A Fine Balance

XIII. Wedding, Worms, and Sanyas

THE KITTENS’ REAPPEARANCE OUTSIDE the kitchen window a month later was not an occasion for rejoicing. The creatures treated it as no more than a scrounging stop. Om and Maneck would have been happy with some sign of recognition — a loud miaow, perhaps, or a look, a purr, an arching of the back. Instead, the kittens grabbed a fish head and ran off to enjoy it in seclusion.

“Why are you surprised by that?” said Dina. “Ingratitude is not uncommon in the world. One day, you too will forget me — all of you. When you go your own way and settle down, you will not know me.” She pointed at Maneck. “In two months you’ll sit for your final exam, pack your things, then disappear.”

“Not me, Aunty,” he protested. “I will always remember you, and visit you, and write to you wherever I am.”

“Yes, we’ll see,” she said. “And you tailors will some day start on your own and leave as well. Not that I won’t be happy for you when it happens.”

“Dinabai, I’ll bless your mouth with sugar if that ever happens,” said Ishvar. “But before there can be homes or shops for people like us, politicians will have to become honest.” He held up his index finger, crooked it, then extended it. “The bent stick may straighten, but not the government.” In fact, he said, this was his biggest worry — how would Om take a wife if they couldn’t find a place to live?

“Surely something will turn up by the time he’s ready to marry,” said Dina.

“I think he is ready now,” said Ishvar.

“I think he is not,” snapped Om. “Why do you keep talking about marriage? Look at Maneck, same age as me, and no one’s hurrying to fix his wedding. Are your parents in a rush, Maneck? Come on, speak, yaar, teach my uncle some sense.”

Maneck shrugged his shoulders and said no, they weren’t in a rush.

“Go on, tell him the other part. That your parents will wait till you meet someone you like. And if you decide to marry, only then will they make the arrangements. That’s how I want it to be for me also.”

“Omprakash, you are speaking nonsense,” his uncle seethed beneath the absurd suggestion. “We are from different communities, with different customs. Because your parents are not with us, it’s my duty to find you a wife.”

Om scowled.

“Sour-lime face,” said Maneck, trying to head off the battle that was brewing. “Anyway, let me warn you, Aunty. You may not be rid of me in two months.”

“What does that mean?”

“I’ve decided to go to college for three more years, get a proper degree instead of the technician’s certificate.”

Her delight leapt to her face; she pushed it into a less public place. “That’s a wise decision. A degree is more valuable.”

“So can I stay on with you? After going home for my vacation, I mean.”

“What do you think, you two? Should we let Maneck come back?”

Ishvar smiled. “On one condition. That he does not plant his wild ideas in my nephew’s head.”

The question of his nephew’s marriage continued to haunt Ishvar. He brought it up at every opportunity, while Dina discouraged him gently. “Work is plentiful, and at last you are managing to save some money. Why go jumping into a new responsibility? Just when things are improving?”

“All the more reason,” said Ishvar. “In case things become worse again.”

“They are bound to, whether Om marries or not,” said Maneck. “Everything ends badly. It’s the law of the universe.”

Ishvar looked as though his face had been slapped. “I thought you were our friend,” he said, his voice shrinking with pain.

“But I am. I’m not saying it out of spite. Just look at the world around you. Things seem promising at times, but in the end every — ”

“That’s enough philosophy from you,” said Dina. “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything. Keep your black thoughts to yourself. I disagree with Ishvar too, but that’s no reason to utter such inauspicious words.”

“But I don’t disagree, it’s just that — ”

“Enough! You have hurt Ishvar enough!”

The hurt did not keep Ishvar’s fixation from growing. Two days later he announced, in a voice dripping uncertainty, that his mind was made up. “The best way is to write a letter to Ashraf Chacha, ask him to spread the word in our community.”

Om stopped sewing and looked scornfully at his uncle. “First you kept dreaming we would save, go back to our village and buy a little shop. Now you have a new dream. Why don’t you wake up for a change?”

“What’s wrong in exchanging an impossible dream for a possible one? A shop will take very long. But marriage cannot be postponed. Bas, I’m writing to Chachaji.”

“I’m warning you, write to him only if you want a wife.”

“Did you hear that? My nephew is warning me.” He gave up the pretence of calm; the damaged left cheek eclipsed his face. “You will do as you are told, understood? I have been too lenient with you, Omprakash — hahn, too lenient. Somebody else in my place would have softened your bones over the years.”

“Leave it, yaar, I’m not scared of your threats.”

“Listen to him. Just a few months ago, at the work camp, you were weeping in my arms each night. Scared and sick, vomiting like a baby. Now you are all strong and defiant. And why? Because I want what’s best for you?”

“Nobody is denying that,” Dina broke in, hoping Ishvar would see sense if she added her voice in opposition. “But such blind haste is unwise. If Om was longing for a wife, it would be different. What is your rush?”

He felt they were ganging up on him. “It is my duty,” he murmured with the irritating air of a sage and, in effect, declared himself the winner. Then he got back to work. Reaching absently for a length of cloth, he made the entire stack collapse.

“Wonderful!” she pounced. “Well done! Bring down the whole ceiling, go ahead. See how your urgent duty is affecting you? Mania is what it is — mania, not duty.” She helped him pick up the fallen clothes. “If only that rascal cat had not left her babies in my kitchen. She put this whole crazy idea in your head.”

Over the next few days, Ishvar’s fretting was transformed into clumsiness at the Singer. Errors kept popping up in his sewing like wrong cards in a magic trick, giving Dina occasion to point out the danger of his ways. “Your marriage mania will destroy our business. You will make the food vanish from our plates.”

“I’m sorry, there is much on my mind,” said Ishvar. “But don’t worry, it’s only a passing phase.”

