A Fine Balance Part 56

"That's not a fair question," said Rajaram. "Does a beggar possess a lot of money? No. Yet he knows how to handle it."

Beggarmaster had liked the answer, and given his approval. So it was Rajaram who arrived outside the Vishram, armed with his barber's kit.

Shankar thought he recognized the man from somewhere. "Babu, have I met you before?"

"Never seen you in my life," said Rajaram, haunted by their hair connection, and anxious to disown it. Staying on in the city was risky, he knew, but he had decided it would be safer to commence his journey to the Himalayas in a sanyasi's outfit. Saffron robes and beads and a hand-carved wooden bhiksha bowl didn't come cheap, however; Beggarmaster's bonus for this special job would certainly help.

He tied a white sheet round the beggar's neck and whipped up a cup of lather with the shaving brush. Shankar bowed his head towards it to catch the fragrance, almost losing his balance. Rajaram pushed him back. "Sit still," he said, his tone surly to discourage conversation.

Surliness was regular fare for Shankar, and could not diminish his good cheer. "Looks like a cream puff," he said, when the froth rose in the cup.

"Why don't you eat a bowlful?" Rajaram moistened the jowls and slapped on the soap. The careless brush strokes pushed some lather into Shankar's open mouth. Rusty as Rajaram was, he also forgot to pinch the nostrils shut while lathering the upper lip. He opened the razor and began to strop the gleaming blade.

Shankar loved the swishing sound. "Do you ever make a mistake with your razor?" he asked.

"Lots of times. Some people's throats are such weird shapes, they cut easily. And police cannot arrest barbers for occupational accidents, it's the law."

"You better not make a mistake on my throat, it's the proper shape! And Beggarmaster would punish you!"

Despite the bravado Shankar kept very still, tense till the blade had finished its dangerous tour of his map. Rajaram mopped up bits of lather missed by the razor, then glided an alum block over the shaved areas. The callow skin had been badly nicked in places.

"Show me the mirror," demanded Shankar, feeling the smart and worrying that the razor had erred after all.

Rajaram held up the gla.s.s. The beggar's anxious face peered back, but the styptic had checked the bleeding and there were no drops of red.

"Okay, next is face ma.s.sage. That's what Beggarmaster instructed." From a bottle in his box he scooped out a dab of cream and spread it over the jowls.

Shankar went stiff, not sure what those muscular hands were up to. Then he allowed his head to roll with the rubbing, stroking movements. He began oohing and aahing with pleasure as the fingers kneaded his cheeks, worked under the eyes, around and over the nose, forehead and temples, ma.s.saging away a lifetime of pain and suffering.

"A little more," he pleaded when the barber stopped and wiped his hands. "One extra minute, I beg you, babu, it feels so wonderful."

"It's all done," said Rajaram, wrinkling his nose. He had never enjoyed giving face ma.s.sages, not even to middle-cla.s.s faces in the heyday of his career. He flexed his fingers before taking up the scissors and comb. "Now your haircut," he said.

"No, that I don't want."

"Beggarmaster has told me what to do." He jerked the head down to trim around the nape, anxious to finish and get away.

"Aray babu, I don't want it!" Shankar started screaming. "I said I don't want it! I like long hair!" He shook his tin to make noise, but it had been a slow morning, the tin remained silent. He banged it on the pavement.

Pa.s.sersby slowed to examine the duo curiously, and Rajaram ceased to press him, worried about attracting more attention. "Don't be scared, I will cut your hair very carefully, very handsomely."

"I don't care how handsome! I don't want a haircut!"

"Please don't shout. Tell me what you want, I'll do it for you. Scalp ma.s.sage? Dandruff treatment?"

Shankar reached under his platform and took out a package. "You are the hair expert, right?"

He nodded.

"I want you to fix this to my hair." He pushed the package towards him.

Rajaram opened it, and quailed as two lovely ponytails slid out. "You want me to tie these to your hair?"

"Not just tie. I want it permanent. It must grow from my own head."

Rajaram was at a loss. He had, in his time as a barber, had his share of unusual a.s.signments: grooming a circus's bearded lady; shaping a gigolo's private hair into little plaits; designing artistic pubic coiffures for a brothel moving upmarket to target ministers and corporate executives; shaving (blindfolded in the interest of modesty) the crotch of a caste-conscious man's wife because the husband didn't want her polluted by performing the lowly task herself. With these and other challenges, Rajaram had dealt with a barber's professional aplomb. But Shankar's request was beyond his skills.

