The Storyteller (32 page)

Farishta and I had regular bets in the
bustee.
Sitting on the wall, we would locate a couple of mangoes high on a branch and not easily detectable to the naked eye, give them names and then bet on which one would fall off first. We gambled on Barey Bhai’s moods, or who would be the next person to die in the
bustee.
There was a
bidi
or a cigarette to be won or lost on the weather, the colour of Baji’s lipstick for the day, the professions of the men entertained by Chaman, and the winners of the fights near the water tap.

I had nearly finished eating when I became aware of a commotion in the crowd. At first I assumed that a close contest was the cause of such high-pitched noises. I peeked over the gravestone. People were scattering in different directions. The shrill sound of whistles alerted me to the source of panic. Policemen chased the spectators without making any serious efforts to catch them. It was odd that the law enforcers were shouting with their
lathis
raised in an attempt to intimidate the spectators, but no one was being targeted for an arrest or a beating as a chastising example to others.

I crawled through an opening in the lichen-covered wall that fenced the farthest section of the graveyard. From the outside it was safe to look again at the antics of the policemen. They had
grouped together, as if there were an urgent need to review the situation. Whatever their raid had intended to achieve, their agitated gestures suggested that they had not succeeded.

Then someone threw a rock at them. And another. The response was predictable. Several of the daring men, who had hung around were grabbed and thrashed. Their screams for mercy and pleas of innocence had no effect. Frustration with their seeming failure goaded the policemen into being particularly brutal in administering beatings. In the frenzied attack, nothing was spared. Headstones were smashed, several cages, with the prized partridges trapped inside, were battered with hefty blows, and food carts overturned, but not before the savouries had been voraciously consumed. The police behaviour was desperate.

A constable blew a whistle. They assembled again with drooping shoulders and worried looks. More talking. Slowly they trooped off without even glancing at those who were injured. Their departure revealed the hiding places. Men sprang up from behind the walls and graves, jumped down from trees and emerged from the surrounding areas covered with wild grass. The injured were consoled, and their cuts bandaged with bits of rag and pieces of clothing. One man managed to stand up without any assistance. Others were helped to their feet and carried on the shoulders of those who had escaped.

I found Manu. His demeanour indicated neither fear nor outrage. He was leaning over a man, who had been bashed on the head and was struggling to sit up, when I called him.

He managed a tremulous smile. ‘You found a hiding place.’

‘The same as you.’

‘It’s most unfortunate, most unfortunate,’ Manu muttered. ‘The police are so inefficient.’ He turned his attention back to the victim.

The nearest
dhaba
was crowded with faces I recognised from the graveyard. The cacophony of voices was charged with
indignation. The motivation for the raid could not be established with any measure of certainty. Every conceivable reason was offered, but none was unanimously accepted.

‘More money! That’s what they were after!’

‘
Nahey yar
! If that was the reason, they would have sent someone in plain clothes to speak to one of the
khalifas.
’

‘On the trail of a criminal!’ an old man claimed. ‘Partridge fighting is no longer the noble sport it once was.’

We allowed him to relive a refurbished past before impatient voices drowned his remembrance. From drugs to contrabands. Foreign spies. Terrorists. The graveyard was the centre of subversion, a haven for thieves and the place to buy drugs. Outrageous suggestions prompted even more improbable responses.

‘That is where kidnapped village girls are brought at night!’ a voice piped from a corner. ‘Pimps and brothel owners pick their stock from a monthly auction!’

The police were supposedly investigating complaints about supernatural activities. Malicious spirits were rumoured to be roaming the countryside, terrorising villagers. The implications were serious. Could it be that the eternal enemies of India had found a way to harness the assistance of the Devil? The only silent and contented man was the owner of the
dhaba.
He ensured that there was an uninterrupted supply of tea and snacks to all the tables.

Gradually the voices faded and people drifted off. Manu and I lingered over more tea.

‘A huge loss,’ he moaned. ‘I was certain to win over five hundred rupees.’ He shook his head ruefully.

I felt obliged to pay the bill. It hadn’t been such a disastrous morning for me.

