Jasoda

  The woman was past forty and it was her first child. Jasoda took her to the tin shed in the park. It was not a difficult delivery but the woman’s vagina had lost its elasticity so the baby took a good deal of coaxing. Every now and then the woman was too tired to push and rested her head on Jasoda’s lap.

  ‘How did you know I was a midwife?’

  ‘I used to work with the roadside food place in the lane next to the big stone archway till yesterday.’

  ‘You mean the place which sells tea, snacks like bhajiyas, batata wadas, pao bhaji?’

  ‘Not just snacks. Since last year, the owner has started serving a full meal right there on the road. Oh God, help me please. If this is what it means to have a baby, I don’t want it.’

  ‘Mind your tongue. Don’t cast an evil eye on your own child.’

  ‘All the pavement dwellers know there’s only one midwife in our locality and she stays next to the garden.’

  ‘So why did you give up the job?’

  ‘Because I don’t have to work any more. My husband’s got a good job in Doha.’

  ‘Push. Push hard.’

  ‘I can’t. I’m exhausted.’

  ‘Push. You can rest after the baby’s out. Who’s taken over your job?’

  ‘No one.’ It was difficult to make out whether the woman was screaming because she was in pain or it was her way of forcing the baby out. ‘Help me, I’m going to die.’

  ‘No, you are not. Push.’

  The baby’s bald head inched out.

  ‘Push harder.’

  The baby was out now.

  ‘They are looking for a replacement.’

  She had got the job but every night she wished she hadn’t. The owner-cum-chief cook had taken one look at her bloated stomach and said, ‘Oh no, not another pregnant woman.’

  ‘You don’t have to worry. I’m here to stay. I will work even on the day I deliver my child.’

  ‘That’s what they all say and ditch me when the baby comes.’

  ‘Try me.’

  ‘I will but I’m warning you I will be looking for someone who’s through with making babies.’

  ‘Why don’t you tell me what the job is?’

  ‘You won’t want to do it once you come to know what it is.’

  Jasoda had to report for work at five-thirty in the morning. Fortunately, the tiny establishment which had started out as a tea stall and now also served snacks and meals was barely five minutes from the garden. Her first task at that early hour was to briskly scrub the mud off twenty kilos of potatoes in a tub of water, refill the tub, light the kerosene stove and put the potatoes to boil. That done, she set about peeling ten kilos of onions and chopping them, her eyes watering profusely. The knife was nothing but a thin steel sliver thirty centimetres long, sandwiched between two strips of wood just long enough to serve as a handle and tied at the rear end with a strand of exposed copper wire. The blade had been honed so fine, one wrong move and very likely you would have lost a piece of your finger and the chopped onions would be floating in blood. Khat-khat-khat khatkhatkhatkhatkhatkhatkhatkhatkhatkhatkhatkhat, from six in the morning the blade was at it and though it stopped around nine, it kept chopping Jasoda’s and her family’s brains for the next two or three hours. Even little Heera now spoke only khatkhatkhatkhatkhatkhat.

  The potatoes were next in line. Jasoda fished out one hot potato at a time, plunged it into a bowl of cold water, peeled it and threw it into the tub. When they were all naked yellow, it was time to crush them to a uniform mash and hand the lot over to the chef. He would make thick pancakes of the mash, then stuff them with onions, green peas, grated radish, cauliflower or cabbage, seal the open ends and deep-fry them.

  At seven, Jasoda would stretch out her hand towards the roof of the leather footwear stall to retrieve the plastic tray filled with green chillies. She had handled dry red chillies all her life and had pounded them to a powder at the end of the season in a tall hourglass mortar. Most of it was used at home but if the crop was good, she sold the chilli powder to the grocers in Jalta. But chopping these green chillies was like holding your hands above a powerful flame and it took days for the burning to cease. Half of the chillies would be deepfried whole so that customers could chomp on them. The rest, Jasoda cut into tiny bits, which would lace the other snacks.

