A Fine Balance (38 page)

“Soon, my concerned colleagues were gathered around me. They crowded my little cubicle, pouring comfort upon what they thought was grief. They presumed that reading about the sorry state of the nation, day after day – about the corruption, the natural calamities, the economic crises – had finally broken me. That I was dissolving in a fit of sorrow and despair.

“They were wrong, of course. I would never let emotions stand in the way of my professional duties. Mind you, I’m not saying a proofreader must be heartless. I’m not denying that I often felt like weeping at what I read – stories of misery, caste violence, government callousness, official arrogance, police brutality. I’m certain many of us felt that way, and an emotional outburst would be quite normal. But too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart, as my favourite poet has written.”

“Who’s that?”

“W.B. Yeats. And I think that sometimes normal behaviour has to be suppressed, in order to carry on.”

“I’m not sure,” said Maneck. “Wouldn’t it be better to respond honestly instead of hiding it? Maybe if everyone in the country was angry or upset, it might change things, force the politicians to behave properly.”

The man’s eyes lit up at the challenge, relishing the opportunity to argue. “In theory, yes, I would agree with you. But in practice, it might lead to the onset of more major disasters. Just try to imagine six hundred million raging, howling, sobbing humans. Everyone in the country – including airline pilots, engine drivers, bus and tram conductors – all losing control of themselves. What a catastrophe. Aeroplanes falling from the skies, trains going off the tracks, boats sinking, buses and lorries and cars crashing. Chaos. Complete chaos.”

He paused to give Maneck’s imagination time to fill in the details of the anarchy he had unleashed. “And please also remember: scientists haven’t done any research on the effects of mass hysteria and mass suicide upon the environment. Not on this subcontinental scale. If a butterfly’s wings can create atmospheric disturbances halfway round the world, who knows what might happen in our case. Storms? Cyclones? Tidal waves? What about the land mass, would it quake in empathy? Would the mountains explode? What about rivers, would the tears from twelve hundred million eyes cause them to rise and flood?”

He took another sip from the green bottle. “No, it’s too dangerous. Better to carry on in the usual way.” He corked the bottle and wiped his lips. “To get back to the facts. There I was with the day’s proofs before me, and my eyes leaking copiously. Not one word was readable. The text, the disciplined rows and columns, were suddenly in mutiny, the letters pitching and tossing, disintegrating in a sea of stormy paper.”

He passed his hand across his eyes, reliving that fateful day, then stroked his pens comfortingly, as though they too might be upset by the evocation of those painful events. Maneck took the opportunity to slip in a bit of praise, to ensure that the story continued. “You know, you’re the first proofreader I’ve met. I would have guessed they’d be very dull people, but you speak so … with such … so differently. Almost like a poet.”

“And why shouldn’t I? For twenty-four years, the triumphs and tragedies of our country quickened my breath, making my pulse sing with joy or quiver with sorrow. In twenty-four years of proofreading, flocks of words flew into my head through the windows of my soul. Some of them stayed on and built nests in there. Why should I not speak like a poet, with a commonwealth of language at my disposal, constantly invigorated by new arrivals?” He gave a mighty sigh. “Until that wet day, of course, when it was all over. When the windows were slammed shut. And the ophthalmologist sentenced me to impotence, saying that my proofreading days were behind me.”

“Couldn’t he give you new spectacles or something?”

“That wouldn’t have helped. The trouble was, my eyes had become virulently allergic to printing ink.” He spread his hands in a gesture of emptiness. “The nectar that nurtured me had turned to poison.”

“Then what did you do?”

“What can anyone do in such circumstances? Accept it, and go on. Please always remember, the secret of survival is to embrace change, and to adapt. To quote: ‘All things fall and are built again, and those that build them again are gay.’“

“Yeats?” guessed Maneck.

The proofreader nodded, “You see, you cannot draw lines and compartments, and refuse to budge beyond them. Sometimes you have to use your failures as stepping-stones to success. You have to maintain a fine balance between hope and despair.” He paused, considering what he had just said. “Yes,” he repeated. “In the end, it’s all a question of balance.”

