In the next room was the sound of Mr Chawla pacing up and down. ‘What have we got ourselves into?’ The sound of Ammaji whispering: ‘Just wait a little, beta, wait and see.’ Outside, in the barren sky, the drone of the Red Cross planes.
When there was almost no space left to draw on any more, when the walls, floor and ceiling were full, packed tight to the point of bursting, Sampath was born. And he was born in such remarkable circumstances, they were remembered for ever afterwards by the people of Shahkot.
One day, as Kulfi was at the bedroom window looking at the street, prepared to sit through another seemingly endless stretch of time until Ammaji finally cooked and served her dinner, all of a sudden a shadow fell across the sun and magically, as quickly as a winter’s day tumbles into smoky evening and then night, the white-lit afternoon deepened into the colour of old parchment as the sky darkened. Curtains billowed white out of every window. Bits of newspaper and old plastic bags turned cartwheels in the indigo streets. The air thinned and stirred in a breeze that brought goose bumps out upon her arms. ‘Look!’ Kulfi shouted. ‘Here comes the rain!’
She could hear the sound of cheering from the bazaar. And she watched the children in the streets leap like frogs, unable to keep still in their excitement. ‘It’s getting cold,’ they shouted, and pretended to shake. ‘It’s going to rain.’ They wrestled and tussled with each other in an exuberance of spirit, while the grown-ups hurried, in this shifting, shadowed light, to get to the market and back, to bring in washing, to carry in string cots. They raised their hands in greeting to each other: ‘At last! The monsoon!’ Who knew whether it came because of the giant fan, the wedding of frogs, the Pied Piper, because of mercurial powers or magician’s marvels? And in the end, who cared? The rain had come to Shahkot. The monsoon was in town. Kulfi watched with unbelieving elation as the approaching smell of rain spiked the air like a flower, as the clouds shifted in from the east, reached the trees at the town’s edge and moved in.
In the Chawla household, Mr Chawla bustled about with plastic sheeting, while Ammaji placed buckets outside to catch the rainwater and brought out candles and kerosene lanterns in preparation for the inevitable breakdown of electricity. They paused, though, to test the growing strength of the wind against their cheeks; looked up to check the progress of the clouds. When they were finally prepared for the downpour, they watched from the windows like Kulfi and the rest of Shahkot’s residents, leaning from balconies and verandas, from beneath the flaps of scooter rickshaws; the entire town, with anxious, upturned eyes, until an especially strong gust sent the leaves flying like birds before gunshot and brought the first drops of water to sound loud against the parched earth.
Kulfi watched the rain. It came down fast and then faster yet. It filled up every bit of sky. It was like no other sound on earth and nothing that was ever suggested by the thin trickles from Shahkot taps. It came down black with dust from the sky and dirt on the trees, and then clear. But always louder. She stretched out her hands to feel the weight of the drops on her flat palms and then put her face out too, holding it, luminous, pale, in this town enclosed within the dark heart of the monsoon.
As she did so, she felt Sampath kick inside her stomach. Her heart jumped in rhythm. He kicked harder and harder. The jamun tree in the courtyard thrashed and creaked. The rain streamed down Kulfi’s hair and washed over her face. Her husband shouted: ‘Get away from the open window.’ She paid no attention. He wrapped her in a square of plastic, but she shrugged it off. The rain descended in great sweeping sheets.
The neighbours withdrew in quick, sharp movements, slammed their windows, barred their doors, but Kulfi stretched out farther still, farther and farther until the rain took up all the space inside her head. It seized her brain, massaged and incorporated her into the watery sounds, until she felt that she herself might turn to storm and disappear in this blowing, this growling, this lightning flutter quick as a moth’s wing. If she would only let go of the metal window frame, she could take all those tedious days of summer and crash them to the ground, transform them into water and wind and pounding.
She felt her muscles contract as a clap of thunder echoed about her. Again, the thunder roared. Kulfi, soaking wet, opened her mouth wide and roared back. Below her, the ground had disappeared. Ponds formed, joined to make lakes and ran down streets to make rivers. Rivers took the place of roads.
A mere two hours later, Mr Chawla and Ammaji running back and forth with cloths and hot water, the storm still raging, rain pouring through windows that would not stay closed and flooding in beneath the doors, Sampath was born. As his face, with a brown birthmark upon one cheek, appeared to the cheers of his family, there was a roaring overhead that almost split their eardrums, followed by a vast crash in the street outside.
‘What was that?’ said Mr Chawla nervously, as the ground shuddered. Could it be that his son’s birth had coincided with the end of the world? Leaving Kulfi and the new baby, he and Ammaji ran to the window to investigate, and discovered that far from being the end of things it was more like the beginning.
Caught in their old jamun tree, they saw a crate of Red Cross supplies that had been dropped by a Swedish relief plane befuddled by the storm in a move that must surely have been planned by the gods. The departing plane rose high into the sky and vanished among the swirling clouds, unmoved apparently by the townspeople jumping and waving down below as they ran out despite the downpour to greet this unexpected largesse. Draped in the foliage of the ruined jamun, they discovered containers full of sugar and tea, of rehydration mixes, dried milk powder, raisins and digestive biscuits. There were unidentifiable powders in packages covered with pictures of smiling foreign women. There were nuts, sweets and baby-food tins galore.
