A Free Man A True Story of Life and Death in Delhi (20 page)

The grin is gone the moment I bring up Raja’s name: Raja is selfish and ungracious and refuses to acknowledge everything that Ashraf has done for him. Of course, the business is dead now, but while it was running, it had put Raja’s children through school, built him a second house, and made him into the kind of old, fat zamindar that everyone hated.

It is true that Raja spent about a thousand rupees when Ashraf fell ill—but he got the money by selling Ashraf’s complete set of tools without his permission. What tools they were: a large, heavy hammer with a perfectly weighted head, two broad brushes, four smaller brushes, scrapers, a majula, a plumb line—everything. They were worth at least two thousand rupees. Raja must have spent the rest of the money on himself, and still had the temerity to ask Ashraf for more.

Now, Ashraf coughs theatrically. After a year of hard work, Ashraf is exactly where he started: sleeping on the pavement with no money, and no tools.

And his uncles, did he finally visit them?

Just once and they refused to help. He spent twenty rupees getting his clothes washed and ironed, ten rupees on bus fare, and another fifty rupees on a box of sweets. The kindly old uncle was dead, and Ashraf’s cousins were fearful of giving him a share of their business.

And his mother?

His mother is dead. Well, not really. Well, actually he has no idea where she is. He assumes she would be dead by now. She was quite old.

‘I don’t think I will ever see her again, so she’s as good as dead,’ he concludes in his typically logical fashion.

I ask him if I could talk to his ex-wife. He refuses. Later in the evening we go out for a walk and he tells me that Prabhu and Veeru used to be very successful businessmen till one batch of rum went horribly wrong and fourteen people died. ‘They sold everything they had to get the enquiry hushed up.’

No, it doesn’t bother him that the same two men now sell him two bottles of alcohol a day. ‘It wasn’t their fault; it could happen to anybody.’

•

On my last day, we set out to buy Ashraf a new set of tools—he wants a change from the safedi line.

‘Bengalis don’t care to paint their houses,’ he says with a sniff. ‘They are the shabbiest people I know.’

He wants to become a santrash—a specialized line of mazdoors who break houses rather than build them. ‘There is a system for everything in Calcutta,’ he says. ‘One line of people build, another set break, another set paint—everything is very organized.’

‘So is there a specific technique for breaking houses?’

‘Of course there is. There is a specific technique for everything.’

‘So what is it? You start from a particular wall…or…?’

‘You start from the roof, Aman bhai. If you break the walls first, you’ll get buried by the roof. You really can be very stupid at times.’

The santrash line traces its lineage back to court sculptors and anyone who worked with a hammer and a chisel.

‘There is a lot of work for santrashes in Calcutta: cutting air-conditioning ducts, making openings for exhaust fans, thin channels for laying electrical wiring, thick channels for water pipes.

‘The santrash line is a risky line. All sorts of things are released when you break a wall—dreams, desires, secrets…’

I like the idea of a house absorbing what occurs within the safety of its four walls: sound waves imprinting themselves onto wet concrete surfaces like a phonograph record to be read by the santrash’s hammer.

Ashraf natters on as we take the bus from Raja Bazaar to a part of Calcutta called Dharamtala. It’s a short ride but the bus makes many stops. As we step off near Calcutta’s large, open maidan, a man brushes against me and vanishes into the crowd. Instinctively, my hand reaches for my back pocket—my wallet is missing.

Ashraf takes the news rather well—certainly far better than I do.

‘Don’t worry, Aman bhai. Look, I have seven rupees in my pocket. Let’s get some tea and think—I’ll pay.’

We get tea. I smoke a cigarette: the wallet has my credit cards, my press card, and a significant amount of money. Worryingly, I still have to pay for my hotel and buy Ashraf his tools.

‘Don’t worry about the tools, Aman bhai, this happens to me all the time. Wake up feeling like I am going to conquer the world, only to be stabbed in the back.’

If only the staff at the hotel prove to be so understanding. I’m having visions of leaving my watch at the reception, promising to wire them money. Maybe they will tut-tut sympathetically and say that these things happen. Maybe my wallet shall miraculously reappear in my bag. I suddenly realize I don’t really know anyone at all in this city; my sole friend from Calcutta now works in Bombay.

‘So what are you going to do?’

‘I don’t know. I think I’m going to call my mom.’

