Indian Magic

by Balraj Khanna

  ‘Exactly. Why I ask him to listen to me with open ears. Is that the boy is suitable. Is also true he’s just got off boat train. His boots still have Indian dust on them. Give him time. Let him learn.’

  ‘We have time. Four, five months minimum. And I will teach him every trick I’ve learned from English. No secrets now.’

  ‘What tricks you learned from English?’

  ‘Be isstraight till it is necessary to be otherwise. And I don’t mind sharing with him - almost family member now.’ Three people as old as my parents talking about me so seriously! What was the matter with them? The doorbell rang and Veena shouted from the hall, ‘It’s all right, mum. It’s Sarita.’

  I heard the front door open and close, then the two girls laugh and run upstairs, and I wondered what Sarita was like. Sarita. I loved the name. I hoped she was as pretty as Veena had said she was. I also hoped I would get to see her, even meet her - I had this funny feeling that there was something in it for me. In my final year at college in Simla there had come for one half term this lovely girl called Sarita. With Hollywood uppers and a Bollywood behind, she was a dambuster. We called her La Belle Dame Sans Merci as she threw her chin up in the air and walked straight and never looked at a boy. But more than once I caught her glance at me with those doe-eyes. Nothing more happened – it never does in India. Maybe something would with this Sarita.

  My mind being where it was, on the first floor of the Swami house, I missed what was being said below it. Stupid me. I missed a crucial point. It was to change my life.

  ‘So what you say, Raavi? Where is your mind? Isspeak.’

  ‘It’s fine by me, Mr Swami. You know it.’

  ‘Issoon you have to isstop this mister business.’

  ‘Why, sir?’

  ‘Family member don’t call each other mister-shister. In which country? You tell him, Issweetness.’

  Sweetness laughed and passed her hand over my head as my mother used to do, to tell me she loved me. That made me miss my mum and my little sister Ushee and our house and the faint smell of its recently varnished floorboards, and the famous Simla mist which engulfed the beautiful English hill-town at this time of the day, every day at this time of the year.

  The meeting was over. I heard the girls come down the Stairs and stood up, timing my exit so that I would run into the beautiful Sarita in the hall, and if she was going out, to walk out with her. But Mr Swami held me back.

  ‘Listen.’ While I listened, I happened to glance at the door and saw two pairs of dark brown eyes peering at me through the half– ajar door. They vanished instantly, like rabbits in the bush.

  ‘Isstop issmiling and listen,’ said my boss. ‘Going with Rameshwar to give farewell to issomeone going to India. So take Magic key.’

  A stingray hit Jagan and Prohit when they turned up for work and saw me sitting on the boss’s stool. Nor were they interested in what I had to say. Martyr-like, they worked - in deadly silence. At eight, just when the evening had begun to pick up, the phone rang.

  ‘Flight delayed three hours. Air India. What do you expect? So carry on and lock up.’

  Just then, Bish arrived with a friend. He was over the moon to see me acting the boss. He introduced me in that capacity to his companion, an English girl called Jean. She didn’t walk, she wriggled in that calf-length frock. She seemed hungry and fond of our food. For dessert, she asked for the readymade Knicker-bocker Glory, inspiring my imaginative friend to coin a new phrase. Meal over, she went to powder her nose and Bish called me over.

  ‘Works in an office in the same block. Hungry woman. Maneater. Does she leave me knackered! Knackered and bickered, you can say.’ Bish invited himself to breakfast next day, ‘On my way back home in SW7. Jean lives near you in Golders Green.’

  At ten, when most of our guests had gone, I rang the Swami house to see if they had heard from the boss. There was no answer. By half ten the restaurant was completely empty, strange for a Thursday night. But we knew a few customers could straggle in from a pub. And then they came. I shivered and moved to stand in their way. ‘The right of entry is reserved. Leave immediately. Or!’

  ‘What will you do?’ The giant put a vice-like hand on my mouth, squeezing. I had to spit in it to make him let go.

  This was Pimlico, half a mile from Westminster, the Mother of Parliaments! And here were four of her sons terrorising us. Back in Simla at school, college and university we were taught That every Englishman was a gentleman.

