Sacred Games (132 page)

This became Aadil's daily routine. He was disciplined about getting out and to classes early every morning, but in the evenings he sat with the boys and talked about politics, corruption, films, international events, the changing climate, women, cricket. The conversation moved fast, in a mixture of Hindi and Bhojpuri and Magahi with English sprinkled over it all. Sometimes Aadil kept quiet, when the allusions escaped him, or when the slang flew so fast that it left him quite behind. During and through these sessions, because of the nights at restaurants, he was realizing how much there was that he didn't know about the lives of his new friends, about people who didn't live in the Ansari Tola. Despite all his reading, his world had been limited, and not only because of the smallness of Rajpur. Now that he was friends with boys who had grown up with televisions in their homes, who took motorcycles and trips to Calcutta for granted, whose parents subscribed to newspapers and magazines, Aadil understood that poverty was a country of its own, that he
was a foreigner stepping clumsily through unknown landscapes. But he was a good learner, and he applied himself. He had a terror of embarrassing himself, and so he was shy, and always reluctant to assume familiarity. But Jaggu always knocked on his door, and included him in all the group's plans. ‘Wake up, Dilip Saab,' he would say, ‘time to go.' Jaggu insisted that Aadil was an exact duplicate of the young Dilip Kumar, down to the soft voice and the tragic mumbles. ‘Put a rifle in your hand,' he had said, ‘and you're straight out of
Ganga Jamuna
.' Aadil understood that this, in Jaggu's lexicon, was high praise. But since Jaggu thought that he himself was the spitting image of Jackie Shroff, and modelled himself with nitpicking precision on his namesake, Aadil didn't take the compliment too seriously. Jaggu's generosity was exactly equal to his self-deception. He believed sincerely that he had fully repudiated his Bhumihar medium-sized-zamindar ancestry by studying history and getting involved with theatre and poetical circles in Patna, but he lived on fat monthly money orders from home. He said he didn't believe in caste or creed, but he once confessed to Aadil – late at night, after many bottles of beer – that he thought people from the lower castes were unclean. ‘They don't bathe,' he whispered confidentially. ‘It's not in their sanskars, you see. That you can't deny.' He never told Aadil whether Muslims bathed or not, but he especially favoured patriotic films about combat with Pakistan. He ate tandoori chicken avidly, and believed that the narrative of history must be deduced from corroborated facts and archaeological evidence, but he grew wildly furious when he read in the paper about a professor who had published a book proving that Vedic Indians ate beef. ‘This is all a plot,' he had muttered, his face crimson, ‘a maderchod plan.' He didn't say whose plan it was, and Aadil didn't ask. It was understood.

And yet Jaggu was an affectionate and faithful friend. He went out of his way to help Aadil and his other hostel-mates, he organized outings, he went on his motorcycle and fetched medicines when someone was sick. Even though he wasn't in Aadil's department, he collected gossip about Aadil's professors, and advised him on the subtleties of academic politics. He was a constant support, and Aadil was glad to have him as confidant. It was impossible to admit, even to Jaggu, but university was very hard for Aadil, and getting more difficult. It wasn't just the studies and the research, which took hours and effort and the energy from Aadil's body. This he could manage, even though he was now competing with boys who were truly gifted, and not just the ragged lot of Rajpur louts. It was the chronic shortage of money that wore him down. How could you read,
and concentrate on what you were reading, when your stomach twitched and ached from hunger? As the weeks passed, Aadil's small reserve of cash in the bank was being whittled down. There were always unexpected expenditures, fees and hostel collections and antibiotics for a sudden fever. There were books that were not on the curriculum but which professors casually declared to be essential pre-exam reading. And there were new hungers, for a play, for dinner at a restaurant and maybe a Coca-Cola. But the rupees vanished rapidly, and Aadil struggled, and tried to reduce his spending. But there was no excess to trim away, and he felt as if his discipline were cutting into his own flesh. He suffered, and he hid his suffering.

‘Beta, what is happening to your hair?' Jaggu said to Aadil one evening, tugging him down by the shoulder so he could peer closely at Aadil's head. They were sitting on top of the wall, outside the hostel, waiting for the group to gather for an expedition to the Ashok cinema.

‘My hair? Nothing,' Aadil said. He patted down his parting, and was reassured of the fullness of the growth.

‘Yaar, it's going completely white.'

