For Now, It Is Night, page 4
“He was stubborn, but we must admit that his pen carried weight.”
“Sir, you might be right, but what good was that?” I asked. “He made us destitute. Sir, it is generous of you not to criticize him, but I must tell you – he was a vagabond who ruined his life and made his family suffer. You said his pen carried weight, sir. He suffered from the same delusion. If that was true, he would have received awards from government institutions. We live in a democracy now, not under a dictatorship. These days, awards are given after assessing a person’s abilities and are based on the merits of their work.”
Sahib laughed. I also smiled a little. “Does your family miss him?’ ” he asked after a short silence.
“No, sir, not at all. Father was already upset with him. But mother was very fond of him. She loved everything about him. When he would finally come home after wandering around all night, he would find her waiting for him with a bowl of food. But eventually, she also gave up.”
“Did you ever talk to him?”
“A lot, sir, but it was useless. As Lal Dĕd said: do not waste words of wisdom on a fool.”
Sahib rose quickly. I too got up. He went inside. I sat back on the sofa.
I had counseled my brother on many occasions. I had lectured him at length. I would summon all my knowledge and all my wisdom to persuade him. He would listen to me in silence, only to laugh it all off in the end. It made me feel inferior and made my words sound hollow. Eventually, I decided to get rid of him. I would never flourish otherwise. Several times, I thought of strangling him, but whenever I stood before him, my strength ebbed and I was drenched in sweat.
Something odd happened a few days ago, though. He came home at midnight, tears streaming down his cheeks. He hugged me the moment he saw me and sobbed inconsolably. I wiped his tears and asked him what was wrong. His voice was strained when he replied, “You made fun of my clothes and my vagabond way of life all the time, but I never took it badly. I always stood on my own two feet. I was neither helpless nor dependent. I had entrusted a hundred thousand rupees to someone, but today I found out that he’s bankrupt. Totally broke. Maybe he was always penniless, and I mistook him for a millionaire. Basically, I am ruined.”
I smelled his breath. Perhaps he’d had an extra drink that day, which is why the wretch was talking of lakhs and crores. Then he became even more incoherent and began to ramble. He talked about communism, then switched to the music halls of Czechoslovakia. He boasted about socialism and then he blathered on about income tax. He delivered a sermon on Gandhi’s non-violence and spoke of smoke rising from the cotton mills of Ahmedabad. Finally, he collapsed, exhausted, and fell to the floor with a thud.
This is the moment, I thought. I steeled myself, sought courage from God and strangled him in the dead of night. His eyes popped out and he quickly turned cold. In the morning, everyone saw his corpse lying in the room. His bulging eyes were horrifying. When we closed his eyes before covering his face, two big tears rolled out of them.
Sahib came back into the drawing room. I got up. He sat down. I also sat down.
“What were you thinking about?” he asked.
“Nothing, sir. I was just admiring your taste. The color of these walls, the design of the sofas, the choice of artwork – sir, you yourself are a great artist!”
He laughed. I also smiled a little.
“I am sure you too must have a well-decorated drawing room.”
“How I wish, sir. But because of that miserable fellow, we live in a hovel.”
“For now, you can submit an application for a plot of land. Leave the rest to God.”
Deep inside, I knew that God was with me. Finally, I confessed to Sahib that I was also writing a book and that I would like him to write the foreword.
Sahib laughed. I also smiled a little.
I left there happy. My heart assured me that God would be on my side. But I was worried that the wretch’s ghost would not let me live, prosper, or write in peace. They say that if someone is killed like this, their ghost torments even innocent people until the Day of Judgement.
Tomorrow – A Never-Ending Story
As the boys began to enter their classrooms after prayer, Sulleh of Class IV said to Makhan, “Learnt the tables for Neelkanth, bugger?”
“No. You?”
“Tried, but couldn’t memorize them.”
“What do we do now? He is a real pain in the neck.” Makhan’s face grew pale.
Sulleh laughed it off and quietly slipped something to Makhan. “Here, rub this on your hands, bugger.”
“What is it?”
“Sheep tallow. Rub it on your hands and the caning won’t hurt.”
“Swear on your father?” Makhan asked dubiously.
“May my father die if I am not telling the truth. Look, I’m putting it on my hands, too.”