Maneck nodded. “All the same, you must have missed your work very much.”

“Well, not really,” he dismissed the sympathy. “Not the work itself. Most of the stuff in the newspaper was pure garbage. A great quantity of that which entered through the windows of my soul was quickly evacuated by the trapdoor.”

This seemed to Maneck to contradict what the man had said earlier. Perhaps the lawyer behind the proofreader was still active, able to argue both sides of the question.

“A few good things I kept, and I still have them.” The proofreader tapped audibly, first on his forehead, then on his plastic pen case. “No rubbish or bats in my belfry – no dried-up pens in my pocket-case.”

The thump of the single crutch signalled the return down the aisle of Papaji and daughter. Maneck and the proofreader greeted them with pleasant smiles. But they were not to be so easily placated. While passing through to his seat, Papaji lunged with his crutch at the proofreader’s foot. He would have successfully speared it had the proofreader not anticipated the attack.

“Sorry,” said Papaji, gruff with disappointment. “What to do, clumsy mistakes happen when you have only one good leg in a world of two legs.”

“Please don’t worry,” said the proofreader. “No harm has been done.”

The daughter resumed knitting, and Papaji concentrated his grim look outside the window, startling the occasional farmer working his field who happened to catch the angry eye. Maneck wanted the proofreader to continue. “So are you retired now?”

He shook his head. “Can’t afford to. No, luckily for me, my editor was very kind, and got me a new job.”

“But what about your throat trouble?” Maneck assumed that the point of the entire narration had somehow been overlooked.

“That happened in the new job. Because of his position, the editor-in-chief was friendly with many politicians and was able to set me up for freelancing, in morcha production.” Seeing the question on Maneck’s face, he explained, “You know, to make up slogans, hire crowds, and produce rallies or demonstrations for different political parties. It seemed simple enough when he presented me with the opportunity.”

“And was it?”

“There was no problem on the creative front. Writing speeches, designing banners – all that was easy. With years of proofreading under my belt, I knew exactly the blather and bluster favoured by professional politicians. My
modus operandi
was simple. I made up three lists: Candidate’s Accomplishments (real and imaginary), Accusations Against Opponent (including rumours, allegations, innuendoes, and lies), and Empty Promises (the more improbable the better). Then it was merely a matter of taking various combinations of items from the three lists, throwing in some bombast, tossing in a few local references, and there it was – a brand-new speech. I was a real hit with my clients.” A smile played on his face as he remembered his successes.

“My difficulties lay in the final phase, out on the street. You see, I had spent my working life in an office, in silence, and my throat was unexercised. Now suddenly I was yelling instructions, shouting slogans, exhorting the crowds to repeat after me. This was
terra incognita
for a person of my background. It became too much. Much too much for my underused larynx. My vocal cords suffered such injuries, the doctors tell me they will never fully recover.”

“That’s terrible,” said Maneck. “You should have let the others scream and yell. After all, that’s what the crowds are hired for, aren’t they?”

“Correct. But the habit of my old job – doing everything myself, down to the smallest detail – was a hard habit to break. I could not leave it to the rented crowd to do the shouting. After all, the success of a demonstration is measured in decibels. Clever slogans and smart banners alone will not do it. So I felt I must lead by example, employ my voice enthusiastically, volley and thunder, beseech the heavens, curse the forces of evil, shriek the praises of the benefactor – bellow and clamour and cry and cheer till victory was mine!”

Excited by his remembrances, the proofreader forgot his limitations and began raising his voice. He plucked a pen from his pocket and gesticulated with it like a conductor’s baton. Then his symphonic descriptions were cut short by a violent fit of hacking and choking and gasping.

Papaji and daughter cringed, shrinking backwards into their seats, fearing contagion from the vile-sounding cough. “What to do, Papaji,” sniffed the daughter, covering her nose and mouth with her sari. “Some people just have no concern for those around them. So shamelessly spreading their germs.”

The proofreader caught his breath and said, “You see? You see the extent of my suffering? This is the result of the morcha profession. A second impotence.” He lifted his hands and clutched himself round the neck. “You could say that I have cut my own throat.”