‘No.'

‘I'm telling you.'

‘It's the same. It has been like this for a long time.'

‘No, no. Full white, I'm telling you. Come and look.'

They went back into the hostel, upstairs to Jaggu's room, which had many mirrors. Jaggu positioned Aadil in front of one on the wall, and held another one behind his head. ‘Look,' he said.

Aadil looked, and he saw that the back of his head was indeed quite white. From behind, he was an old man.

‘I think it's spreading from back to front,' Jaggu said. ‘But listen, it's nothing to worry about.' And he proceeded to list hair dyes, and pronounce on the virtues of different brands, and instruct Aadil in their usage. He was outraged when Aadil shook his head, and refused to colour.

‘Why, bhai, why? I ask you, why?' Jaggu said. ‘Nothing could be easier. It's not like you have to do it every day. You need to take care of yourself, and you refuse to do even this little thing.'

Aadil held Jaggu's wrist, and smiled, and shook his head, and led him down, back to the gate and the others. It was impossible to explain to Jaggu that hair dye even once a month could be an unbearable expenditure, a luxury reserved for people not like Aadil. Jaggu, who threw away
his toothbrush every second week because he thought it looked worn and tired, couldn't know what it really meant to live without a thick fold of rupees available at all times. He didn't lack intelligence, or sympathy, or insight. He was just different, he couldn't understand. Aadil couldn't blame him personally. Aadil couldn't tell him, either, that there were many days now when he felt like an old man. Maybe Aadil had aged prematurely, which was why there was this debilitating weariness seeping through his veins. He fought to rouse himself from bed every morning, struggled through fatigue to get through lectures, studying, exams. The exhaustion was not just in his muscles or cells, this he could have perhaps isolated and controlled and defeated. He had somehow been eroded, ground down until only a thin sliver of will was left, steely and brittle. He was on the verge of breaking, and yet he had to go on. He survived. He kept at it, and by the end of the year, by the time that exams were done and plans were being made for the future, Aadil had had enough. He wanted to go home.

‘Why?' Jaggu said. ‘Go back to what? You have to get a PhD, that's the only thing you can do.'

Getting a doctorate was the only possible choice if you wanted to teach, which Aadil did want to do. But paying for another degree, for three or maybe four years, was something he was not capable of, not any more. Maybe a human being could only expend so much effort, he thought, and he had been trying so very hard from class one onwards, he had no strength left to exert. He knew that he couldn't drive trucks any more, or miss another meal, or borrow books and make fervent promises that he would return them before dawn. He tried to explain to Jaggu. ‘I am just very tired,' he said.

Jaggu grew angry. ‘What is this, this laziness? I thought you had more guts than that. You are just throwing away years of education. At least try.'

For the first time, Aadil felt a sullen rage towards Jaggu, his friend who had so easily finished one degree and was going on to another one, who would no doubt complete this one with a song on his lips, who would have a PhD and a teaching job dropped into his lap. He would think he had really tried so hard to earn these prizes, he would believe that he had sacrificed and sweated. No doubt, one day, seated with his fellow professors in some cosy common room, he would tell the story of his friend Aadil, a poor rural boy who hadn't had the fortitude to finish his education.
Those people
, he would say, and sigh and take a sip of his chai. And
here he was, generous Jaggu, righteous and indignant. Aadil wanted to slap him.

Instead, Aadil turned away. He withstood Jaggu's impassioned entreaties and gibes for the next three weeks, and then he went home to Rajpur. Here, in the bazaar, there were debates and arguments about what had happened to Dibba in Patna. Some thought he had failed, others believed that he had not even gone to Patna. Otherwise why would he come back, with all his supposed education, and work on the land? This was the puzzle that Rajpur tried to solve, and some even went out to Ansari Tola, to see Aadil in the fields, wearing a lungi and sweating next to his father. Aadil shrugged off all questions and taunts, and kept to himself. He came into town rarely, to get seed and fertilizer, and went straight back out. The months passed, and the bazaar wits grew tired of Dibba, and moved on to other topics. Interest was suddenly revived when it became clear that Dibba was going to produce a spectacular crop from that little patch of patli earth near Ansari Tola. After the spring harvest, there was much sage nodding of heads in Rajpur. ‘That Dibba boy is earning all that Patna money back for his father. From his ekfasli land, Dibba's going to produce two harvests. Old Noora must be happy.'

