A Fine Balance

IV. Small Obstacles

MIRROR, RAZOR, SHAVING BRUSH, plastic cup, loata, copper water pot — Ishvar arranged them on an upturned cardboard carton in one corner of the shack. Trunk and bedding took up most of the remaining space. He hung their clothes from rusted nails protruding through the plywood walls. “So everything fits nicely. We have jobs, we have a house, and soon we’ll find a wife for you.”

Om did not smile. “I hate this place,” he said.

“You want to go back to Nawaz and his awning?”

“No. I want to go back to Ashraf Chacha and his shop.”

“Poor Ashraf Chacha — deserted by his customers.” Ishvar picked up the copper pot and moved to the door.

“I’ll get the water,” offered Om.

He went to the tap in the lane where a grey-haired woman watched him fumble with the handle to start the flow. Nothing happened. He kicked the standpipe and rattled the spout, shaking out a few drops.

“Don’t you know?” the woman called. “It only runs in the morning.”

Om turned to see who was speaking. She was standing very short in her darkened doorway. “Water only comes in the morning,” she repeated.

“No one told me.”

“Are you a child that you must be told everything?” she scolded, stepping out of her shack. Now he could see she was not short, just badly stooped. “Can’t you use your own intelligence?”

He tried to decide which would best demonstrate his intelligence: retorting or walking away. “Come,” she said, and retreated within. He glanced in the doorway. She spoke again from the darkness, “Are you planning to wait by the tap till dawn?”

Opening the lid of a round-bottomed earthen matka, she transferred two glassfuls into his copper pot. “Remember, you have to fill up early. Wake up late, and you go thirsty. Like the sun and moon, water waits for no one.”

A long queue had formed at the tap in the morning when the tailors emerged with toothbrushes and soap to await their turn. From the next shack a man came out smiling, blocking their way. He was bare above the waist, and his hair hung to his shoulders. “Namaskaar,” he greeted them. “But you cannot go like that.”

“Why not?”

“If you stand at the tap, brushing your teeth, soaping and scrubbing and washing, you’ll start a big fight. People want to fill up before the water goes.”

“But what to do?” said Ishvar. “We don’t have a bucket.”

“No bucket? That’s only a small obstacle.” Their neighbour disappeared inside, and came back with a galvanized pail. “Use this till you get one.”

“What about you?”

“I have another — one bucketful is enough for me.” He gathered his hair in a tail and tugged it before spreading it out again. “Now. What else do you need? A small can or something, for toilet?”

“We have a loata,” said Ishvar. “But where should we go?”

“Come with me, it’s not far.” They collected their water, deposited the heavy pail in their shack, then walked towards the railway lines beyond the field with their loata. The water in it sloshed a little as they scrambled over mounds of concrete rubble and broken glass. A foul-smelling stream, greyish yellow, trickled through the mounds, carrying a variety of floating waste in its torpid flux.

“Come to the right side,” he said. “The left side is for ladies only.” They followed, glad to have a guide; it would have been awkward to have blundered. Women’s voices, mothers coaxing their children, rose from that direction, along with the stench. Further down, men were squatting on the tracks or by the ditch to the side, near the prickly scrub and nettles, their backs to the railroad. The ditch was a continuum of the roadside sewer where the hutment colony pitched its garbage.

Past the crouching men, the three found a suitable spot. “The steel rail is very useful,” said their neighbour. “Works just like a platform. Puts you higher than the ground, and the shit doesn’t tickle your behind when it piles up.”

“You know all the tricks, for sure,” said Om, as they undid their pants and assumed their positions on the rail.

“Takes very little time to learn.” He indicated the men in the scrub. “Now squatting there can be dangerous. Poisonous centipedes crawl about in there. I wouldn’t expose my tender parts to them. Also, if you lose your balance in those bushes, you end up with an arseful of thorns.”

“Are you speaking from experience?” asked Om, teetering on the rail with laughter.

“Yes — the experience of others. Careful with your loata,” he cautioned. “If you spill the water you’ll have to go back with a sticky bum.”

Ishvar wished the fellow would be quiet for a minute. He did not find the jocularity helpful to the task, especially when his bowels were reacting disagreeably to the communal toilet. It had been decades since he used to go outdoors, as a child. With his father, in the morning’s half-darkness, he remembered. When the birds were loud and the village was quiet. And afterwards, washing in the river. But the years with Ashraf Chacha taught him big-town ways, made him forget the village ways.

“Only one problem with squatting on the rail,” said their longhaired neighbour. “You have to get up when the train comes, whether you have finished or not. Railway has no respect for our open-air sundaas.”

“Now you tell us!” Ishvar craned his neck in both directions, searching up and down the track.

“Relax, relax. There’s no train for at least ten minutes. And you can always jump off if you hear a rumbling.”

“That’s very good advice, as long as one isn’t deaf,” said Ishvar peevishly. “And what’s your name?”

“Rajaram.”

“We’re very lucky to have you for our guru,” said Om.

“Yes, I’m your Goo Guru,” he chortled.

Ishvar was not amused, but Om roared with laughter. “Tell me, O great Goo Guruji, do you recommend that we buy a railway timetable, if we are to squat on the tracks every morning?”

“No need for that, my obedient disciple. In a few days your gut will learn the train timings better than the Stationmaster.”

The next train was not heard till they had finished, washed, and buttoned their pants. Ishvar decided he would sneak out tomorrow morning before Rajaram awoke. He did not want to squat next to this philosopher of defecation.

Along the line, men and women abandoned the tracks and waited by the ditch for the locomotive interruption to pass; the ones in the bushes stayed put. Rajaram pointed at a train compartment as it glided slowly in front of them.

“Look at those bastards,” he shouted. “Staring at people shitting, as if they themselves are without bowels. As if a turd emerging from an arse-hole is a circus performance.” He flung obscene gestures at the passengers, making some of them turn away. One observer took exception and spat from his window seat, but a favourable wind returned it trainward.

“I wish I could bend over, point, and shoot it like a rocket in their faces,” said Rajaram. “Make them eat it, since they are so interested in it.” He shook his head as they walked back to their shacks. “That kind of shameless behaviour makes me very angry.”

“My grandfather’s friend, Dayaram,” said Om, “he was forced to eat a landlord’s shit once, because he was late ploughing his field.”

Rajaram emptied the last drops of water from his can into his palm and slicked back his hair. “Did that Dayaram develop any magic power afterwards?”

“No, why?”

“I’ve heard of a caste of sorcerers. They eat human shit, it gives them their black powers.”

“Really?” said Om. “Then we could start a business — collect all these lumps from the track, package them and sell to that caste. Ready-made lunches, teatime snacks, hot and steaming.” Rajaram and he laughed, but Ishvar strode ahead, disgusted, pretending he hadn’t heard.

Om returned to the tap for another bucketful. The line had grown considerably. A few places ahead he saw a girl with a big brass pot balanced against her hip. When she raised her arms to lift it to her head, his eyes were drawn to the swell of her blouse. The weight thrust a fine sharpness into her hips as she passed. Water overbrimmed the pot and sloshed, trickling down her forehead. Glistening drops hung in her hair and eyelashes. Like morning dew, thought Om. Oh, she was lovely. For the rest of the day he felt he would burst with longing and happiness.

