Ishvar, however, was still troubled that he and his nephew were taking advantage of Dina’s goodness. “You won’t accept any rent from us,” he said. “You let us use your verandah and bathroom. You give us tea. This is too much, it makes us feel bad.”
His declaration reminded her of her own guilt. She knew that everything she did was done from self- preservation — to keep the tailors from being picked up again by the police, and to have them out of sight of nosey neighbours and the rent-collector. Now Ishvar and Om were wrapping her in the mantle of kindness and generosity. Deceit, hypocrisy, manipulation were more the fabrics of her garment, she thought.
“So what is your plan?” she said brusquely. “To insult me with fifty paise for tea? You want to treat me like a roadside chaiwalla?”
“No no, never. But is there not something we can do for you in return?”
She said she would let them know.
At the end of the second week, Ishvar was still waiting to hear. Then he took matters into his own hand. While she was bathing, he fetched the broom and dustpan from the kitchen and swept the verandah, the front room, Maneck’s room, and the sewing room. As he finished in each, Om got busy with the bucket and cloth, mopping the floors.
They were still at it when Dina emerged from the bathroom. “What’s going on here?”
“Forgive me, but I have decided,” said Ishvar firmly. “We are going to share the daily cleaning from now on.”
“That does not seem right,” she said.
“Seems just fine,” said Om, briskly squeezing out the mop.
Deeply moved, she poured the tea while they were finishing up. They came into the kitchen to replace the cleaning things, and she handed two cups to Om.
Noticing the red rose borders, he started to point out her error, “The pink ones for us,” then stopped. Her face told him she was aware of it.
“What?” she asked, taking the pink cup for herself. “Is something wrong?”
“Nothing,” his voice caught. He turned away, hoping she did not see the film of water glaze his eyes.
“Someone at the door for you,” said Dina. “The same longhaired fellow who came once before.”
Ishvar and Om exchanged glances — what did he want now? Apologizing for the interruption, they went to the verandah.
“Namaskaar,” said Rajaram, putting his hands together. “Sorry to bother you at work, but the nightwatchman said you didn’t sleep there anymore.”
“Yes, we have another place.”
“Where?”
“Nearby.”
“Hope it’s nice. Listen, can I meet you later to talk? Any time today, anywhere, your convenience.” He sounded desperate.
“Okay,” said Ishvar. “Come to Vishram at one o’clock. You know where it is?”
“Yes, I’ll be there. And listen, can you please bring my hair from your trunk?”
After Rajaram had left, Dina asked the tailors if something was wrong. “He’s not connected with that other man, I hope — the one who’s squeezing you for money every week.”
“No no, he does not work for Beggarmaster,” said Ishvar. “He’s a friend, probably just wants a loan.”
“Well, you be careful,” said Dina. “These days, friends and foes look alike.”
The Vishram was crowded, and Rajaram was waiting nervously on the pavement when they arrived. “Here’s your hair,” Ishvar handed him the package. “So. What will you eat?”
“Nothing, my stomach is full,” said Rajaram, but his mouth betrayed his hunger, masticating phantom food in response to aromas from the Vishram.
“Have something,” said Ishvar, feeling sorry for him. “Try something, it’s our treat.”
“Okay, whatever you two are eating.” He forced a laugh. “A full stomach is only a small obstacle.”
“Three pao-bhajis and three bananas,” Ishvar told the cashier-waiter.
They carried their food to the site of a collapsed building, just down the road, and chose a window ledge in the shade of a half-crumpled wall. A horizontal door served as their table. Its hinges and knobs had been scavenged; the collapse was several weeks old. Four children with gunny sacks were clambering in the rubble, sifting and searching.
“So how’s your work as a Family Planning Motivator?”
Rajaram shook his head, wolfing a large mouthful. “Not good.” He ate as though he hadn’t seen food for days. “They asked me to leave two weeks ago.”
“What happened?”
“They said I wasn’t producing results.”
“Suddenly? After two months?”
“Yes,” he hesitated. “I mean, no, there were problems from the very beginning. After the training course, I was following the procedure they showed me. I visited different neighbourhoods every day. I carefully repeated the things they taught me, using the correct tone, sounding kind and knowledgeable, so no one would get scared. And usually people listened patiently, took the leaflets; sometimes they laughed, and young fellows made dirty jokes. But no one would sign up for the operation.
“A few weeks later, my supervisor called me into his office. He said I wasn’t pursuing the right customers. He said it was a waste of time trying to sell a wedding suit to a naked fakir. I asked him exactly what he meant.”
Rajaram repeated for the tailors the supervisor’s reply — that people in the city were too cynical, they doubted everything, it was difficult to motivate them. Suburban slums were the places to tackle. After all, there lived the ignorant people most in need of the government’s help. The programme, with its free gifts and incentives, was specifically designed for them.
“So I took his advice and went outside the city. And would you believe it? On the very first day my cycle got a puncture.”
“A bad beginning,” said Ishvar, shaking his head.
“Puncture was only a small problem. The real trouble came later.” While the tyre was being fixed at a cycle shop, said Rajaram, he got to talking with an elderly man waiting in a bus shelter, not far from a fire hydrant. The elderly man needed a wash, and was hoping that street urchins would come along and turn on the hydrant.
For the sake of practice, and to see how long he could hold the fellow’s attention, Rajaram began telling him he was a Motivator involved in the good works of the Family Planning Centre. He described the birth-control devices, named the sterilization operations, and the cash inducement for each: a tubectomy was awarded more free gifts than a vasectomy, he explained, because the government preferred intervention that was final and irreversible.
That’s the one I want, interrupted the old man, the expensive one, the tube-whatever one. Rajaram almost fell off his perch on the bus-shelter railing. No no, grandfather, it’s not for you, I was just talking about it for the sake of talking, he said. I insist, said the old man, it’s my right. But tubectomy can only be performed on a woman’s parts, explained Rajaram, for a man’s parts there is vasectomy, and at your age even that is unnecessary. I don’t care about age, I’ll take it, whichever is meant for my parts, persisted the old man.
“Maybe he badly wanted a transistor radio,” said Om.
“That’s exactly what I assumed,” said Rajaram. “I thought to myself, if this grandfather desires it so much, who am I to argue? If music makes him happy, why deny him?”
So he got out the proper form, took a thumbprint, paid the tyre-repairer, and escorted his patient to the clinic. That evening, he received the money for his commission, his very first.
Now he regarded the puncture as the harbinger of good fortune: the pointed finger of fate, flattening his tyre and his bad fortune. The badge of Motivator clung with more honesty to his shirt. Brimming with confidence, he returned to the suburban area, certain that he could round up vasectomies and tubectomies by the score.
A week passed, and his peregrinations took him to his first customer’s neighbourhood. He cycled among the shacks, seeking to motivate the masses, his head overflowing with various ways of saying the same thing, formulating phrases to make sterility acceptable, even desirable, when someone from the old man’s family recognized him and began shouting for help: Motorwaiter is here! Aray, the rascal Motorwaiter has come again!