  The ‘gentlemen’ bolted the door and turned the Open sign to Closed and switched off a few lights. I remembered the sword and ran to get it. But someone tripped me. As I fell, boots rained on my face. My screams brought everybody up from downstairs. Then it was the turn of Jagan and Prohit. As the bullies slapped them in the face and punched them in the stomach, it gave me the two seconds I needed. I pulled the gleaming long rapier out of its scabbard and held it against the back of the giant.

  ‘Don’t move. Hands up. All of you.’ But the bastards moved and turned around.

  ‘HANDS UP. I’LL PUSH IT IN IF YOU MOVE,’ I shouted, placing the point of the sword between the ribs of the giant. I had gone mad. I would have pushed it in had he tried anything funny, and the man knew it. His jaw fell as four pairs of hands went up. At that very precise moment there was a loud banging on the front door. I turned to look and saw a huddle of silhouettes through the fine gauze curtain - the Swamis and Lord Rameshwar. In that split second, a table was jammed into me, throwing me on the floor, and the goondas ran. They opened the door and crashed into the four shadows outside. Next instant, they vanished in the thin London air.

  Bish’s jaw fell to the floor on seeing my face. He became speechless. He was angry with the English nation on account of me. I embraced him in gratitude.

  ‘They don’t like us here because we are Indian.’

  ‘Nothing to do with that, Bish. There are goondas in every country of the world.’

  ‘This is what I like about you, RKM. When will you learn?’ There was little to eat in my room. So we went out. At a set of traffic lights, a car pulled up as the light went red. There was nothing else in sight. But the driver waited for the light to go green and I said to Bish that in India the man wouldn’t have stopped as there was no traffic.

  ‘England was made by two sets of rules. One of them is this. The other was applied to you last night and the other night.’

  ‘There are thugs in every country.’

  ‘How do you think they built their Empire?’ We were strolling around aimlessly. Taking a turning downhill we ended up in Brent, an inelegant part of London. Bish spotted a butcher’s shop. He said they had a branch near him, the only butcher’s who sometimes sold his favourite - brains. We went in and joined the queue. A young woman with a beautiful baby in her arms came and stood behind us. I made a face at the baby. It smiled, and I wished I could hold it in my arms.

  ‘What a lovely baby,’ I couldn’t help saying to its mother. The young woman smiled just like her child.

  ‘You hurt yourself,’ she said sweetly, studying my face.

  ‘My friend had an accident,’ Bish said. Unwittingly, he moved ahead of a middle-aged lady in the queue and found himself at the counter. ‘A set of calves’ brains, please.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am?’ the butcher said to the lady, ignoring Bish.

  ‘Serve this young man first. He needs brains,’ the lady said. But Bish was not one to be put down that easily.

  ‘Madam, we all need brains, believe me. Including your good self.’

  ‘Oi, move back in the queue. And none of your cheek,’ the butcher growled.

  ‘Don’t “oi” me, my good man.’ The butcher didn’t like that. ‘Mind your manners. Or get out.’

  ‘My manners are perfectly all right.’

  ‘Out. I’m not serving you geezers.’

  ‘Yes, you are.’

  ‘Am I?’

  ‘Yes. This is a democracy. If you refuse to serve me, I’ll call the police.’


  ‘You won’t call the police. I bloody will. Johnnie!’ the butcher shouted and a large Henry Cooper of a man in a white smock with traces of his trade all over it emerged from a door. ‘Call the station before I sell this wog his own brains.’ Then the two men came out and stood before us, edging us back.

  ‘Forget it, Bish. Let’s go,’ I pleaded in Punjabi.

  ‘Wait a minute. They are not going to treat us like this.’

  ‘You ‘eard. Piss off,’ shouted Henry Cooper, pushing Bish.

  ‘Do not push me,’ Bish said.

  ‘I’ll push you from ‘ere to kingdom come. What are you going to do about it?’ The man pushed Bish with both his hands.

  ‘DON’T TOUCH ME!’

  ‘THEN CLEAR OFF,’ the man growled and slapped Bish. It was a hard blow. I held Bish in my arms as he staggered back. But he recovered almost immediately. What followed next had to be seen to be believed. The karate champ roared like a tiger. His legs, arms, feet and fists flew into action. It was the speed with which it all happened. The big Mr Cooper was on the floor, bundled up, nursing his groin, not knowing what had hit him. Just at that moment, his partner jumped at Bish and suffered the same fate as his friend. Whack, baam, whoosh – Bish’s hand-chops and flying feet were talking – and then the butcher lay next to ‘Ole Enery’. We were all stunned. My lovely friend had licked two over-sized butchers overfed on beef.

