Narcopolis (13 page)

It was too early for customers. When Rashid arrived, agitated and muttering to himself, only Dimple and Bengali were in the khana. The old man kept his accounts and looked after the shop, and had been with him since the early days, when Rashid was a tapori selling charas near Grant Road Station. Bengali spent most of his time locking and unlocking a tin box that served as the register, putting in money, paying it out. He’d been working for Rashid for many years, and no one knew anything about his life before he came to Shuklaji Street, except that he’d once been a clerk in a government office in Calcutta. He was between fifty and seventy, wrinkled skin on bone, and he spoke English with an affected British accent.

‘Syzygy,’ he said one afternoon, and he repeated the word in case the student had not heard him. ‘That is the reason the world has gone mad.’

‘What?’

‘Syzygy. It has never happened before and it won’t happen again.’

‘No, probably not. It’s a once in a lifetime occurrence.’

‘How can it not affect everything? Nine planets, lined up on the same side of the sun. Does it mean the end of the world as some people think?’

‘It’s tempting to see it that way, I suppose, kind of like a unified theory of apocalypse.’

‘You understand, all the planets in a row, like sitting ducks. I say it’s an important question, the question of syzygy. Maybe the most important question of all.’

Bengali was in his usual position, sitting on his haunches with his head between his bony knees. He seemed to be smiling but it was difficult to tell, because his face was so thin and his skin shone with a papery yellow light. He told the student not to worry. Chandulis and charasis were like cockroaches, he said, they would survive anything, including the end of the world. He quoted a Punjabi proverb or poem or limerick:

And he talked about the historical tradition of the apocalypse myth and other matters, for ten minutes, very slowly, like a scholar, and the student listened open-mouthed. What Bengali was doing, Rashid thought, was making up big what-ifs, making them up out of thin air. Bengali
was
a what-if. He talked about mythological, religious and political figures as if he knew them well, knew their numerous personal failings and feet of clay. He was on first-name terms with Jesus, Nehru and Gandhi, Cassius Clay, Winston Churchill, Gina Lollobrigida and Jean-Paul Sartre. Would Orpheus’s story have been different if he’d chosen another, slightly more cheerful song? Bengali asked the student. Perhaps, in his distraction, he made a mistake, an error of judgment, and he chose the wrong tune. If you’re singing for the Furies, I personally would choose something to please them. What if he had chosen wisely? What would have happened? Would he have kept his wife and his head? And purely as an aside, mind you, I’ll point out that the real interest of the tale is the psychological portrait of a person in grief. Because, if you know anything about grief, you know that its main outward manifestation is a deep distraction, like absent-mindedness without the insouciance.

From Orpheus or Icarus or Stephen Dedalus he turned to Bengali cultural heroes, Tagore and Satyajit Ray and the Dutts, Guru, Toru and Michael Madhusudhan. He shared the regional affliction that Bengalis were prone to, the conviction that they were the most artistic and talented people in the world. But Bengali was a maverick Bengali and some of his views were a kind of blasphemy. What if Tagore had not won the Nobel when he did? Bengali asked. How would it have affected his work? I suspect it would have made him more open to experimentation and more interesting in every way, especially in his poetry, which, I have to say, is not very good. And why shouldn’t I say so? The point about Tagore is that the whole was far greater than the sum of the parts. It is the composite figure that matters. But Tagore the mystic and poet? Tagore the painter? Tagore the composer? Not one of those Tagores is worth very much.

The old man was sitting by the cookpot, imbibing fumes by a system of osmosis. When he saw Rashid he got up to prepare his boss’s pyali. Outside, the day was bright with noonday sun and Rashid could see the balcony of Khalid’s place next door, the ancient iron railing and the flaking green paint on the walls. They were meeting today, Khalid and he, after lunch, which could mean anytime before the evening prayer. Rashid picked up the newspaper and put his glasses on, but he couldn’t focus on the words. He was still rattled by the anger that had swept him up. He put the paper aside and prepared a hit of coke. The room got busy all of a sudden, two lamps lit, the pot bubbling in the tiled washing area near the entrance, and Dimple fixing his pipe while Bengali placed his pyalis on a tray.

Rashid said, Chal, chal, hurry up, don’t be doing your randi baazi when my pipe’s waiting to be made. Dimple didn’t seem to hear him; she dipped a knitting needle into a pyali and cooked the opium into a soft black bubble. Then she tapped the stem and Rashid ducked to the pipe. He smoked cross-legged, never mind the popular version, on your back with your knees bent and your legs triangulated. He was a businessman, a father. He wasn’t going to lie there with his legs open to the world. He took a long pull of the pipe and a stream of smoke ascended from his nostrils and veiled his face. He took another pull and this time there was no smoke: he ate it down. It was just short of noon and already the khana was dark, in a kind of permanent half-shade. The room made people talk in whispers, as if they were in a place of worship, which, the way he saw it, they were. Already now there were times he could feel it
slipping
away, a way of life vanishing as he watched, the pipes, the oil lamps layered with years of black residue, the conversations that a man would begin and lose interest in, all the rituals that he revered and obeyed, all of it disappearing.