Climbing high into the tree, the street urchins tossed down what they found lodged in the broken branches. Mr Chawla ran back and forth like a silly chicken, filling a shopping bag with supplies, while Ammaji alerted neighbours to the birth by shouting out of the window near Kulfi’s bedside. Soon the house was full of well-wishers, chattering excitedly, not knowing whether to talk of the baby or the rain or the food. ‘Wonderful,’ they kept exclaiming, water dripping from their clothes to form pools about their feet. ‘What a beautiful baby … and can you believe the monsoon? Oh and the food! … What a baby!’
Only Kulfi was quiet. She looked at the tiny creature in her hands, a creature that looked as if he had come from another planet altogether, or had been discovered in the woods, like something alien and strange. The baby’s eyes were closed and his fingers were tightly curled. His face was red and his skull pointed. She looked at his strangeness and felt a sense of peace and comfort descend upon her. Soon the storm would end and the world would grow silent and fragrant, the air weathered soft as the hour of sleep. Soon the winged ants would be flying and lizards would grow fat on dozens of multiplying insects. The water would turn muddy and soft. Doors would swell and it would be impossible to close them once opened, or to open them once closed. Fungus and mould would sprout green and voluptuous and armies of mushrooms would gather in the cupboard under the sink.
Attempting to include Kulfi in their high spirits, the neighbours assured her that her son was destined for greatness, that the world, large and mysterious beyond Shahkot, had taken notice of him. ‘Look! Even people in Sweden have remembered to send a birthday present.’ And: ‘Let’s name him Sampath,’ they said. ‘Good fortune.’ For though he might not be very plump or very fair, he was triumphantly and indisputably male.
In great good humour, chewing on famine relief, they celebrated by the light of a roomful of candles, for the electricity had, of course, gone.
2
Twenty years later, in the very same house and in the very same room, Sampath Chawla, with spider-like legs and arms, thin and worried-looking, lay awake under a fan. It thrashed and swung above him, making as much noise as a gale, although Sampath could feel only the faintest tremor of an air current playing about his toes.
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All around him, his family lay and snored: his father, mother, grandmother and his younger sister, Pinky, swathed in quantities of flowered organza. Rrrrr. Rrrrr. Phurrrr. Wheeeeee. Rrrrrrr. What a racket! Sampath listened to each hostile inhalation. Even in sleep, he thought, disgusted, his family showed themselves incapable of pleasant displays of consideration. Self-indulgent as always, they worked their way noisily through their dreams, keeping Sampath, meanwhile, awake and tossing. Even his mother, whom he loved most of all, had forgotten him in sleep.
He kicked a foot up into the air with impatience. ‘Sshhhhh,’ he said out loud, but it was a poor, sad sound and they took no notice. Wheeeeeeeee. Rrrrr. Rrrrrr. It was too bad they were not rich enough for everyone to have their own room and their own fan. However, Sampath decided, for his own sake, it would be best to suppress his irritation. His family might be unable to respect the holy silence with which sleep should be imbued, but he would not lose his temper.
Making a new effort and a new start, he moved his body around so his head occupied the place where his feet had been. The puny bit of breeze picked up a strand of his hair and dangled it over his face so it tickled like a fly. He grabbed at it, pulled it out, scratched his face and composed himself again.
The fan squeaked. He thought it might fall on top of him, smashing his face as flat as a child’s drawing. This thought became more and more persistent. The electrician, after all, had just been cleaning it, and it was well known in the whole of Shahkot how shamefully bad Bunty Chopra was at his job.
Sampath got up from under this dangerous appliance and lay on the floor, spreading his arms and legs and fingers as far apart as he could, so that not a single part of his sweaty, uncomfortable body would touch another. He lay flat like that and opened his mouth wide to facilitate the easy intake of air and, he hoped, the quick arrival of dreams. As soon as he had thus arranged himself, however, the power failed and the fan slowed to a standstill. Instead of dissipating into some blissful, cloudy realm, Sampath’s concentration sharpened like a knife at all the places where his bones pressed against the hard floor. Once again, despite himself, he became conscious of the snores of his family who loomed alarmingly above him now he was on the ground, their hips rising like mountains far too high to climb.
How did they expect him to rest as they roared and vibrated like giants? As they sent their snores all the way to the top of the ceiling? Back and forth so the disturbing qualities of each sound accumulated and weighed on Sampath like a grinding stone? The room was hot and stuffy. His body felt heavy and dull. He knew, in a flash, that it might never be possible for him to move again. He was drowning; he would sink like a stone to a place as deep and dark as the sea floor. Making a heroic effort, propelled by a terrible feeling of panic, Sampath brought all the strength of his will together. In a crucial show of determination, unwitnessed by anyone, he rose, ran into the living room and burst through the door that led to the roof.
