Three Bargains: A Novel (6 page)

A boy squatted outside the gate, flipping old bottle caps. Madan had seen him before, and figured he was Rani’s son. Rani came to sweep the house every morning and evening, her sari permanently hitched to midcalf. She swept all the houses in this area. This was her turf.

The boy didn’t look up when Madan passed, and since Minnu memsaab told him to stay away from the main road and market, Madan wound his way through the side streets under the shade of gulmohar trees. The houses here were not of the usual tenement variety scattered all over town, and he could see arched entryways and stuccoed colonnades through their gates. A man on a bicycle pedaled by with toy guns, dolls and miniature kitchen sets in clear plastic packets hanging from a cardboard display affixed to the handlebars. He rung his bell hopefully up and down the street but no children emerged from behind the shuttered gates.

Madan kept his head down and walked on, keeping himself between Prince and any car that passed, like memsaab had directed. Prince was eager, hardly ever lifting his nose from the ground, sniffing every tree and lamppost. He was particularly attracted to the brackish water in the drains running alongside the roads and his tail wagged with eagerness anytime he lurched in their direction. Once Prince squatted and then disdainfully walked away from his pile of muck, they turned around and headed back to the house.

“Kasmankhana!” Minnu memsaab swore. “What have you done?” She held Prince up by his middle, the small dog flopping down on either side of her hand, and twirled him around in a half circle. Prince yapped every time she lifted up a paw.

Madan thought he should look contrite. He should apologize. Only he was not sure what was wrong.

“What has this boy done to you, my Princey? Oh, look at him.” She placed Prince back down on the lawn, his leash hanging off his collar, and pinned Madan down with an arrow-like stare. “Don’t you have any sense?”

Madan couldn’t understand why memsaab was so furious.

“This silly boy! What has he done to you?” she wailed again to Prince, then shoved the leash back in Madan’s hand. “Oof-ho! Take this and do something!”

Madan held on to the leash, his mind still a blank, and this incensed memsaab even more.

“Do I have to do everything? Bahadur! Bahadur! Have all the servants gone and died, or what? Where are you all?” Her screech reverberated down the lawn, and Bahadur, Madan’s mother and Rani came running out of the house from different directions. Seeing them all pelting toward her, memsaab shouted, “Don’t you two have any other work to do?” Rani and his mother turned around and went back in.

“Bahadur, look what this boy has done to Prince. The ladies will be here for my kitty party tomorrow. Look at this!” She held out an accusing finger at Prince’s paw. It wasn’t white as cream anymore. Prince’s constitutional had left him with socks of brown caked mud.

Bahadur scooped Prince up and Madan followed meekly to the stone patio behind the kitchen, where Bahadur filled a large basin from the spout sticking out of the wall. Madan squatted next to him. “Don’t feel bad,” Bahadur said over the drumming of the water. “No one told you.”

“I don’t understand. I did exactly what she said.”

Bahadur placed the squirming animal in the water and began lathering his legs with a bar of soap. “I don’t know how to explain this to you, but you’re not supposed to get him dirty.”

“But he got dirty when we walked,” Madan gushed in defense. “She said to stay away from the main road. The back roads are no different . . .”

“Okay, here’s the trick,” Bahadur said. “He’s a small dog, so we’re lucky. You walk out of the front gate with him on the leash and as soon as you are out, pick him up. Take a few rounds, he wiggles, you set him down. If he goes, you know, does his business, well and good, otherwise pick him up again until he wiggles again.”

“But then he’s not . . . walking?” Madan said, sure that Bahadur was playing a trick.

“That’s what the other guy used to do.” Bahadur and Madan turned around at the sound of the voice. The boy who had been flipping bottle caps by the gate came in, squatting beside Madan. “You know royalty,” the boy said, grinning. “They need their walk, but can’t get dirty.”

“Do you know Jaggu, Rani’s son?” Bahadur asked Madan, as Prince tried to leap out of the basin. Both Madan and Jaggu leaned forward to help hold Prince down. The dog would have none of it. He squirmed, jiggled and yapped. Madan was not sure who laughed first, but a few minutes later they were all wiping tears out of their eyes, not sure if it was the flying soap suds or the bedraggled dog making their eyes water.

