The plumbers came an hour later and repaired the damaged pipe. She went back with five hundred-rupee notes and a job.
Despite the language problem, Jasoda and her employer managed to settle upon a monthly salary. She was worried that his intentions might not be honourable but he was never at home except on weekends, when he kept to himself. It was not a big flat but she kept it meticulously clean, hoping that the owner would recommend her to his friends and she could get more work. She had to collect enough to put something by for the very last month of pregnancy and perhaps another month after delivery.
If she wanted she could have had the run of the place from eight-thirty in the morning till seven in the evening from Monday till Friday. But at the most she had a bath when it was very hot. She was not sure how to operate the shower and had been drenched the first time she had opened the wrong tap. She preferred to collect the water in a bucket and sit down on the plastic stool and bathe. She didn’t do this too often because she was afraid of leaving an unnoticed strand or two of her hair on the floor.
On the third Sunday, he asked her a question in sign language that she didn’t have a problem comprehending. He was asking her why she hadn’t cleaned the toilet in all these days. She told him that was not her job. He must have been stupid or maybe he wanted to demean her. He kept asking her why not and even took it upon himself to show her how it was done. Disgusting, that’s what it was. She told him she was leaving and wanted her salary for three weeks. He looked puzzled and kept repeating the same question: Why? She was at the door when he gave her a full month’s salary.
Jasoda would have to start looking for a job once again but with the unexpected bounty from her ex-boss she decided to take the children to Chowpatty Beach that evening for bhel puri. She was about to cross the road a little beyond the Babulnath temple to get to the sands when she saw some women girdling the banyan tree in the middle of the road with a string and praying to it. That’s what all the married women used to do in Kantagiri before the drought: gather around the banyan tree next to the temple on Vata Savitri day and pray. That was a long time ago. That temple was in shambles and the holy tree had been cut and hacked for wood to create cooking fires.
She took Himmat aside and told him to take charge of his younger brothers for a few minutes while she ran across to the tree to pray. It was when she was standing in the middle of the road that she realized that she had no string. Luckily the other women had got their own balls of twine and she requested one of them to give her some. It was a large banyan. She circled it seven times with the string, cut it and tied the ends. In Kantagiri, it wouldn’t have done to stand and pray. She dropped down to the ground and invoked the gods.
That night when everybody had gone to sleep, Himmat turned to his mother as she pulled the sheet over and tucked him and Heera in. ‘What were you praying for, Maa?’
‘It is Vata Savitri day, the day Savitri made Yama, the god of death, bring her dead husband back to life. So, on this auspicious day married women pray that they will get the same husband for the next seven lives.’
‘So you can have the same children too for seven lifetimes?’
Jasoda looked at her son anew. ‘I hadn’t thought of that but what a good idea to have you and Pawan and Sameer with me for seven lives.’
She was big with child now and her breasts had swollen. A couple of months and she would be feeding a baby again. The surly man had come at the beginning of last month and she had paid him in full, including the arrears. Then she had lost her job, or rather given it up, and had sought to explain to the rent collector that she was once again jobless and would pay him in full when she got work.
‘Bloody hell, every few days you come up with a new excuse. You better cough up the money or you are out for good.’
It was past midnight when he slipped under the odhani which covered her. She would have screamed but his hand was clamped over her mouth. When he released it, she asked him in a fierce whisper, ‘What are you doing? I’m pregnant. My mother-in-law’s here.’ He was undoing the buttons of her blouse.
‘You owe me,’ he said as he sucked at her nipples. The pressure on her bloated belly made it hard for her to breathe and she tried to push him off but he held on tightly to her. He was chewing furiously at her nipples. The pain was unbearable and she was sure that they would bleed in a minute.
‘Where’s the milk?’ he asked with suppressed rage.
‘Don’t you know that comes only when the baby is born?’
‘Fuck, fuck, fuck.’ He pulled up her skirt. It took all her selfcontrol not to scream as the man penetrated her brutally. She turned her head sideways to avoid his sour alcoholic breath. The children’s grandmother was staring at her.
The next morning after the children had left for work, the old lady took off her only piece of jewellery, the heavy gold rings that pulled her earlobes down all the way to her shoulders, and handed them to her. ‘Pawn them and pay that man.’
Jasoda shook her head. ‘My gold bangle will take care of him.’
‘Don’t argue with me. Leave the bangle for an emergency.’
‘Vahidullah, oh Vahidullah, where the hell is that old man? Baijnath, Purandas. Has everybody in the Palace died?’
The bell in the bedroom that rang in the kitchen had stopped working three months ago and His Highness had been yelling for the servants for the past five minutes. ‘I know you’re standing outside, Sangram Singh. I saw you peering from behind the door as always, eating the lady in my bed greedily with your eyes. Now that you’ve had your fill of her, would you do me the great kindness of fetching one of the help in the house? But before that, give me a hand to move into the wheelchair.’
Sangram Singh pushed open the heavy teak door and entered the room. His Highness had thrown a sheet over his mistress. ‘Hukum. Your wish is my command.’
‘Spare me that bogus servility and just do my bidding.’
