The Eighteenth Parallel (18 page)

He then stopped going out at all, almost. Everybody at home had stopped going out too. People seldom ventured out in the whole town, for that matter. Nagaratnam had come out by herself, brave girl. Her people at home may not have known. The times were such that formal leave-taking before one went out had to be given up.

Mr Kasim next door was shouting for Father. Chandru peeped out and said, 'Father hasn't returned from the office yet.'

'There's no water in our tap,' Kasim shouted. 'You've tampered with something, haven't you?'

In normal times one never heard Kasim's voice, and his radio could be mistaken for being the sole occupant of his house. But for some days now he had been shouting at Chandru's father, intimidating him.

'But we've done nothing,' Chandru said. 'Actually, we haven't been getting water either.'

'You want me to believe that? When I can hear the water all the time? What are you people up to?'

'But we haven't done anything at all—' Before Chandru could finish Kasim had jumped over the wall that separated the front- yards of their two houses. He pushed Chandru aside and went into the house in his slippers. Chandru followed him.

Hurrying past the prayer room and kitchen, Kasim reached the tap in the backyard. Every two adjacent houses in Lancer Barracks shared a connection from the water mains. The supply was very poor these days. Kasim went to the tap and said, 'See?'

Chandran didn't find anything wrong with it. His mother peeped out timidly from the kitchen.

'You seem to think you can leave your tap open all the time, don't you ?' Kasim closed the tap, screwing it tight with all his strength, then looked round the backyard. His eyes fell on the buffalo's trough.

'Look at
that!'
he cried. 'Wasting water on animals when we don't have a drop for humans. Listen. This creature should leave the place by nightfall today.'

Mother showed a bit of herself and said placatingly in Tamil, 'It's mostly swill from the kitchen that we feed it, not fresh water ever.'

Kasim turned upon her, 'You people seem to think you own this place! These are railway quarters. How dare you keep a buffalo here? If I reported it, you would be thrown out with all your pots and pans in two days. So look out.'

As he was leaving, Kasim said to Chandru, 'When your father comes, ask him to see me.' The buffalo grunted just then. Kasim went in again, gave it a vicious kick and came out. When he had gone, Chandran went to bolt the front door shut. Pyari Begum, who was standing in Kasim's garden, gave him a secret smile. Perhaps she had no idea of what her father had done just now. Kasim had never behaved that way at any time in the past. Chandru bent his head and closed the door. What had happened was not unusual. There had always been arguments with maids, milkmen, sweepers, carpenters, tailors, tongawalas. They had even quarrelled with Kasim's family several years ago. That sobriquet for Pyari Begum as a special kind of sow dated from one of those fights. But Kasim had never involved himself in any of these neighbourly fracases. Now he was spoiling for a fight.

Mother and daughters sat in a huddle. When Father came home Mother told him, 'We knew terror stalked the place but today it actually entered our house.'

What were we going to do about the buffalo? At a time when most of the milkmen had fled the city, the buffalo had kept us supplied with milk. It would give us milk for another four or five months before it went dry.

'Anyway, you said Kasim wanted to see me. Let me go and meet him,' said Father, his face going rather pale. Then he called softly from our veranda 'Mr Kasim!', then called again. There was no reply. So he went out through our gate and in through theirs. He stopped at their threshold and called again 'Mr Kasim!'

Mr Kasim put his head out and asked, 'What is it?'

'I've come to see you.'

Kasim hesitated a bit before letting him in. Everyone in Chandru's house was nervously watching. Kasim's voice went on booming for a long time. Then Father too said something. When he came out, Father was sweating profusely.

'What he says is quite fair,' Father began. 'We mustn't leave the tap open all the time. Let's close it once we've collected our water.' No one responded to Father's statement. There was water in the tap for only a few minutes each day. Keeping the tap open or closed was not going to make any difference.

'Did he say anything about our buffalo?' Mother wanted to know. 'Are we supposed to beg his permission to have cattle in our house?'

'Shhh, softly,' Father warned. 'I told him we won't give it any water.'

The tap couldn't be opened at all. First Chandru and then his father tried and gave up. Kasim had closed it very tight. 'A few knocks with the hammer may do the trick,' Mother suggested. But that could invite more trouble from Kasim. So Father went to Kasim's for the second time and called, 'Mr Kasim!'

