the date. A signature writhed its way across the revenue stamp at the bottom, and the money was taken.
“Count it, please.”
“No need, sister. A twenty years’ tenant like you — if I cannot trust you, who can I trust?” Then he began counting it all the same. “Only to make you happy.” From an inside pocket of the sherwani he withdrew a thick wad of notes and thickened it further with Dina’s contribution. Like the plastic folder, the money was secured by a rubber band.
“Now,” he said, “what else can I do for you while I am here? Taps leaking? Anything broken? Plaster all right in the back room?”
“I’m not sure.” The cheek of it, she thought indignantly. Tenants could complain till they were exhausted, and here this crook was pretending with his automatic smile. “Better check for yourself.”
“Whatever is your wish, sister.”
In the back room he rapped the walls with his knuckles. “Plaster is fine,” he muttered, unable to hide his disappointment at the silent sewing-machines. Then, as though noticing the Singers for the first time, he said, “You have
“There is no law against two machines, is there?”
“Not at all, I was just asking. Although these days, with this crazy Emergency, you can never tell what law there is. The government surprises us daily.” His laugh was hollow, and she wondered if a threat was concealed in the words.
“One has a light needle, the other heavy,” she improvised. “Presser feet and tensions are also different. I do a lot of sewing — my curtains, bedsheets, dresses. You need special machines for all that.”
“They look exactly the same to me, but what do I know about sewing?” They went into Maneck’s room, and Ibrahim decided to put subtlety aside. “So this must be where the young man lives.”
“What?”
“The young man, sister. Your paying guest.”
“How dare you! How dare you suggest I keep young men in my flat! Is that the kind of woman you think I am? Just because — ”
“Please, no, that’s not — ”
“Don’t you dare insult me, and then interrupt me! Just because I am a poor defenceless widow, people think they can get away with saying filthy things! Such courage you have, such bravery, when it comes to abusing a weak and lonely woman!”
“But sister, I — ”
“What has happened to manhood today? Instead of protecting the honour of women, they indulge in smearing and defiling the innocent. And you! You, with your beard so white, saying such nasty, shameful things! Have you no mother, no daughter? You should be ashamed of yourself!”
“Please forgive me, I meant no harm, I only — ”
“Meant no harm is easy to say, after the damage is done!”
“No sister, what damage? A foolish old man like me repeats a silly rumour, and begs your forgiveness.”
Ibrahim made his escape clutching the plastic folder. The attempt to raise his fez in farewell was, like the earlier greeting, short-circuited. He substituted again with a yank at the sherwani’s collar. “Thank you, sister, thank you. I will come next month, with your permission. Your humble servant.”
She played with the idea of taking him to task for using “sister” so hypocritically. He had been let off too lightly towards the end, she felt. Still, he was an old man. She would have preferred to scold a younger hireling of the landlord’s.
In the afternoon she re-enacted the scene for Maneck, some sections twice at his urging. He enjoyed it the most when she came to the slandered-woman bit. “Did I show you my pose for the harassed and helpless woman?” She crossed her arms with hands on shoulders, shielding her bosom. “I stood like this. As if he was going to attack me. Poor fellow actually looked away in shame. I was so mean. But he deserved it.”
Their laughter acquired a touch of brave desperation after a while, like slicing a loaf very thin and pretending that bread was plentiful. Then the quiet in the room was sudden. The last crumb of fun had been yielded by the rent-collector’s visit.
“The play is acted and the money digested,” she said.
“At least the rent is paid up, and water and electricity too.”
“We cannot eat electricity.”
“You can have my pocket money, I don’t need it this month,” he said, reaching for his wallet.
She leaned forward and touched his cheek.
Another fortnight flew by, as swiftly, it seemed to Dina, as the rows of stitches that used to spill merrily from the Singers during happier days. She did not notice that already, in her memory, those months with Ishvar and Om, of fretting and tardiness, quarrels and crooked seams, had been transmuted into something precious, to be remembered with yearning.
Towards the end of the month, the hire-purchase man came to inquire about the sewing-machines. The instalment was overdue. She showed him the Singers to prove they were safe, and talked him into a grace period. “Don’t worry, bhai, the tailors can cover your payment three times over. But an urgent family matter has delayed them in their native place.”
Her daylong searches for new tailors continued to yield nothing. Maneck sometimes went with her, and she was grateful for his company. He made the dreary wanderings less dispiriting. Happy to skip college, he would have gone more often had it not been for her threats to write to his parents. “Don’t create extra problems for me,” she said. “As it is, if I don’t have two tailors by next week, I will have to borrow from Nusswan for the rent.” She shuddered at the prospect. “I’ll have to listen to all his rubbish again — I told you so, get married again, stubbornness breeds unhappiness.”
“I’ll come with you if you like.”
“That would be nice.”
At night, they busied themselves with the quilt. The stack of remnants was shrinking in the absence of new material, making her resort to pieces she had avoided so far, like the flimsy chiffon, not really suitable for her design. They sewed it into little rectangular pouches and stuffed in fragments of more substantial cloth. When the chiffon ran out, the quilt ceased to grow.
“Welcome,” the foreman greeted the Facilitator, as he delivered a fresh truckload of pavement-dwellers at the work camp.
The Facilitator bowed and presented an enormous cellophane-wrapped box of dry fruits. He was making a tidy profit between what he paid Sergeant Kesar and what he collected from the foreman; the wheels had to be kept oiled.
Cashews, pistachios, almonds, raisins, apricots were visible through the windows in the lid. “For your wife and children,” said the Facilitator, adding, “Please, please take it, no,” as the foreman made a show of refusing. “Its nothing, just a small token of appreciation.”
The project manager, too, was delighted with the arrival of new pavement-dwellers. The scheme allowed him great liberties in manipulating the payroll. What the free labour lacked in efficiency, it made up in numbers. The expanding irrigation project no longer needed to hire extra paid workers.
In fact, a few were laid off; and the remaining day-labourers began to feel threatened. In their view, this influx of starving, shrivelled, skeletal beings was turning into an enemy army. Regarded at first with pity or amusement as they struggled with puny little tasks, the beggars and pavement-dwellers now seemed like invaders bent on taking away their livelihood. The paid workers began directing their resentment at them.
Harassment of the newcomers was constant. Abuse, pushing, shoving became commonplace. A spade handle would emerge out of a ditch to trip somebody. From scaffoldings and raised platforms, spit descended like bird droppings but with greater accuracy. At mealtimes a flurry of suddenly clumsy elbows overturned their plates, and since the rules denied a second serving, the beggars and pavement-dwellers often ate off the ground. Most of them were used to foraging in garbage, but the water-thin dal soaked quickly into dry earth. Only solids like chapati or bits of vegetable could be salvaged.
Their supplications to the foreman were ignored. The view from the top showed a smooth, economical