“What do you mean, don’t worry? How can it pass? Once there is a wife, there will be children. Then there will be even more on your mind. Where will they all stay? And all those mouths to feed. How many lives do you want to ruin?”

“It may seem like ruining to you. What I am doing is building the foundation for Om’s happiness. A marriage does not happen in a month or two. It will take at least a year before we get anywhere. If the girl is too young, the parents may wish to wait longer. All I want is to find the right one and reserve her for my nephew.”

“Like a train ticket,” put in Maneck, and Om laughed.

“You have a very bad habit,” said Ishvar. “Always making fun of things you don’t understand.”

What other choice was there, thought Maneck. But the risk of further upsetting Ishvar kept him silent.

Ashraf’s reply came in an envelope bearing black cancellations across the postage stamp. It featured the date, postal district, and a slogan: AN ERA OF DISCIPLINE, followed by a menacing exclamation mark shaped like a cudgel.

They waited impatiently for Ishvar to tear it open and share the news. His eyes travelled across the page with the uncertainty of one unused to reading, stumbling over Ashraf’s shaky hand. He smiled broadly once, then looked puzzled, and frowned towards the end, all of which made Om very nervous.

“Chachaji is in good health,” began Ishvar. “He has missed us. He says the devil must have held time captive, it has been so long in passing. He is happy that Om will marry. He also agrees it should not be delayed.”

“What else?”

Ishvar sighed. “He has spoken to people in our community.”

“And?”

“There are four Chamaar families interested.” He sighed again.

“Hurray” said Maneck, thumping Om on the back. “You’re in big demand.” Om pushed away his hand.

“But Ishvarbhai, the news should please you,” said Dina. “Why so worried? Isn’t it what you wanted?”

He shuffled the two pages as though wishing there were more. “This part pleases me. Difficulty is in the other part.”

They waited. “Are you planning to tell us today or tomorrow?” asked Om.

Ishvar fingered his frozen cheek. “The four interested families are in a hurry. You see, there are other parties with marriageable sons. Luckily, Chachaji has improved our standing — that Om is working for a big export company in the city, a good match for any girl. So the families want us to select and finalize in the next eight weeks.”

“That’s too fast,” said Dina. “You’ll have to refuse them.”

During the year that he and his nephew had worked for Dina, Ishvar had never once raised his voice. When he did it now, it startled everyone, including himself.

“Who are you to say! Who are you to tell me what is best for my nephew in this, the most important decision of his life! What do you know about us, about his upbringing, about my duty, that you think you can advise on such matters!”

Ishvar the peacemaker, gentle and soft-spoken, raged and waved his hands. “You think you own my nephew and me? We are not your slaves, we only work for you! Or would you like to tell us how to live, and when to die?”

And then, because he had no practice with the emotion of anger, and did not know how a tantrum should conclude, he burst into tears, fleeing to the verandah.

“Fine!” she called after him, finding her voice. “Do what you like! But don’t expect me to provide shelter for wife and children and grandchildren!”

“I don’t expect anything from you!” he shouted back, his voice cracking.

Dina escaped to the front room to be alone; she did not trust herself or her tongue. Shaking, she sat on the sofa beside Maneck.

“Calm down, Aunty, he doesn’t really mean it.”

“I don’t care what he means,” her voice trembled. “But you see this? You heard with your own ears. After all I’ve done — taken them into my home, treated them like family — he shouts at me like a dog. I should throw them out right now.”

“Throw, throw!” shouted Ishvar from the verandah. “What do I care!” He snorted to clear his runny nose, and tasted salt.

With a finger to his lips, Maneck-signalled to her to ignore him. “He is completely illogical about this marriage business,” he whispered. “Why argue with him?”

“Only because I feel sorry for Om. But you’re right, it’s between him and his uncle. They can do what they like. This thing has become trouble with a capital t.”

Om heard them in the back room, and buried his face in his hands.

The hours dredged the stagnant afternoon in vain, revealing nothing. Ashraf’s abandoned letter lay on the dining table. The clock’s big hand fell from mark to mark like a stone. No one made tea, no one went out for tea. Ishvar on the verandah, Om in the back, Maneck and Dina in the front room: the household was frozen.

The sun dropped towards the horizon, and the light started to change. A breeze visited each window, rustling the letter on the table. Soon it would be dinnertime — time to make chapatis. Om was hungry.

He walked around with his chappals flopping purposefully. He drank water, letting his glass clatter against the pot. He wanted his noises to touch the others; friendly noises could melt hostility. He sat down, drummed on the Singer’s bench, rattled the scissors, filled six bobbins. Then he went to the front room.

They were relieved he had come. Maneck winked. “That was something else, yaar. He exploded like a Divali Atom Bomb.”

Om forced a short laugh. “I just don’t know what to do with my uncle,” he confided, his voice hushed. “I’m worried about him.”

His words amused Dina, for they echoed the ones that Ishvar the conciliator would use in the old days when Om was rude, sewed badly, or misbehaved in general. “Be patient,” she said.

“What is it about marriages and weddings that turns people crazy. On this one topic he becomes a madman.”

“Yes, he does, doesn’t he,” grimaced Dina. “Reminds me of my brother.”

“Just wait, I’ll straighten out my uncle.” He went to the verandah, where Ishvar sat cross-legged on the floor beside the bedding roll.

“Are you crazy, speaking like that to someone who has been so good to us?” Om began scolding, arms folded across his chest.

Ishvar looked up, smiling weakly. He heard the same echo in his nephew’s words that Dina had detected. After his freak outburst of anger, he felt confused, foolish, ready to make amends.

“You go at once and tell Dinabai you are sorry. Tell her you lost your head, you didn’t mean the nasty things. Go right now. Say that you respect her opinions, you realize what she says is out of concern for us. Now get up, go.”

