Slumdog Millionaire: A Novel (16 page)

Australian
Geographic
magazines which I will sell to a
kabariwalla.
And 52,000 rupees. In crisp new notes.

I say my hooroos to the Taylor family. Roy behaves like a whacker. Since he started taking drugs he has kangaroos loose in the top paddock. Maggie's pashing James. And I am not worried about Mrs Taylor. With the HC around, I know she'll be apples. As for me, I'm off to meet Salim in Mumbai. It'll be a bonzer!

* * *

Smita looks at her watch. It shows the time as one-thirty am. 'Are you sure you want to carry on?'

I ask.

'Do we have a choice?' she replies. 'They will file formal charges against you by tomorrow.' She presses the 'Play' button again.

* * *

We are in yet another commercial break. Prem Kumar taps his desk. 'You know what, Mr

Thomas, your luck has finally run out. I am ready to bet you that you cannot answer the next question. So prepare to use one of your Lifeboats.'

The signature tune begins.

Prem Kumar turns to me. 'We now move on to question number five for fifty thousand rupees.

This one pertains to the world of diplomacy. When a government declares a foreign diplomat

persona non grata,
what does it mean? Is it a) that the diplomat is to be honoured, b) that the diplomat's tenure should be extended, c) that the diplomat is grateful or d) that the diplomat is not acceptable? Have you understood the question, Mr Thomas?'

'Yes,' I reply.

'OK. Then let's have your reply. Remember, both Lifeboats are still available to you. You can get A Friendly Tip, or you can ask me for Half and Half and I will remove two wrong answers,

leaving you with just two choices. What do you say?'

'I say D.'

'Excuse me?'

'I said D. The diplomat is not acceptable.'

'Is that a guess? Remember, you stand to lose the ten thousand rupees you've already won if you give the wrong answer. So if you want, you can quit right now.'

'I know the answer. It is D.'

There are gasps from the audience.

'Are you absolutely, one hundred per cent sure?'

'Yes.'

There is a crescendo of drums. The correct answer flashes.

'Absolutely, one hundred per cent correct! You have just won fifty thousand rupees!' declares Prem Kumar. The audience stands up and cheers. Prem Kumar wipes the sweat from his brow. 'I must say, this is remarkable,' he says out aloud. 'Tonight Mr Thomas really seems to be The Man Who Knows!'

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HOLD ON TO YOUR BUTTONS

'Khallas.
Finished,' I say, speaking in monosyllables. 'No more whisky. Bar closed now. Go home.'

'Noooo. Plizz don't say that. Ged me one m-more peeeg. Lasht one,' the customer pleads and holds out his empty glass. I look at my watch. It is twelve forty-five am. Technically, the bar does not close till one. With a grimace I pick up the bottle of Black Dog rum. 'Hundred rupees, please,' I demand. The man takes a crumpled note from his shirt pocket and I pour a carefully measured peg into his glass.

'Thang you, b-b-b-artender,' he says, takes a swig of the rum and crashes down on the table, shattering his glass on the floor, spilling the bottle of soda and overturning the bowl of mint chutney. Within seconds he will be fast asleep. Now I not only have to clear up the big mess he has created, but also call a taxi, help him to his feet and somehow send him home. And though I was smart enough to charge him for the drinks in advance, I can forget about getting any tip from this customer.

Perhaps I myself am to blame for getting into this situation. The customer was displaying all the tell-tale signs of crashing out any minute. But I thought he could stomach one last peg. As usual, I was wrong.

Even after two months at Jimmy's Bar and Restaurant, I am unable to assess accurately a

drinker's capacity. I have, though, evolved a rough classification system for drunkards. Top of my list are the horses. These can hold as many as eight pegs without slurring their speech. Then come the asses, who start braying and babbling after just two or three, or become maudlin and sentimental and begin crying. Then come the dogs. The more they drink, the more they want to get into an argument or a fight. Some of them also get frisky with Rosie. Below them are the bears, who drink and then drift off to sleep. And at the bottom are the pigs. They are the ones who vomit after their last peg. This classification is not watertight. I have seen customers who start like horses but end up like pigs. And dogs who turn into bears. Mercifully, this customer has ended up a bear rather than a pig.