The two friends quietly applied the tallow to their palms during the first four periods and all through the recess hour. Neelkanth’s class was after recess. As soon as he entered the classroom, he took off his turban and placed it on the broken shelf of a cupboard. Then he sat down in his chair, unbuttoned his coat and shirt, and began scratching his hairy chest. He stretched his legs, farted and asked the boys to recite their multiplication tables. Makhan was sixth in turn. He did all right through to the three times table, but then he faltered. Neelkanth hauled him forward by his ears. Makhan looked furtively at his hands. They were shining with sheep tallow like a bagel. But Neelkanth did not plan to cane his hands. He surveyed the classroom and noticed that Sulleh was the sturdiest of all the boys.
“Hey, you, Sulleh fatso, come here and lift this snotty fellow onto your back.” Sulleh had been quietly referring to his book to memorize the tables. He closed it quickly, shoved it into the cloth bag in which he carried his books, and stood up. He glanced at Makhan, sniggered, and lifted him onto his back. Neelkanth pulled down Makhan’s pants and began hitting the soft, tender flesh with his cane.
Makhan screamed, “Oh father dear! Oh mother mine! I am dead. Sir, I swear I’ll know them by heart tomorrow! Oh father, I am dead. May God give all your misfortunes to me, Master Ji, tomorrow I will memorize everything, you will see, sir.”
“Do you promise?” Neelkanth asked.
“I promise. If I don’t know them tomorrow, skin me alive, sir.”
“Put him down, then,” Neelkanth said to Sulleh before asking the entire class, “Will all of you have learnt the tables till sixteen tomorrow?
“Yes sir,” all boys shouted together, Sulleh the loudest of all.
“All those who hadn’t learnt the tables for today, pinch your ears in shame.”
Several boys pinched their ears, Makhan before everyone else.
At four o’clock, the two friends left for home together. On the way, as Sulleh began to say something, Makhan snapped, “Shut up, you bugger, I know what a loyal friend you are.”
“Hey, I didn’t put you on my back because I wanted to. I did what Master Ji asked me to do.”
“To hell with your sheep tallow!”
“As if I knew he would beat your arse. You should have rubbed it there, it wouldn’t have hurt.”
“Shut your mouth or I will break your teeth!”
“You are asking for trouble, you lentil-eating Brahmin!”
“Shut up, you gasbag.”
When they reached the main road, the convent school bus had just arrived. Children wearing white shirts, red ties, red socks, black shoes and green shorts or skirts, were getting off the bus as their mothers waited for them. They all carried little lunchboxes in their hands. While Sulleh looked at a boy with soft hair and milk-white legs, Makhan fixed his gaze on a girl with blue eyes.
Apparently, the boy had not eaten his lunch, for his mother was saying, “You should have told me that you don’t like keema, I would have given you some mutton, or a couple of eggs. There were some pieces of fish leftover from yesterday – you could have had those too. Why did you starve yourself?” The boy simply smiled in reply.
Suddenly Sulleh turned to Makhan and asked, “What did they cook at your house today?”
“Collard greens and mallow leaves.”
“As plain and boring as I thought.”
Makhan did not hear him. Perhaps he was thinking about the blue-eyed girl.
The next day, after the bell had rung, when all the boys had assembled in the school compound for morning prayer, Sulleh happened to look around. He turned deathly pale when he saw his father talking to the headmaster outside the school gate. He thought of running out, but the peon was guarding the gate. The lump of sheep tallow was in his pocket – he had not yet rubbed it on his hands. Soon, the headmaster returned and the peon shut the gate.
“Sulleh of Class IV, step out,” commanded the headmaster as he walked in.
Sulleh’s legs were trembling, but slowly, he managed to step out of the line. He blew on his hands to warm them.
Waving his cane, the headmaster said, “Do you know what Sulleh did at home yesterday?”
“No, sir,” the boys shouted at the top of their voices.
“He threw pots and pans around, smashed drinking glasses and bit his mother’s thumb. And do you know why?”
“No, sir.”
“He demanded hot rice and a tasty curry.”
“Hot rice and tasty curry! Ha ha ha…” all the boys laughed.
“Should he have asked for this food?”
“No, sir.”