By the time the tap went dry, the hutment colony had finished its morning ablutions, leaving the ground charted with little rivulets of foam and froth. As the day wore on, the earth and sun readily swallowed it all. The smell from the railroad-latrine endured longer. The capricious breeze escorted the stench for hours into the shacks before changing direction.

Late in the evening, Rajaram was cooking on a Primus stove outside his door as the tailors returned from exploring the area around the slum. They heard the oil hissing in the frying pan. “Have you eaten?” he asked.

“At the station.”

“That can be expensive. Get a ration card as soon as possible, cook your own food.”

“We don’t even have a stove.”

“That’s only a small obstacle. You can borrow mine.” He told them about a woman in the colony who hawked vegetables and fruit in residential neighbourhoods. “If something remains in her basket at the end of the day — a few tomatoes, peas, brinjal — she sells it cheaply. You should buy from her, like me.”

“Good idea,” said Ishvar.

“Only one thing she won’t sell you — bananas.”

Om snickered, expecting a juicy punch line, but there wasn’t one. The monkey-man in the colony had a standing agreement with the woman. Her blackened or damaged bananas went to his two main performers. “The poor dog has to find his own food, though,” said Rajaram.

“Which dog?”

“Monkey-man’s dog. He’s part of the act — the monkeys ride him. But he is always in the garbage, looking for food. Monkey-man can’t afford to feed them all.” The Primus sputtered twice; he pumped it up and stirred the pan. “Some people say Monkey-man does dirty, unnatural things with the monkeys. I don’t believe it. But even if he does, so what? We all need comfort, no? Monkey, prostitute, or your own hand — what difference? Not everyone can have wives.”

He poked the sizzling vegetables to check if they were done, then extinguished the stove and spooned out a helping on a plastic plate for the tailors.

“No, we ate at the station, really.”

“Don’t insult me — have one bite at least.”

They accepted the plate. A man with a harmonium slung from his neck overheard them while passing. “Smells good,” he said. “Save one bite for me also.”

“Yes, sure, come on.” But the man squeezed out a chord, waved, and continued on his way.

“Have you met him? Lives in the second row.” Rajaram stirred the pan and helped himself. “He begins work in the evening. Says people are more generous if he sings when they are eating or relaxing. Have some more?”

Their refusal was final this time. Rajaram finished what remained. “It’s very nice for me that you are renting this house. On the other side of me,” he said, lowering to a whisper, “lives a useless fellow — drunk all the time. Beats his wife and his five-six children if they don’t bring back enough from begging.”

They looked at the shack, where all was quiet at present. The children were not in evidence. “Sleeping it off. To start again tomorrow. And she must be on the streets with the little ones.”

The tailors sat with their neighbour for the rest of the evening, talking about their village, about Muzaffar Tailoring Company, and about the job they were starting on Monday with Dina Dalai. Rajaram nodded at the familiar story. “Yes, thousands and thousands are coming to the city because of bad times in their native place. I came for the same reason.”

“But we don’t want to stay too long.”

“Nobody does,” said Rajaram. “Who wants to live like this?” His hand moved in a tired semicircle, taking in the squalid hutments, the ragged field, the huge slum across the road wearing its malodorous crown of cooking smoke and industrial effluvium. “But sometimes people have no choice. Sometimes the city grabs you, sinks its claws into you, and refuses to let go.”

“Not us, for sure. We are here to make some money and hurry back,” said Om.

Ishvar did not want to discuss their plans, fearing contamination by doubts. “What’s your trade?” he asked, changing the subject.

“Barber. But I gave it up some time ago. Got fed up with complaining customers. Too short, too long, puff not big enough, sideburns not wide enough, this, that. Every ugly fellow wants to look like a film actor. So I said, enough. Since then I’ve done lots of jobs. Right now, I’m a hair-collector.”

“That’s good,” said Ishvar tentatively. “What do you have to do, as a hair-collector?”

“Collect hair.”

“And there is money in that?”

“Oh, very big business. There is a great demand for hair in foreign countries.”

“What do they do with it?” asked Om, sceptical.

“Many different things. Mostly they wear it. Sometimes they paint it in different colours — red, yellow, brown, blue. Foreign women enjoy wearing other people’s hair. Men also, especially if they are bald. In foreign countries they fear baldness. They are so rich in foreign countries, they can afford to fear all kinds of silly things.”

“And how do you collect the hair?” asked Om. “Steal it from people’s heads?” There was a sneer in his voice.

Rajaram laughed good-naturedly. “I go to pavement barbers. They let me take it in exchange for a packet of blades, or soap, or a comb. In haircutting saloons they give it free if I sweep the floor myself. Come — come inside my house, I’ll show you my stock.”

Rajaram lit a lamp to dispel the early dusk within the shack. The flame flickered, steadied, and blossomed into orange, revealing gunny sacks and plastic bags stacked high against the wall.

“The sacks are from pavement barbers,” he said, opening one under their curious gaze. “See, short hair.”

They held back from the unappetizing contents, and he plunged in his hand to display a greasy clump. “Not more than two or three inches long. Fetches twenty-four rupees a kilo from the export agent. It’s only good for making chemicals and medicines, he tells me. But look inside this plastic bag.”

He untied the string and drew out a handful of long tresses. “From a ladies’ barber. So beautiful, no? This is the valuable stuff. It’s a very lucky day for me when I find this kind of hair. From eight to twelve inches, it brings two hundred rupees a kilo. Longer than twelve, six hundred rupees.” He fingered his own hair and held it out like a violin.

“So that’s why you are growing yours.”

“Naturally. God-given harvest will put food in my stomach.”

Om took the tresses and stroked them, not repulsed as he had been by the mounds of short clippings. “Feels good. Soft and smooth.”

“You know,” said Rajaram, “when I find hair like this, I always want to meet the woman. I lie awake at night, wondering about her. What does she look like? Why was it cut? For fashion? For punishment? Or did her husband die? The hair is chopped off, but there is a whole life connected to it.”

“This must have been a rich woman’s hair,” said Om.

“And why do you think so?” asked Rajaram, with the air of a mentor examining the novice.

“Because of the fragrance. Smells like expensive hair tonic. A poor woman would use raw coconut oil.”

“Perfectly correct,” he tapped Om’s shoulder approvingly. “By their hair shall you know them. Health and sickness, youth and age, wealth and poverty — it’s all revealed in the hair.”

“Religion and caste also,” said Om.

“Exactly. You have the makings of a hair-collector. Let me know if you get tired of tailoring.”

“But would I be able to stroke the hair while it’s still attached to the woman? All the hair? From top to bottom, and between the legs?”

“He’s a clever rascal, isn’t he?” said Rajaram to Ishvar, who was threatening to hit his nephew. “But I am strictly a professional. I admit that sometimes, seeing a woman with long hair, I want to run my fingers through it, twine it around my wrist. But I have to control myself. Till the barber severs it, I can only dream.”

“You would dream a lot about our new employer if you saw her,” said Om. “Dina Dalai’s hair is beautiful. She probably has nothing to do all day but wash it and oil it and brush it and keep it looking perfect.” He held the tresses against his head, clowning. “How do I look?”

“I was planning to find you a wife,” said his uncle. “If you prefer, we can find a husband.” Laughing, Rajaram took back the hair and replaced it carefully in the plastic bag.

