Indian Magic

by Balraj Khanna

  ‘What did you do? You didn’t?’

  ‘Didn’t touch his leg or arm, swear we didn’t.’ Tariq said. I knew what that meant.

  ‘Only improved his looks a bit. Got your watch back, borrowed his clothes and pushed him into the beauty canal,’ Bish said.

  ‘Left him shoes and wallet, though. With his doggy,’ Walia added. ‘And told him – lay off our friend. PERMANENTLY. Or else!’

  ‘Why the fuck did you bring his clothes here?’

  ‘Thought you like to see them.’

  ‘Get rid of them. Their presence might land us in jail.’

  ‘Give us their car key and tell us where you left it. We’ll go and return them to him.’

  We went in two cars. Tariq parked Dalton’s car in the council estate’s car park. Then with Bish and Walia he went up in the lift and left Dalton’s clothes outside his door.

  ‘The son of a bitch can say thank you to us tomorrow,’ Bish and Tariq said at the same time, touching my heart. How lucky I was.

  I always arrived earlier than I had to. I got changed and gave the jovial and ever-friendly Balli Shah a hand with this and that in the kitchen below. Being with him brought Simla back to me. It gave me a feeling of home-coming. Today I got there even earlier. I was ‘on top’ in spite of my little world having turned upside down. I had something in my breast pocket courtesy of Tariq, who took turns to collect my mail from my flat every morning – Jane wrote to me every day, sometimes twice. Balli Shah knew all about Jane, her father and me, the only one around to do so. I gave him Jane’s telegram-style letter to read – he knew just about enough English: Can’t live without you. Stop. Arrive Victoria Monday morning boat train. Stop. Marry Tuesday in temple. Stop. Have written to Mum. Stop. See you Monday, baby. Stop.

  Balli Shah read the letter with a pained look.

  ‘Don’t go to Victoria on Monday, Raavi babu,’he said.

  ‘What a strange thing to say, Shah-ji. Of course I’ll go.’

  ‘Her parents will be there. And knowing the sort of man her father is – unlike any Englishman I have ever heard of and that he carries a loaded gun - I see tragedy on the platform.’

  ‘This is being too alarmist.’

  ‘You know I am right. Anyway, think.’ I thought and thought. Then I heard Ranji arrive upstairs, singing a favourite song of his from the oldie-goldie film Awara. His tenor was loud. Lucky for him the boss wasn’t around.

  ‘Posh Balls, a lady to see you!’ Ranji yelled in Hindi through the kitchen lift-shaft five minutes later. A lady to see me? The fool had made a mistake, surely.

  ‘An English mem,’ Ranji hissed in Hindi. I flew up the stairs and had a 440-volt shock.

  ‘Mrs Muir!’

  ‘You see, I had to come.’ Why? It was writ large on her face. No, she hadn’t been bashed up again. And she walked and stood straight and looked every inch my Jane’s mum – beautiful, but worried and angry.

  ‘Can we talk somewhere else, Mrs Muir?’ I said after my greetings and I walked out into the street with her. The rising noon sun beamed a thousand smiles at Queensway teeming with tourists. These smiles were lost on my unhappy soon-to-be mum-in-law. In forbidding silence she walked by my side to the Prince Alfred pub with its black-pained doors.

  ‘Permit me to buy you a drink, Mrs Muir.’

  ‘No, thank you. I’ll buy my own. I only want to talk.’

  This set the tone of our meeting. However, in the pub, I settled her down at a corner table and said, ‘I know you don’t like me and I cannot say it doesn’t matter, for I deeply wish you did like me. But you have come to see me. I cannot allow you to buy your own drink. I am not English. I am Indian and this is how we do things.’

  ‘Here’s a half crown. Take it. A single gin and tonic.’ I didn’t take the money and got her a gin and a coke for myself. ‘How are the children?’

  ‘Young man, you have caused us a great deal of trouble. And now we hear you two are going to get married.’

  ‘Jane and I love each other.’

  ‘Jane is a very impetuous girl. You seem an intelligent sort of man. I thought I could talk to you.’

  ‘And talk me out of it?’

  ‘Yes. You are both being very foolish. And selfish. Don’t you realise what you are doing?’

  ‘We do, Mrs Muir. And soon you are going to my mum-in-law.’

  ‘Oh, stop it, for God’s sake.’

  ‘Jane loves my mum. She’s seen photos of her.’

  ‘Look here, you, whatever your name is.’

