The Marketplace

I was not there to witness my nani’s death. Perhaps I was in first-period theology, or last-period algebra. I could have been having my ass paddled by one of the brothers. I was away and when one is away, when one is not present, there is no end to the things that can happen. Had my mother thought of this when she left me with my nani? Perhaps, although I doubt it. Or she may have rationalised to herself that she could not be present but her mother could. It was Brother Philip who told me. He called me into his office after classes had ended and before the dinner bell had sounded and said I was to pack my things and be prepared to leave before first period the following morning. Why, I asked, what have I done?

Your grandmother has died, he replied, and therefore you must leave.

But why? Brother Philip sir, I insisted. Where am I to go to school?

This is not my concern, he said. As to your first question, with your grandmother having died, there is the matter of fees. We agreed when we took you on that because you showed promise we would pay your gazetted tuition and your boarding, but your grandmother would look after your book fees and the extracurricular. Now she is dead, there is no one to pay your bills.

But if she is dead, where do I live? I asked.

Upon your matriculation, your grandmother provided us with the address for someone she described as your mother. I have this morning sent a boy around, and a woman, who admitted she is your mother, said to meet her tomorrow afternoon at the Red Fort.

But! I started.

Brother Philip held out his hand like a traffic officer and put a stop to my question. I had not seen her in nine years.

I hardly slept that night and, in the morning, before sunrise, I snuck out of my dorm room with my pathetic rucksack bursting with my schoolbooks and clothing and left the Cathedral High School. The boys were wrong, of course. I did have coins. But I never carried them on me. I had enough for bus fare and by eight am, I was standing on Netaji Subhash Marg in front of the Red Fort, facing Chandni Chowk, remembering the last time my mother had met me there: the intoxicating perfume, the curvature of her spine and the way her glissade walk towards the market seemed more an attack than an attempt to cross the street smoothly, my stumbling efforts to keep up, my fall, my cry, her dry reply.

Mother lived on the second floor of a building on the Lal Kuan Bazaar Road, tucked in an alley between two windowless restaurants, one veg, one non-veg. To reach her apartment, which like Nani’s house consisted of a bedroom slash living room and a kitchen, one pushed through a scratched, red wooden door and negotiated a series of worn, concaved steps. The stairwell smelled of curry and frying oil from the restaurants and food stalls nearby, commingling as one ascended with the scent of my mother: incense and musk with saffron, attar perfume gifts I learned, that came in lovely coloured cutglass bottles or in squat cork-stopped jars from the shops on Dariba Kalan down the street.

No sooner had I set down my pack than she told me I was to go out. I have but arrived, I protested. And now you must depart, she said. I must work. She walked me to the door and took a few rupee notes from a clay bowl on a shelf. She thrust them into my hand and with the other hand at my back sent me away for the afternoon. I walked down the stairs into the wafting smell of curries and stood at the doorway. I looked left and I looked right waiting for a sign from anyone or anything to indicate my next move, but when none came, I slid one foot in front of the other and exited the alley.

At the entrance I bumped into a hurried man with his head lowered. Excuses and apologies rushed from his lips as he scurried into the alley. I stopped to watch him flee down the path and wondered what pursued him, only to have him stop at the red door that indicated my mother. He stood there, his belly bulge pushing at his dark kurta, looked left and looked right, to where I stood. And then he went in.

I walked by the soiled white and spoiled grey buildings, stumbled along the uneven footpaths by clapped-out cars and their belching exhaust, dodged dehydrated cows. I bumped against bonded labourers and peons, saw chowkidars standing guard in front of residential buildings, and heard the odd bada sahib chewing out his chhota for this or that. Eventually I found myself in Chawri Bazaar, an orgasm of colour, with kiosks and shops displaying all manner of homemade paper for writing, for drawing, for wrapping, for hanging as art, some cut into sheets and some on spindles to roll out like fabric, others folded origami-style into boxes, or bound as virgin diaries, untouched by thought or secret, and others secured between painted wood covers into copies of the Razmnama and the Ramayana.

