The Sari Shop (27 page)

But before he could think of lighting one too, a fresh bout of panic seized him and he sat trembling on the edge of his bed.

Darkness smothered him. He couldn’t breathe. He had no name, no language. He did not know where and why he lived. He began to tremble in fury. Terror filled the little room. Ramchand was enveloped in a sense of timelessness. He didn’t know anything. He knew everything. These thoughts did not just run through his head, they ran through his body, the way a shiver does. ‘You cannot keep demons out. They all have a foot in the door,’ he thought incoherently.

There was a sound outside, someone wheeling a bicycle
and light footsteps. The faint sounds fell on Ramchand’s nerves as frightening assaults. He could not control his trembling. He was mad, yes, mad. No other explanation.

Ramchand ran to the bathroom and threw up, once, then again after five minutes. He had eaten little, but the litres of tea he had drunk erupted out of his mouth as a sour brown liquid that trickled down into the hole of the Indian-style toilet. He washed his face and came back in the dark. He did not look for the candles or the matchbox. On his way to his bed, he tripped on the uneven floor and fell, his bony frame making a loud crack. He did not get up. He lay there curled up as tightly as he could and vomited again, just a little bit of vomit. More old tea trickled to the floor. Tears came pouring down Ramchand’s face. He wanted to scream loudly, as loudly as he could. But he couldn’t. Because you couldn’t scream. Not really, not like this, in darkness, in your room, without any real reason. You couldn’t cry either.

His books, his notebook and his Oxford dictionary stood on their tiptoes on the uppermost shelf. And the Indian Beggar, the Policeman, Phyllis, Peggy, Penguins and Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru (or my favourite leader) all leered down at him in unison.

He lay weeping on the floor and it was almost morning when he dropped off to sleep out of sheer exhaustion. In his troubled sleep, Ramchand had a dream. A vivid dream, with the lights, shadows, darkness and colours, all in place.

He dreamt that he was alone in the sari shop. It was twilight and he was all alone. Surrounded by saris and silence. But there were shadows behind him – shadows that moved but slid away as soon as he turned around to look at them. No matter how quickly he whipped around, they were faster than him. Small, prickly, invisible
things
crawled out of the white mattresses and crawled up his body. They didn’t bite or hurt him, but they were there, nestled against his body snugly. And he didn’t know who or what they were.

Then, the saris began to flap, and they began to unwind, all of them. The ones that were rolled up and the ones in transparent cellophane packs. Soon, the room was full of swishing and flapping sounds of cloth. A few saris grew very long, even longer than the longest in real life, much, much longer than the grand old-fashioned nine-yard saris. They flew out at him and whipped themselves around his neck, almost strangling him. A navy-blue sari floated in front of the window, like a curtain. It had no border, no embroidery, no patterns on it. It was perfectly plain, like a new, crisp, navy-blue turban.

Finally, a parrot green sari (the sort he had once unsuccessfully tried to sell to Mrs Bhandari), floated from the shelf towards him. He watched as it drew closer.

It then descended over his head, engulfing him like a shroud, its black border suffocating him.

Throughout the dream, a dead woman’s eyes followed him.

*

The next day, he woke up feeling violently angry. He didn’t get angry; he just woke up like that, on the hard floor, wanting to hit somebody. It was such an alien, new feeling for Ramchand that it took him a while to get used to it. Like wearing a stiffly starched new cotton shirt.

He did not go to work. Instead, he just paced his room, his mind completely upside down, occasionally kicking out at the walls.

One particularly violent kick sent flakes of plaster falling in the room below. The landlord emerged and shouted, ‘
Raaamchand!
’

Ramchand opened his window, looked down and, for the first time in his life, shouted.

‘
Shuuut up!
’ he screamed back at the landlord, and then spat for good measure.

He caught sight of Sudha’s upturned, astonished face. She stood in the courtyard with a plateful of shelled peas in her hands, wearing a pretty multi-coloured sari with a floral pattern.

Ramchand slammed his window shut. He didn’t eat anything all day. He didn’t even have tea. He swallowed a lot of water in large gulps and continued to feel restless.

*

At five in the evening, he got dressed slowly and went out. Then he made his way to the shop. He walked slowly, softly, padding along like a leopard stalking its prey.

When he got there, the first to spot him was Mahajan. ‘So, you have arrived finally. What happened to you? Are you completely mad, Ramchand? I tell you, if things go on like this…’

‘You think you are so smart, don’t you, Mahajan?’ Ramchand said suddenly in a quiet voice.

Mahajan was really, truly, shocked.

‘What? How dare you speak to me like this?’ he spluttered.

