The Storyteller (3 page)

‘Silence! Your mind is an infernal pit where the devil dances with mischievous delight.’ A despairing shake of the head told me that I was beyond redemption.

For a moment I was tempted to ask the judge if the court could make provisions for me to meet the nefarious dancer destined to continue his unchallenged control over my mind. Not in the infernal pit, of course. Somewhere else where I wouldn’t burn the soles of my feet. In an abandoned graveyard, perhaps, where the tyrant could be made to appear under the influence of magical chants. Or under the light of a full moon in a barren field, where I could pledge eternal loyalty to the wicked dancer. Maybe the court could employ a sorcerer to act as medium and facilitate our communication…

‘Gross vulgarity, indecent behaviour, bullying foreigners, using foul language!’ The judge’s face darkened. Anger choked the gush of words. He spluttered and reached for another drink of water. He might collapse and never recover, I hoped. Find himself a place in the orbit of darkness and come back in a few hundred years, recycled as a mute and impotent monkey.

‘Not guilty,’ I said confidently. Well, I wasn’t for most of the charges.

Take the case of Sri Pandey, the politician. Obscenely obese. Oily face,
paan
-stained mouth and rotten teeth. The butt of jokes. He was forever scolding us for being too noisy. Pandey Jhee—the moralist, espousing the benefits of ethnic purity, a staunch defender of the caste system and fanatically in favour of deporting the descendents of conquerors and alien settlers.

We grew accustomed to a rear view of him. The fat man had a weakness. A flaw. A secret. He enjoyed being whipped on his hairy buttocks. The sight of the politician bending over, grunting like a sow in labour, was an unforgettable sight. Chaman flogged him with an unprofessional relish until his bottom was streaked with red.

We had a strict understanding with Chaman. When she entertained men in the evening, we were not allowed to stay in the godown, even if the weather was foul. The only exception was Sri Pandey’s visits. Chaman hated him and allowed us unrestricted access to the spectacle. We reached an honourable agreement to take turns with the viewing. Using a makeshift ladder, made from bamboo and pieces of wood, we climbed to the top of the unstable timber framework that supported the flimsy and buckled cardboard walls. The partitioned corner of the godown was exclusively for Chaman and her clients.

She relished the fact that we gawked at the spectacle of a bloodied political bottom and participated in his humiliation. ‘In exchange for your free entertainment,’ Chaman reminded us calmly whenever we complained about her unwillingness to contribute to the ‘look the other way’ collection that minimised police harassment.

There was never any serious possibility of being seen by the middle-aged politician as he was flogged. Fat Pandey had the habit of burying his face in a pile of pillows and lifting his backside for the lashing. The posture was such that it made any sudden upward and sideways movement of the head an
impossible proposition. The whipping was administered with a leather strap in the light of two candles stuck to the floor on either side of the mattress.

One night, after a local election, the charlatan lurched into the godown. It had been a miserable day. The rain and wind collaborated to bring us back indoors in the afternoon. The bazaars were deserted and the streets empty. Earlier I had gone out only to escape Barey Bhai’s threats about rising costs and dwindling incomes. It was a regular routine. Accusations of laziness. Suspicion of deception. He was convinced that we earned far more than we declared. We were reminded about his authority in the
bustee.
If he ever found that we were cheating…, he threatened. His advice never varied. Sell more
charas.
Pick more pockets. Target the elderly. Extend our nocturnal activities to the more affluent suburbs. How many babies had we kidnapped recently? He remained unconvinced that it was less dangerous to make a living in the older sections of the city.

The early part of the morning had been barren. Few pedestrians. Speeding buses and cars. Recklessly driven motor rickshaws and trucks sprayed me with water. I was splattered with mud.

After roaming aimlessly for most of the morning, I spied a white
memsaheb
near one of the city’s big hotels. She didn’t look like the type to be wearing a money belt. As she waited for a taxi, I moved beside her and partly sheltered myself under the blue umbrella she held. I shivered and chattered my teeth. She edged away. The trick with foreigners was to get close to them. They felt intimidated about being touched by ragged locals. Their nostrils quivered and they smiled nervously.

