The Cripple and His Talismans (9 page)

I remove the finger from the bag and present it to the lady as though I am giving her a red rose. “Lady, how much will you give for this magnificent structure?” I ask.

She fiddles with her handbag again, this time struggling to reach in. She throws fifty rupees onto the driver’s seat and flees the taxi from the other side.

“Is this taxi empty?” I ask the driver.

“Where you want to go?”

“I need to decide. I must look for my next clue,” I tell him.

I listen for clues in the blaring of horns. But there is no pattern in the way they erupt; I can take hints only from things that are systematic. Maybe nature can direct me. There are small trees, very thin, planted on the sidewalk at regular intervals. The trees are bereft of leaves. That also means nothing. I look at the hot sky. It is so hot that one by one birds will burn and fall to the ground. On a charred wing, I will find words in my name. I will tear the wing off, secretly put it in my pocket and read it in the shade. But there is not a bird in the sky.

“What are you looking up for?” asks the taxiwala.

“An answer.”

“The day the heavens give an answer, I will stop driving like hell.”

“I don’t think I will take your taxi. I have to wait here.”

“For a plane?”

“For directions.”

“Look ahead. The cars are moving. Get in fast.”

“But I don’t know where to go.”

“All line clear,” he says. “Just like Clear Road.”

“Clear Road?”

“You don’t know Clear Road?”

“No.”

“It’s near St. Bosco School at Byculla.”

As soon as he mentions St. Bosco School, I open the door of the taxi and get in as if my life depends on its torn seat. “You mean
Clare
Road,” I tell him. My heart is pounding so hard that women plucking tea leaves in Assam can hear it.

“Clear
Road! It’s given that name because it is one of the few roads in this city that has no traffic. All line Clear.”

“Okay. Take me to Clear Road, then,” I say.

My driver slides left on the seat, circles his arm through the open window and turns the meter to bring the fare back to minimum.

I look up at the sky and tell it that I do not need its birds to tell me where I must go next. “Stop outside St. Bosco School,” I tell the driver.

“Careful. A lot of gangs are there.”

“I know. I went to school with them.”

“Were you beaten?”

“Lots,” I lie.

“Then why go back to your school?”

“To show people my finger.”

It makes perfect sense. Only a taxi driver can show me the way, tell me what road I must take. I am going back to my roots. I must go back to school, where I will learn something.

Viren is breathing heavily. The lid of his brown desk is open as he puts all his schoolbooks into his sweet little blue bag. Each of his notebooks is neatly marked: History, Geography, Mathematics, Science, Moral Science. I do not see his English book. Perhaps he has given it to Shakespeare to read.

The rest of us are getting ready for the first period after the lunch break. The class is Moral Science. Marks from this class are not counted as part of the final grade, but the lectures have been added mainly for our class, since we were asked to leave the church and its beautiful hymns more than a year ago.

Viren sees me as he puts the last of his books into his bag. He does not take his eyes off me, but continues to wheeze hard. I approach him and start wheezing exactly like him. Now I have the class’s attention. I must hurry before the teacher walks in with messages from Almighty God.

“You should become a yoga master,” I tell Viren. “You breathe so well.”

The girls in the class laugh and the boys gather closer to Viren’s desk. Viren tries to gather courage.

“Can I be your disciple?” I ask. “Please, yogiji, I want to be your humble pupil.”

Viren tries to put one hand through the strap of his blue bag. I snatch the bag away from him. He must be very tired, for he does not even resist. This is no fun.

“You accept me as your yoga student or not?” I ask.

He does not answer. The girls have stopped laughing. The boys are bored.

“Okay,” I say. “I will prove to you that I am worthy, that I can breathe as superbly as you do.”

I wheeze. I am a good wheezer. It is a great feeling to discover gifts you never knew you had.

“Please …” he says. “Stop making fun of my asthma.”

He breathes rapidly four or five times.

So do I.

“Are you having an asthma attack?” I ask.

He nods. He looks at me and puts his hand out for his bag. I throw it hard at him. The bag lands on his chest. There is a gasp from one of the girls.

“Don’t worry,” I turn around and say. “It will make his chest strong. He needs a strong chest.”

I think of the girls in the class. What strong chests they have.

Viren is a thin boy, but his chest expands like a wrestler’s. I push the bag harder against him.

“Please,” he says. “I want to go home.”

I open his bag and take out a notebook. It is labelled
Moral Science
. Maybe I should keep it for myself. Viren is physically weak, but morally strong.

“Please. My mummy is coming.” His voice cracks.

I wait for the class to laugh, and they do. A tear gathers in the corner of Viren’s right eye. Now there are two. He tries hard to breathe and control his tears. They stream.

“Who is your mummy coming with?” I ask.

“No one,” he cries.

“You liar,” I say. “She’s coming with Shakespeare!”

I am surprised that no one laughs. Miss Bardet does not find it funny, either. She just stands in the doorway and looks at a thin boy, pretty blue bag stuck to his chest, crying for air.

The taxi halts outside Lucky Moon. Each morning before school, while my friends had tea and buttered bread, I drank sugarcane juice at Lucky Moon. After I got typhoid, I switched to tea. I used the tea as a dip for bun-maska. The owner always sat at the counter, head a little bent, dispensing change at the pace of a bank teller. He would shout out the order from his counter to the waiter in the back.

