Animal's People (4 page)

Such feelings I kept to myself. Four hundred rupees a month I earned for my work, which was easy, in this life good fortune too seldom comes along and when it does you don't want to be twisting its balls. Chunaram soon got wind of my new riches because Zafar for some reason had taken a shine to him, his chai shop in the Nutcracker became like a second headquarters. Chunaram told me that four hundred rupees was a lot of money, he offered to keep it safe for me but I wasn't falling for that. Instead, I gave it to Nisha. She said I should open a bank account.

“How can I, who can neither read nor write?”

“Then I must teach you.”

At that time she was enrolled at Iqbal Bahadur Women's College in the walled city, but I think she was not taking her studies very seriously.

“You shouldn't come home at midday,” her father said.

“Then what will you do for lunch? Papa, Zafar gets me back in time for my afternoon lectures, plus this boy needs at least one good meal a day, if he will insist on sleeping rough instead of under a roof like a human being.”

“You could leave some chappatis in a tiffin,” I said, giving a glance at her dad, of whom I was afraid. Grim, terrifying bastard he was, but with good cause, when you knew his story. “Plus I'm not a human being.”

“Don't you like my cooking?”

“Animal's right,” said her father.

“I could get something outside,” says I, who'd newly discovered the pleasure of spending a little of my earnings on a samosa here, pau bhaji there.

“Should my dad also eat street food?”

“I can manage fine,” her father said. Both of us knew that it was not for our sakes that she came home. Zafar too came, most days. He would eat with her father, spend some time with Nisha, then take her back to college on his motorbike.

“You give so much time to Zafar's work,” I said once when we were alone. “Is it a good idea?”

“Because it's important.”

“And your studies?” To me, being a student, getting educated was not just an impossible dream, it was an impossible dream inside a dream.

“Worry about a roof over your head,” said Nisha, with a casual flip of the subject. “How many places has Zafar found you? Why do you keep refusing?”

“I have a good place to sleep, fully private.”

“Where?”

“That's my secret.” She would be horrified if she knew.

“Where?” she demanded. “Come on, tell.”

“Difficult to describe,” I said, which was nothing but the truth.

Ever since that night the Kampani's factory has been locked up and abandoned. No one goes there, people say it's haunted by those who died. It's a shunned place, where better for an animal to make its lair?

When jarnaliss and foreigners come to Khaufpur they always think the factory is a big building. It isn't. Its wall seems never-ending, and inside is an area equal to the whole of the Nutcracker. It takes more than an hour for me to circle the whole thing, enough steps to fill two miles. Here and there are holes in the wall as if a giant has banged his fist through, it's where people have dug out bricks for their houses, our end of the Nutcracker is made mostly of death factory. Look inside, you see something strange, a forest is growing, tall grasses, bushes, trees, creepers that shoot sprays of flowers like fireworks.

Eyes, I wish you could come with me into the factory. Step through one of these holes, you're into another world. Gone are city noises, horns of trucks and autos, voices of women in the Nutcracker, kids shouting, all erased by the high wall. Listen, how quiet it's. No bird song. No hoppers in the grass. No bee hum. Insects can't survive here. Wonderful poisons the Kampani made, so good it's impossible to get rid of them, after all these years they're still doing their work. Once inside, in the grass, it's careful hands, careful feet. Fucking place is full of cobras. Dogs too you've to watch for. See a dog, keep away. If it comes close drive it off with stones. These dogs have foaming mouths, I'm afraid for Jara but not for myself. This is my kingdom, in here I am the boss. I've been in and out of here since I was small, I'd come in to hide where no one could find me. Sometimes I'd bring other kids in to play marbles and spin tops when we didn't want the grown-ups to know where we were. To make sure they didn't come back on their own I'd tell them stories of children who had wandered into the factory and were never seen again.

I'd tell how I found their bones in the jungle, gnawed by animals with fangs of fire. How come you're still alive then, they'd ask.

Eyes, imagine you're in the factory with me. See that thing rising above the trees, those rusty pipes and metal stairs going nowhere? That's the place where they made the poisons. It used to be bigger, but bits keep falling off. Each big wind pulls more iron sheets loose. We hear them banging like angry ghosts. All that's left now is its skeleton. Platforms, ladders and railings are corroding. Its belly is a tangle of pipes like rotting guts. Huge tanks have split, stuff's fallen out that looks like brown rocks. How often did Zafar warn that if the dry grasses inside the factory ever caught light, if fire reached these brown lumps, poison gases would gush out, it'd be that night all over again.

In these dry grasses that Zafar said were a danger to the city I used to make my sleeping nest. On warm nights I could dream in comfort under the stars with no insects to trouble me. During the rains and in cold weather there were rooms that the Kampani, when it fled from Khaufpur, left knee-deep in papers. The Kampani papers made a thick quilt, plus I had the dog to keep me warm. In the offices the chemical stench was less. Inside the warehouses I never went, they were full of rotting sacks that poured out white and pink powders. Too long near them, you'd soon be breathless, with pains in the chest. Sometimes moving through the jungle I'd get dizzy and feel a sharp metallic taste on my tongue, those were regions to avoid.

Eyes, are you with me still? Look throughout this place a silent war is being waged. Mother Nature's trying to take back the land. Wild sandalwood trees have arrived, who knows how, must be their seeds were shat by overflying birds. That herb scent, it's ajwain, you catch it drifting in gusts, at such moments the forest is beautiful, you forget it's poisoned and haunted. Under the poison-house trees are growing up through the pipework. Creepers, brown and thick as my wrist, have climbed all the way to the top, tightly they've wrapped wooden knuckles round pipes and ladders, like they want to rip down everything the Kampani made.