I hounded her with the standard story about my miserable fate—a sick mother, starving brothers and sisters, no job, the disadvantages of being a dwarf. My size rarely failed to arouse
pity in foreigners. I was deemed to be helpless. An object of curiosity. The fact that I could speak some English fascinated them. They were perplexed that a beggar could speak the rich man’s language. They couldn’t figure it out. There were questions about the satchel I carried, where I lived, my family. I smiled and remained a mystery. Often I took out a handful of dead cockroaches and offered the insects for sale as an aphrodisiac. They had to be dried and ground to a powder. A miracle cure for weak erections and watery semen. It could intensify the sexual drive in women and sometimes frighten their husbands away. That stopped the questions. Hastily they moved on.

The
memsaheb’s
grip on the handbag relaxed. She looked concerned and fossicked around for some money. I was handed a ten rupees note. I seriously thought about snatching the handbag. It would have been fairly simple. Up on my toes for a quick bite on the fingers…the knife slashing the strap…across the road and under the fence. No one would have heard the screams. By the time the police arrived, I would be a confusion in her memory. But she was old…

I looked longingly at the unmarked smoothness of the leather. The bag itself would have fetched me a fortune. And inside? A dark bazaar full of riches. Money. Perfume. Key ring, pen, lipstick, hairbrush. Disposable commodities.

She looked down at me and smiled kindly. The way Maji did when I pretended to be apologetic about broken crockery. Reluctantly I walked away.

The money? Well, I used it to gorge myself on savouries and
chai.

An empty field. No football or cricket. An absence of vendors. It was too miserable for daytime lovers. Irresistible. I closed my eyes and stood in the middle to feel the calm of the openness around me. I rinsed my T-shirt and tattered pants in
the rainwater. I felt the power of freedom in my nakedness. I owned all that was precious in the world. Trees…space…empty benches. The silhouettes of buildings in the misty distance were no more than the shadows of a troubled mind. I whirled around like an entranced dervish. Time and memories were trampled under my feet. Bliss was being by myself, without people to stare at me. Trees didn’t laugh. No noise of ridicule from space.

Rhim jhim…Rhim jhim.
The song of the wind and the rain dancer.

In the afternoon I returned to the dreariness of the
bustee.
The rain had intensified, and heavy clouds floated in from the north. Slush and puddles of dirty water. I stepped over dead rats and dissolving shit. Steam rose with a dreamy slowness from the mounds of rotting rubbish. They looked forlorn without the dogs pawing through the soft, pulpy mess and naked children sliding down their sides. The shacks cowered and shivered in the wind in a state of abject surrender. Wisps of smoke, like departing ghosts, drifted upwards and disappeared in the pall of grey.

I missed the sacred emptiness of the field. There was a sudden tug of loneliness and a momentary weariness with my life. The rich and the loved would lie beneath the earth or be reduced to ashes, I reminded myself. The same as I. There was some consolation in nature’s scheme for humans. I began to conceive a story about a dying gravedigger.

The others had returned to the godown. Only Barey Bhai was away, undoubtedly bullying and extracting money from the
bustee
dwellers, instructing his thugs to use violence on those shopkeepers who were behind with their rent.

We pooled our collection of cigarette butts and lit them with a lighter that Chaman had pinched from a taxi driver. We talked about the futility of our morning’s wanderings. Empty bazaars
and surly shopkeepers. No foreigners. Not a
paisa
to be made. There was a pervasive note of mutual sympathy in our lies.

We anticipated Barey Bhai’s response. Yelled abuses. A beating for whoever was slow enough to be caught. Threats to abandon us. The following day he usually behaved as if nothing had happened.

This time we were wrong. There were no angry words or violence. But he refused to provide us with a meal. We had to earn our food, Barey Bhai said quietly.

‘He has had a profitable day,’ Lightning Fingers observed shrewdly.

Whenever we were hungry, we talked about unknown experiences—marriage, children, the security of parents, love. We speculated and pondered on things we could not experience and didn’t understand. Sometimes Chaman cried for no obvious reason. Somehow the commonality of our bewilderment dulled the pain of hunger.

Boredom hovered over us as the afternoon slipped into darkness. We watched Chaman as she prepared for the night. With deft touches of her fingers, she transformed herself. Among the shadows she looked distant and exotic, unwilling to speak to us. Chaman was ready for work.

