Three Bargains: A Novel (5 page)

“You’re right, Pandit-ji, to think of doing some good with the money.” Avtaar Singh swung his chair toward Madan.

“This boy”—he placed a hand on Madan’s shoulder—“can read English, Pandit-ji. Lived in the village all his life, but picked up English.” Pandit Bansi Lal gave a disbelieving laugh.

“It’s true,” Avtaar Singh said. “I’ve seen it myself. Shall he read something for you?”

“No, no . . . of course not. If you say so, it must be true.” Pandit Bansi Lal’s hand was on the door now, ready to push it open.

“You know that school I started a few years ago, Gorapur Academy near Ambala Road?” Avtaar Singh said. “You know it, you are there for Children’s Day every year,” Avtaar Singh went on calmly, as though he were not speaking to the pandit’s back. “We need a student like this, someone who will make a name for Gorapur, who will make us known not only in Haryana but all over the country. We should be famous for more than your temple. I’ve been thinking of adding senior classes, renovating the auditorium.” Avtaar Singh smiled at Madan. “And now this young man will be going there soon. Fifty thousand would be a good donation toward his education and would help the school. Ashrams, Pandit-ji, can wait.”

Pandit Bansi Lal turned around to face them, turned again to the door and then back, struggling with the folds of his pristine dhoti. His eyes bore down on Madan and he recoiled as if a mangy jackal had appeared before him. If there was anything else Pandit Bansi Lal was going to say, it did not see the light of that room. “You are right as always,” was all that escaped his tightly compressed lips, and without another glance, he took his leave.

Madan tilted back in his chair. He felt like he had run a hundred times to the market and back.

“Did all that scare you?” Avtaar Singh eyed him, holding the forgotten box of pinnis under Madan’s nose again. Madan did not look down at the box, but at Avtaar Singh.

The world was full of trembling men. There were the men who trembled in front of his father and then all of them who came here and trembled before this man, even when he smiled at them. This man who sat beside him, their knees almost touching, and his head attentively inclined toward him.

He picked up a pinni, kept his eyes on Avtaar Singh and shook his head resolutely. “No,” he said, and did not add
saab
to that.

“Take another,” said Avtaar Singh, and Madan had a pinni in one hand and another almost to his mouth when his father came back.

“We got all the information. Looks like most of the money is still there. What should we do about him?” said his father.

“He will end up in a hospital if we let him go?”

“Yes, there will be unnecessary questions . . .”

“Better to finish this business once and for all. Who does he have at home? Anyone to follow up with the police?”

“Nobody. He’s quite useless. We will take care of the brother tonight, what can anyone say? The inspector can handle any questions . . . if they come up.”

“Do it,” said Avtaar Singh.

Madan’s father turned to leave, but not before Madan caught the hard stare as he took in the sight of them still sitting side by side at the desk.

“Eat, eat,” said Avtaar Singh. Madan bit into the dense sugary flour, chewing slowly, each bite heavy and satisfying.
I will never eat anything as rich as this pinni
, he thought.

He smiled up at Avtaar Singh reading some papers on his desk and settled back in his chair. As he worked his way through both pinnis, he didn’t let the faint noises from the other side of the door, of his father at work and a man gurgling away his last breath, interrupt the warm sweetness enveloping him.

M
A AND MADAN QUICKLY GATHERED SOME MONEY, AND
slipped on their shoes. Ma had taken a few hours away from work so they could go to the market to buy Madan’s school uniform. Madan was due to start school on the Monday of the coming week.

His father had heard of their planned shopping trip for the school uniform and cursed out Madan’s mother. “You think you know better or I know better? I have a job already lined up for him,” he shouted, storming out of the quarters.

“Ma, I don’t have to go to school,” Madan said, shaken by his father’s outburst.

But his mother was determined. “Your father will calm down once he gets used to the idea,” she tried to assure Madan. “If you do well, then maybe saab sends Swati to school.”

Huddled by the stove, Swati shook her head vehemently, her braids bouncing off her shoulders. “Na-baba-na. I don’t want Bapu to be angry with me too.”

Madan might have snapped a harsh retort at Swati, he didn’t need reminding of their father’s bruising hand or dark temper, but the door to their room clattered open, and his father came weaving back into the room, making a beeline for their mother.

“What’re you trying to do, you witch? You want your son to rise higher than me?” His hands cut through the air. “I will give him one, and he will rise right up to the sky.”

The bottle in his hand slipped and crashed to the floor. He looked at it in surprise, like he had forgotten he was holding it. “He’s not going,” he roared. “There’s no need for school. I never went to school.”

Ma started swabbing the floor and said, “He’s your son too.”

A decisive kick got Ma in the ribs, toppling her over into the tawny pool of spilled drink and shards of glass. Madan wanted to go help her, but fear and Swati cemented to his side kept him in the corner. Unfazed, his mother got up. She wiped her hands, dabbing her dampened sari with a kitchen rag. Before Bapu’s swinging hand got her under the chin, she grabbed his cocked fist, massaging the coiled mess of taut, protruding veins, whispering to him until his roar tapered down to a drunken mutter.

