The Sari Shop (21 page)

In the dictionary, he had finally finished all words beginning with ‘A’. It had taken him much longer than he had expected, a full five months, but he hadn’t given up. He had been both relieved and jubilant when he had come to the last word. Azure. It meant
bright blue (colour)
as in
an azure sky
. He had
taken a three-day break then, and last night he had started on ‘B’, working on Babble, Babe and Baboon.

He read the essays regularly, the
Complete Letter Writer
he read more rarely, as it made less and less sense to him. He had bought two more books, and read them regularly too, even though these days the heat had sapped his brain so much that he could hardly think straight. After Mahajan’s chack chack all day, he rarely had the strength to go through the books after the shop closed. Neither had he painted his room yet. But he was glad, as he read another signboard, Mahesh Kiryana Store. At least he had stuck to
something
.

*

The two new books that Ramchand had bought over the course of the past five months had kept him very busy.

One day after reading ‘Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru’ (or ‘Our Favourite Leader’) in
Radiant Essays
, he had realized that the
Complete Letter Writer
and the
Radiant Essays
were getting a little stale and boring now. He had made another foray to the second-hand bookstalls to see if he could buy something new. The first book he had spotted in one of the bookstalls seemed promising, and he almost bought it the same instant. It was called
Improve Your English,
written by a Dr Ajay Rai.

On the jacket, there was a note about the book. Ramchand read it hopefully. It said:

The importance of English is well accepted. Importance of good English only more so.

• Ability to use and know effective English is the correct and proper prelude to your successful professional career as well as a dominant, commanding place in society.

• Success in the use of computers is very closely connected to
the success in the use of English, since almost 90 per cent of all the information that is stored in a computer is in English.

Ramchand stopped reading right there. For one, he found the language a little too elaborate. And also the sudden introduction of computers into his already complicated efforts to study alarmed him.

When he leafed through the book, his suspicions were confirmed. The book was too difficult for him, at least at this stage. It had passages in it that one was supposed to read carefully. Then there were two sections following each passage –
Answer the following
, and C
orrect and punctuate the following
.

Ramchand put the book back on the counter, a little dispirited. He found the passages very difficult to understand at first glance, and he didn’t even know what ‘punctuate’ meant. He still hadn’t reached the letter ‘p’ in the dictionary. Maybe one day, when he was more proficient, he could buy a book like this…

Ramchand turned his attention to other books.

There was a faded book that he was sure he could get cheap – a book called
Quotations for all Occasions
. Ramchand had always thought that quotations were something to do with fixing the price of wholesale fabric, but the book jacket explained that quotations were things of wit and wisdom said by great people. He didn’t know what wit meant, but he knew he could do with some wisdom. Another thing that was in favour of the book was that the quotations were short. He needn’t have a Sunday or a whole evening free before working on the book. It could be dipped into during empty pockets of time, and he could read at least one quotation while waiting for the rice to be done, or while warming water for a bath. Ramchand bought the book, haggling till he got it for twenty rupees, sure that it would help fill in empty moments with
wisdom and with wit, which he was sure was a desirable thing.

The quotations were classified in alphabetical order. There were quotations in the beginning of the book about Ability. A few pages later, there were some about Adversity. The book went on to report the ideas and opinions of great men on everything from Flattery to Literature to Tact, ending with Youth, Yukon and finally Zeal.

The quotations evoked mixed, but passionate reactions from Ramchand. Some quotations he just didn’t understand, and he skipped over them. Sometimes he skipped whole subjects that he either didn’t understand at all or found uninteresting.

Some quotations he wholeheartedly agreed with, and others he vehemently and angrily opposed. While reading through ‘Ability’, he was impressed by this:

Ability is of little account without opportunity –
Napoleon

How true that was, Ramchand thought sadly, wondering who Napoleon was. Maybe a foreign poet. How right he was! He, Ramchand, would have gone to an English-medium school if his parents had not died.

He read with some scepticism an idea attributed to somebody called Aughey.

