Arms Race (5 page)

Next Jora went to his brothers in the restaurant kitchen. He laid an original
Lonely
Planet
on the chopping block. Sharpen your knives, he said. Imagine you are cutting
a diamond.

His brothers went to work on the binding, slicing out each page.

Then Jora sat down with his niece Nisha. Your ignorant uncle can't read or write,
he said. How'd you like to do it for me?

In the mornings and after school Nisha studied the guidebook. Then she carefully
composed a paragraph about Shahi Palace on the hotel's antiquated laptop, and pasted
it over the entry for Sarkar Mansions. It was hard to tell that it wasn't part of
the original.

On the morning of the first printing Jora closed the hotel and assembled his staff
at the tannery. It was the dead of winter and there were no guests. Jora issued instructions,
his breath fogging in the cold, and there were questions and laughter and barking
dogs, but soon enough everyone stood ready. Though there would be no race, Jora couldn't
help himself. He raised his arms, and brought them swiftly down.

Go!

When the copies were made and the bindings done and the books stacked in the hotel
lobby, Jora was proud. He took one and thumbed through it. They were rough: pages
were upside down or missing, and in his copy someone had swapped the entry on Shimla
for a photograph of Kabir Bedi in very small shorts. But to Jora, who could not read
and could not write, they were perfect. He was in there. His family, his hotel, his
life.

He snapped the book shut and turned to the desk. Raj, he called. Have you been to
the city before?

All the time.

Jora laughed. Not Jodhpur. How'd you like to go to Delhi? On my money?

Raj attempted a shrug. Then he broke into an enormous smile.

You take these to Delhi, Jora said, and you don't come back until you've sold every
last one.

Two days after the family had seen Raj and Sunil off from the bus station, the boys
were back. Sunil's arm was broken. Raj's handsome face was an ugly pulp.

We set up at Old Delhi, Raj said through swollen lips. We were only there a day and
these five men came up to us and said it was their corner. You know what the bastards
said? Fuck off back to your village. India is full.

Jora hurled his drink off the balcony. That dog, he cried. India is never full! What
about the books?

Raj dropped his gaze. I'm sorry, Uncle-
ji
.

Jora spent the days shouting at his waiters, and the nights drinking Old Monk by
himself in the restaurant. He'd spent everything. There was no more money for toner
or paper. There were few guests and no books. All he had was a sand-strewn room full
of ancient photocopiers, and crushing debt.

India, he told his glass, is empty.

One morning Nisha came to see him.

Why aren't you at school? he asked.

Nisha handed him a sheet of paper. I made this for you, Uncle-
ji
.

It was the main Jaisalmer page from the guidebook, except that Nisha had pasted new
paragraphs over the entire text, and replaced the photographs with hand-drawn pictures.
It looked like a school assignment.

That's lovely, Jora said. I'll put it on the wall in my office.

No, Nisha said, pointing to the new paragraphs. That's Sunil's camel treks, and that's
the taxi drivers, and that's the laundry service on Fort Road.

But they're not in the guide, Jora said. Why would we put them in the—

Jora went door to door. He asked his friends and neighbours if they wanted to appear
in a new edition of
Lonely Planet
. He sat cross-legged in their homes and invented
prices according to the sweetness of their tea. He charged the shawl sellers in the
old fort one hundred rupees for a listing. Srinagar's Jewellers paid two thousand.
Nisha wrote the entries and pasted them in, and if a business wanted a photo but
didn't have one, she drew them a picture. In a month they had enough money to buy
paper.

This time the printing was quicker, but sales were slower than the Jodhpur bus. Local
bookwallahs shook their heads and pointed to their existing stock, and Jora didn't
dare send anyone back to the capital. The few copies Raj sold at the bus station
made little difference to bookings at the hotel.

The only vendor Jora could find who didn't seem to stock
Lonely Planet
was in the
waiting room at Jodhpur Station. The gap-toothed old Marxist who ran the stall was
always busy. People came to sit and argue politics with him, and most left with a
book under their arm. Jora studied his wares and then approached.

