Three Bargains: A Novel (13 page)

S
TEPPING INTO SUNRISE GENERAL GOODS, MADAN GLANCED
around the empty store looking for the proprietor, Sharma-ji. He heard thumping overhead and looked up to see Sharma-ji perched halfway up a ladder, a dust cloth in hand.

There were two clear divisions to Sharma-ji’s store. The items in the glass cases under the countertops were of Indian origin: packets of Parle-G glucose biscuits in waxy yellow wrappings, Swati’s favorite Britannia chocolate cream cookies, packets of bhujia and chewra and other salty delights—“domestic goods,” as Sharma-ji called them. On the shelves above were the goods from abroad consisting of whatever could fit in a suitcase: Kraft cheese tins, Pepsi cans, Hershey’s chocolate syrup and tins of Del Monte sweet corn.

Madan had once asked Sharma-ji who wanted tins of corn when fields of maize as golden as the pictures on those tins surrounded Gorapur. “There’s always someone,” Sharma-ji said, “some poor sucker who wants to show off or taste something outlandish.” While waiting for this person to materialize, the bright green labels bleached to white, remaining unsold and unmoving as if they had staked their claim to that area of shelving.

Sharma-ji flapped his dust cloth at Madan and began to descend, his short legs negotiating one rung at a time. “Ah, Mr. Madan, I knew you would come today.”

“It’s the same day every month, Sharma-ji,” said Madan.

“Yes, yes,” Sharma-ji replied, reaching behind the counter and taking out a roll of notes. He looked up at Madan as he handed him the money. “It seems like it was only yesterday you were this high . . . here with your father . . . now look at you. Tell me again, how old are you?”

Madan smiled down at Sharma-ji. “Seventeen . . . nearly eighteen.”

He unrolled the money and began to count it. He knew it would all be there, but still he counted it in front of the man. That way, in case there was a discrepancy he could take care of it there and then. “Even if you know they’ll not cheat, why let them feel too comfortable?” Avtaar Singh would say. “The moment they feel at ease, they might think of doing something you don’t want them to do.”

Madan listened with half an ear as Sharma-ji talked on. Why did Sharma-ji always launch into the retelling of Madan’s first time at the store? Did he want to remind Madan that he knew his father, or was he trying to find common ground, some empathy for their shared experience at the hands of his father?

The money all counted, Madan added it to the other rolls in his pocket. “Thank you, Sharma-ji,” he said, leaving the man in midsentence.

“Wait, wait. I know you’re a busy man these days.” Sharma-ji darted around randomly, gathering up sundries and supplies.

“Please don’t, Sharma-ji,” Madan said. Swallowing his irritation, he quickly exited the store. Sharma-ji should know better by now—Madan would never take anything more or anything less than was due to him.

At Bittu’s Paan Stand, Madan reached through the smoke curling up from the burning incense stick and over the jars of gulkand and betel nuts and took out a pack of Gold Flakes. He flipped open the cover, tapping out one cigarette. The pan-wallah struck a match and lit it. “Put it on my account Bittu-bhai,” he said.

“Oh, Madan-babu! Madan-babu!”

Madan turned in the direction of the supplicating tone. Shuffling up to Madan was the crooked figure of
1984
, his arm cradling a shehnai, the double-reed wood instrument scuffed and stained from years of rough use. His right arm stayed by his side, straight and stiff, as if in a splint.

Bittu shooed him away. “Motherfucker, get out of here.”
1984
did a small backward dance, but kept his eyes on Madan, grinning, waiting, jiggling the shehnai in his good hand.

“It’s fine,” said Madan. “Give me two more.” He tucked the cigarettes into the breast pocket of
1984
’s shirt.

“Salaam, saab. Thank you, saab.”
1984
bobbed up and down, following Madan through the market.

Madan hurried on, nodding absently at passersby who wished him, “Ram, Ram.” There was no time to stop and chat. All they wanted was his support in approaching Avtaar Singh for assistance to ask for money for their daughter’s wedding or to acquire a contract for a government tender.

With his lurching gait,
1984
kept up behind Madan. No one could recall
1984
’s real name, and even
1984
claimed he couldn’t remember. When asked where he used to live or who he was born to,
1984
just chuckled. He had come to their notice after the riots following Indira Gandhi’s assassination, when, in towns like Gorapur, with their volatile mixture of Sikhs and Hindus, vengeful mobs pulsed down the streets, some with a torch in one hand, ax in the other.

Rounded up in a colony on the southeast side of town,
1984
was part of a group of Sikhs dragged out of their homes and cars by their turbans. The mob shoved car tires around their waists, doused them with petrol, and set them on fire. Their women screamed, their babies cried, but mobs of any kind don’t listen. Rubber melts quickly, adhering to the skin, and in intense bursts of flames, those men were pools of grist and bubbling rubber.

1984 ran to the canal when the mob moved on. They had used too big a tire on him, a truck tire on his scrawny frame, and he held it up till they were gone, slipping out of the ring of fire before it consumed him like the rest of his neighbors.