When Khalid arrived, Rashid was having lunch, scooping it up from stainless-steel dabbas spread on the floor. The food, sent hot from upstairs, was backed up with a fish delivery from Delhi Darbar and a stack of tandoori rotis and bheja fry and lassi, thick, no froth, a slab of hard cream on top. He had had a craving for bheja and fish, the bheja with its texture like scrambled eggs and that odd resistance when it burst in the mouth. His older wife, Dariya, had tried to make it at home but she couldn’t manage the flavour that Delhi Darbar’s cook seemed to get every time, without effort. She’d sent biryani, the mutton cooked with the rice, not layered separately, and plates of fresh onion and cucumber, and daal fry with garlic, a film of oil floating on top. He ate no biryani but mutton, bought the meat himself three times a week. Because he could afford it, he ate meat every day, sometimes twice a day, sometimes mutton and chicken. He was sitting cross-legged, hands smeared with rice and masala, working on his second plate of biryani, and he invited his neighbour to join him but Khalid declined, as he always did, declined even to taste the meal. Which was an unMuslim thing to do, never mind that it was rude. Rashid thought: This is what we do: we eat together from the same dish. This is how we remember we’re brothers. He motioned to Khalid to sit. He wasn’t eager to share his lunch in any case and he wanted to take his time with the lassi, which he would have last, like dessert. But Khalid’s presence in the khana had lessened his pleasure in the meal. It took some effort to ignore the man, who was leaning over, putting his mouth near Rashid’s ear, saying he wanted to talk in private, as if Bengali and Dimple were not to be trusted. Rashid continued to eat, methodically working his way through the food. We are in private, he said, when he was washing his hands at the tap. Then they went through the formalities. Salaam alikum. Alikum as salaam. How are you? How’s business? Your family? Your health? And they went through the ordering and serving of tea, paani kum from the restaurant downstairs, brought up double fast by a freelance pipeman. The khana was filling with customers and still Khalid wouldn’t talk, so Rashid suggested they stand on the balcony for a moment, sip from their glasses of milky chai, and only then did he get to it.

‘Much better, Rashidbhai, some privacy in your balcony where I can tell you my news.’

‘Tell me. One minute,’ and Rashid said a few words to Bengali, something about getting the cookpot started for the day’s second batch of chandu, which was an unnecessary order: Bengali had never forgotten to do it.

‘Okay.’

‘I’ve been approached by Sam Biryani. You’ve heard of him, he’s always in the papers.’

‘He’s too much in the papers.’

‘He made an offer, very good terms to open a garad pipeline from Tardeo to Nagpada.’

‘If it’s a good offer, take it up.’

‘That’s why I’m here. I’ve brought this up with you before but you never give me a proper reply. My suggestion is we do it together. Garad is the future of the business.’

‘Your topi is fur, isn’t it? Doesn’t it get warm in this weather?’

‘It’s insulation, bhai, in winter and summer, that’s why we Kashmiris wear them.’

‘That’s why you Kashmiris are so hot-headed. Take it off once in a while, miya, it might lighten your outlook. Meanwhile, listen to me: I won’t sell powder here.’

‘You use it but you won’t sell it.’

‘I use it carefully.’

‘Everybody says that. What about the Pathan, Kader Khan? I’m trying to remember how soon he was finished. Six months? Or less? Such a dada and look at him now, khatarnak junkie.’

‘This is what you want to talk about? Give me a lecture about the evils of drugs?’

‘You’re an educated man. You have your way of seeing things.’

‘You mean I’m not seeing something.’

‘I mean you should be thinking of diversifying, expanding your business.’

‘Garad separates the strong from the weak; it brings out the worst in a man and the best. That’s why the Pathan gave up so quickly; inside he was nothing.’

‘And you?’