“But I am thinking,” said Ishvar. “Wouldn’t a hair-collector get more business in a place like Rishikesh? Or a temple town like Hardwar? Where people shave their heads and offer their locks to God?”

“You are correct,” said Rajaram. “But there’s a big obstacle in the way. A friend of mine, also a hair-collector, went south, to Tirupati. Just to check out the production in the temples there. You know what he found? About twenty thousand people a day, coming to sacrifice their hair. Six hundred barbers, working in eight-hour shifts.”

“That must produce a huge hill of hair.”

“Hill? It’s a Himalayan mountain of hair. But middlemen like me have no chance to collect it. After the hair is dedicated, the very holy Brahmin priests put it in their very holy warehouse. And every three months they hold an auction, where the export companies buy it directly.”

“You don’t have to tell us about Brahmins and priests,” said Ishvar. “The greed of the upper castes is well known in our village.”

“It’s the same everywhere,” agreed Rajaram. “I’m still waiting to meet one who will treat me as his equal. As a fellow human being — that’s all I want, nothing more.”

“From now on you can have our hair,” said Om generously.

“Thank you. I can cut it for you free, if you like, as long as you’re not fussy.” He tucked away the sacks of hair and brought out his comb and scissors, offering a crop on the spot.

“Wait,” said Om. “I should first let it grow long like yours. Then you can get more money for it.”

“Nothing doing,” said Ishvar. “No long hair. Dina Dalai won’t like a tailor with long hair.”

“One thing is certain,” said Rajaram. “Supply and demand for hair is endless, it will always be big business.” As they returned outside into the evening air, he added, “Sometimes, it also turns into big trouble.”

“Why trouble?”

“I was thinking about the hair of the beard of the Prophet. When it disappeared from the Hazrat-Bal mosque in Kashmir some years ago. You remember?”

“I do,” said Ishvar. “But Om was just a baby then, he doesn’t know.”

“Tell me, tell me. What happened?”

“Just that,” said Ishvar. “The sacred hair disappeared one day, and there were big riots. Everyone was saying the government should resign, that the politicians must have something to do with it. To cause trouble, you know, because Kashmiris were asking for independence.”

“What happened was,” added Rajaram, “after two weeks of riots and curfews, the government investigators announced they had found the sacred hair. But the people were not happy — what if the government is fooling us? they asked. What if they are passing off some ordinary hair for the sacred one? So the government got a group of very learned mullahs and put them in complete charge of inspecting the hair. When they said it was the correct one, only then did calm return to the streets of Srinagar.”

Outside, the smoke of cooking fires had taken control of the air. A voice yelled in the darkness, “Shanti! Hurry with the wood!” and a girl responded. Om looked: it was her, the one with the big brass pot. Shanti, he repeated silently, losing interest in the hair-collector’s story.

Rajaram propped a rock against the door of his shack so the wind wouldn’t blow it open, then escorted the tailors on a tour of the neighbourhood. He showed them a shortcut to the train station through a break in the railroad fence. “Keep walking through that gully, till you see the big advertisements for Amul Butter and Modern Bread. It will save you at least ten minutes when you go to work.”

He also warned them about the slum abutting their field. “Most of the people in that bustee are decent, but some lanes are very dangerous. Murder and robbery is definitely possible if you walk through there.” In the safe part of the slum, he introduced them to a tea stall whose owner he knew, where they could have tea and snacks on credit, paying at the end of the month.

Late that night, as they sat outside their shack, smoking, they heard the harmonium player. He had returned from work, and was playing for pleasure. The reedy notes of his instrument, in the bleak surroundings, were rich as a golden flute. “Meri dosti mera pyar,” he sang, and the song about love and friendship took the sting out of the acrid smoke of smouldering fires.

The Rations Officer was not at his desk. A peon said the boss was on his meditation break. “You should come back on Monday.”

“But we have to start our new jobs on Monday,” said Ishvar. “How long is the meditation break?”

The peon shrugged. “One hour, two hours, three — depends on how much weight is on his mind. Sahab says without the break he would turn into a madman by the end of the week.” The tailors decided to wait in line.

It must have been a relatively easy week for the Rations Officer, for he returned thirty minutes later, looking suitably revitalized, and gave the tailors a ration-card application form. He said there were experts on the pavement outside who, for a small fee, would fill it out for them.

“That’s okay, we know how to write.”

“Really?” he said, feeling snubbed. He prided his ability to appraise at a glance the applicants flowing past his desk every day — their place of origin, financial status, education, caste. His face muscles twitched, tightening in defiance of his just-completed meditation. The tailors’ literacy was an affront to his omniscience. “Complete it and bring it back,” he dismissed them with a petulant flutter of fingers.

They took the form into the corridor to fill in the blanks, using a window ledge to write on. It was a rough surface, and the ballpoint went through the paper several times. They tried to nurse the pockmarked sheet back to health by flattening the bumps with their fingernails, then rejoined the line to face their interlocutor.

The Rations Officer scanned the form and smiled. It was a superior smile: they may have learned how to write, but they knew nothing about neatness. He read their answers and stopped in triumph at the address portion. “What’s this rubbish?” he tapped with a nicotine-stained finger.

“It’s the place where we live,” said Ishvar. He had entered the name of the road that led to their row of shacks on the north side. The space for building name, flat number, and street number had been left blank.

“And where exactly is your house?”

They offered additional information: the closest intersection, the streets east and west of the slum, the train station, names of neighbourhood cinemas, the big hospital, the popular sweetmeat shop, a fish market.

“Stop, enough,” said the Rations Officer, covering his ears. “I don’t need to hear all this nonsense.” He pulled out a city directory, flipped a few pages, and studied a map. “Just as I thought. Your house is in a jhopadpatti, right?”

“It’s a roof — for the time being.”

“A jhopadpatti is not an address. The law says ration cards can only be issued to people with real addresses.”

“Our house is real,” pleaded Ishvar. “You can come and see it.”

“My seeing it is irrelevant. The law is what matters. And in the eyes of the law, your jhopdi doesn’t count.” He picked up a stack of forms and shuffled them to align the edges. Tossed back to their corner, they landed in disarray, raising dust. “But there is another way to get the ration card, if you are interested.”

“Yes, please — whatever is necessary.”

“If you let me arrange for your vasectomy, your application can be approved instantly.”

“Vasectomy?”

“You know, for Family Planning. The nussbandhi procedure.”

“Oh, but I already did that,” lied Ishvar.

“Show me your F.P.C.”

“F.P.C.?”

“Family Planning Certificate.”

“Oh, but I don’t have that.” Thinking quickly, he said, “In our native place there was a fire in the hut. Everything was destroyed.”

“That’s not a problem. The doctor I send you to will do it again as a special favour, and give you a new certificate.”

“Same operation, two times? Isn’t that bad?”

“Lots of people do it twice. Brings more benefits. Two transistor radios.”

“Why would I need two radios?” smiled Ishvar. “Do I listen to two different stations, one with each ear?”

“Look, if the harmless little operation frightens you, send this young fellow. All I need is one sterilization certificate.”

“But he is only seventeen! He has to marry, have some children, before his nuss is disconnected!”

“It’s up to you.”