I grew hungry after some time. Out in the street again I noticed the food stalls I had missed on my way in. I had the money my mother had pushed on me to get me out the door. Rickety pushcarts on spindly wheels bulged with oranges, melons and mangos. I smelled a variety of curries; I detected heady, earthy fenugreek like a hand reaching into my insides and pulling them closer. I could see in remembered, vibrant mind-pictures my nani seated on an overturned wood crate breaking cinnamon sticks into pieces and adding them to a small, dry frying pan over a fire of cow-dung cakes in her outdoor kitchen. For now, though, I stood on the Chawri Bazaar Road, on the pink, yellow, orange and white petals come loose from the garlands hanging in the flower-wallah’s. I ate a poori accompanied by a small Styrofoam bowl of aloo.

I returned to my mother’s apartment after dark. Where were you, she demanded when I opened the door. I was out, I said. Well, it’s late and you missed dinner. But I didn’t know until what time you worked, I responded. Tomorrow you come home for dinner. I went into the kitchen, found the small brass pots with the remnants of dinner and warmed them over the hotplate.

The next day had a similar pattern: I woke to the smell and sight of my mother applying attar, which that morning seemed less saffron-infused than musky. She adjusted her sari, placed bangles on her wrists and slid into silver-braided anklets. Up up! she called. She made chai for the two of us and sent me on my way. I spent the day at Nai Sarak, where there were high school pupils as I had once been and students from the local colleges and universities, and here and there book-loving tourists. I slipped into a shop, found a Harry Potter book and sat on the floor reading until the owner kicked me out. We are not a library, you scoundrel, he said. I went next door, found the same edition and continued from where I had left off, until I was asked to leave the store. And so it went through the day. When it felt like time for dinner, I left the book bazaar, having read most of The Prisoner of Azkaban.

Within a week of my having arrived at my mother’s, I had visited all the major bazaars of Chandni Chowk, had had meals cooked at stalls in the smoky warren’s galis, which criss and cross major and minor thoroughfares like the capillaries veining the silvery moon. One afternoon, idling over stuffed paratha, I felt my mother nearby. It was her smell, actually, a spicy-herbal-woody blend. I turned and looked, circling and pivoting, but she was not there. I had drifted into the perfume market as on a cloud.

But I grew bored of my neighbourhood. As much as I enjoyed the breadth and length of my freedom, I wondered what was happening in the classrooms of the Cathedral High School. I wandered less frequently, spent many days pacing in the alley in front of the red door of my mother’s apartment, or squatting at the threshold. Men entered the alley, looked at me, asked Are you waiting? and when I looked quizzically or answered No, they went up. Half an hour later they were gone again, to be replaced by more.

It did not take me long to figure out why so many men were approaching the wooden door of my mother’s apartment. I began to answer in the affirmative when asked: Are you waiting? The men would turn on their heels and leave or squat beside me in the narrow alley. After half an hour, forty-five minutes or more had gone by, they would stretch, shake their heads and mutter to themselves and depart. One mid-afternoon there was a whole line of us sitting, squatting or standing along the wall of the building. Some of the men smoked, some spat; some sucked their teeth or picked their nose and flicked away the prize on the betel juice-covered walkway. One or two looked like they had some badu post for the municipality. There was some chat, a word or two and a shake of the head, but not much; rather, I suspect, the men had entered a place of quiet where they reflected on the reasons for their presence at the door of my mother’s apartment. Towards dinner, the door opened and out stepped my mother who expressed genuine surprise to find the line of men there. What are you all doing here? she cried, and then she spotted me squatting nearby and shouted, You! What are you doing here? She slapped my head and said Get! Go for a walk! I sheltered my head, then stood and backed away and managed to avoid getting struck again. As I left, I turned and watched her slippery shape from behind and heard her ask, Who was here first?