Ten minutes later, it’s all done. My parents have righted the balance of my world. The brother of a family friend has been located. He will be at a gathering of dentists at lunchtime at Trincas on Park Street. ‘Uncle will give you six thousand rupees,’ says my mother reassuringly. ‘Enough for your hotel bill and Ashraf’s tools.’

It’s only 11:30, but I can wait. Ashraf looks on as I call my bank to cancel my cards. Twenty minutes later that’s done too.

‘Do you have any more money, Ashraf? I really need a cigarette.’

‘Let me check.’

A crumpled ten-rupee note has emerged from a secret pocket in his trousers’ waistband. ‘I had forgotten all about it. Maybe I have some more money elsewhere.’ Ashraf smiles as he frisks himself for cash. ‘Let’s get you a cigarette and some tea.’

•

‘I was just thinking, Aman bhai, what would you have done if you didn’t have a phone?’

‘I’d probably ask someone if I could use their phone.’

‘What if you didn’t have that option? If your mother didn’t know someone in Calcutta? If no one knew anyone?’

‘I don’t know, Ashraf bhai. I’d probably go to the police and ask for help.’

‘Basically you would beg for help, wouldn’t you, Aman bhai? Just like the rest of us. Your level is a little higher—so you could go begging to the police. Our level is a little lower…’

‘So where would you go?’

‘To Jamil bhai.’

Jamil bhai, later to become Jamil saab, was a great man.

For a period in the 1980s, or so Ashraf says, he ruled the beedi-rolling trade in Calcutta. Every beedi produced in Calcutta was rolled by his workers, slipped into paper packets bearing the insignia of various brands, and shipped out to the rest of the country.

In later years, he handed over control to his sons and went about setting up the entire stretch of shops from the Raja Bazaar main road down towards Narkul Danga.

‘Jamil saab was like us; he came out of Raja Bazaar when there wasn’t much of a bazaar to speak of. All this is before my time, but I heard that one day Jamil saab got all the people living in Raja Bazaar together and asked them to dip their hands into a cloth bag and pull out a chit. Jamil saab then looked at every chit and said, “You, you will become a butcher and sell chicken. You will open a vegetable shop; you will sell milk.” On and on he went, telling everyone what they should do. Then he gave everyone some money to start their shops and told them to buy their things and start immediately.’

It seems that for some years he took rent from everyone, but later he made so much money that he even stopped doing that. In a manner faintly reminiscent of the freeing of slaves, Ashraf claims Jamil called everyone out one day. (In Ashraf’s narrative Jamil saab was always calling people out into a gathering to hear his latest diktat.) He said, ‘You are free now. As long as I am alive no one will ask you for any rent or hafta or donation or anything.’ And no one did.

Soon after, Jamil saab retired to a house in South Calcutta and dedicated himself to doing good works. He would come to his office in Raja Bazaar for a few hours every day to hold court, listen to complaints, redress wrongs.

A lot of mazdoors would go to him at festival time. ‘They would say a pickpocket stole their money and train ticket and they were left with nothing. Jamil saab would listen and ask one or two questions. Only one or two questions.’ Ashraf is insistent on the precise nature of the interrogation.

‘He would only ask, “Where are you from? Where were you going to? And how much was the ticket?” and from just those three questions, he would be able to tell if you were lying!’

‘Exactly how?’

‘Because Jamil saab knew the exact rail fares between any two stations. See, in the railways, it’s all a formula.’ I’ve started Ashraf off on the railways again. ‘The fare is based on the distance—and Jamil saab knew the distance to everywhere, so automatically he knew the fare.’

As Ashraf would put it, ‘It really is very simple.’ If Jamil saab believed you, he would call up his most trusted munshi—from Ashraf’s description, a sad little man with nothing to do except book train tickets—and ask him to buy the mazdoor a ticket on the next train. ‘Sometimes, he would even give the mazdoor a little extra money for the journey.’

‘So did you ever need to go to Jamil saab, Ashraf bhai?’

‘No, I didn’t, but I knew several people who did. But now he’s gone.’

According to Ashraf, there are Jamil-like figures in every major city—except Delhi. Bombay, for instance, has the Ghanswallahs. ‘They are an old Parsi family. I think their forefathers sold horse fodder to the British. They also give money to mazdoors to go home.’