I get rid of the last drunkard and look at the clock on the wall. It is one-ten am. Ever since Rosie and her dad pushed off to Goa for a holiday, I have been returning to my cubby-hole of a house in Dharavi after midnight almost every night. This is partly my fault. If I had not told the manager that I knew how to mix drinks and measure whisky by the peg, that I could tell the difference between a Campari with Soda and a Bloody Mary, I wouldn't have been asked to

officiate as the bartender in Alfred's absence.

Jimmy's Bar and Restaurant in Colaba has fading prints on the walls, mirrors behind the bar, sturdy wooden furniture, and the best menu in South Mumbai. Because the food is so good and the prices so cheap, it attracts customers from all walks of life. On any given day you can find a top-level executive nursing his drink at the bar next to a lowly factory worker. The manager insists that we strike up conversations with customers at the bar, because people drink more when they have company. Rosie's dad, the doddery bartender Alfred D'Souza, is adept at chatting up patrons. He knows most of the regulars by name and sits with them for hours, listening to their tales of woe and adding steadily to their liquor bill. Rosie herself is becoming quite an expert bar girl. She sits at the bar wearing a low-cut blouse and a tight skirt, occasionally bends down to display some cleavage and entices the customers into ordering expensive imported

whisky instead of the cheap Indian brands. Sometimes, though, her antics land her in trouble with boorish customers who fancy her as a cheap lay. I then have to act as informal bouncer.

Mr Alfred D'Souza thinks there is something brewing between Rosie and me and watches me

like a hawk whenever she is around. He is completely mistaken. Rosie is a sweet girl. She is short and bosomy. The way she tilts her head at me and occasionally winks, I feel she might be trying to give me a signal. But my brain is now incapable of receiving it. It is overloaded with memories of just one person: Nita. The doctors in Agra have said it will take at least four months for Nita to recover from her injuries. And I know Shyam will never allow me to meet her. That is why I have returned to Mumbai: to exorcise the ghosts of Agra, both of the living and of the dead. But I cannot escape my own history in this city. Memories of the past waylay me at every intersection. Shantaram, the failed astronomer, mocks me in the streets. Neelima Kumari, the actress, calls out to me on the local train. And Salim, my friend, looks down at me from every billboard. But I have taken a conscious decision not to meet Salim. I do not want him to get sucked up in the vortex of my crazy life and my crazy plans.

* * *

I live in a corner of Mumbai called Dharavi, in a cramped hundred-square-foot shack which has no natural light or ventilation, with a corrugated metal sheet serving as the roof over my head. It vibrates violently whenever a train passes overhead. There is no running water and no sanitation.

This is all I can afford. But I am not alone in Dharavi. There are a million people like me, packed in a two-hundredhectare triangle of swampy urban wasteland, where we live like animals and die like insects. Destitute migrants from all over the country jostle with each other for their own handful of sky in Asia's biggest slum. There are daily squabbles – over inches of space, over a bucket of water – which at times turn deadly. Dharavi's residents come from the dusty

backwaters of Bihar and UP and Tamil Nadu and Gujarat. They came to Mumbai, the city of

gold, with dreams in their hearts of striking it rich and living upper-middle-class lives. But that gold turned to lead a long time ago, leaving behind rusted hearts and gangrenous minds. Like my own.

Dharavi is not a place for the squeamish. Delhi's Juvenile Home diminished us, but Dharavi's grim landscape of urban squalor deadens and debases us. Its open drains teem with mosquitoes.

Its stinking, excrement-lined communal latrines are full of rats, which make you think less about the smell and more about protecting your backside. Mounds of filthy garbage lie on every corner, from which rag-pickers still manage to find something useful. And at times you have to suck in your breath to squeeze through its narrow, claustrophobic alleys. But for the starving residents of Dharavi, this is home.

Amidst the modern skyscrapers and neon-lit shopping complexes of Mumbai, Dharavi sits like a cancerous lump in the heart of the city. And the city refuses to recognize it. So it has outlawed it.

All the houses in Dharavi are 'illegal constructions', liable to be demolished at any time. But when the residents are struggling simply to survive, they don't care. So they live in illegal houses and use illegal electricity, drink illegal water and watch illegal cable TV. They work in Dharavi's numerous illegal factories and illegal shops, and even travel illegally – without ticket – on the local trains which pass directly through the colony.