  ‘Raavi. May I show you a picture of my mother?’ I opened my wallet, took out my mother’s photograph and put it on the table. Mrs Muir looked away, and I wondered what sort of people these English were. I was sure she wanted to see the picture, but couldn’t bring herself to do so. Why couldn’t she? What was she thinking of?

  ‘She’s nice,’ Mrs Muir said without looking at the photo.

  ‘So are you. And I care for you and respect you,’ I told her.

  ‘Look here. You have caused enough trouble. Why don’t you just go?’

  ‘Go where, Mrs Muir? I am soon to be your son-in-law. Can’t you have a little feeling for me, a little affection?’

  As I said that, I saw a sight I was unprepared for. Mrs Muir hiccuped loudly – she was trying hard not to break down.

  ‘Just go away and leave us alone,’ she said shakily. ‘Do you know what her father wants to do? Kill you. And he will if you don’t get away.’

  It was a baffling moment, charged with a certain inevitability about the future. Never before had I felt that I was living on borrowed time. The feeling now became so real, somehow I no longer cared what happened to me.

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Because you are going to marry his daughter.’

  ‘Has he sent you here to?’

  ‘He doesn’t even know I am here, talking to you. God knows what he would do if he did.’

  ‘Aren’t you pleased that your daughter wants to get married?’

  ‘Pleased? Pleased?’ She was about to throw up in my face. ‘No, I am not.’

  ‘Is that because you think I’m not good enough for your daughter?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then why?’ ‘Because her father is the way he is. He will do anything and everything to stop you marrying her. Kill you even. He will not let Jane marry you. Don’t you understand?’

  ‘He’s trying very hard to have that accomplished.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’ I did not want to make matters worse. So I did not elaborate. ‘It’s natural that a father should love his daughter, but.’

  ‘Anyway, why don’t you wait a year, a few months even? You are both so young. And he is a bastard. I shouldn’t have said that, but I have, so there. Look - clear off. Leave Jane alone. Do not go to Victoria on Monday. Stay away, for God’s sake.’

  Mrs Muir was shaking. Bits of white spittle stuck to the corners of her shapely mouth. With a tremulous hand, she lifted her glass and I saw her lips quiver as she took a sip. A tear rolled down her cheek. Then two. I leaned over and put an arm around her. Mother and daughter trembled alike. She finished her drink, wiped the corners of her mouth with a small embroidered handkerchief and stood up, looking very dignified. She then walked out, saying: ‘Do not go to Victoria on Monday.

  Sunday was my birthday. It was also another thanksgiving Ganesh pooja day – my boss had just bought Number Two outright. Naturally, I was invited and was told to look ‘extra issmart in best suit, boot and tie’. For quite some time now he had been hinting at a rise in my teacher-scale salary to ‘professor pay’. He had been talking openly about an auspicious day and my birthday would be the time to make an announcement. Those with marriage in mind must be given a professor’s pay, if not his Chair. Wait till Jane heard about it.

  Tariq dropped me off.

  There had been a brief shower, but the sun was out again. The trees lining the boss’s street had been pollarded earlier in the summer, somewhat ruthlessly in my
opinion. They looked stark and grotesque – tall ugly stumps with not a leaf sprouting from their lumpy branch heads. A car was proudly parked in front of every second house. It being Sunday, they were being washed from steaming plastic buckets, and scrubbed and polished with some fervour. It looked like a competition.

  ‘Never heard of such a dumb thing, having to go to the boss’s house on a fucking Sunday morning. He’s got you by the balls,’ Tariq said.

  ‘I’ll quit as soon as I know how much a professor’s pay is.’

  ‘Come in, come in, the late Raavi Kumar,’ Mr Swami said, looking at his watch. I was only twenty minutes late.

  ‘Heartiest congratulations, sir.’

  ‘On the roof of every house is written the name of he or she who will live in it. You can issay it was Issweetness and Veena’s on Number Two upisstair.’

  Surprise, surprise, HMS Swami was loaded with the same old cargo from Gujarat - ladies, gentlemen and children.

  ‘And what you carrying?’

  ‘A little pooja present, sir.’ There were many other unopened presents in colourful wrappings on a table by a side wall. I added my big box of Indian sweets to them.

  ‘What are you doing? Those presents are for you, you fool.’

  ‘Birthday Boy, eh. And so smart, I say,’ said Mr Bhudia, the baboon, embracing me and crushing some of my strategically located bones. ‘Very smart.’

