“Don’t you know?” the woman called. “It only runs in the morning.”
Om turned to see who was speaking. She was standing very short in her darkened doorway. “Water only comes in the morning,” she repeated.
“No one told me.”
“Are you a child that you must be told everything?” she scolded, stepping out of her shack. Now he could see she was not short, just badly stooped. “Can’t you use your own intelligence?”
He tried to decide which would best demonstrate his intelligence: retorting or walking away. “Come,” she said, and retreated within. He glanced in the doorway. She spoke again from the darkness, “Are you planning to wait by the tap till dawn?”
Opening the lid of a round-bottomed earthen matka, she transferred two glassfuls into his copper pot. “Remember, you have to fill up early. Wake up late, and you go thirsty. Like the sun and moon, water waits for no one.”
A long queue had formed at the tap in the morning when the tailors emerged with toothbrushes and soap to await their turn. From the next shack a man came out smiling, blocking their way. He was bare above the waist, and his hair hung to his shoulders. “Namaskaar,” he greeted them. “But you cannot go like that.”
“Why not?”
“If you stand at the tap, brushing your teeth, soaping and scrubbing and washing, you’ll start a big fight. People want to fill up before the water goes.”
“But what to do?” said Ishvar. “We don’t have a bucket.”
“No bucket? That’s only a small obstacle.” Their neighbour disappeared inside, and came back with a galvanized pail. “Use this till you get one.”
“What about you?”
“I have another — one bucketful is enough for me.” He gathered his hair in a tail and tugged it before spreading it out again. “Now. What else do you need? A small can or something, for toilet?”
“We have a loata,” said Ishvar. “But where should we go?”
“Come with me, it’s not far.” They collected their water, deposited the heavy pail in their shack, then walked towards the railway lines beyond the field with their loata. The water in it sloshed a little as they scrambled over mounds of concrete rubble and broken glass. A foul-smelling stream, greyish yellow, trickled through the mounds, carrying a variety of floating waste in its torpid flux.
“Come to the right side,” he said. “The left side is for ladies only.” They followed, glad to have a guide; it would have been awkward to have blundered. Women’s voices, mothers coaxing their children, rose from that direction, along with the stench. Further down, men were squatting on the tracks or by the ditch to the side, near the prickly scrub and nettles, their backs to the railroad. The ditch was a continuum of the roadside sewer where the hutment colony pitched its garbage.
Past the crouching men, the three found a suitable spot. “The steel rail is very useful,” said their neighbour. “Works just like a platform. Puts you higher than the ground, and the shit doesn’t tickle your behind when it piles up.”
“You know all the tricks, for sure,” said Om, as they undid their pants and assumed their positions on the rail.
“Takes very little time to learn.” He indicated the men in the scrub. “Now squatting there can be dangerous. Poisonous centipedes crawl about in there. I wouldn’t expose my tender parts to them. Also, if you lose your balance in those bushes, you end up with an arseful of thorns.”
“Are you speaking from experience?” asked Om, teetering on the rail with laughter.
“Yes — the experience of others. Careful with your loata,” he cautioned. “If you spill the water you’ll have to go back with a sticky bum.”
Ishvar wished the fellow would be quiet for a minute. He did not find the jocularity helpful to the task, especially when his bowels were reacting disagreeably to the communal toilet. It had been decades since he used to go outdoors, as a child. With his father, in the morning’s half-darkness, he remembered. When the birds were loud and the village was quiet. And afterwards, washing in the river. But the years with Ashraf Chacha taught him big-town ways, made him forget the village ways.
“Only one problem with squatting on the rail,” said their longhaired neighbour. “You have to get up when the train comes, whether you have finished or not. Railway has no respect for our open-air sundaas.”
“Now you tell us!” Ishvar craned his neck in both directions, searching up and down the track.
“Relax, relax. There’s no train for at least ten minutes. And you can always jump off if you hear a rumbling.”
“That’s very good advice, as long as one isn’t deaf,” said Ishvar peevishly. “And what’s your name?”
“Rajaram.”
“We’re very lucky to have you for our guru,” said Om.
“Yes, I’m your Goo Guru,” he chortled.
Ishvar was not amused, but Om roared with laughter. “Tell me, O great Goo Guruji, do you recommend that we buy a railway timetable, if we are to squat on the tracks every morning?”
“No need for that, my obedient disciple. In a few days your gut will learn the train timings better than the Stationmaster.”
The next train was not heard till they had finished, washed, and buttoned their pants. Ishvar decided he would sneak out tomorrow morning before Rajaram awoke. He did not want to squat next to this philosopher of defecation.
Along the line, men and women abandoned the tracks and waited by the ditch for the locomotive interruption to pass; the ones in the bushes stayed put. Rajaram pointed at a train compartment as it glided slowly in front of them.
“Look at those bastards,” he shouted. “Staring at people shitting, as if they themselves are without bowels. As if a turd emerging from an arse-hole is a circus performance.” He flung obscene gestures at the passengers, making some of them turn away. One observer took exception and spat from his window seat, but a favourable wind returned it trainward.
“I wish I could bend over, point, and shoot it like a rocket in their faces,” said Rajaram. “Make them eat it, since they are so interested in it.” He shook his head as they walked back to their shacks. “That kind of shameless behaviour makes me very angry.”
“My grandfather’s friend, Dayaram,” said Om, “he was forced to eat a landlord’s shit once, because he was late ploughing his field.”
Rajaram emptied the last drops of water from his can into his palm and slicked back his hair. “Did that Dayaram develop any magic power afterwards?”
“No, why?”
“I’ve heard of a caste of sorcerers. They eat human shit, it gives them their black powers.”
“Really?” said Om. “Then we could start a business — collect all these lumps from the track, package them and sell to that caste. Ready-made lunches, teatime snacks, hot and steaming.” Rajaram and he laughed, but Ishvar strode ahead, disgusted, pretending he hadn’t heard.
Om returned to the tap for another bucketful. The line had grown considerably. A few places ahead he saw a girl with a big brass pot balanced against her hip. When she raised her arms to lift it to her head, his eyes were drawn to the swell of her blouse. The weight thrust a fine sharpness into her hips as she passed. Water overbrimmed the pot and sloshed, trickling down her forehead. Glistening drops hung in her hair and eyelashes. Like morning dew, thought Om. Oh, she was lovely. For the rest of the day he felt he would burst with longing and happiness.
By the time the tap went dry, the hutment colony had finished its morning ablutions, leaving the ground charted with little rivulets of foam and froth. As the day wore on, the earth and sun readily swallowed it all. The smell from the railroad-latrine endured longer. The capricious breeze escorted the stench for hours into the shacks before changing direction.
Late in the evening, Rajaram was cooking on a Primus stove outside his door as the tailors returned from exploring the area around the slum. They heard the oil hissing in the frying pan. “Have you eaten?” he asked.
“At the station.”