“Go out with your sister,” she said to Madan without looking at them.

In a fading shaft of sunlight, their grandfather mumbled softly, his head twisted to the side as if whispering to his shoulder. Swati and Madan waited, as they knew to do, with their backs against the door. Madan wanted to stay close in case Ma needed him. When the grunting and groaning started, Swati slipped her hand into Madan’s, squeezing tight until their father emerged, stretching and yawning.

Flopping down on a vacant chair, Bapu pulled Swati close into the crook of this arm and asked to see her doll. “Such a beautiful thing,” he said, stroking the doll’s plastic cheek, “like my beautiful girl.”

There was a dull thump as the doll fell to the ground, landing on its side with its glassy eyes wide open. Their father drew Swati in tighter, pressing her stomach hard against his knee. He traced the rise of Swati’s cheek with his thumb, progressing down past the sweep of her neck to the delicate spread of her collarbones. Standing by his grandfather’s chair, Madan saw her squint to hold back the gathering tears.

“When did this rosebud become such a big girl, ha?” their father asked no one in particular. Swati stood stiff and dutiful. Bapu’s long fingers brushed the top button of her cotton shirt. In the village when the men catcalled at Madan’s mother, it was not so much the whole leering mob, but the one man at the back silently following the sway of Ma’s hips with a slitted gaze who terrified Madan and made his bones rattle with fright. Recognizing the same glint in his father’s eyes, Madan desperately looked around for a distraction. He reached out and pinched his half-dozing grandfather, who startled awake and fell off his chair, screaming and caterwauling a torrent of abuse.

His father turned on Madan. A blow to his head narrowed Madan’s vision to a pinprick. A subsequent kick to his backside sent him spiraling into their room.

Lighting the stove for the evening meal, his mother told him that they would get his school things the next day.

“Call Swati in to help you,” was all he managed to say through the pain, as she began to peel the potatoes.

The bus dropped him off in front of the school gate but Madan, in his new navy shorts and light blue shirt, hesitated outside. The occasion seemed too momentous to simply stroll in. Children of all ages streamed past him into the sandy front courtyard and toward the long building at the back. A large sign near the roofline proclaimed
GORAPUR ACADEMY, SOON TO BE AFFILIATED TO CBSE, NEW DELHI
.

All those years of following Colonel Bhatnagar around, nipping at his heels like the stray dogs that followed the scent of the chappati scraps hidden in the colonel’s pockets, of exacting promises from the colonel to return to teach English this day and the next and of curling his tongue around strange words like, “they” and “them” and “mother” and “around.” All that time spent waiting for the colonel each evening after regular village school, even after most of the other boys had long since stopped. Why did he do it?

“See that vulture?” Colonel Bhatnagar would say, pointing with his walking stick to the circling, redheaded, scraggly bird in the sky. “It can fly anywhere, and as high as it wants. That’s what you can do with this English language. It can free you from this village, and take you wherever you want, Madan.”

It was such a fantastic notion. The idea gripped Madan with a fervor he was unable to explain to anyone—not to his mother or to the boys who rolled their eyes at him and called him Prime Minister. Not that he would ever leave Ma and Swati, he told himself, but just that he could say those words was enough.

He studied the school name again:
GORAPUR ACADEMY
.

Below the billboard, painted directly onto the wall, was another sign, its bold script confined in a rectangular border.
COME TO LEARN
, Madan read, his lips moving with the words. Hands curled into fists by his side, he took a deep breath and stepped inside the gate.

In the front room hung a photo of Avtaar Singh shaking hands with a man in a suit, who turned out to be the principal. “Yes, yes, Madan Kumar. We were told to expect you,” the principal said, guiding Madan through a quiet corridor into a classroom. “Young man, Avtaar Singh-ji has high hopes for you,” he said, handing Madan off to the teacher.

That was his last coherent moment of the day. First, there was Master-ji, the teacher who spoke so fast that Madan had a hard time keeping up with the instructions he barked out all day. Repeat after me, he instructed. Repeat louder, he said. And if he caught them looking anywhere but at the blackboard, they got a rap on the knuckles with the ruler that seemed affixed to his hand like an extra long finger.

Then, while Madan watched some boys play cricket at break time, someone sneaked up from behind and tried to pull down his shorts. He caught his shorts in time, before they got low enough to be embarrassing. But the girls on the creaking swings, their pigtails flying in the air, saw this much and laughed. It made Madan burn to find out who had done it. He would thrash them until their own parents wouldn’t even recognize them.

Tired and hungry, his feet hot and swollen in his new black shoes, he took the bus home and was washing his face when Swati came running into the quarters. “Ma wants you.”

But it was Minnu memsaab, who recalled she wanted Madan to walk Prince. Leashing the dog, he proceeded down the gravel driveway that looped around a tinkling fountain and cut through the front lawns, where Minnu memsaab savored her evening tea. “Bye-bye, my Prince.” Minnu memsaab blew kisses their way, her cup of tea sloshing precariously. Prince ignored her, pulling on his leash, urging Madan toward the gate.