Sangram Singh assisted the Prince into the wheelchair, then ran down to deliver his message. He didn’t have to go very far since the elderly Vahidullah was already making his laborious way up the stairs.
‘How many times do I have to tell you, Vahidullah, that I will not tolerate this parasite staying in my Palace, eating my food, drinking my water, slyly eyeing my mistress and making himself at home? And yet it is this man’s accursed face that greets me every morning and ruins my day.’
The old retainer was used to the Prince’s tantrums but he was taken aback by the fury in his tone. Sangram Singh meanwhile was trying to calm His Highness down. He had this new smile he was cultivating of late and his tone had the patience required when talking to children. ‘Easy, easy, don’t get so worked up, Highness. You know it’s bad for your health; very, very bad. You know that your father died of high blood pressure. They say it’s hereditary. You don’t want to bring that upon yourself, do you now?’ Sangram Singh turned to the sleeping lady in his bed. ‘Madam, I must ask you to excuse my presumption in disturbing you but I am worried about his Royal Highness. Do, do please ask him not to get so agitated. He has already suffered an accident when riding his favourite horse but this could lead to something far more dangerous and the consequences could be…’ Sangram Singh paused for effect. ‘How should I put it, tragic.’
‘Abey bhosadike, I will see you in the grave long, long before I kick the bucket.’
Sangram Singh smiled blissfully. ‘Sugar in your mouth, Highness. I couldn’t ask for a better fate than to precede you to the afterlife and make all the preparations to welcome you when you join me. And may that day never arrive.’
‘Won’t some kind soul rid me of this self-serving, sycophantic glib-mouth? Vahidullah, where in the name of our revered gods are Baijnath, Purandas and Allauddinmiya? Tell them to get my driver on the double and ask him to run over this leech as we throw him on the road.’
‘Ghanikhama, Huzoor, forgive my insolence but you sacked Baijnath, Purandas and Allauddinmiya three weeks ago, because you said they did litt
le work and were a burden on the treasury.’
‘Ask Baijnath to rejoin duty immediately.’
‘Huzoor, they’ve all left Kantagiri in search of a living, like the rest of the residents.’
‘That’s a relief. All they did all day long was sit on their haunches and yak away in these dire times. Do you have any idea how perilous our finances are at this moment?’
‘I’m too old and too illiterate to know anything about such matters, Huzoor, but I must tell you that we are very short of servants. There’s me, there’s Kripanidhi who sweeps and swabs the house and washes the clothes and then there’s Jairam who alone knows how to prepare your favourite dishes and also washes the vessels. So, till you find someone else, Sangram Singh has his uses. He goes to Jalta and does all the shopping for us. Otherwise, there will be no food on the table.’
Sangram Singh took it as given that he was now officially a member of His Highness’s household. He locked up his own house – not that there was much left for anyone to steal from it – and moved into one of the larger guest bedrooms in the Palace. Within a month or two he had annexed a few of the adjoining rooms. The chaise longue with the lion’s head fronting the armrest had made its way from the former zenana to his new quarters. As it got colder in autumn, he took over the sunroom with its semicircle of French windows looking out on to the parched garden and grounds at the rear of the Palace. His favourite place for warming himself in the sunlight was the love seat. On some days, he sat on the left-hand seat and at other times, at the other end. A couple of times the sweeper, Kripanidhi, had caught him talking to the absent beloved on the other side and quickly shuffling over and continuing the back and forth of the conversation.
There were scores of rooms in the Palace and Kripanidhi wouldn’t have been able to say precisely what had migrated to Sangram Singh’s quarters, or from where. Besides, while her salary did not come from Sangram Singh’s pocket, he had slipped into the role of caretaker of the estate and had made himself responsible for disbursing salaries to the servants. She had quickly grasped that it would be foolhardy to cross him. When Sangram Singh had first moved in, it was with two sets of clothes – one that he wore and the other that hung on the clothesline in the bathroom. But now his wardrobe appeared to be growing. He had taken an unused cerulean blue brocade curtain he had found in a cupboard and had given it to the tailor in Sharana to make a knee-length sherwani for himself.
‘I heard you scream so piercingly, I dropped everything I was doing and ran out of the room where I was doing the accounts.’ Sangram Singh was breathless and panting. ‘You were having a nightmare as you dozed off on the wheelchair. You said something about it being a long time ago … and how could you possibly remember what happened.’
The Prince stared coldly at the factotum. ‘What else did I say?’
‘You said you had nothing to do with it.’ Sangram Singh paused. ‘You mustn’t worry so much, Huzoor. Not everything in one’s dreams is true.’
‘I’m not one bit worried, you ass. And I would like to tell you that I don’t dream. Full stop. I never dream. You’re making this up. I live in the present and with my eyes open. And I certainly don’t sleep when I am in this wretched wheelchair.’
‘Of course you don’t dream if you say so.’ Sangram Singh switched on his indulgent-parent-with-obstreperous-child smile. And now he moved to being solicitous doctor with impeccable bedside manners. ‘But you mustn’t let that affect you and raise your blood pressure. I’m sure you remember your grandfather and your father suffered from the same condition.’
