Three Bargains: A Novel (28 page)

“All I’m saying is this is a chance, not a small chance, not a big chance, but an enormous chance to set yourself up for life.” Dinesh was talking loud enough for the whole group to hear.

“But I don’t understand,” said a worker.

“I know these things can seem complicated on the surface, but really it’s very simple.” Dinesh stood up to make his point and to make sure that more people could hear him. It worked. Men turned to listen to him as they smoked their last beedi before going back to work.

“Vladimir, who runs the gym I go to, was with the Russian heavyweight Olympic team. He’s an expert in body and health. He’s developed this powder. You suffer from tiredness, your joints ache, you catch a cold easily, your skin is dull—this powder can fix all these things and more. Mix one spoon in your dal or your beans, in your curd, or make your rotis with it, and you’ll get all the health benefits, all the vitamins you need to have a long and healthy life.”

“But how’ll we make money from the powder?”

“He’s going to sell this powder in shops everywhere, in gyms, in chemist shops. Even your vegetable seller will carry it.” Dinesh put up his hand as someone tried to ask a question, not letting them speak. “Listen carefully, because you’re getting in from the start. You contribute to the starting fund, say five percent of your salary. He’s going to use this fund to manufacture and distribute the powder. Not only will he give you this powder free every month, but every time you bring in another person, you will get two percent from their five percent and one percent from everyone your investor brings in.”

The man who handled the account books lit a cigarette, puffing a stream of smoke in their general direction. He stood with Ketan-bhai, the general supervisor, who sniffed disapprovingly at the cigarette smoke. Ketan-bhai’s neatly pressed safari suit and polite, firm manner of talking distinguished him from most of the workforce, and Madan had often seen him walking the floor fiddling with the reading glasses folded away in his breast pocket.

“All of you are out here,” said the accountant. “And who is going to do the work?”

“Listen to Dinesh, Accountant-saab. He’s telling us something very interesting.”

Dinesh repeated his pitch to the accountant and Ketan-bhai. “Bring in your brother, your neighbor, your uncle, already you have three contacts and have made a six percent return on your investment. But don’t stop there. What about your in-laws, and your friends? Now you’ve eight, ten, twelve percent return. Money from all directions. You only have to look.”

“What’s in this powder?” Ketan-bhai asked.

“A good question,” Dinesh said, removing a glass jar from his bag that was filled with a grainy brown powder. “I can’t tell you everything that it’s made of. That’s secret. Some of the main ingredients are fenugreek and almond powder.”

There was a groan from the crowd, and Dinesh looked offended.

“Madan,” Dinesh said. “Come on, my friend. At least you try it, and tell them.”

Madan turned his face away and tried to shrug off Dinesh’s hand.

“Just give it a try,” Dinesh insisted.

“Who is this?” Ketan-bhai asked. “I think I’ve seen you before.”

“Remember, Ketan-bhai?” Dinesh said. “This is the boy who I was telling you about.” Ketan-bhai looked puzzled. Clearly, in spite of swearing up and down that he had, Dinesh had never spoken to Ketan-bhai as he’d claimed.

“You worked at Forex Garments, I think,” Ketan-bhai said.

“He’s worked here previously as well,” said the accountant.

“Where’re you from?” Ketan-bhai asked.

“Looks like he’s from this side,” said the accountant. “Haryana? Punjab?”

“What do you think, Madan?” asked one of the workers. “You’re always reading those big books and these newspapers. I have to get my sister married soon. I need to make some extra money fast.”

“Our fund is just the way. Vladimir won a gold medal. He knows what he is doing,” Dinesh said. “Take it from me in writing, you’ll be giving your sister a wedding so grand we’ll all be talking about it.”

The man looked dubious. “Would you do it?” he asked Madan again.

“I’m not interested,” Madan said.

“Don’t listen to him. He’s not interested in changing his life. Do you ever hear him complain? He likes this dog’s life we lead here.”

Madan had had enough. “It’s an interesting proposition,” he said to the worker, and a few curious ones turned to listen to him and sat back down.

Dinesh smiled and said, “See? Now he’s making sense.”

