Half a Rupee: Stories Read online

  But Aunty, being Aunty, had constructed a still—right behind her shack, not like Bakshi who had his distilling apparatus in the corner of the maidan. Bakshi would brew liquor only once in ten–fifteen days and distil just enough to fill his drums. The days Bakshi would fire his still you could see the havildar making rounds of his hut right from the morning. Bakshi owned another two huts—the men of honour would sit inside one of these and drink. And the men of normal stature, whose honour would neither increase nor decrease if they were seen drinking, would squat outside the huts and drink the country liquor. For snacks they would lick the salt kept on the plate in front of them. But Aunty was Aunty—she would distil her alcohol with great love and tenderness. She would put some rotting fruits in her brew and very little sal ammoniac. Her alcohol was the colour of gold. And if you brought in your own empty bottle she would give a discount of one rupee on the price. Her customers were mostly regulars. They were the only ones who came to her and never after 10 p.m. After that it was her time to drink. She would drink herself senseless, feast on beef and then go off to sleep. If somebody were to wake her up, she would hurl such choice abuses at them that the entire basti would become redolent with the language.

  But now even Aunty was imprisoned behind walls. You no longer got to hear her—as if her voice has been choked. She did not seem this lonely earlier.

  And Jaani … these days he says that the money from his hotel job is not enough, not any more. He sold off some of his chickens, ate some and some died. What could he do? You couldn’t raise chickens on the second or third floor!

  This year, Gaffar did not buy a billy goat either. On Bakr-i-Id, he sacrificed his own she-goat. What else could he do? Earlier he would let his goat loose and the goat would look after herself—she would graze for food somewhere in the rubbish heaps of the basti. Now she was eating away the clothes in the house—the cost of two lungis had got added to Gaffar’s monthly budget. Poor Gaffar. When he did not have his pukka house, he was so much better off.

  My husband too used to often bring his friends home. He would set the charpoy outside our shack and drink and argue most of the night away; and then they would roll over there itself and sleep through the rest of the night. In the morning they would all get up and go about their duties. Now my husband had stopped bringing his friends over. In these one-room homes, what would all the men and women do now? Earlier the children would lie on the floor inside and the men would sleep outside. The women, after filling their buckets with water from the tap, would come and pick up their bleating kids and wrap them around their bosoms and go off to sleep. What were they to do now? The grown-up kids … they all kept staring wide-eyed.

  I have told my husband a number of times, ’Damn it, is this any life? The government had locked us up in boxes and you know why … so that the stench of poverty stays contained, stays inside. Come, let’s sell this pukka house and go somewhere else … to some other slum. Surely we can find some place that we like.’

  The Rain

  The rain was unrelenting. It had poured night and day, continuously, for five days in a row. And Damoo had been drinking relentlessly, day and night, all through those five days, competing with the downpour. Neither would the rain let up nor would Damoo let go. The steadfast rain and stubborn Damoo. Drunk, both.

  Damoo had always been like this. When he picked up the bottle he had to completely take to it. His drinking bouts stretched into days, going on for twenty days, sometimes thirty. He would drink all through the day and right through the night. When his wife stopped Laksha from supplying him more, Damoo would conjure up a bottle from anywhere—from under the mattress, from inside the containers in the kitchen, even from the rafters on the roof. He had an insatiable capacity to drink. And he was happy when he was drinking. He was never the man you would find in a drunken brawl; in this Damoo was quite unlike others. And when he gave up the hooch, he really gave it up—he wouldn’t touch the devil for three or four months at a stretch, sometimes even for a full six months. When he was on the wagon, there wasn’t another man like him in the basti—there was no better father than him, no better husband, no better worker.

  But all that was in another season. Seasons change. This monsoon he had started drinking with the very first showers. And this year it wasn’t raining, it was pouring. Such a downpour had not been seen in the last hundred years.

