A Fine Balance (57 page)

O
UT OF A DOORWAY A WOMAN
beckoned to Dina, and furtively displayed a basket. “Tamaater, bai?” the woman whispered. “Big, fresh tamaater?”

Dina shook her head. She, as always, was searching for tailors, not tomatoes. Further ahead, someone stood concealed in an alcove with a box of leather wallets; another half-hidden man balanced a stack of bananas in his arms. Everyone was on the lookout for the police and ready to run. The rubble of broken stalls littered the ground.

She wandered through several bleak streets where pavement life had been sucked away by the Emergency. But perhaps her chances of finding replacements for Ishvar and Om were better now, she comforted herself. Perhaps the tailors who used to ply their trade from roadside stalls would seek alternate work.

Delivering the final dresses to Au Revoir Exports, she had casually advised Mrs. Gupta that her employees were going on a two-week vacation. As the tailorless fortnight drew to a close, however, she realized her optimism was misplaced. The manager had to be informed that resumption of work was being further postponed.

Dina started by praising Mrs. Gupta’s hair. “It looks lovely. Did you just come from Venus Beauty Salon?”

“No,” said Mrs. Gupta grouchily. “I had to go to a strange place. Zenobia has let me down.”

“What happened?”

“I needed an urgent appointment, and she said to me she was all booked up. To me – her most faithful client.”

Oh no, thought Dina, wrong topic. “By the way, my tailors have been delayed.”

“That’s very inconvenient. For how long?”

“I’m not sure, maybe two more weeks. They have fallen sick in their village.”

“That’s what they all say. Too many production days are lost to such excuses. Probably drinking and dancing in their village. We are Third World in development, but first class in absenteeism and strikes.”

Stupid woman, thought Dina. If she only knew how hard poor Ishvar and Om worked, and how much they had suffered.

“Never mind,” said Mrs. Gupta. “The Emergency is good medicine for the nation. It will soon cure everyone of their bad habits.”

Wishing the manager’s head could be cured of its chronic brainlessness, she agreed. “Yes, that would be a great improvement.”

“Two more weeks, then – and no more delays, Mrs. Dalai. Delays are the by-products of disorder. Remember, strict rules and firm supervision lead to success. Indiscipline is the mother of chaos, but the fruits of discipline are sweet.”

Dina listened in disbelief, and said goodbye. She wondered if Mrs. Gupta had taken up writing slogans for the Emergency, as a sideline or hobby. Or perhaps she had suffered an overdose of the government’s banners and posters, and lost the capacity for normal speech.

While the manager’s words hung like an ultimatum over Dina and the second fortnight commenced, the rent-collector arrived on his appointed day. He lifted his right hand towards the maroon fez as if to raise it. Stiffness in his shoulder kept the greeting incomplete. The hand dropped to the collar of his black sherwani, tugging it in a surrogate salutation.

“Oh, rent-collector,” she sniffed. “Wait. I’ll bring the money.”

“Thank you, sister,” smiled Ibrahim winsomely, as the door shut in his face. He relinquished the collar to rub his snuff-streaked nostrils. His fingers missed the light shower of brown dust that had rained on his clean-shaven upper lip, stark amid the full white beard.

He felt under the sherwani, got hold of the tip of his handkerchief, and pulled. He mopped his brow, then thrust it back into the trouser pocket, pushing repeatedly till all but a dangling corner disappeared.

Sighing, he leaned against the wall. Midday, and he was exhausted. Even if he finished his rounds early, there was nowhere to go – from nine a.m. to nine p.m. he had rented his room to a mill-worker on night shift. Doomed to roam the streets, Ibrahim occupied park benches, sat on bus-shelter stiles, sipped a glass of tea at a corner stall till it was time to return home and sleep in the mill-worker’s smell. This was life? Or a cruel joke? He no longer believed that the scales would ever balance fairly. If his pan was not empty, if there was some little sustenance in it for his days and nights, it was enough for him. Now he expected nothing better from the Maker of the Universe.

He decided to find Dina’s receipt while waiting outside her door. Cautiously, the rubber band was pulled upwards. He brought it safely as far as the edge of the folder, then it snapped, stinging his nose and making him drop the folder.

