“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 passersby 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 harass anyone and stayed in his proper place. “May God watch over you forever! O babu, please listen, I always give a salaam to the people who pass 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.
“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 God-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 passing 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 cockroaches 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 cockroach 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.
“Hello, 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. Nobody 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 God’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. Nobody 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’ gratitude reminded him how little he could do to help