It was only with supreme effort that Ramchand kept his fists clenched by his sides.

‘I dare because I dare,’ answered Ramchand. ‘And you are not God, you know, after all.’

Mahajan was about to shout back at him, but he paused. This was very unusual. Ramchand had always been so timid and obedient. He backed off a little, his face turning wary. Something was wrong. Ramchand was in a strange mood. Mahajan thought he would go and fetch Gokul. Ramchand usually listened to Gokul. But there were customers upstairs. He would have to be discreet. He’d go up and fetch Gokul, to be on the safe side. You never knew with young men. They sometimes suddenly turned violent.

When he spoke, though, his tone was still authoritative, betraying none of his apprehension. ‘You wait here, I am just coming.’

Mahajan rushed up the stairs. What
had
got into Ramchand? He went to where Gokul was sitting, and was whispering into his ears, when he suddenly saw Ramchand come up and enter the glass door. Mahajan groaned.

Ramchand came and stood in the middle of the room, glaring at Mahajan, and began to slowly, deliberately, crack his knuckles, as if daring Mahajan to do something to stop him.

Mahajan stood transfixed. Gokul looked worried. The others hadn’t noticed yet. Ramchand looked around, still cracking his knuckles. His eyes turned to Chander’s corner. Chander was free for the moment. He sat by Hari. They were both laughing and talking. Ramchand turned his glare on them. When they didn’t notice, he turned to the only chair in the room. It was a small chair kept especially for elderly women whose joints ached and made it impossible for them to sit on the floor. It happened to be vacant right now. Ramchand picked it up, held it up over his head, and then, with all his might, flung it at Hari and Chander.

They yelled and scrambled to their feet. All the chatter in the shop died. Every head turned to look at Ramchand. Most women got up, afraid, ready to leave if a fight broke out.

‘Ramchand, son, calm down,’ said Mahajan, almost affectionately.

Ramchand couldn’t bear his oily voice. What he wanted to do most at that moment was strike. Just strike, break, destroy. His eyes were red.

‘He is drunk,’ Gokul whispered to Mahajan.

‘And I can hear you, Gokul!’ Ramchand screamed in fury.

The longer he stood there, the louder he shouted. Some women began to leave quietly. Others, torn between fear of
this madman and the acquisition of a beautiful sari, remained. When Mahajan saw a few women leaving, he began to get angry. Customers leaving? What would Bhimsen Seth say?

‘Ramchand,’ he said, sternly now. ‘Leave immediately, or I’ll have to take some serious action…’

Then Ramchand did the unthinkable. He lunged at Mahajan and grabbed him by his collar. He began to shake him in fury. Mahajan looked shocked, his eyes goggling as his frame shook.

‘You shut up,’ Ramchand screamed, his blood boiling, his eyes bloodshot. ‘You just keep your mouth shut or I’ll cut your tongue up into little pieces and tie it up in your own handkerchief and give it to you.’

At this, all the customers fled for their lives, leaving behind whatever saris their feminine hearts had desired. The shop was empty in a minute except for the shop assistants. Ramchand still had Mahajan firmly by the collar.

Gokul and Hari rushed forward to intervene, their faces serious but shining with excitement. Hari put his arm around Ramchand’s shoulders and tried to calm him down. Ramchand turned on Hari and tried to get his fingers around Hari’s throat, fighting like a madman to get rid of the arm around his shoulder.

‘And you, Hari!’ Ramchand yelled. ‘Don’t laugh, don’t you ever laugh again. Ever, you understand? If I ever see you laughing, I swear by all the gods I know that I’ll break every tooth in that grinning mouth of yours.’ Ramchand tried to push Gokul’s arm away, but Chander came to help, trying to pin Ramchand’s arms to his side.

‘Oh. Chander is very brave now, isn’t he?’ Ramchand screamed. ‘Chander, if you had any heart, any courage, any belief, you wouldn’t have been sitting here gossiping like an old woman.’

And then Ramchand spat. His spit landed on a gorgeous turquoise sari embroidered with real silver thread that someone
among the fleeing customers had been about to buy. The glob of spit gleamed tremblingly on the delicate silver pattern.

Then Ramchand wrenched his arm free, and ran out of the shop, not looking back once.

When Ramchand returned to his room, feeling slightly sobered up after the scene, it had begun to rain. It looked like the monsoon had finally arrived. People looked up at the sky in happy anticipation. Ramchand climbed up the stairs dejectedly, and went into his room. He walked straight to the back window and opened it. In the courtyard below, Sudha was taking the washing off the line in a hurry. She wore a blue salwaar kameez. The hem of the kameez was edged with lace, and it fitted her very well. The raindrops made dark little holes in the blue fabric, like little bullet holes. Her hair got damp and her chunni fluttered in the breeze. Ramchand calmed down at the sight of her, but only slightly.

