A Free Man A True Story of Life and Death in Delhi (8 page)

On still summer evenings, when the oppressive closeness of the jhuggi became impossible to bear, she would roll up one entire side of the tent so that patrons could watch trains as they shunted up and down the railway tracks. On winter nights, the crowded shack exuded the warm, cosy glow of whisky and company.

Soon Kalyani cut a deal with the local liquor vend to supply to her in bulk amounts and came to an agreement with the local policemen. Kalyani was an ardent supporter of the Delhi Police—law enforcement was necessary for a favourable investment climate. If the police didn’t harass people drinking on the streets, why would people come to Kalyani’s?

‘We wouldn’t. Well, maybe I would, because Kalyani is now a friend, but ninety per cent people would not come.’

‘What sort of friend is she, Ashraf bhai?’

‘No, Aman bhai, she is a married woman—shaadi-shuda. She also has kids—three of them!’

‘So? Maybe she secretly despises her husband and wants to leave him.’

‘No, she doesn’t. I have met him several times.’

‘Well, I don’t think you should let that stop you. I think she is a great girl.’

‘In that case I think you should fuck her. Just show her your press card; I’m sure that would impress her.’

Ashraf continues to protest vehemently, but I am convinced that he should try his luck with Kalyani; if nothing else, at least for the sake of my story. Looking back at my notes, I find I have been needlessly sensitive about certain issues—primarily sex. There is no sex in my story—a lacuna that could easily be addressed if Ashraf has some.

Ashraf is at least in his late thirties. Does he not have sex?

‘In Dilli? No. Absolutely not. No chance, never. Ekdum NO.’ Rarely have I seen Ashraf exhibit a resolve so steady. So has he ever had sex at all?

‘Of course. Multiple times on several occasions. Just not in Dilli, it’s not safe. I know these things. I once whitewashed a chodai khana on GB Road; there I saw everything. Some poor chootiya will ask, “Kitna?” and the randi will assure him, “Hundred rupees,” or something. But once he’s in, they will take everything he has. Everything—watch, belt, rings, money, everything! And you can’t even report these people to the police.’

‘Why?’

‘Why? Because then you’ll go straight from the chodai khana into the police thana, Aman bhai, and it’s hard to tell which is worse.’

‘So what’s a good place?’

‘Bombay. Calcutta is not bad, but Bombay is the best. Kamatipura. Get off at Grant Road Railway Station, walk towards Bhindi Bazaar. My favourite was this girl in Arab Galli—her father walked with a limp. I visited her every Tuesday and paid between fifty and a hundred rupees depending on her mood.’

‘When were you in Bombay?’

‘Many years ago, before I came here.’

‘Why Tuesday?’

‘Tuesday means half day at the shop.’

‘What shop?’

‘The meat shop where I worked.’

‘What was her name?’

‘I don’t know, Aman bhai—it’s not like I was marrying her.’

3

‘P
HAAT! On the cheek! On my cheek, he pasted one. Phaat.’ Arm pulled back past his shoulder Ashraf mimics the action, a crisp straight-elbowed arc that almost lands on my cheek.

If every city that Ashraf has visited has had a single defining moment, then in Bombay, that moment is ‘the slap’.

‘It was like “Phaat”, not two quick phut-phut-type smacks. No, it was a chaanta—phataack.’

We are still drinking at Kalyani’s. I have finished my raisins and, to Kalyani’s relief, have poured myself a large drink. ‘She gets nervous when people don’t drink,’ Ashraf says, as he warms to his tale.

To deflect my queries about his sex life, Ashraf has offered me what he thinks might be a comparable anecdote about his time in Bombay—this being the first I have heard of him having lived in that city. I am still trying to build a year-wise timeline of Ashraf’s life but as far as Ashraf is concerned, he was brought up in Patna and is now in Delhi—everything else can only be accessed via oblique enquiries. As a result, every interview is a bit like playing a word association game. Kalyani to sex to Bombay whorehouse to slapping.

‘You got slapped in a whorehouse, Ashraf bhai?’ I’m laughing through the fixed grimace I acquire when exposed to desi alcohol.

‘No, yaar. Not in the whorehouse, in the meat shop. Kuch ho gaya tha. Something happened.’

Up to this point, I had assumed that the meat shop
was
the whorehouse, but I’m clearly mistaken.

‘Kya ho gaya? What happened? Where were you? Tell me from the beginning.’