I observe that no one gives money for people to come to cities—only to go back home.

Ashraf nods his head; we sit back in the maidan and wait for lunchtime and its promise of money.

•

We are looking for a workshop from where to buy a good hammer and a set of chennis—metal picks of various sizes and strength to cut holes in brick, plaster, and concrete surfaces. Hammers are relatively easy to come by, but you can’t buy a chenni off the shelf.

The meeting with my father’s friend’s brother had gone surprisingly well—notwithstanding my dishevelled appearance. ‘Best of luck, son,’ he said gravely as he gave me his number. ‘Any further troubles, just call.’

Six thousand rupees tucked into my jeans (how I wish I had a secret pocket) I slipped out into the street where Ashraf was waiting, and together we headed off to Dharamtala.

‘The best chennis are made from the suspension coils of old model Ambassador cars,’ says the blacksmith as he bangs away on his anvil. ‘The only problem is you can’t find any scrap any more. China is buying everything. Old cars, spare parts, spoons, plates, ships—anything made of metal that you drop into a dustbin gets sorted, packed, and shipped off to China. Same with suspension coils. How will India become great if we keep selling everything to the Chinese?’

A good chenni must be absolutely straight to transmit the force of the hammer into the wall. Any kinks and the chenni will snap when you strike it too hard.

Ashraf selects a few pieces and as the blacksmith straightens them out tells me how he is fighting a case against the Uttar Pradesh government for removing him from his post as a homoeopathic healer in a government hospital. ‘I have come up with a pioneering cure for cancer,’ says the blacksmith. ‘But I can only tell you about it once I have the time to file for a patent. You have to be very careful. How can we make India great if we keep stealing each other’s ideas?’

6

‘Y
ou could say nothing has changed, Aman bhai, and then again everything has changed. No one has changed, but everyone has changed.’

Looking at Kaka, it’s hard to imagine that only five years have passed since I started coming to Bara Tooti. I’ve been away in the US for one of those years, and in that time—the gulf that I had so assiduously bridged—seems to have widened again. I’ve forgotten many names, many faces have forgotten me. It’s eight in the morning, but the crowd seems to have abandoned Kaka’s. A year after the financial crisis obliterated any chances I had of finding a job in New York, have the mazdoors of Bara Tooti finally lost faith in their banker as well?

‘You have certainly changed, Kaka,’ I say. ‘For one, you have become even fatter.’

‘Don’t make fun of an old man, Aman bhai. I think I have diabetes.’

‘Must be all that sugar in your tea, Kaka. Where is everybody?’

‘Haven’t you heard? Do you remember this man called Sunil, Aman bhai? Thin fellow with wispy brown hair, moustache but no beard—never drank, never smoked, never took ganja? Sunil found a thekedari on the Sonipat side near a place called Rai. A short assignment of maybe three or four days; a factory needed to be painted.’

‘They all went—Rehaan, Naushad, Kale Baba, Munna. The factory sent an open van and they set off like schoolchildren on a class trip to the local Coca-Cola factory.

‘Well, this was more a warehouse than a factory—with those high, double ceilings. So Munna and Kale Baba lashed the ladders together and reinforced them with double knots. Rehaan climbed up and was putting primer on the exhaust grilles. He was right on top; maybe two storeys up when—I don’t quite know what happened—the ladder slipped.’

The body is breakable. The body with its puffed-out chest, its tight, rope-like biceps, its dense, bulging calves. The body that can scramble up walls, balance on pillars, and drag a loaded handcart up three flights of stairs. Dropped off a tall ladder, these bones shatter, these muscles tear, these tendons snap, and when they do, they leave behind a crumpled shell in the place of a boy as beautiful and agile as Rehaan.

He was rushed to a nearby hospital where he was in a coma for almost a week. Munna found a small black diary in his breast pocket and called his family. They came down on the fourth day after the accident. He died on the seventh without ever regaining consciousness.

‘Remember Naushad, Rehaan’s friend? Maybe you never spoke with him, but he and Rehaan used to smoke together all the time. Two days after Rehaan’s accident, Naushad was leaning over the side of the factory’s terrace, putting a base coat on a ledge. His elbow nudged the pot of paint, he leaned out further to save it, and fell six storeys to his death. No one even knew who to call, and you wouldn’t have recognized his body anyway.’