"It's not possible," he said flatly.

"You must, you must, you must!" screamed Shankar. Of late, Beggarmaster's attentions, sudden and excessive, had had a spoiling effect on the gentle, accepting beggar. He refused to listen to the barber's explanation. "A rose can be grafted!" he yelled. "So graft my hair! You're the expert! Or I'll complain to Beggarmaster about you!"

Rajaram begged him to speak softly, to put away the ponytails for now, he would come back tomorrow with special equipment for the complicated job.

"I want it today!" shouted Shankar. "I want my long hair right now!

The cashier-waiter of the Vishram Vegetarian Hotel watched from the doorway, and so did the cook. More pa.s.sersby stopped, expecting something interesting to develop. Then a lottery-ticket vendor brought up the case of the beggars who had been killed many months ago for their hair. What a coincidence, he said, that two thick tails of hair should be in this beggar's possession.

Speculation flourished. Perhaps there was a connection a ritual of beggars that involved human sacrifice. Or maybe this beggar was a psychopath. Someone mentioned the gruesome Raman Raghav serial killings a few years ago; the beggars' murders suggested a similar bloodthirsty pattern: Trembling with fear, Rajaram tried to dissociate himself from Shankar. He packed up his kit and edged backwards till he became part of the crowd confronting the beggar. At the first opportunity he slipped away.

People moved in closer around Shankar. It frightened him. Now he was sorry he had made a fuss with the barber. He regretted forgetting the cardinal rule of all good almsmen: beggars could be seen, and also heard, but not too loudly especially not on non-begging matters.

He felt claustrophobic as the crowd towering over him blotted out the sun. His pavement went dark. He tried to appease them by singing the begging song, "O babu ek paisa day-ray," his bandaged palm repeatedly touching his forehead. It didn't work. Opinion continued to churn menacingly.

"Where did you steal that hair, you crook?" shouted someone.

"My friends gave it to me," whined Shankar, frightened yet indignant about the accusation.

"Saala murderer!"

"What a monster he is!" marvelled another, torn between repulsion and admiration. "Such dexterity! Even without fingers or legs, he can commit these violent crimes!"

"Maybe he is just hiding his fingers and legs. These people have ways to modify their body."

Shankar wept that he had not committed any bad acts, he was a good beggar who did not hara.s.s anyone and stayed in his proper place. "May G.o.d watch over you forever! O babu, please listen, I always give a salaam to the people who pa.s.s by! Even when I am in pain I smile for you! Some beggars curse if the amount is insulting, but I always give a blessing, whether the coin is big or small! Ask anyone who walks by here!"

A policeman approached to see what the commotion was about. He bent down, and Shankar spied his face outside the forest of legs. The crowd parted to let the constable take a better look. Shankar decided it was now or never. He pushed off on his platform and shot through the opening.

The crowd laughed to see him crouch low, paddling with his arms for all he was worth. "Chalti Ka Naam Gaadi!" "Chalti Ka Naam Gaadi!" said someone, eliciting more laughter from those who remembered the old film. said someone, eliciting more laughter from those who remembered the old film.

"The beggars' Grand Prix!" said another.

A hundred yards past the Vishram, Shankar found himself in unexplored territory. Here, the pavement sloped quite steeply, and the castors began to spin faster. Turning the corner at high speed was going to be impossible. But Shankar had not thought so far ahead. The terrifying crowd had to be escaped, that was all.

He reached the end of the pavement and screamed. The platform took flight, sailing out into the busy intersection.

Maneck stayed in the centre of the stairway, away from the paan-stained banisters and the ugly daubs of G.o.d-knows-what on the wall. The old revulsion returned as he climbed the hostel stairs. Empty cigarette packs, a shattered lightbulb, a blackened banana peel, chapati in newspaper, orange rind littered the corridors. Was the jharoowalla late, or had the garbage descended since the morning sweep? he wondered.

He did not expect to find Avinash in, but decided he would leave the box with someone, maybe at the counter in the lobby. Reaching his floor, he held his breath while pa.s.sing the toilets. The stench confirmed their continuing state of disrepair, the stink so deep it could be tasted in the throat.