Ishvar left in a rage, Om hurrying after him to calm him down as he fumed at the shocking, almost blasphemous, suggestion. No one noticed, though, because the corridor was crowded with people like Ishvar, lost and stumbling, trying to negotiate their way through the government offices. They waited around in varying stages of distress. Some were in tears, others laughed hysterically at bureaucratic absurdities, while a few stood facing the wall, muttering ominously to themselves.

“Nussbandhi, he says!” seethed Ishvar. “Shameless bastard! For a young boy, nussbandhi! Someone should cut off the ugly rascal’s pipe while he is meditating!” He fled down the corridor, down the stairs, and out through the building’s main door.

A small, clerkish-looking man on the pavement, noticing Ishvar’s agitation, rose from his wooden stool to greet them. He wore glasses and a white shirt, with writing material spread before him on a mat. “You have a problem. Can I help?”

“What help can you give?” said Ishvar dismissively.

The man touched Ishvar’s elbow to make him stop and listen. “I am a facilitator. My job, my speciality, is to assist people in their dealings with government offices.” His runny nose made him sniff several times during the course of his introduction.

“You work for government?” asked Ishvar, suspicious, pointing at the building they had just left.

“No, never, I work for you and me. To help you get what the government people make difficult to get. Hence my title: Facilitator. Birth certificates, death certificates, marriage licence, any types of permits and clearances — I can arrange it all. You just select what information you want on it, and I will have it issued.” He removed his glasses and smiled his most facile smile, then lost it to six violent sneezes. The tailors jumped back to avoid the spray.

“All we wanted was a ration card, Mr. Facilitator. And the fellow wanted our manhood in exchange! What kind of choice is that, between food and manhood?”

“Ah, he wanted the F.P.C.”

“Yes, that’s what he called it.”

“You see, since the Emergency started, there’s a new rule in the department — every officer has to encourage people to get sterilized. If he doesn’t fill his quota, no promotion for him. What to do, poor fellow, he is also trapped, no?”

“But it’s not fair to us!”

“That’s why I am here, no. Just pick the names you want on the ration card, up to a maximum of six, and whatever address you like. Cost is only two hundred rupees. Hundred now, and hundred when you get the card.”

“But we don’t have so much money.”

The Facilitator said they could come back when they did, he would still be here. “While there is government, there will be work for me.” He blew his nose and returned to his spot on the pavement.

Taking Rajaram’s shortcut, the tailors trotted down the platform towards the wasteland of track and cinder, watching the train slide out of the station to disappear into the evening. “The closer he gets to the stable, the faster the tired horse gallops,” said Ishvar, and Om nodded.

Their first day with Dina Dalai was over. Borne along by the homeward-bound flock, exhausted from ten hours of sewing, they shared the sanctity of the hour with the crowd, this time of transition from weariness to hope. Soon it would be night; they would borrow Rajaram’s stove, cook something, eat. They would weave their plans and dream the future into favourable patterns, till it was time to take the train tomorrow morning.

The end of the platform sloped downwards to become one with the gravel hugging the rails. Here was the crucial opening in the endless cast-iron fence, where one of its spear-pointed bars had corroded at the hands of the elements, and broken away with a little help from human hands.

The swelling knot of men and women trickled through the gap, far from the exit where the ticket-collector stood. Others, with an agility prompted by their ticketless state, ran farther down the tracks, over cinders and gravel sharp against bare soles and ill-shod feet. They ran between the rails, stretching their strides from worn wooden sleeper to sleeper, vaulting over the fence at a safe distance from the station.

Though he had a ticket, Om yearned to follow them in the heroic dash for freedom. He felt he too could soar if he was alone. Then he glanced sideways at his uncle who was more-than-uncle, whom he could never abandon. The spears of the fence stood in the dusk like the rusting weapons of a phantom army. The ticketless men seemed ancient, breaching the enemy’s ranks, soaring over the barbs as if they would never come down to earth.

Suddenly, a posse of tired policemen materialized out of the twilight and surrounded the gap-seeking crowd. A few constables gave halfhearted chase to the railing jumpers in the distance. The only energetic one among them was an inspector brandishing a swagger-stick and shouting orders and encouragement.

“Catch them all! Move, move, move! No one gets away! Back to the platform, all you crooks! You there!” he pointed with the swagger-stick. “Stop lagging! We’ll teach you to travel without tickets!”

The tailors’ attempt to inform someone, anyone, that they actually had tickets was drowned in the noise and confusion. “Please, havaldar, we were only taking a shortcut,” they implored the nearest uniform, but were herded along with the rest. The ticket-collector wagged a reproving finger as the captive column shuffled past him.

Outside, the prisoners were loaded onto a police truck. The last few were levered in with the help of the tailgate. “We’re finished,” said someone. “I heard that under Emergency law, no ticket means one week in the lockup.”

For an hour they were kept sweating in the truck while the inspector attended to some business in the ticket office. Then the truck started down the station road, followed by the inspector’s jeep. They journeyed for ten minutes and turned into a vacant lot, where the tailgate was thrown open.

“Out! Everybody out! Out, out, out!” shouted the inspector with a penchant for triplets, slapping the swagger-stick against the truck tyre. “Men on this side, women on that side!” He organized the two groups into a formation of rows six deep.

“Attention everyone! Grab hold of your ears! Come on, catch them! Catch, catch, catch! What are you waiting for? Now you will do fifty baithuks! Ready, begin! One! Two! Three!” He prowled among the rows, supervising the knee-bends and counting, performing sudden about-turns to catch them off guard. If he found someone cheating, not doing a full squat or releasing their ears, he let them have it with his stick.

“… forty-eight, forty-nine, fifty! That’s it! And if you are found again without a ticket, I will make you remember your grandmothers! Now you can go home! Go! What are you waiting for? Go, go, go!”

The crowd dispersed rapidly, making jokes about the punishment and the inspector. “Stupid Rajaram,” said Om. “From now on I’m not going to believe anything from his mouth. Get a ration card, he told us, it’s very easy. Take the shortcut, you’ll save time.”

“Ah, no harm done,” said Ishvar genially. Back at the railway station he had been quite frightened. “Look, the police spared us some walking, we are almost at the colony.”

They crossed the road and continued towards the hutments. The familiar hoarding loomed into view, but the illustration was different. “What happened?” said Om. “Where did Modern Bread and Amul Butter go?”

The advertisements had been replaced by the Prime Minister’s picture, proclaiming: “Iron Will! Hard Work! These will sustain us!” It was a quintessential specimen of the face that was proliferating on posters throughout the city. Her cheeks were executed in the lurid pink of cinema billboards. Other aspects of the portrait had suffered greater infelicities. Her eyes evoked the discomfort of a violent itch somewhere upon the ministerial corpus, begging to be scratched. The artist’s ambition of a benignant smile had also gone awry — a cross between a sneer and the vinegary sternness of a drillmistress had crept across the mouth. And that familiar swatch of white hair over her forehead, imposing amid the black, had plopped across the scalp like the strategic droppings of a very large bird.

“Look at it, Om. She is making the sour-lime face, just like yours when you are upset.”

Om obliged by duplicating the expression, then laughed. The towering visage continued to deliver its frozen monition to trains rumbling by on one side, and buses and motorcars scrambling in clouds of exhaust on the other, while the tailors trudged to the hutment colony.

The hair-collector emerged as they were unlocking their shack. “You naughty children, you are so late,” he complained.