  The city braved the first day of the onslaught. Local train services were suspended, then resumed, and then suspended again. The second day took its toll—trucks were unable to enter the city. They started grinding to a halt on the highways. The city was flooding. The supply of fresh vegetables dried up. Prices shot up like the ears of a rabbit. The rain kept falling—in sheets. Steadily, unfalteringly. And Damoo kept drinking, matching the intensity of the rain.

  By the third day the signs of danger were loud and clear. Rain and more rain accompanied by strong winds. The wind drove the sheets of rain into the lane, and it quickly started filling up. Half the household lay strewn outside Damoo’s house in the lane—his wife started dragging it all into the kholi, their one-room tenement. The kholi had the wingspan of a sparrow. It could hardly accommodate Damoo, his wife Shobha, and their daughter Kishni who was to be married off the next month. When the wife pulled in the family goat as well, Damoo lost it: ‘Abey, what’s the need to get this behen inside?’

  ‘What am I to do—let it soak in the rain? Till when?’

  ‘Look at the bloody thick coat she has! She’s not going to wilt in two hours.’

  ‘You say two hours, but it’s been two days. Today the lane’s flooded. Even the drain’s spilling over. I think this accursed rain is going to sweep Punya’s shanty away.’

  Damoo fell silent. He smacked a little salt off his right hand, picked up the glass and guzzled half a glass of hooch. The booze scorched his innards and he belched out a thick, filthy curse—directed this time at the maker of the hooch.

  ‘The bastard. Saala has poured so much naushader* into the booze it tastes more like battery acid.’

  Shobha did not respond. She tied the goat in the corner and spoke to Kishni instead. ‘Get up beti. Pick up all the things from the floor and put them on the shelf. I’m afraid some water will seep in. This rain is not going to let up. It has started raining harder instead …’

  She hadn’t even finished speaking when a clamour rose in the streets, ‘Look at that, that’s Punya’s shanty—it … it’s gone.’

  Shobha looked out of her door: Muqadam’s roof had collapsed and slid onto the lane. People ran across to hoist it up again, but there was no point. Instead of flowing in from the lane, the water was now filling in from the top. The sky was stubborn in its intent.

  Kishni wanted to run out, to help, but Shobha stopped her: ‘You stay put. You’re going to get married next month. I don’t want you to break a limb.’ She muttered something more under her breath and hurried out of the house.

  Damoo looked at his daughter. There were now only the three of them—Damoo, Kishni and the goat. Love for his daughter was spilling out of his bosom. He wanted to reach out to her, to strike up a conversation.

  ‘Are there any onions in the house, beti? Will you give me one—sliced? Sprinkle some salt on it.’

  Kishni began to slice an onion without a word. And Damoo scooped up the bottle of booze from the window and filled his glass all over again.

  ‘Pour me a glass of water too, from the matki.’

  Without saying anything, Kishni filled a mug with water and gave it to her father. Damoo now had half a glass of booze topped to the brim with water. Kishni had walked back to her corner of the room before Damoo could extend his quivering hand over her head in blessing. The hand kept flapping in the air for a few orphan moments, quite like a bird in mid-fight, and then came down to roost.

  ‘You no worry, beti. I’ll arrange your marriage with style. Will give you twenty-five thousand rupees kholi, another twenty–five thousand for clothes and jewellery. And also give y
our man twenty-five thousand cash. Full one lakh I’ll bring. Will spend all on your marriage. One lakh, too much, no? All right, fifty thousand then. I’ll get fifty thousand for your marriage.’

  He must have said this at least twenty-five thousand times, this talk of fifty thousand rupees. Every time Shobha would snub him, ‘Where from? Where will you bring the money from—bet on a race or do a dacoity or what?’