“But if I were you, I wouldn’t give my hard-earned money to some guy who could disappear tomorrow. If you ever want your money back, where will this Vladimir be? Laughing at you all the way from Russia. And I’d ask what proof is there that this powder is good for health. If I don’t know what’s in it, why would I eat it? Why would I give it to my family and friends?”

Dinesh’s face turned red, and he laughed and frowned and laughed again. “What do you know?” he shouted at Madan. “Bloody rogue.” He addressed the group. “Are you going to trust this motherfucker who came into our midst yesterday? You know me. I tell you, Vladimir is a trustworthy man. Not like this one. Who the hell is he? Does anyone know?”

Ignoring Dinesh’s bluster, they turned to Ketan-bhai for his advice. Ketan-bhai looked like he found the whole exchange distasteful, but he answered with tact. “This is not the place for your schemes, Dinesh,” he said. “It’s time for all of you to go back to work,” he told the workers. “You’re better off putting your money in a fixed-deposit account with a bank. Your return may be less, but at least your money is safe.”

“That’s what we thought,” the workers murmured.

“Can’t believe Dinesh is such a fucking cunt. I was ready to bring the cash tomorrow.”

“Has anyone even seen Vladimir’s gold medal?”

They disappeared inside the gate, and Madan, released from Dinesh’s grip, got up to follow them.

“You bastard, why don’t you mind your own business?” Dinesh snarled.

“I was trying to,” Madan said, tossing his lunch plate and newspaper in the pile of trash by the electricity pole. All at once he was furious. How dare Dinesh force him to get involved in a scheme so ridiculous? He wasn’t beholden to anybody, not anymore, and certainly he wasn’t about to let a slimy idiot like Dinesh jerk him around. Madan whipped back around and grabbed Dinesh’s waist. Using the force of his body, he took Dinesh down. Dinesh’s head caught on the edge of the concrete slab but it did not knock him out.

Madan flipped Dinesh onto his back and held him in place with a knee on his chest. Blood trickled out of the gash on Dinesh’s forehead.

He slammed his head down into Dinesh’s face. It should have been Dinesh screaming in pain, but Madan heard his own scream of rage.

He looked up into the void before him. Where was he and how had he gotten here? He stared blearily at Ketan-bhai, standing straight, rooted tightly in place. The accountant’s cigarette hung loosely from his lips.

Madan let go of Dinesh and straightened up, leaving Dinesh writhing on the ground.

“He’s broken my arm,” Dinesh screamed. “Motherfucker, asshole. I can’t feel my hand. I am dying.”

Madan raised his arm to wipe the sweat and blood off his forehead. Ketan-bhai and the accountant reflexively took a step back. Only a few people remained around them. They kept their distance.

Madan was suddenly sorry. Dinesh was a chump and a moron, but these shortcomings were no reason to attack him. Madan was becoming what Pandit Bansi Lal had prophesized, was turning into the uncouth goon his mother had accused him of being with her silences. He was Avtaar Singh’s domesticated dog set free, not knowing how to behave without its master. He wished he could have reacted differently, shaken Dinesh off and walked away, but he seemed not to know how to control himself. Madan knelt down next to Dinesh and tried to work his arm under Dinesh’s back. He tried to get Dinesh to sit up.

“Don’t touch me! Stop him!” Dinesh bellowed.

His last plea moved Ketan-bhai, who had not taken his eyes off Madan. Surely Ketan-bhai was going to fire Madan for this outburst, or worse. “What are you doing to him?”

Ignoring Dinesh’s whimpering and wailing, Madan continued to try and lift Dinesh up. “I’m taking him to the doctor,” Madan said.

“The doctor?” Ketan-bhai repeated. He exchanged a baffled glance with the accountant. “You’re taking him to the doctor?”

Madan didn’t have time for their waffling. “I need help,” he said.

“You broke his arm,” Ketan-bhai stated, as if filling Madan in on something he had missed.

“I think it’s his wrist.”

“And now you’re taking him to the doctor?” Ketan-bhai turned disbelievingly again to the accountant.