Kasim refused to come. 'Where's the hurry ? I'll come tomorrow and open it for you.' Which meant that Father was expected to go and wait at his door the next morning. It was the last day for buying the month's ration of sugar. Father and Mother had been enquiring every day at the ration shop but stocks of sugar had not arrived as yet, the shopkeeper said. He had promised to give them one seer if they came on the last day at closing time. One seer was just two pounds. If they went now and caught the shopkeeper in the right mood and acknowledged receipt of six seers of sugar, they might get one seer. 'You'd better go with your father,' said Mother. So Chandru set out, walking silently with his father.

Many houses in Lancer Barracks were locked. Guard Naga-bhushanam had managed to get a railway pass without a police permit and the whole family had left. Only the houses of Jafar Ali, Mannas and Kasim still had families in them.

Instead of their usual shortcut through Manohar Talkies to the ration shop, Father and Chandru now went through Charles Street and the Regimental Bazaar Police station. The dimly lit police station wore a sorry look. Like all other bright lights in Secunderabad, the mercury lamp in the police station had also been removed. The ordinary bulbs were all fitted with tiny black skirts, reminding one of the blackout of the World War years. This was a precaution against Indian air attacks. Though there were still six months left of the Standstill Agreement, Hyderabad was in the grip of a phobia. War conditions prevailed in the area.

They had to go past the Rajasthani oil store. Monda was nearly empty. The oil shop was closed. The boy from the shop who belonged to the Arya Samaj had been badly beaten by the police. Someone from Chandru's house had gone to the shop the other day and had returned without oil. The boy was there, his face horribly swollen.

Chandru walked silently with his father. To think that he used to look forward eagerly to these visits with Father to Monda until two years ago! They would discuss everything they could think of by the time they reached Monda and would meet a lot of people there as well. When Father met an acquaintance on the way, they would start talking in the middle of the road, then would keep moving out inch by inch, still engrossed in their conversation, till they finally stood on the verge of the road. Chandru would feel bored listening all the while, but it had all given him glimpses of worlds beyond his ken. Today they had walked two miles to the heart of the city but there wasn't a soul to talk to...

The man at the ration shop collected their ration card and money and went into the house next to the shop. Ten minutes later, he came out with a small packet in a bag. They would have to make do with this sugar for a whole month. Father asked the shopkeeper in Telugu if rice was available—even five seers would go a long way.

'There is some rice, very poor quality rice. But I heard you get good rice in the railway rations.'

'Oh no. It's that awful reddish rice that we get with lots of stones. Gives you diarrhea. You feel like making do with maize rotis. But somehow we never seem to get used to these rotis.'

The shopkeeper whispered, 'Hyderabad doesn't get any supply of rice or food items. The planes are bringing in only guns and tanks. That white man's plane seems to have landed in Malakpet even today.'

'Is that so?' said Father.

Not that Father didn't know. Chandru had also heard all about the Australian gun-runner Sydney Cotton who had purchased arms abroad for the Nizam's forces and had managed to smuggle them into Hyderabad under the very nose of the Indian Army. Rumour, which had at first numbered these forays as two or three had now increased the score to dozens of times. Panic spread when it was also rumoured that he had brought in a tank by air.

There had been an incident in Bibinagar twenty miles from Secunderabad, a town chosen by Kasim Razvi for exemplary punishment. He got four Hyderabad Police trucks to carry his men there and set fire to a whole street of shops and reduced them to ashes. Houses and shops were looted. Three were killed and forty wounded, no one knew the exact number. But what really was shocking was the way the women...

So the sugar had been bought. But Father wasn't finished yet. Having come this far, he'd do well to buy a few vegetables as well. They climbed onto the platform at Monda and bought a few things from the scattered stalls there. Father then went towards the market gate. At the gate was a clock tower. There used to be two food shops there, one on either side of the entrance. One was called Bharat Bhavan, the other Sholapurwala. Bharat Bhavan had shut shop, only Sholapurwala stayed on. Father bought a sweet called sone-mithai, for six annas.