Do you have
Lonely Planet India
? he asked.

No sir. Imperialist trash. What I have is this.

The man pulled a foxed volume from the bottom of a pile. This is the only guide to
India you'll ever need.

Jora studied the faded red cover. The characters seemed more unfamiliar than usual.
What language is this? he asked.

Russian. Hotels all approved for their socialist values. This is the latest edition.
Nineteen sixty-six.

Listen,
baba
, Jora said. How would you like to sell an up-to-date, um, socialist
version of
Lonely Planet
?

The man jumped to his feet. Does such a thing exist?

Jora pulled the guide from his
bag. See here, he said. Everyone's listed. No one is turned away. I'll give them
to you very cheap.

The man took the book and flicked through. He paused at Kabir Bedi's tiny shorts.

And I'll feature your stall in the next edition, Jora said.

The man's eyes gleamed. You would put
me
in
Lonely Planet
? he asked.

For free.

The bookwallah smiled. He had a mischievous gap between his
paan
-stained incisors.
I can sell these, he said. How many have you got?

The Jodhpur bookwallah pressed copies on every tourist coming through the station.
His whole family was in the book trade, and within a month the guide was displayed
in markets and bazaars across the city. The vendors bragged to friends that they
themselves would appear in the next edition, and by the end of winter the second
printing was nearly sold out. Bookings at the hotel slowly rose.

With the change in seasons the heat began to build. Nisha stayed home from school,
working beneath the turning fans to add the new material. Word had spread far beyond
the bookwallahs that it was now possible for anyone to get themselves listed in
Lonely
Planet
. Jora held court in the rooftop restaurant. Officials from the surrounding
panchayats
climbed the stairs to beg for the inclusion of their villages. Wealthy
families had their weddings and mansions written in. For a handful of coins even
the fruit vendors who lined the market could have their work praised in the guide.

There is always room, Jora cried. India is never full!

The tannery blazed with the light of photocopiers long into each night. They went
through a third printing, and then a fourth, and with each new addition the book
became more idiosyncratic. Nisha grew tired of imitating the guide's original style.
Her entries began to sound like a studious thirteen-year-old Rajastani girl, and
when she could no longer keep pace with new additions, people were allowed to write
their own.

The fonts grew wildly mixed. Hinglish and Bengali and hyperbole crept in. People
supplied their own skewed maps that placed themselves at the centre of their city
or town. They spoke of how their broadband was as fast as light, their railways faster
still. They wrote of how their
lassi
prolonged life, how the women of their town
had the finest minds and fiercest gods. The book grew to six hundred pages.

By the fifth printing, no tourist could mistake the book for the real thing, or even
a copy of the real thing, but many bought it just the same. Jora's guide had a unique,
combative vitality. There were five entries for Kolkata, each funded by a rival politician,
and each more baroque and outrageous than the last. A string of hypothetical mega-cities
and dams appeared as peaceful realities. There was a bidding war between slumlords
and NGOs to write up the nation's slums. People airbrushed their children's faces
and Photoshopped their sunsets.

Tourists began travelling to India expressly to take a holiday based on Jora's
Lonely
Planet.
To follow it was to give yourself over to chance, to navigate the present
with a map of the future. The book had become a thing of pure, virulent aspiration:
a guide to the what the country wished and hoped to be.

To mark the printing of twenty thousand books, Jora bought a bottle of well-aged
Laphroaig, and a cheap bottle of locally made 100 Pipers. He sat with his extended
family in the rooftop restaurant looking over the desert.
The horizon was dotted
with campfires: camel traders journeying east to the fair at Pushkar. Jora poured
a round of 100 Pipers.

A toast, he said. We're on our way to putting a bunch of filthy village dogs on the
map. At the end of the week we'll have paid off one-fifth of our debt.

