The Walls of Delhi (16 page)

These words sobered him up instantly. He certainly didn't want to die and force his wife to rely on kind-hearted men.

‘You just doused my Bonnie Scot with bitter herbs. Make me some food. I've got to go to work early tomorrow.' Then Chandrakant was silent. He hung his head low as he ate, stretched and yawned, then lay down to sleep on the mat on the floor. She ate afterwards, then did household chores late into the night, washing dishes, chopping vegetables for the morning, ironing Chandrakant's pants and shirt, until finally, at midnight, she sat by the outdoor tap and bathed. By the time she finished her work, humming some old song while she adjusted the fan on top of the trunk, Chandrakant was already snoring.

Shobha and Chandrakant had been living together for some thirty years. Chandrakant had fled with her from Sarani where she had been living with her husband, Ramakant.

Ramakant had no job and no skills: he ran around wherever he could to try and get a small piece of the action. He was addicted to playing the market, and also worked part-time for the police as a false witness. Those days, the eyes of a certain police inspector had fallen on Shobha; every night, the inspector came over to their house to drink and eat. Every night for three months, the middle-aged inspector's lust fell on Shobha. Those three tortuous months in Shobha's life were worse than hell. He arrived at the house around nine at night; as soon as he stepped in the door he took off his uniform and hung it on a peg. Now down to his sweaty, smelly, dirty undershirt and brown, greasy
shorts, he took a seat on the little mat on the floor, and forbade the outside door to be closed because then there would be no breeze to cool him down. Ramakant served the inspector as if he were his butler, running back and forth to the kitchen and market for salty namkeen snacks, hard-boiled eggs, and, whenever the need arose, another bottle of hooch. Ramakant also kept his glass nearby, so whenever he had a free moment after running around fetching things for the inspector, he sat down next to the inspector and joined him for a shot. He was proud of those moments; they were a real honour and treat. He laughed and joked with the inspector, and chided his wife Shobha – ‘Hurry up, squeeze the lemon, bring the snacks! Inspector sahib likes green chilies. Thinly, cut them thinly!' Or, ‘Don't just toss the dish on the floor! Place it in the man's hand, nicely, gently, that's it. And what happened to the coriander? Didn't I just buy two bunches for inspector sahib to enjoy?'

‘Ramakant, how about one more?' the inspector said. ‘And give your better half something to drink, too. Tomorrow a friend of mine is coming. We'll have a party!' the inspector said.

Ramakant's face lit up at the mention of a party. A party meant he would get to eat mutton or chicken, with plenty of snacks, too, plus more good booze. On top of that, he was always able to ferret away a few rupees from the money the inspector gave him for the food and drink.

‘Consider it done, sahib! So will it be mutton or chicken? Should I have her make fish or pakoras to go with the drinks? She's a fantastic cook. How much meat, four pounds or five? And how much whisky d'you think'll be necessary?' He grinned
shamelessly and added, ‘See, if there's any food left over it'll be a big help the next day. After a big party Shobha's in no shape at all until two or three in the afternoon.'

After getting drunk, the inspector might launch into song, or start hurling vile curses. He had convinced himself that Shobha was thrilled to have found such a robust specimen of a man as he, and one with money, too – particularly after playing long-suffering wife to the penniless, shiftless, good-for-nothing Ramakant. The inspector also came to accept that in her heart of hearts, Shobha fancied him indeed. And once the inspector understood this, he stepped up his abuse of Ramakant, chastising and reprimanding him at every word, pausing to fasten his gaze on Shobha, to whom he started sweet-talking. It transpired that since she was little she had a soft spot for dark gulab jamun, not to mention her other favourite sweet: rabri-ilichi kulfi. How was this loser going to procure such sweetmeats for Shobha? The inspector at once sent Ramakant out to fetch the delicacies. As soon as he was out the door, the inspector drew her near.

His hairy potbelly poked out from a filthy, stinking undershirt, underneath which he grabbed Shobha's head and brought it to his sweaty, soiled crotch. Her every breath caught a second stench of the raw sewage rivulets that crisscrossed the neighbourhood. She nearly retched on the spot. The inspector stroked her hair as he swigged from the bottle. Sounds issued from her mouth as if she were getting the sour taste of a lemon and the hot part of a chili both at once. The door to the outside was left open, a fact that late-night passers-by often noticed. Moreover, the little vacant patch of land in front of the house was a popular spot for people to stop and answer the call of nature. Here, in perfect darkness, a crush of young nogoodniks,
out for a midnight stroll, gathered by the house of police flunky Ramakant to watch live porn.

