Shining Hero (13 page)

Struggling in, she wedged her boxes between a basket of noisy ducklings and another of mangoes. The compartment was packed with purchases; new shoes, sugarcane sticks, transistor radios, bales of cloth and kapok, five-gallon tins of mustard oil, pans of live fish, flopping. Dolly at last managed to squeeze Karna between two men on the seat and squatted on the floor herself, her bottom resting on cracked heels, holding the end of her new tinsel-trimmed sari out of the dirt.

Passengers were grumbling to each other, one man saying, ‘I couldn’t sell my milk and now my kujahs are returning even though they have crossed the holy river twice. You would expect the goddess to be more kind to people who respect her.’

‘Hush, hush,’ his wife urged. ‘You are insulting the goddess and she will take revenge on us.’

‘But he is right,’ another man said. ‘My cabbages have crossed six times in a week and still, in spite of so many blessings, failed to catch a market.’

People began to joke, saying, ‘It is a kindness of the goddess to save people from having to eat those wrinkled things. That is why she would not let you sell them in Calcutta even though your train went over the river bridges.’

Dolly hardly heard them. Her attention was on Karna and she was feeling proud because he looked like any rich person’s child in his yellow T-shirt and blue nylon shorts.

One of the women examined Karna’s face then asked Dolly, ‘Where did you get him?’

Dolly blinked. The question had always made her frightened. Once
a policeman had tried to take Karna away from her saying she must have kidnapped him and she had had to run to escape.

‘For he is a nice-looking child,’ the woman added, as though it was unlikely that a true child of Dolly’s would look nice.

A discussion followed. Karna was scrutinised from every side, different people making pronouncements, most agreeing that, in spite of his skinniness, Karna was a handsome boy.

Dolly wished they would not talk like that, fearing that such a compliment might make the gods jealous. If she had been able she would have burnt chillies now to ward off the evil eye. Karna gazed at his admirers with honey-coloured eyes and swung his legs ostentatiously, hoping they were noticing his new Bata sandals and tall white knee socks. Dolly had felt proud of Karna when she had finished dressing him in his new clothes but now she wished he was back in rags so that these people would not pay all this dangerous attention to him.

One of the women said, ‘He reminds me somewhat of Dilip Baswani.’ There came cries of horror.

‘The face cut is entirely different,’ said one.

‘Also the ears are of another shape altogether.’

‘And even the complexion of this child is of a deeper hue.’

‘Our Dilip is of a pleasant plumpness and this is one skinny fellow. There is no likeness between them,’ said one woman with indignation and she leant forwards and peered into Karna’s face.

He stuck his tongue out at her.

Reeling back she gasped, ‘See, see, how could anyone compare the divine Dilip to such a mannerless urchin.’

‘Don’t be so rude,’ Dolly ordered her son.

But the first woman continued to insist she saw a likeness and turning on Dolly accusingly, said, ‘With such a beautiful child you should be feeding him better.’

Dolly felt sad but asked, ‘Who is Dilip Baswani?’

There rose a hubbub of amazement. ‘But how can it be that you have not seen the Sun God of the cinema Mahabharata?’

Dolly had not been to the cinema for so long that she had forgotten
Dilip Baswani. Trying to make light of it all she gave a laugh and said, ‘My little Karna is forever saying he wants to be a film star,’ but thought to herself, ‘It is because he is wearing good clothes. No one thought he looked like any film star when he was in his rags.’

‘What do you think, little man?’ asked one of the women and pinched Karna’s cheek with a thumb and forefinger, leaving a red mark. ‘Would you like to be a film star?’

‘Oh yes,’ cried Karna. ‘That’s exactly what I’m going to be. There will be great big posters of me all over Calcutta when I get famous.’

Everyone laughed indulgently.

When the train crossed the bridge that spanned the sacred river Jummuna, the women all rose from their seats and scattering thermos flasks, betel nuts, gaudily-clad babies and paper rolls of popcorn, folded their hands. Facing the frothing water that was dark as beaten cocoa, they bowed their heads in a namaste of respect. Even the sellers of the unsold milk and cabbages rose and salaamed, for who knows, next time the goddess might be kinder and to deny her respect might make matters much much worse.