They laughed and drank until the distant campfires had burned down, and when the
100 Pipers bottle stood empty Jora took it to his office and refilled it with Laphroaig.
The next day, hungover and grinning, he took a copy of his guidebook and signed the
title page with a crude X. Then he posted it, along with the whisky, to the factory
manager in Delhi.

With the onset of another winter, sales died away like the monsoon winds. Each morning
Jora entered the lobby to more precarious piles of unsold books. By day he laughed
it off. But by night he woke to barking dogs and the fuzzy thump of village weddings,
and he knew something had changed. He and Raj took the bus to Jodhpur.

What's going on? Jora asked the Marxist bookwallah. Why doesn't anyone want our book
anymore?

They all want it, the man said. The problem is they've already got it.

Jora and Raj walked the streets. The old Marxist was right: every stall had copies
of their guide. Children
darted out to sell them at traffic lights. They were even
in the window of the Oxford Bookstore on Gandhi Marg.

A week later a tall woman with blond ringlets and a shabby man in fake Ray-Bans came
into the hotel restaurant, carrying a copy of Jora's guide. They looked around at
the sweeping view over the desert.

They were right, the man said. This place is a-
mazing
.

And that must be Jora, the woman said, glancing at the guidebook. Hey, she called.
Your place is a-
mazing
.

Thank you, Jora said, beaming. Please, join me.

The couple sat and spread their things across his table. While they moaned about
rickshaw drivers, Jora found himself gazing at their guidebook. There was something
about it. He picked it up. May I?

Jora read the book the only way he could. He weighed it in his hands. He sniffed
it. He tested the paper between finger and thumb. It felt odd, though he couldn't
say why. He flicked to the photo section, and his own image stared back, vivid and
bright-eyed. It was definitely his guidebook, and yet—

He stood sharply, his
thali
tray crashing to the ground. This is a forgery! he cried.

The couple stared up at him. Jora brandished the book.

You, he demanded. Where did
you get this?

But he already knew the answer. He opened the book. Inside the cover, included in
the printing itself, was his own scrawled X.

The giant factory in Okhla III. The manager. That bastard was smarter than he looked.

At dusk Jora assembled his brothers and nephews and cousins at the bus stop. They
stood wreathed in blankets, and carried cricket bats and bags of
roti
and
chana dal
.
In the dim winter monochrome they looked like a mongrel cricket team about to go
on tour. Jora went among the men and counted heads.

Thirty, he told the frightened driver.

Please,
sahib
, no trouble, the man said. Is it a family feud? A matter of love?

No, Jora said, a matter of theft.

From Jodhpur the mob took a sleeper to Delhi. They stayed awake singing and smoking
bidis
to hide their nerves. Raj and Sunil bragged about how many copiers they would
smash. Other passengers entering the carriage turned and left with eyes averted.

In Delhi the next morning a convoy of rickshaws ferried them south. Most had never
been to Delhi before. The desert men gripped their bats and stared out at the gleaming
boutiques and chain stores of South Extension. It was too loud and cold to talk above
the engines.

At Okhla III they piled out to stand in the factory's shadow.

Follow me, Jora yelled. He marched towards the
guard post with his bat held in both
hands.

There was nobody there. The post was unmanned and the gates stood open. They stormed
down to the reception shoulder to shoulder. There was no sign of the receptionist,
and Jora simply walked around her desk and buzzed them through.

Ten of them pushed into the elevator, packed close with the smell of sweat and smoke.
Jora could hardly bear to stand still. No Delhi
choot
stole from him and his family.

The doors slid apart and the men piled out. The cavernous expanse of the factory
opened before them. Jora had no time for the spectacle. He turned towards the manager's
office.

Halfway along the metal gangway, hunched over the railing, staring vacantly across
the factory floor, was the manager himself.

You, Jora said, pointing his cricket bat at the man's head. You're copying my guidebooks.

Accha
, the manager said, blinking angrily. The beggar returns a publisher. Only an
illiterate man could make such a monstrous book.

And only a goat-licking cripple would copy it.