The Song of Kahunsha (13 page)

Anand Bhai says this to himself as if he now regrets slashing Munna. They all stand in silence and listen for more wails. As Chamdi stares at the room, he sees shadows on the wall, vague shapes, and he understands now why the man is called Darzi. He is Anand Bhai’s tailor, the one who does the dirty stitching. Darzi must be taking a needle and thread and sewing Munna up while Chottu holds Munna. He wonders if Darzi is a real doctor—probably not. He hopes Munna gets some medicine for the pain.

“I’ll go and see how Munna is,” Anand Bhai says. “You all go home.” He turns to Sumdi. “On the way feed Dabba. Here’s some money, buy him mutton chops. I don’t think anyone has gone to him since yesterday. And tell him I will
come for information later tonight. He’d better have something.”

As Anand Bhai is entering Darzi’s room, a large white car pulls up in the square. The driver keeps the engine running and the car’s headlights blaze onto the gravel, and Chamdi can see every stone and pebble. The back door of the car opens and out steps a boy. Chamdi is glad that the boy is not deformed in any way. In fact, the boy looks very clean, as though he has been scrubbed thoroughly. His blue T-shirt and white shorts seem brand new. He is as young as Chamdi, and his features are very soft, and his hair falls over his eyes. Chamdi says to himself that this boy could easily be mistaken for a girl.

Anand Bhai comes out of Darzi’s room and goes to the driver’s window. The windows are tinted. A male hand drops a packet into Anand Bhai’s palm and the window closes. Anand Bhai digs the packet into the front of his black trousers and watches as the car turns and drives away.

The boy stands still for a moment. Then he walks quietly towards Anand Bhai. As he walks, the boy looks at Chamdi, probably because he has spotted somebody new. Chamdi smiles at the boy,
but the boy does not return the smile. He simply walks lifelessly across the gravel as if he has nowhere to go. Then suddenly the boy collapses to the ground, and Chamdi rushes to his aid. As he bends down to help the boy, he notices the boy’s white shorts. There is a dark patch of blood on them and drops of blood trickle down his thigh. Chamdi cannot take his eyes off the blood. He wonders why the boy is bleeding. Anand Bhai crouches down and taps the boy lightly on his cheeks. For a moment, Anand Bhai’s eyes lock into Chamdi’s. Anand Bhai smiles, and Chamdi looks away. Anand Bhai picks the boy up and carries him to his room.

Sumdi leads Chamdi away from the adda. This time, the three of them take a new route. Chamdi trails them, and pays little attention to his surroundings. He is trying hard to forget the boy. Even though he has seen so many deformed people, there was something about this boy that disturbed him. He does not understand why Anand Bhai smiled at him, and why that smile made his skin crawl.

“Who was that boy?” asks Chamdi after a while.

Guddi picks up a broken twig from the ground and chucks it onto the wall that surrounds a building compound. There is an advertisement for Lifebuoy Soap painted on the wall.

“Who was that boy?” Chamdi asks again. “There was blood on him …”

“That was Khilowna,” answers Sumdi.

What strange names these people have, thinks Chamdi. Handsome and Jackpot’s names do not match their appearance at all. And now this boy is called a toy.

“Why is he called Khilowna?” he asks.

“Look—do you have to know everything?” snaps Guddi.

“I just …”

“He must know,” says Sumdi. “Let him know. The boy is called Khilowna because grown men play with him. They hurt him in dirty ways. The blood you saw, that was because …”

“Sumdi …” interrupts Guddi.

“Anyway, he belongs to Anand Bhai. He looks pretty, but he’s filthy, he’s …”

“That’s enough,” says Guddi.

There is a look of disgust on Sumdi’s face. Chamdi thinks he understands what Sumdi has just told him. But not entirely. He feels sorry for
the boy, and then very afraid. But he does not fully understand his fear.

They all remain quiet for a while. A watchman taps his large cane on the ground and patrols the building compound. He notices the three of them and starts tapping loudly. Sumdi slows down on purpose. It seems to bother the watchman, but he does nothing.

“I want to feed Moti,” says Guddi.

“He’s a dog. He can take care of himself,” says Sumdi.

“But he’s not well.”

“Not now. Later.”

Guddi does not argue. She walks with her head down. Chamdi is sorry that he asked about Khilowna. It seems to have made Sumdi angry. Chamdi wishes he had not seen Khilowna at all. Why did Anand Bhai smile at Chamdi like that? He distracts himself by eyeing a packet of cream biscuits that hangs from a blue rubber sling in a beedi shop. A few packets of sliced bread are stacked on the counter.

