A Free Man A True Story of Life and Death in Delhi (6 page)

At Panipat he changed buses for Amroha. At Amroha he stayed at his sister’s house and plied a rickshaw. When his sister tired of his company, he moved to Moradabad where he worked as a painter for a few years before saving enough to get married. His family was overjoyed by the prospect of him finally settling down. But a year later, for no obvious reason, he jumped onto a bus and arrived at the Inter State Bus Terminal near Kashmere Gate. As he walked down from Kashmere Gate to Bara Tooti, Munna realized it had been ten years since that day before Holi. By now his uncle would surely have forgotten about the bicycle.

•

Munna has been summoned by Ashraf to Kaka’s tea shop to explain to me how and why he came to Bara Tooti. According to Ashraf, Munna’s story illustrates that the life of the mazdoor is equal parts azadi and akepalan, or solitude. ‘Today I can be in Delhi,’ says Ashraf. ‘Tomorrow I could well be in a train halfway across the country; the day after, I can return. This is a freedom that comes only from solitude. Isn’t that so, Munna?’

‘Yes, Ashraf bhai.’ Munna is a slender, reedy mistry with salt-and-pepper hair, his lungs hollowed out by smoking, his voice a throaty whisper. His matchstick arms are encased in plaster casts—a consequence of a drunken argument with a policeman who knocked him out without much ado.

When Munna came to, he was in the public ward of the Bara Hindu Rao Hospital in Malkaganj with both his hands in slings. ‘So I slipped out of the ward and hurried back here.’

‘Didn’t you meet a doctor, ask a nurse? Find out what happened?’

‘I couldn’t find anyone. Besides, I didn’t have any money for the plaster cast. So I ran away without paying.’

‘It’s a government hospital, Munna. They weren’t going to charge you a per square foot rate for the plaster of Paris in your cast.’

‘Oh, and how was I supposed to know that?’

I am flummoxed by the manner in which Ashraf and his friends make decisions.

‘Why did you come back, Munna?’

‘I felt like it, Aman bhai. I missed Delhi.’

‘But what about your wife?’

‘I suppose I miss her too, but I keep going back.’

‘When did you last go?’

‘Three years ago.’

Ashraf is frowning. I think I’ve asked too many questions. It’s bad form to keep asking people about pasts that they are reluctant to confront. At Bara Tooti people come and go all the time. A man could get up from a drinking session, walk down the road for a piss, keep walking till he reached the railway station, hop onto a train, and return after a year without anyone really missing him.

I suspect Ashraf sees himself as that man, the sort who jumps onto a train on a whim and is carried away to a faraway place. Ashraf loves the railways; he can talk about them forever. Stations, train numbers, timings, junctions, Ashraf remembers them all in a manner reminiscent of my grandfather’s mental catalogue of food prices from the 1930s. Such information is important for a man who spends his idle hours thinking of trains to jump on to.

What about tickets?

‘You don’t need tickets. If the checker doesn’t come, you travel for free. If you get caught, you simply go to jail.’ Jail, according to Ashraf—who has never been to one—is an acceptable way of spending three months of a life in exchange for a short train ride. ‘They don’t make you work if you are in for less than six months,’ he claims. ‘All you do is eat and roam the premises.’

His audience at Kaka’s tea shop is unconvinced. ‘You have to drink from the same tap that you use to wash your latrine!’ bellows Kaka, whose face, I have just realized, has acquired a crimson hue after years of sitting next to a lit stove. ‘Have you ever drunk from a latrine?’

‘Impossible!’ Ashraf is aghast at the callousness of the state. ‘Just last week the government distributed chlorine tablets worth ten thousand rupees at the chowk. For free! How can they make you drink from the latrine in jail?’

‘They make you drink from the latrine,’ Kaka insists as he throws a fistful of sugar into what looks like a pot full of liquid mud.

Ashraf retreats into a contemplative silence. He and I have arrived at a temporary truce regarding his past; I shall stop pestering him for details on the condition that he will bring them up himself at some point.

In the meantime, I look around for possible interview subjects. It is about six in the evening and we are sitting at Kaka’s tea shop—again! Munna’s story notwithstanding, I am bored of Bara Tooti and exhausted by its curious crowds, frustrated by their tendency to pick up my voice recorder and say ‘Is this your mobile phone?’ followed by ‘So everything I say is being recorded?’

Yes, it is! Not only is it being recorded, I will be forced to listen to it when I review my tapes, forced to transcribe it in the hope that someone would have said something memorable, and forced to relive this moment when I review my transcripts. Over the last few months, my tapes are full of conversations just like these. In some I am ineffectually explaining how it doesn’t have a tape but it can be converted into a CD; elsewhere I concede that though the paanwallah has a cellphone that doubles up as a recorder, my phone does not record and my recorder cannot phone. ‘It’s like using a saw to hammer a nail,’ I point out rather brightly in one transcript.