“If your parents give you cold rice, you eat it. If they give you collard greens, you eat them. And if they give you nothing, you stay quiet, right?”
“Yes, sir.”
The headmaster hit Sulleh a dozen times on each hand with his cane, and then asked the Molvi Sahib to bite the boy’s left thumb. Sulleh bore the sting of the cane on his hands, but the bite made him scream and he slumped to the ground. The headmaster kicked him hard twice, and sent him back to his place among the row of boys.
The morning prayer began. Two boys from Class V – Javed Ahmed and Ashok Kumar – stepped forward and starting singing:
My desire comes to my lips as a prayer
O God may my life shine like a candle
The other boys repeated the lines as loudly as they could. Sulleh, still hiccupping from his sobs, sang through his tears.
May my presence rid the world of darkness
May every place brighten with my sparkling light
After prayer, the boys went to their respective classrooms. When Makhan saw Sulleh, his eyes red and sunken, he was filled with pity and his anger from the previous day vanished. It occurred to him that if his own father had been alive, he too would have come to the school to have him thrashed every now and then. Just as well he was dead. Whatever his mother did to him, she did herself. She would never come to school with a complaint. But the very next moment, he thought of Master Neelkanth and remembered that he had still not memorized his multiplication tables. To ask Sulleh for the sheep tallow now would be awkward. Besides, he had no faith in it anymore. He considered the matter, and in the end, decided that his own remedy seemed to be the best: he muttered Goddess Kali’s name seven times and tied a knot in the hem of his shirt.
Neelkanth entered the classroom after recess. As usual, he took off his turban and placed it in the broken cupboard, took his shoes off and sat cross-legged on his chair. As he scratched his head, he asked the students to recite their tables. The first boy had not quite finished when Makhan stood up suddenly.
“And what thunderbolt has hit you, may I ask?”
“I want to go to the toilet.”
“Oh, really? Sit down at once or I’ll thrash you.”
Makhan sat down but stood up again after a few minutes.
“Master Ji, I’m bursting.”
“No mischief in my class. I will beat it out of your bottom.”
“Master Ji, I’m not lying, I really need to go.”
Neelkanth looked at Makhan’s face. His eyes were filling with tears. Neelkanth saw that the boy was telling the truth and allowed him to leave.
In the toilet, Makhan began to think that tying a knot at the hem of a shirt really did have power. Otherwise, why had he suddenly felt the urge to shit? He had relieved himself at home in the morning. It’s clear, Maha Kali does not abandon her devotees in their hour of need. By the time he got back to the classroom, Neelkanth’s class would be done.
School ended at four o’clock, and Makhan and Sulleh set off for home. Sulleh wanted to continue walking when they reached the main road, but Makhan stopped him, “Let’s wait for the convent school bus.”
“To hell with that. We’ll only get beaten for it.”
Makhan did not understand what that meant, but he kept quiet. Sulleh took Makhan’s arm and tried to pull him along, but Makhan’s feet refused to move. Eventually, Sulleh went on alone. But after a short distance, he saw some men playing cards and stopped to watch the game.
A few minutes later, the convent bus arrived and the children dressed in skirts and shorts, socks, shoes and ties, trotted out. The girl with the blue eyes emerged after a few children had got off the bus. She handed her lunchbox and school bag to her mother and tightened the belt on her skirt. Makhan’s heart pounded against his ribs, as if the headmaster had made him run around the school compound eight times. He watched her enter the baker’s lane.
The next day, school continued as usual until recess when suddenly there was a commotion – two boys had drowned at Habba Kadal. The school bell did not ring for a long time, and when it did, teachers assembled all the boys in the compound and instructed them to stand in rows as they did for morning prayers. After a while, the headmaster came out and delivered a lecture: “Boys must not go to the river ghats to bathe because the river is infested with crocodiles. Crocodile is an aquatic animal that resembles a lizard but it is much bigger in size. As soon as anyone enters the river, its jaws close on his legs and he is dragged down. It’s called ‘crocodile’ in English and ‘crocodile tears’ is a phrase…”
The deputy headmaster came around with a stamp and ink pad to mark every boy’s thigh with the school emblem. The headmaster continued his speech: “The stamp of the school is being put on each boy’s thigh and we shall check it every day. If this stamp is found erased, the boy will be thrashed with stinging nettles.”