  This was what Shobha told him every time. And he too, in every drunken stupor of his, would put his hand in blessing over his daughter’s head in his own inimitable style and repeat the exact same words, ‘You no worry, beti …’

  Kishni put down the plate of sliced onions and salt and moved out of Damoo’s sight. The floodwater had by now started seeping into the house. The bucket in the kitchen was still ringing with raindrops trickling in from the leaking roof. The goat had been squatting on the floor. It now stood up on all fours.

  Shobha was not yet back. It had been quite some time. Kishni had braved the rain and ventured out to find her mother. She too had now been gone for over half an hour. Damoo began to worry about their possessions.

  The first thing he secured was his litre of booze: he put it on a higher shelf. The other bottle was still safe, hidden inside a canister of daal in the kitchen. Then he filled a jug with water and kept it safely aside. After that he hauled the two tin trunks up on the wooden plank that also doubled up as their bed. The third trunk proved too heavy for him. He hurt his feet trying to drag it up—so he let that be.

  The goat stood crouched in a corner in silent prayer. Damoo found some puffed rice in a jar, filled some into his pockets, scooped some in his hands and returned to where he had been sitting—and continued drinking and munching. The kholi was now fast filling up with floodwater.

  Now, Shobha returned, but not Kishni. She had hitched her sari over her knees. She yelled, ‘Listen, today no cooking possible at home. Maliya’s hotel is flooded, half-filled with water. People are running for shelter to the garages on the upper side.’

  He was drunk but he remembered, ‘What about Muqadam—his house, flooded or no?’

  ‘Poor man! He’s still at it, hauling his stuff upstairs to safety. Everybody’s at it—Heera, Gopal, Sulaiman, everybody. But what to do—look after the young and the old or save the belongings?’

  Shobha was picking up the foodstuff and keeping them aside safely, one by one. She had brought some vada-pav for Damoo. As she was giving it to him, she kept on the prattle, ‘How many kids these people in our mohalla produce? At least ten kids you’ll find in every size. Thank God, we only have one.’

  Damoo was relieved to see his wife back. He shook the droplets of rain from his hair and said, ‘If you could have held on to your pregnancies, here also would be a long line of kids.’

  Shobha glared at him, ‘There is a God above, no, to save me. Here … eat it.’

  Damoo grabbed her wrist, ‘Why, God’s your relative or what?’

  ‘Let go of me!’ Shobha said in mock irritation. ‘Be ready to leave … just look how fast the water’s filling up.’

  Shobha had propped a chair on top of the two trunks. Damoo quietly stood up and climbed atop the chair, ‘This high your relative cannot come also. Forget the water.’

  ‘Be careful! Don’t fall down. There won’t be anybody here to pick you up.’

  ‘Why? Where are you going?’

  ‘To the roof on the garage. They need help. Even Kishni’s there.’

  ‘When is she coming back?’

  ‘As soon as the rain lets up we will all return.’

  But this time round nobody let up—neither the rain nor Damoo. The floodwater in the lane kept surging. The drain metamorphosed into a river. Muqadam’s youngest son fell into the water and was swept away. A few people ran to pull him out but the current dragged the boy further away. A few people got wounded in the effort. Some people thought that the boy had got sucked into an open manhole above which the floodwaters had created a whirlpool.

  And then the electricity went. Or perhaps the government had shut off the power to stave off electrocutions from short circuits. As the day began to wear off the city begun to drown in darkness as well. The three garages on the upper side of the lane got filled with six feet of water. The cars, stripped of their engines for repair, were floating in the water like graves. There were a number of huge floor-to-ceiling cabinets in the garage. People threw out the stuff from the shelves closest to the ceiling and crawled into them. No one had any intention of stepping down till the rain abated.

  Those who could escape sought shelter on the roofs of sturdier buildings, in hospital verandas, in school classrooms. Kishni was sitting lifelessly in a hospital veranda. Somebody had broken the news to her—they said Shobha was seen drowning in the floodwater; a few others said that she had been bitten by a snake. A number of serpents had been seen swimming in the deluge.

