The Storyteller (10 page)

Farida Baji was at breakfast. Without make-up and her hair undone, she was a haggard spectacle. Her eyes were red and swollen. The sour expression warned us to be respectful and cautious about what we said. Her
chelas
tiptoed around her, patiently awaiting an improvement in her mood. Baji did not acknowledge our arrival. She continued eating with a ferocious energy, tearing the freshly made
allu puris
with both hands and devouring large pieces as though they were desperately needed to fuel a fire deep within her. She ate sloppily, making guttural noises as she masticated the bread.

One of the
hijras
, Gulbadan, crept up to us and whispered, ‘Chunni ran away last night.’

‘Why?’

‘
Paani!’
Baji wailed. ‘
Paani!’

Banu ran up to her with a tumbler of water.

‘After the evening’s massage in Baji’s room, Chunni was asked to stay behind. For a few minutes we heard nothing.’ Gulbadan looked nervously at Baji to see if she was listening. ‘Then suddenly there were screams. Swearing…abuses.
Tauba! Tauba!’
Gently she slapped her cheeks and stuck out her tongue. ‘The language! Chunni ran out of the room, her
kameez
torn and blood running down her face.’

I giggled. Chaman promptly whacked me between the shoulders. An awkward silence ensued.

I had rarely spoken to Chunni. She was the most feminine looking of all the
hijras
under Baji’s care. Young and slightly built, with delicate features. I enjoyed looking at her large bum that jutted out like watermelons. A cock stirrer.

With hesitant steps, Chaman approached the
charpai.
‘Baji…we have come to ask for your blessing. We are beginning something new today.’

‘Do you like my new clothes?’ I stepped forward boldly.

Baji’s eyes flicked over me. ‘Blessing? Who needs the blessing of someone as old as I am?’

‘You are not old—’

‘My flesh is like rotting vegetable peel!’ Baji screamed. ‘That’s what
she
said! The bitch! The whore was panting for an unwrinkled cock up her arse! What could I offer her? Love, care, gentle affection…’ She sniffled and wiped her face in a towel. ‘The important things in life don’t matter any more.’ Suddenly she picked up the plate of
allu puris
and hurled it in our direction. ‘I am in mourning! Can’t you see?’

I picked an
allu puri
off the floor and gobbled it. Delicious. My stomach rumbled, and I reached for another. The others had backed off apprehensively. I found myself stranded near her, my mouth slobbered with spiced potatoes.

‘Look at him! He can think of nothing but his own needs!’ Her face distorted into a snarl of contempt. ‘Who did the make-up?’

‘I did it myself.’

‘It has made no difference. You are just as ugly. Chaman! What is he doing?’

Chaman spent an inordinate amount of time in whispered explanation. Occasionally Baji closed her eyes and grunted.

I was impatient to leave. A crowded bazaar awaited me. Curious eyes and grasping minds. I would open the windows and make them see. A hundred…many more. Empty shops and deserted food stalls. Impatient chants and handclaps. Then a roar.

There he is! The descendant of Valmiki and Kamban. We will hear about Rama again!

‘
Ay larka!
Come here. Chaman, why does he stand there with that glazed look in his eyes?’

Whatever Chaman said had revived Baji. She sat up and assumed her customary tone of unchallenged authority. She placed her hands on top of my head and muttered words that invoked the forces of the universe, the spirits that guarded the body and the
djinns
who were the custodians of Delhi. She blew on my face and spat near my feet. I stood mesmerised, awed by the conviction she had in her ability to protect me. Eyes closed, she lapsed into a brooding silence. Carrying incense sticks in both hands, Gulbadan walked around me in a circle. I was sprinkled with rosewater, and my forehead was rubbed with a coarse sandalwood powder.

‘He will survive.’ Baji opened her eyes after pronouncing the definitive words with a calm authority, as if she had concluded a satisfactory arrangement with Fate about my safety.

Chaman beamed and clapped politely. There were audible sighs from around the courtyard. We bowed in deference to Baji’s mysterious powers and then headed towards the entrance.

Baji called me back. She took a beaded necklace from under a bolster and dangled it in front of me. ‘Pretty, isn’t it?’ She rolled it over her lips and rubbed the beads on her cheeks.

I was entranced by the shiny blueness of the glass orbs.

‘Wear it.’