His uncle held out a hand; Om grabbed it, leaned back, hoisted him up. Ishvar shuffled into the front room and stood sheepishly before the sofa to apologize. For Dina it was a reprise: the sermon on the verandah had been audible inside. But she remained stiff, scrutinizing the wall to her right.

Having almost run out of words, Ishvar sighed. “Dinabai, to thank you for your kindness and beg forgiveness for my rudeness, I fall at your feet.” He started to bend, and the threat worked.

“Don’t you dare,” she broke her silence. “You know how I feel about that. We will speak no more about all this.”

“Okayji. It’s my problem, I agree to work it out in my head.”

“Fine. He is your nephew, and the fatherly duties are yours.”

The agreement was broken by Ishvar the following evening. The correspondence he had initiated was yet to be dealt with, and the ordeal was putting him through bouts of excruciating doubt. Sighs of “Hai Ram” steamed from his lips at intervals. The real cause of yesterday’s explosion was now clear to everyone.

“The opportunity is perfect,” he brooded. “Only, it comes before we are ready for it.”

“Om is a handsome fellow,” said Maneck. “Look at his chikna hairstyle. He does not need a marriage reservation. Top-notch girls will line up for him by the dozen.”

Ishvar whirled around and pointed, his finger an inch from Maneck’s face. “You stop mocking such a serious matter.”

For a moment it seemed he might strike Maneck; then he dropped his hand. “Like a son I look on you — like a brother to Om. And this is how you treat me? Jeering and making fun of what is so important to me?”

Maneck was nonplussed; he thought he saw tears starting in Ishvar’s eyes. But before he could come up with something to reassure him, Om intervened, “You’ve gone crazy for sure, you can’t even take a joke anymore. All you do is drama and naatak every chance you get.”

His uncle nodded meekly. “What to do, I am so worried about this. Bas, I’ll keep my mouth shut from now on and think quietly.”

But he badly wanted their opinions, wanted a proper discussion, a favourable consensus to cloak his obsession. And within minutes he started again. “Who can tell when a golden chance like this will reappear? Four good families to choose from. Some people go through life without finding even one suitable match.”

“It’s too soon for me to get married,” Om repeated wearily.

“Better too soon than too late.”

“What if our tailoring goes phuss because of a strike or something?” said Dina. “These are bad times, you cannot take anything for granted.”

“All the more reason to marry. A new wife’s kismat will change all our lives for the better.”

“Even if that’s true, where is the space for her in this tiny flat?”

“I would not dream of asking for more space. The verandah is enough.”

“For you and Om, and his wife? All three on the verandah?” The idea sounded preposterous. “Are you ridiculing me?”

“No, Dinabai, I am not. Next time I go searching for accommodation, you should come with me, see how families live. Eight, nine, or ten people in a small room. Sleeping one over the other on big shelves, from floor to ceiling, like third-class railway berths. Or in cupboards, or in the bathroom. Surviving like goods in a warehouse.”

“I know all that. You don’t have to lecture me, I have lived my whole life in this city.”

“Compared to such misery, three people on the verandah is a deluxe lodging,” he said fervently. “But I am not insisting on it. If it’s not your wish, we’ll just go back to our village. The important thing is Om’s marriage. Once that is done, my duty is done. The rest does not matter.”

A week after Ashraf Chacha’s letter, Ishvar found the courage to proceed with the viewing of the four brides-to-be. He wrote back, laboriously forming the words, that Om and he would arrive in a month. “Which will give us time to complete the dresses you brought yesterday,” he told Dina. With his response in the mail, the old calm returned to him, slipping like a shirt upon his person.

Dina found it baffling: a sensible man like Ishvar, suddenly turned irrational. Could he be conducting a form of blackmail? Could he be hoping that her need for their skills would force her to take in Om’s wife?

Her suspicion waxed and waned. It was stronger at times when he kept emphasizing how Dina’s fortune would change if the bride resided in this flat. “You will see the difference the minute she crosses your threshold, Dinabai. Daughters-in-law have been known to transform the destiny of entire households.”

“She will be neither my daughter-in-law nor yours,” Dina pointed out.

But he was not to be put off by a trifling technicality. “Daughter-in-law is just a word. Call her anything you like. The hand of good fortune is not fussy about words.”

She shook her head in frustration and amusement. Ishvar and deceit — the two just did not go together. His inability to dissemble was well known. If his mind was in turmoil, his fingers were never far behind in manifesting the confusion; when he was pleased about something, his half-smile radiated uncontrollably, his arms ready to embrace the world. Cunning strategies did not proceed from such an open nature.

She dismissed her suspicion about blackmail. It would have made more sense in dealing with someone like Nusswan. Now he — he was capable of every devious twist and turn. A person could go crazy trying to predict his actions. She wondered how it would be when the time came for the children to get married. Not children anymore — Xerxes and Zarir were grown men. And Nusswan trying to select wives for them, putting to use all the practice he got when he was set on finding her a husband.

She remembered the years when her nephews were small. What a time of fun it had been, but so brief. And how miserable they were when Nusswan and Ruby and she argued, and there was screaming and shouting. Not knowing whose side to take, whether to run to Daddy or to Aunty to plead for peace. In the end, she had missed out on so much. Their school years, report cards, prize distribution days, cricket matches, their first long trousers. Independence came at a high price: a debt with a payment schedule of hurt and regret. But the other option — under Nusswan’s thumb — was inconceivable.

As always, on looking back, Dina was convinced she was better off on her own. She tried to imagine Om a married man, tried to imagine a wife beside him, a woman with a small delicate figure like his. A wedding photo. Om in stiff new starched clothes and an extravagant wedding turban. Wife in a red sari. A modest necklace, nose-ring, earrings, bangles — and the moneylender waiting in the wings, happy to put the noose around their necks. And what would she be like? And what would it be like to finally have another woman living in this flat?