  By seven-thirty the tiny lane with the big stone arch was alive with vendors and customers and all those people who went for a walk every morning in the garden next to Jasoda’s home. There was only one pavement in the lane and there was no way any pedestrian could use it. Just two weeks back, a new wooden stall selling cheap leather shoes, sandals, chappals and all kinds of plastic monsoon footwear had been put up next to where Jasoda sat. Sprawled next to the leather guy was the flower-family – mother, father, sons, daughters-in-law and cousins expertly stringing mounds of marigolds, lilies and mogras into garlands for the gods. And at the end of the lane was the fruit vendor with the damaged voice box, who earlier had a single four-wheeled cart and now two more, plus several wooden cartons to house apples, oranges, bananas, custard apples, guavas, pineapples and any other seasonal fruit arranged against the compound wall of the building behind. Two days ago, a vegetable vendor had set up his shop on the tarred road itself above the grill of the rainwater gutter.

  Sangram Singh whispered something as he helped the Prince bathe.

  ‘Why are you muttering, kaminey? I trust you are not whispering sweet nothings in my ear.’

  ‘Huzoor, what I am about to tell you is going to upset you. Should I tell you or not?’

  ‘No, whatever it is, don’t tell me.’

  ‘Quite right you are. It’s not worth getting a stroke because of some dream you were having. You know you can trust me never to breathe a word of what I heard you say.’

  His Highness whooped with laughter and fell off the stool on which he was sitting. ‘Yes, Sangram Singh, yes, if there is one person on the face of the earth I can trust to stab me in the back, it’s you.’

  ‘Ah, Huzoor, I am glad I am a source of so much entertainment for you. I have always held it as my first and last duty to be of service to you.’

  ‘You must take me for a perfect ass to think that I would be taken in by your fawning and boot-licking. I know exactly what you are up to. The only service you’ve ever considered doing, Sangram Singh, is to yourself. You don’t give a damn about your wife, your children or your mother. And least of all about me.’

  That morning, immediately after breakfast, His Highness wanted to be taken to the grand dining hall with its huge Italian crystal chandeliers where visiting royalty used to be feted and dined in the days when his father entertained lavishly. As was the Prince’s wont, the moment a thought crystallized in his mind, he became impatient. It was almost like whatever he wanted done had to be done before he had even expressed his wish. Right now he wanted to see the Ravi Varma painting of Menaka seducing the great ascetic Vishwamitra, which his great-grandfather, Tej Bahadur Singh, had bought from the painter himself and put up at the centre of the rear wall of the dining room. Now His Highness wanted it hung in his bedroom directly in his and his mistress’s line of vision.

  Sangram Singh was manoeuvring the wheelchair through the middle door of the dining room when Parbat Singh remembered that he had forgotten his glasses in the bedroom. ‘How do you expect me to look at the painting without my specs, you fool? Do you have to be reminded of every single thing? Next thing I know you will be telling me that you need a personal secretary. Well, what the hell are you waiting for, idiot? Go, fetch them. Now.’

  Sangram Singh walked across the endless corridor and into the east wing where the private quarters of the royal family were. The Prince’s specs were on the bedside table. He picked them up and was placing them in the bejewelled case when he heard singing from the bathroom. It was a full-throated, joyous voice, telling you that on this planet all you got was one shot at life and if you didn’t make the most of it, whose fault do you think it was? S
angram Singh pushed the door open gently.

  The Prince’s mistress Raat Rani was stepping over the low bathtub with her hand outstretched to collect the neatly folded towel from the clothes rack. Sangram Singh stood transfixed. He had never seen anything so flawless. Her wet hair was loosely tied above her swan-like neck. She was fair as a pale pink rose in the first flush of morning dew. Her breasts below the raised right hand were full but firm. Her purple-rose nipples were tender and taut. Between her legs was a dark flower of magnetic power. Then her long hair came undone and cascaded all the way down her spine. Sangram Singh stood spellbound. Oh, there was no doubt about it. She was the same celestial woman in the painting in the grand dining room, only more ethereal. Little wonder she had been able to seduce the great ascetic Vishwamitra whose powers of concentration were so renowned that the gods themselves feared him.