Barey Bhai watched her with brooding eyes. In the light of the hurricane lamp that hung over his specially made platform, he ate lamb curry and
chappattis
provided by the restaurant he owned. He devoured food in huge quantities, belching, grunting and farting with an explosive potency that made us thankful for the roominess of the godown.

There was no light for me to read. Besides, I couldn’t risk revealing my cache of magazines and stolen books. They could all be sold easily for a few rupees. I lost myself in the story about the gravedigger and the worms that he nurtured and caressed at night to ward off loneliness.

Sri Pandey had arrived quite unexpectedly. His face was flushed with the triumph of the local election result, and he talked in a shrill, loud voice. We were given bottles of cheap whisky. ‘Gifts to celebrate our win!
Jai Hind!’

The night redeemed itself with this sudden stroke of generosity.

‘
Jai Hind!
’ he cried again, expecting us to echo the call of patriotism.

Eagerly we broke the seals and unscrewed the bottle tops. Chaman led him inside the partitioned space. We drank greedily. Throats burned and sensations sharpened. The world wasn’t a bad place after all. It was full of swirling colours and unending music. I began to feel numb. It was an immense relief to be free from pain.

Lightning Fingers suddenly decided that Chaman was in danger. He lurched around in a circle, insisting that she had to be rescued from the clutches of the foul politician. Nimble Feet disagreed. This was to be our only earning for the day, he argued aggressively. I managed to distract them by suggesting a sword fight on top of the unstable timber frame. In his state of drunkenness, Nimble Feet needed no encouragement. He grabbed a stick and managed to climb up a makeshift ladder.

‘I am Raj Kumar! Prince of Swordsmen!’ he boasted.

Lightning Fingers followed. Farishta and I clapped our approval, ignoring Barey Bhai’s whispered warning. Instead of entertaining us, the two drunks were distracted by Pandey’s antics. They began to laugh and abuse him, gesticulating with their sticks.

Their insulting intrusion upset the politician. Alarmed that his kinkiness had been witnessed, the fat man made a move to leave. The situation quickly spiralled out of control. Chaman demanded full payment. Pandey refused. Provocatively he fished out a wad of one hundred rupees notes from somewhere and waved it above his head.

‘You could have had some!’ he shouted.

Even Barey Bhai gasped at the opportunity we sensed. Luxury beckoned me. I saw myself in a huge mansion with a wife and children. My children. Servants in attendance. Wardrobes crammed with clothes. A new car. Acres of gently undulating land with gardens and fruit trees.

We reacted instinctively. I grabbed the politician’s right leg and bit into the calf muscle. His howl of pain goaded us to greater efforts. Lightning Fingers and Farishta attempted to snatch the money. Chaman pulled his hair and Nimble Feet punched him in the face. Even Barey Bhai joined the struggle.

The pelting rain muffled the noises. We were too giddy with the absurdity of our dreams to think about the sobering consequences of our action. I pulled his other leg. There was an awful sound as the politician’s head hit the floor. We scrambled for the money. I barked and bared my canines like an angry dog. There was a knife in my left hand. The others backed away. I had every intention of distributing the money evenly, provided I had my fair share.

The rest of the night remains blurred in my memory. I was told that someone informed Sri Pandey’s bodyguards. They threatened us with truncheons and knives, and managed to recover the money we had taken. Sri Pandey was carted away. He did not regain consciousness. There was no police investigation. The matter was hushed up, until the judge mentioned the incident as though I were the only one responsible for the politician’s death.

‘Liars…thieves…illegitimate offspring! They are like sores on a weak body. The country must rid itself of these blemishes!’ The angry words swarmed around me. The government was dedicated to the promotion of spiritual enrichment. Artistic excellence. A new moral order. The forging
of a national identity. A revival of a glorious past. Those were the priorities of this new democracy.

I know, I know. My laughter was inappropriate. But it was merely a reaction to what I was unable to comprehend. I couldn’t help myself.

I was lectured on propriety. ‘It is essential to respect the icons of the law…reverence for our visionary leaders…’ The judge lingered on the necessity for honesty, prayers and a simple life devoid of greed. ‘It is the duty of every citizen to strive for a clean mind and a pure soul.’