‘So you keep saying. But I don’t suffer from any condition, you arsehole. And neither did my father. The only condition I suffer from is you.’
In Kantagiri, almost all the problems of the last ten or twelve years could be traced back to the absence of water. In Mumbai, Jasoda had discovered water again, flowing water. In many parts of the city, she had heard, there were severe water shortages. But the garden adjoining the pavement and the deal she and Ratna had made with the senior gardener had taken care of their water needs. If you were poor, the big problem in this city was how to store the water. The three brass vessels Jasoda had brought along with her were for cooking. Bottles, even plastic ones, cost money. And both glass and plastic bottles broke or cracked and needed to be replaced frequently. Himmat’s new job settled that problem once and for all. Although there was a heavy demand for recyclable plastic bottles amongst ragpickers, every once in a while, Himmat was allowed to take a couple of them home.
It was a filthy, dangerous job with green or black fungus on days- or week-old pizzas, dal mixed with rice gone green, rotting meat, putrid oranges and all kinds of worms, ants, cockroaches and other creepy-crawlies scampering across or digging into the leftovers. But Himmat wasn’t given to complaining. After the first minute, the nose became immune to the stench. And there were other advantages. If some of the food or fruit had not gone bad, he would eat it then and there, or take it over to his mother. Occasionally he found an old godhadi, a vest, T-shirt or sari. But the most precious gift from the garbage heap was an English storybook with lovely coloured pictures.
It was barely nine weeks since Himmat had started working but already he could sort out the garbage at twice the speed of the older man whom he was assisting. His daily wages had gone up, though not proportionately. He had also discovered some tiny bits of black plastic with minute yellow stripes and lines called circuits, which, when collected separately, fetched a good price. Then disaster struck. His boss developed a fever. His hands started suppurating from broken red blisters and they swelled up. Soon his hands had no sensation and he was not able to use them at all. Himmat worked all day singlehandedly till the boss-man turned up at four-thirty in the afternoon, checked the piles of plastic and glass, weighed the stuff, dipped his hand underneath his polyester shirt, peeled the notes from his cloth wallet and left. Eventually, Himmat’s sick elder co-worker had to be admitted to a hospital. Himmat caught the bus and went to visit him at Nair Hospital in the evenings and handed over his share of the previous day’s earnings. The man’s condition kept deteriorating and within a month he was no more.
Himmat knew almost immediately that he had lost his livelihood, for the day after his boss’s death, the heavies were on the scene asking him to get the hell out of there. He had tried to plead and protest and tell them that this was his beat but one of the hoods took a swipe at him and Himmat hit the concrete. ‘Abey maderchod, does this place belong to your father?’
Himmat’s head was still in a red haze but he was not likely to go down quietly. ‘Like it belongs to yours, right?’
The man was about to kick him but was interrupted by a low, dead voice. ‘Leave the boy alone.’
‘Who the fuck are you?’
‘I’m Plastick. Any more questions?’
‘We’ll get you far more productive workers than this useless little twit.’
‘No, you won’t. There’s nobody faster than him.’
The toughs were about to take off when the leader of the gang whispered to Himmat, ‘You watch it, pipsqueak. Who knows, someone might want to break those lovely fingers of yours.’
Plastick shook his head in mock despair. ‘I don’t think it’s a good thing to mess with this boy here.’ No one had seen Plastick draw his knife out but its steel point was at the gangleader’s throat. ‘Because then I might want to mess around with you.’
Himmat knew now that he had four things going for him. He was the fastest worker in the business. He still had a job. His salary would be doubled. And he could bank on Plastick to protect him.
It took him just twenty-four hours to learn how mistaken his assumptions were. Plastick turned up at four-thirty p.m. sharp the next day. When the counting and the weighing were over, Himmat got paid.
‘This is only half of what I earned today.’
The dead eyes looked at him sadly and the dead voice said, ‘No, it’s the full sum.’
Himmat counted the
money again. ‘No, it’s not.’
‘Let me see.’ Plastick took the notes back and counted each note separately. ‘I was right. It is the full sum. Mumbai is the fastest maths teacher in the world. Children get half of what adults do, it’s as simple as that.’ He put the notes back in his cloth wallet. ‘Come to work on time tomorrow.’ Plastick’s dead hand patted Himmat’s cheek. ‘Otherwise, you will be working for free like today.’
It was true. Mumbai was the fastest teacher in the world.
Jasoda had still not found a job. The folks in the tall buildings would take one look at her belly and the door of the apartment would close before she could ask if they needed a cook or a servant to do the cleaning. That, however, had not deterred her from setting out daily. There had to be a job out there and if there wasn’t she would have to create it through sheer willpower and get it. Her protruding belly was always ahead of her now and she followed it sedulously.
She was at the petrol pump next to the garden when a taxi executed a sharp u-turn and nearly knocked her over. She started to swear at the driver when he opened the door and jumped out. ‘Bloody stupid woman. She gets into my taxi to go to the train terminus and then tells me to stop because she’s about to have a baby and says you’re the only one who can help her.’