Three Bargains: A Novel (11 page)

“Tell Ganesh to bring the car around,” he commanded at last. “I’m going to take you somewhere. And . . . tell your friend to come too.”

Where? What? Baffled by these rapidly changing events, he nevertheless pulled himself together and rushed to comply with Avtaar Singh’s directive. “Yes, saab!”

The front bench seat of the Ambassador, high and springy and stretching continuously from driver to passenger door, allowed Madan enough space to sit between the driver Ganesh and Jaggu, who was bouncing up and down, happy to have appropriated the window seat.

“Jaggu,” Madan whispered, aware of Ganesh sitting next to him listening in on them. “You could have been in trouble because of me . . .”

“What trouble? I’d have got us out somehow.” Jaggu tried to laugh, but it came out like a relieved yip. “Weren’t we like Veeru and Jai in
Sholay
? You must’ve seen
Sholay
, at least, everyone’s seen that movie. But I’m Veeru, okay? Because I don’t want to die in the end.”

Ganesh harrumphed from his side of the car.

“Listen,” Madan said, interrupting Jaggu’s starring-role fantasy. “Avtaar Singh said we could come here after school, to the factory. He’ll put us on the payroll.”

“Us? You mean you and me?”

Madan nodded.

“How come . . . how did . . . ?” Jaggu shook his head in disbelief. “Well,” he said, bemused by this twist of fate. “Money in my pocket. Do you think I’ll be able to get a new knife?”

The back door slammed shut, and Avtaar Singh said, “Take us to Guru Gianchand’s akhara.”

Jaggu cocked a questioning eyebrow at Madan.
Why are we going to the wrestling gym?
Madan was equally puzzled. The sound of Ganesh’s soft knowing chortle swiftly robbed the two boys of any pleasure of being in the car and going for a ride. Jaggu stopped his fiddling and became very still, his hand reaching out for Madan’s.

They approached the akhara from off the main highway. The place had an air of remoteness, as if too far to hear a songbird’s call. A low stone wall surrounded a large rectangular pit of red earth. Men dressed in loincloths emerged from a cavernous building with its corrugated roof, its outer walls adorned with a gallery of faded murals of the wrestlers’ patron god, Hanuman. The wrestlers stretched and did push-ups; some oiled their bodies and slapped their forearms and chests.

When they spotted Avtaar Singh, the wrestlers immediately rushed up to him, touching his feet and welcoming him. They talked all at once, but fell silent when Avtaar Singh spoke, and occasionally they turned to look at Madan and Jaggu standing off to the side near a mud-splattered buffalo tethered to a pipal tree.

The ground was being prepared for competition, ghee and mustard oil mixed into the mud to tame dust clouds, and turmeric sprinkled over the ground’s surface to disinfect any wounds the wrestlers may happen to suffer. Finally, as a heavy wooden block was dragged across the pit, packing the earth down to a level plane, Avtaar Singh called to Madan and Jaggu.

“Waheguru,” said Jaggu, remembering God, “what is happening?”

Madan and Jaggu reluctantly scooted to the edge of the group. The men parted, giving them a clear pathway straight to Avtaar Singh, who stood respectfully next to a man in a white kurta and brown trousers, with lines down his face that said he was old, but his hair was dyed tar-black.

“Everyone has to learn from someone,” Avtaar Singh said to Madan, “and this is my guru, Guru Gianchand-ji.”

Madan realized suddenly that Jaggu wasn’t with him anymore, but he knew why Jaggu had finally abandoned his side. This was too much.

The guru-ji squinted down at Madan. If he could, Madan would have turned and run all the way back to his village. He trained his sight on Avtaar Singh’s feet encased in leather sandals, and held his place. The guru-ji shouted a name out into the crowd and the men melted away, but someone grabbed Madan, lifted him away from Avtaar Singh and he was back in the shade of the pipal tree, and a man with a chest as tight as a drum was removing Madan’s shirt and slathering his body with oil.

“Are you ready?” the wrestler asked Madan.