‘Party night' meant that the inspector brought a buddy. Those nights, Shobha endured inhuman torment and suffering. After getting well drunk, the men let loose the beast within. And in that room, Shobha fell victim to the violence of the wild animals and the frenzy they unleashed. Once they got going, they sang, drank more, praised the fish pakoras to high heaven, laughed and giggled, groped and fondled Shobha, squeezed and pinched. Ramakant encouraged them in all this.

A fat and flabby fair-skinned contractor was brought to one such party by the inspector. He was in his late fifties, early sixties. That night they had even set up a VCR to watch porn; back then, VCRs had just come out and could be rented in the bazaar. Leering at the stunning Shobha, he casually let slip that this year he was going to be elected as municipal councillor, having locked up all the votes from this neighbourhood and the surrounding ones.

That night Shobha was taken to the gates of hell. The contractor and inspector committed unnatural acts, including the contractor inserting a beer bottle in her rectum. The inspector laughed, ‘What the heck are you doing!?'

‘What am I doing?' The contractor overflowed with delight. ‘Just a little drilling from the back side to bore a big hole so that the motor'll hum from the under side! I've got a twenty-horsepower tractor!' Shobha gasped for breath, blood dripping on the rug and floor, while porn flashed on the TV. Unconsciousness relieved her from the torments. It was nearly four in the morning when the inspector and contractor finally made their way home. Shobha was greeted with splitting pain
when she came to; she wanted to get up and get dressed and wash off the blood and semen. She found Ramakant mounting her. She gave him a kick. Then, in fits and groans, she found the bucket of water kept just outside the front door and began washing herself, not a stitch of clothing covering her body.

As she sat groaning and washing off her blood and the spit and semen of the contractor, inspector, and Ramakant, she had the feeling that at four in the morning she had been ogled by the eyes of many men in the darkness from across the bylane. Bloodletting, blood-soaked, bestial violence: these people stayed up all night to watch this? Not a wink of sleep, smelling the shit from the sewage all night long? This was their idea of fun?

Almost a week later, the contractor showed up one afternoon in his car. The inspector was with him. They brought all sorts of goodies for Shobha: saris with matching tops, lingerie, teddies, lace panties, salwar-kurta, bangles, jewellery, and more. The contractor seemed very pleased and, between sips of chai, informed her that he had appointed her Director of the All-Women's Welfare Association, meaning that now he would take her with him on tour to Mumbai, Nagpur, Pune, Kolhapur, and other cities.

That day, Chandrakant, a servant in the contractor's employ, was introduced to Shobha.

Six weeks later, at a government rest house in Jalgaon, the contractor took her to the VIP room. There, party underway, Shobha slipped out under the pretext of needing to change her clothes and, bag packed with everything she had, ran off with Chandrakant to Delhi, where they rented a ground floor flat for five hundred rupees a month at house number E-3/1, bylane number seven, Jahangirpuri. He found part-time work as a
helper at a department store in Vijaynagar and she began making food and snacks and pickle and preserves for neighbouring households.

Fleeing from Jalgaon with Chandrakant that night had rescued Shobha from a terrible crime; Chandrakant had masterminded the escape. Fifteen days had passed since the last party, when the contractor had announced they were going to Jalgaon. He had been busy with some construction project. Only the inspector had come in the meantime, two or three times. Shobha waited quietly for the next party, for which she had purchased thirteen rupees worth of rat poison kept hidden in her secret bundle. She mixed it into the goatmeat dish, and was ready to serve it to the inspector, contractor, and her husband, Ramakant. After she did, Shobha faced a dilemma: eat it and herself perish, or don't eat it and run off with Chandrakant? She kept her plan hidden from Chandrakant; he seemed so guileless and honest that she was sure he would never allow her to go through with it. Chandrakant finally acceded to them running away together from Jalgaon, though he was clearly scared.