I take my little brown package and climb the three white steps that lead to the tables. The sugarcane juice machine is still there, battered and dirty, with the required quota of flies and mosquitoes circling its periphery. The tables are the same: three wooden legs and a round top of white marble. The chairs are wooden with elegant backs, reminiscent of the English. The owner, Irani Uncle as we used to call him, is not at the counter. I sit at the table with my back to the man who has taken his place. I face the kitchen. It has the same grime-covered walls from years ago.

I do not like the waiter’s walk. He has been watching too many Hindi movies. His rag is too clean. This means he does not wipe the bread crumbs and spilt tea off the table.

“Chai-paani?” he asks.

“Cutting la,” I tell him.

I love the word “cutting.” We all did in school. It means nothing more than a cup of tea, three-fourths full, but it is all in the name. Students who did not use it were considered unversed in the ways of men. It is like saying, “I would like a cup of tea, please,” as opposed to, “Get me some tea, you bastard.” When you are young, there is nothing more horrible than being cultured. Low class was in, and we had plenty of it.

The waiter comes with one cutting. He puts it on my table, spilling a little. “Anything else?” he asks, irritated.

He is obviously an amateur. Deliberation by the customer is a necessity at Lucky Moon. A good waiter knows that. In fact, I made a mistake. I did not follow protocol. When you enter, you should look around as though you own the place and, with an air of disdain, select the table you wish to sit at as though you are doing the owner a favour by gracing Lucky Moon. Then you remove the pack of Charminar, Gold Flake or 555 from the left pocket of your white shirt (it has to be a white shirt) and place the pack on the table as though no one else in the country can afford cigarettes. When you know for certain that someone is watching you, you remove a cigarette from the pack. Tap it twice, only twice, on the tabletop. (One tap suggests you do not know what you are doing, and three taps or more suggests you are copying the actions of someone else.) The waiter arrives, and if he is sensible he will not speak. He will observe, wait upon you, as you put the cigarette to your lips, light it with a match and stare at the flame as it pulls away. You blow out smoke as if it is your gift to this earth. Then you lean back against the chair. Only then —
only then
— may the waiter ask for your order. And even though you have the same item every day, you deliberate.

Today I did not deliberate. I am ashamed of myself. I will make up for it by wasting the waiter’s time.

“Anything else?” he asks.

I deliberate. I have mastered the art of deliberation through years of schooling. I look at the glass showcase near the entrance. Colgate toothpaste, Parachute oil, Haman soap, all the splendours of the modern world are displayed before me. I notice that the waiter is getting impatient. So I lean back on my chair and look at his face. I do not look directly into his eyes, but at his nose and ears, so that he gets uncomfortable. He starts shifting. I clear my throat as if I am about to deliver a speech before Parliament.

“Bun-maska la,” I say.

“Just one?”

“Let me think,” I say. I put the only hand I have to my chin. My school friends would be proud of me. I miss them. “One,” I tell the waiter. To me, it is important to be low class.

I look outside and see a few parked cars. All old Fiats. Is no one rich anymore? I used to come in a bloody Mercedes. But then, my parents never loved me. So it was a fine balance. I used to water the tires of the Mercedes with my friends. Let us paint the tires yellow, I would say, but no hands. So we would all put our hands in the air and spray. My driver would be most upset. I will tell Daddy, he would shout. But it’s not
your
daddy’s car, I would reply. Then our spray painting would go all wrong because we would break out into peals of laughter. Those were the days of a privileged existence.

The sweet buttered bun I ordered soon arrives on a small steel plate. I can detect the waiter’s finger smudges on the surface of the plate. There is very little butter on the bread; it is more a thin film than a coating. The cutting is still hot. I blow into it before my first sip. The sugarcane machine has started. The flies and mosquitoes have grown accustomed to its clumsy rotations as it spits out crushed shoots of cane. I eat the bun-maska without dipping it in the cutting. The waiter is in the back boiling some more chai. I call out to him with The Kiss.

The Kiss is an unsentimental gesture in this case. A man’s lips purse to produce a sucking sound. The result is a universally accepted means of beckoning. But The Kiss cannot be used to call women. Bus conductors, drivers, beggars and friends respond well to it. If you call a woman that way, then her handbag will slap your face.

The waiter responds to my kiss but not too kindly — his Hindi movie walk commences. I place my handy brown bag on the white tabletop.

“Waiter!” I say defiantly. “There’s a fly in my soup.” My transition from low class to highbrow is sudden, but the situation demands it.

“What?”

“Did you not hear me? There’s a fly in my soup.”

“This is not soup.”

“It tastes like soup. What sort of cutting is this?”

“Lucky Moon cutting. Best in Clear Road.”

“What do we do about the fly?”

“Where is the fly?” He bends forward to inspect the cutting.

“It flew,” I say.

“Boss, this area no fool around.”

“Okay, I will finish this soup even though it is contaminated. You will be responsible for giving a cripple jaundice.”

“Cripple?”

“You mean you did not notice my deformity? Manager! Who is your manager?”

“I not see …”

“A complete lack of service. Absence of the human element!”

By now, he has no clue what I am saying. So to give him a visual stimulant, I remove the finger from the bag. In this setting it looks edible. The man moves away from the table.