Just in front of the beediwala is a man who sells mutton chops. His face is dark and sweaty as a result of the coal of the iron grill. Chamdi stares at the beads of sweat on the man’s face. The man
exchanges greetings with Sumdi, who takes out the ten-rupee note that Anand Bhai gave him and hands it to the man.

“Are you okay?” Guddi asks Chamdi.

“No, I …”

“You’ll be okay,” she says. “Once you live on the streets, you see everything in a few days. You see in a few days what most grown-ups see in a lifetime. That’s what my father used to say. Don’t worry.”

“Yes,” replies Chamdi. “Thank you.”

It is the first time she has spoken to him gently since the night she found him. The man twirls the mutton skewers and wipes his face with his shirtsleeves.

“Now you’ll meet Dabba,” she says. “I like Dabba.”

“Who’s Dabba?” asks Chamdi.

“Dabba’s a beggar. He’s been with Anand Bhai for very long.”

“But why is Anand Bhai asking Sumdi to feed him?”

“You’ll see.”

Chamdi does not like that this man is called Dabba. It means he must resemble a box. This time Chamdi does not ask. It is best he leaves their names alone.

When they are ready, Sumdi takes the mutton chops that are wrapped in a newspaper. He puts one in his mouth and immediately spits it out on the paper. “Hot,” he gasps. The man laughs, the crackling coal of the grill giving birth to new sweat on his face. As they walk away, Guddi flips a piece of mutton from hand to hand. She blows on it, and then, even though it is still steaming, she eats it. Sumdi gobbles down a piece as well. He holds out the meat to Chamdi.

“Eat while it’s hot,” he says.

“Isn’t this Dabba’s food?”

“Delivery charge. Now stop being a saint and eat.”

“Don’t feed Chamdi,” says Guddi sternly. “He has to fit in through the temple bars.”

“Let him eat,” says Sumdi. “Otherwise the fool will faint while running.”

Chamdi does not wait for Guddi’s approval. He savours the taste of the mutton as it melts in his mouth. “First time in my life I’m eating mutton,” he says.

“What?” asks Sumdi.

“At the orphanage all we had was vegetables, rice, and dal.”

“It sounds like a horrible prison.”

“No, it was good. We had beds. We learned how to read and write.”

“You and your reading and writing. What a waste! Tell me, if Munna knew how to read and write, would he have been able to prevent the knife from gouging his eye out?”

“The eye was gouged? It came out?”

“I hope so.”

Chamdi is shocked. “Why?”

“I don’t like Munna. He wants to be a don someday. Talks of cutting and killing all the time.”

“But Munna might go blind, no?”

“Who knows? Anyway, did you like the mutton?”

“I did.”

“You know what mutton it was?”

“Meaning?”

“What mutton—cow, goat, lamb …”

“I don’t know.”

“It was dog meat.”

“What?”

“These vendors kill stray dogs and cook their meat.”

Chamdi stares at Sumdi in horror. Could this be another one of Sumdi’s pranks? Chamdi
turns to Guddi to gauge her reaction. But she is not laughing.

“Would I eat a dog?” she asks Chamdi. “You saw how I feel about my Moti. Would I eat Moti?”

“Thank God,” says Chamdi. “I felt sick.”

“I only eat dogs I don’t know,” she says.

Sumdi’s gleeful laugh cuts through the night air. He wraps the rest of the mutton chops in the paper, then hits his sister on the back. She hits him back hard. How can they be so relaxed after what they have just witnessed? It is as if Chamdi cannot fully absorb this strange new world.

“I don’t understand something,” he tells Sumdi.

“Yes, say.”

“If Anand Bhai can make money stealing cars, why does he need beggars?”

“Begging is a big business, that’s why.”

“So all the money, does it make him rich?”

“More important than that, it keeps
us
poor. We don’t die of hunger, but we wish we did. Men like Anand Bhai make sure we have no way out. We are too afraid to get real work because he will come after us. We bring him money, we bring him information. Once you fall into this trap, it becomes your life. That’s why we are
stealing the temple money. We want to get out of this hell.”

“What if he catches us?”

Sumdi does not answer. The three of them find themselves on a main road again. This road is full of sari shops and jewellery shops. There is a police station as well. It has blue and yellow stripes on its pillars. What a strange tiger that would make, Chamdi thinks.

A police-tiger.

Chamdi is excited by the thought. Perhaps the real, living policemen of Bombay need strong tigers to help them keep Bombay safe. One day, the walls of these police stations will shake and tigers will emerge from their pillars and patrol the streets. Then we will see who riots, thinks Chamdi.