Aughey, whoever he was, had commented on Adversity. Ramchand looked up Adversity in the dictionary. It meant
misfortune
. Ramchand shook his head and looked up
misfortune
. It meant
bad luck
. Ramchand sighed and read the quotation:

God brings men into deep waters, not to drown them, but to cleanse them
.

Ramchand snorted at this. ‘Yes,’ he thought scornfully, ‘and sometimes He just leaves them in deep waters till they are wrinkled and shrivelled like a washerwoman’s hands and are no good to themselves or to anyone else.’

Ramchand skipped all the quotations under the heading of America.

He solemnly admitted the wisdom of most of the quotations under Borrowing.

Debt is a bottomless sea
, somebody called Carlyle had said. And hadn’t his father always said that to his mother, whenever they had been short of money, ‘Never mind,’ he’d tell his anxious wife. ‘We’ll manage on whatever we have. But I am not borrowing money from anyone. There is no end to it once you start. It can make life hell.’

And Gokul also echoed the same sentiments about borrowing money. ‘It is a whirlpool, Ramchand. Don’t you ever get sucked into it. Make do with whatever you have. Limit your needs according to the money you have in your pocket. Once you get in the hand of moneylenders…’ Gokul had shaken his head. ‘And even if you borrow money from friends and acquaintances and relatives, some sort of pressure is always there. It is better to wear old clothes and have one meal a day and have some peace of mind than to live on borrowed money.’

By February Ramchand had reached Darkness, after skipping Capital and Labour and wondering at the sort of nonsense there was under Cats.

There is not room to swing a cat
– Smollett, Humphrey Clinker.

A cat may look at a king
– John Heywood.

The things supposedly great men had said about cats didn’t impress Ramchand much.

In April Ramchand bought another book.

He hadn’t meant to, he had been just browsing through the books at a bookstall, but he had fallen in love with this book as he hadn’t with any other. It was called
Pocket Science for Children
. It was a small book, made of very glossy paper. It contained colour pictures, beautiful illustrations and
so much
knowledge that Ramchand was overwhelmed.

Ramchand asked the price. It was for 150 rupees. He was dismayed. It was a huge amount to pay for just one book, but
the shopkeeper said it was a foreign book and he wouldn’t budge from the price. Even after bargaining his best, Ramchand only managed to bring it down to 120 rupees. But he couldn’t go back without it, he knew that. Besides, he had bought
Quotations for all Occasions
about two months back. Surely it was all right to buy this now. He didn’t think any more about it and bought it.

It was so absorbing and delightful that Ramchand had to tear himself away from it in the mornings to leave for the shop. And his first thought on getting back every evening was to start reading it again. Even Sudha was a little neglected in favour of
Pocket Science for Children.

Inside its pages there were pictures of stars and planets, machines, plants and the inside of the human body. It explained, in words that Ramchand could understand now, how electricity was generated, how car brakes worked, why hot air balloons rose up in the air, why guitars had holes in them and why rainbows were formed in the sky. It explained how penguins, birds that Ramchand had never seen or heard of before, used wave movements to swim. Ramchand gazed at the accompanying picture of penguins with wonder. They looked like the solemn waiters in bow ties and black suits who had been serving food at Rina Kapoor’s wedding.

The book also explained why diamonds sparkled and said, to Ramchand’s surprise, that there were 640 muscles in the human body, and that human beings were fast using everything on earth and if they went on at this rate, there would soon be nothing left.

Ramchand loved this book above all the others that he possessed, even though he didn’t like to admit it to himself.

After reading it, when he placed it on top of the fast-increasing book pile that now had
five
books, he began to feel the first stirrings of a book-collector’s possessive pride.

He had his eye on
A Short History of the World for Youngsters
now, but it was for a hundred rupees, and he thought it would be better to wait till August before he bought it. He hoped no one else would buy it meanwhile.

