picking up bundles of newspapers and then melting into the crowds. A man sitting on a little wooden box was counting out the papers. The small boys, talking to the man like adults doing business, would then pick u
p their bundles and go off. No one wore any footwear. In a few seconds, the papers were gone and the man’s wooden box nestled in a corner. Soon a vegetable seller spread out his wares in the same spot. A boy clinking a coin against his kettle came shouting, ‘Chai!’ Holding a tower of glasses in one hand, the boy pulled them out one by one to fill them with tea. Narasimha looked at Chandu meaningfully, as if to say this is what happens to children who don’t go to school. But Chandu was already enchanted by the smartness of the tea boy and the talisman on a black thread round his neck.

  Unexpectedly, Katkar Kaka came home in the afternoon, saying, ‘I applied for half a day’s leave. We’ll go wherever you want to go.’

  Narasimha felt rushed, as though he had to set off on an expedition even before he had recovered from the night’s journey.

  ‘You go and have your lunch,’ said Katkar. ‘After that we can go to the remand home in Dongri. No guarantee that I’ll get leave tomorrow.’ There was no mention of Katkar’s wife and children. He didn’t ask after Meera. Neither did he speak a word to Chandu. Narasimha felt fearful.

  ‘Come and have lunch with us,’ he said to Katkar.

  ‘No, no, you go. Bring me a masala dosa,’ Katkar replied.

  Narasimha and Chandu went out, looking into the kholis along the way. In some kholis, there appeared to be small workshops. Serious-looking young women were attaching something to pieces of plastic. Tiny machines were whirring. The women, whose eyes didn’t blink, looked like statues.

  When they looked back from the road, the chawl seemed far away. There seemed to be many more such chawls in the distance, as though the buildings had merged into one another. Hanging from the rusted windows were drying clothes, looking like faded flags on an old chariot. In the Udupi hotel, each of them ate a ‘rice plate’ with gusto. When Chandu gently insisted on having an ice cream, Narasimha felt pleased, and bought him one, laughing. While Kaka’s masala dosa was being packed, Chandu looked carefully around the hotel. The waiters were adults, but the cleaners were small boys, who dashed about at the speed of lighting. As soon as Chandu finished his ice cream, a cleaner boy picked up the plate, and with a wet cloth meticulously swept the rice grains from the table into his tub. Narasimha smiled at him and he smiled back. Chandu felt the boy was deliberately not looking at him. He saw the boy standing in a corner later, speaking in a serious way with the waiters.