A Fine Balance (50 page)

“Times are such, I don’t know how much help 1 can be to anyone. But tell me anyway.”

“Our home… it’s gone,” said Ishvar timidly.

“You mean your landlord kicked you out?” She sympathized. “Landlords are such rascals.”

He shook his head. “I mean… gone completely,” and he swept his palm through the air. “It has been destroyed by big-big machines. All the houses in the field.”

“They said it was illegal to live there,” added Om.

“Are you serious?” said Maneck. “How can they do that?”

“They are the government,” said Ishvar. “They can do anything they want. Police said it’s a new law.”

Dina nodded, remembering that as recently as last week, there had been ringing praise from Mrs. Gupta for the proposed slum clearance programme. How unfortunate for the tailors, though. Poor people. And she was right about one thing – they did live in an unhygienic place. Thank goodness Maneck was spared from eating with them. “It’s terrible,” she said. “Government makes laws without thinking.”

“Now you know why we had to cancel dinner,” said Om to Maneck. “We felt bad to tell you in the morning.”

“You shouldn’t have,” said Maneck. “It would have given us more time to think of some way to help and –” He broke off, silenced by Dina knitting her brow fiercely in his direction.

“Rent was already paid for this month,” said Ishvar. “Now we have no house or money. Can we sleep on your verandah … for a few nights?”

Maneck turned, appealing to Dina as she weighed her response. “Myself, I have no objection,” she said. “But if the rent-collector sees, there will be trouble. He will use it as an excuse to say I have made this an illegal guest house. Then you and Maneck and me, and your sewing-machines – everything will land on the street, roofless.”

“I understand,” said Ishvar. His pride would not let him push against the rejection. “We’ll try elsewhere.”

“Don’t forget to take your trunk,” said Dina.

“Can we leave it for tonight?”

“Leave it where? There’s no room to even move in this flat.”

Disgusted by her answer, Om passed the bedding to his uncle and picked up the trunk. They nodded and left.

Dina followed them to the door, locked it, and walked back into the glare of Maneck’s reproach. “Don’t look at me like that,” she said. “I had no choice.”

“You could have let them stay at least tonight. They could have slept in my room.”

“That would be trouble with a capital t. One night is enough for the landlord to bring a case against me.”

“And what about the trunk? Why can’t you keep it for them?”

“What’s this, a police interrogation? You’ve lived such a sheltered life, you’ve no idea what kind of crookedness exists in a city like this. A trunk, a bag, or even a satchel with just two pyjamas and a shirt is the first step into a flat. Personal items stored on the premises – that’s the most common way of staking a claim. And the court system takes years to settle the case, years during which the crooks are allowed to stay in the flat. Now I’m not saying Ishvar and Om came tonight with this plan in their heads. But how can I take the risk? What if they get the idea later from some rascal? Any trouble with the landlord means I have to ask for Nusswan’s help. My brother is absolutely unbearable. He would crow and crow about it.”

Maneck looked out the window, trying to sort out the degree of Dina Aunty’s suspicion. He imagined the invasion of dirty laundry that she feared, the fabricated occupation force.

“Don’t worry so much about the tailors,” she said. “They’ll find somewhere to stay. People like them have relatives all over the place.”

“They don’t. They came just a few months ago from a faraway village.” He was pleased to see a trace of worry in slow migration across her face.

Then she was annoyed. “It’s amazing. Just amazing how much you know about them, isn’t it?”

They ignored each other for most of the evening, but while working on the quilt after dinner, she spread out the squares and tried to get him to talk. “Well, Maneck? How does it look now?”

“Looks terrible.” He was not ready to forgive her while the tailors remained unaccommodated in the night.

The sign read “Sagar Darshan – Ocean View Hotel.” The only sea in sight was the rectangle of blue painted on the weather-beaten board, with a little sailboat perched upon a wave.