‘That’s what I’m doing—so I get off the train…’

‘Why were you on the train, where were you going?’

‘Aman bhai…’

‘Arre, at least tell me the basic facts.’

‘You take the mazaa out of every story. Where’s your glass? Oye Kalyani, where’s Aman bhai’s glass? Pour another one for Aman bhai.’

•

Submerged in the depths of a train compartment, a slender figure struggled through the crush of commuters on the Monday morning Virar Slow. As the train pulled into Malad Station Mohammed Ashraf burst through the crowd and scurried down the road.

Late night, last night—kuch ho gaya, kuch ho gaya. He can explain, they will understand, something happened, some things happen.

Slip, trip, jump, slide—the long road past the church had never looked so long. Up the slope, up the slope, almost there, almost there, panting, gasping, ‘Salaam walekum, Maalik.’

‘That’s when he slapped me. In front of everyone.’

‘Phaaat!’ Onomatopoeia is one of Ashraf’s many talents.

‘A slap like that, Aman bhai, that’s a full stop. Once you get slapped like that in front of everyone, you can never work in there again. Your izzat is gone; no one will ever give you respect, and a head kasai cannot function without respect.’

The story started with Mohammed Ashraf installed as the head kasai of Fauji Halal Shop in Malad whose proprietor was a Javed Qureshi.

The head kasai decides everything: who does what, who sits where, and also other things like when the knives should be changed, how often the floor should be mopped. In a chicken shop, the floor must always be clean. If the floor is clean, the customer will think everything is clean. All these things must be decided in advance because once the day begins, there is no time.

Apart from cleanliness, the other important thing is speed. The head kasai sets the speed of the shop. Speed is crucial—the more time a customer spends in a shop, the dirtier he is likely to think it is. The customer is like a child; he must be distracted immediately. The kasai should grab the chicken and keep asking questions—‘Is it for curry? Or kebabs?’, ‘Big pieces or small?’, ‘Do you want the liver?’—all to keep the customer engrossed. Once the customer’s attention starts to wander, he will stare closely at the kasai’s hands, he will wonder how often the kasai washes them, he may notice the fly buzzing around inside the glass display case, maybe a cockroach will run across the floor. By the time he gets his chicken, he will be so full of sights, sounds, and smells that he may never return to the shop again.

In a fast shop, the head kasai is like a hungry machine: shredding, cutting, slicing, and chopping everything that is placed before him. His assistants function like boiler room boys—shovelling fuel so that the furnace never goes cold. Customers step up to the cage and pick their chicken; the assistant tags the chicken with a plastic counter, beheads it quickly and cleanly, and flings it into the dibba to cool down. The kasai reaches in, pulls out the chicken, calls out the number, asks the customer how he wants it cut, and hands over the cut bird—all in less than ten minutes.

‘In full form, I could skin, cut, clean, and dice a whole chicken in about two minutes. I had studied biology up to first year college so I knew exactly how to cut the bird. I only had to learn to undress the chicken, which is easy once you know the basic technique.’

‘What’s that, Ashraf bhai?’

‘Kapde utarna, Aman bhai, the technique for undressing is always the same—be it a goat, a bird, or a woman. Start from the limbs and work your way inwards and upwards. Make cuts near the legs, tear the skin away from each side, and then reach up to the neck and peel from the head downwards.

‘Once I had perfected my skinning technique, it was only a matter of time before I became a head kasai. No one else in the shop had my kind of skill.’ Ashraf reaches out for the Everyday to replenish his glass and mine. ‘You will not believe me, Aman bhai. I was a brilliant kasai—one of the best in Bombay. I could make one kilo of chicken into one and a half kilos simply by skinning it.’

The trick, as I learnt later, is fairly common among most experienced butchers. It takes a while to master, but once learnt—like any good conjuring trick—it is impossible for the audience to spot.

‘The first step is to strip the chicken of its feathers and skin it as carefully as you can. Then dip it in the rinsing tub and wash it thoroughly. Now, everyone washes the chicken; but before washing make two deep incisions just above the thigh, where the leg joins the abdomen, and make sure the water is slightly warm. Then you knead the chicken legs in a smooth pumping action—pumping is crucial—and the flesh soaks up the water just like a sponge. It only takes a few seconds, while the customer stands there marvelling at the time you have taken to wash his chicken. By the time you cut it, the chicken will look pinker, firmer, healthier, and even its head will swell up to twice its size. The customer will be happy with the juicy, healthy chicken, your maalik will be happy with the extra money, and you will be happy because he will make you head kasai.’