The contents scattered. He went down on his knees to recover the precious pieces of paper. His hands fluttered methodlessly among them. For every two he picked up, one slipped from his fingers. A slight breeze rustled the pages ominously, and he panicked. He swept with his palms to gather them together, not caring that the sheets were being crumpled.

Dina opened the door with the rent money in her hand. For a second she thought the old man had fallen. She bent to help. Then, realizing what had happened, she straightened away from the landlord’s emissary, watching the enemy’s discomfort.

“Sorry,” he smiled upwards. “Old hands are clumsy hands, what to do.” He managed to cram everything back inside the plastic folder. The large rubber band was slipped around a wrist for safekeeping. He rose to his feet, and staggered. Dina’s hand shot out to steady him.

“Heh, heh, don’t worry. Legs are still working, I think.”

“Please count it.” She sternly presented the money.

With both hands clutching the unsecured folder, the money remained unaccepted. He listened intently for the chatter of the sewing-machines. Nothing. “Please, sister, can I sit for a minute to find your receipt? Or everything will fall again to the ground. Hands are shaking too much.”

The need for a chair was real, she knew, and he would exploit it, without question. “Sure, come in,” she opened wide the door. There was nothing to lose today.

Excitement augmented Ibrahim’s tremors of fatigue. At last, after months of trying, he was inside. “All the papers are mixed up,” he said apologetically, “but I’ll find your receipt, don’t worry, sister.” He listened again for sounds from the back room. Ah, but they were quiet as mice, of course.

“Yes, here it is, sister.” The name and address were already entered. He filled in the amount received and the date. A signature writhed its way across the revenue stamp at the bottom, and the money was taken.

“Count it, please.”

“No need, sister. A twenty years’ tenant like you – if I cannot trust you, who can I trust?” Then he began counting it all the same. “Only to make you happy.” From an inside pocket of the sherwani he withdrew a thick wad of notes and thickened it further with Dina’s contribution. Like the plastic folder, the money was secured by a rubber band.

“Now,” he said, “what else can I do for you while I am here? Taps leaking? Anything broken? Plaster all right in the back room?”

“I’m not sure.” The cheek of it, she thought indignantly. Tenants could complain till they were exhausted, and here this crook was pretending with his automatic smile. “Better check for yourself.”

“Whatever is your wish, sister.”

In the back room he rapped the walls with his knuckles. “Plaster is fine,” he muttered, unable to hide his disappointment at the silent sewing-machines. Then, as though noticing the Singers for the first time, he said, “You have
two
machines in this room.”

“There is no law against two machines, is there?”

“Not at all, I was just asking. Although these days, with this crazy Emergency, you can never tell what law there is. The government surprises us daily.” His laugh was hollow, and she wondered if a threat was concealed in the words.

“One has a light needle, the other heavy,” she improvised. “Presser feet and tensions are also different. I do a lot of sewing – my curtains, bedsheets, dresses. You need special machines for all that.”

“They look exactly the same to me, but what do I know about sewing?” They went into Maneck’s room, and Ibrahim decided to put subtlety aside. “So this must be where the young man lives.”

“What?”

“The young man, sister. Your paying guest.”

“How dare you! How dare you suggest I keep young men in my flat! Is that the kind of woman you think I am? Just because –”

“Please, no, that’s not –”

“Don’t you dare insult me, and then interrupt me! Just because I am a poor defenceless widow, people think they can get away with saying filthy things! Such courage you have, such bravery, when it comes to abusing a weak and lonely woman!”

“But sister, I –”

“What has happened to manhood today? Instead of protecting the honour of women, they indulge in smearing and defiling the innocent. And you! You, with your beard so white, saying such nasty, shameful things! Have you no mother, no daughter? You should be ashamed of yourself!”

“Please forgive me, I meant no harm, I only –”

“Meant no harm is easy to say, after the damage is done!”

“No sister, what damage? A foolish old man like me repeats a silly rumour, and begs your forgiveness.”

Ibrahim made his escape clutching the plastic folder. The attempt to raise his fez in farewell was, like the earlier greeting, short-circuited. He substituted again with a yank at the sherwani’s collar. “Thank you, sister, thank you. I will come next month, with your permission. Your humble servant.”