  Sangram Singh was out of breath, having drunk her in one long, heady draught. She dropped the folded towel on the floor and her hand swept up the tall crystal flower vase with its stale roses and flung it at him. The vase hit the bridge of his nose and under his right eye. Blood streamed into his eyes, nose and mouth. Yes, he thought, yes, he wanted her to open every vein and artery in his body and smear herself with his blood and thus prove that he alone had the right to possess her.

  ‘What took you so…?’ His Highness looked as if he had seen a ghoul walking. ‘What the fuck have you been up to? How did you get that cut on your cheekbone?’

  ‘It’s nothing, really. I fell while getting your specs, Huzoor.’ Sangram Singh smiled as he handed over the glasses.

  The lid of the wheeled bin had been thrown all the way back on its hinges and the garbage rose up like a miniature mountain. Himmat was tall for his age but his hands couldn’t reach all the way to the top. He had been attempting to tilt the big trolley towards himself to start separating the plastic from the other stuff when the pyramid came crashing down and fell all over him. He was in a state of shock when someone smacked him on the head.

  ‘Stupid fool, look what you’ve gone and done.’ The lid of the plastic container had fallen off and its ghastly blue-green, smelly goo had fanned out on the road and on the white pair of trousers of the bespectacled man who had hit him. ‘Is your father going to clean this mess on my trousers?’

  Himmat didn’t understand English but he got the drift of what the man was saying and wouldn’t look up. He knew he had been in the wrong but he was seething since he didn’t think there was any need for physical chastisement.

  A couple of weeks later, he was sitting in the garden behind his roadside home, trying to read the storybook he had picked up some weeks ago, but he was not making much progress. The teacher in the school back home had taught his class the English alphabet and Himmat had learnt to spell thirty-seven words and then the school had closed down.

  ‘This is the third day you’ve been on the same page.’ It was that man who had knocked him on the head. ‘Aren’t you the boy who dirtied my trousers?’

  Himmat did not look up but folded the book and got up to leave.

  ‘Sit down.’ The man whisked the book from Himmat’s hand and started to read. ‘Once upon a time…’

  He was in the garden every evening. He took his ten rounds and then sat with Himmat. In time, Himmat would learn that the bespectacled man was a Parsi named Cawas Batliwala. Himmat had heard him speak Hindi and Gujarati though he conversed with Himmat only in English.

  ‘What did I say in my dream the other day?’

  ‘Oh nothing, Huzoor. You were quite right to have told me you were better off not knowing.’

  ‘Don’t try my patience, Sangram Singh. What did I say?’

  “I didn’t do it. I didn’t do it.”

  ‘You didn’t do what?’

  ‘That’s what you said, Huzoor.’

  ‘Well, that settles matters, whatever they may have been. It’s clear I didn’t do it, whatever “it” was. Besides, who knows what you are talking about.’

  Sangram Singh had begun to part his hair in the middle. He was going grey and he spent hours lovingly colouring his hair and combing and brushing it in place. Sometimes at night after he had helped His Highness change into his pyjama suit and tucked him into bed, he ironed the newly tailored brocade sherwani and churidar and tried them out in front of the full-length mirror. Despite the middle-parting, his burgeoning beard and waxed moustache, something seemed to be missing. He wasn’t quite sure what it was till he dislodged one of the long, curved swords that hung on the wall of the durbar hall and posed with it. He took to practising his posture, demeanour and a supercilious look on his face till it became ingrained in him.

  It was obvious that he needed at least three more sets of formal royal clothes. Fortunately, since he had spent months noting down every single item in the Palace, he had a fairly good idea where to locate the brocade cloth for achkans and sherwanis. Then he began trying out a new way of signing his name. It was perhaps the toughest job he had attempted and there were times when he went to bed furious with himself.

  A couple of weeks before Jasoda thought she would be delivering her baby, she told her employer that for the next few weeks she would like to work from home.

  ‘Why? What’s your problem?’ he asked.

  ‘No problem. I don’t think you would want me to deliver my baby in front of all your customers. I promise you, even on the day I deliver, my mother-in-law will do all the work and hand it over to you.’

  ‘And what if you started pilfering some of the food?’