*

Now, while Ramchand walked towards Chander’s place, he felt satisfaction welling up inside himself as he read one signboard after another without faltering once. Sunder Ram Brass Band, Sukhvinder Hardware Store, Shiv Shankar General Store…

The signboards petered out a long way before he reached Chander’s neighbourhood, though. Instead, there were just small houses, more like shanties, and dark, poky, miserable little shops. The neighbourhood had seemed bad enough when he had come here last time, but that had been in the winter. The summer somehow made it seem much worse. The whole place stank, the drains were festering with filth, the heat made the dirt even more unbearable.

When Ramchand reached the Hanuman temple, it seemed to him as if he had been walking for eternity. He turned into the street. There was an alcove in the long stretch of crumbling walls, and in this space the Municipal Corporation tap was installed.

Two women stood quarrelling by the tap, flailing their arms around and screaming at each other. Ramchand couldn’t pass because other women and children who were watching the fight with interest blocked the street.

One of the women was screaming, ‘You think this is your father’s tap? We don’t get water to drink, to cook, and look at this maharani. She is giving her young prince a bath.’

A skinny, naked boy of five or six stood between the two women. He was soaped all over, down to his bony knees and scabbed feet. Only his face was soap free; even his head was covered with soapsuds. He looked miserable.

His mother had a restraining hand on his shoulder in case he tried to run away.

‘Just because you are content to have your children’s head full of lice and their knees black as soot doesn’t mean everybody is the same!’ the boy’s mother screamed back at the other woman.

The other woman had a firm hand clasped on the tap. She shouted back, ‘You don’t have to act as if you are a clean Brahmin or something. You throw your garbage all over the street!’

‘What can I do?
I
am not on such intimate terms with shopkeepers that they will give me things like plastic dustbins for free.’

‘You bitch!’ the other screamed. ‘What are you trying to say?’

‘I am just saying I know what goes on after your husband goes to sell bananas every day. Don’t make me open my mouth.’

The two women were screaming at the top of their lungs now.

‘At least my husband doesn’t go to other women. I also know lots of things about your household, so you keep your filthy mouth shut.’

The child looked even more miserable. He hadn’t wanted a bath in the first place. The soap on his skin was drying now. His hair was beginning to form spikes and his body felt itchy. It was so hot that he was sweating under the layer of soap he was sweating. Sweat and drying soap were making him feel wretched, but his mother still had as firm a hold on his shoulder as the other woman had on the tap. Some children in the crowd laughed at him. He glared back at them.

There would be more fighting on the street later on in the day.

By now, Ramchand was wedged in the middle of the crushing horde of women and children, being pressed and pushed
from all directions, and he had to struggle very hard to get past them.

He was relieved when he got to Chander’s door. He knocked at the door wearily. No one answered. He knocked again, louder this time. Silence. Ramchand pushed at the door gently. When no one spoke, he grew bolder and opened the door. At first he thought there was no one inside. Then he saw her, sitting propped up in a corner of the room, head bowed, silent, holding the half-full bottle of rum that Chander had left behind when he had stalked out of the house in a temper.

Ramchand cautiously crept towards Kamla, shocked at the sight of a woman with a bottle in her hand. He had never before seen a woman drinking. He opened his mouth to address her, but stopped. It seemed stupid to call her Bhabhi. Bhabhis were decorous women who gave you tea, sometimes irritated you with a lot of information about their children and occasionally asked with sly smiles when you were planning to get married. This creature in a drunken stupor, staring with unseen eyes at the wall opposite – how should he address her? Then he saw her unkempt appearance, tear-stained cheeks, pinched face and decided that this was no happy drunk. He bent over her and lightly placed an arm on her shoulder. He shook her slightly. No response. A dead woman’s eyes continued to stare into air. For a moment Ramchand panicked. Was she dead? But he could hear her breathe. He shook her slightly again.

The memory of the day when he had left her in a huddled heap after Chander had beaten her came back vividly to him, bringing with it a fresh pang of guilt. The image had often come back to haunt him, but he had always pushed it away to the recesses of his mind. But a persistent, though vague feeling of guilt had remained, a feeling that he had not even admitted to himself.