“I saw you at school today,” Jaggu said, once the last of the giggles subsided.

“You go to Gorapur Academy too?”

Jaggu nodded, and Madan realized that he was wearing the same navy shorts and light blue shirt, only they weren’t new, but faded to a tired gray.

“The great Avtaar Singh is making sure we’re all able to balance his checkbooks.” Jaggu joined his hands in mock thanks and looked up at the sky. Madan giggled again but at the same time he looked around. He thought Jaggu was brave to make fun of Avtaar Singh.

Bahadur didn’t look too happy about it either. “Stop it,” he said. “Get out of here, both of you. I will take care of this.”

“My apologies, my guru.” Jaggu joined his hands again and bowed to Bahadur until his forehead touched the ground and his bottom stuck up in the air. Madan caught Bahadur’s eye and they began laughing again. Jaggu straightened up, looking pleased. He held his hand out to Madan. “Come,” he said. “You and I have the world to conquer.”

Madan grabbed his hand, and they ran out, Jaggu singing his own made-up ditty over and over again, “
The dog is Prince and I’m the pauper
.”

In the servants’ quarters, Madan’s grandfather lay on his charpai shoved against the wall outside the doorway of the family’s room. His grandfather had pulled the old rope bed out the day after their arrival. “I will sleep under the stars,” he had insisted, and now spent all his time on the bed among his jumbled sheets, talking to anyone who passed by, puffing away on one of the two daily beedis Ma restricted him to, only getting up to use the toilet. “Our learned Valmiki has returned with a friend,” he said as they went to sit by the entryway. Madan hoped his grandfather wouldn’t get into one of his funny moods again. Once he had hurled a string of swear words at the retreating back of Minnu memsaab when she came looking for Ma. Later, Ma probably got an earful from memsaab.

Jaggu’s left shoulder twitched as they sat down. “I’ve been going to school now and then, not sure if I want to go on,” he said, flicking an imaginary fly from his shoulder. “But it’s not too bad. It gives me something to do instead of following my mother from house to house all day. Everyone’s talking about you at school, you know.”

“About me?”

“Everyone knows Avtaar Singh asked the principal to take you, even though the year had already started, and of course he had to agree. This is the first time Avtaar Singh asked the principal to take a particular student since he opened the school.”

“Oh?”

“Aha, Avtaar Singh promised the principal that he would not interfere in the school, but when Avtaar Singh asks for something now, what is the little principal going to do—say no?”

“How did you get in?”

Jaggu waved his hand about. “This school was built for all of us who could not pay fees for any of those other schools, the ones that all the saab’s children go to. Some time ago, Avtaar Singh was having a bad time in his business. Pandit Bansi Lal, as usual, told him he should do a pilgrimage to a temple in Manali, where the pandit’s own teacher lives. He threw in something about helping children there, and said then Avtaar Singh’s bad luck will go away. I’m sure Avtaar Singh must’ve given a big donation in Manali. But he did his bit for children here, in Gorapur, also.”

When Madan didn’t respond, Jaggu went on, “Bet Pandit Bansi Lal is double sorry now.”

“Pandit Bansi Lal? Why?”

“We also heard that Avtaar Singh made Pandit Bansi Lal give money to the school so you could join. Is that true?”

“I don’t know.” Madan was unsure how much to divulge about the night at the factory.

“My mother’s probably looking for me,” Jaggu said after a while. “You know, the thing with your shorts . . . at school . . . don’t feel bad. Those kids are just jealous.”

Still embarrassed about the whole thing, Madan didn’t respond and they were quiet again. Jaggu kept fidgeting, and under his breath he hummed a song from a recent movie Madan had often heard on the radio.

Sure enough, Jaggu turned to him and asked, “Have you seen
Do Aur Do Paanch
?”

Madan shook his head.

“No? You missed something. I laughed so much I nearly had to change my pants.”