She played with the idea of taking him to task for using “sister” so hypocritically. He had been let off too lightly towards the end, she felt. Still, he was an old man. She would have preferred to scold a younger hireling of the landlord’s.

In the afternoon she re-enacted the scene for Maneck, some sections twice at his urging. He enjoyed it the most when she came to the slandered-woman bit. “Did I show you my pose for the harassed and helpless woman?” She crossed her arms with hands on shoulders, shielding her bosom. “I stood like this. As if he was going to attack me. Poor fellow actually looked away in shame. I was so mean. But he deserved it.”

Their laughter acquired a touch of brave desperation after a while, like slicing a loaf very thin and pretending that bread was plentiful. Then the quiet in the room was sudden. The last crumb of fun had been yielded by the rent-collector’s visit.

“The play is acted and the money digested,” she said.

“At least the rent is paid up, and water and electricity too.”

“We cannot eat electricity.”

“You can have my pocket money, I don’t need it this month,” he said, reaching for his wallet.

She leaned forward and touched his cheek.

Another fortnight flew by, as swiftly, it seemed to Dina, as the rows of stitches that used to spill merrily from the Singers during happier days. She did not notice that already, in her memory, those months with Ishvar and Om, of fretting and tardiness, quarrels and crooked seams, had been transmuted into something precious, to be remembered with yearning.

Towards the end of the month, the hire-purchase man came to inquire about the sewing-machines. The instalment was overdue. She showed him the Singers to prove they were safe, and talked him into a grace period. “Don’t worry, bhai, the tailors can cover your payment three times over. But an urgent family matter has delayed them in their native place.”

Her daylong searches for new tailors continued to yield nothing. Maneck sometimes went with her, and she was grateful for his company. He made the dreary wanderings less dispiriting. Happy to skip college, he would have gone more often had it not been for her threats to write to his parents. “Don’t create extra problems for me,” she said. “As it is, if I don’t have two tailors by next week, I will have to borrow from Nusswan for the rent.” She shuddered at the prospect. “I’ll have to listen to all his rubbish again – I told you so, get married again, stubbornness breeds unhappiness.”

“I’ll come with you if you like.”

“That would be nice.”

At night, they busied themselves with the quilt. The stack of remnants was shrinking in the absence of new material, making her resort to pieces she had avoided so far, like the flimsy chiffon, not really suitable for her design. They sewed it into little rectangular pouches and stuffed in fragments of more substantial cloth. When the chiffon ran out, the quilt ceased to grow.

“W
elcome,” the foreman greeted the Facilitator, as he delivered a fresh truckload of pavement-dwellers at the work camp.

The Facilitator bowed and presented an enormous cellophane-wrapped box of dry fruits. He was making a tidy profit between what he paid Sergeant Kesar and what he collected from the foreman; the wheels had to be kept oiled.

Cashews, pistachios, almonds, raisins, apricots were visible through the windows in the lid. “For your wife and children,” said the Facilitator, adding, “Please, please take it, no,” as the foreman made a show of refusing. “Its nothing, just a small token of appreciation.”

The project manager, too, was delighted with the arrival of new pavement-dwellers. The scheme allowed him great liberties in manipulating the payroll. What the free labour lacked in efficiency, it made up in numbers. The expanding irrigation project no longer needed to hire extra paid workers.

In fact, a few were laid off; and the remaining day-labourers began to feel threatened. In their view, this influx of starving, shrivelled, skeletal beings was turning into an enemy army. Regarded at first with pity or amusement as they struggled with puny little tasks, the beggars and pavement-dwellers now seemed like invaders bent on taking away their livelihood. The paid workers began directing their resentment at them.

Harassment of the newcomers was constant. Abuse, pushing, shoving became commonplace. A spade handle would emerge out of a ditch to trip somebody. From scaffoldings and raised platforms, spit descended like bird droppings but with greater accuracy. At mealtimes a flurry of suddenly clumsy elbows overturned their plates, and since the rules denied a second serving, the beggars and pavement-dwellers often ate off the ground. Most of them were used to foraging in garbage, but the water-thin dal soaked quickly into dry earth. Only solids like chapati or bits of vegetable could be salvaged.