  ‘My sincerest apologies, ladies, for this disgraceful spectacle,’ Bish said, bowing respectfully to the customers.

  ‘I’ve never seen anything like it in all me life,’ said one.

  ‘Serve ‘em right. They started it,’ said the very woman whose place in the queue Bish had unknowingly taken. ‘You are a very brave young man. Are you all right?’ As we turned to go, two policemen appeared at the shop door. Nobody had had the time to phone the police. Yet here they were, under two quaint-looking helmets. A small crowd had materialised outside the shop and the baby started to bawl.

  ‘We’ve had it, RKM,’ Bish hissed. ‘Let’s make a run for it. Run as if someone put a Fifth of November banger up your arse.’

  ‘No,’ I said and held him by his arm. ‘We are going to see this thing through. We have done nothing wrong. It’s the Mother Country. We will be understood.’

  ‘Mother Country? Which mother behaves like this?’

  ‘What’s the meaning of all this?’ said one policeman to the stunned shop.

  ‘Officer.’ The lady explained what had happened. Then the other ladies spoke up. ‘It is true, Officer. They brought it on themselves.’

  ‘Well, well, well.’ The policemen did what the ladies were doing – they looked at Bish in amazement. Then one of them spoke to the butchers:

  ‘Do you want to press charges against this gentleman? I wouldn’t advise you to do so, however.’ And that was that.

  ‘England! Mother Country!’ Bish said as we came out.

  The spring sprinkled flowers in its path as it advanced, and the days continued to lengthen. Ranji said that in a couple of months it would still be day at ten at night. I didn’t believe him. ‘Go rub your belly button on a Hyde Park tree, Ranji.’

  ‘You think I am taking the Mickey Mouse out you? Ask the Wise Him if you don’t believe me.’ Ranji pointed to chef Bandhu. Bandhu sat opposite us in the kitchen. Old, bald and small with a baby face like Churchill, Bandhu smiled and shook his head. He always did that whenever you asked him something.

  ‘Our Guru in residence in English pants and coat.’ They called Bandhu ‘Wise Him’ because he listened to everyone and disagreed with no one. He never complained about anything – the weather, politics, life in general and his own in particular. He never spoke about himself. In fact, he hardly ever spoke.

  ‘Minister of Mouth Economy, our own brown Churchill-ji.’ Bandhu looked like a little boy who been wrongly punished. Whispers said that a woman lay behind his silence, ‘an English woman’. And that was the sum total of his biography available. But since the second attack on us, whenever we were free, Bandhu came and sat by me. He wanted to talk - to me. Then one afternoon he did.

  ‘A war-time story of loving and losing,’ he told me. ‘A common story, you may say because there are countless. But this one is special, because it is my story. It begin when the war begin: I am in London in thirty-nine when I jump ship with a friend. I am cook, my friend too. Not a good time for jumping ships, you may say, but how do we know? My friend has a friend who get us fixed up straightaway by a stroke of luck - there is very little work. I become cook in India League Hostel. First I am very, very happy - I am in London and have a job. Then not – no one looks at me. Every day, I go to work, come to my room and go to sleep. I go to work then go to my room and sleep. On Sunday, I walk in park or see film. That’s all, the total mathematics of my English life. I exist but I do not live because no one sees me. I want to go back home, but cannot because Chamberlain declares war on the radio. But it is not real war. It is phony War. For more than a year. And for more than a year no one has seen me. Then real war come and it is night raids and bombs and fire, bombs and fire every night, and she sees me one night in bomb shelter – I am not bad-looking then, believe you me, Raavi. The bomb hits the very shelter we are in. The ceiling collapses and everybody is buried, but for me and her. Fifty people are dead, and more dying and crying for help and we dig with bare hands and the raid going on. Earsplitting, deafening, frightening. But we go on pulling the dead and dying from burning hell till the all-clear siren comes and the fire brigade and the ambulance. We walk out together, crying, and find the hotel she work in is gone. Our story begins

  ‘Ruby gets a job in my hostel bar doing drinks and cleaning. From then on we spend every moment together when we are not working. Every single moment. I am happy. So happy that the sea has not enough water to compare. Ruby says she is too. Life shines with beauty in spite of the raging war and falling bombs. We decide to get married. I buy the ring for her. She says she’ll meet me in the Registry Office with her friend but I say I’ll meet her at the tube station with mine and the four shall walk together. There my story ends.’