A picture began to form, and Dina let it develop for two days, adding depth and detail, colour and texture. Om’s wife, standing in the front door. Her head demurely lowered. Her eyes sparkling when she looks up, her mouth smiling shyly, lips covered with her fingers. The days pass. Sometimes the young woman sits alone at the window, and remembers forsaken places. Dina sits beside her and encourages her to talk, to tell her things about the life left behind. And Om’s wife begins at last to speak. More pictures, more stories…

On the third day Dina said to Ishvar, “If you seriously think the verandah is big enough for three people, we can try it out.”

He heard her through the Singer’s hammer and hum, and braked the flywheel, slamming his palm upon it.

“Good thing you drive a sewing-machine and not a motorcar,” she said. “Your passengers would be chauffeured straight into the next world.”

Laughing, he leapt from the stool. “Om! Om, listen!” he called to the verandah. “Dinabai says yes! Come here — come and thank her!” Then he realized he himself still hadn’t done that. “Thank you, Dinabai!” He joined his hands. “Once again you are helping us in ways beyond repayment!”

“It’s only a trial. Thank me later, if it works out.”

“It will, I promise! I was right about the cat… the kittens coming back… and I will be right about this, too, believe me,” he said, breathless in his joy. “The main thing is, you are willing to help. That’s like receiving your good wishes and blessings. It’s the most important thing — the most important.”

The mood in the flat changed, and Ishvar couldn’t stop beaming at the seams he was running off. “It will be perfect, Dinabai, believe me. For all of us. She will be useful to you also. She can clean the house, go to the bazaar, cook for — ”

“Are you getting a wife for Om, or a servant?” she inquired, her tone caustic.

“No no, not servant,” he said reproachfully. “Why does it make her a servant if she does her duties as a wife? How else do people find happiness except in fulfilling their duty?”

“There can be no happiness without fairness,” she said. “Remember that, Om — don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”

“Exactly,” said Maneck, concealing the inexplicable sadness that came over him. “And if you misbehave, Umbrella Bachchan and his pagoda parasol will straighten you out.”

Dina felt that granting consent for the verandah had legitimized a role for herself in Om’s marriage, and given her certain rights. He had come along quite nicely in these past few months, she thought. The scalp itch was gone and his hair was healthy, no longer dripping with smelly coconut oil. For this last, the credit went to Maneck and his distaste of greasy stuff in the hair.

Slowly but surely, Om had reinvented himself in Maneck’s image, from hairstyle to sparse moustache to clothes. Most recently, he had made flared trousers for himself, borrowing Maneck’s to trace the pattern. He even smelled like Maneck, thanks to Cinthol Soap and Lakmé Talcum Powder. And Maneck had learned from Om as well — instead of always wearing shoes and socks in the heat, which made his feet smell by the end of the day, he now wore chappals.

But imitation only underscored the difference between the two: Maneck sturdy and big-boned, Om with his delicate birdlike frame. If anyone was to become a husband, she thought, Maneck seemed more ready, not Om, the skinny boy of eighteen.

Once more, she was acutely aware of the painful thinness flitting and darting about the flat, especially in the kitchen, in the evenings, when it charmed her to watch his flour-coated fingers fly, kneading the dough and rolling out the chapatis. The rolling pin moved like magic under his hands. His skill, and the delight he took in it, had a mesmerizing effect. It made her want to cease her own chores, just stand and stare.

She reflected on the time Om had been living with her. She had observed him devouring hearty meals, quantities that were anything but birdlike. Which removed one possibility — he was not underweight because he ate poorly. And her original suspicion of a year ago wriggled out again.

“It just won’t do,” she said, discussing the matter with Ishvar. “Thanks to you, the boy is going to take on a big responsibility. But what kind of husband and father will he make with a stomachful of worms?”

“How can you be so sure, Dinabai?”

“He complains about headaches, and itches in private places. He eats a lot but continues to be skin and bones. Those are definite signs.”

Next day, she showed Ishvar the dark-brown bottle of vermifuge she had purchased at the chemist’s. “It’s the best wedding gift I can give the boy.”

The pink liquid was to be ingested in a single dose. He examined it, unscrewing the top to sniff: not a pleasant smell. How good it would be if Om were cured before the wedding, he thought. “But what if it’s something else, not worms?”

“That’s okay, the medicine won’t do any harm. It just acts like a purge. He must fast this evening, and take it late at night. Look, it explains on the label here.”

But the directions were quite complex for his rudimentary English, lost when it strayed too far beyond chest, sleeve, collar, waist. He promised to make his nephew swallow the dose before going to bed.

The more difficult part was to persuade Om to miss dinner. “Such injustice,” he complained. “Starving the cook who makes your chapatis.”

“If you eat, the worms eat. They need to be kept waiting hungrily inside your stomach, with their mouths wide open. So when you take the medicine, they swallow it eagerly and die.”

Maneck said he had once seen a film about a doctor who became very tiny, in order to go inside the patient’s body and fight the disease. “I could take a tiny gun and shoot dead all your worms.”

“Sure,” said Om. “Or a tiny umbrella, to stab them. Then I won’t need to drink this foul stuff.”

“One thing you are forgetting,” said Ishvar. “If you are very tiny in the stomach, the worms will be like giant cobras and pythons. Hahnji, mister, hundreds of them swarming, seething, hissing around you.”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” said Maneck. “Forget it. I’m cancelling my voyage.”

Dina lost count after Om’s first seven trips to the toilet next morning. “I am dead,” he moaned. “Nothing left of me.”

Then late in the afternoon he burst out of the wc, shaken but triumphant. “It fell! It looked like a small snake!”