‘Ashraf bhai, can we please go somewhere else? I cannot have another cup of this tea.’

‘What’s wrong with the tea?’

‘It’s too sweet.’

‘True. Kaka, your tea is bakwaas. Aman bhai says it’s too sweet.’

‘It’s because of you bhenchods. All day long you chootiyas smoke ganja and then complain that the chai is pheeka! So I put more sugar, and then Aman bhai says it’s too sweet, then Rehaan says it’s expensive, then Lalloo says there isn’t enough milk and you, you gaandu, say, “This time make mine special.” No chai for anyone today!’

‘Araam se, Kaka. I’m sorry.’ I smile my best ‘I’m one of the boys, but not really’ smile.

‘We could go to Kalyani’s,’ Ashraf suggests.

‘What’s Kalyani’s?’

‘It’s a bit like…it’s a bit like a permit room but without a permit.’

‘You mean an illegal bar?’ As a law-abiding denizen of South Delhi, I am instantly and constantly impressed by the illegality and ingenuity of the North. Having dismissed Ashraf’s concerns about money with an imperious wave of my hand, we are finally off on an adventure into the depths of Sadar Bazaar. Well, at least I am; Ashraf just wants to get drunk.

We head down towards Teli Bara Road, past several buildings that I once romantically assumed were ruined havelis but which turned out to be perfectly functioning godowns. On my right I notice a small cinema (‘Must watch a film in the hall,’ say my notes from that day).

‘Do you watch films, Ashraf bhai?’

‘No.’

‘Why?’

‘No interest.’

Buoyed by the prospect of a drink at Kalyani’s, Ashraf prattles on about the government as we walk through the market. Having dispensed with the railways, he is now telling me about the Delhi Excise Department, a department he often thinks about.

‘I don’t understand it,’ he declares. ‘See, Sheila Dikshit knows that there are homeless people in Delhi. How do we know that Sheila knows? Because every winter, the Delhi government sets up shaadi-style shamiana tents in Sadar Bazaar for mazdoors to sleep in. For free! Why would people leave their homes to sleep in a shamiana? They won’t. Which means the sarkar knows that mazdoors are homeless.

‘Now consider the Head of Excise. He knows that there is homelessness, he also knows that full ninety per cent of Delhi’s desi sharab is sold in Sadar Bazaar area—the
same
area where Sheila puts up shelters for the homeless! What does this mean, Aman bhai?’

‘It means these people drink themselves out of house and home?’

‘No! Don’t make a joke of this, everyone knows that isn’t true. They drink it in the streets! So the Excise Department is making us break the rule! Otherwise they should just not sell it!’

‘Would you prefer they didn’t?’

‘No, no,’ Ashraf backtracked in some haste. ‘I’m just saying I don’t understand it.

‘Neither do I, Ashraf bhai.’

Drinking on the street is fun occasionally, but it loses colour really fast. Everyone is just a little bit nervous and so ends up drinking much faster than they would like to. Most mazdoors simply knock the bottle back in quick gulps and then wander about Bara Tooti in a daze. After seven, the chowk has a different feel to it—a rough edge exposed by the alcohol. A few fights break out, people intervene, and then the police show up.

The last time we drank out on the pavement, Ashraf almost got us both beaten up and arrested. The evening had started pleasantly enough—Ashraf and Lalloo were drinking quarters of the Mafia brand—Everyday, the chowk favourite, was not available and Shokeen, Ashraf’s ‘number two favourite’, was sold out for the day—I was nursing a small drink myself, while Rehaan was telling us about the time an outbreak of the Ranikhet disease at his farm back home had forced him to kill off his entire flock of chickens. ‘I grabbed each bird by the neck and forced a shot of rum down its throat. They ran around for a few minutes and then suddenly they became very still.’

‘How did you know they were dead?’ I asked. ‘Maybe the alcohol just knocked them out.’

‘That’s exactly what it did. So then I dug a deep hole and buried them.’

‘Alive?’

‘Well, asleep. Buried them asleep,’ said Rehaan, folding his hands under his head like a pillow as if to emphasize the humanity of this avian genocide.

Thwack! A steel-tipped lathi struck the bottle of Mafia with inch-perfect accuracy, scattering shards of glass across the pavement. We looked up to see a giant policeman glowering at us, his stick poised for another strike.

‘Bhenchodon! Who said you could drink on this pavement? Go drink in your house!’

