The Cripple and His Talismans (15 page)

There are two girls at the egg-man’s stand. I recognize them as dancers from Topaz. I do not want to see them because they remind me of
her
. In every man’s life, there will be
that one woman
. He knows he should treat her well, he knows he should open her hair gently and let her rivers of black touch the floor. But because she is stronger than he is, he will separate her thighs again and again so that when she is least expecting it, he can tell her he is leaving her.

That one woman
will look into your eyes while holding you. She will touch you, make you feverish, and ask you if that is really your thickness she is holding or a bijli ka khamba. When you tell her that it is no bolt of lightning, she will tell you that you are wrong. She will fly you to heaven. After you have flown and exchanged your heart for a larger one, she will make you sleep in her lap and she will play with your hair. Only then will you believe in God and ask for no further proof of his creation. But again, even to know God, you need money.

As I look at the bar dancers, who eat their eggs so beautifully, I am taken to the edge of her bed, where I stood and undressed while she looked outside. The streetlights shone on the movie posters.

That night, Malaika was not happy. I had drunk too much.

Malaika. That very name makes me want her to bear my children. Seventy times. It is the best name in the world. God should be called Malaika. Then everybody will love him.

That night Malaika was not happy.

“Your drinking makes you less of a man,” she said.

“Come here,” I told her.

But she sat by her dressing table and looked at the moon. The flowers in her hair were white, or orange, or an evil green.

“Not tonight,” she said. “This night is bad.”

“I will make it badder.”

“You love me?”

I talked to her face in the mirror. It was less beautiful but easier to remember. “Tonight I do,” I said.

“What about tomorrow?”

“If I can still afford to love you, I will.”

“Means?”

“You’re expensive.”

“I’m worried about you.”

“Then come and suck my worries away.”

The window next to the dresser opened with the wind. A car horn entered the room. Buffalo horn, Fiat, 1970s.

“I keep thinking something is going to happen to you,” she said.

“You’re right.”

“Even you feel it?”

“Something happens to me every time you kiss me. Will you marry me?”

“No.”

“Not even for a day?”

“Just for one day?”

“I will love you more in one day than other men can in a lifetime.”

“You talk like a bad poet.”

“What’s a poet?”

“Someone who means one thing and says another.”

Once more the car horn entered the room. Smoke from a cooking fire as well. The flowers in her hair were green. They did things behind her head that she could not see. I did not like those flowers.

“Come here,” I said.

“You don’t have to pay me tonight.”

“Why not?”

“Tonight, I will pay
you.”

“I’d love that.”

“But you won’t fetch much.”

“Then I’ll work extra hard.”

The sari she wore was almost transparent, and her nipples rose through her blouse as if they wished to speak.
Her skin is so smooth I could slip on it if I walked
, I thought.
I love this woman
.

I held her face in both my hands. I wanted to call out her name. I wanted to call her by a hundred names. I wanted to call her name a hundred times. I told her.

“You’re so silly. Like a child.”

“Malaika,” I said.

“What.”

“Start counting.”

I moved close to her lips until their redness could kill me.

“Malaika,” I said.

“Yes.”

“That was one,” I said. “Malaika.”

“Two,” she played along.

“Malaika.”

“Three.”

“Malaika.”

On some days you can count like a gambler and still lose. Even after one hundred I could not stop. Instead of getting less drunk, I flew across the room — over her dresser, along the cracks in the stone and under the wobbling fan. The flowers in her hair were so green that each time I tried to break them loose, the colour rubbed off on my hands. It seemed as if both my hands had been dipped in a mossy, slimy pool of water. The next second I had no hands. They had been cut off at the wrists. Then the elbows were gone. I wanted to ask Malaika how she knew the night was bad, but all she would say was, “You don’t have to pay me.”

The two bar dancers have finished eating their meal and sway toward their cars. They are rich, earning as much as chartered accountants do, and their cars are more expensive. Dancers can be accountants if they want to. It might take work, but it can be done. But why count numbers when you can dance to them?

“How are you?” asks the egg-man. His cart has been painted yellow since I last saw him. Without waiting for me to respond, he says, “You’re hungry. You need eggs.”