Inside, a youth in a frayed white uniform sat on the floor by an umbrella stand, staring at pictures in
Filmfare
. He did not look up as the tailors came in. A grey-haired man, eating busily behind the counter, broke pieces from a loaf of bread and dipped them in quick succession into a series of four stainless steel saucers. “Thirty rupees per night,” he mumbled through an overloaded mouth, revealing a gold tooth in the process. Masticated fragments of his dinner flew past the moist lips onto the counter. He swept them to the floor, then polished away the smudge with his sleeved elbow.

“See? I told you, we cannot afford a hotel,” said Ishvar as they retreated.

“Let’s try another one.”

They checked place after place: Paradise Lodge, at twenty rupees a night, located over a bakery with a badly insulated ceiling, so that the searing heat of oven flames could be felt upstairs; Ram Nivas, the signboard stating that all castes were welcome, whose rooms reeked with a horrible stench, courtesy of a small chemical factory next door; Aram Hotel, where their luggage was almost stolen while they inquired, the would-be thief bolting as they retraced their steps down the hallway.

“Had enough?” said Ishvar, and Om nodded.

They lifted their loads and started towards the train station, pausing to inspect every doorway, awning, and façade that might offer shelter. But wherever shelter was possible, the place was already taken. To discourage pavement-dwellers, one shop had laid down in its entrance an iron framework covered with spikes, on hinges that could be unlocked and folded away in the morning. This bed of nails was being used by an enterprising individual – first, a rectangle of plywood over the spikes, and then his blanket.

“We will have to learn things like that,” said Ishvar, watching admiringly.

They passed the beggar on his platform, who greeted them with the usual rattle of his tin. Intent in their search, they didn’t acknowledge him. He gazed forlornly after them. There were a few empty places outside a furniture store that was still open. “We could try there,” said Om.

“Are you crazy? You want to get killed for taking someone’s spot? Have you forgotten what happened on the pavement near Nawaz’s shop?”

They passed the store that never closed, the twenty-four-hour chemist’s. The lights were going out in the main section as the sales clerks left. The dispensing side stayed bright, with a compounder on duty.

“Let’s wait here,” said Ishvar. “See what happens.”

Someone put a wooden stool outside, in the entrance way that was shared by the chemist’s and the antique shop next door. Steel shutters descended like eyelids on the two windows. Soaps, talcum powders, cough syrups on one side, and bronze Natarajas, Mughal miniatures, inlaid jewel boxes on the other, all vanished from view. The two managers locked up and handed over the keys to the nightwatchman.

The tailors waited till the nightwatchman loosened his belt, pulled off his shoes, and got comfortable on the wooden stool. Then they approached with their packet of beedis. “Matches?” asked Ishvar, making the striking gesture with his hand.

The nightwatchman stopped rubbing his calves to dig in his pocket. The tailors shared a match. They offered the beedis to the nightwatchman. He shook his head, producing a pack of Panama cigarettes. The three puffed silently for a while.

“So,” said Ishvar. “You sit here all night?”

“That’s my job.” He reached for the night stick that leaned against the door and tapped it twice. The tailors smiled, nodding.

“Anyone sleeps in this entrance?”

“No one.”

“Sometimes you must feel like taking a rest.”

The nightwatchman shook his head. “Not allowed. I have to watch two shops.” He leaned towards them and confided, pointing inside to the night compounder, “But he. He takes a rest. He takes a long sleep, inside, on a mat on the floor, every night. For that, the rascal gets paid, and much more than me.”

“We have no place to sleep,” said Ishvar. “The colony where we lived – it was destroyed by the government yesterday. With their machines.”

“That’s happening often these days,” said the nightwatchman. He continued his complaint about the compounder. “That fellow has very little work at night. Sometimes a customer comes for medicine. Then I unlock the door and wake the rascal to mix the prescription. But if he has been sleeping his mind is cloudy. He has trouble reading the labels.” He leaned closer again. “Once, he put wrong things in the medicine mixture. Customer died, and police came to investigate. Manager and police talked. Manager offered money, police took money, and everybody was happy.”