“But-”

“Never mind, it’s only a small obstacle. The food will soon get warm again. I put off the stove because vegetables were drying up.” He disappeared inside to return with the frying pan and three plates. “Bhaji and chapati. And my special masala wada with mango chutney, to celebrate your first day at work.”

“How much trouble you’re taking for us,” said Ishvar.

“Oh, it’s nothing.”

Rajaram let the food heat for a minute, then handed out the plates with the four items neatly arranged around the circumference. A substantial amount still remained in the pan. “You cooked too much,” said Ishvar.

“I had a little extra money today, so I bought more vegetables. For them,” he pointed with his elbow at the other shack. “That drunken fellow’s little ones are always hungry.”

While they ate, the tailors described the police action against ticketless travel. The gift of dinner softened the accusing tone Om had planned to use; he told it like a traveller’s adventure instead.

Rajaram clapped a dramatic hand to his forehead. “What foolishness on my part — I completely forgot to warn you. You see, it’s been months and months since a raid.” He slapped his forehead again. “Some people travel all their lives without buying a single ticket. And you two get caught on the first day. Even with tickets,” he chuckled.

Ishvar and Om, appreciating the irony, started laughing too. “Just bad luck. Must be a new policy because of Emergency.”

“But it was all a big show. Why did the inspector let everyone go, if they are really getting strict?”

Rajaram thought about it while chewing, and fetched glasses of water for everyone. “Maybe they had no choice. From what I hear, the jails are full with the Prime Minister’s enemies — union workers, newspaper people, teachers, students. So maybe there is no more room in the prisons.”

While they were mulling over the incident, cries of joy went up near the water tap. It had started gurgling! And so late in the night! People watched the spout, holding their breath. A few drops dribbled out. Then a little stream. They cheered it like a winning racehorse as it gathered strength, gushing full and strong. A miracle! The hutment dwellers clapped and shouted with excitement.

“It has happened once before,” said Rajaram. “I think someone made a mistake at the waterworks, opening the wrong valve.”

“They should make such mistakes more often,” said Ishvar.

Women ran to the tap to make the most of the fortuitous flow. Babies in their arms squealed with delight as cool water glided over their sticky skin. Older children skipped about gleefully, bursting into little involuntary dances, looking forward to the generous drenching instead of the meagre mugfuls at dawn.

“Maybe we should also fill up now,” said Om. “Save time in the morning.”

“No,” said Rajaram. “Let the little ones enjoy. Who knows when they’ll get a chance like this again.”

The festivities lasted less than an hour; the tap went dry as suddenly as it had started. Children soaped in anticipation had to be wiped off and sent to bed disappointed.

Over the next fortnight, the slumlord erected another fifty ramshackle huts in the field, which Navalkar rented out in a day, doubling the population. Now the fetid smell from the ditch hung permanently over the shacks, thicker than smoke. There was nothing to distinguish the small hutment colony from the huge slum across the road; it had been incorporated into the inferno. The rush at the water tap assumed riotous proportions. Accusations of queue-jumping were exchanged every morning, there was pushing and shoving, scuffles broke out, pots were overturned, mothers screamed, children wailed.

The monsoon season started, and on the first night of rain, the tailors were awakened by the roof leaking on their bedding. They sat huddled in the only dry corner. The rain poured down beside them in a steady stream and gradually lulled them into slumber. Then the rain slowed. The leak became an aggravating drip. Om began counting the splashes in his head. He reached a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand, counting, adding, tallying, as though hoping to dry them out by attaining a high enough number.

They ended up sleeping very little. In the morning, Rajaram climbed onto the roof to examine the corrugated iron. He helped them spread a piece of plastic, not quite wide enough, over the leaking area.

Later that week, heartened by the remuneration from Dina Dalai, Ishvar was able to plan a little shopping excursion to buy a large plastic sheet and a few other items. “What do you say, Om? Now we can make our house more comfortable, hahn?”

His suggestion was greeted with a mournful silence. They stopped at a pavement stall selling polythene bowls, boxes, and assorted tableware. “So, what colour plates and glasses shall we get?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“A towel? That yellow one with flowers, maybe?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Would you like new sandals?”

“Doesn’t matter” came yet again, and Ishvar finally lost his patience. “What’s wrong with you these days? All the time with Dinabai you make mistakes and argue. You take no interest in tailoring. Anything I ask, you say doesn’t matter. Make an effort, Om, make an effort.” He cut the shopping expedition short, and they started back with two red plastic buckets, a Primus stove, five litres of kerosene, and a package of jasmine agarbatti.

Ahead they heard the familiar dhuk-dhuka dhuk-dhuka of Monkey-man’s little handheld drum. The string-tied rattle bounced upon the skin as he spun his wrist. He was not looking to collect a crowd, merely accompanying his charges home. One of his little brown monkeys had hitched a ride on his shoulder, the other ambled along listlessly. The emaciated dog followed at a distance, sniffing, chewing newspaper in which food had once been wrapped. Monkey-man whistled, and called “Tikka!” and the mongrel trotted up.

The monkeys started teasing Tikka, tweaking his ears, twisting his tail, pinching his penis. He bore his tormentors with a dignified calm. His reprieve came when the red plastic buckets swinging from Om’s hands attracted the monkeys’ attention. They decided to investigate, and hopped in.

“Laila! Majnoo! Stop it!” scolded their master, tugging the leashes. They bobbed their heads out over the bucket rims.

“It’s okay,” said Om, enjoying their pranks. “Let them have some fun. They must have worked hard all day.”

They walked together to the hutment colony, the tailors, Monkey-man, and his animals, moving to the drum’s hypnotic dhuk-dhuka. Laila and Majnoo soon tired of the buckets and began clambering over Om, sitting on his shoulders or his head, hanging from his arms, clinging to his legs. He laughed all the way home, and Ishvar smiled with pleasure.

Om’s playfulness vanished when he and the monkeys parted company. Once again he sank into his gloom, casting a nauseated look in Rajaram’s direction, who was sorting his bags of hair outside the shack. The little black mounds looked like a collection of shaggy human heads.

Seeing the two laden with purchases, Rajaram complimented them. “Makes me happy to see you started on the road to prosperity.”

“You need spectacles if you think this is the road to prosperity,” snapped Om. He went inside and unrolled the bedding.

“What’s the matter with him?” asked Rajaram, hurt.

“I think he’s just tired. But listen, today you must eat with us. To celebrate our new stove.”

“How can I refuse such good friends?”

They prepared the food together, and called Om when it was ready. Halfway through the meal, Rajaram asked if he could borrow ten rupees. The request took Ishvar by surprise. He had assumed the hair-collector was doing well in his line of work, judging by his enthusiastic talk during the past fortnight.

The hesitation showed on his face, for Rajaram added, “I’ll return it in a week, don’t worry. Business is little slow right now. But a new style is coming into fashion for women. Everyone will start chopping off their plaits. Those long chotelas will fall straight into my lap.”

“Stop talking about hair,” said Om. “It makes my stomach sick.” After dinner, instead of sitting outside to chat and smoke with them, he said he had a headache and went to bed.

His uncle came in an hour later and stood watching the back of Om’s head for a minute. Poor child, what a burden of terrible memories he had to carry. He leaned across and saw his eyes were open. “Om? Headache gone?”

He groaned and answered no.