E-3/1 was a four-story house. There was space underneath the stairs that, with a little imagination, formed something like a room. Ten feet long, seven feet wide, not exactly a room, but a half flat, and thus with no proper front door. Chandrakant and Shobha fastened two planks of wood over the opening. The first they nailed to the top with scrap metal and hung a blue plastic curtain. The second served as a sliding door leaf. On
cold winter days when both Chandrakant and Shobha went out, they kept the door closed. In front of the door, or wall, or board, or whatever you want to call it, was an additional space that measured about four-and-a-half feet. On the left side was a little tap where Shobha and Chandrakant did all their bathing, laundry, and dishes. They called it ‘the balcony'; two feet below was an open sewer. A strong, sour smell continuously wafted upwards along with a buzzing swarm of flies. A few days ago Chandrakant had found another board to cover it up.

They slept on a coarse little mat spread on the floor of their half flat, which they called, in English, the ‘room.' Chandrakant and Shobha also owned a banged-up tin trunk in which they kept items used infrequently. Also kept in the trunk were the bangles, jewellery, saris, and salwars from the inspector and contractor; stainless steel and glass pots and plates from her parents when she got married; a pair of silver anklets; her mangalsutra wedding thread; a toe ring; armlet; a sari of silver thread. A half-inch strip of plywood was fastened above the trunk, on top of which perched the household's most valuable and necessary item, a fan. It was because of the fan they were able to sleep in the heat, without harassment from flies and mosquitoes. When it went on the blink, the despondent pair would go out to fetch the electrician and wouldn't rest until he'd fixed it. But it rarely stopped working. Flip the switch and it purred to life with a loud whoosh. The strong flow of cool air made Chandrakant and Shobha very happy.

In the corner of the room was a little stove that ran on wood scraps. That's where Shobha cooked, and no food was more delicious than Shobha's. He had been hooked on Shobha's cooking since the days of Sarni when he went in the big car to
the parties at Ramakant's with his boss, the contractor. He used to pull right up to the door, making it a little difficult for the passersby who liked to peer inside the house. The contractor would turn up the tape deck as loud as it would go, drowning out both the noise of the ‘party' and the shrieks of Shobha. Chandrakant was right there, stretched out in the back of the car, listening to the music issuing from its sound system. He had no idea what was going on inside. He never even peeked.

His eyes opened to find Shobha banging on the car window. She brought him food, a thali with roti, meat curry, onions, and more, sometimes a bit of rice. He liked her meat curry so much that it seemed there was never enough. This happened two or three times; Shobha began to sense his fondness, maybe because the two were around the same age. This was thirty years ago, when Shobha was nineteen or twenty, and villagers didn't pay attention to age differences between bride and groom. Ramakant was between thirty and thirty-five. The inspector who those days raped Shobha daily couldn't have been younger than forty-five, and the contractor, boss of servant Chandrakant, must have been nearing sixty.

Chandrakant, a young man of nineteen, was utterly different from these middle-aged, savage, stinking men; he stretched out in the back of the car, eyes closed, quietly listening to music, never asking for seconds, never taking a peek inside the house to see what went on during the ‘party.'

That night she quietly crept to the car door window and, peering inside, saw Chandrakant mopping up the last of meat sauce with a roti, two more still on his thali.

‘Do you want some more meat and sauce?' she asked, startling Chandrakant.

‘No, no, this is plenty!'

Shobha met his reply with a smile. ‘Then what's the use of the other roti?'

Chandrakant didn't have an answer.

She brought another katori dish full of meat and sauce, and two more roti as well. It pleased her as Chandrakant silently took the bread and lowered his head to begin eating. She watched him as he ate. He suddenly lifted up his head: his hair was a mess, his mouth full of food. He stared at Shobha and blushed as he broke into a kind of giggle.

It was like the end of a lifesaving rope that dangled in front of the black hole of her hellish life. She decided to grab it and run away, not knowing whether it was out of love or from an intense desire to be free.

The next party, Shobha informed the inspector, contractor, and Ramakant, who were busy eating fish pakoras and drinking, that she was going outside to serve Chandrakant his food. Once there, she got in the car and told him everything. She showed him her legs, back, chest, and neck for him to examine. ‘Someone might come, I can't show you the rest here,' Shobha began. ‘But mark my words, one day I'll be dead and they'll throw my body away. Save me however you can. Take me anywhere. I'll do your laundry, clean and dust, cook for you every day, wash the dishes. You like my meat curry, right? I can cook better. I can put a masala into the dish that'll fill the whole house with the most unbelievable fragrance you've ever smelled. If you want me to sleep outside, in the courtyard, on the stoop, I will. I don't need sheets or blankets. I can live with the clothes on my back. When you're not making money, I'll make it for you.'