  This was madness real and total. You didn’t ask your friends to give birthday presents to your business manager, however visionary or however much he might have helped enlarge your bank balance.

  My boss pointed to where I was to sit, next to him on his grand new chesterfield sofa. Others fended for themselves around the room. Then I was handed a cup of black coffee. I put a spoon of sugar in and stirred it idly as someone poured a thin line of cream from a jug and I saw a wonderful sight – the whole of the Milky Way in my cup - and wondered what the hell it was all about. I looked out of the large French window and saw two bluetits fly past it. I thought of Jane and wished I knew where in France she was, and whether she was thinking of me. I turned to my boss. He jerked his head and smiled.

  ‘Your birthday. Our Ganesh pooja day. Best day for best announcement. So I am making it. Okay?’ he said and shouted at the door: ‘Isasweetness. Bring her in. Bring everybody.’

  It was typical of my boss to want the whole world to hear of the rise in my salary. Would it be ten bob a day or a whole pound? When he said a ‘professor’s salary’, did he mean an Indian professor or an English one? Was it rupees or pounds?

  ‘You are looking exceptionally smart today, may I say?’ said the chap who worked at Heathrow, the pleasant Mr Sethu.

  ‘So are you, sir, may I say?’ I replied.

  ‘No, you may not. Because I know what I am talking about and you don’t,’ the man replied, baffling me further.

  There was movement in the hall and ladies made their way into the large living room, steering someone, a tiny schoolgirl figure in a skimpy scarlet choli that revealed six inches of her flat tummy and concealed her lemon-sized breasts. She wore a matching silk sari. Suddenly I knew what it was all about. I wanted to scream - but my throat failed me. I wanted to dash through the glass of the window - but Mr Swami was holding my hand. And slowly, the women kept advancing. They guided the walking gift-wrapped parcel to the chesterfield sofa and parked her next to me, even though there was more room by my boss’s side. He cleared his throat noisily. He was about to make the announcement.

  ‘One, your rise is five pounds a week, Raavi. Two.’ Like the renowned white-bearded Maharishi Sai back home, he produced a diamond ring out of thin air and put it on the third finger of my right hand. ‘Raavi, time you wrote to Doctor Mehra back home. And give me his address. I too write to congratulate him.’

  Staggered, I sat upright. This was the most fantastic thing ever to happen in my life. I crossed my legs and then uncrossed them. I managed to spill the coffee on my trousers.

  ‘Excuse me, sir. Back in a sec,’ I said, pointing to my soiled trousers. I rose and walked to the lavatory in the hall. Once there, I locked myself in, jumped through the window and over the hedge and then ran and ran, a panic-stricken Derby horse let loose in the concrete jungle of Pimlico and Victoria. Wait till she hears about this one, RKM. She will award you a Victoria Cross for bravery, or a Pimlico Cross at least. But where to now, bloody fool RKM, MA?

  I took a cab to Queensway. I wanted to see Balli Shah. It was not yet eleven. He would still be in his room above Number Two.

  Balli Shah was about to leave for Southall to visit relatives, the only contacts he had in London. A minute later – and I would have missed him. He saw me get out of the taxi from the door and instinctively knew something was very wrong – me coming to Number Two on a Sunday and in a taxi at that. We went inside the restaurant and sat behind the counter by Lord Rameshwar’s 1857 Indian Mutiny sword which had found its way here after all. Balli Shah heard me out. His handsome face got distorted. He slapped his forehead tragically.

  ‘Being naïve is one thing, Raavi Babu, but this!’ Words failed him. He slapped his forehead again, in pity this time. ‘I wish I did not have this brick in my stomach. Otherwise I would have laughed my lungs out. But think, Raavi Babu. Think.’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘If you quit like this, he might turn nasty. Call the police and say you stole his money. Has happened before, you know, this sort of thing. As far as he is concerned, you are deceiving him. Look at it from his point of view.’

  ‘I can’t, Balli Shah. Not any more. I just want to quit.’ I had never been more ashamed of myself in all my life. I should just go, eradicate myself.

  The master chef was also a master reader of the human mind.

  ‘Done is done,’ he said. ‘Let’s quit together. You and me.’

  ‘You can’t do that, Shah-ji. Where will you go in this city where no one cares for no one? Especially for us lot.’ I then did what I had come here to do. I sat down and wrote Gokul Swami a letter. In it, I begged everyone’s forgiveness, especially Mr and Mrs Swami’s, and Miss Swami’s.’