“Was it wriggling or lifeless?”

“Wriggling madly.”

“That means the medicine couldn’t sedate it. What a powerful parasite. How big was it?”

He thought for a moment and held out his hand. “From here to here,” he pointed from fingertips to wrist. “About eight inches.”

“Now you know why you are so thin. That wicked creature and its children were eating up your nourishment. Hundreds of stomachs within your stomach. And none of you believed me when I said worms. Never mind, it won’t be long now before you put on weight. Soon you’ll be as well built as Maneck.”

“Yes,” said Maneck, “we have three weeks to make a strong husband out of you.”

“And the father of half a dozen boys,” added Ishvar.

“Don’t give bad advice,” said Dina. “Two children only. At the most, three. Haven’t you been listening to the family planning people? Remember, Om, treat your wife with respect. No shouting or screaming or beating. And one thing is certain, I will not allow any kerosene stoves on my verandah.”

Ishvar understood her allusion, veiled though it was. He protested that bride burnings and dowry deaths happened among the greedy upper castes, his community did not do such things.

“Really? And what does your community say about male and female children? Any preferences?”

“We cannot determine these things,” he declared. “It’s all in God’s hands.”

Maneck nudged Om and whispered, “It’s not in God’s hands, it’s in your pants.”

Om took a day to recover from the vermifuge. Next evening Maneck made plans to celebrate the return of the appetite with bhel-puri and coconut water at the beach.

“You are spoiling my nephew,” said Ishvar.

“Not really. It’s the first time I’m treating him. Previously his pet worm did the eating.”

Ishvar stared at the man in the doorway, trying to place him, for the voice was familiar but not the face. Then he recoiled, recognizing the greatly transformed hair-collector. His scalp was smooth and shining, and he had shaved off his moustache.

“You! Where did you come from?” He wondered whether to tell him to get lost or threaten to call the police.

Shoulders drooping, head bowed, Rajaram would not meet his gaze. “I took a chance,” he said. “It’s been so many months, I didn’t know if you still worked here.”

“What happened to your long hair?” asked Om, and Ishvar clicked his tongue disapprovingly. He didn’t want his nephew to get familiar again with this murderer.

“It’s okay to ask about my hair,” said Rajaram, raising his head. The expression in his eyes was empty, the fire of relentless enterprise extinguished. “You are my only friends. And I need your help. But I feel so bad… still haven’t returned your last loan.”

Ishvar withheld his disgust. To get involved in police business, with just days left before the wedding trip, would be most inauspicious. If a few rupees could get rid of the killer, he would do it. He stepped backwards to allow Rajaram to enter the verandah. “So what’s wrong this time?”

“Terrible trouble. Nothing but trouble. Ever since our shacks were destroyed, my life has been filled with immense obstacles. I am ready to renounce the world.”

Good riddance, thought Ishvar.

“Excuse me,” said Dina. “I don’t know you very well, but as a Parsi, my belief makes me say this: suicide is wrong, human beings are not meant to select their time of death. For then they would also be allowed to pick the moment of birth.”

Rajaram stared at her hair, letting moments elapse before responding. “Choosing the ending has nothing to do with choosing the beginning. The two are independent. Anyway, you misunderstand me. All I meant was, I want to reject the material world, become a sanyasi, spend my life meditating in a cave.”

She regarded this as much an evasion as suicide. “It’s all the same thing.”

“I don’t agree,” said Maneck.

“Please don’t interrupt me, Maneck,” she said, turning to Rajaram again. “And how is my old haircutting kit? Does it still work? It is a Made In England set, mind you.”

He blanched. “Yes, it’s working first class.”

Then he would speak no more of himself in the presence of Maneck and Dina. “Can I buy my two old friends a cup of tea? What’s that restaurant you go to — Aram?”

“Vishram,” said Ishvar, and checked if he had enough money in his pocket for tea. Although the invitation was the hair-collector’s, chances were, he would end up paying.

They walked silently to the corner, and settled around the solitary table. The cook waved an oily hand from his corner. “Story time!” he shouted happily. “And what is today’s topic?”

The tailors laughed, shaking their heads. “The story is, our friend is thirsty for your special tea,” said Ishvar. “He has come very far to meet us.”

Rajaram looked about him awkwardly; he had forgotten how tiny and exposed the Vishram was. But he was grateful for the privacy afforded by the din of the roaring stoves.

“So what’s all this fakeology about sanyasi?” asked Om.

“No, I’m serious, I want to renounce the world.”

“What happened to barbering?”

“That’s where the whole problem started. I was a failure right from the first day. My hair-collecting years had left me useless for barbering.”

Ishvar was unwilling to believe a single word from the mouth of this killer. “You mean you forgot how to do haircuts?”

“Much worse than that. Whenever a customer sat on the pavement and asked for a trim, he ended up almost a baldie.”

“And how did that happen?”

“Something would come over me. Instead of clipping and pruning, shaping the hair, I hacked off everything. In a way it was funny — some of them so nice and polite, when I held up the mirror they would say, ‘Good, very good, thank you.’ They probably didn’t want to hurt my feelings and tell me I was a lousy barber. But most customers were not kind. They shouted angrily, refused to pay, threatened to beat me up. And I just couldn’t stop my clippers or scissors. My hair-collecting instinct had become too powerful, I was like a monster.”

Word got around of the maniac with scissors, and no one stopped anymore at his pavement stall. Soon he was left without a choice. It had to be full-time hair-collecting again. But there was a problem: he had no place to store the bags of low-value clippings, which were his stock in trade. “And you could not have kept it in your trunk either. You need a small warehouse for that. You saw my hut in the colony, how it was stacked from floor to ceiling.”