Shadows breathe heavily. Whose rude hands are these? An unprovoked attack. I struggle. Blows on my head and shoulders stun me into submission. My hands are yanked behind my back and tied with a rope. A smelly rag presses against my mouth. I manage an ineffectual bite on the fleshy part of a palm, just under the thumb. A muted cry of surprise. Anger rather than pain. Immediate retaliation. Knuckles crunch against my cheeks. A deeper darkness presses against my eyes. The shadows disappear. Hands fumble to tie a knot at the back of my head.

I can smell the night. I have been carried into the open. They dump me on the ground. My ribs hurt as my chest hits a patch of bare earth. I can smell dog shit. A boot rests lightly on the back of my neck. Is it Ram Lal’s foot? It will crush me to the earth if I move. They have not spoken among themselves since they came to fetch me.

This is not the way to conduct a hanging. I have heard that a condemned man is treated with respect. Perhaps I am being moved to another prison. A different city? A private audience with a judge? I am flattered to think that I could be dangerous
enough for a clandestine operation to be initiated under the cover of darkness.

Slowly I twist my neck slightly to the left. Immediately the pressure of the foot increases. The blindfold has slipped down under my eyes. I can see the glowing tips of cigarettes and
bidis.
Behind them spreads the dark wig of a large tree pasted to an inert sky. There’s someone with a hurricane coming towards us. A whispered conversation. I am lying close to the prison gate. Twin lights and the low rumble of a car engine. Running feet. The lights are turned off. Hands grab me. I am pulled up to stand on my feet. Someone swears. The blindfold is adjusted and the knot tightens. Intense whispering. More hands, momentary weightlessness. I feel a coarse material rubbing against me. I think I am being placed inside a sack.

‘Make sure that the cells are cleaned. Properly! Scrub the walls. The floor must be dry. No smell! We have to impress the minister.’ The voice is suddenly muffled.

Breathing is difficult. Otherwise it is quite cosy in here. I think of the security that a foetus might enjoy inside the womb. Warmth and calmness in a room of nourishment. I must have been inside a womb once. I was created. I belonged. Did my mother feel love, pride and hope in what was her own? And did she cry when she saw me? Had she contemplated murder rather than the abandonment of an unwanted baby? Was it guilt or maternal instinct that saved me?

Aaah, these fellows don’t believe in being gentle. I can smell petrol fumes. Oops! Have I fallen off the edge of the world? I crash against something hard and bump my head. I think I have been thrown inside the back of a van. Should I sense danger? The fear induced by unseen tentacles crawling over me?

So, I am being bundled out of the prison in secrecy. Long ago the judge had declared that I was a menace to the community. I was to be treated with extreme caution until the
trial and the sentencing. He used words like
malicious
and
aggressive
to describe me. I was an unfortunate creature without even a rudiment of morality or a sense of obligation to society. He understood that my physical condition might have deepened my bitterness towards life, but that could not justify my acts of violence or the ways I had poisonously affected impressionable minds. In my case, compassion had to be a secondary consideration to the protection that the city deserved.

While he babbled on, I didn’t know what I was expected to do. I fidgeted and grinned and evoked the wrath of the old man. It wasn’t defiance but confusion that made me appear as if I were unrepentant.

Hardened. Shameless. Rude. Coarse. Wilfully wicked.

Had he accused me of arrogance, I might have conceded that he had identified a slight defect in my personality. Now that I look back on the event that landed me in prison, I cannot deny that it was excessive pride that brought me down. But I have not been brought to trial to prove my humility. Besides, there were others who conspired to trap me…

I lived with Manu as if it were my new home. I relaxed and became careless about the dangers that lurked in the city. I knew that Ram Lal had not given up, but my alertness to his cunning slackened and once more I became recklessly bold. I operated in small, suburban bazaars, even though it was impossible to find a sizable audience for my new stories. I refused to admit that people were not interested in listening to morbid tales of merciless destruction. My warnings about the ultimate fate of Delhi were unpopular. Fools are forever dismissive of prophetic words.