Here we can climb, up the ladders and up, to where the death wind blew. At the top of the highest stair, a single black pipe continues into the sky. You can rest your hand on it, it's wider than the rest. Up this pipe the poisons flew on that night. Still black and blistered it's after twenty years. Its paint was burnt off, so hot were those gases, yet that night was a freezing night of stars.

“Wah! what a view!”

It's the first thing they say when they get up here, from here you can see clear across Khaufpur, every street, every lane, gully, shabby alley. That huddle of roofs, it's Jyotinagar. Lanes in there are narrow, I don't like to think about what happened in them. My friend Faqri, he lost his mum and dad and five brothers and sisters in those lanes. See the flashes where the naala flows? It's Mira Colony, then Khabbarkhana and Salimganj. East's Phuta Maqbara, to the west Qazi Camp, killing grounds all. Those minarets far off are the big masjid in Chowk. There, see the Delhi road? On that night it was a river of people, some in their underwear, others in nothing at all, they were staggering like it was the end of some big race, falling down not getting up again, at Rani Hira Pati ka Mahal, the road was covered with dead bodies.

Eyes, there's such a thing as bhayaanak rasa, the kind of terror that makes your little hairs stand up and tremble, which is called romanchik. I feel it when I come back to this high place, I see mother Kali stalking in the forest below, her skin black as a roasted corpse. She's got these massive fangs and a red tongue hanging to her waist and a belt of chopped-off heads, each one wears a face of agony which is how they looked when they died. Eyes, you see a black pipe climbing into the sky, I see Siva dark and naked, smeared with ashes from funeral pyres. His eyes are red from hash and smoke of burning flesh, dancing he's, from all sides I can hear the screams and cries of dying people, because when Siva dances the world comes to an end. Do you suppose anyone can explain, why did the Kampani choose this city to make its factory? Why this land? Is it by chance that the old name for this place is Kali's ground? Is it by chance that Siva her husband wears cobras round his neck?

Up here with just the wind how quiet it's. Isn't always. You should hear the ghosts, the factory is full of them, when a big wind blows, their souls fly shrieking up and down the empty pipes. Some nights, there'd be nothing here, just the ghosts and me, a four-foot creature climbing in the trees and pipes. Perched like a monkey on top of this poison-khana I'd watch the moon making shadows, and the stars cutting their circles, and I would look at the lights of the city and wonder if this pipe had been mended, that wheel tightened, I might have had a mother and father, I might still be a human being.

Each morning I would creep out of the factory to do my work in the bastis. At noon I'd head to Nisha's. Her cooking was good, her company fun. I'd eat my lunch and do my best to avoid her frightening father.

Somraj is the name of Nisha's dad, Pandit Somraj Tryambak Punekar. Unlike his daughter he's tall, twists my neck to look up at him, he has the same zapaat nose as hers, long and pointy, his fingers also are long, but the most important thing about him is that he used to be a singer, and not just a singer but a famous one. His name was known throughout India, so many awards and honours he won, they called him
Aawaaz-e-Khaufpur
, the Voice of Khaufpur. Nisha told me that in his younger days her dad was always singing on the radio plus he gave concerts and the like, until that night took away his wife and baby son and fucked up his lungs. Nisha never knew her mother or brother, she says that when the Kampani stole away her father's breath it also stole his life, because breath is the life of a singer. From that night on he would listen to other people's records, but never his own. He became a solemn and private man. Later he started teaching music, his students won prizes, to them he was like a god but he seemed to get no pleasure from it since hardly ever would you see him smile.

Like every Khaufpuri, Somraj hated the Kampani, he ran a poison-relief committee which did what it could for the locals who were still coughing their lungs up so many years after that night. The people he helped were among the poorest in the city, which is why no politician gave a shit about them and hardly a lawyer would take up their claims for compensation. Through this work he had met Zafar, through him Zafar met Nisha. I used to wonder how Somraj felt about those two. His daughter, a Hindu girl not yet twenty, with a Muslim man twice her age, but whatever Somraj thought about it he kept to himself, he approved of her work with Zafar, where he and she differed was on the question of how the battle should be fought. The case against the Kampani had been dragging on endless years. It stood accused of causing the deaths of thousands on that night, plus it ran away from Khaufpur without cleaning its factory, over the years the poisons it left behind have found their way into the wells, everyone you meet seems to be sick. The Khaufpuris were demanding that the Kampani must pay proper compensation to those whose loved ones it killed, whose health it ruined, plus it should clean the factory and compensate the people who had been drinking its poisons. Trouble was that the Kampani bosses were far away in Amrika, they refused to come to the Khaufpuri court and no one could make them. So long had the case been running it had become part of our Khaufpuri speech such as if I blagged six rupees from Faqri he'd say, “Be sure to pay me back before the case ends.” Or someone says something unbelievable like Chunaram is serving free kebabs, others will pipe, “Oh sure, and the Kampani's come to court.”

One day I came as usual for lunch and found Nisha and her dad having an argument. “Every accused must have the chance to defend himself,” Somraj was saying. “Even the Kampani. In the end the law will reward us.”

Nisha was standing looking upset with her hands covered in white paint and her hair dishevelled. “Papa, the Kampani has never even turned up to the court, so how can the law reward us?”

“It may take years, but its attempts to escape will not succeed.”

“What attempts? It has no need to escape, it got away scot free.”

“Justice is on our side.”

“Darling Papa,” said Nisha with a small sigh, “you are a kind and a fair man, everyone knows it and praises you for it, but you're either being naive or you have not noticed how the world has changed. Maybe you remember such a thing as justice, but in my lifetime there's been no sign of it. If we want justice, we'll have to fight for it in the streets.”

“Violence isn't the way.”

“Who said anything about violence? It's just a march.”