A Fine Balance (79 page)

He reached the end of the pavement and screamed. The platform took flight, sailing out into the busy intersection.

M
aneck stayed in the centre of the stairway, away from the paan-stained banisters and the ugly daubs of God-knows-what on the wall. The old revulsion returned as he climbed the hostel stairs. Empty cigarette packs, a shattered lightbulb, a blackened banana peel, chapati in newspaper, orange rind littered the corridors. Was the jharoowalla late, or had the garbage descended since the morning sweep? he wondered.

He did not expect to find Avinash in, but decided he would leave the box with someone, maybe at the counter in the lobby. Reaching his floor, he held his breath while passing the toilets. The stench confirmed their continuing state of disrepair, the stink so deep it could be tasted in the throat.

His old room was vacant, the door unlocked. No one had occupied it since his departure, it was exactly the way he had left it. Eerie to look at, as though he were split in two – one half still living here, the other half with Dina Aunty. And the bed, a foot away from the wall, its four legs in cans of water. Avinash’s method, to discourage crawling things – it had worked really well. Avinash used to joke that what he didn’t know about cockroaches and bedbugs after being raised in the mill tenements wasn’t worth knowing.

Maneck went closer, half-expecting to see water in the cans. They were dry, empty except for brown cockroach eggs, a dead moth, and a drowsy spider. The water had left rings on the wooden legs. His watermark: Maneck Was Here. Desk and chair, the faithful witnesses to so many games of chess, were near the window, where they had been shifted to catch a better light. Seemed so long ago.

He withdrew and shut the door gently on the past. To his surprise, there were sounds coming from the next room. What would Avinash say when he saw him? What would he say to Avinash? He collected himself, he didn’t want to look anxious or uncertain.

He knocked.

The door opened, and a middle-aged couple gazed at him questioningly. They both had grey hair, the man hollow-cheeked and coughing terribly, the woman red-eyed. Must be the parents, he decided.

“Hello, I’m Avinash’s friend.” Perhaps they were expecting him back soon, he could be around somewhere in the building. “Are you waiting for him?”

“No,” the man spoke in a small voice. “The waiting is over. Everything is over.” They moved back slowly, weighed down by invisible burdens, and beckoned him inside. “We are his mother and father. Today we cremated him.”

“Pardon? Today what?”

“Cremated today, yes. And after a very long delay. For months and months we have been searching for our son. Going to all different police stations, begging for help. Nobody would help us.”

His voice quavered, and he stopped, making an effort to control it. “Four days ago they told us there was a body in the morgue. They sent us to check.”

The mother began to cry, and hid her face in a corner of her sari. The father’s coughing stabbed the air as he tried to comfort her; he touched her arm lightly with his fingers. A door slammed somewhere in the corridor.

“But what – I mean … nothing, no one …” stammered Maneck. The father put a hand on his shoulder.

Maneck cleared his throat and tried again. “We were friends.” And the parents nodded, seeming to take comfort in the feeble fact. “But I didn’t know… what happened?”

The mother spoke now, her words fluttering away almost unheard. “We don’t know either. We came here straight from the cremation ceremony. It went well, thanks to God’s grace. No rain, and the pyre flamed brilliantly. We stayed with it all night.”

The father nodded. “They told us the body was found many months ago, on the railway tracks, no identification. They said he died because he fell off a fast train. They said he must have been hanging from the door or sitting on the roof. But Avinash was careful, he never did such things.” His eyes were watering again, he paused to wipe them. The mother touched his arm lightly with her fingers.

He was able to continue. “At last, after such a long time, we saw our son. We saw burns on many shameful parts of his body, and when his mother picked up his hand to press it to her forehead, we could see that his fingernails were gone. So we asked them in the morgue, how can this happen in falling from a train? They said anything can happen. Nobody would help us.”

“You must report it!” said Maneck, angrily fighting his tears. “You must! To… to the minister – I mean, the governor. Or the police commissioner!”

“We did, we made a complaint. The police wrote it all down in their book.”

They resumed the task of gathering Avinash’s belongings. Maneck watched helplessly as they carried clothes, textbooks, papers, and placed them in the trunk with reverence, now and then putting their lips to some object before packing it. The room was silent except for their soft footsteps.

“Did he tell you about his three sisters?” said the mother suddenly. “When they were small, he used to help me look after them. He very much enjoyed feeding them. Sometimes they bit his fingers and made him laugh. Did he ever tell you that?”

“He told me everything.”

In a few minutes they were ready to leave. He insisted on carrying the trunk downstairs for them, glad for the exertion that kept his eyes from overflowing. The parents’ gratitude reminded him how little he could do to help with the weight of their grief. All he could think of was that first day, when Avinash had appeared at the door with the Flit pump. They had killed cockroaches. They had played draughts. They had told each other their life stories. And now he was dead.

He said goodbye, and proceeded to the technical building. Then he remembered that he still had the chessmen and board. He hurried to the gate. There was no sign of the parents. How stupid of me, he thought, it would have meant so much to them, the remembrance, Avinash’s high-school prize for winning the tournament.

He started walking back aimlessly, and found himself in the hostel lobby again. Then he stopped, and decided: the chess set – somehow he had to give it back to the parents. He felt like a thief, robbing them of a source of comfort. He was adding to their grief, the longer he kept it.

The task of returning the set assumed an overriding urgency, a matter of life and death. He was weeping silently now as he climbed the stairs, watched by a handful of curious students. Someone hooted and shouted something he couldn’t catch. They began chanting: “Baby, baby, don’t cry, Mummy making chilli-fry, Daddy catching butterfly…”

He slipped into his old room and sat down on the musty bed. Maybe there was something in Avinash’s room, in the wastepaper basket, an old envelope or letter with the address. He went to look. Nothing. Not a scrap of paper. The address, he had to find the parents’ address, to send them the set. He could ask around on this floor. But those bastards in the corridor would start their juvenile teasing again, watching him stumbling in and out of rooms, making a fool of himself.

