A Fine Balance Part 18

"Yes, sure, come on." But the man squeezed out a chord, waved, and continued on his way.

"Have you met him? Lives in the second row." Rajaram stirred the pan and helped himself. "He begins work in the evening. Says people are more generous if he sings when they are eating or relaxing. Have some more?"

Their refusal was final this time. Rajaram finished what remained. "It's very nice for me that you are renting this house. On the other side of me," he said, lowering to a whisper, "lives a useless fellow drunk all the time. Beats his wife and his five-six children if they don't bring back enough from begging."

They looked at the shack, where all was quiet at present. The children were not in evidence. "Sleeping it off. To start again tomorrow. And she must be on the streets with the little ones."

The tailors sat with their neighbour for the rest of the evening, talking about their village, about Muzaffar Tailoring Company, and about the job they were starting on Monday with Dina Dalai. Rajaram nodded at the familiar story. "Yes, thousands and thousands are coming to the city because of bad times in their native place. I came for the same reason."

"But we don't want to stay too long."

"n.o.body does," said Rajaram. "Who wants to live like this?" His hand moved in a tired semicircle, taking in the squalid hutments, the ragged field, the huge slum across the road wearing its malodorous crown of cooking smoke and industrial effluvium. "But sometimes people have no choice. Sometimes the city grabs you, sinks its claws into you, and refuses to let go."

"Not us, for sure. We are here to make some money and hurry back," said Om.

Ishvar did not want to discuss their plans, fearing contamination by doubts. "What's your trade?" he asked, changing the subject.

"Barber. But I gave it up some time ago. Got fed up with complaining customers. Too short, too long, puff not big enough, sideburns not wide enough, this, that. Every ugly fellow wants to look like a film actor. So I said, enough. Since then I've done lots of jobs. Right now, I'm a hair-collector."

"That's good," said Ishvar tentatively. "What do you have to do, as a hair-collector?"

"Collect hair."

"And there is money in that?"

"Oh, very big business. There is a great demand for hair in foreign countries."

"What do they do with it?" asked Om, sceptical.

"Many different things. Mostly they wear it. Sometimes they paint it in different colours red, yellow, brown, blue. Foreign women enjoy wearing other people's hair. Men also, especially if they are bald. In foreign countries they fear baldness. They are so rich in foreign countries, they can afford to fear all kinds of silly things."

"And how do you collect the hair?" asked Om. "Steal it from people's heads?" There was a sneer in his voice.

Rajaram laughed good-naturedly. "I go to pavement barbers. They let me take it in exchange for a packet of blades, or soap, or a comb. In haircutting saloons they give it free if I sweep the floor myself. Come come inside my house, I'll show you my stock."

Rajaram lit a lamp to dispel the early dusk within the shack. The flame flickered, steadied, and blossomed into orange, revealing gunny sacks and plastic bags stacked high against the wall.

"The sacks are from pavement barbers," he said, opening one under their curious gaze. "See, short hair."

They held back from the unappetizing contents, and he plunged in his hand to display a greasy clump. "Not more than two or three inches long. Fetches twenty-four rupees a kilo from the export agent. It's only good for making chemicals and medicines, he tells me. But look inside this plastic bag."

He untied the string and drew out a handful of long tresses. "From a ladies' barber. So beautiful, no? This is the valuable stuff. It's a very lucky day for me when I find this kind of hair. From eight to twelve inches, it brings two hundred rupees a kilo. Longer than twelve, six hundred rupees." He fingered his own hair and held it out like a violin.

"So that's why you are growing yours."

"Naturally. G.o.d-given harvest will put food in my stomach."

Om took the tresses and stroked them, not repulsed as he had been by the mounds of short clippings. "Feels good. Soft and smooth."

"You know," said Rajaram, "when I find hair like this, I always want to meet the woman. I lie awake at night, wondering about her. What does she look like? Why was it cut? For fashion? For punishment? Or did her husband die? The hair is chopped off, but there is a whole life connected to it."

"This must have been a rich woman's hair," said Om.

"And why do you think so?" asked Rajaram, with the air of a mentor examining the novice.

"Because of the fragrance. Smells like expensive hair tonic. A poor woman would use raw coconut oil."

"Perfectly correct," he tapped Om's shoulder approvingly. "By their hair shall you know them. Health and sickness, youth and age, wealth and poverty it's all revealed in the hair."

"Religion and caste also," said Om.

"Exactly. You have the makings of a hair-collector. Let me know if you get tired of tailoring."

"But would I be able to stroke the hair while it's still attached to the woman? All the hair? From top to bottom, and between the legs?"

"He's a clever rascal, isn't he?" said Rajaram to Ishvar, who was threatening to hit his nephew. "But I am strictly a professional. I admit that sometimes, seeing a woman with long hair, I want to run my fingers through it, twine it around my wrist. But I have to control myself. Till the barber severs it, I can only dream."

