A Fine Balance (27 page)

The sarcasm was lost on Nawaz. “Oh, it’s my responsibility to help Ashraf’s friends. And now that you have found jobs, my next duty is to find you a place to stay.”

“No rush, Nawazbhai,” said Ishvar, mildly alarmed. “We are happy where we are, your awning is beautiful, very comfortable.”

“Just leave it to me. The thing is, it’s almost impossible in this city to find a house. When something becomes available you must grab it. Come on, finish your tea, let’s go.”

“Last stop!” called the conductor, clanging his ticket punch against the chrome railing. The bus skirted the gloomy slum lanes, groaned as it turned the corner, and stopped.

“This one is the new colony,” said Nawaz, indicating the field which was in the process of being annexed by the slum. “Let’s find the man in charge.”

They entered between two rows of shacks, and Nawaz asked someone if Navalkar was around. The woman pointed. They found him in a shack that was his office.

“Yes,” said Navalkar, “we still have a few places for rent.” His straggly moustache fluttered with studied exaggeration in front of his mouth when he spoke. “Let me show you.”

They returned through the two rows of shacks. “This corner house,” said Navalkar. “It’s vacant, if you want it. Come, look inside.”

As he opened the door of the shack, a pariah dog departed through a hole in the back. The mud floor was partially covered with planks. “You can put more pieces of wood if you like,” suggested Navalkar. The walls were a patchwork, part plywood and part sheet metal. The roof was old corrugated iron, waterproofed in corroded areas with transparent plastic.

“The tap is out there, in the middle of the lane. Most convenient. You won’t have to go far for water, like they do in other inferior colonies. This is a nice place.” He swept his arm around to take in the field. “Newly developed, not too crowded. The rent is one hundred rupees per month. In advance.”

Nawaz tapped the walls with his fingers like a doctor examining a chest, then stamped his foot on a floor plank, making it wobble. He made an approving face. “Well built,” he whispered to the tailors.

Navalkar gave a circular nod. “We have even better huts. You want to see?”

“No harm in looking,” said Nawaz.

They were led behind the rows of tin-and-plastic jhopadpattis to a set of eight brick-walled huts. The roofs once again were of rusted corrugated metal. “These are two hundred and fifty rupees per month. But for that money you get a pukka floor, and electric light.” He pointed to the poles that fed wires to the huts, pirated from the street-lighting supply.

Inside, Nawaz inspected the bare bricks and scratched one with his thumb nail. “Very good quality,” he said. “You want to know what I think? For the first month, take the cheaper house. Then if your job goes well and you can afford it, move to this one.”

Navalkar kept up his circular nodding. The tailors’ silence made Nawaz uneasy. “What’s the matter, you don’t like it?”

“No no, it’s very nice. But money is the problem.”

“Money is a problem for everyone,” said Navalkar. “Unless you are a politician or a blackmarketeer.”

When the forced laughter concluded, Ishvar said, “The advance rent is difficult.”

“Don’t you have even a hundred rupees?” asked Nawaz disbelievingly.

“It’s because of the tailoring lady. She told us we must bring our own sewing-machines. And we have just enough for the rental deposit. These last few months without work, we have been spending and-”

“You useless people!” Nawaz spat, seeing his plan to be rid of them begin to disintegrate. “Wasting your money!”

“If we can stay with you a little longer,” pleaded Ishvar, “we could save enough-”

“You think this house is going to wait for you?” he snarled, and Navalkar shook his head on cue.

Desperate, Nawaz turned to him. “Can you make an exception, Mr. Navalkar? Twenty-five rupees today, which I will pay. And twenty-five from the tailors each week, for the rest.”

Navalkar curled his lips, gnawing at the moustache with his lower incisors. He brushed back the wet hairs with his knuckles. “For your sake only. Because I trust you.”

Nawaz counted out the money before any minds could be changed. They returned to the first shack, where Navalkar put a lock on the plywood door and gave the key to Ishvar. “Your house now. Live well.”

They picked their way through the cracked earth of the field and waited at the bus stop. The tailors looked worried. “My congratulations and felicitations to you again,” said Nawaz. “In one day you have found jobs and a new house.”

“Only with your help,” said Ishvar. “Is Navalkar the landlord?”

Nawaz laughed. “Navalkar is a little crook working for a big crook. A slumlord called Thokray, who controls everything in this area – country liquor, hashish, bhung. And when there are riots, he decides who gets burned and who survives.”

Seeing the apprehension on Ishvar’s face, he added, “You don’t have to deal with him. Just pay your rent regularly, you will be all right.”

“But then, whose land is this?”

“No one’s. The city owns it. These fellows bribe the municipality, police, water inspector, electricity officer. And they rent to people like you. No harm in it. Empty land sitting useless – if homeless people can live there, what’s wrong?”

On this last night, Nawaz’s relief spurred him to greater generosity. “Please eat with me,” he invited them in. “Honour me at least once before you go. Miriam! Three dinners!”

He inquired if they were happy under the back awning. “If you prefer, you can sleep indoors. The thing is, that’s where I was going to put you anyway, when you first arrived. But I thought to myself, the house is so cramped and crowded, better outside in the fresh air.”

“Yes yes, much better,” said Ishvar. “We have to thank you for your kindness for six months.”

“Has it really been that long? How fast the time has flown.”

Miriam brought the food to the table and left. Even obscured by the burkha, Ishvar and Omprakash had been able to see her eyes cloud with embarrassment at her husband’s hypocrisy.

M
IRROR, RAZOR, SHAVING BRUSH
, plastic cup, loata, copper water pot – Ishvar arranged them on an upturned cardboard carton in one corner of the shack. Trunk and bedding took up most of the remaining space. He hung their clothes from rusted nails protruding through the plywood walls. “So everything fits nicely. We have jobs, we have a house, and soon we’ll find a wife for you.”

Om did not smile. “I hate this place,” he said.

“You want to go back to Nawaz and his awning?”

“No. I want to go back to Ashraf Chacha and his shop.”

“Poor Ashraf Chacha – deserted by his customers.” Ishvar picked up the copper pot and moved to the door.

“I’ll get the water,” offered Om.

He went to the tap in the lane where a grey-haired woman watched him fumble with the handle to start the flow. Nothing happened. He kicked the standpipe and rattled the spout, shaking out a few drops.

“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.”