“Patience, Om, it will go.” To cheer him up, he added, “Our stars must be in the proper position at last. Everything is going well, hahn?”

“How can you keep repeating such rubbish? A lousy, stinking house we live in. Our jobs are terrible, that Dinabai watching us like a vulture, harassing us, telling us when to eat and when to belch.”

Ishvar sighed; his nephew was in one of his implacable black moods. He lit two sticks from the jasmine agarbatti package. “This will make our house smell nice. Sleep well, your headache will be gone in the morning.”

Late at night, after the harmonium player’s song was silent and Tikka stopped barking, it was the noises from the hair-collector’s shack that continued to keep Om awake. There was a visitor. A woman giggled, then Rajaram laughed. Soon he was panting, and the sounds through the plywood walls tormented Om. He thought of them naked amid those eerie bags of hair, contorting in the erotic poses of cinema posters. He thought of Shanti by the water tap, her lovely shining hair, the tightness of her blouse when she lifted the big brass pot to her head, the things he could do with her in the bushes by the railroad. He looked at his uncle, sound asleep. He got out of bed, went to the side of the shack, and masturbated. The woman next door was just departing. He hid in the shadows till she was gone.

He fell asleep after midnight only to be awakened by piercing screams. This time Ishvar was roused as well. “Hai Ram! What can that be?”

Outside, they ran into Rajaram, smiling contentedly. Om scowled at him with equal parts of envy and disgust. People were emerging from shacks all down the row. Then word spread that it was a woman in labour, and everyone went back to sleep. The screams ceased after a while.

In the morning, they heard that a girl had been born during the early hours. “Let’s go and give them good wishes,” said Ishvar.

“You go if you like,” said Om gloomily.

“Ah, don’t be so unhappy,” he ruffled his hair. “We will find a wife for you, I promise.”

“Find her for yourself, I don’t need one.” He moved out of reach and snatched the comb on the packing case to restore his hair.

“Back in two minutes,” said Ishvar. “Then off to work.”

Om sat in the doorway, fingering a piece of chiffon he had slipped in his pocket yesterday from the scraps littering Dina Dalai’s floor. How comforting it felt, liquid between his fingers — why couldn’t life be like that, soft and smooth. He caressed his cheek with it, observing the drunkard’s children running about, sprawling in the dust, passing the time till their mother took them out to beg. One of them found a curiously shaped stone, which he showed off to his siblings. Then they chased a crow probing a lump of something rotten. The mettlesome bird refused to fly away, hopping, circling, returning to the putrefying tidbit to provide more fun for the children. How could they be so happy? wondered Om — dirty and naked, ill-fed, sores on their faces, rashes on their skin. What was there for anyone to laugh about in this wretched place?

He slipped the chiffon back into his pocket and wandered to Monkey-man’s shack. Laila was grooming Majnoo, and he settled down to watch. A minute later, they had jumped onto his shoulders, combing their delicate infant-sized fingers through his hair.

Seeing that Om did not mind, Monkey-man smiled and let them be. “They do it to me also,” he said. “Means they like you. Best way of keeping a clean head.”

Laila found something in Om’s hair and held it up to examine. Majnoo grabbed it from her paw and put it in his mouth.

Om chose a black Hercules at the rental shop on the road to Dina Dalai’s flat. It had an impressive spring-loaded carrier over the rear wheel and a large shiny bell on the handlebars.

“But why do you need a cycle?” persisted Ishvar. His nephew smiled cunningly while the man used a spanner to adjust the seat height.

“One month has passed since we started working for her,” said Om. “That’s long enough, I’ve made my plan.” The freshly pumped-up tyres withstood the inspecting squeeze of his fingers. He wheeled it out into the main street. “Today is her day to go to the export company, right? And I’m going to follow her taxi on my cycle.” Swinging one leg lightly over the saddle, he rolled off.

“Careful,” said Ishvar. “Traffic is heavy, it’s not our village road.” On the kerb he quickened his pace to keep up. “The plan is good, Om, but you forgot one thing — her padlocked door. How will you get out?”

“Wait and see.”

Freewheeling alongside his uncle, Om was in high spirits. The mudguards rattled and the brakes were spongy, though the bell worked perfectly. Tring-tring tring-tring, his thumb urged it on, tring-tring. Brimming with confidence, he plunged into the traffic on his carilloning cycle, on the wheels that would help put the future right.

He returned to the safety of the kerb, and Ishvar breathed easier. The scheme was absurd, but he was happy that his nephew was enjoying himself. He watched him swing the handlebars from side to side and backpedal, to keep from racing ahead. Om on the saddle performed an intricate dance, the dance of balancing-at-slow-speed. Soon, hoped Ishvar, he would forsake his crazy ideas and perform with equal facility the arduous dance of sewing-for-the-employer.

At Om’s prompting, Ishvar got on the carrier behind the saddle. He sat sideways, legs straight out. With his feet inches off the ground, sandals grazing the road now and then, they sailed away. Om’s optimism pealed in the tring-tring showers spouting from the bell. For a while the world was perfect.

Soon, the tailors neared the corner where the beggar was wheeling his platform around. They stopped to toss him a coin. It landed with a clink in the empty can.

They hid the bicycle at a safe distance from Dina Dalai’s door, in a cobwebby stairwell that smelled of urine and country liquor. Chaining it to a disused gas pipe, they emerged brushing off the invisible threads clinging to their hands and faces. Ghosts of the webs continued to bother them for some time. Their fingers kept returning to their foreheads and necks to remove strands that were not there.

Dina’s fingers flitted like skittish butterflies, folding the dresses for delivery to Au Revoir Exports. She checked the paper patterns to make sure everything was accounted for. The manager had been repeatedly dire about them. “Guard the patterns with your life,” Mrs. Gupta always said. “If they fall in the wrong hands my entire company will be ruined.”

Dina thought this was somewhat exaggerated. Nonetheless, she could not help feeling, while sorting through the brown-paper sections of bodice and sleeve and collar, that her own torso and arms and neck were at stake. Of late, she sensed a haughtiness in Mrs. Gupta, as though the manager had discovered they were not social equals. She no longer left her desk to greet her and see her off, nor did she offer tea or a Fanta.

Her fingers returned nervously to the folded garments, picking one up at random, examining its seams and hems. Would this lot pass Mrs. Gupta’s inspection? How many rejections? The angelic tailors had fallen from grace; carelessness was rife now in their handiwork.

From his corner, Om watched as Dina completed her weekly performance of fretfulness. His thoughts were bent on bracing himself; the moment was approaching.

It was now.

She snapped shut her handbag.

He stabbed his left index finger with the scissors.

The pain, sharper than expected, jolted him. He had assumed that because it was anticipated, it would be less intense, the way it was with anticipated pleasure. The blood spurted in bright-red arcs upon the yellow voile.

“Oh my goodness!” said Dina. “What have you done!” She grabbed a snippet of cloth from the floor and pressed it over the cut. “Raise the hand, raise it up or more blood will flow.”

“Hai Ram!” said Ishvar, removing the soiled garment from under the presser foot of the Singer. Just when he thought his nephew was improving, he did this. His obsession to find the export company was not good.

“Quick, soak that dress in the bucket,” said Dina. She got the tincture of benzoin from her first-aid box and applied it liberally. The cut was not as serious as the blood had led her to believe. She indulged in the relief of a scolding.