  “I had no idea, sir, none at all. You do know how trusting I am, and how unsuspecting. If I didn’t return the ring there and then, it was to save you embarrassment before so many of your distinguished guests. Therefore, as you would wish me to do, with this ring I sadly tender my resignation”.

  I put the ring in an envelope and gave it to Balli Shah with a pound note for two taxis. He refused the money and left, saying, ‘I am going and I am coming.’

  I gave him half an hour to accomplish the two acts, of going and coming. Patiently, I sat down on a bar stool. I knew he would be back, smiling, with a reply: ‘Mistakes all around. All is forgiven. Don’t go anywhere. Continue normal, normal.’

  Exactly thirty minutes later by my watch, I heard the key turn in the door.

  ‘I picked him up from the gutter, Rameshwar. From dirty water gutter. And look what’s he done to me.’ Mr Swami, Mr Bhudia, Lord Rameshwar and two other men thudded their way in.

  ‘Take the letter back, Raavi,’ Lord Rameshwar said calmly.

  ‘I am afraid I cannot, Lord Rameshwar.’

  ‘Put expensive diamond ring on your finger and beg Swamiji’s apology. He treated you like his own son.’

  ‘And I treated him like my own father. I simply did not know.’

  ‘You did not know? My daughter was in the question and you did not know. I put money in your pockets. Raise you to the issky. I even said “take her to the cinema” and you did not know? Who do you think I am? A cheap chap English father?’

  ‘Beg Swami-ji and finish story, Raavi, good boy. Say you are very very sorry and touch his feet. You will forgive him, Gokul?’

  ‘Yes, I will.’

  ‘See, Raavi? How kind. So touch his feet. Maybe you didn’t know. But now you do. We make marriage soon and destroy very bad misunderstanding. Touch his feet. Both of them,’ Mr Bhudia said.

  ‘I can�
��t, Mr Bhudia.’ Mr Bhudia took my right arm and twisted it behind my back. ‘Apologise and finish with. Quick, quick. Or.’

  ‘Or what?’

  ‘Or I break it.’ He nearly did.

  ‘Get lost, you silly man. It was a misunderstanding. I apologise for that. I really did not know what Boss was up to. In a sudden surge of force, I pulled myself free. But the ape arrested my arm again.

  ‘Touch his feet. He is to be your father-in-law.’

  ‘Yes, I am to be.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Issnake. I pick you from the toilet bowl and you pay me back like this?’ Mr Swami screamed, spittle shooting out of his bad-breath mouth and falling on my face. Then he did something I did not think he was capable of. He lashed out at my face, hard. After that he went mad. ‘Bastard. Son of a bitch. Take this birthday present.’ Yelling, he slapped me in an unstoppable frenzy. ‘Take birthday present. Take, take, take.’

  ‘You stupid man,’ I managed to say. ‘You were sneaky.’

  ‘Kill him, Bhudia. I will go to jail. He daily eat my issalt, my bread. And this is how he pay me. O Rameshwar, why it happen to me? He shame my daughter. He cut my public nose. He dissistroy me. Me who gave him everything on a round silver plate. Give him more birthday present. More, more, more!’ He started crying.

  It was only when Bhudia came for me again with someone else that I roared with rage and picked up the old sword, unsheathed it and made a charge, roaring, ‘OUT OF MY WAY.’

  Stupefied, they fell back and I moved fast. Sticking the sword in the umbrella-stand, I ran out, my ears buzzing.

  DEPARTURE

  Did I know what I was doing? The gambler who stakes his all on a single throw of the dice knows what he is doing.

  I did go to Victoria – but twelve hours earlier than Jane was scheduled to arrive – in order to get the train for Dover. I just managed to catch the last train. The harbour station was exactly as it had been two years ago – characterless in a friendly sort of way. The-waiting room bench was as railway benches everywhere are – stone-hard. But the thought of seeing Jane in just a few hours laid a mattress of quail feathers under me. I dozed off for an hour and sat up for another, staring at nothing. Finally, she arrived - at seven in the morning, a French baguette sticking out of her haversack. It held a special meaning for me that she had come on the very boat, Invicta, that had brought me to these shores. She was at the back of a large group of girls. The look of shock on her face at seeing me was profound, but it was instantly replaced by a smile so sparkling, it made her fly into my open arms. She introduced me to her friends, Jill and Janet.