When they returned to the chawl, Katkar Kaka had woken from his nap, and started gobbling up the dosa. Even as he chewed, he continued to speak. Picking up courage, Narasimha said, ‘Let’s not take Chandu today. Let him sleep. We two will go by ourselves.’ Katkar seemed to be hesitating, and the reason became clear as they got ready to leave.
Katkar Kaka started telling Chandu, ‘Don’t touch this switch. Don’t meddle with that switch. Don’t open this cupboard.’ Then he peered into the doorway of the next kholi and told the woman, ‘Please keep an eye on this boy, he’s a handful.’ Narasimha pointed to a packet of biscuits and told Chandu to eat some if he felt like it, and not to go out anywhere.
Chandu tried to fall asleep but couldn’t. On the table in the corner was a square-shaped cloth bundle. It felt firm to Chandu’s touch. It had been tied with two or three bedsheets, and knotted firmly. Chandu tackled the knot with his little fingers. It refused to yield. Breathing heavily, he attacked it again. Then suddenly in a heart-stopping voice, the neighbour, who came rushing in, shouted, ‘Hey boy! What are you up to?’
After this initial question, she ignored Chandu altogether while she put two vessels she had been carrying on the gas stove, and started cooking. Then she brought in a series of utensils which all made their way onto the stove. After cooking for an hour and a half on Katkar’s gas stove, the woman said, laughing, ‘See here, boy, don’t tell him I used the gas, haan? Otherwise I’ll tell him you were up to no good.’
Chandu was frightened. Even though the bundle kept on enticing him, he stayed away from the knot. He went to stand in the verandah. The young women were hard at work on their bits of plastic. Just then, the tea boy came clattering up the stairs and began to hand glasses of tea to all the women, pouring from above so that there was foam on top. The women saw Chandu standing there, and signalled to him to come and drink some tea. As Chandu deliberated what to do, the tea boy came up to him and gave him a glass. The hot glass burned Chandu’s hand, and he put it down suddenly, while the tea boy laughed. He was probably not much older than Chandu, and the women called out to him, ‘Popat, Popat, dance that “hamma” dance for us!’
As though to indicate that he didn’t have time for all this, Popat balanced a glass on his head, held his hand on his hip, and said, ‘Hamma, hamma,’ while wiggling his bottom. In a trice, he had moved on to the next chawl. Chandu laughed. He finished his tea and went over to leave it near the young women, who had already returned to their statue-like positions. The machines had started whirring again.
Chandu waited for Popat the tea boy to emerge from one of the chawls. He was back quickly, having collected all the empty glasses. As though he understood Chandu’s fascination with him, he asked, ‘What’s your name?’ And when the boy replied, ‘Chandu,’ Popat immediately asked for the empty glass.
Chandu pointed towards the young women at their machines. When he picked up the glasses and collected his money from the girls, Popat came past Chandu and said, ‘Maaf kiya, you’re excused.’ It seemed as though the girls had forgotten to pay Popat for the extra glass of tea, but all the same he ‘forgave’ Chandu, before he went back into the streets and melted into the heat holding his kettle.
The breeze that blew from the side of the market felt hot on Chandu’s face. He peered slowly into the neighbour’s house. On a rather small cot, the woman, who was quite big, was fast asleep. A six-inch wide electric fan in a small square box was making a ‘kiti-kiti’ noise. Chandu glimpsed several cages inside the kholi, and wondered why rats needed such large traps. Suddenly Chandu realized with surprise that he hadn’t so far seen a single animal – a cock, or a dog, a cat or a squirrel. He began to think about Kunta Mangesha, who could cover his mouth with his hand and make animal and bird sounds. When he told them that yellow parrots used to come to Veling Hill, the children used to insist that parrots were green, and Mangesha would laugh and say they could have it that way if they wanted. Chandu wondered if this large woman was one of the thousand wives Mangesha had left behind in Mumbai. Then his attention turned to the mysterious bundle, and again he began to pull at the knot. Just then Narasimha and Katkar came back.
‘Eh, eh, eh, don’t touch that bundle,’ said Katkar Kaka, lying down on the bed. ‘Now you know the way to Dongri. Take Chandu tomorrow, and if you get lost just ask a panwala.’ Then uttering ‘Hey Ram!’ Katkar shut his eyes.