Rajaram wrung his hands and shook his head. “If I could have obtained even one set of twelve-or fourteen-inch hair every week, I would have survived. It would have paid for one daily meal. But there was no long hair in my horoscope.”

“What about the packets you left with Shankar?” interrupted Om. “They contained long hair.”

“That came later,” he said. “Be patient, I am making a full confession.” He gazed wistfully in the distance, as though at a parade of longhaired lovelies. “I will never understand why women hang on forever to their long hair. It’s beautiful to look at, yes, but so much trouble to take care of.”

He took a sip of tea and licked his lips. “I wasn’t ready to give up. Not yet. Now I started offering free haircuts to beggars, vagrants, and drunks.” Late at night, after the hustling and drinking was done, he would approach the ones with long hair. A few needed tempting with a small coin. If they were comatose, or too impaired to know what was happening, he just helped himself.

But the venture failed. The quality of his harvest was very poor. The agent said this type of long hair, knotted and dirty, was worth no more than the snippets of pavement barbers. Besides, the supply became erratic when the police started their Emergency roundups under the Beautification Law.

Hungry and homeless, Rajaram would stare ravenously at women who passed with their tantalizing dangling plaits, taunting him with the wealth they carried on their heads. Sometimes he picked one to follow, a well-dressed society lady, a likely candidate for a visit to the hairdresser, who just might be planning to have her tresses lopped off. The women he pursued led him to their friends’ homes, doctors’ offices, astrologers, faith healers, restaurants, sari shops, but never to a hair salon.

He scrutinized longhaired men, too: hippies, foreign and local, in their beads and beards — foreign ones gone native in chappals, kurtas, and pyjamas, local ones slouching in sneakers, bell-bottoms, and T-shirts, and all of them equally smelly. He wondered how much a head of blond or red hair might fetch, but did not bother following them, for he knew they would never get a haircut.

It was a pity, he began to muse, that hair was so firmly fastened to the owner’s head, making it so difficult to steal. Firmer than the most tightly clutched purse, snugger than a fat wallet in skin-tight trousers. Beyond the fingers of the most skilful pickpocket. Or pickhead. To think that something as fine and light as hair could cling so tenaciously was truly an amazing thing. The way its roots clutched the scalp, it might have been a powerful banyan tree anchored to the earth. Unless, of course, alopecia set in and the hair fell out.

To pass the time, Rajaram told the tailors, he dreamt of being the first pickhead to go into business. He dreamt of developing a system that would overcome healthy hair’s natural reluctance to relinquish the head. Perhaps invent a chemical which, when sprayed on the victim’s scalp, would melt the roots but leave the hair untarnished. Or a magic mantra that would hypnotize the individual and make the hair jump off, the way ancient Vedic shlokas recited by sadhus could inspire flames to leap from logs or clouds to pour rain.

Dreaming away the hungry hours, he concluded that in reality a pickhead needed no new invention or supernatural power: the existing techniques of pickpockets, with a few modifications, would suffice. In crowded places it would be easy, using roughly (and smoothly) the same procedure as cutpurses. They were known to employ a sharp blade to ease a restrictive pocket; he still had his razor-keen scissors. One snip and the hair could be his.

At some point, Rajaram’s fanciful notions took on a serious aspect. Now he began to believe there was no ethical connection between picking pockets and administering unwelcome haircuts. One was a crime, which deprived the victims of their money. The other was a good deed, the alleviation of an encumbrance, the eradication of a lice-breeding pasture, which would save the victims time and effort and itchy scalps, not to mention the frivolous expenses of shampoo and hair lotions. And “victim” was hardly the correct word in this case, he felt. Surely “beneficiary” would be more accurate. Surely it was vanity that kept people from realizing their own good, and a helping hand was necessary. In any case, the loss would be temporary, the hair would grow back.

“I began training earnestly,” he said, stroking his bald head while the tailors shifted on the bench in the Vishram, rendered speechless by the hair-collector’s story thus far. “I travelled through the suburbs till I found a place in the barren countryside where I could rehearse.”

There, removed from the gaze of human eyes, he stuffed a bag with newspaper to produce a ball the size of a human head, but much lighter, light enough to sway at the least disturbance when suspended with twine from a branch. To the bag he tied lush clusters of string. Then he practised severing them close to the head, without shaking the bag. For variation he would weave the strings into plaits, or hang them in a thick ponytail, or spread them loose like cascading curls.

As his skills advanced, the setup was modified to simulate real-life situations. He held a cloth bag beneath the plait to catch it as it fell, dropped in the scissors, and drew the bag shut — all in one smooth movement. He performed this drill in very tight places, to discipline his hands to work within crowds. And when they were trained, he returned to the city’s jostling streets and bazaars.

“But why did you go through all this madness?” asked Ishvar. “If your hair business collapsed, wouldn’t it have been easier to collect something else? Newspapers, dabba, bottles?”

“I have been asking myself the same question. The answer is yes. There were dozens of possibilities. At the very worst, I could have become a beggar. Even that would have been preferable to the horrible road I was starting on. It’s easy to see now. But a blindness had come over me. The more difficult it was to collect long hair, the more desperately I wanted to succeed, as though my life depended on it. And so my scheme did not seem at all crazy.”

In fact, when it was put to work, he realized he had developed a brilliant system. With his cloth bag and scissors he would elbow himself into a crowd, selecting the victim (or beneficiary) with care, never impatient and never greedy. A head with two plaits could not tempt him to go for both — he was happy with one. And he always resisted the urge to cut too close to the nape — the extra inch or two could be his undoing.

In the bazaar, Rajaram stayed clear of the shoppers who came with servants, no matter how luxuriant the hair. Similarly, matrons with children in tow were avoided — youngsters were unpredictable. The woman he singled out to receive the grace of his scissors would be alone, preferably someone poorly dressed, engrossed in buying vegetables for her family, agitated by the high prices, bargaining tenaciously, or absorbed in watching the vendor’s weights and scales to make sure she wasn’t shortchanged.