His old room was vacant, the door unlocked. No one had occupied it since his departure, it was exactly the way he had left it. Eerie to look at, as though he were split in two one half still living here, the other half with Dina Aunty. And the bed, a foot away from the wall, its four legs in cans of water. Avinash's method, to discourage crawling things it had worked really well. Avinash used to joke that what he didn't know about c.o.c.kroaches and bedbugs after being raised in the mill tenements wasn't worth knowing.

Maneck went closer, half-expecting to see water in the cans. They were dry, empty except for brown c.o.c.kroach eggs, a dead moth, and a drowsy spider. The water had left rings on the wooden legs. His watermark: Maneck Was Here. Desk and chair, the faithful witnesses to so many games of chess, were near the window, where they had been shifted to catch a better light. Seemed so long ago.

He withdrew and shut the door gently on the past. To his surprise, there were sounds coming from the next room. What would Avinash say when he saw him? What would he say to Avinash? He collected himself, he didn't want to look anxious or uncertain.

He knocked.

The door opened, and a middle-aged couple gazed at him questioningly. They both had grey hair, the man hollow-cheeked and coughing terribly, the woman red-eyed. Must be the parents, he decided.

"h.e.l.lo, I'm Avinash's friend." Perhaps they were expecting him back soon, he could be around somewhere in the building. "Are you waiting for him?"

"No," the man spoke in a small voice. "The waiting is over. Everything is over." They moved back slowly, weighed down by invisible burdens, and beckoned him inside. "We are his mother and father. Today we cremated him."

"Pardon? Today what?"

"Cremated today, yes. And after a very long delay. For months and months we have been searching for our son. Going to all different police stations, begging for help. n.o.body would help us."

His voice quavered, and he stopped, making an effort to control it. "Four days ago they told us there was a body in the morgue. They sent us to check."

The mother began to cry, and hid her face in a corner of her sari. The father's coughing stabbed the air as he tried to comfort her; he touched her arm lightly with his fingers. A door slammed somewhere in the corridor.

"But what I mean ...nothing, no one ..." stammered Maneck. The father put a hand on his shoulder.

Maneck cleared his throat and tried again. "We were friends." And the parents nodded, seeming to take comfort in the feeble fact. "But I didn't know...what happened?"

The mother spoke now, her words fluttering away almost unheard. "We don't know either. We came here straight from the cremation ceremony. It went well, thanks to G.o.d's grace. No rain, and the pyre flamed brilliantly. We stayed with it all night."

The father nodded. "They told us the body was found many months ago, on the railway tracks, no identification. They said he died because he fell off a fast train. They said he must have been hanging from the door or sitting on the roof. But Avinash was careful, he never did such things." His eyes were watering again, he paused to wipe them. The mother touched his arm lightly with her fingers.

He was able to continue. "At last, after such a long time, we saw our son. We saw burns on many shameful parts of his body, and when his mother picked up his hand to press it to her forehead, we could see that his fingernails were gone. So we asked them in the morgue, how can this happen in falling from a train? They said anything can happen. n.o.body would help us."

"You must report it!" said Maneck, angrily fighting his tears. "You must! To...to the minister I mean, the governor. Or the police commissioner!"

"We did, we made a complaint. The police wrote it all down in their book."

They resumed the task of gathering Avinash's belongings. Maneck watched helplessly as they carried clothes, textbooks, papers, and placed them in the trunk with reverence, now and then putting their lips to some object before packing it. The room was silent except for their soft footsteps.

"Did he tell you about his three sisters?" said the mother suddenly. "When they were small, he used to help me look after them. He very much enjoyed feeding them. Sometimes they bit his fingers and made him laugh. Did he ever tell you that?"

"He told me everything."

In a few minutes they were ready to leave. He insisted on carrying the trunk downstairs for them, glad for the exertion that kept his eyes from overflowing. The parents' grat.i.tude reminded him how little he could do to help with the weight of their grief. All he could think of was that first day, when Avinash had appeared at the door with the Flit pump. They had killed c.o.c.kroaches. They had played draughts. They had told each other their life stories. And now he was dead.

He said goodbye, and proceeded to the technical building. Then he remembered that he still had the chessmen and board. He hurried to the gate. There was no sign of the parents. How stupid of me, he thought, it would have meant so much to them, the remembrance, Avinash's high-school prize for winning the tournament.

