He looked around, and spied a besom beside Nawaz’s back door, propped against the downpipe. He borrowed it to sweep the rubbish aside, while Ishvar brought mugfuls of water and splashed the ground before giving it a second going-over with the besom.
The sound brought Nawaz out to investigate. “This place not good enough for you? No one is forcing you to stay.”
“No no, it’s perfect,” said Ishvar. “Just cleaning it a little.”
“That’s my property you are using,” he pointed to the besom.
“Yes, we were — ”
“The thing is, you must ask before you take something,” he snapped and went in.
They waited till it was dry under the awning, then unrolled their sleeping mats and blankets. Noise from the surrounding buildings did not abate. Radios blared. A man yelled at a woman, beating her, stopping for a bit when she screamed for help, then starting again. A drunkard shouted abuse, and there was boisterous laughter at his expense. The grind of the traffic was constant. A flickering glow at one window made Omprakash curious; he rose and peered inside. He beckoned to Ishvar to come, look. “Doordarshan!” he whispered excitedly. After a minute or two, someone inside spotted them gazing at the television and told them to be off.
They returned to their bedding and slept badly. Once, they were awakened by shrieks that seemed to come from an animal being slaughtered.
There was no offer of morning tea from inside the house, which Omprakash found quite offensive. “Customs are different in the city,” said Ishvar.
They washed, drank water, and waited around till Nawaz opened his shop. He saw them on the steps, craning, trying to look inside. “Yes? What do you want?”
“Sorry to trouble you, but do you know we are also tailors?” said Ishvar. “Can we do sewing for you? In your shop? Ashraf Chacha told us — ”
“The thing is, there is not enough work,” said Nawaz, retreating within as he spoke. “You will have to search elsewhere.”
Ishvar and Om wondered aloud on the steps outside — was this it, the full extent of Nawaz’s help? But he came back in a minute with paper and pencil for them, dictating names of tailoring shops and instructions to get there. They thanked him for the advice.
“By the way,” said Ishvar, “we heard some terrible screams last night. Do you know what happened?”
“It was those pavement-dwellers. One fellow was sleeping in someone else’s spot. So they took a brick and bashed his head. Animals, that’s what they all are.” He returned to his work, and the tailors left.
After stopping for tea in a stall at the street corner, the two spent a futile, frightening day locating the addresses. The street signs were missing sometimes, or obscured by political posters and advertisements. They had to stop frequently to ask storekeepers and hawkers for directions.
They tried to follow the injunction repeated on several billboards: “Pedestrians! Walk On Pavement!” But this was difficult because of vendors who had set up shop on the concrete. So they walked on the road with the rest, terrified by the cars and buses, marvelling at the crowds who negotiated the traffic nimbly, with an instinct for skipping out of the way when the situation demanded.
“Just takes practice,” said Om with an experienced air.
“Practice at what? Killing or getting killed? Don’t act smart, you’ll get run over.”
But the only mishap they witnessed that day involved a man’s handcart; the rope securing a stack of boxes snapped, scattering the goods. They helped him to reload the cart.
“What’s in them?” asked Om, curious about the rattling.
“Bones,” said the man.
“Bones? From cows and buffaloes?”
“From people like you and me. For export. It’s a very big business.”
They were glad when the cart rolled away. “If I knew what was inside, I would never have stopped to help,” said Ishvar.
By evening, the addresses on the list had been exhausted, yielding neither work nor hope. They tried to make their way back to Nawaz’s shop. Though they had walked this route in the morning, nothing seemed familiar now. Or everything looked the same. Either way it was confusing. Approaching darkness made it worse. The cinema billboards they had hoped to use as landmarks led them astray because all of a sudden there seemed to be so many of them. Was it a right turn or left at the
Famished and tired, they at last found Nawaz’s street, and debated whether to buy food before returning to the awning. “Better not,” decided Ishvar. “Nawaz and his bibi will be insulted if they are expecting us to eat with them today. Maybe last night they were just unprepared.”
Their host was at his sewing-machine as they passed the shop. They waved but he didn’t appear to notice, and they went round to the back. “I am finished,” said Omprakash, unrolling the bedding and letting himself drop.
Lying on their backs, they listened to Nawaz’s wife working in the kitchen. A tap was running, glasses rattled, and something clanged. Presently they heard his voice calling “Miriam!” She left the kitchen, and her words were too soft for them to hear. Then from the front came his loud, surly tone again, “No need for all that, I told you already.”
“But it’s just a little tea,” said Miriam. Now husband and wife were both in the kitchen.
“Haramzadi! Don’t argue with me! No means no!” They heard the sharp sound of a slap, and Omprakash flinched. A cry escaped her lips. “Let them go to a restaurant! The thing is, you pamper them and they’ll never leave!”
Miriam’s sobs prevented them outside from picking up what she said, except for fragments: “But why…” and then “… Ashraf’s family…”
“Not my family,” he spat.
The tailors left the awning and went to the stall where they had stopped for morning tea. After devouring a plate of puri-bhaji, Omprakash said, “What I wonder is, how Ashraf Chacha can have someone so horrible for his friend.”
“All people are not the same. Besides, Nawaz’s years in the city must have altered him. Places can change people, you know. For better or worse.”
“Maybe. But Ashraf Chacha would be ashamed to hear him now. If only we had somewhere else to stay.”
“Patience, Om. This is our first day. We’ll find something soon.”
But in four weeks of searching, they obtained a mere three days of work, at a place called Advanced Tailoring. The proprietor, a man named Jeevan, hired them to meet a deadline. The work was very simple: dhotis and shirts, a hundred of each.
“Who needs so many?” asked Omprakash in amazement.
Jeevan strummed his pursed lips with one finger, as though checking the instrument for tuning. He did this whenever he was about to make what he thought was a significant utterance. “Don’t repeat it to anyone — the clothes are for bribes.” Ordered by someone running in a by-election, he explained. The candidate was going to distribute them to certain important people in his constituency.
There was room for only one tailor in Advanced Tailoring, but Jeevan had props in the back that quickly converted the place into a workshop for three. At a height of four feet from the floor, he arranged planks horizontally on brackets in the walls, making a temporary loft. The planks were supported below with bamboo poles. Then he rented two sewing-machines, hoisted them into the loft, and sent Ishvar and Om up after them.
They settled gingerly on their stools. “Don’t be scared,” said Jeevan, strumming his lips. “Nothing will happen to you, I have done this many times before. Look, I am working under you — if you collapse, I also get crushed.”
The structure was shaky, and trembled heavily when the treadles worked. Traffic passing in the street made Ishvar and Om jiggle up and down on the stools. If a door slammed somewhere in the building, their scissors