Dolly too struggled up from the floor and bowed exceptionally low, for what she felt for this river was not only respect but an enormous gratitude as well. It had given her Karna.

The train chuntered on over the Indian countryside and Dolly swayed from side to side, her toes sliding among cigarette stubs, betel-scarlet spit, oily newspaper, the leaves of bananas in which curd rice had been rolled. Her feet were bare for there had not been enough money for her to buy shoes.

Karna sat awed and thrilled among the nicotine-flavoured husbands who cuddled goods too precious for the floor, breakable china, bottles of arrak and whisky and a new TV set still in its box. He would own a TV when he became a film star, he decided, and imagined himself and his mother sitting side by side, the blue light flickering on their faces, watching him acting the part of the Sun God. He had caught a glimpse of one once, in a shop display, showing a film of gods and goddess wearing white gowns with golden haloes. They were
all nicely fat and were seated on a cloud, singing. One of the gods wore a wristwatch. Karna had stood enraptured till the shopkeeper came and drove him off. Remembering it, he decided that as well as a TV he would also find some way of owning a wristwatch like the god had worn, one with a big face and silver hands. The train passed slowly through narrow streets of towns and Karna was able to look into windows and see what the people were doing inside. He saw a woman crushing spices with a stone roller, schoolchildren facing a blackboard and reciting their lesson, a man sitting naked and cross-legged on his veranda massaging oil into his skin, a young boy and girl kissing each other as though they were Europeans. Many of the houses had TV aerials on their roofs, even in these rural towns. Roads of motorcars flowed by, lorries piled high, bullock carts dragging country produce and rice straw, a car fitted with giant posters from which a voice loud-hailed announcements of the latest film. Karna’s eyes rushed swiftly from the delights outside to those inside – all these people who, any other day, would have refused to allow him near them. When he was a rich film star, he thought, he would always travel on trains.

At midday the people sitting opposite Karna, a stout bald man and his stouter wife, pulled out a tiffin carrier and took the sections apart. They began to ladle spoonfuls of rich mutton curry onto a couple of stainless steel plates till the compartment was filled with the strong smells of spices and the fats of meat. As though it was a signal the others began to bring out their food as well; banana leaves wrapped round rice and curds, small fat samosas in newspaper, parathas stuffed with mincemeat. Quite soon everyone’s jaws were moving except for Karna’s and his mother’s.

Karna watched his mother’s hands, and waited for the moment when she too would bring out some food but she only sat there, her head lowered, and would not look at him. After a long while, when nothing happened, he wriggled to the smallest edge of his seat and watched the fingers of the people opposite carrying the succulent food to their mouths, staring as though his eyes could eat.

After a while the woman, her mouth full, said, ‘If you stare any harder your eyes will pop out,’ but Karna was like someone
hypnotised. Dolly pulled Karna’s face against hers and whispered, ‘I have kept a little money back in case there is an emergency during our journey. If there is some left over I will buy you a meal in the village. Be brave till then, son.’

But the boy could not take his eyes off the food until after a while the people became restless under the hot gaze of the longing eyes, their expressions petulant, their movements furtive. If it had been possible they would have gone somewhere else to eat, where a ravenous little boy could not see them.

The fat woman stopped eating suddenly, as though she could not bear it. Tipping some water into the cup of her thermos flask lid she rinsed her fingers and wiped them on a small lace hankie, then opening a bag took out an orange.

‘Here,’ she said, handing it to Karna.

He snatched at it wildly. But before he had time to start peeling, Dolly smacked it out of his hand. ‘We are not beggars. Please don’t give food to my child.’

People were still eating when the train stopped with a sudden scream of brakes and a ferocious jerk that sent kebabs and keemas, ghugni and begun bhaja shooting over the laps of the eaters and onto Dolly sitting on the floor. Luggage went flying from the racks. Ducklings went tumbling, crockery clattering, the TV thumped over, the cloth bales began unrolling. Karna was flung from his seat and landed, with a splat, onto the basket of mangoes.