Upstairs, however, it was as hot as in the room below. The moon was pale and mildew-like, just a lifeless smudge against the night. Not one of the streetlights worked, and they wouldn’t work, everyone knew, until the next local election. Then there would be a flurry of excitement, with five – and ten-point plans for the improvement of electricity supplies, and enough modern technology, they always promised, to send Shahkot and its residents bounding into the twenty-first century. Sampath walked up and down, the pale glow of his white pyjama kurta the only moving thing in this night so still, it seemed to be moulding itself perfectly against his body, so he knew it would be impossible to shake off; that there it would be, clinging to him even if he jumped or beat around him with a stick.
Up and down, back and forth. He walked to calm himself, as you would walk with a baby who cries and cries and cannot sleep. Above, there weren’t any stars, only the lights now and then of planes, flying on their way to who knows where. To Calcutta? Madras? Madurai? To England or America? It was a terrible thing to be awake while some people flew, carrying the world over his head, and others slept, claiming it from under his feet. He was grateful, though, for the feel, rough and sandy, of the bricks beneath him, the uneven surfaces and the thin-ridged crisscross of lines. For the cool smoothness, now and then, of a fallen leaf. He picked them up one by one and held them against his lips to imitate the dull brrrrrr of a cricket; rolled them against his cheek and in his hot, sticky fingers, until they too became damp and warm. He sampled some ginger pickle from a jar set out to mature on the roof along with a whole row of mango, lime and pumpkin pickle jars. As the night wore on, he sampled a bit from every jar so as to decide on which kind, if any, he liked best. And by and by, between mouthfuls, without even knowing it, he started to sing: ‘Sooner or later,’ he sang softly, ‘there will come a magic hour, when I spot a princess from the kingdom of Cooch Behar.’
A passing car sent its searchlight-glare crazy and liquid over the sides of the buildings and into the trees, revealing not the colours, the daylight solidity of things, but a world of dark gaps cut from an empty skin of light.
‘When my mouth I’ll open, I’ll think of nothing to say, and this lady so fine and beautiful will continue on her way. Goodbye, my princess of Cooch Behar, may we meet again –’
The sound of his small voice, so bravely singing, cheered him up a little.
By the time the night watchman cycled past on his way home from the wealthy neighbourhood where he worked, Sampath was shaky on his feet from lack of sleep. Phee … pheee … phee – the watchman blew his whistle as if in a nasty attempt to awaken all those who might still be sleeping.
Sampath watched as the shadows retreated, as Shahkot was offered up once again, whole and intact, with its overflowing rubbish heaps and its maze of streets. Bit by bit he saw the jumble of wires spilling out at the top of the electricity pole and the dirty, stained walls of the houses that rose high all about him, with their complications of rooftops and verandas; their clutter of television aerials, washing lines and courtyards filled with bicycles and raggedy plants and all the paraphernalia of loud and large families. The municipal water supply was turned on. From every kitchen and bathroom in Shahkot there was the sound of water pumps, thin streams of water dribbling into the first in a long line of buckets and pots and pans waiting to be filled. Sampath’s father appeared down below with his yoga mat. Women emerged from different houses, converging in their walk to the Mother Dairy booth, and the priests in the temple at the end of the road launched into song, their voices richer and stronger than Sampath’s, their hymns rising, undulating, soaring over the rooftops.
Sampath wondered if the cloudiness in his mind could be driven away with strong morning tea, with a good brushing of his teeth; if the emptiness in his belly could ever be filled. Descending the steps back into the house, he met Ammaji leaving with her milk pail, her white sari in messy folds about her. She looked like a pale sea creature washed on to the shore, marked by the tides, crumpled and creased.
Ammaji looked at her grandson’s tired eyes. ‘Didn’t you sleep?’ she asked. ‘How will you last the day?’ She pinched his cheek with tender reproach.
3
In the courtyard down below, Mr Chawla began his morning exercises. Determined to start the day in a purposeful manner, according to schedule and habit, he spat out the last remnants of sleep and inertia in a perfectly aimed rainbow spray of spittle. He stood in a patch of sunlight where the shadows cast by the jamun tree could not reach him. Still, at the spot where the Red Cross crate had landed the night of his son’s birth, there was a large gap that marred the tree’s otherwise elegant proportions. Mr Chawla bent forwards to touch his toes, then backwards to form a perfect arc, one taut and tight enough to catapult himself into the sky.
‘Ommmmm.’ He let his voice fly in triumph over the rooftops. ‘Ommmmmm,’ he roared, teeth gleaming in the morning rays. ‘Ommmmm.’ He informed the world that he, Mr R. K. Chawla (B.A., Pass), head clerk at the Reserve Bank of Shahkot, was ready for a new day. The
air vibrated as if shot through by arrows. He was forty years old, hale and hearty. And if he was balding a little and had a small belly … well, he liked this look; it added importance to his words and inspired respect. He stepped out into the world firm-footed and sure, putting to shame the sorry young men who drooped about the town, ignoring their responsibilities. Slapping his chest and swinging his arms, he jogged up and down around the courtyard.