“God saved me, Madan-babu,” he said.

“God causes the problem and then saves you from it. Like a policeman who steals so he’ll have a job. You’re a fool,
1984
.”

Madan’s derision didn’t affect
1984
. He salaamed and grinned, and asked for a bread pakora, his favorite food. The flames had licked his face and the puckered skin widened his eyes, his mouth was perpetually open and lopsided. His arm was the biggest casualty, fused to his side by scar tissue or, as
1984
reckoned, by melted rubber. The market was his home now. He followed people around, spreading news and gossip, earning money playing his old shehnai badly and shrilly with one useful hand, known only to everyone by the year he sprang into the town’s stream of consciousness.

Madan was in the office when Avtaar Singh received news of the mob’s onslaught on his town, when he handed out missives to his men to go and control the streets of Gorapur—to do what the police were unable or unwilling to do. For those few days, as the town descended into an eerie calm and Madan served Avtaar Singh endless cups of tea, he waited and watched to see if Avtaar Singh would reveal to Madan what to think about the frightening events outside their door—for even in all the fear and confusion people still had opinions and took sides. Avtaar Singh’s ancestors were Sikhs, but through marriage and time, his faith had become twofold, the temple on Tuesdays and the gurdwara one morning each week.

Yet, as he followed a pensive Avtaar Singh from home to factory and back again, he realized that Avtaar Singh had no side but his own. These few years later—now that the razed buildings had been rebuilt and the hustle and bustle had returned—
1984
stood as the solitary reminder to Avtaar Singh of that time when the reins of the town briefly slipped from his tight grip.
1984
knew this better than anyone. That was why he would not follow Madan past the borders of the crowded market. His true survival,
1984
knew, depended on his staying away from the factory and out of Avtaar Singh’s sight.

The fat brown dragonflies hovering over the open yard were the first to welcome anyone entering the timber factory. Madan and Jaggu had spent many afternoons pondering over why they droned over the arid factory floor, when a few meters away, surrounding the entire factory, were waterlogged fields of rice.

Stopping to drop off his collections with the accountant, Mr. D’Silva, he wound his way to Avtaar Singh’s office. Madan could walk the factory blindfolded, steer through the workers, machines and trucks trundling through, by the smell, the noise and the heat.

Nearby, the blade of a peeler screeched as it met a log of eucalyptus. Almost as if the blade were undressing the hapless log, it shaved off layers of bark into sheets as thin as paper. Madan picked his way through the debris obscuring the brick floor; already he felt the sawdust settle on him like a fine veil. Workers in scruffy white vests slathered a formaldehyde and urea glue mix onto dried sheets of bark. The toxic glue made the resulting plywood board resistant to termites. Overhead, tentacles of pipes crisscrossed the ceiling, dispersing the heat generated by the furnace to the pressing and bonding machines.

The massive furnace was no more than part of the landscape of the factory now. Ma had never asked about his father, had never shown any inclination to know what had happened to him, though there were instances when she caused Madan some disquiet, when he caught her scanning him with a look that was unseeing, yet sharp as a talon. Other than that, she had settled into her changed situation. She stopped applying the vibrant slash of sindoor to her hair and quietly donned the plainer clothes of a widow. Every year during the dark fortnight of Shradh, she joined the throngs offering prayers at the temple to cleanse the sins committed by the dead. Madan never accompanied her, nor did she ever ask.

She did not have much to complain about—a place to live, her work, hard but respectable, and money in the bank. He suggested to her in passing that she open a bank account. “Me? Your old mother, have an account like a big lady?” The idea took her by surprise yet pleased her, and she nagged him until he accompanied her to Punjab National Bank.

She cherished her bank passbook. Her finger tracing each line of deposits, she asked Madan again and again to tally up the totals. “Maybe the bank people made a mistake,” she said, but he knew she wanted to hear the total amount out loud. “We’ll need it for your sister’s wedding,” she said to him. Madan did not have the heart to remind her that it would take more than a good dowry to find a man to marry Swati.

Madan knocked and entered, in a quick second taking in everyone who was in Avtaar Singh’s office. One could tell the time of day by the occupants who happened to be in there.

During the day, Avtaar Singh was busy with the running of the factory—vendors, buyers, tree farmers coming and going. But in the evening, a different type of mood overtook him. Then Feroze with his cloudy green eyes and pockmarked face, Gopal with his nunchucks, Harish and his psoriasis, the flaky, peeling skin bugging Avtaar Singh no end, and their cohorts, mainly wrestlers from the akhara, would come by. They would discuss everything from politics to the latest film star visiting Chandigarh for a live show. Madan was neither part of the day crowd nor one of the evening visitors. He was everywhere. He was where Avtaar Singh wanted him to be.

“There he is,” said Avtaar Singh, and the men squirmed, making room for Madan. He pulled up a chair and sat near Avtaar Singh, who patted him on the shoulder. There was a snort from the corner of the room. Madan recognized it as Pandit Bansi Lal’s.