“Careless boy! What were you trying to do? Where is your mind? A skinny person cannot afford to lose so much blood. But always there is so much anger, so much haste in whatever you do.”

Still stunned by what his scissors had accomplished, a lukewarm scowl was the best Om could reply with. He liked the pungent fragrance of the golden-brown liquid coating his finger. She taped a cotton wad tightly over the cut as the bleeding slowed to a trickle.

“Your finger has made me late. Now the manager will be upset.” She did not mention the cost of the bloodstained garment. Better to see if the voile was salvageable before discussing restitution. She took the bundle of dresses to the door and picked up the padlock.

“It’s paining too much,” said Om. “I want to go to doctor.”

And now Ishvar understood: the encounter of scissors and finger was part of his nephew’s foolish plan.

“Doctor for this? Don’t be a baby,” she said. “Rest with your hand up for a while, you will be all right.”

Om screwed his face into caricatures of agony. “What if my finger rots and falls off because of your advice? It will be on your head, for sure.”

She suspected the act was put on to shirk the afternoon’s work, but it planted the seed of unease in her mind. “What do I care — go if you want,” she said brusquely.

The stress of dealing with these two fellows, their sloppy work, their tardiness, was wearing her out, she felt. Mrs. Gupta was bound to cancel the arrangement sooner or later. The only question was, which would disappear first, the tailors or her health. She envisioned two leaky faucets: one said Money, the other, Sanity. And both were dripping away simultaneously.

Thank goodness that Maneck Kohlah was arriving tomorrow. At least his room and board was one hundred per cent guaranteed income.

Om watched from a distance, holding aloft his punctured finger until Dina was inside the taxi. Then, spurred by the smell of success, he rushed to his hiding place.

By the time he unlocked the bicycle and wheeled it out from under the stairs, the taxi had disappeared. He raced to the side street and — there it was, waiting at the red traffic light.

He caught up, staying two cars away. Keeping her in sight was as important as keeping himself out of sight. He sped up, slowed down, ducked behind buses, changed lanes like a demon. Cars honked in protest. People shouted at him and made nasty gestures. He was forced to ignore them, the taxi and bicycle requiring all his concentration.

So confident was he now of tracking the destination, he was trembling. It was a curious palpitation, the excitement of the hunter mingling with the trepidation of the hunted.

The street merged into the main road, and the traffic was thicker now, deranged and bad-tempered, worse than anything he had encountered so far. Within minutes he was panting with frustration. The taxi was lost and found half a dozen times, slipping farther away. Scores of identical yellow and black Fiats swarming the street, their bulky meters sticking out on the left side, did not make his task easier.

Confused, Om began to lose his nerve. The brief early-morning ride from the train station was no preparation for the hysteria of midday traffic. It was like seeing wild animals lethargic in zoo cages, then coming upon them in the jungle. Making a final desperate bid, he squeezed between two cars and was knocked off his bicycle. People screamed from the pavement.

“Hai bhagwan! Poor boy is finished!”

“Crushed to death!”

“Careful, his bones might be broken!”

“Catch the chauffeur! Don’t let him run! Bash the rascal!”

Feeling bad about generating so much needless concern, Om stood up, dragging the bicycle after him. He had scraped his elbow and bruised one knee, but was otherwise unhurt.

Now it was the chauffeur’s turn. He emerged boldly from the car where he had been cowering. “You have eyes or marbles?” he screamed. “Can’t see where you’re going? Causing damage to people’s property!”

A policeman arrived and checked most solicitously on the passengers in the car. “Everybody all right, sahab?” Om looked on, a little dazed, and also frightened. Were people who caused accidents sent to jail? His finger was bleeding again, throbbing madly.

A man in an ochre-coloured safari suit, snuggled in the back of the car, fished out his wallet. He passed the policeman some money, then beckoned his chauffeur to the window. The chauffeur put something in Om’s hands. “Now go! And be more careful or you’ll kill somebody! Use your God-given eyes!”

Om looked down at what lay in his shaking hands: fifty rupees.

“Come on, you paagal-ka-batcha!” shouted the policeman. “Take your cycle and clear the road!” He waved the car through with his smartest VIP salute.

Om wheeled the bicycle to the kerb. The handlebars were askew and the mudguards rattled more resolutely than before. He dusted off his pants, examining the black smears of grease on the cuffs.

“How much did he give you?” asked someone on the pavement.

“Fifty rupees.”

“You got up too fast,” said the man, shaking his head disapprovingly. “Never get up so fast. Always stay down and make some moaning-groaning noise. Cry for doctor, cry for ambulance, scream, shout, anything. In this type of case, you can pull at least two hundred rupees.” He spoke like a professional; his twisted elbow hung at his side like a qualification.

Om put the money in his pocket. He braced the front wheel between his knees and tugged at the handlebars till they were straight. He walked the bicycle down a side street, leaving the crowd to continue analysing his accident.

Returning to the flat was useless, the padlock would be on the door, hanging dark and heavy, like a bullock’s lost scrotum. He was also reluctant to turn in the bicycle early — a day’s rent had been paid in advance. He wished he had listened to his uncle in the morning. But the plan seemed so perfect when he had imagined the sequence of events, shining with success, like the sunlight gilding the handlebars. Imagination was a dangerous thing.

He mounted the bicycle where the traffic was less threatening, and took the seaward road. No longer quarry or pursuer, he could enjoy the ride now. The tinkling bell of the candy-floss man outside a school caught his ear. He stopped and squinted into the man’s neck-slung glass container, getting a hazy look at the pink, yellow, and blue cottony balls through the side that was cleanest.

“How much?”

“Twenty-five paise for one. Or try a lottery for fifty paise — win from one to ten balls.”

Om paid and dipped a hand into the brown-paper lottery bag. The chit he pulled out had a 2 scrawled on it.

“What colours?”

“One pink, one yellow.”

The man plopped off the round lid and reached inside. “Not that one, the one next to it,” directed Om.

The sweet fluff melted quickly in his mouth. Got the bigger pink ball for sure, he thought, pleased with himself as he separated a ten-rupee note from the crackling group of five. The man wiped his fingers on the neck-sling before taking it. Om pocketed the change and continued towards the sea.

At the beach he paused to read the chiselled name under a tall black stone statue. The plaque said he was a Guardian of Democracy. Om had studied about the man in his history class, in the story of the Freedom Struggle. The photo in the history book was nicer than the statue, he decided. Letting the bicycle lean against the pedestal, he rested in the statue’s shade. The sides of the pedestal were plastered with posters extolling the virtues of the Emergency. The obligatory Prime Ministerial visage was prominent. Small print explained why fundamental rights had been temporarily suspended.

He watched two men making juice at a sugar-cane stall in the sand. One fed the sticks to the crushing wheels while the other swung the handle. The latter was shirtless, his muscles rippling, skin shining with sweat as he heaved mightily at the machine. His job was harder, thought Om, and he hoped they took turns, or it would not be a fair partnership.

The frothing golden juice made Om’s mouth water. Despite the money in his pocket, he hesitated. Recently, he had heard stories in the bazaar about a cane stall that had pulped a gecko along with cane. An accident, they said — the thing was probably lurking about the innards of the machine, licking the sugary rods and gears, but many customers had been poisoned.