“I’ve been to the cinema hall one time.”

“What?” Jaggu stared at him for a second. “Do you have any money?”

Madan had nothing on him and Jaggu was crestfallen.

“Too bad. Otherwise I would’ve taken you to the cinema hall. We could sneak in, but I’m already in trouble for doing that. The bastard owner is on the lookout for me. I see one film a week. More if I can. On the screen, there’s always something going on, some action, some commotion. They don’t even have time for a shit. So I too am full of action. I’m learning karate—”

“Where? With who?”

“Right now I’m teaching myself. And I’m working on my talents. I can hear a dialogue and I remember it. I hear a song and I can sing it back to you word for word.” He belted out a few lines.

Madan didn’t have the heart to tell him that he did not recognize the song, or that Jaggu could not carry a tune.

But Jaggu was ahead of him. “My voice is a little rough, but that’s okay. My real talent is in my emotion. My heart, it is full of emotion. You want to see me cry?”

Madan nodded, fascinated. Jaggu scrunched his eyes, he squinted into the sun, he contorted his face.

“See?” He pointed to his eyes. They were moist. “Any scene you want me to do—my mother is dying, my love is dying, my friend is dying, my dog is dying, I can bring the tears out.

“You want to see me in a comedy scene?” Jaggu acted out a few scenes for Madan, action, romance, drama from his favorite movies, ones Madan had heard about but never seen.

Soon Rani came calling for her son. “Oh, Jaggu, at least let someone know where you are so I’m not searching everywhere for you. I’m tired enough as it is.”

Jaggu jumped up and bowed. “Sorry, my esteemed mother.” He stretched his words out, and when she smiled, he was satisfied. “Will you take Prince for a walk tomorrow?” he asked Madan.

Madan shrugged.

“What am I saying?” Jaggu slapped his forehead. “I’ll see you at school tomorrow, won’t I?”

“Yes, I’ll be there,” Madan said, watching Jaggu till he went around the bend, following his mother to the next house that needed cleaning.

He should have asked Jaggu if he knew who had pulled the stunt with his shorts. He would ask tomorrow. He curled up next to his grandfather, who had fallen asleep sitting up, his back against the wall, his mouth wide open. The sheets bunched untidily around him smelled of his grandfather, unwashed and musky. They smelled of beedi smoke.

Madan thought about getting up and looking for Swati, who must be at the main house with his mother, but he was too tired. The streetlights came on, and his stomach groaned with hunger.

“Who is it? Who is it?” His grandfather awoke, grabbing and thrashing. “Motherfucking robber comes to empty my bag. Motherfucker, motherfucker.”

“Dada-ji, it’s me. Madan.” He caught his grandfather’s hand.

“Madan, is that you? Thank god, I thought it was a robber. Has your mother come back yet?”

Madan shook his head. “Are you hungry? I can get something for you.”

“No, no,” his grandfather said. He was quiet for a while then. “My toes hurt,” he said, and got up to stretch.

“You mean your foot?”

“No, no. My toes.” He pointed down and wiggled them. “You know where she keeps the beedis; get your poor grandfather one.”

“Dada-ji.” Madan tried to look strict but was too tired to follow through. “Okay, one last one.”

He went inside, and from behind one of Ma’s jars took out a beedi from its packet and went back out. His grandfather lit it and, taking a deep breath, said, “God bless you and give you a long life.”

Madan resumed his place next to his grandfather.

“Have you seen your father?”

Madan shook his head. None of them had seen him for the last few days, and his mother hoped aloud that he was working a job, perhaps sleeping at the factory because he did not want to come home to the crowded room. But she was beginning to worry.

Cracking his toes, his grandfather exhaled an acrid stream of smoke. “Even as a child your father couldn’t find happiness in anything. I bought him a watch once. It had a golden face, leather straps, tick-tock, he was so happy. Then a few days later, I see him whacking it against a rock. It’s not making time pass faster, he said. Idiot, I said, it tells you the time, but he wanted to be the master of time.” His grandfather flicked the ashes, but not far enough, and they landed on the sheet.