I couldn’t tell whether her wink was a gesture of friendliness, or a mildly flirtatious form of mockery.

‘And come back to tell me a story…a happy one without the pain of yearning or the hardship of suffering. Make me forget that I am imprisoned in a foreign place.’ She gripped my right hand in a desperate plea. I hid my embarrassment by admiring the necklace and rolling one of the beads between my right thumb and index finger. ‘A story should soothe and heal. Don’t you know one in which people are happy?’ It was a child’s voice, pregnant with curiosity, vaguely aware of the fragments of a world she desperately desired to enter.

‘Baji…’ I grinned.

She turned to look the other way.

‘Baji, I do not know what happiness is. I can tell you about loneliness. About hatred and meanness—I have grown up with them. I have to grapple with the problem of how to live with what I am. How to create meaning in the emptiness in which I float. I try to fill this bleak world by creating lives similar to my own. By creating people in situations similar to mine, I gain strength. I don’t feel lonely. They may be illusions but they renew my will to live. But they don’t make happy stories.’ I sounded clumsy. They were words she did not wish to hear. I was powerless to console her.

She looked at me with wonderment, as though for the first time she realised that I was capable of experiencing all those feelings attributed to humans. I stared back at her. A silence of dissatisfaction enveloped us. I sensed darkness…and cold. I could have laughed, a cynical expression of the absurdity that confronted us. A
hijra
was asking a loathsome dwarf to produce illusions of contentment, to provide temporary relief for her chronic pains.

And me? What about me?
I wanted to ask.
Who will be my physician? Who can nourish my vanity? I have to do it myself.

Her eyes moistened. I stood unmoved, unable to afford the luxury of pity. I hoped that she read my understanding of her
plight in the silence. We were a part of the debris on which civilisations constructed their symbols of success. Under the most magnificent buildings lay dirt. Apparently insignificant and useless. But without it, could there be reminders of what man was capable of achieving? We, too, had a hidden part to play in life…

I could not accuse Baji of selfishness. Beneath a compelling need to hide, not so much from the world but from ourselves, was an instinctive desire for love. It was a quest that we shared.

‘Do you ever feel the need to be loved?’

‘My only urge is to survive. A
roti
…sleep. To get through the day without injury.’

‘And nothing else?’

To lie with a woman. Touch her softness. Feel love and all that is supposed to be tender about life. Enter her and make my contribution to creation. I even dream of firmly fleshed boys. I like to think of sex as a ritual in heaven. But sometimes it is more like madness. An insane beast—writhing, charging, snorting.

‘Nothing else,’ I lied.

‘She spurned me,’ Baji murmured. ‘I offered her everything that was precious. Love in its purest form.’

‘I must go now.’

‘
Jah! Jah!’
The contempt returned in her voice and she waved me away. ‘Gulbadan! I must have a bath in perfumed water. Lay out my blue
banarsi
sari. Has Mohammad Shafiq responded to our offer?’

I escaped into the lane where Chaman scolded me for being late.

‘I had to finish eating the
allu puris.
All of them,’ I responded provocatively, assured that such a confession of gluttony would infuriate her.

‘And you didn’t bring any for us?’

I admitted that I hadn’t thought about them.

‘Always yourself!’ Chaman roared, her hands clasping her waist. ‘You can think of nothing else!’ She looked at my unrepentant face before she flounced off with the others. I skipped along behind them, humming a tune I made up as I went. The absence of the dull pain that lived in my stomach made me chirpy.

The bazaar buzzed with the morning’s energy. Shopkeepers sipped
chai
and unlocked battered doors. Shutters clanged open. Trestles were dragged outside and piled with saris,
shalwars
,
kameezes
and
duppatas.
Trinkets and jewellery. Shoes, prayer caps and mats. The butchers were already busy—sharpening knives, sharing lewd jokes, shouting their bargains and haggling with customers. The aroma of frying
parathas
wafted from the
dhabas.
Small boys scrubbed and washed large copper pots that would later be used for cooking
biryani.
Sweet-sellers, ice-cream vendors, barbers, shoe-shine boys, cobblers, snake charmers, fortune-tellers, puppeteers—all vied for positions on dusty strips of earth. Quarrels ignited. The owners of established shops intervened to settle territorial disputes. The absence of calmness was fascinating. This was a part of the city unable to exert any control over itself. The spirit of Chandni Chowk diffused into my system and found a welcoming home.