“Crooks, all of them,” said Ishvar, and they nodded in agreement. “Can you let us sleep here?”

“It’s not allowed.”

“We could pay you.”

“Even if you pay, where’s the space?”

“Space is enough. We can put our bedding near the door if you move your stool just two feet.”

“And what about other things? There is no storage place.”

“What things – just one trunk. We will take it with us in the morning.”

They shifted the stool and unrolled the bedding. It fit exactly. “How much can you pay?” asked the nightwatchman.

“Two rupees each night.”

“Four.”

“We are poor tailors. Take three, and we will do some free tailoring also for you. We can repair your uniform.” He pointed to the worn knees and fraying cuffs.

“Okay. But I’m warning you, sometimes the nights are very noisy here. If a customer comes for medicine you will have to move. Then don’t say I spoiled your sleep. No refund for spoiled sleep.” And if the night compounder should ask, they were to say two rupees, because the rascal would demand a cut from it.

“Bilkool,” agreed the tailors to all his conditions. After another beedi, they took needles and thread out of the trunk and got to work. The nightwatchman sat in his underwear while they fixed his uniform.

“First class,” he said, slipping on his trousers.

The compliment gratified Ishvar, and he said they would be pleased to mend other things for him and his family. “We can do everything. Salwar-kameez, ghaghra-choli, baby-baba clothes.”

The nightwatchman shook his head sadly. “You are kind. But wife and children are living in my native place. I came here alone, looking for work.”

Later, as the tailors slept, he watched them from his wooden stool. When Omprakash twitched in his sleep, it reminded him of his children: those special nights with the family still together, and he present at his babies’ dreamings.

The street awoke early to rouse the tailors before dawn. In fact, the street never slumbered, explained the nightwatchman, only drowsed lightly between two a.m. and five a.m. – after the insomniac gambling and drinking ended, and before the newspapers, bread, and milk arrived. “But your sleep was beautiful,” he smiled proprietorially.

“It was two nights’ sleep poured into one,” said Ishvar.

“Look, the rascal is still snoring inside.” As they peered through the window, the compounder’s eyes opened suddenly. He scowled at the three faces flattened against the glass, turned over, and went back to sleep.

They smoked in the entranceway, observing the streetsweeper at work, collecting the previous night’s cigarette and beedi stubs. His broom made neat designs in the dust. Later, they rolled up the bedding, paid three rupees and departed with their loads, promising to be back in the evening.

Om’s left shoulder and arm were aching from the trunk, but he refused to let his uncle take it. “Use your right hand,” said Ishvar. “Give them both equal exercise, they will grow strong.”

“Then both will be useless. How will I sew?”

They stopped at the railway station and washed before proceeding to the Vishram Vegetarian Hotel for tea and a bun. “You didn’t come yesterday,” said the cashier-cum-waiter.

“We were busy – looking for a place to rent.”

“Now that is something you could spend your whole life searching for,” put in the cook from his corner, shouting over the roaring, blue-flamed stoves.

In the window Om noticed a large picture of the Prime Minister that hadn’t been there before, along with a poster of the Twenty-Point Programme. “You have a new customer or what?”

“That’s no customer,” said the cashier. “That’s the goddess of protection. Her blessing is a business necessity. Compulsory puja.”

“How do you mean?”

“Her presence keeps my windows from being smashed and my shop from being burned. You follow?”

The tailors nodded. They told the cashier and the cook about the Prime Minister’s meeting into which they had been dragooned. Their stories of the helicopter, the rose petals, the hot-air balloon, and the huge cutout had them laughing.

After the first night of sound sleep, the nightwatchman’s forecast about nocturnal disturbances proved accurate. He apologized each time he had to shake the tailors awake. In his system of beliefs, nothing was more despicable than depriving a fellow human being of either food or sleep. He helped move the bedding to unlock the door, comforting them as they stumbled around in the dark, Om’s drowsy head on one shoulder, Ishvar leaning heavily on the other.