“I need a window to die,” I say.

“No stylish talk here. Say straight.” He grinds his teeth and lets out a grunt.

“One bhurji-pao,” I order.

“Should I throw lots of masala?”

“No, it’s hard on my stomach.”

“Less spicy then. Sit.”

“Where?”

“Lean on the bonnet.”

He indicates a white Maruti with his head as he breaks the eggs into two and lets them fry on an oily iron plate. I can see my large, fat tree in the distance. The stray dogs still hover around it. They are so sick that they look like ghosts of dogs.

“Why do you not want masala? It does not taste the same if it’s not spicy.”

“My stomach,” I remind him.

“Why worry about your stomach when you don’t have an arm?”

“You’re right,” I say. “Throw lots of masala.”

He slaps a thick red paste onto the plate. I wonder if the ghost dogs can smell it.

“I will make you burn in delight like a woman of the night,” he says. “You’ll go home and still be on fire. You’ll need a fire engine to calm you down. No, even if they put the hose in your mouth you’ll still not get relief. But for a few hours you’ll forget that you don’t have an arm because the burning sensation will be so good.”

The sari shops are all closed for the night. Beside them is a makeshift temple with oil lamps in its hutch. They are still burning because there is no wind. Five children sleep near the shutters of the sari shop. They snore in peace; they do not hate the world. Only those who have beds hate the world. The god in the makeshift temple knows this. That is why he lets poverty grow; he does not want his children to own beds and hate the world.

The egg-man sprinkles salt, slaps an orange mixture into the existing egg paste. A prod here, a poke there, a few droplets of his sweat dip in, sizzle-sizzle.

“Is that your money box?” he asks, pointing to the finger coffin.

I do not feel like explaining. So I put the Dark Torpedo in my pocket and pull out a ten-rupee note.

“Is this enough?” I ask.

“I made this with love. Now it’s up to you to pay with love.”

“More than ten rupees?”

“Your love is weak. My love is real and strong.”

“Fifteen rupees okay?”

“Right now you love me like a brother or sister. I made bhurji for you like a naughty, spicy lover.”

“Is twenty rupees fine?”

“Yes. You are my true love. Romeo–Juliet, Laila–Majnu no class. It should be put in all the scriptures and literatures that the realest love came from a cripple to an egg-man and exactly opposite versa.”

“It’s sad that no one knows how much you love me.”

He puts his hand on his heart. “If that is how you feel, then feel no more.” He shouts, “Help!”

I look around but there is no one. I recall that Mr. P talked to imaginary people as well. Perhaps it is a new practice in the city. But why invent people when millions already exist?

“Someone help! Come here and see our love.”

I repeat what I did at Mr. P’s. I imitate the egg-man: “Come here and watch two lovers.”

“Who are you talking to?”

“The same person you are talking to.”

Just then I hear a scraping sound. It comes from underneath the egg-cart. There is a loud bump and the cart rattles a bit. The egg-man reacts quickly and ensures that none of the plates or food land on the street.

“Gura, is that you?” asks the egg-man.

“It is.”

“What are you doing underground?”

“Sleeping.”

Did Gura know I was looking for him? Was he hiding from me? There is still no sign of his face. I hope he does not intend on conversing from below the cart.

“Did you get drunk again?” asks the egg-man.

“Yes,” says Gura.

“Come out of there. I don’t want people to think negative things.”

“Like what?”

“Like what you could be doing to me from under there,” says the egg-man with a sheepish grin.

Gura scuttles out from below the egg-cart. He is not surprised to see me at all. Maybe that is why he does not acknowledge me.

“We want you to see our love,” says the egg-man.

“Brotherly,” I say. “All brotherly.”

“You think I’m a fool? There is no such thing as brotherly love!” says Gura.

“Gura, calm down,” says the egg-man.

“Right in front of my eyes you’re doing this!”

“Gura, we were doing nothing,” I say.

Then Gura starts mumbling. He eats up his words, swallows them like a goblin chomping up tiny living letters at random. The remaining letters flee for their lives, and even though they try to collect themselves, they make no sense at all.