Clutching the box against his chest, he closed his eyes, trying to think calmly. The address. The answer was simple – the warden’s office. Yes, they would have the address. He could mail it to Avinash’s parents.

He opened his eyes and gazed at the maroon plywood box as it swam through his tears. He remembered that day in the canteen: white to play and mate in three – and then the vegetarians vomited. The memory made him smile. Revolution through regurgitation, Avinash had said. And he had asked him to look after the chess set.

And he never asked for it back. His gift. The game of life. To send it back would be wrong. He would keep it. He would keep it now forever.

Dina urged Maneck to stay calm, to mentally recite one Ashem Vahu before reading the exam paper and one more before beginning to write the answers. “I am not a very religious person myself,” she said. “But think of it as insurance. I find it helps. And good luck.”

“Thanks, Aunty.” He opened the door to leave and almost stumbled into Beggarmaster on the other side, his index finger poised to ring the bell.

“Excuse me,” said Beggarmaster. “I have come with very bad news.” He was utterly exhausted, his eyes strained from weeping. “May I please see the tailors?”

“But they left two days ago”

“Oh, of course. I forgot – the wedding.” He looked as though he would collapse.

“Come in,” said Dina.

He stepped onto the verandah and, choking back a sob, revealed that Shankar was dead.

Disbelief, the sort that allowed time to deal with shock, was what Maneck reached for. “But we talked to him three days ago – Ishvar and Om and I, when we went for tea. And yesterday morning he spoke to me about the barber coming. He was hale and hearty, rolling as usual.”

“Yes, till yesterday morning.”

“What happened then?”

“Terrible accident. He lost control of his gaadi. Flew off the pavement … straight into a double-decker bus.” He swallowed and said he hadn’t witnessed it himself but had identified the remains. “With all my years in this profession, my eyes have seen much that is gruesome. But never anything this horrible. Both Shankar and the gaadi were crushed completely – not possible to separate the two. Removing the wood and castors embedded in his flesh would have meant mutilating his poor body still more. It will have to be cremated with him.”

They coped in silence with the grisly picture. Beggarmaster broke down and wept uncontrollably. Attempts to muffle the sobs made him tremble. “I should have told him we were brothers. I waited too long. And now it’s too late. If only he had brakes for his platform … I thought about it once, but the idea seemed silly. He could barely drag it around … not a fast car or something. Maybe I should have taken him off the street.”

“You mustn’t blame yourself,” said Dina. “You were trying to do the best for him, as you said.”

“Was I? Did I? How can I be sure?”

“He was such a nice person,” said Maneck. “Ishvar and Om told us how he nursed them when they were sick in that work camp. You never met him, Aunty, but in most ways he was like everyone else. He even made funny jokes sometimes.”

“I feel like I knew him. Ishvar and Om brought his measurements and described him for me, remember? And the special vest I designed for him?”

“That was very kind of you,” said Beggarmaster, in tears again at the thought of how he had lovingly ripped and soiled the garment, customizing it for Shankar’s requirements.

“Would you like a glass of water?” she asked. He nodded, and Maneck fetched it.

Beggarmaster regained his composure after the drink. “I wanted to invite the tailors to Shankar’s cremation. Tomorrow at four o’clock. They were his only friends. There will be plenty of beggars there, but Ishvar and Om would have been special.” He returned the empty glass.

“I’ll go,” said Maneck.

Beggarmaster’s surprise shone through his sorrow. “Will you really? I will be so grateful.” He took Maneck’s hand and shook it. “The funeral procession begins outside Vishram. I thought it a suitable place for everyone to gather – out of respect for Shankar. Don’t you think? His last location?”

“Yes, I’ll meet you there.”

“What about your exam?” asked Dina.

“It finishes at three.”

“Yes, but what about the exam the day after?” She tried to discourage him. The idea of his attending a beggar’s funeral made her uneasy. “Shouldn’t you come straight home and study for it?”

“I will, after going to the cremation.”

“Excuse me for a minute,” she said to Beggarmaster, and retreated inside. “Maneck!” she called from the back room. He shrugged and followed.

“What is this nonsense? Why do you have to go?”

“Because I want to.”

“Don’t give smart answers! You know how that man scares me. The only reason I put up with him is because he protects the flat. No need to get more familiar.”

“I don’t want to argue, Aunty. I am going to the cremation.” His voice was soft, emphasizing each word.

It puzzled Dina that he should feel so intensely about the beggar’s funeral. She attributed his behaviour to the pressure of his final exams. “Fine. I cannot stop you. But if you go, I go with you.” To keep an eye on him if nothing else, she decided.

They returned to the verandah. “We were discussing about tomorrow afternoon,” she said. “Both of us will come.”

“Oh, that is wonderful,” said Beggarmaster. “How shall I ever thank you? You know, I was just thinking, in a way it’s good that Ishvar and Om left two days ago. The grief would have ruined the wedding. And marriage is like death, only happens once.”

“How true,” she said. “I wish more people would understand this.” She was surprised that his words so perfectly fitted her feelings on the matter.

Beggarmaster gave everyone the afternoon off to attend the cremation ceremony. The assembly of crippled, blinded, armless, legless, diseased, and faceless individuals on the pavement soon attracted an audience. Onlookers inquired whether some hospital, for lack of space, was conducting an outdoor clinic.

Dina and Maneck joined Beggarmaster having tea inside the Vishram. “Look at that crowd,” he said disgustedly. “They think it’s a circus.”