A Son of the Circus

the right thing.”

23. LEAVING THE CHILDREN

Not Charlton Heston

For weeks after the unusual foursome had departed from the Government Circuit House in Junagadh, the rabies vaccine and the vial of immune globulin, which Dr. Daruwalla had forgotten, remained in the lobby refrigerator. One night, the Muslim boy who regularly ate the saffron-colored yogurt remembered that the unclaimed package was the doctor’s medicine; everyone was afraid to touch it, but someone mustered the courage and threw it out. As for the one sock and the lone left-footed sandal, which the elephant boy had intentionally left behind, these were donated to the town hospital, although it was improbable that anyone there could use them. At the circus, Ganesh knew, neither the sock nor the sandal would be of any value to him; they weren’t necessary for a cook’s helper, or for a skywalker.

The cripple was a barefoot boy when he limped into the ringmaster’s troupe tent on Sunday morning; it was still before 10:00, and Mr. and Mrs. Das (and at least a dozen child acrobats) were sitting cross-legged on the rugs, watching the Mahabharata on TV. Despite their hike up Girnar Hill, the doctor and the missionary had brought the children to the circus too early. No one greeted them, which made Madhu instantly awkward; she bumped into a bigger girl, who still paid no attention to her. Mrs. Das, without taking her eyes from the television, waved both her arms—a confusing signal. Did she mean for them to go away or should they sit down? The ringmaster cleared up the matter. “Sit—anywhere!” Mr. Das commanded.

Ganesh and Madhu were immediately riveted to the TV; the seriousness of the Mahabharata was obvious to them. Even beggars knew the Sunday-morning routine; they often watched the program through storefront windows. Sometimes people without televisions assembled quietly outside the open windows of those apartments where the TV was on; it didn’t matter if they couldn’t see the screen—they could still hear the battles and the singing. Child prostitutes, too, the doctor assumed, were familiar with the famous show. Only Martin Mills was perplexed by the visible reverence in the troupe tent; the zealot failed to recognize that everyone’s attention had been captured by a religious epic.

“Is this a popular musical?” the Jesuit whispered to Dr. Daruwalla.

“It’s the Mahabharata—be quiet!” Farrokh told him.

“The Mahabharata is on television?” the missionary cried. “The whole thing? It must be ten times as long as the Bible!”

“Ssshhh!” the doctor replied. Mrs. Das waved both her arms again.

There on the screen was Lord Krishna, “the dark one”—an avatar of Vishnu. The child acrobats gaped in awe; Ganesh and Madhu were transfixed. Mrs. Das rocked back and forth; she was quietly humming. Even the ringmaster hung on Krishna’s every word. The sound of weeping was in the background of the scene; apparently Lord Krishna’s speech was emotionally stirring.

“Who’s that guy?” Martin whispered.

“Lord Krishna,” whispered Dr. Daruwalla.

There went both of Mrs. Das’s arms again, but the scholastic was too excited to keep quiet. Just before the show was over, the Jesuit whispered once more in the doctor’s ear; the zealot felt compelled to say that Lord Krishna reminded him of Charlton Heston.

But Sunday morning at the circus was special for more reasons than the Mahabharata. It was the only morning in the week when the child acrobats didn’t practice their acts, or learn new items, or even do their strength and flexibility exercises. They did do their chores; they would sweep and neaten their bed areas, and they swept and cleaned the tiny kitchen in the troupe tent. If there were sequins missing from their costumes, they would get out the old tea tins that were filled with sequins—one color per tin—and sew new sequins on their singlets.

Mrs. Das wasn’t unfriendly as she introduced Madhu to these chores; nor were the other girls in the troupe tent unwelcoming to Madhu. An older girl went through the costume trunks, pulling out the singlets that she thought might fit the child prostitute. Madhu was interested in the costumes; she was even eager to try them on.

Mrs. Das confided to Dr. Daruwalla that she was happy Madhu wasn’t from Kerala. “Kerala girls want too much,” said the ringmaster’s wife. “They expect good food all the time, and coconut hair oil.”

Mr. Das spoke to Dr. Daruwalla in hushed confidentiality; Kerala girls were reputed to be a hot lay, a virtue negated by the fact that these girls would attempt to unionize everyone. The circus was no place for a Communist- party revolt; the ringmaster concurred with his wife—it was a good thing Madhu wasn’t a Kerala girl. This was as close as Mr. and Mrs. Das could come to sounding reassuring—by expressing a common prejudice against people from somewhere else.

The child acrobats were not unkind to Ganesh; they simply ignored him. Martin Mills in his bandages was more interesting to them; they’d all heard about the chimp attack—many of them had seen it. The elaborately bandaged wounds excited them, although they were disappointed that Dr. Daruwalla refused to unwrap the ear; they wanted to see what was missing.

“How much? This much?” one of the acrobats asked the missionary.

“Actually,” Martin replied, “I didn’t see how much was missing.”

This conversation deteriorated into speculation about whether or not Gautam had swallowed the piece of earlobe. Dr. Daruwalla observed that none of the child acrobats appeared to notice how the missionary resembled Inspector Dhar, although Hindi films were a part of their world. Their interest was in the missing piece of Martin’s earlobe, and whether or not the ape had eaten it.

“Chimps aren’t meat eaters,” said an older boy. “If Gautam swallowed it, he’d be sick this morning.” Some of them, those who’d finished their chores, went to see if Gautam was sick; they insisted that the missionary come with them. Dr. Daruwalla realized that he shouldn’t linger; it wouldn’t do Madhu any good.

“I’ll say good-bye now,” the doctor told the child prostitute. “I hope that your new life is happy. Please be careful.”

When she put her arms around his neck, Farrokh flinched; he thought she was going to kiss him, but he was mistaken. All she wanted to do was whisper in his ear. “Take me home,” Madhu whispered. But what was “home”—what could she mean? the doctor wondered. Before he could ask her, she told him. “I want to be with Acid Man,” she whispered. Just that simply, Madhu had adopted Dr. Daruwalla’s name for Mr. Garg. All the screenwriter could do was take her arms from his neck and give her a worried look. Then the older girl distracted Madhu with a brightly sequined singlet—the front was red, the back orange—and Farrokh was able to slip away.

Chandra had built a bed for the elephant boy in a wing of the cook’s tent; Ganesh would sleep surrounded by sacks of onions and rice—a wall of tea tins was the makeshift headboard for his bed. So that the boy wouldn’t be homesick, the cook had given him a Maharashtrian calendar; there was Parvati with her elephant-headed son, Ganesh—Lord Ganesha, “the lord of hosts,” the one-tusked deity.

It was hard for Farrokh to say good-bye. He asked the cook’s permission to take a walk with the elephant- footed boy. They went to look at the lions and tigers, but it was well before meat-feeding time; the big cats were either asleep or cranky. Then the doctor and the cripple strolled in the avenue of troupe tents. A dwarf clown was washing his hair in a bucket, another was shaving; Farrokh was relieved that none of the clowns had tried to imitate Ganesh’s limp, although Vinod had warned the boy that this was sure to happen. They paused at Mr. and Mrs. Bhagwan’s tent; in front was a display of the knife thrower’s knives—apparently it was knife-sharpening day for Mr. Bhagwan—and in the doorway Mrs. Bhagwan was unbraiding her long black hair, which reached nearly to her waist.

When the skywalker saw the cripple, she called him to her. Dr. Daruwalla followed shyly. Everyone who limps needs extra protection, Mrs. Bhagwan was telling the elephant boy; therefore, she wanted him to have a