Looking defeated, Narasimha turned to Chandu and asked him if he had eaten the biscuits. In a small voice, Chandu related the story of Popat giving him tea, hearing which Katkar Kaka, with his eyes still shut, began to babble: ‘You should never take what a stranger gives you. These street children are up to no good. Today it’s tea, tomorrow something else…’
‘Let’s go and get something to eat,’ said Narasimha to Chandu.
‘Why don’t you go for a stroll and come back in a couple of hours?’ suggested Katkar Kaka.
As soon as they were on the street, Narasimha hugged his son, and asked: ‘Shall we eat an ice cream?’ Narasimha’s limbs were shaking, and his heart thumping as if he had just woken from a bad dream. He hadn’t recovered from Katkar’s unexpected behaviour when they went to see the remand home. They had changed buses twice, and then walked a long way to reach the home. Pointing out the rusted, jail-like building from a distance, Katkar said, ‘There’s your son’s remand home. You can go inside if you like, I’m not coming.’ Then he burst out: ‘Look, Narasimha, I’ve done all this for you because it’s the first time you’ve come to Mumbai. In the future, I won’t be able to mind your rogue of a son, or worry about his endless pranks. This place is infamous for housing juvenile delinquents and homeless children, and I don’t want to have anything to do with it. If you have the idea that I could be the local guardian for your son, remove it from your mind at once.’ Narasimha couldn’t understand why Katkar could not look him in the eye. His mouth felt dry as he stared at the remand home, which began to look like a graveyard. In the heat of the afternoon, the building seemed to be without human inhabitants. In that moment, Narasimha felt afraid that he had come so far from Chandu.
Father and son ate their ice creams. ‘Much better than what you get in Ponda,’ said Chandu, smacking his lips. They wandered for a bit through the bazaar. Like in the morning, Chandu saw only children everywhere. Shoeshine boys, boys who scrubbed windshields of cars with yellow cloths, those who sold rat poison, those who held the ladder for the poster-stickers, those who sold coriander leaves in bunches, those who shouted out to customers from bhelpuri and omelette carts – all of them like himself. What brave children. Chandu felt that all schoolteachers should come and see how these boys behaved. Narasimha, on the other hand, could not think of anything but Chandu’s touch and his voice. When Chandu said they should go and look at the trains, they climbed the station stairs. From the bridge they could see Parel Station. Each train looked as though it was carrying limbs and trunks and heads from a far-off battlefield. Each would deposit some of these on the platform and proceed to its next destination.
Chandu thought he saw a familiar small figure waving to him from the corner of the bridge. He was afraid to look closely. But when he did, he saw the tea boy Popat, sitting on his kettle, his talisman winking in the evening sun. Narasimha took Chandu’s hand and started climbing down the stairs. Chandu felt like a top that had begun to spin, thrilled to see Popat.
As they climbed down the stairs, they were shocked to see a middle-aged man lying on the steps and thrashing around as though he was having an epileptic fit. His body was arching like a bow, and his slippers and bag were scattered on the steps. People were walking past him. Some stood and looked. Some said he must be drunk. Others said, ‘Hold a chappal to his nose.’ One said, ‘Get some water.’ No one stayed beyond two or three minutes. But amidst the crowd, speculation about who he might be continued. Narasimha sat down on the step and held the man so that he would not fall off. Someone took up the piece of paper the man had been clutching. When pulled, the paper tor
e into three pieces, and people began to scrutinize each of the pieces. The paper was torn from a school exercise book.
‘There’s some sort of map here,’ said one in a raised voice.
‘There seems to be some lafda here.’
‘It’s a map of some underground activity…’ said some people.
‘Why don’t you join the three pieces together?’ suggested one person.
This was done, and people peered at the paper again. ‘Perhaps it’s the code of a smuggling gang,’ said someone.
‘We should inform the police,’ said another.
