Animal's People (5 page)

“Stone-throwing? Like last time?”

“Zafar did his best to stop it, but how long must people suffer in silence?”

“To that, alas, I have no answer,” said her father, and left the room.

“What are you doing?” I've asked Nisha. She shows me this big banner she has made for the juloos, the demo, painted on the black cloth are large white letters.

“What do you think? Is it strong? Does it have power?”

“How should I know? I can't read.”

She gives a big sigh and says, “This very day we will start your lessons.”

It was hard at first, reading. Take two letters like
and
, they look almost the same, but the sounds they make,
ka
and
la
, are different. Slowly the letters began to make sense.
, a shape like a begging hand, was
ja
.
, a shape that reminded me of an elephant's head with trunk and tusks, like Ganesh on the front of a beedi packet, this was
ha
for haathi, elephant. Signs in the street gradually came to life.
, I already knew it meant Coca-Cola, which I had never tasted. I learned to spell my own name,
, Jaanvar, meaning Animal. Nisha said that it was my name and I should be proud of it. Jaan means “life.” Jaanvar means “one who lives.”

“Life? You're full of it,” she said, casting her eye over a page of scrawled jaanvars. “I've never known anyone with so much jaan as you.” Then spoilt it by adding, “Except Zafar.”

When I could read and write Hindi, Nisha set me a new task. There was a group of kids to whom she was teaching Inglis. I should join them. I hadn't been to school since the orphanage, where all of us children sat together in one room and chanted our lessons. The nuns were strict, get something wrong it was a ruler cut, edge down, to the palm. Ma Franci was kind, but she did not have to teach because no one including me could understand a word she said, and she could not understand us.

“Will you beat me?” I asked Nisha, she laughed. Such a patient teacher was she, hard it's to remember she was at that time not yet nineteen. Never did she complain as we struggled to wrap our tongues round the uncouth Inglis words, mayngo, pawmgront, cushdhappel, gwaav, bunaan, which were the names of fruit trees in her garden. In truth I didn't find Inglis very difficult. Like I've told you, Eyes, I've always caught the meanings of speech even when I could not understand a word, I had not just an ear but an eye for meanings. I could read expressions and gestures, the way someone sat or stood, but being taught by Nisha really brought out my gift for tongues. Like water flooding into a field, the new language just came. Cat sat on the mat house burns down people rally to the banner, thus my Inglis progressed. Zafar too would sit and listen to me, both would praise me and marvel at my quickness to learn.

One day comes Zafar with a small book he has printed. “It's about that night,” says he all proud, “it shows what was wrong in the factory that caused the poison to leak. There are pictures so children can read and understand.”

Nisha hands me the book and asks me to read from it. I've given it a flick through, in it are drawings of the different buildings inside the factory, I know every one of them, but in the book they are shown as they must have been before that night, not rotting like now. Arrows show where things went wrong, here, there, there, there, all over.

“I won't read this,” says I.

“Why not?” she asks.

“I am not a child.”

“So, big man,” asks Zafar, “what will you prefer to read instead?” He's laughing but secretly I think he is hurt that I don't want to read his book.

“I am not a man. Give me that other one that you are carrying.” Zafar used to read a great deal, never was he without a book.

“This one? I think you might find it too difficult.”

I open the book to the first page and taking great care slowly read aloud,
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in position of good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

Nisha starts clapping. She says I am her best pupil. Then she stoops down and gives me a hug. No girl had ever touched me till then, less hugged. It sent a thrill through me straight to my cock. This was the first time I caught myself thinking, if only things were different with me, if I could walk upright, it might be my praises she sang instead of Zafar's.

It was my clever tongue, which could curl itself to any language, that ended my days of living rough. Nisha loved to chatter, and when I was in her house having my lunch we would talk of all kind of things. One day I say, “Nisha, after Inglis, I will learn français, then at last I'll know what Ma Franci used to yell at us kids in the orphanage.”

“Who is Ma Franci?”

“She's a nun, came from France more than forty years ago to spread the word about Isa miyañ and do good works.”

“And français?”

“The language of France, it's all she knows.”

“After forty years here she can't speak Hindi?”

So then I get to telling Nisha about Ma Franci. It's a sad sort of story, Ma's, though in another way funny.

On that night all sorts of people lost all kinds of things, lives for sure, families, friends, health, jobs, in some cases their wits. This poor woman, Ma Franci, lost all knowledge of Hindi. She'd gone to sleep knowing it as well as any Khaufpuri, but was woken in the middle of the night by a wind full of poison and prophesying angels. In that great mela of death, those rowdy, unforgettable festivities, her mind was wiped clean of Hindi, and of Inglis too, which she had also been able to speak à sa manière, she forgot all languages except her childhood speech of France. Well, this by itself was no problem, so many foreigners come to Khaufpur, how many can speak Hindi? But there was a further twist to Ma Franci's madness, when she heard people talking in Hindi or Inglis, or come to that in Urdu, Tamil, Oriya, or any other tongue used in Khaufpur, she could no longer recognise that what they were speaking was a language, she thought they were just making stupid grunts and sounds.

The orphanage was run by les réligieuses françaises, it was in Jyotinagar near the factory and on that night it was badly hit. Many of the children died, nuns too. Those who survived were sick. Afterwards Indian nuns came and the French nuns one by one were taken back home. Ma refused to leave. She said Khaufpur had felt the fist of god, the Apokalis had begun, her place was with its suffering people. So she stayed and in a loud voice prayed day and night.

None of the remaining sisters spoke français, there was no one left whose speech Ma Franci could understand, or who had any idea what she was saying. The Indian sisters did take the trouble to learn a few things such as
o,
water,
dézhoné
, meal, and
twalet
, toilet,
komoñ sava
, how's it going, etc., but this only made the old woman crazier. If they knew what proper language was, why did they keep on with their beastly gibbering?

This all was still going on when I was very small. By the time I was old enough to know who she was, my own troubles had begun and Ma Franci had already spent years with a head full of angels and a tongue sourer than a lick of tamarind.

When I've finished Ma's story Nisha asks with wet eyes, “That poor woman, is she still here in Khaufpur?”

“She is. She lives in the convent.”

“You'll have to go back.”

“Back where?”

“Convent,” says she, snivelling into a handkerchief. “Like you say, you will learn français no problem, you can look after that poor old lady.”