Noor Mohammed wasn't happy. He was very afraid. During the cutting of the crop, Aadil had noticed that their land had shrunk. The farm next to theirs belonged to Nandan Prasad Yadav, and during the harvesting, it expanded six inches all down the length that abutted Noor Mohammed's land. Nandan Prasad Yadav's men cut their crop, and when they were done, the addah that separated the two properties had somehow shifted six inches to the west. One farm grew, the other lessened. When Aadil pointed this out, at first Noor Mohammed denied it. Then Aadil grew angry, and walked him down the boundary, and pointed out where it was closer to the babul tree on their side, and further from the pump on Nandan Prasad Yadav's land. Noor Mohammed could deny it no longer. He admitted that their land had been taken, but begged Aadil to do nothing, say absolutely nothing. ‘We are very small people,' he said. ‘They are elephants.'

Aadil was quiet. The yellow flowers of the babul blazed against the distant haze over the river. ‘How much have they taken?' he said.

‘You said this much, kya?' Noor Mohammed said, holding up a callused hand, fingers stretched out.

‘No,' Aadil said. He took his father's hand. ‘I mean in all, everything, in all the years.'

Noor Mohammed looked over at Nandan Prasad Yadav's holding, which went all the way into the high land and to the road. He wasn't measuring, he knew already. ‘We used to own almost one and a half bighas. One bigha they took when I was a boy. My Abba, he borrowed some money and signed a paper.'

‘What paper?'

‘Who knows? He couldn't pay, so they took the land.'

Noor Mohammed didn't know who had the paper now, either, or where it could be found. ‘Beta,' he said, ‘the land belongs to them now. It's theirs.'

Aadil pointed down at the new addah. ‘And this?'

Noor Mohammed had no sorrow, no anger. His brow and cheeks were as hard as carved black stone. ‘This also,' he said, ‘is theirs.' He turned and walked back to the Tola at his usual even pace, not slow and not fast.

Noor Mohammed grew afraid the next day, when it became clear that Aadil was not willing or able to stay quiet. Aadil went that morning to Kurkoo Kothi and demanded to see Nandan Prasad Yadav. After being kept waiting for four hours, he went to the Rajpur police thana and tried to file an FIR, and when the constable on duty laughed at him, he came back to Ansari Tola, took a spade and tramped out to his fields. An hour later a labourer on Nandan Prasad Yadav's land saw him, digging furiously. He had moved fifteen feet of the addah back over. Another hour later, two men with lathis and two with shotguns came out to Ansari Tola, and spoke to Noor Mohammed. He and two of his cousins ran out to the field, and talked and then struggled with Aadil. They had to wrestle the spade away from him. He cursed them all, and Nandan Prasad Yadav's men laughed. Aadil walked away. Noor Mohammed and his cousins moved the addah back to where it had been that morning.

Aadil went to the land records karamchari the next day, and from there to the circle inspector. Both seemed impressed by his sophisticated manner of speech, and advised him to file a land suit, and they would take it up with the circle officer, who was actually a deputy collector, who would take it up with the collector. Neither the karamchari or the circle inspector knew anything about a promissory note signed by Aadil's grandfather, but the karamchari promised to look up the number for the plot of land in the registry, and see if there was anything to be found there.

Aadil understood that nothing would be found, and nothing would be done. He had no money to bribe the karamchari, and no influence to bring to bear on the circle inspector. The Ansari Tola didn't have the num
bers or the will to beat back Nandan Prasad Yadav. The land that had been lost would never be regained. He knew this as surely as he knew that the Milani flowed from west to east, and yet he was unable to reconcile himself to it. He knew that in Rajpur the rule of law was an illusion that not even children believed in, but he could not find the fortitude that his parents practised. He was no longer silent. When he went into the bazaar, he spoke angrily against Nandan Prasad Yadav. He called him a thief and a bastard. He had not drunk beer in Patna, but now he began to drink tadi. His relatives now often found him staggering down the road to the Ansari Tola. He sat on the culvert, talking to himself and darting red-eyed glares at all who walked by. His mother and father pleaded, threatened, got the maulvi to speak to him, but nothing could assuage Aadil's despair. His mother insisted that he be married now, that a wife and responsibility would calm him down, but no parents were willing to give their girl to such a known madman, all his education notwithstanding.