‘Where else can we drink, Constable saab? The chowk is our house; this pavement is our drawing room.’ Ashraf had been drinking since six.

‘Chootiya, I’ll make the police station your bedroom if you don’t shut up right now. What’s under that shawl?’ Whack, whack, whack—the lathi struck the pavement on either side of Lalloo.

‘Police saab, we made a mistake, forgive us, forgive us, forgive us.’ Lalloo stretched out on the pavement, his hands alternately touching the constable’s shoes and covering his own head to ward off further blows.

‘And you? Who are you? Who are you?’ The lathi waved in my direction.

‘He’s from the press!’

Thanks, Ashraf, why don’t you give him my home address and telephone number as well.

‘What are you doing here? Encouraging this sort of illegal behaviour?’

‘He is from the press; he can go wherever he wants!’ It was Ashraf again. He was talking too much now. ‘Whenever he wants! However he wants.’ Shut up, Ashraf, shut up! Please just shut up!

‘I am interviewing them, officerji,’ I explained, standing up and adopting what I hoped was a professorial air. ‘This is an important part of my research.’

It took another fifteen minutes to resolve the matter, with no help from Mohammed Ashraf who piped up every time the constable showed signs of calming down. ‘You tell us where to drink! Should we drink in your thana then? I’ll come every day at six o’clock.’

Fortunately, Rehaan and Lalloo shut him up. I smoothened the constable’s ruffled feathers and sent him on his way. ‘I’m warning you,’ he said as he walked off. ‘Don’t mix with this lot. There is a cell waiting for them in the lock-up—you’ll get thrown in as well.’

Ashraf was incandescent. ‘Why didn’t you flash your press card and tell him to fuck off?’

‘Oh really? What was I supposed to tell him? “Hi, I’m from the press, so why don’t you fuck off while I break the law and drink in the open with my friends?”’

‘All of you are the same. In front of the police, tumhari phat jaati hai—you get fucked!’

‘Shut up, Ashraf, I’m going home.’

•

It is to escape the tyrannies of the officials of the Excise Department and the evil henchmen in the Delhi Police that Ashraf now leads me to ‘a secret place that everyone knows’. Somewhere in Sadar Bazaar, a low-slung tarpaulin worm sprawls lazily along the footpath. From a distance it appears to be a consignment of material waiting to be loaded onto an arriving truck but on closer examination reveals itself as a tunnel-like hut fronted entirely by interlocking sheets of cardboard and ply. At one end, a heavy wooden blanket masks a sturdy wooden door on which Ashraf now gently knocks. ‘This is Kalyani’s—the secret place,’ he says. ‘Don’t mention the location in your book.’

Originally a series of individual rooms divided by thatch and plywood partitions, the structure has since had its inner walls knocked down to create a hall about twenty feet long and about seven feet high. While the road-facing wall of Kalyani’s is an impregnable assemblage of wood, cardboard, and tarpaulin, the far wall has been folded up, offering much-needed ventilation and a pleasing view of a set of railway tracks. ‘This is Kalyani’s,’ begins Ashraf somewhat unnecessarily, ‘and that is Kalyani.’

‘Ashraf,’ Kalyani greets him with genuine enthusiasm even as she appraises me with some suspicion. She puts her head to one side and stares at me like an annoyed hen, an impression heightened by her sharp nose, her light, bobbing gait, and her dark hair pulled back into a tight bun that sits high on her almost perfectly spherical head. She is slender, about thirty-five years old, and speaks, like Ashraf, with a soft Bihari accent. ‘This is Aman bhai. He’s a friend of mine—he is okay.’

‘Whatever you say, Ashraf.’ She pours him a steep glass of Everyday. ‘Does he drink?’ For a second I hesitate, only to be revisited by the memory of an Everyday hangover that felt like a kick to the head, and politely refuse. She gives me a look of pity with just a trace of contempt and hands me a handful of raisins. ‘Chaba le,’ she says caustically, as she slips out through a fold in the wall.

As I chew on raisins, Ashraf goes about finishing his half bottle of Everyday. Made from the finest commonly available ingredients, Everyday whisky isn’t for everyone. New recruits often shun this intoxicating brew, in favour of more bombastic brands like Hulchul that shakes the very foundations of a man’s being; Jalwa Spiced Country Liquor that speaks of youth, fire, and passion; Toofan, infused with the pent-up vigour and vitality of an impending storm; and Ghadar Desi that is a perfect antidote to colonial oppression. Enclosed in a squarish, clear-glass bottle, the name printed across in simple bilingual lettering, Everyday makes no such promises, its prosaic name serving as a reminder of an incontrovertible truth: Everyday—for those who crave it every day, day after day.