"You would dream a lot about our new employer if you saw her," said Om. "Dina Dalai's hair is beautiful. She probably has nothing to do all day but wash it and oil it and brush it and keep it looking perfect." He held the tresses against his head, clowning. "How do I look?"

"I was planning to find you a wife," said his uncle. "If you prefer, we can find a husband." Laughing, Rajaram took back the hair and replaced it carefully in the plastic bag.

"But I am thinking," said Ishvar. "Wouldn't a hair-collector get more business in a place like Rishikesh? Or a temple town like Hardwar? Where people shave their heads and offer their locks to G.o.d?"

"You are correct," said Rajaram. "But there's a big obstacle in the way. A friend of mine, also a hair-collector, went south, to Tirupati. Just to check out the production in the temples there. You know what he found? About twenty thousand people a day, coming to sacrifice their hair. Six hundred barbers, working in eight-hour shifts."

"That must produce a huge hill of hair."

"Hill? It's a Himalayan mountain of hair. But middlemen like me have no chance to collect it. After the hair is dedicated, the very holy Brahmin priests put it in their very holy warehouse. And every three months they hold an auction, where the export companies buy it directly."

"You don't have to tell us about Brahmins and priests," said Ishvar. "The greed of the upper castes is well known in our village."

"It's the same everywhere," agreed Rajaram. "I'm still waiting to meet one who will treat me as his equal. As a fellow human being that's all I want, nothing more."

"From now on you can have our hair," said Om generously.

"Thank you. I can cut it for you free, if you like, as long as you're not fussy." He tucked away the sacks of hair and brought out his comb and scissors, offering a crop on the spot.

"Wait," said Om. "I should first let it grow long like yours. Then you can get more money for it."

"Nothing doing," said Ishvar. "No long hair. Dina Dalai won't like a tailor with long hair."

"One thing is certain," said Rajaram. "Supply and demand for hair is endless, it will always be big business." As they returned outside into the evening air, he added, "Sometimes, it also turns into big trouble."

"Why trouble?"

"I was thinking about the hair of the beard of the Prophet. When it disappeared from the Hazrat-Bal mosque in Kashmir some years ago. You remember?"

"I do," said Ishvar. "But Om was just a baby then, he doesn't know."

"Tell me, tell me. What happened?"

"Just that," said Ishvar. "The sacred hair disappeared one day, and there were big riots. Everyone was saying the government should resign, that the politicians must have something to do with it. To cause trouble, you know, because Kashmiris were asking for independence."

"What happened was," added Rajaram, "after two weeks of riots and curfews, the government investigators announced they had found the sacred hair. But the people were not happy what if the government is fooling us? they asked. What if they are pa.s.sing off some ordinary hair for the sacred one? So the government got a group of very learned mullahs and put them in complete charge of inspecting the hair. When they said it was the correct one, only then did calm return to the streets of Srinagar."

Outside, the smoke of cooking fires had taken control of the air. A voice yelled in the darkness, "Shanti! Hurry with the wood!" and a girl responded. Om looked: it was her, the one with the big bra.s.s pot. Shanti, he repeated silently, losing interest in the hair-collector's story.

Rajaram propped a rock against the door of his shack so the wind wouldn't blow it open, then escorted the tailors on a tour of the neighbourhood. He showed them a shortcut to the train station through a break in the railroad fence. "Keep walking through that gully, till you see the big advertis.e.m.e.nts for Amul b.u.t.ter and Modern Bread. It will save you at least ten minutes when you go to work."

He also warned them about the slum ab.u.t.ting their field. "Most of the people in that bustee are decent, but some lanes are very dangerous. Murder and robbery is definitely possible if you walk through there." In the safe part of the slum, he introduced them to a tea stall whose owner he knew, where they could have tea and snacks on credit, paying at the end of the month.

Late that night, as they sat outside their shack, smoking, they heard the harmonium player. He had returned from work, and was playing for pleasure. The reedy notes of his instrument, in the bleak surroundings, were rich as a golden flute. "Meri dosti mera pyar," he sang, and the song about love and friendship took the sting out of the acrid smoke of smouldering fires.

The Rations Officer was not at his desk. A peon said the boss was on his meditation break. "You should come back on Monday."

"But we have to start our new jobs on Monday," said Ishvar. "How long is the meditation break?"

The peon shrugged. "One hour, two hours, three depends on how much weight is on his mind. Sahab says without the break he would turn into a madman by the end of the week." The tailors decided to wait in line.

It must have been a relatively easy week for the Rations Officer, for he returned thirty minutes later, looking suitably revitalized, and gave the tailors a ration-card application form. He said there were experts on the pavement outside who, for a small fee, would fill it out for them.

"That's okay, we know how to write."