You’re scaring away my customers, she told me in the morning. So what am I to do? Where am I to go? I asked. Where have you been going? she asked in turn. I am walking around the markets. You what? You are traipsing around in the markets? Haven’t you found a job? I must have looked surprised. Yes, a job, she repeated. Are you thinking I can afford to feed two of us on the piss money I make?

Back out into the market I went, but with purpose this time, not to find a job, but to find a way out. I approached all the shops I had visited in those early days of my life in Chandni Chowk and was rejected as often as I found work. I was a badli, a day labourer, paid in cash to package and haul goods, to fetch wares, to run a peon’s errands, to tout the products for sale in the stall; once, I was even allowed to step behind the counter and man the shop while the owner went to relieve himself in the public latrine.

But my mother decided after about ten days of my working dawn to dusk in the marketplace that I was more useful squatting outside the building, where the presence of myself and the other men waiting in the alley, in the shadow of the restaurants – veg and non-veg – imparted the perception she had many clients. Over time, I acknowledged familiar faces. Apparently, my mother had repeat customers. And these squatting, standing, sitting, smoking, spitting, sucking men, as old as eighty as young as fifteen, began eventually to talk idly, to compare notes, to palaver about the perfumed woman on the pallet upstairs. I said nothing and shrunk further into a shadow of shame, as one spoke about the enjoyment of sliding his hands along the S of her body, how the distinction, the intensity, of the deformity derailed him each time.

I was not witness to my mother’s death. When I returned for dinner the afternoon she died, I saw a number of her clients squatting against the wall, squawking, hawking, spitting, coughing, smoking, but mostly waiting patiently. I pushed open the door, walked up the stairs and found no one home. I went back to the front and said my mother was out. They should go. When will she be back? one asked. I have no idea, I said. Then I will wait, another replied. And a few others nodded and then returned to their haunches and I climbed back to the apartment.

When darkness came and she still had not arrived, I grew worried. I went out – the men had finally left – and threaded through the streets of Chandni Chowk to the police chowki, where I made a report to the officer, who never once looked up from his paperwork to ask his questions. I was a fly to him, a nuisance. She has not been missing twenty-four hours yet; why should you worry? Maybe she had a date. Now leave. You do not understand; she hardly ever goes out. She is crippled. Crippled, you say. Finally, a reaction. He looked up. Describe her. So I talked about her hair and her eyes and face. No, you idiot. Describe the nature of the cripple. Yes, the S-shape of her body. I told him. The officer’s face lit up then. I could see it in his eyes and then they went dim again and returned to his paperwork. Yeah, we found her. She was hit by a blue. She died on the spot. You can claim her at this address, and he wrote a number and street name on a slip of paper he then tore off and handed to me. I waited. I had so many questions still. But the officer looked at me: You are still waiting? Leave. Go fetch the body before the morgue throws it out.

I raced out of the police chowki and found the morgue, where I discovered they would not release the body to me without proof of identification, a birth certificate, for example, indicating she was who I said she was, and my own birth certificate to prove our relation. How do we know you will not defile the body? the attendant at the morgue said. Can I at least see the body? I asked. He shook his head slowly. That is not possible now. Now? Does that mean it will be possible tomorrow? I cannot answer that. And on it went: one question frustrated by an obtuse answer, none of it solving the essential obstacle: I had no such proofs. I had no birth certificate, nor had my mother.

It was a long night between the waiting and the police and the morgue and when I returned home to the apartment I flopped on my cot and slept through the cock’s crow. When I finally did awaken, it was to the smell of curry and perfume. I turned over on my side, but she was not there. It was the markets of Chandni Chowk coming to life. But here, in the apartment, the perfumes were nothing but oil in a bottle without someone to wear them; the spices were grains without heat to invigorate them. Without mother, I would need to take care of myself. I determined to find work, even part-time work, as I had before. I went down the stairs and pulled open the door only to find mother’s clients had begun to line the alleyway. She has passed, I said. Passed? Yes, you john. Dead. Hit by a bus. Go home. And a few did. But others lingered. How do we know? Go to the morgue, I said. That is where they are keeping her. And a few more of the men left. What? What do you want? I asked one man. He thrust some rupees at me. How much? he said. I pushed him aside and ran out of the alley.