Together, Madan and Ketan-bhai maneuvered Dinesh into an auto-rickshaw. All the way to the hospital, Madan propped Dinesh up while Ketan-bhai kept his injured arm steady, the older man’s eyes wide with confusion and a grudging respect.

“What is your full name? Kumar?” he repeated when Madan told him. “A common enough name that tells me nothing about you.”

“I am what you see,” Madan said.

The smell coming from the toilet was sharpest in the morning, when the hole in the ground was in most demand. It would be overflowing and unusable if he didn’t hurry. His room was a recess in the wall of a building, its threshold crossed in two steps. Rolling up his sleeping mat, he collected the bucket sitting by the door for his wash. The plastic bag slouching against the bucket tipped over, spilling out pieces of leather and bits of crepe, chenille, cotton, georgette and velvet. The day before, in the garbage bin at the back of the factory, he’d come across a jagged piece of goat hide which he could not leave behind even though his bag of discarded cuttings was almost full to bursting. The star-shaped piece would delight Swati. Stuffing the scraps back into the bag, he secured the top with a tight knot.

From the narrow ledge out his door, he descended the steep spiral staircase to a long lane of crumbling plaster. Out of corroded grilled windows on either side poured sounds of babies crying, bells tinkling in morning prayer and hymns sung in stilted voices, muffled shouts of argument and calls for cups of tea. Skittish goats with matchstick legs and jute sacks slung over their backs for warmth bleated and tugged at the ropes leashing them to doorways and window bars. He washed up quickly under the broken pipe protruding from the wall, the cool water from the municipality spurting out with a pounding force at this time of the morning. A gurgle of soap suds from the previous bather oozed around his feet, flowing down along the sloping gradient of the street. After his quick bath, he filled his bucket to take back to the room. By the time he returned in the evening the copious flow from the pipe would be down to a trickle, and he could do with one less inconvenience. He should be used to the shrill noises, the mordant smells, the slimy concrete blocks beneath his wet feet, but every small vexation, every tiresome moment, counted toward the drip of hurt and bitterness slowly filling his heart.

He remembered making Swati laugh when, after a bath, he’d chase her around the compound vigorously shaking his wet head, spraying her with droplets of water as she ran, giggling and yelling, “Stop! Stop!” He did it to hear her laugh. He did it to hear his mother say, “Wear some clothes, you’ll catch a cold.” She would say it with her usual brusqueness, as she had since his father’s death, but he felt for a moment in those few words that she still worried about him, cared about him in some way.

On his way to his room, he rapped on the open door of a room below his staircase. He owed money to the lady who prepared evening meals for him. Her cross-eyed husband would appropriate the payment if he was around, so Madan waited for when he knew the husband was out, to pay her directly.

“I’m coming,” she said.

Madan waited by the doorway, his eyes adjusting to the dimness of the interior. A baby lolled on a mat, plump and naked, with a black string tied around his middle, his tiny eyes lined with a dark smudge of kohl. Another baby hung off the lady’s hip. She bent over the stove, lighting a burner and stirring a deep pot on the ring of blue flames. Her other children were playing in the web of alleyways somewhere.

Madan felt something run over his foot, and looking down he saw the plump baby crawl out the open door and into the street.

“Behn-ji,” he said, “your baby.”

“Get him,” she said, unruffled. “My hands are full.”

The child sat in the middle of the lane and raised his arms up and down as if hailing a rickshaw.

“Come on,” she hollered, “he won’t bite you.”

“You’re making me late,” he said. Another tiny face, bundled tight, prickled his memory. “Get him,” she said again. “I’ll be there in a second.”

The baby would drown with the trash in the drainage ditch by the time she turned around. Madan didn’t see why he had to make the effort when she didn’t seem worried about a bicycle or tonga running him over as he sat cackling in the lane, his bottom covered in gravel. He stepped out and, picking the baby up by the waist, deposited him back down on the mat.

She came to the door to collect the money from Madan. “Such a big man, scared of a small person like this.” She laughed. The baby jiggling at her side sucked on a piece of carrot.