"Really?" he said, feeling snubbed. He prided his ability to appraise at a glance the applicants flowing past his desk every day their place of origin, financial status, education, caste. His face muscles twitched, tightening in defiance of his just-completed meditation. The tailors' literacy was an affront to his omniscience. "Complete it and bring it back," he dismissed them with a petulant flutter of fingers.

They took the form into the corridor to fill in the blanks, using a window ledge to write on. It was a rough surface, and the ballpoint went through the paper several times. They tried to nurse the pockmarked sheet back to health by flattening the b.u.mps with their fingernails, then rejoined the line to face their interlocutor.

The Rations Officer scanned the form and smiled. It was a superior smile: they may have learned how to write, but they knew nothing about neatness. He read their answers and stopped in triumph at the address portion. "What's this rubbish?" he tapped with a nicotine-stained finger.

"It's the place where we live," said Ishvar. He had entered the name of the road that led to their row of shacks on the north side. The s.p.a.ce for building name, flat number, and street number had been left blank.

"And where exactly is your house?"

They offered additional information: the closest intersection, the streets east and west of the slum, the train station, names of neighbourhood cinemas, the big hospital, the popular sweetmeat shop, a fish market.

"Stop, enough," said the Rations Officer, covering his ears. "I don't need to hear all this nonsense." He pulled out a city directory, flipped a few pages, and studied a map. "Just as I thought. Your house is in a jhopadpatti, right?"

"It's a roof for the time being."

"A jhopadpatti is not an address. The law says ration cards can only be issued to people with real addresses."

"Our house is real," pleaded Ishvar. "You can come and see it."

"My seeing it is irrelevant. The law is what matters. And in the eyes of the law, your jhopdi doesn't count." He picked up a stack of forms and shuffled them to align the edges. Tossed back to their corner, they landed in disarray, raising dust. "But there is another way to get the ration card, if you are interested."

"Yes, please whatever is necessary."

"If you let me arrange for your vasectomy, your application can be approved instantly."

"Vasectomy?"

"You know, for Family Planning. The nussbandhi procedure."

"Oh, but I already did that," lied Ishvar.

"Show me your F.P.C."

"F.P.C.?"

"Family Planning Certificate."

"Oh, but I don't have that." Thinking quickly, he said, "In our native place there was a fire in the hut. Everything was destroyed."

"That's not a problem. The doctor I send you to will do it again as a special favour, and give you a new certificate."

"Same operation, two times? Isn't that bad?"

"Lots of people do it twice. Brings more benefits. Two transistor radios."

"Why would I need two radios?" smiled Ishvar. "Do I listen to two different stations, one with each ear?"

"Look, if the harmless little operation frightens you, send this young fellow. All I need is one sterilization certificate."

"But he is only seventeen! He has to marry, have some children, before his nuss is disconnected!"

"It's up to you."

Ishvar left in a rage, Om hurrying after him to calm him down as he fumed at the shocking, almost blasphemous, suggestion. No one noticed, though, because the corridor was crowded with people like Ishvar, lost and stumbling, trying to negotiate their way through the government offices. They waited around in varying stages of distress. Some were in tears, others laughed hysterically at bureaucratic absurdities, while a few stood facing the wall, muttering ominously to themselves.

"Nussbandhi, he says!" seethed Ishvar. "Shameless b.a.s.t.a.r.d! For a young boy, nussbandhi! Someone should cut off the ugly rascal's pipe while he is meditating!" He fled down the corridor, down the stairs, and out through the building's main door.

A small, clerkish-looking man on the pavement, noticing Ishvar's agitation, rose from his wooden stool to greet them. He wore gla.s.ses and a white shirt, with writing material spread before him on a mat. "You have a problem. Can I help?"

"What help can you give?" said Ishvar dismissively.

The man touched Ishvar's elbow to make him stop and listen. "I am a facilitator. My job, my speciality, is to a.s.sist people in their dealings with government offices." His runny nose made him sniff several times during the course of his introduction.

"You work for government?" asked Ishvar, suspicious, pointing at the building they had just left.

"No, never, I work for you and me. To help you get what the government people make difficult to get. Hence my t.i.tle: Facilitator. Birth certificates, death certificates, marriage licence, any types of permits and clearances I can arrange it all. You just select what information you want on it, and I will have it issued." He removed his gla.s.ses and smiled his most facile smile, then lost it to six violent sneezes. The tailors jumped back to avoid the spray.

"All we wanted was a ration card, Mr. Facilitator. And the fellow wanted our manhood in exchange! What kind of choice is that, between food and manhood?"

"Ah, he wanted the F.P.C."

"Yes, that's what he called it."

"You see, since the Emergency started, there's a new rule in the department every officer has to encourage people to get sterilized. If he doesn't fill his quota, no promotion for him. What to do, poor fellow, he is also trapped, no?"