Maneck laughed appreciatively, but the proofreader had not intended to be humorous. “I have learned from my experience,” he said with gravity. “Now I keep a strong-throated assistant at my side, to whom I whisper my instructions. I teach him the phrasing, the cadence, the stressed and unstressed syllables. Then he leads the shouting brigades on my behalf.”

“And his throat is okay, no problems?”

“Yes, quite okay, on the whole. He used to be a sergeant-major before he left the army. Still, I have to keep him supplied with mentholated throat lozenges. In fact, he is meeting me at the station. There is always a lot of demand in the city for morchas. Various groups are in a state of perpetual agitation – for more food, less taxes, higher wages, lower prices. So we will also do some business while I get my medical treatment.”

Towards the end of the story, his voice sank to the feeble whisper that he had struggled to produce last night, and Maneck asked him to please not strain himself any further.

“You’re quite right,” said the proofreader. “I should have stopped talking ages ago. By the way, my name is Vasantrao Valmik,” and he held out his hand.

“Maneck Kohlah,” he replied, shaking it, while Papaji and daughter looked the other way, wanting to take no part in an introduction with these two ill-mannered individuals.

I
t was thirty-six hours after leaving home that Maneck arrived in the city, clothes covered in dust and eyes smarting. His nose ached, and his throat felt raw. He wondered what additional damage the journey had inflicted on the poor proofreader’s ravaged vocal cords.

“Bye-bye, Mr. Valmik – all the best,” he said, struggling outside with his suitcase and boxes.

Standing woebegone on the platform, looking around for his retired sergeant-major, Vasantrao Valmik was hardly able to croak a reply. He raised a hand in farewell, which stroked his pens on the way down.

Maneck’s taxi from the train station to the college hostel made a small detour around an accident. An old man had been hit by a bus. The conductor flagged down passing buses, transferring his passengers while waiting for the police and ambulance.

“Have to be young and quick to cross the street,” mused the taxi driver.

“True,” said Maneck.

“Bastard bus drivers, they buy their licence with bribes, without passing the test.” The driver took an angrier tone, moving into the opposing lane of traffic to overtake. “Should all be sent to jail.”

“You’re right,” said Maneck, only half-listening. Filtered through his exhaustion, the city seemed to roll past the taxi window like the frames of a film reel. On the pavement, children were pelting pebbles at a dog and bitch joined in copulation. Someone emptied a bucket over the animals to separate them. The taxi narrowly missed hitting the dog as it darted into traffic.

At the next signal light, police were arresting a man who had been beaten up by a gang of six or seven young fellows. The mohulla’s residents had spilled into the road to witness the culmination of the drama. “What happened?” the taxi driver leaned out his window to ask an onlooker.

“Threw acid in his wife’s face.”

The signal changed before they found out why. The driver speculated that maybe she was fooling around with another man; or she may have burnt the husband’s dinner. “Some people are cracked enough to do anything.”

“Could have been a dowry quarrel,” said Maneck.

“Maybe. But in those cases they usually use kerosene, in the kitchen.”

It was late evening when Maneck reached the hostel. At the warden’s office he was given his room number, keys, and a list of rules: Please always keep room locked. Please do not write or scratch on walls with sharp instruments. Please do not bring female visitors of the opposite sex into rooms. Please do not throw rubbish from windows. Please observe silence at night time…

He crumpled the cyclostyled list and tossed it on the little desk. Too enervated to eat or wash, he unpacked a white bedsheet and went to sleep.

Something crawling along his calf woke him. He rose on one elbow to deliver a furious swat below the knee. It was dark outside. He shivered, and his heart thumped wildly with the panic of not being able to remember where he was. Why had his bedroom window shrunk? And where was the valley that should lie beyond it, with pinpoints of light dancing in the night, and the mountains looming darkly in the distance? Why had everything vanished?

Relief covered him like a blanket as his eyes were able to trace the outline of his luggage on the floor. He had travelled. By train. Travelling made everything familiar vanish. How long had he slept – hours or minutes? He peered at his watch to unravel the puzzle, pondering the glowing numbers.