Again both were in tears. I couldn’t understand why Nisha was so moved by this particular story, all of us worked every day with people with awful tales to tell. The wedding picture gave the answer, the happiest moment in the love affair of a Hindu woman and a Muslim man. Like Nisha and Zafar.
After Aftaab’s death the moneylender sent his goons after her. These were guys whose eyes were red from drinking, mean miserable mother-fuckers, they carried Rampuri flick-knives and wouldn’t hesitate to use them. They stood in the gulli outside her house and called in loud voices. “Ohé bitch, are you in there?” “Whore, have you forgotten the money you owe?” “Have some pity,” she told them. “My husband has just died.” They walked into her house and took things. They took her cooking pots. They wheeled away her husband’s bicycle. “Well, he won’t be needing it any more.”
At the end of this narrative all are in tears, except me who never cries and for each story as tragic as this can narrate ten that are worse.
When Pyaré has gone, Nisha says, “We have to do something for her. We’ve got to get those goons off her back.”
“There is a problem,” says Zafar. “How can we help one and not others? If we help Pyaré, where does it end? How can we say to her neighbours who also have suffered terribly, we’ve helped her but we can’t help you?”
“Zafar,” says Nisha, “I don’t know the answer, but I know that if I do not help that poor woman and her daughters, I myself will die.”
“You shall not die,” he said. “This is what we’ll do. We will ask twenty friends to start a fund, I’ll here and now put in a thousand rupees.”
“And me,” said Nisha.
“I too will give a thousand,” said Somraj.
“And I,” said Farouq. They looked at me but I looked the other way.
“Animal?” asks Zafar. See? He’s determined I should have the opportunity to show the generosity of my spirit.
“Twenty,” I mumble.
“When we’ve paid Pyaré’s debt,” said Zafar, “we’ll begin a new work, a trust to give low interest loans so people are not driven to these scum.” Thus spoke Zafar bravely, but I caught his groaning thoughts and knew that another heavy burden had just been added to the world he carried on his shoulders.
The money when it was collected was a lot more than twenty thousand rupees. It could not be given to Pyaré Bai because the moneylender might trick her. It needed to be given direct plus a receipt obtained.
“I’ll take it.” This is me.
Says Zafar, “I think better not this time.”
“What, don’t you trust me?” This time I’ve got him.
“You’re right, I don’t. Not your honesty, your big mouth it’s I don’t trust. These are bad guys.”
“I’ll take it,” I repeat. “Trust can’t be cut. You either trust or you don’t.”
Zafar fiddles with his beard, ponders. “Okay then, you take it, but Farouq will go with you.”
It was the most money I had ever carried, enough to buy a house.
The moneylender was P. N. Jeweller, shop’s in Iltutmish Street, in the Chowk. Farouq and me, we’ve wandered up there slowly through the noise and smells, pakoras frying, crowds, money’s in the bag round my neck.
“Her arse man,” says Farouq, “it’s like two sweet juicy melons, wouldn’t I love to sink my teeth into that?” Guess who he’s talking about.
“You have a disgusting mind,” I tell him. “Even a gutter born person like me doesn’t talk that way.”
“Doesn’t talk, but thinks,” says he, laughing. “I’ve seen you looking at her, plus at Nisha too. You four-footed bastard wander the city with dick dangling, in secret you wear out your fist.”
Well, there’s truth in this, Eyes, I won’t deny, but don’t tell me he doesn’t do the same, or you for that matter, can you honestly say you’ve never touched yourself, so what’s the big deal?
“Trouble with you, Animal,” continues Farouq, we’re passing the Hanuman temple where the milkmen gather each morning, “is you think because you’ve a crooked back and walk with your arse in the air no one should dare to criticise you. I’m an animal, always you’re bleating, I’m an animal, I don’t have to do like the rest of you, laws of society don’t apply to me because I’m such a fucking animal.”
It really irritates him that I choose to be an animal not human, it’s like grit in his eye. “Wasn’t me who gave myself the name of Animal,” I reply. “Plus who was it just now called me four-foot? Oh, I do believe it was you.”
“Don’t whinge,” says he. “This is Khaufpur. In this city if a man is lame he’s called Langda. If he’s cross-eyed he’s Look-London-Talk-Tokyo. These are just fucking words, call him Raju or Razaq, doesn’t change what he is.”
Not very bright, is our Farouq. Really, he should have been a mechanic, or a goonda in a criminal gang like his two brothers. First he does not realise that everything’s just fucking words, second this edge he misses, that when I say I’m an animal it’s not just what I look like but what I feel. “Your name should be Hypocrite,” I tell him, “because in front of people like Somraj Pandit you act respectable, at Muharram you’ll walk across hot coals to show how pious you are, three-sixty-four other days you do not set one foot in the masjid, nor do you say daily namaaz, behind the backs of the mullahs you are up to all kinds of dirty adventures.”
I say this because of him visiting the houses near Laxmi Talkies.
Eyes, till now I’ve not told you much about Farouq, except that he’s Zafar’s number two. You must be wondering, what’s a roughneck like him doing mixed up with Zafar and Nisha, how come he does a caring kind of work in return for next to no pay? Hardly the type he’s, his uncle is Afroze Khan Yar-yilaqi, a big gangster in Khaufpur, mixed up with transport scams, smuggling, liquor, all kinds of stuff. Farouq’s dad is the younger brother of this godfather but the two of them had quarrelled. Two years ago Farouq’s father fell seriously ill, he could not get proper treatment, it was Zafar who fixed it, since that time Farouq worships Zafar, he came to work with him, for Zafar and Nisha he’ll do anything, but me he treats like shit, he says it’s what I deserve.
Farouq’s people are Yar-yilaqis. They came to Khaufpur from Yar-yilaq, it’s a region near Samarkand. This happened a long time ago, maybe three hundred years, Farouq told me about it once, guess I wasn’t listening. There’s a whole Yar-yilaqi quarter of Khaufpur, the women in that district wear high heels under their burqas and lipstick under their veils, but if you upset one of them with some Eve-teasing type of remark she’s liable to out with a knife and stick you, this too Farouq told me, in which case it’s a shameful miracle that he has lived so long. Always though there’s hope that one day he will burn to death. Each year at Muharram, it’s tradition for Yar-yilaqi men to show their purity of heart by walking with bare feet over a bed of hot coals. Farouq does this every year, he’s proud of it.
Any mention of the firewalk is bound to cause trouble between Farouq and me, in past years like others I’ve gone to see it, to get any kind of view I’ve had to shin up something, last time it was scaffolding where they had put a TV camera, my jumping about was making it shake. Farouq yelled at me, “Animal, get down, what are you doing here anyway, little shit, don’t even believe in god?”