  ‘How, Bandhu-ji?’

  ‘Me and my friend are late because our tube is stuck in the tunnel. Ruby is waiting and waiting and them Stukas are suddenly in the sky. Hitler makes a direct hit. Then Ruby suffer too, too much in the hospital, Raavi. That’s why I have nothing to say because it is my fault. I only wait to join.’

  ‘Don’t blame yourself, Bandhu-ji. It was not your fault!’

  ‘I know. But.’

  ‘It was chance, that’s all. When did it happen?’

  ‘The year of Montgomery and Rommel in the desert.’

  ‘That was a long ago. How old was she?’

  ‘Five years younger.’

  ‘Where did you live then? Where do you live now?’

  ‘I lived in the hostel then. I live in the kitchen now.’

  ‘But where?’ There was no sign of a bed around.

  ‘Where we keep rice and flour and things.’

  ‘My God. You mean in the cellar under the street?’

  ‘Boiler next to me. Warmest place in London.’

  ‘You spend every night here?’

  ‘Every day too. On Sundays I go out to see Mrs Harris, Ruby’s mother. Also alone in this world and ill and eighty-six. Every Sunday I spend with her and give her half my pay.’

  ‘Since when?’

  ‘Since Ruby went.’

  ‘Don’t you go anywhere else? Don’t you have friends?’

  ‘Now I need nobody. Now I miss nothing. Sundays I walk in the park. Other days I sit in the back garden and pigeons and sparrows come and sit on my head and shoulders and eat bread from my hands. They are my English friends.’

  That evening, I arrived early at work to talk to the boss. He heard me out. A sudden guilty look came over him.

  ‘Bandhu. Up here. Now,’ he shouted in the lift-shaft.

  Bandhu came up right away.

  ‘You not
issleeping under the road from tonight.’

  ‘Then where am I sleeping, Gokul? On the road?’

  ‘Basement of my house. Room there for four camels.’

  ‘I am going nowhere, if you are asking.’

  ‘I am not asking. I am ordering.’

  ‘I am refusing.’

  ‘See, Raavi? They call him Wise Him. But he is a mule. So what I do with a mule?’

  ‘Gokul, here I have my freedom. There I’ll have Sweetness treat me like I was U-bend old man half in grave.’

  ‘Bandhu-ji, it is inhuman.’

  ‘Here I like - warm in the winter and cool in the summer. Here I have my English friends - the pigeons and the sparrows. And I am too old to make new ones.’

  ‘Man versus mule. Man have not one leg to isstand on and the mule has four.’

  ‘Sir, if the Council found out where Bandhu-ji sleeps.’

  ‘They’ll put me in jail. That what you want?’ That did it. I was glad Bandhu would be making new friends.

  As spring advanced towards summer, the Subcontinental also changed. Suddenly, everybody had a girlfriend (or two) who visited them, sometimes staying overnight. They were continental lasses from NW11 - ‘Au Pair Land’ - who spoke little English, or, which suited my friends even more, none at all. One Saturday, they decided to throw a party. To get the evening off work, I knew I had to lie to my boss and say I had to see my aunt urgently. I also knew his answer in advance: ‘You lie. You are meeting English girl. She go to party on Saturday night and dance. And. You lie.’

  ‘Would I lie to you, sir?’ So I arranged a quick call from my uncle’s office.

  The party was held in Tariq’s room, the largest, with its own kichenette. It was a bottle party with cocktail sausages and crisps. Invite whoever you want to. I invited Bish and his Knicker-Bocker Glory. But he came solo.

  ‘Man goes to a party for one reason only. For that, man’s Got to be alone. All continental? Put it here.’

  To crown it all, a full moon smiled its way in, flooding the Finchley Road with light. The Subcontinental burst into life as some thirty or forty young people drank and danced. The girls looked ‘ready for anything’ and the boys I hardly saw. Many girls gave me the eye – I expected them to. I didn’t know how to dance, but the new craze Twist didn’t require any expertise. The few I Twisted with clung to me instead, as if they were drowning and I was their last straw, oblivious of the fact that by doing so they had caused my honourable member to crush into their belly-buttons. Then I met Tariq’s sexy Pia.