As soon as the deputy headmaster had finished stamping all the boys, school was closed for the day.
On the way home, Makhan said to Sulleh, “Suppose we told them we bathed under a tap – how could they tell?”
“Do you think they are fools? They know there’s no water in the taps. No chance that your trick will work!”
Makhan pulled up his shorts and said to Sulleh, “See, how beautiful this mark of slavery looks on our thighs.”
“Legs of mutton are stamped like this at butcher shops,” Sulleh replied.
They reached the main road. Makhan said to Sulleh, “We were spared Neelkanth the Crocodile’s class today.”
“Yes.”
“Did he ask you to recite the tables yesterday?”
“No, I got away, luckily.”
“Swear on your father?”
“On my father’s death, I swear.”
“But how?”
“He asked me to massage his head instead.”
They were quiet for a while, and then Makhan said, “The convent bus hasn’t come today.”
“It can’t come now, we were let off early today. Let’s go.”
“Let’s wait.”
“No, the Crocodile is sure to demand his tables tomorrow.”
But Makhan had developed faith in the power of a knot in the hem of his shirt. So he replied indifferently, “We will see, tomorrow is a long way off.”
Tomorrow came and went for many days, for what seemed like a long time. The form master was made responsible for the boys’ hygiene, and before the morning prayer, he would ask them to show him the stamps on their thighs. The stamp had faded completely for many of the boys but some still had a faint impression on their thighs. However, Sulleh’s and Makhan’s were as fresh as if they were new. In fact, the layers of grime that had accumulated around the impressions made them more visible. The form master understood that this pair had obeyed the headmaster’s order to the letter while the others had surreptitiously taken an occasional bath. He was pleased with the two. Letting them off early, he sent them to work with the carpenters at his own house.
Sulleh and Makhan were happy to be working at the form master’s house. Their job was to pass the planks, beams, and nails to the carpenters, fill water in the hookah, tamp tobacco in its bowl, place the embers carefully, and puff at it till it was properly lit. The beams tore Makhan’s shirt. Sulleh was smarter…he had taken off his shirt and worked in only his shorts.
At four o’clock, the boys picked up their bundles of books and left for home. As they reached the main road, Makhan’s feet automatically came to a halt. Sulleh laughed and stopped too. Soon, the Convent school bus arrived and the children started to alight. Today, they wore their winter uniforms – black shoes, red socks, warm grey flannel pants and sweaters, white shirts, red ties, and cherry-red blazers with school badges pinned on the upper pockets. Makhan looked hard, but could not see the girl with the blue eyes. “Let’s go…it’s getting late and it’s cold,” Sulleh’s words jolted Makhan out of his thoughts. He felt the cold too, and they headed home.
About a month later, school closed for the winter vacation. When it reopened, there was still snow on roads, boundary walls, and in yards. The boys had snowball fights before the school bell rang. Sulleh and Makhan buried many boys in the snow, thrust snowballs down the collars of many others, and made snow effigies of the headmaster, Master Neelkanth, and Molvi Sahib. In their excitement, they realized for the first time how good they were at these games. They spared hardly anyone. Dragging Ashok Kumar and Javed Ahmed of Class V through the snow doubled their glee, and this game lasted until the fourth period. No teacher showed up in class for the first two periods. The third period was Molvi Sahib’s. He demanded Shivaratri walnuts from the Pandit students and forgot to check the homework assigned for the vacation. But in the fourth period, the deputy headmaster entered the classroom and demanded the homework immediately. Many boys turned deathly pale. Makhan quickly tied a knot in the hem of his shirt. Sulleh did not seem to have the lump of tallow with him. He looked up at the deputy headmaster with a beseeching expression in his eyes. The deputy headmaster asked Sulleh, Makhan and all the others who had not done their homework to stand up. He banged on the wood stove’s pipes with a stick, collected the fallen soot and smeared it on their faces. He ordered the class monitor to parade them around all the classrooms. Makhan heaved a sigh of relief at having escaped a beating. He was now totally convinced that tying a knot in the hem of the shirt had divine powers. As he went down the stairs, he said to Sulleh, “The other day, on Shivaratri, I watched a film with my cousin. The black giant in it looked exactly like you.”