Listlessness came over me by midday. The temperature was rising. The relief of the rains was still a month away. I found no work that day. A couple of rupees’ worth of hauling the next day. Nothing the day after. This was no way to live. And every morning, the men were outside the door. She is dead, I said. She is dead! Go away! But they returned, like cats. As did the one who lingered, with his fistful of rupees. I stared him down and finally even he too left. But then, one afternoon, when I returned from having not worked, and my stomach was empty and my mouth dry, the alley was empty except for one I had never seen before. Despite his height and girth, he did not seem as threatening as the others. He did not spit or hack or blow snot from his nose. Allow me to see her flat one last time.

He followed me through the door and up the stairs into the apartment, where he looked around the two rooms before stepping to the window and opening it. So, it is true, is it? I nodded, but he was looking outside. He turned. He lifted one perfume bottle after another and opened them, smelling the herbs and spices of the attars my mother prized. He opened a drawer of the small chest, removed a sari, light blue with cloudy wisps of white and dark blue beadwork. He fingered the fabric, rubbed it gently in the large maw of his hand. She was beautiful, he said. She was twisted, I said. Before, he said. Before she became twisted, she was beautiful, as flawless and pure as this fabric. And even afterward. Beauty isn’t in the bones; it is in the marrow. He turned and looked at me closely and I felt he was examining me, boring into the innermost part of me. He said, You look like her. Did you know? Your eyes, mostly, the way they sit under your brow, like a hawk, watching everything; the gentle slide of the nose, the lips. You most definitely look like her. He was standing, in front of me now, still holding the folded fabric of my mother’s sari and veil. He lifted it and let its full body unfold. He put it up against me. Here, he said, and handed it to me. Put it on. He turned around and I did as he asked. I did not know why he had asked me to do so, but it did not feel wrong. If I looked so much like her, perhaps this small act would please him, a lifetime of nostalgia in a moment’s deception. I stripped and dressed in the sari. I am here, I breathed. He turned back; a sharp intake of air when he saw me. You are beautiful, he said, and put his large hands on my upper arms and squeezed gently and he massaged my arms and my hands. I felt tingling right down to my soles. Through the open window, a warm breeze rustled the sari and the veil. The man lifted the veil from my face and kissed me. It was deep and long and excited me and excited him. He bid me to lie down on my pallet while he slipped his feet out of his chappals and removed his shirt and pants, then slowly he made love to me. This is what it felt like to be wanted, desired, I felt, even if I had not been the initial object of his desire.

I had no other clients. There was M. and he came to me a few times a week. Thus was I able to stay in my mother’s flat, to eat, to buy the attars and shamanas like those my mother wore, to buy fabric to make saris. When M. did not visit me, I walked through the bazaars of Chandni Chowk.

Mostly, I spent my time in the bookshops, never buying anything but, finally, entering the good graces of the booksellers who permitted my reading as long as I did not break the spines of the books. And it was there one afternoon, while I was deep into The White Tiger, about a limousine driver in Mumbai, that I first encountered the man with the crisp, white, long-sleeved shirt, the properly knotted tie, the polished black shoes. Are you a pupil? he asked. No, I answered. Where did you learn to read, if you are not a pupil? I attended the Cathedral High School, I said, but no longer. He nodded. What are you reading? I showed him. I told him what it was about. I’m looking for a driver, he said. Can you drive? I lied. And my over-eagerness probably indicated to him that I had. But he did not divulge any such knowledge; instead, he gave me his business card and told me to call him. He left and I looked at the card: Professor Bhupindar Sengupta.

I bought some paint, a blue as dark as squid’s ink, and painted the scratched, red wooden door.