In a fit, Gura lifts the egg-man’s iron frying pan and flings it onto the bonnet of the white Maruti. Even the egg-man is startled. Next to go are the small plastic containers that hold masalas. Gura opens them and sprinkles the powder into my eyes. My eyes sting and water. Through the haze, trees fall, rivers dry up and a midget rides a tricycle. I can see only that which is not before me. Mad women, blue dogs, orange robes and deep wells. I hear children screaming, swords clashing, prayers failing.

Then everything goes quiet.

I look for the egg-man and Gura but they are nowhere.

It is too dark to see, but I sense a light, a slight varnish, around an object a man holds in his hands. He strokes it methodically, as if he is giving it a new coat of light with his fingers.

“Mr. P makes good coffins,” he says in a resounding voice. He speaks with the speed and grace of a carrier pigeon in flight. The glaze around the Dark Torpedo is a sheet of dark ice.

“You were ready to let go, so I helped myself,” he says.

I can trace the finger through the coffin. I try to see the man’s face but only his long, matted hair is visible.

“Who are you?” I ask him.

“Baba Rakhu,” he replies.

In the dim light, human limbs slowly appear on the wall. I see all kinds: dark ones, long ones, stunted ones. They are neatly packed in plastic sheets as they hang shamelessly, suits and shirts waiting to be picked.

“Welcome to my khopcha,” says Baba Rakhu. “My pet dungeon that will save the world. How many men are without arms? How many women are without legs? It is shameful when the eunuch-dogs of this city roam freely.”

The organization of the arms and legs is meticulous — they are labelled with names in alphabetical order; they shine a little, coated with a substance to preserve them.

Baba Rakhu clasps his matted hair above his head with both hands. “What are you thinking, brother? There is no shame in buying arms. It is like buying anything else.”

A hairy arm dangles above me like the leather support strap in a bus. I want to take the black shawl that Baba has draped over his shoulders and cover the arm with it.

“You are what … five feet seven? Short one you are. So you will need short arm.”

What I need is to beat my conscience to a thin paste. I try not to imagine how Baba must acquire these limbs. He selects a short, pale arm, slightly hairy, with a white scar on the wrist. He strokes it lovingly as if he is a vendor displaying quality silk. Without removing its plastic wrapping, he holds it in place of my missing arm. I quiver as the arm touches my skin. Even my stump is repulsed by something that should seem familiar. I move away.

“What are you doing?” he shouts. “Stay still. Trial fitting.”

“So you do sell arms and legs …”

“You act as though I am selling guns.”

“There must be at least …” I try counting the limbs in front of me.

He uses the arm in his hand as a pointer and instructs, “Twenty right legs, twenty left legs, both male and female. Seven pairs of arms. And seven single ones for gentlemen like you.”

I imagine my body if I buy an arm. I will stand naked in front of the mirror and dance, count my fingers repeatedly as though I am the first to discover that humans have ten fingers. I will use my new arm to scratch an itch on my neck, to turn the pages of a newspaper. I might even learn sign language and never speak again.

“So brother, only twenty thousand rupees for this arm, including surgery.” He looks at me with eyes of charcoal, his long beard a tangle of snakes that will come to life any minute, bite me for being greedy.

He places the arm once more against my stump. He shakes his head. “This one does not suit you. Not to worry. I will get one to match your size and skin tone. It will only take a day or two.”

He places the arm back on its rack. “Twenty thousand rupees. Cash only. And I don’t give receipt.”

“The price is fine with me,” I reply. I am sure this is my lost arm talking. Or the unbought arm — maybe it is lonely. “I’m worried about something else.”

“The surgery? That is only a term I use. There will be no knives and blood, or any bogus rituals. Once I get an arm, I simply attach it to your body. It is a gift I have. If you believe in God, call it God-given.”

“The surgery is not a concern,” I answer.

“Then what, brother? If money and health do not bother you, what lunatic flesh are you made of?”

“Where you do get these arms?”

“Do you check where the vegetable vendor gets his stock? Do you know every detail about the fish that are sold at your doorstep?”