Yet another man sat on the steps and smoothed out the paper pieces. Immediately, Chandu figured out what it was, but did not have the courage to speak up. He whispered in his father’s ear just one word: ‘Chappal.’ Then Narasimha too saw the diagram clearly, and began to tell everyone that it was the measurement of a small boy’s foot, made to buy a chappal of the right size. The man who had been lying on the steps was coming back to consciousness, and he too nodded faintly. The crowd dispersed, feeling cheated. The man stood up slowly, and after they had made sure he had picked up his bag and had begun to cross the bridge, Narasimha and Chandu left the station. How quickly the boy had understood the diagram! Narasimha felt very happy. He held Chandu close to him as they walked on. ‘How did you figure out what it was?’ he asked his son.
Chandu was filled with enthusiasm. ‘Appa, when do we go to the shoe house Mangesha told us about, and the aquarium?’ he asked.
‘Tomorrow,’ said Narasimha.
They got back to Katkar’s kholi a little earlier than expected. The door and windows, which were always open, were now shut from the inside. They could hear faint sounds from the kholi. Narasimha was astonished. He banged on the door, and the sounds stopped suddenly. Chandu stared at the door, which showed no signs of opening. Narasimha worried that thieves might have gotten inside. He banged on the door again. Then he climbed on the ledge of the window, slowly pushed aside the ventilator glass and looked inside. Katkar Kaka was tying up something in the sheets with great haste. Suddenly Narasimha understood what the small square object was. It was a television set. Folding up the wires, Katkar tied the knots tightly. Having placed it on the corner table, he came nonchalantly to the door and opened it. Narasimha jumped down from the ledge. ‘Oh, you came back early,’ Katkar greeted them.
Chandu saw that the bundle had changed position and that the knot looked different. Katkar’s behaviour, like a child eating a tidbit in secret, alarmed Narasimha. Chandu touched the bundle when no one was looking. It was hot to the touch. That night as they were making awkward arrangements to go to sleep, a series of strange growling noises and the shrieking of animals emanated from the neighbour’s house. Although it was a sound that pierced the night, no one in the chawl seemed bothered by it. Noticing Narasimha and Chandu’s stunned silence, Katkar said, ‘Cats, cats.’
Chandu wondered in fear where the cats had come from, since he hadn’t seen even a squirrel’s tail that morning. Katkar went on to explain that the neighbouring woman’s husband was in the business of catching cats and selling them to pharmaceutical companies for their research. The large cages he had glimpsed in the morning rose up before Chandu’s eyes. Katkar continued with his story. The cat catcher went around the city with a bag and lurked around waiting for cats to come by. He kept them in the cages and put them all into the tempo sent by the company every morning. When the chawl people had complained, he had let some terrible cats loose to frighten them. ‘Makes really good money,’ said Katkar, raising his eyebrows. The cats’ screams did not stop.
Neither father nor son could sleep. If Chandu had not recognized the drawing of the child’s foot today, the poor epileptic man would have been turned over to the police. Compared to these people with faces like torn banknotes, whose main effort was to save their pockets from being picked, little Chandu Gabbar Singh’s pranks in Farmagudi’s fields and hills, alleys and attics, began to seem like the god Krishna’s games to Narasimha. How scared the poor child must be feeling. Feeling the boy’s hot breath on him as he tried to sleep clutching his father, Narasimha’s chest felt a little less tight. He whispered in Chandu’s ear: ‘Do you see how the naughty little boys are all on the streets without their fathers and mothers? You’re a good boy. Tomorrow we’ll go home, and you must stop all your mischief, haan?’
Chandu’s eyes remained open. In front of him marched an entire army of brave boys. With baskets of roasted peanuts tied to their stomachs, looking like little pregnant women, they marched on. They would leap from the running trains so that not a single peanut fell. They held this entire city up on their thin hands, as though they were holding up Govardhan Hill itself. In their midst was Popat of the tin talisman, smiling.
All of a sudden, Chandu sat up. He had dreamt that the Zuari River in Farmagudi was swollen with rainwater. In it was a boat without oars, floating. Someone had put Kunta Mangesha into the boat, and he was drifting away, far away, waving his hand and smiling.
Seeing Chandu sit up, Narasimha said: ‘Sleep, sweet child. Tomorrow morning we’ll look for the shoe house, and then catch the bus at night to go home.’
‘I want to buy the legs for Mangesha. If we don’t get them, I’m not coming home,’ drawled Chandu.