Rashid was looking at the street. A beggar woman squatted over a puddle by the garbage pit on the intersection of Shuklaji Street and Arab Gully. She was dark and plump and she wore a fitted kameez that she held up around her waist.
Emptying
. The correct word for what she was doing. He noticed that her hair had been very stylishly cut, cropped short over the ears, with pointed sideburns and a little tail in the back. The puddle under her expanded and the people on the street stepped over it without comment. Then the woman’s head came up and her eyes met Rashid’s and there was no embarrassment in her face, only intelligence. From the balcony, he could see into Khalid’s khana next door. It was a smaller room, with a single pipe and no customers, no one there at all except for the pipe maker. Rashid’s was already busy, a group of Spanish-speaking hippies around one pipe and students from Wilson College around the other. Waiting their turn were Dawood Chikna, an up-and-coming businessman and gangster, and Bachpan, a pimp, with his friend and associate, the pocket-maar Pasina. Last in line was a fellow called Spiderman for the way he crawled on all fours. Salim was there too, in a new shirt, a starched yellow number with flap pockets and large collars. He was at Dimple’s station, deep in conversation with the kaamvali. Rashid wanted to know what they were talking about but all he could hear was Khalid, who was saying that a businessman should never sample his own merchandise, particularly if his business was drugs, and that a Mussulman did not put his habits before his duty to God, that only kafirs did such a thing. Rashid watched the beggar woman who was tidying up the garbage on the sidewalk and he thought about his system. A man’s reputation depended on never seeming intoxicated. So, in the afternoons, he read
Inquilab
, squinting at the editorials, some article on the Muslim Brotherhood’s travails in Syria or the Jews’ latest incursions into Lebanon, and he stole a few quick nods. Then he’d give an order to Bengali, whatever order it didn’t matter, a shout for a pipe or for lunch, a summons for the malishwallah, for whisky or cocaine, an audible order to an employee to re-establish the chain of command. In the evening if he’d been drinking a lot he went upstairs for an hour or two to nap. He was always mindful of his reputation, but here was this Khalid, this Kashmiri, casting aspersions. Just then, Rashid noticed something odd. All sound and activity had frozen, as if a giant wave was about to hit the street, and this was the split second of calm before the chaos. The beggar woman was completely still, a black marble statue listening intently to the decades as they passed through her; the salt march to freedom; the years of upheaval and bloodletting and so-called Independence; the years of the Pakistan wars when headlights were painted black to keep automobiles safe from enemy jets; the years of regulation and control and planned socialism; the years of failure. Everything was frozen, even the traffic and the sunlight and the slight still breeze, and then the woman went back to her work and the street too resumed its normal pace and Rashid realized he’d been holding his breath.

‘What is she doing, the beggar woman, what is she doing?’ he asked Khalid.

‘It’s already a thing of the past, chandu,’ Khalid said, ‘like these pipes.’

‘Like everything, like us.’

‘That is the nasha talking, not you. Listen, very soon all the khanas will be closed, ours included. Last month, they closed six. In one month. Padlocks and chains courtesy Customs Excise.’

‘There are too many on this street. Let them close.’

‘And then? What will you do for business?’

‘This, that.’

‘You’re a BA pass, educated man, but you’re talking like you don’t know how to read-write.’

Rashid brushed the hair off his face with his hands, letting the thought take shape in his head before he spoke. He said, It’s a funny thing, only the uneducated set so much stock by education. When you go to school you realize how little it means, because the street belongs to whoever takes it. Today it’s ours; tomorrow someone else will take our place. My problem, I don’t like garad heroin. Garadulis put their foot on the accelerator and push all the way to the floor. The car was going five miles an hour and suddenly it’s up to fifty-five. Super fast, then crash. A chanduli can smoke for years and be healthy; garadulis are impatient, they want to die quickly. You say we’re businessmen and we should provide what people want. What kind of a businessman would I be if I supplied heroin to chandu customers? I would be a chooth businessman. I’d be shooting myself in the foot. Why I’m telling you this, it’s my way of saying don’t ask me again to join you in business.

Salim, Pasina and Dimple were not looking in his direction, but some of the others were. Even Bengali, unflappable as the old man was, had forgotten himself and was staring. Khalid lit a cigarette and regarded Rashid as he smoked. His shirt was tucked into pleated trousers and the Kashmiri topi was tilted at an angle on his head. He was a drug dealer but he looked like a shopkeeper.

Finally he said, ‘The crazy woman? She’s mending a salvaar, she’s stitching, that’s why she’s half dressed. She’s crazy but she keeps quiet. Your kaamvali, the hijda Dimple, why do you let her talk so much?’

‘The customers like to hear her talk.’

‘Our scripture says women must be silent in the assemblies of men. It isn’t permitted for them to speak. This is a chandu khana but it is also an assembly of men. Tell her that.’

‘Tell her yourself, there she is.’

But Khalid would not look in her direction.

‘Kaam,’ said Bengali, as if to himself, ‘is work in Hindi, but desire or lust in Sanskrit. So kaamvali has a double meaning, which this gentleman is doubtless aware of.’

Rashid asked for tea and Marie biscuits to be sent to the beggar woman with the haircut who was still stitching, seated on the sidewalk on the junction of Shuklaji Street and Arab Gully. She was not, at the moment, reclining on the garbage. It
occurred
to him that she used the garbage dump as a toilet and the sidewalk as a living area. He heard Khalid say something about tapping new sources of income and the need to expand one’s consumer base if one wished to stay on top of the business. He was talking to save face. Rashid watched a boy from the teashop downstairs hand the woman a glass of milky tea and a plate of biscuits. She sat on a metal awning from Delite Restaurant, the restaurant out of business, the awning lying on the street for months now, its tin warped. She sipped at the tea, her little finger raised in the air. She ate the biscuits one by one, daintily, dipping each one in the tea before putting it in her mouth. She was smiling.