Chaman bullied a young vegetable seller into moving further towards Jama Masjid so that we were able to occupy a vantage point. Lightning Fingers and Nimble Feet appeared with two sturdy boxes and a straw mat. Behind them, Farishta carried a
dholak.
They helped me to the top of a box. Slowly Farishta began to beat the drum. Curious passers-by. Amused looks. Steps slowed and a few came back. What a spectacle! The sight of a strikingly dressed dwarf dancing must have been immensely attractive. Slowly they gathered. Half a dozen, fifteen, or were there more? Quite a crowd. My eyes followed
Chaman and Lightning Fingers as they slipped behind a couple of onlookers.

‘Brothers and sisters…’ There was a hint of a tremble in Farishta’s voice. ‘Today we revive a great tradition in the activities of this bazaar…ah…this city.’ Nervously he glanced at me. I tensed, fearing a lapse in his memory. The words had been rehearsed for several days. I had simplified the introduction against my inclination. ‘Ah…Delhi, as you know, is not one city. Some say there were seven cities before the present one that we know. Others are of the opinion that there were more. Where is our beginning? Did Delhi have its origin in Indraprastha of the
Mahabharata
, or was there a city even before that? Qila Rai Pithora, Siri, Tughlakabad, Jahanpanah, Ferozabad, Dinpanah, Sher Shahabad and Purana Qila…Shahjahanabad and Lal Qila. City after city. Who can tell? Listen to the wind at night and you might hear the noises of ancient battles! Conquerors riding their horses to victory and the cries of the vanquished. This city once belonged to emperors and noblemen. It dazzled the eyes with its riches. Love, hatred, treachery, nobility—the city has known everything that is human!’

Farishta timed the pause perfectly and intensified the pounding on the drum. Simultaneously we stopped the sound and movement. The visions fled. Silence fenced out the noises of history. People crept forward. It was my turn to speak.

‘The richest stories about Delhi lie under our feet, buried under the weight of its ancient soil, waiting to be unearthed some day. But in the meantime we must enrich ourselves with the
kissas
that have survived. Historical, mythical, legendary. Today, it is our intention to entertain you and inform you with a tale that is drawn from one of our greatest stories. Gather around…’

More faces. I could not see Chaman or Lightning Fingers.

‘Room for everyone!’ Nimble Feet spread the mat on the ground and prevented the audience from stepping on it.

A roll of the drum. Farishta sounded more confident. ‘We have a very special storyteller. Valmiki is born again! We are blessed with the spirit of Kamban! Hear about demons, giants and fairies…The triumph of the Pandavas, about Nala and Damayanti! And afterwards…’

Nimble Feet pointed to the mat. ‘Whatever your hearts please. The kindness of your generosity will be our reward.’

I stretched the silence and teased their patience until hostility sparkled in curious eyes. Feet shuffled. Then…The Battle of Kurukshetra. The return of the five Pandavas brothers to Indraprastha. The ten horses sacrifice. I set adrift an ancient world suspended in the mist of an inner darkness. The sky crackled and the gods entered in gold chariots drawn by winged horses. Heroic deeds and nefarious acts of villainy. I roared, paused and whispered. Arrows darkened the sky. Thunderous hooves pounded the dusty plains. Spears…clashing swords…fire. Piercing cries of humans, eagles and vultures. I built on what I knew. The battle extended itself at my whim. Warriors fell and animals died. The powers of the universe surged through me. Oh, the joy of entering and controlling minds! I was a projector, flashing pictures on screens. Close-ups…long shots. The words gushed like an unchecked river.

The applause was deafening. Coins and notes rained down on the mat. Imperial waves of my hands acknowledged the adulation. I decided against a curtsy. Such a gesture would be an affront to my triumph. Emperors were not obliged to bow. And I was the king of words. I ignored Chaman who was making frantic signs for me to get off the box. I deliberately ignored her.

An elderly foreigner offered me five rupees. I shook my head and pointed to his cap.

‘That’s a baseball cap.’ His Hindi was surprisingly fluent. He laughed and gave it to me. It was dark blue with a white emblem just above the peak. Farishta tugged my wig and then made off in great haste with the mat rolled under his arm. The white man’s satchel appealed to me.

‘You want that as well?’ This time he didn’t laugh. He took out a towel and a water bottle before handing it to me.