The people in the compartment began craning through the window bars. ‘Perhaps the train has hit a buffalo.’ ‘Perhaps the engine driver has been taken ill.’ There came the sound of shouting but no one could hear what was being said. ‘A customs check, perhaps,’ said one man. ‘A tree across the line,’ suggested another. ‘Yes, it must be that. A tree.’ ‘Sometimes after the monsoon the river floods the railway line and the trains can’t proceed.’ ‘Or the driver has gone on strike. This often happens.’ They waited, wondering. Someone opened the door and scrambled down onto the line.

‘Come back inside,’ commanded his wife. ‘The train might suddenly start again and then what will you do?’

The mango basket was covered with a piece of hessian, attached with string. While the attention of the passengers was diverted by the sudden stopping of the train, Karna surreptitiously began to unpick the string and pull the cloth back. ‘When I am rich,’ thought Karna, sniffing deeply, filling his nostrils with mango scent, ‘I am going to own a mango orchard and then my mother and I will eat mangoes all day long.’

The shouting was growing louder. Suddenly the man who had got down began scrambling up again. ‘It is dacoits,’ he gasped as he clambered back inside the compartment. People hurriedly pulled down the latches of the door and tried to thrust their purchases under the seats where they would not be seen. From further down the train there came a sudden howl. A girl’s voice let out a shriek.

Karna found a mango that had split and, making sure no one was looking, dipped his fingers into the pulp. A man said, ‘I am not waiting inside here to be killed,’ and clutching his basket of Calcutta purchases, leapt over the mango basket, kicking Karna on the head. Ignoring the boy’s outraged yowl and squelching mango pulp in his chappals, the man began to open the outer door.

At once the other passengers began screaming, ‘Keep it shut, you fool, or they’ll get in.’

The man continued to wrestle with the door latches and a woman hit him on the head with her thermos flask, shouting, ‘Shut it, shut it, you salah, or all of us are dead.’ He fell back, sparkling glass and water drips showering from his hair.

There came a banging on the door and angry men’s voices roaring, ‘You in there. Open up.’

Several people near the door put their shoulders to it as it began to heave. The bolt was bending. The women began pulling off their gold earrings and stuffing them down the front of their cholis. In terror Dolly pulled out the cloth bag that held Karna’s inheritance.

Even as she hunted the foul heaps of rubbish, and had nothing at all to eat, she had never once been tempted to sell Karna’s chain and without it now she would not be able to carry out her plan, and
secure Karna’s future. She clutched it tightly as the two dacoits burst the door bar.

The passengers cringed back into their seats. Karna sucked his fingers. The dacoits wore army boots and a sort of tattered khaki uniform, and grubby red bandanas.

One, smiling broadly over a luxuriant moustache, said, ‘Salaam, Hello. Pass over jewels, money and watches.’ He spoke as though he was the conductor asking to see tickets. ‘Come on. No need to be afraid.’ He leant over and pinched one of the cuddled babies on its cheek.

A woman mutely showed him her bare arms as evidence that she had no bangles and another gestured to her naked throat, while Dolly felt her heart beating heavily against the hidden chain in her palm.

‘I have nothing, only this two rupees,’ the people started saying. Men turned their pockets inside out to prove the truth of this, women shook open their handbags.

One dacoit reached out to the nearest woman and, taking her choli at the neck, gave it a yank. Money, a watch, earrings, a necklace and bangles tumbled to the floor.

The dacoit laughed and picked up the treasures. ‘Come on, the rest of you. Let’s have it. No more tricking.’ But men and women had started pulling out their precious things even before he spoke, rootling in their underclothes, inside their saris, under their kurtas, groping down the back of the seats.

Soon the two dacoits had their pockets bulging and turned their attention to the things on the floor. One opened the outer door while the other peered into bales and bundles, finding one full of cabbages and tossing it, with a scoffing laugh, onto the rails, discovering the TV set and the radios and setting them outside carefully. They joked with each other as though they found the contents of the boxes and baskets hilarious, and stopped every now and again to give a child a tickle under the chin, or blow a joking kiss to a terrified young woman. The kujahs were hurled to explode on the rails in a spray of terracotta and souring milk. One dacoit, saying, ‘Come on out and have a walk,’ shattered the duckling basket with a kick and in
a moment released ducklings were everywhere. Out went the shoes and the sugar cane, the melons and the bottles of arrak.