Though the oil was warming his muscles, Madan shivered. “I don’t know . . . I’ve never . . . I don’t know how . . .” Avtaar Singh had been so nice to him a short while ago. He couldn’t understand it. What did Avtaar Singh want? Why was he doing this?

The wrestler knocked Madan on the head, and he reeled, finding his balance with some difficulty. Though it was not the hardest knock he had ever received, it still hurt, and it shut him up.

“Just try to remain standing,” said the wrestler.

The square pit seemed like the largest desert in the world. In only his shorts, Madan could feel the last rays of the evening sun trained on his back. There must be some misunderstanding. He frantically searched the crowds for Avtaar Singh. He could sort out this confusion, and give the order to pluck Madan out of the ring and return him to the sidelines, where he belonged.

The boy circling before Madan in a blue loincloth was not much older than Madan, and of a similar height and build. He seemed to have been born in this place. Just then, Madan saw Avtaar Singh lounging on a cane chair at the edge of the arena, the corners of his shirt fluttering in the breeze over his sharply creased trousers. With his head tilted back and arms draped lazily on the chair’s sides, he looked as if he were here to watch the clouds float by.

Madan blinked, swallowing the hot lump of coal burning a hole down his throat. The mist of tears in his eyes cleared. There was no escape from this pit.

He brought his attention and focus back to his opponent. All he could hear was his breath whistling through him. The boy touched the ground reverently, sizing Madan up. Before Madan could do the same, the boy was upon Madan. Welded by their intertwined arms, they vigorously grasped each other’s shoulders, forming a bridge of limbs. Madan dug his heels into the sand and held on, unwilling to release his first solid hold. The crowd called out encouragement or advice from the fringes.

In a few moments his leg muscles were on fire with the strain of bearing down on his opponent. All he had to do was get this boy on the ground. But it seemed that the boy would take advantage of any small movement, the slightest tremor, and it would end the other way around. The grappling continued. Then the boy slipped under and over Madan, and onto Madan’s back. Madan couldn’t believe it. How had the boy managed it? Hunched over with the boy’s weight, he swayed but remained on his feet. From the corner of his eye he could see a snippet of Avtaar Singh’s shirt fabric, a flash of his mustache.

“Aargh!” Madan shouted, launching the boy off his back and in Avtaar Singh’s direction. He would show Avtaar Singh that no one put Madan Kumar on his back. The boy landed with a thump and the audience broke out in a scattered applause. Avtaar Singh’s head was turned. He was talking reverently to his guru-ji. He appeared not to have seen Madan’s move.

The boy bounced back up. All of a sudden the ground disappeared beneath Madan. The boy had flipped him with such ferocity that the crowd expelled an involuntary groan.

He rolled away, but the boy flew through the air, landing on top of him. Madan pushed off from the ground, lifting them both up, and wrangled into a position where they were grappling side to side, each trying to find an opening to finish the other off. If he’d had but a moment to think before the match, he would have come up with some strategy, some tactic recalled from the many bouts he had seen from the sidelines of the akhara in his village. But there was no time to think now.

The boy untangled himself from Madan and Madan was barely able to take a breath when they were standing up again, arms interlocked, head butting against head. The crowd grew restless, but Madan’s only hope seemed to be in never giving up his position. The other boy, however, had other ideas, and in a spectacular cluster of moves, he grabbed Madan’s hand and, pivoting on one foot, kicked his other foot up and around, hooking Madan behind the knee. In a thud of bodies, they fell to earth. The boy sprawled over Madan, crushing him into the dust.

Rolling in the mud to cool off his sweat-slicked body, the boy rose up from the ground to great applause. People flowed into the pit. Madan stared up at the blue-gray sky, grit covering his tongue and the skin of his face, arms, legs and back, stinging like a million needle pricks. No one noticed as he got up with some difficulty and slinked back to the shade of the tree, collapsing next to the wall.

“You weren’t that bad.” Jaggu appeared at his side, slipping two hard-boiled eggs rolled up in a chappati into his hand and placing a steel tumbler of cold almond milk by his feet. Madan attacked the food and drink eagerly. “There’s more in the kitchen if you want,” said Jaggu.