Liquid lizards kept swimming into Om’s thoughts, alternating with glassfuls of golden juice. Eventually the lizards won, squelching all desire for the drink. Instead, he bought a length of sugar cane, peeled and chopped into a dozen pieces. These he munched happily, chewing the juice out of them, one by one. He spat each husky mouthful in a tidy pile at the statue’s feet. His jaws tired quickly, but the ache was as satisfying as the sweetness.

The desiccated shreds attracted a curious gull. Next time he spat, he aimed for the bird. It dodged the missile and poked around in the macerated remnants, scattering the neat little hill before turning away disdainfully.

Om tossed it his last piece, unchewed. The gull’s interest was renewed. It investigated thoroughly, refusing to believe its beak was not up to tackling sugar cane.

A street urchin shooed away the gull and snatched the prize. She took it to the juice stall and washed off the sand in the bucket where the men were rinsing dirty glasses. Om felt drowsy watching her gnaw the chunk. He wished he could come here with the lovely shiny-haired girl. Shanti. He would buy bhel-puri and sugar cane for both of them. They would sit in the sand and watch the waves. Then the sun would set, the breeze would come up, they would snuggle together. They would sit with their arms around each other, and then, for sure…

Dreaming, he fell asleep. When he awoke the sun was still harsh, and shining in his eyes. An hour and a half of rental time remained on the bicycle, but he decided to turn it in anyway.

Ishvar was certain that his nephew had reached his goal, if the grinning insouciance with which he took his place at the Singer was any indication.

Dina, having returned hours ago, began scolding him. “Wasting time, that’s all it is. Were you taking a tour of the whole city? How far away is your doctor — at the southernmost tip of Lanka?”

“Yes, I was carried through the sky by Lord Hanuman,” he replied, wondering if she could have spied him on the bicycle.

“This fellow is getting very sharp.”

“Too sharp,” said Ishvar. “If he isn’t careful, he will cut himself again.”

“And how is the finger that was going to rot?” she inquired. “Has it fallen off yet?”

“It’s better. Doctor checked it.”

“Good. Do some work, then. Start pushing your feet, there are lots of new dresses.”

“Hahnji, right away.”

“My goodness. No more grumbling? Whatever medicine your doctor prescribed, it’s working. You should take a dose every morning.”

Unexpectedly, the last hour of the day, usually the most difficult, passed with banter and laughing. Why couldn’t it be like this every day, wished Dina. Before they left, she took advantage of their good mood to move part of the furniture from her bedroom into the sewing room.

“Are you rearranging the whole flat?” asked Ishvar.

“Just this room. I have to prepare for my guest.”

“Yes, the college boy,” said Om, remembering. They rolled up the mattress from the bed, carried in the frame and slats, then replaced the mattress. The Singers, stools, worktable were crammed closer together to make space. “When does he arrive?”

“Tomorrow night.”

She sat alone in the sewing room after they were gone, watching the floc and fibres float in the electric light. The heavily starched cloth from the Au Revoir mills mingled its cloying textile sweetness with the tailors’ scent of sweat and tobacco. She liked it while their bustle filled the room. But the smell was depressing during the empty evenings, when something acrid suspired from the bolts, stiffening the air, clouding it with thoughts of dingy factories, tubercular labourers, bleak lives. The emptiness of her own life appeared starkest at this hour.

“So. What’s the name of the company?” asked Ishvar.

“I don’t know.”

“The address?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then why so pleased? Your cunning plan got you nothing.”

“Patience, patience,” he mimicked his uncle. “It got me something.” He flashed the money and narrated his afternoon’s adventures.

Ishvar began to laugh. “Only to you could such things happen.” Neither of them seemed disappointed — it may have been the money, or relief at the failure: finding the export company would have led to some difficult choices.

A mobile Family Planning Clinic was parked outside the hutment colony when they got home. Most of the slum-dwelling multitudes were giving it a wide berth. The staff were handing out free condoms, distributing leaflets on birth-control procedures, explaining incentives being offered in cash and kind.

“Maybe I should have the operation,” said Om. “Get a Bush transistor. And then the ration card would also be possible.”

Ishvar whacked him. “Don’t even joke about such things!”

“Why? I’m never getting married. Might as well get a transistor.”

“You will marry when I tell you to. No arguments. And what’s so important about a little radio?”

“Everybody has one nowadays.” He was imagining Shanti at the beach, twilight fading, while his transistor serenaded them.

“Everybody jumps in the well, you will also? Learning big-city ways — forgetting our good, humble small-town ways.”

“You get the operation if you don’t want me to.”

“Shameless. My manhood for a stupid radio?”

“No, yaar, it’s not your manhood they want. The doctor just cuts a tiny little tube inside. You don’t even feel it.”

“Nobody is taking a knife to my balls. You want a transistor? Work hard for Dinabai, earn some money.”

Rajaram came up, displaying the condoms he had collected at the clinic. They were handing out four per person, and he wondered if they would get their quota for him if they didn’t need it. “Who knows when the van will come this way again,” he said.

“Are you a frequent fucker or what?” said Om, laughing but envious. “Not going to keep us awake again tonight, are you?”

“Shameless,” said Ishvar and tried to whack him as he skipped away to visit the monkeys.

Dina reread the letter from Mrs. Kohlah that had arrived with the first rent cheque, postdated to Maneck’s moving day. The three pages listed instructions concerning the care and comfort of Aban Kohlah’s son. There were tips about his breakfast: fried eggs should be cooked floating in butter because he disliked the leathery edges that got stuck to the pan; scrambled eggs were to be light and fluffy, with milk added during the final phase. “Having grown up in our healthy mountain air,” continued the letter, “he has a large appetite. But please don’t give him more than two eggs, not even if he asks. He must learn to balance his diet.”

About his studies, Aban Kohlah wrote that “Maneck is a good, hardworking boy, but gets distracted sometimes, so please remind him to do his lessons every day.” Also, he was very particular about his clothes, the way they were starched and ironed; a good dhobi was indispensable to his sense of well-being. And Dina should feel free to call him Mac because that was what everyone in the family called him.

Dina snorted and put away the letter. Eggs floating in butter, indeed! And a good dhobi, of all things! The nonsense that people foisted on their children. When the boy had visited last month, he seemed nothing like the person described in his mother’s letter. But that was always the case — people hardly ever saw their children as they really were.

To prepare the room for his arrival, Dina carried out her clothes, shoes, and knickknacks, making space for them amid the tailoring paraphernalia. Place was found in the trunk on the trestle for her stock of homemade sanitary pads and snippets. The larger leftovers of fabric, with which she had recently started to design a quilt, went into her cupboard’s bottom shelf. The pagoda parasol remained hanging from the top of the boarder’s cupboard, it wasn’t going to bother him there.

Her old bedroom was empty and ready for Maneck Kohlah. Her new bedroom was — horrible. I’ll probably lie sleepless, gasping for breath, she thought, hemmed in by the stacks of cloth. But it was out of the question to put the boarder in with the sewing-machines. That would make him run back to his college hostel.

She selected pieces of cloth from the bundle under the bed and settled down to make more patches for the quilt. Concentrating on the work made the anxieties about tomorrow fade. Ridiculous, she felt, to even think of competing with Aban Kohlah and the luxuries of her home in the north. Giving Maneck the bedroom was the only concession she would make.