He started walking back aimlessly, and found himself in the hostel lobby again. Then he stopped, and decided: the chess set somehow he had to give it back to the parents. He felt like a thief, robbing them of a source of comfort. He was adding to their grief, the longer he kept it.

The task of returning the set a.s.sumed an overriding urgency, a matter of life and death. He was weeping silently now as he climbed the stairs, watched by a handful of curious students. Someone hooted and shouted something he couldn't catch. They began chanting: "Baby, baby, don't cry, Mummy making chilli-fry, Daddy catching b.u.t.terfly..."

He slipped into his old room and sat down on the musty bed. Maybe there was something in Avinash's room, in the wastepaper basket, an old envelope or letter with the address. He went to look. Nothing. Not a sc.r.a.p of paper. The address, he had to find the parents' address, to send them the set. He could ask around on this floor. But those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds in the corridor would start their juvenile teasing again, watching him stumbling in and out of rooms, making a fool of himself.

Clutching the box against his chest, he closed his eyes, trying to think calmly. The address. The answer was simple the warden's office. Yes, they would have the address. He could mail it to Avinash's parents.

He opened his eyes and gazed at the maroon plywood box as it swam through his tears. He remembered that day in the canteen: white to play and mate in three and then the vegetarians vomited. The memory made him smile. Revolution through regurgitation, Avinash had said. And he had asked him to look after the chess set.

And he never asked for it back. His gift. The game of life. To send it back would be wrong. He would keep it. He would keep it now forever.

Dina urged Maneck to stay calm, to mentally recite one Ashem Vahu before reading the exam paper and one more before beginning to write the answers. "I am not a very religious person myself," she said. "But think of it as insurance. I find it helps. And good luck."

"Thanks, Aunty." He opened the door to leave and almost stumbled into Beggarmaster on the other side, his index finger poised to ring the bell.

"Excuse me," said Beggarmaster. "I have come with very bad news." He was utterly exhausted, his eyes strained from weeping. "May I please see the tailors?"

"But they left two days ago"

"Oh, of course. I forgot the wedding." He looked as though he would collapse.

"Come in," said Dina.

He stepped onto the verandah and, choking back a sob, revealed that Shankar was dead.

Disbelief, the sort that allowed time to deal with shock, was what Maneck reached for. "But we talked to him three days ago Ishvar and Om and I, when we went for tea. And yesterday morning he spoke to me about the barber coming. He was hale and hearty, rolling as usual."

"Yes, till yesterday morning."

"What happened then?"

"Terrible accident. He lost control of his gaadi. Flew off the pavement ...straight into a double-decker bus." He swallowed and said he hadn't witnessed it himself but had identified the remains. "With all my years in this profession, my eyes have seen much that is gruesome. But never anything this horrible. Both Shankar and the gaadi were crushed completely not possible to separate the two. Removing the wood and castors embedded in his flesh would have meant mutilating his poor body still more. It will have to be cremated with him."

They coped in silence with the grisly picture. Beggarmaster broke down and wept uncontrollably. Attempts to m.u.f.fle the sobs made him tremble. "I should have told him we were brothers. I waited too long. And now it's too late. If only he had brakes for his platform ...I thought about it once, but the idea seemed silly. He could barely drag it around ...not a fast car or something. Maybe I should have taken him off the street."

"You mustn't blame yourself," said Dina. "You were trying to do the best for him, as you said."

"Was I? Did I? How can I be sure?"

"He was such a nice person," said Maneck. "Ishvar and Om told us how he nursed them when they were sick in that work camp. You never met him, Aunty, but in most ways he was like everyone else. He even made funny jokes sometimes."

"I feel like I knew him. Ishvar and Om brought his measurements and described him for me, remember? And the special vest I designed for him?"

"That was very kind of you," said Beggarmaster, in tears again at the thought of how he had lovingly ripped and soiled the garment, customizing it for Shankar's requirements.

"Would you like a gla.s.s of water?" she asked. He nodded, and Maneck fetched it.

Beggarmaster regained his composure after the drink. "I wanted to invite the tailors to Shankar's cremation. Tomorrow at four o'clock. They were his only friends. There will be plenty of beggars there, but Ishvar and Om would have been special." He returned the empty gla.s.s.

"I'll go," said Maneck.