However, the few raindrops proved to be a false signal. Even as Ramchand watched, the few clouds in the sky disappeared and the sun shone down again, as hot and cruel as ever. The monsoons were still not here. Sudha reappeared with an armful of the washing. She hung it up on the line again, looking slightly morose.

Ramchand’s brain seemed to thud against the insides of his skull. He rubbed some balm on his forehead and lay down on the bed. The vapours from the balm stung his eyelids.

*

Ramchand spent the next twelve days like this, locked up in his room. A strange twelve days. He had crashed into a broken vacant state, all rage gone. No rage, no worries, no happiness, no ambition, no doubt, no grief. He felt completely blank.

He did not step out even once, he had no contact with the outside world, he did not even keep track of day and night. He just spent all his time lying on his bed or sitting by the window without bothering to open it, thinking of nothing.

He skipped most meals, remembering to eat only when the gnawing void in his stomach became acute. Even then he wouldn’t cook much. He’d boil rice, without bothering to make any daal to go with it. Then he would chew up large quantities of boiled rice with pieces of mango pickle out of a jar. Occasionally, he would walk to the stove in a daze after such a meal and make strong tea, without any milk, to wash down the meal with. Usually, after such a meal, his stomach would get distended, he’d get acidity and usually end up with a bad stomach-ache.

He lost count of the date and days. He didn’t brush his teeth or shave, though he’d take sudden cold baths when he felt like it. He grew a rough stubble; his hair became sticky and oily, and clung to his scalp, making it itch. His toenails grew, their surface became rough. He didn’t touch his books or his notebook. No one came to visit him.

Dust settled on every surface in the room – on the floor, on the desk, on the shelves, on the tops of all the jars, on the mirror, on the tin trunk, on his neat pile of books.

He watched a spider make a web between the table and the wall. He watched it with uninterest, completely detached, while the spider purposefully and industriously spun on. A lizard on the wall stared at him unblinkingly most of the day, breaking out into energetic chases whenever it saw an insect.

The days grew so hot that even the floor of his room radiated heat. There were frequent power cuts, but Ramchand did not get up to open a window or light a candle during any of them. He remained where he was, and remained there even after the power came back on. On most days, the voltage was very low, so that most of the time, the fan merely crawled
lazily around its axis. After it grew dark, sometimes Ramchand would switch on the bulb. When he did, the bulb gave a very dim light. When he didn’t, the room grew dark and cavernous. During the still nights, he could sometimes hear the scurry of mice in the room.

The air in the closed room grew stale. Heat and dust swathed the room like a heavy blanket, and Ramchand remained inert under their weight. On the thirteenth day, when Ramchand woke up feeling cold and shivery, he had his first coherent thought. ‘I wonder if I am running a fever.’ This was the first complete, sensible sentence that had taken shape in his mind for the last twelve days.

How could he feel cold in July? It was July, wasn’t it? Ramchand felt a stab of fear and he got out of his bed. What time was it? What month was it? Where had he been? What had he been doing? For how long? And why was he feeling so cold? It had been very hot till yesterday. Ramchand felt completely disoriented.

He got to his feet and walked gingerly to the front window like an ill, old man. He slipped the bolt of the window with rusty fingers and opened it. It seemed like an eternity since he had last looked out of the windows.

Now he did.

And saw that outside, the morning sky was covered completely with low, dark, cool clouds. The light was unusual, with a smoky, purple tinge to it; it made the ordinary landscape appear strange, turning the most familiar things into extraordinary, beautiful objects. A chilly gale, the strongest that Ramchand had ever seen, was whipping around fiercely in the old city like a happy madman. It whipped crazily through trees, it swept away old newspapers from rooftops, it whirled away any washing left on clotheslines by careless housewives. The morning had an enchanted, unreal feel about it. The temperature had fallen dramatically. In the street below, plastic bags,
dried fruit peel, leaves, coils of hair that women removed from their combs every day and threw down the windows carelessly and bits of paper danced all around the street, this way and that, in the frenzy that the gale had created. A stray pup crazily chased first one thing, then another, finally pursuing in a mad happiness a blue plastic bag that the gale tantalizingly kept just out of the pup’s reach. The pup chased the plastic bag, children chased the pup, squealing in excitement. The old buildings of the city seemed enveloped in that blue-purple light, looking like a film set of an old film. An uncertain half-smile appeared on Ramchand’s unshaven, dirty face. He felt caught up in the beautiful, powerful gale. He stood there at the front window for a while.