He wants to tell Sumdi and Guddi this, but Guddi slips away, starts walking in another direction. Sumdi does not seem to mind. Chamdi feels Guddi’s mind is on Moti. He likes that she cares about a sick stray dog even though she hardly has any food for herself.

Soon, Sumdi and Chamdi come to a halt just outside a jeweller’s shop called Shree Satyam Jewellers. The shop is closed for the night and the
streetlights cast tall shadows on its brown doors. Its steel shutters reflect light grudgingly, and Chamdi can see that an iron padlock binds the shutters together. Sumdi leads him into a narrow alley beside the shop. Electrical wires and the building’s pipes are exposed, and water drains out of the thickest one. It falls onto a human head.

As Chamdi’s eyes adjust to the dim light in the alley, he discerns a man with very little hair on his head, and absolutely none on his body. This man has no arms or legs. He is merely a square piece of human being. He lies flat on his back on the ground and he has no choice but to let the water, or whatever it is, fall on him. When he hears his visitors, he turns his head sideward and opens his eyes. A foul smell emanates from him.

“Dabba,” says Sumdi. “Food.”

The moment he hears the word “food,” Dabba’s mouth opens. His eyes closed tight, he waits. Sumdi puts a mutton ball in his mouth. Dabba chews on it quickly and swallows it. He opens his mouth again. Sumdi puts the second piece in. A scrap of cloth is wrapped around Dabba’s waist. It is filthy, but it prevents him from being naked. He is simply a head and a
breathing torso. Dabba has finished eating the third and final piece of mutton. He licks his lips and opens his eyes wide. A few drops of water fall onto his chest.

“Can you move me?” he asks Sumdi. “Since yesterday this pipe has been leaking and torturing me.”

Sumdi nods at Chamdi. “Help me lift him,” he says.

Dabba looks to be about fifty. His eyes are kind, thinks Chamdi. Perhaps that is because he is forced to stare at the sky all day. They have even acquired some of the blue-grey hue of an evening sky.

“Hold him and lift him up,” commands Sumdi.

Sumdi holds onto one side of Dabba, the side where his head is. Chamdi holds Dabba from below the waist. They lift up the torso. Chamdi holds his breath—the smell is unbearable.

“We’ll keep you here only,” Sumdi tells Dabba.

They place him back on the ground, only a foot away from the leaking pipe. Chamdi checks his hands. They are clean.

“Who’s the new boy?” asks Dabba.

“My friend Chamdi.”

“Thank you for lifting me,” says Dabba.

Chamdi nods. He cannot look into Dabba’s eyes, even though they remind him of the sky.

“Sumdi,” says Dabba. “Please scratch my chest. I’m going mad.”

“Where?”

“Anywhere, please. I can’t bear it anymore.”

Chamdi looks at Dabba’s dirty torso and wonders how Sumdi will get the guts to scratch him.

“There’s a soda cap next to my face,” says Dabba, as if he could read Chamdi’s mind.

Sumdi picks up the jagged steel cap and scratches Dabba’s chest.

“Aaah …” says Dabba. “Harder, harder.”

“Tell me where.”

“Everywhere! Tear my skin apart, I beg you.”

Sumdi continues to trace the cap along every inch of Dabba’s torso. In some areas, he uses more pressure than others. Chamdi realizes Sumdi has done this before because Sumdi can tell which of Dabba’s groans are ones of pleasure and which are those of discomfort. Chamdi wonders how Dabba goes to the bathroom. But then the cloth is so filthy …

“Now the face,” says Dabba, and closes his eyes in anticipation.

As Sumdi lifts his hand from Dabba’s torso, Chamdi notices that the steel cap has left lines of blood.

“Anand Bhai sends a message,” says Sumdi.

“My ears are open,” says Dabba as he turns his face to the side he wants scratched.

“He will come tonight to meet you. He wants information.”

“I have good news for him. Yes, good news. But I’m fed up. This time I’m going to bargain. I can’t do this anymore. I want to live in peace.”

“I understand,” says Sumdi.

“Now even the ears please, do the ears.”

“I must go,” says Sumdi. “I have to feed Amma.”

“Okay. Before you go, come here. I want to tell you something.”

He whispers into Sumdi’s ear, then lets out a heavy sigh.

“Promise me you will do as I have asked,” says Dabba. “In case Anand Bhai does not agree, I need your help.”

“I … I will try,” says Sumdi.