Soon, though, she would be short-haired. Amid the milling shoppers, Rajaram’s sharp instrument emerged unnoticed. It went snip, once, quickly and cleanly. The plait dropped into the cloth bag, and he disappeared, having delivered one more fellow human of the hindrance that, unbeknown to her, was weighing her down.

At bus stops, Rajaram chose the woman most anxious about her purse, clamped tight under her arm, its leather or plastic hot against her sweltering skin. Semicircles of sweat would be travelling like an epidemic across her blouse. He would join the commuters, another weary worker returning home. And when the bus’s arrival converted the queue into a charging horde, the nervous woman hesitated at the periphery long enough for the scissors to do their work.

He never operated twice in the same marketplace or at the same bus stop. That would be too risky. Often, though, he returned empty-handed to the scene of his crime (or beneficence) to listen to the bazaar talk.

For the first little while there was nothing. Probably, as he suspected, the women were too embarrassed to make a fuss. Or maybe no one believed them, or thought the matter not serious enough.

Eventually, however, quips and wisecracks about lost, stolen, or misplaced hair started to sprout. One joke making the rounds of the paan shops was that under the Emergency, with the slums cleaned up, a new breed of urban rodents had evolved, with a taste not for rotting garbage but for feminine hair. At the docks, mathadis unloading ships cheered the exploits of the mysterious hair-hunter, convinced that it was the work of a lower-caste brother extracting revenge for centuries of upper-caste oppression, of Strippings and rapes and head-shavings of their womenfolk. In tea stalls and Irani restaurants, the intelligentsia wryly commented that the Slum Clearance Programme had been given a larger mandate due to bureaucratic bungling: a typo in a top-level memorandum had the Beautification Police down as the Beautician Police, and now they were tackling hair as crudely as they had tackled slums. The inevitable foreign hand also put in its appearance, in the form of female CIA agents spreading stories about missing coiffures in order to demoralize the nation.

“Since everyone was joking about it, I wasn’t worried,” said Rajaram. “My confidence grew, and I thought about expansion.”

The hippies, whom he had long regarded as perfect but impossible beneficiaries, became the focus of his ministrations. He discovered that in the early hours of the morning they lay in drug-filled slumber around the dealer’s addaa where they bought their hashish.

Relieving catatonic foreigners of their locks was child’s play. If someone among them happened to open his eyes and see a companion being sheared, he assumed it was a hallucination; he giggled stupidly, or whispered something like “groovy, man” or “wow, real cool” and went back to sleep after scratching his crotch. Once Rajaram even cropped a fornicating couple. First the man, who was on top, and then the woman when, halfway through, she mounted him. The rocking and pumping posed no problem for the hair-collector’s expert hand. “Oh man!” said the man, excited by his vision. “Far out! I see Kama, grooming you for nirvana!” And the woman murmured, “Like, baby, it’s instant karma!”

Rajaram felt things were finally looking up for him. He welcomed the invasion of foreigners, unlike the conservative section of the citizenry that complained about degenerate Americans and Europeans passing on filthy habits and decadent manners to the impressionable youth. As long as the aliens possessed hair down to there, shoulder-length or longer, Rajaram was happy to see them pouring into the city.

Around this time, beggars reoccupied their places on the pavements, as the Beautification Law ran its schizophrenic course and grew moribund. The hair-collector’s professional eye noticed immediately. Of course, with his business flourishing, he no longer went after the beggars’ dirty, knotted hair. Some, recognizing him, would call out to him, requesting their free haircuts, but he ignored them.

“And if only I had continued to ignore them,” said Rajaram, sighing heavily, “my life would have been so different today. But our destinies are engraved on our foreheads at birth. And it was beggars that brought about my downfall. Not the beautiful women in bazaars, whom I was so scared to approach. Not the hashish-smoking hippies, who I thought would beat me up one day. No — it had to be two helpless beggars.”

Rajaram paused, eyeing the cashier-waiter who was smiling at them from the counter, still hoping to be invited to share the story. The tailors did not acknowledge him. “We know all about the beggars,” said Ishvar quietly. “Why did you have to kill them?”

“You know!” exclaimed Rajaram, horrified. “But of course! Your Beggarmaster — but I didn’t! I mean, I did … I mean — it was all a mistake!” He hid his head in his hands upon the table, unable to look at his friends. Then he sat up, rubbing his nose. “This table stinks. But please help me! Please! Don’t let — !”

“Calm down, it’s okay,” said Ishvar. “Beggarmaster doesn’t know about you. He only mentioned that two of his beggars were murdered and their hair stolen. We at once thought of you.”

Now Rajaram looked injured. “It could have been another hair-collector, you know. There are hundreds in the city. You didn’t have to think of me straight away.” He swallowed. “So you didn’t say anything to him?”

“It was none of our business.”

“Thank God. I meant the beggars no harm, it was such a terrible mistake the way it happened, believe me.”

One night, while he had been out on his rounds, he came upon two mendicants, a man and a woman, asleep under a portico, their knees drawn up to their hollow stomachs. He would have walked right past them, except that the streetlight revealed their hair. And it was beautiful. Both heads glimmered with a full-bodied lustre, a radiance he had rarely seen during his extensive travels. Hair such as this was the stuff that advertising executives’ dreams were made of. Clients would have fought to feature it — its brilliance could have promoted products like Shikakai Soap or Tata’s Perfumed Coconut Hair Oil to new heights of profitability.