Manu did not charge me rent or accept money for food. This arrangement of convenience lasted…well, let’s say for several
weeks, probably longer. In return, I helped him in the shop whenever I could. People turned up late at night. There was little conversation. It all appeared to be prearranged. The exact sum of money was handed over in exchange for boxes of various sizes. No questions asked and no information given. A name, a code. An efficient way to conduct a business. Early in the morning we rearranged the contents of the shop and brought out more kites and coloured strings, the mock weapons and the face masks. A steady trickle of customers gave the shop the necessary legitimacy to survive in the bazaar.

Manu taught me that a petrol-filled bottle, with a rag stuffed in its mouth, could be a potent weapon. I derived a sense of great power from hurling such a missile against a wall, or throwing it forcefully on the ground and watching the flames leap into the night sky as if a fiery genie had been released from confinement.

I could not resist returning to the site of the
bustee.
Cranes, concrete, bricks, cement, iron rods and bamboo scaffolding confronted me. Mighty pillars and walls. Huge slabs of concrete lay on the ground like a gigantic cover that had suffocated our past. I threw several petrol bombs against a massive pillar without inflicting much damage. The noise and the flames woke up the sleeping guard who made threatening noises until a bottle came his way and exploded. His departure was hastened by the ghoulish noises I made. The presence of the guard was an accidental discovery. I became more discreet during my later visits.

A vast complex was emerging, giving shape to Jhunjhun Wallah’s ambition. The structure silently mocked my attempts to thwart the demise of the
bustee.
The visible growth of his triumph haunted me. I felt crippled. To acknowledge that he had won was hurtful beyond endurance. Sometimes I waited patiently for the return of the
bustee
dwellers. I believed that
curiosity would bring them back, and then rage would inflame them to unite in resistance against what was happening. It was a forlorn hope. They had abandoned their previous life with the same indifference that a snake sheds its skin.

One night I returned to find that the mango tree had been uprooted. It was chopped up and the wood neatly piled where the wall had stood. Now, the only remnant of my past was the train that sped through the night. I sat near the track and played the flute until I heard the train approaching. It was like the reassuring sight of an old friend in unfamiliar circumstances. For a moment the atmosphere of the
bustee
revived. Then the noise of the clattering wheels was buried in the darkness. The unremitting drone of insects intensified the permanence of my loss. I responded with the imitative howl of a dog—a low, sustained sound from the fog-girdled cave somewhere inside me.

I thought of ways to hurt Jhunjhun Wallah. I didn’t forget Ram Lal, but my bitterness towards him was tempered by the memory of his children. The glimpse of him as a father had diluted my desire for revenge. And Meena—she was impossible to forget, despite my continuing interludes with other women in the privacy of my sanctuary. Geeta did not last beyond a few days. Shakila refused to believe my intentions. Rasheka and Saleema were silly and unworthy of prolonged pursuit. None of them offered unqualified love. They said little that I wished to hear. I figured that they knew about Meena and the special affiliation I sought with her. Inflexible, unforgiving women!

I encountered a growing sense of betrayal as I wandered through the streets at night. Abandonment by those who had cushioned me from rejection. I slept on the bank of the Jamuna and spent nights near the hearth where Chaman had been cremated. I returned to the cemetery. Not a hint that she had drifted that way to remember me. Was she angry?

One night, at Nigambodh Ghat, I sought forgiveness and tried to justify myself.
I did all I could about the flowers. I didn’t even keep the bottle of ashes so that the river could have your wholeness. I only kept the leftover coins. You hurt me with your lack of trust. Is there anything that I haven’t done?
The night gaped at me as if I were a sorry spectacle.

Reluctantly I turned to Jesu in the church. I was relieved that he didn’t appear. Walls sprang up inside me and blocked the pathways to the familiar retreats I inhabited. The mountain caves where I was not an oddity. The grotto where the fountain of words gushed unabated. Those orchards and groves where fantasy became the obedient servant of desires. I was unable to reach inside for any comfort. I was locked out of my own houses and forced to seek the sanctuary of a desert. And what could I plant in the sand?