  While there still was some daylight left, a couple of young men did venture to enter Damoo’s kholi. But they could not break in. The water now reached up to their necks. The goat hung in the water, legs up, in the doorway. It was long dead. The undercurrent near the wall was strong, and the window at the back was totally under water. Damoo had somehow managed to pull the other table—on which Shobha kept their utensils—up on their bed. A few pots and pans were still floating in the water. Most had been swept away. The roar of the rain and the gurgle of the surging water threatened to split their eardrums. The young men called out for Damoo, yelled his name till they were hoarse, but Damoo—a bottle in one hand and a long wooden stick in the other—was busy trying to fish out a few floating tomatoes and cucumbers from the water. He was actually fishing—hooking them and then reeling them in. And he was laughing. He neither heard them call out to him nor did he call out for help. Perhaps he had not even thought of seeking help—he was still above the water, he was still in the race, the bet was still in play: who would let up first—the rain or Damoo.

  The Charioteer

  The first steamboat to Elephanta Caves left the piers of Gateway of India at seven-thirty in the morning. That was why Maruti had to be there by six-thirty. His chores were well-defined: sweep the boat, pick up the litter of last night’s passengers and finally wash and mop it clean; then move on to the next boat. That was what his mornings were all about, that was his routine.

  Narasingha Rao, his employer, was happy with his work but he had the foulest mouth one could possess—he had no control over his tongue, swearing out a litany of profanities. Agreed, he did not mean a single one of the foul words he spat out, but each of his foul utterances did rankle in Maruti’s ears and singe his heart nonetheless. Narasingha Rao’s lungi was hitched high up on his thighs and there was a six-finger-wide tilak on his forehead, freshly anointed. He must be waking up his god pretty early in the morning.

  By the time the boat was all washed up and clean, a motley crowd of passengers would have queued up for the ride. Tourists from abroad, mostly American and Japanese, herded in groups by their travel agents. Quite often the passengers for the first boat ride strolled out of the Taj Hotel right in the front of the pier, clutching onto their small little bags, an assortment of hats on their heads, cameras and binoculars slung across their shoulders. But the peace with which Maruti cleaned the first boat would go missing when he started work on the second one. No sooner would the first boat leave than the passengers left behind would jump into the second one, even before he could finish his mopping. And to add to his woes, the passengers for the second boat would be of a different kind—less classy, more demanding. Gone would be the meaningless swearing of the morning, the gentle cursing. The cussing now developed a sting—Maruti could feel it whiplash against his skin—worsening as the sun became stronger.

  Narasingha Rao owned three ferries. They trawled the waters between Gateway and Elephanta—filled their bellies with passengers on one shore and emptied them at the other, leaving in their wake crumpled, empty packets of spicy savouries, shells of peanuts,
peels of oranges, wrappers of chocolates and candies, vomit, angrily tossed packets of contraceptives, beads from a broken necklace, somebody’s cap and another’s handkerchief. Maruti’s arms would tire picking up the trash.

  The passengers were not allowed to throw anything overboard into the sea, but Maruti never ever stopped anyone from doing so. If they insisted in their own ways to lessen his burden, lighten his load, who was he to stop them? Scraping the dried vomit from the floor of the boat was the hardest thing to do. And it was very common for those travelling in a boat in the sea for the first time to puke; it was the common curse—the shared disease. Most people leant against the railings and puked over them, and in their effort to do so, puked mostly on their own shirts and onto the benches. It was worse during high tide. All that they had eaten would come out. Narsingha Rao had issued a standing order to scoop water up from the tank and clean the vomit immediately. It was back-breaking work and Maruti would double up in pain. At times he would even be kicked by the superior. On these ferries he was the lowliest of the low—he was the mehtar, a mere sweeper. So they would ask him to do whatever they liked. The captain of the boat brought his lunch in a box but ate with proper plates and cutlery. And Maruti had to clean both his tiffin box and his plates and then arrange his basket before he left in the evening.