‘But, my child, I’m not sure we’ll get them…’
‘You don’t know a thing. Ask Popat – he knows everything. He’s my friend. We’ll go with him,’ said Chandu stubbornly.
‘Shh,’ said Katkar, turning on his side.
The neighbours’ cats were howling. Chandu felt that Popat was standing outside that very moment, and stood up. He went onto the verandah and looked down. A shiver went through him. Down in the street, in the middle of the homeless people who slept on the road divider, Popat was standing. He was looking in Chandu’s direction, the shimmering yellow streetlights at his back.
‘Bannada Kaalu’, 1995
INSIDE THE INNER ROOM
When his wife didn’t open the door, Antariksh Kothari was bewildered. After standing outside his apartment door for half an hour, he climbed down the three flights of stairs and went into the street. Meera Kothari kept sitting on the sofa, even as her husband kept pressing the shrill calling bell. Finally, he got tired of pressing the bell and shrieked a loud ‘Hey!’ When it seemed as though the neighbours would come out to investigate, Antariksh rapidly descended the stairs, clucking ruefully to himself.
Meera and Antariksh’s household or conjugal relationship or whatever you choose to call it had now lasted fifteen years, and of late it had become so transparent so as to be almost invisible to the eye – so much so that even they would wonder sometimes if one person lived in this house, or two. Meera was not even sure if Antariksh, who had not come home in the last three-four days, was with his girlfriend Parul or not. Even if that were the case, Meera was not all that bothered by it. When Antariskh took off, saying ‘business’, with his comb, some papers and a worn calculator in his small leather case, and wandered from town to town, it was as if even he didn’t know what sort of business it was. But he had never asked Meera for money. Neither did he seem to know much about Meera’s own job in a small crumbling office in the Fort area. It was not clear whether it was a good thing or a bad thing that they didn’t have children. But this was true: when they did meet, it was though they were meeting in someone else’s house. Even when they sat opposite each other in their own flat, they spoke like people meeting at a bus stop.
Antariksh was obsessed by his ‘business’, and Meera was crazy about breaking down the old furniture in the house and getting a carpenter to make new things – turning a table into a desk, a desk into a chair, creating cup holders in the chair’s arms. In this house which seemed to come straight out of P.C. Sorcar’s magic shows, there was an enormous double bed which was its heart, its main support. Although the bed didn’t look as though it was from the Arabian Nights, it was thick and soft, and all the household activities were carried out th
ere: eating, shaving, sewing, nail cutting, etc. This was why they subscribed to the Times of India. The sheets of the newspaper were spread out on the double bed. After a meal, the sheets were folded and put away. If Antariksh came home late one night and took up the paper, dry rice grains and tomato seeds would fall out. He would feel sorrow, wondering if any food had been saved for him. For the first few years, Meera would spread out the sheets so they could eat together. Then she began to re-heat his food when he came, having eaten before him. After a few more years, he used to heat the food himself.
And now he eats the cold chapattis straight out of the fridge with the pieces of potato, standing like a thief in the light of the open fridge. He turns off the hissing radio. He then drinks down an entire bottle of water. Then he bathes, puts on a white pyjama-kurta, turns out all the lights and fans, and goes to the bedroom. Lying asleep, huddled on the double bed, Meera looks like a marooned island in the shadows. Sometimes she goes to the beauty parlour on an impulse and gets a haircut. On such days, Antariksh wonders which woman was lying on the bed, and is aroused.
When she put on a new nightgown, he felt the same way, as though he had found a new woman. On such occasions Meera would sit up in bed, and he would start babbling: ‘Today I went and saw a place in Malad. My friend wants to start computer classes, I can be his partner…’ as his hands wandered over her body. But seeing her merciless eyes, he usually backed off and went to sleep. Once in a while when she felt like it, when she hadn’t yet fallen asleep, she let him play with her like an infant. But after playing for a while, he would behave as though he had seen a schoolmaster, and quietly go to sleep. Later, they had separate pillows, separate coverlets. When the milkman or the newspaper boy came around, each would will the other to get up and open the door. Then the new day would take both of them out of the house, and the double bed stood alone and ghostly in the flat.
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