But how strange, thought Rajaram, that such a treasure should adorn the heads of two shrivelled beggars. He knelt beside them and gently touched the shimmering tresses with his fingertips; they felt silken. Unable to resist, he heaped them in his hand and revelled in their texture. His fingers stiffened in sensual agony, as though they would steal the secret of the shine and softness.

The beggars stirred, breaking the spell. Rajaram remembered his professional duty. He took out his scissors and set to work, starting with the woman. For the first time in his career he felt regret. It was a crime, he thought, to separate hair this gorgeous from its roots — its magic glow would fade, as surely as the blush of a plucked flower.

The locks came away in his hand. He twisted the tresses together and packed them in his cloth bag. Then he worked on the maris hair. It was virtually indistinguishable from the woman’s.

Just as the hair-collector finished, she awakened and saw him crouched beside her, the scissors glinting in the dark like a murderous weapon. She let out a heart-stopping shriek. It woke the man, who released his own bloodcurdling yells.

“Those screams,” said Rajaram, shuddering as though they still rang in his ears. “They frightened me so much. I was sure the police would come and beat me to death. I begged the beggars to stop the noise. It was all right, I said, I was not going to hurt them. I clipped a lock of my own hair to show that what I was doing was harmless. I pleaded, I pulled notes and coins out of my pocket, and showered money on them. But they kept on screaming. On and on and on! It drove me crazy!”

He panicked, raised the scissors and struck. First the woman, then the man. In the throat and chest and stomach: in all the wretched places that were pumping the breath and quickening the organs to create those terrible screams. Again and again and again he stabbed, till there was silence.

No one came to investigate. The streets were accustomed to the caterwauling of lonely lunatics and the howling of disillusioned dipsomaniacs. Across the road someone laughed hysterically; dogs barked; a temple bell clanged. Rajaram fled the place, walking as fast as he dared without attracting attention.

Later he threw away his scissors, his bloodstained clothes, and the hair. The first chance he got, he shaved his head and moustache, for when the police questioned the people in the area, the beggars would be sure to describe the fellow who used to come around regularly, cutting and collecting hair.

“But I am not safe,” said Rajaram. “Though it has been months, the CID is still looking for me. God knows why my case fascinates them — there are hundreds of other crimes taking place every day.” The tea in his cup had gone cold. He made a face as he swallowed it. “So now you know every unfortunate thing that has happened. Will you help me?”

“But how?” said Ishvar. “Maybe it is best to give yourself up. It seems hopeless for you.”

“There is hope.” Rajaram paused and leaned closer, fixing his eyes on them. They were shining a little now. “As I first told you, I want to renounce this world of trouble and sorrow. I want the simple existence of a sanyasi. I want to meditate for long hours in a cold, dark Himalayan cave. I will sleep on hard surfaces. Rise with the sun and retire with the stars. Rain and wind, no matter how strong, will be of little consequence to my mortified flesh. I will throw away my comb, and my hair and beard will grow long and knotted. Tiny creatures will find peaceful refuge in them, digging and burrowing as they choose, for I will not disturb them.”

Ishvar raised his eyebrows and Om rolled his eyes, but Rajaram did not notice either of them. He pushed aside his teacup slowly, deliberately, as though performing his first act of abnegation. The wild, romantic vision of an ascetic was a stimulant to his imagination, giving it a graphic turn.

“I will go with bare feet, my soles and heels cracked, torn, bleeding from a dozen lesions and lacerations to which shall be applied no salve or ointment. Snakes wandering across my path in dark jungles will not frighten me. Stray dogs will nip at my ankles as I roam through strange towns and remote villages. I will beg for my food. Children, and sometimes even adults, will mock me and throw stones at me, scared of my strange countenance and my frenzied inward-gazing eyes. I will go hungry and naked when necessary. I will stumble across rocky plains and down steep hills. I will never complain.”

His eyes had drifted from his audience, focusing wistfully in the distance, having already started their travels across the subcontinent. He seemed to be rather enjoying himself, as though it were a holiday itinerary he was planning. In the cook’s corner, the stove ran out of fuel. Without its roar the place was hushed.

The silence dragged Rajaram away from his daydream, back to the Vishram’s solitary and smelly table. The cook went to the rear to fetch the kerosene can. They watched him insert the funnel and fill the stove.

“Worldly life has led me to disaster,” said Rajaram. “It always does, for all of us. Only, it’s not always obvious, as was in my case. And now I am at your mercy.”

“But we don’t know anything about becoming a sanyasi,” said Ishvar. “What do you want from us?”

“Money. I need train fare to reach the Himalayas. There is hope of redeeming myself — if I can get away from the police and CID.”

They returned to the flat. Rajaram waited at the door while Ishvar went inside and asked Dina to let him have, out of their savings, the price of a third-class Frontier Mail ticket.

“It’s your money, and it’s not for me to say how you spend it,” she said. “But if he is renouncing the world, why does he need train fare? He can get there on foot, begging his way like other sadhus.”

“That’s true,” said Ishvar. “But that would take a lot of time. He is in a hurry for salvation.”

He took the money out to Rajaram on the verandah, who counted it, then hesitated. “Could I possibly have another ten rupees?”

“For what?”

“Sleeping berth surcharge. It’s very uncomfortable to sit all night through such a long train journey.”

“Sorry,” said Ishvar, almost ready to snatch back the notes. “We can’t spare any more than this. But please visit us if you are in the city sometime, we can have tea together.”

“I doubt it,” said Rajaram. “Sanyasis don’t take vacations.” Then he laughed mirthlessly and was gone.

Om wondered if they would ever see him again. “His habit of borrowing money was a nuisance, but he was an interesting fellow. He brought us news of the world.”

“Don’t worry,” said Ishvar. “With Rajaram’s luck, all the caves will be occupied when he gets there. He’ll come back with a story about how there was a No Vacancy sign in the Himalayas.”