‘So what happened that day, Ashraf bhai?’

‘That’s what I’m coming to. Listen.

‘One Saturday, maybe six months after I became the head kasai, I went out somewhere with my friends. We had a few drinks, it got very late, and I couldn’t make it back to the shop the next day. Sunday is always the busiest day of the week; in Bombay, the day when the menfolk buy the meat for the house. The women will buy the vegetables, but the men buy the meat. It is the only thing they buy—and Sunday everyone has a holiday from office.’

That day, the queue stretched from the entrance of the shop all the way to the church down the road. Ashraf estimates that Qureshi, the owner, lost between five and seven thousand rupees that day. ‘Easily, kum se kum. Not to mention what it would take to win back all the business he lost that day.

‘So when I arrived on Monday—that too ten minutes late, he slapped me—full on the face, in front of everyone…and bas, it was over. I turned around and never went back to the shop again.’

‘You could have waited for his temper to cool and then gone back, no?’

‘I could. But I didn’t.’

‘Why?’

‘This is temporary kaam, Aman bhai. If my heart is in it, I will say sorry and listen to the maalik’s insults and take his blows and slaps. But when my heart isn’t in it? I won’t. The maalik owns my work, Aman bhai, he doesn’t own me. Who is he to slap anyone? And what will I get with his forgiveness?’

‘Your job for one, Ashraf bhai.’

‘I don’t need a job like that.’

‘So then?’

‘So then I left Bombay. Once I had left Patna—I left my mother, my brother, my cousins, my friends, my life—what was the difference between Delhi and Bombay? Bombay and Calcutta? I didn’t leave my home to get slapped by someone like that, Aman bhai.’

‘So why did you leave home, Ashraf bhai?’

‘That’s a story for another day. I did some mazdoor work in Bombay for a few days, then someone told me there was lots of work in Delhi. So I took a train to Surat, and from there to Punjab. I spent a month in Haryana and then one day I showed up at Old Delhi Railway Station.’

‘So what did you do when you came here?’

‘I met a bunch of chootiyas at Bara Tooti.’

‘Kalyaaaaniii, can we have some more?’ And the bottle of Everyday continued its dizzying orbit.

•

‘Why are you doing this, Aman bhai?’ Ashraf wonders as we stumble cross-eyed through Teli Bara.

‘Doing what, Ashraf bhai?’

‘Why are you spending all this time and money getting drunk with lafunters like us? What can we teach you?’

‘I’m trying to write a book.’

‘But who will want to read it?’

‘I don’t know. I suppose my friends will buy it and maybe a few people interested in Delhi.’

‘But will you make any money?’

‘Well, I’ve already made some money.’

‘How much money?’

‘Enough to buy a laptop.’

‘Oh good.’ Relieved that I, like everyone else, have found a way to make just enough money off Sadar Bazaar, Ashraf stops at a tiny roadside shrine under a tree. ‘Mata ki kasam, Aman bhai, you will make lots of money.’

‘So will you, Ashraf bhai.’

‘And Lalloo—even if he is only my medium-type friend, he is my only friend, Aman bhai. My only friend. And Rehaan too.’

‘And Kaka too.’

‘We will all be rich, Aman bhai.’

‘Yes, Ashraf, some day we will all be rich.’

4

T
he morning after the drunken night at Kalyani’s I have decided it is finally time to sit down with Ashraf and sketch out a timeline of his life. I have a vague idea of the major events, but not a clear sense of the arc of his life. I’ve looked back at my notes and the years don’t seem to add up. Either Ashraf is only thirty years old, or there is a considerable chunk of his life still missing. This will be a no-holds-barred interview where no subject would be too sensitive or personal.

My efforts are complicated by the fact that this morning, Ashraf is drunk. Not drunk-drunk in the unsteady, slurring, and hiccuping fashion, but drunk in an organized and matter-of-fact way—the sort of drunkeness that comes at the end of a cycle he once described to me in his meticulous fashion.

It goes something like this:

Time: 6 pm

Money: About three hundred rupees between the two of them.

Ashraf and Lalloo have just finished work. The shop’s bright pink, still-wet walls have the velvety texture of a wedding cake. The shopkeeper is happy with their work. He has paid them without complaint.