  A wry smile crossed Jasoda’s face. ‘Even if I did, I know I would not lose my job, would I now?’

  Her employer looked uncertain for a moment. Jasoda was right. She had proved herself invaluable. ‘Okay. The onions will be sent over the previous night to your place and one of the men will hand over the boiled potatoes to you by six in the morning or even earlier and collect the onions. I want the mash and the green chillies as always by eight a.m.’

  The two older boys were close to each other and Himmat would teach his younger brother English. That wasn’t very often, however, since Pawan had begun to roam far and wide in the city and sometimes he would fetch as much as a hundred or a hundred and fifty rupees, though at other times he came back empty-handed. Jasoda would occasionally ask him how come his earnings were so erratic but the boy would smile and tell her, ‘Sometimes it pours and sometimes there’s a drought in the sky. That’s life.’

  Jasoda wondered where her second son had picked up such picturesque adult phrases but she decided it was best not to enquire too deeply. Himmat had an inkling but he would never talk about it. He had seen his brother at the Haji Ali dargah and sometimes at the Mahalakshmi temple running errands for the men in the shadows who dealt in afeem, ganja, hash or some pills whose names he didn’t know.

  But it was Sameer who was the real mystery. It was as if he watched you even when his eyes were closed. It was impossible to make out what went on in that little head of his. He didn’t speak much but he always made you feel naked.

  This time around, Jasoda had prayed for a girl since she did not want to have another mouth to feed. Five hours had passed and then seven but the foetus was still stuck. She had a fairly good idea what the problem was. The umbilical cord was where it had no business being, around the neck. She had seen her share of such cases, the last one being Poonam. The outcome was often grim for both the baby and the mother. Jasoda was pale with exhaustion. The only reason she was still alive and breathing was because of the unbearable pain. This was a new experience for her. She had never had problems with delivering her own children. Nine hours had gone by now. The baby was bound to be dead. She knew she was next. Thank God. The earlier the better. But of course she couldn’t let that happen. Her family depended on her. She slipped in and out of consciousness as Himmat, Pawan, Sameer and even Heera watched in silence.

  It was a boy. Her mother-in-law cleaned him up. Something was wrong with him. He’d gone blue. But such a good-lo
oking boy. The name Kishen would be just right for him. All she had to do was to tie a headband around his head and tuck a peacock feather in it. Now hand him a flute and he would be the image of the blue god.

  The Parsi man had given Himmat a cake of soap called Lifebuoy and his first question was always the same. ‘Did you have a bath after work today?’

  ‘Yes. I did.’

  ‘Let me check.’ Mr Batliwala smelt Himmat’s scalp, then his armpits and finally his hands. ‘Seems okay except behind the ears. Make sure the ears too are cleaned tomorrow and every day.’

  Himmat was kept on a diet of Billy Bunter stories for two weeks. All conversation was in English. Occasionally, Himmat would forget and say yes or no or a full sentence in Hindi and was instantly ticked off.

  ‘English. You will speak English with me and nothing else. You are welcome to speak your mother tongue or Hindi or whatever language your folks converse in at your home. With me it will be English and nothing but, you follow? Now tell me the full story that you read today.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  By the fourth week, when Himmat could manage a conversation in English almost effortlessly, Batliwala Sir had brought a set of five books, one each on biology, geography, history, arithmetic and an English reader. They were the same books that the teacher himself had studied thirty years ago. ‘The tuition is free,’ Mr Batliwala told Himmat, ‘but you will pay for the books. That’s the only way you will know the value of education.’

  Batliwala was an old-fashioned taskmaster and on the lookout for Himmat to slip up. But the boy was studious and even when he couldn’t concentrate at night because he was so tired, he made it a point to get up early and finish his homework before going to the garbage sorting centre.

  ‘Where’s your tail today?’ Cawas Batliwala asked Himmat one evening.

  The boy pointed to Heera on a patch of green across. She was busy checking out the taste of grass and earth. Himmat ran over and picked her up and slapped her lightly on her bottom. Heera was delighted. ‘More, I want more.’ Those were her first English words.