A peculiar sequence of events—Father returning from work–the house tense with the Kasim episode – Father waiting at Kasim's door, calling, 'Mr Kasim, Mr Kasim!' – the momentary stop at the closed oil shop – the ration shop owner telling them rice was no longer imported, only guns, and now here was father buying sweets! How did one link up this last fact with the rest?

Father asked the vendor for a small piece of the sweet and gave it to Chandru. As a boy, he had always waited eagerly for this moment. Now he stood there, a young man with an undergrowth of a moustache, but Father still thought it fit to get a free sweet for him.

When they left the shop Father asked him, 'How did you like it?'

'It was good.'

They met Dr Purushottam who was shutting his dispensary for the day. 'Just a minute, Mr Iyer,' he said when he saw Father. He was in the process of closing his clinic, arranging a series of vertical planks in their grooves. Only two planks remained. Father stood there for a moment, then took up a plank. Chandru held the lock. Together, they finished the boarding up and locked the place. The doctor wore his oversized trousers fastened at the waist with a necktie as he always did.

The doctor and Father walked together, talking. Chandru followed a few paces behind. The doctor was narrating his woes which by now were common to most people. His wife, son, daughter-in-law and the grandchildren had all left. They had asked him to come along, but how was he to leave the dispensary? He had a boy to help him in the clinic but the boy too had fled, so now at opening time it seemed that the doctor first got into his clinic without removing all the planks. Then he swept and dusted the room himself before removing the other planks for the public. He was beginning to feel his age, more so with this routine of boarding over and dismantling the shop-front everyday. Only the night before, a plank had fallen on his right big toe.

It was even worse at home, he said, where he had left the housekeeping to a maid, an awful woman who was feeding an army of her own at his expense in the days when everything was scarce. But he was afraid to challenge her, lest she should leave him. This was the plight of a man who had spent fifty years of his life for the sake of his family, working for them, caring for them, worrying for them. They had all gone now, leaving him to fend for himself. After all, was there any point in running away, he wondered. Would someone come and swallow them up here? Riots and disturbances had always been happening in this place. Had the whole population run away at any time? And what did these fools hope to do elsewhere? Settle down? How could they? No, they would have to return some day.

Chandru and his father walked up to Dr Purushottam's house. Once he entered it, the house seemed to swallow him. They then retraced their steps, past the railway station and the Regimental Bazaar police station. The walk had calmed then somewhat. They still hadn't spoken to each other, but the lapse didn't appear significant any more.

The May night was pleasant and balmy. The fragrance of the blossoming night-queen came in gusts through the darkness, you couldn't tell from where. The belief was that a snake was sure to be nearby wherever this sweet smell was present. But then, a snake would have its own smell, that of a raw potato. Yes, snakes did smell like that. But now there was nothing but the scent of the flowers all the way from Keyes High School to Lancer Barracks. The impartial largesse of the night-queen. Chandru wondered who had named it so aptly. This queen didn't bother in the least about matters like the country's independence or subjection.

When they reached home they found Mr Syed of Nallagutta there. He began to rain Father with questions the moment he saw him. His tone was that of a childhood friend and he used the intimate suffix 'da' liberally. 'So we have a fool like you, do we?' he began. 'Your wife tells me your neighbour came and shouted at her. What else can it be if you don't allow him water? You seem to imagine you're still in the brahmin quarter of your village, Chattanapuram. You can't live like that here.' Then he turned upon Chandru—'So you seem to have said goodbye to your studies. I don't know why you're led by the nose by all those people. As the proverb goes a town divided is the vagrant's delight. It's their business to incite people. But why don't you have your wits about you?'

Father went straight to the kitchen without saying a word. He left the sugar and vegetables there, came back, dragged a chair beside Syed's and sat down. Syed meanwhile kept up his harangue. 'You railway people are a troublesome lot, I tell you. All those refugees have come here, fearing for their lives and leaving house and home, but it looks as if they aren't given jobs in the railways. All these Naidus and Reddys seem to be blocking them. Now you tell me, are the railways your grandfather's bequest to you? Not at all. Everything belongs to the Nizam. Is it fair that his people should be denied employment in his railways? Sheer injustice, blackguardism.'