He squatted down next to Madan and scanned the scene before him, his gaze alighting on the tall silhouette of Avtaar Singh. “It’s strange,” Jaggu said. “He gives you a job, makes sure you get into school, helps your family, always wants to talk to you. Gorapur was never a boring place, but everything has certainly become more interesting since you arrived.”

Madan scarfed down the last bite and licked the crumbs off his fingers. “Avtaar Singh used to be a pehlwan here,” he said, feeling the need to change the subject. “That’s his guru-ji.”

The guru-ji noticed their attention and came to join them. He seemed much friendlier, and chatted fondly about his akhara, about Avtaar Singh.

“He wrestled for a few years when he was young,” the guru-ji shared. “His father was a very stern man. Didn’t approve of him coming here, of this lifestyle of training and abstinence and sacrifice. Every day, arguments with his father. ‘Only pigs roll in the mud,’ his father used to come and shout from the wall. Avtaar . . . while he thrived in the akhara’s discipline, his father’s strictness choked him, for some reason. He’d come every morning at five before school to train, and would grapple all day if you asked him. After school, he was here again, exercising, training and competing.”

“Why did he stop?” asked Jaggu. “No one tells Avtaar Singh what to do.”

“Young man, you always listen to your father.” The guru-ji laid a stern look on Jaggu, but dispensed of it as he looked out onto his akhara again. “He loved it deeply, but the akhara is too small a place for a man like him. Don’t you think? Like any first love, it was not enough. He could win every Bharat Kesri, Rustom-e-Hind and Maha Bharat Kesri, but these awards would not be enough for him. Perhaps his father was the wiser one, and recognized this much before all of us.”

Madan was beginning to see why Avtaar Singh paid respect to his guru-ji apart from his status as a teacher. The man spoke astutely.

A crowd made up of old men from nearby farms and younger ones returning from work accumulated at the wall. Motorcycles were propped against the few trees, bicycles flung down to land where they may. Young boys in tattered shorts mock-wrestled. The chanting of prayers offered to Lord Hanuman floated wispily over the throng.

“We’re having a few bouts of kushti in honor of Avtaar Singh,” said the guru-ji. “Time to show Avtaar Singh a real match,” he said with a laugh.

Madan moved in closer to Avtaar Singh’s chair as the wrestling began. He noticed that Avtaar Singh did not smile or add to the mayhem of catcalls, but his whole body seemed to speak in many tongues to the spectacle before him.

After the matches, the men returned to their training, and Jaggu poked Madan in the ribs. “Saab is calling you.”

Standing before Avtaar Singh once again, Madan hung his head and mumbled, “I’m sorry, saab.” He was exhausted.

“For what, now?”

“For losing, saab.”

Avtaar Singh looked down on him, appraising the worth of his dirty clothes and his blistered and peeling skin. His hand lifted like he was going to lay it comfortingly on Madan’s shoulder or ruffle his hair, but he paused and said, “You know why that boy was fighting?”

Madan shook his head.

“To save face is the obvious reason—he couldn’t lose to a fresh apple like you. But if he didn’t win, he wouldn’t get to eat. Why were you fighting?”

He couldn’t think why. He had thought Avtaar Singh wanted him to, but Avtaar Singh had given him no such order.

“So soon you forgot what I told you,” said Avtaar Singh. “You must always have a purpose. Your opponent can be anyone, but to win, it’s not who or what you’re fighting against, as much as what you’re fighting for.”

Instead of feeling chastised, Madan wanted to fall against the pillar of Avtaar Singh’s leg and cry in relief. No longer could he feel his cold shirt plastered to his back by sweat and oil or his aching muscles or dejected heart. He wanted to rush back into the ring and defeat the strongest pehlwan.
I’ll never forget, saab
, he said to himself, imprinting it in his mind.

“Come,” Avtaar Singh said, calling Madan to accompany him for a walk in the green paddy fields beyond the wall.

Floating between the rice stalks, dabchicks dipped their beaks into the cool water. “Look at that.” Avtaar Singh pointed with delight, as if he hadn’t seen these common birds in the rushes many times before.