I rested during the day—an empty sleep. A pervasive blankness as the sun changed positions. Sudden assaults of rain. I drifted in the quietness of clean afternoons caressed by a rainbow’s arc. If only I could find its beginning, climb and ride on its curved surface, slide down to the promises stored at its end. Could it be that there was a steep track to take me to the oasis of little people, a place to retire, somewhere to stand on a peak and dream like a benevolent god? To be among my own. How often have I felt that I was not of this world?

Night dragged me deep into the tortuous entrails of a sinful city pulsating with the remnants of its monumental past. Sad people. Women with shrivelled breasts and despair coiled in the hollowness of their eyes. Whores with stained teeth and blemished skins, their garish looks luring lost souls into their charred lives. Bruised children. Men without pride. I stopped to see and listen. Of what use were their miserable lives?

I chipped, smashed and burned—monuments and statues, walls, doors, windows and lights, vehicles, and those rapidly
multiplying eyes of the devil.
Holy…Holy…Holy.
Rain was my ally. There was little danger of being pursued or apprehended. The hands of Vamana could have been the monsoonal storms. The odd police van passed by, a night patrol filling in its time without searching for work. Policemen with their eyes glued to their feet, fat, lazy and deliberately ignorant of nocturnal mischief. I grew bold. A daunting challenge germinated and unfurled into a plan of revenge. I sniffed the change of season.

An autumn night. I expected guards to be hovering in front of Jhunjhun Wallah’s house. Was he inside? Fearful and cowering? Awaiting a dreaded attack? I slipped around to the back where the wall had been topped with barbed wire. To breed fear and panic was my intention. Layer upon layer. Each incident was meant to reach into his mind and nourish a vengeful monster. Even before I threw the petrol bombs against the wall, I decided to return with the full moon.

I visited Baji the next evening and interrupted her dinner. Gulbadan opened the door and stifled a scream as the point of my knife pressed against her crotch. The amazement on her face! A ghost had escaped from the recesses of her memory and assumed a stunted, human shape.

‘The grave is the place for a permanent rest,’ I grinned. ‘I am not that tired.’

She didn’t appreciate the remark. Her lips tightened into a slit of disapproval and she looked at me with unfriendly eyes. ‘We thought you—’

‘Wrong!’ I pressed the knife a little further into the folds of her sari. ‘The police didn’t catch me! Won’t Baji be delighted to see me?’

‘Gulbadan, who is it at this time of the night? The mutton curry isn’t hot. Can you warm it again?’ Baji was sitting on a
charpai
in her customary position—legs crossed and hunched
over a tray of food. She tore a piece of
chappati
and wrapped it around several pieces of meat before popping it into her
paan
-stained mouth. I had always been fascinated by the extent to which her mouth opened to accommodate large morsels of food. She reminded me of a picture of a hungry rhinoceros I had once seen. It was a greedy mouth, one that was intent on swallowing all the pleasures of the world in a gulp if possible. Baji looked haggard. Her face was puffed, and without make-up she was an unattractive sight. If she were afraid and displeased to see me, she hid her reactions behind a welcoming smile.

‘Vamana!’ She stretched out her hands.

Was that the way Death reached out to people at the end of their lives?

‘We have often wondered about you!’

‘Whether I was still alive, starving in a prison? What was the arrangement you reached with Ram Lal?’

She did not attempt a clumsy cover-up. Wearily she wiped the fingers of her right hand with a towel. ‘Necessity makes us cowards. For survival we will do anything. Anything! You must know that. That is the education of life. I am bound to its harsh rules.’ She saw the knife in my hand but did not flinch. ‘Have you come to kill me?’

Her question startled me. It was asked in a peculiar tone of curiosity and wistful longing.

A prince and a thief. Politician, businessman, a lover or a magician. Wealthy people. Those without flaws and those who were happy. To such people, I could wish harm. Be malicious, aggressive, drag them into my world and torment them and curse their ancestors. But a murderer? An extinguisher of life? I didn’t think so. I had intended to kill Dilip. But my hand couldn’t be directed to target his back. I stabbed him repeatedly on his legs, thighs and arms. My rage was a stormy night—thunder,
hail and sheets of rain. The immensity of life’s dark passions. At that moment my mind and body brimmed with the black, viscous filth of hatred. But killing, I discovered, was beyond my power. I slipped the knife back into the satchel.