The city may have chosen to ignore the ugly growth of Dharavi, but a cancer cannot be stopped simply by being declared illegal. It still kills with its slow poison.

I commute daily from Dharavi to Jimmy's Bar and Restaurant. The only good thing about

working in Jimmy's establishment is that I don't have to come to work till at least midday. But this is more than offset by the late nights spent serving drunken louts from all over the city and listening to their pathetic tales. The one conclusion I have reached is that whisky is a great leveller. You might be a hot-shot advertising executive or a lowly foundry worker, but if you cannot hold your drink, you are just a drunkard.

After my traumatic experience with Shantaram, I thought I would never be able to tolerate a drunk. But Jimmy's was the only establishment that offered me a job. I console myself with the thought that the smell of whisky is less pungent than the stench from the communal latrine near my shack, and that listening to a drunkard is less painful than listening to the heartrending stories of rape, molestation, illness and death that emanate daily from the huts of Dharavi. So I have now learnt to fake an interest and say 'Ummmm' and 'Yes' and 'Really?' and 'Wow!' to the tales of cheating wives and miserly bosses that are aired every night at Jimmy's Bar and Restaurant, while simultaneously encouraging customers to order another plate of Chicken Fry and another bowl of salted cashew nuts to go with their drinks. And every day I wait for a letter to arrive from the
W3B
people, to tell me if I have been selected to participate in the show. But the postman delivers nothing.

A sense of defeat has begun to cloud my mind. I feel that the specific purpose for which I came to Mumbai is beyond me. That I am swimming against the tide. That powerful currents are at work which I cannot overcome. But then I hear my beloved Nita's cries and Neelima Kumari's sobs and my willpower returns. I have to get on to that show. And till that happens, I will continue to listen to the stories of the drunkards in this city. Some good. Some bad. Some funny.

Some sad. And one downright bizarre.

* * *

It is past midnight, but the lone customer at the bar refuses to budge. He has come by chauffeur-driven Mercedes, which is parked outside. He has been drinking steadily since ten pm and is now on his fifth peg. His uniformed driver is snoring in the car. Perhaps he knows that his employer will not come out in a hurry. The man is in his early thirties and is dressed in a smart dark suit with a silk tie and shiny leather shoes.

'My dear brother, my dear brother,' he keeps repeating every two minutes, in between sips of Black Label whisky and bites from the plate of shammi kebabs.

The manager snaps his fingers at me. 'Thomas, go and sit with him and ask him about his

brother. Can't you see the poor fellow is distraught?'

'But . . . Manager Sahib, it is past midnight. We should tell him to leave or I'll miss the twelve-thirty local.'

'Don't you dare argue with me or I'll break your jaw,' he snarls at me. 'Now go, engage the customer in conversation. Get him to order the Scottish single malt which came in yesterday. He has come in a Mercedes.'

I glare at the manager like a schoolboy at a bully. Reluctantly, I return to the bar and slide closer to the customer.

'Oh, my dear brother, I hope you will forgive me,' he moans, and nibbles at the shammi kebab.

He is behaving like an ass, but at least he is in the lucid phase, with a couple of pegs in his system and words bubbling out of his mouth.

'What happened to your brother, Sir?' I ask.

The man raises his head to peer at me with half-closed eyes. 'Why do you ask? You will only increase the pain,' he says.

'Tell me about your brother, Sir. Perhaps it will lessen your pain.' 'No. Nothing can lessen the pain. Not even your whisky.' 'Fine, Sir. If you do not want to talk about your brother, I will not ask. But what about you?'

'Don't you know who I am?'

'No, Sir.'

'I am Prakash Rao. Managing Director of Surya Industries. The biggest manufacturer of buttons in India.'

'Buttons?'

'Yes. You know, buttons on shirts, pants, coats, skirts, blouses. We make them. We make all kinds of buttons from all kinds of materials. We use mostly polyester resins, but we have also made buttons of cloth, plastic, leather and even camel bone, horn-shell and wood. Haven't you seen our ad in the newspapers? "For the widest range of buttons – from fastening garments to pulling drawers – come to Surya. Buttons R Us." I am quite sure that the shirt you are wearing has buttons manufactured by my company.'

'And your brother, what is his name?'