“Hello Animal,” says old Huriya. “What brings you here so late?”
“Need to fetch water,” I say. “Ma’s not well. Has a fever.”
“That good woman,” says Huriya, sucking in breath and shaping it into a prayer for Ma. “I do hope it’s not serious. Come Aliya, Animal needs our help.”
“Can I ride you to the pump?” asks the child, putting down her book.
“What, is he a horse to be ridden?” scolds her granny.
“No, a donkey,” replies cheeky Aliya, but I’ve said it’s okay I don’t mind, my shoulders are broad and strong, I’ve given rides to countless kids. So she’s climbed atop, complete with large water pot, and it’s away to the pump, her heels urging my ribs, she’s shouting trrrr, hup and the like.
“Good you can read,” I tell her. “What was the book about?”
“It’s a story,” says she, “about a girl called Anarko who won’t do as she’s told.”
“Like you, then.”
“Huh, aren’t I coming with you? I work hard.” It’s true, she does. Her granddad Hanif being blind and all, and Huriya old, Aliya does all the water fetching, cleaning and more besides, plus goes to school when she can.
“Only joking,” I tell her, “you’re a good kid.”
This compliment earns me a hard kick to the ribs.
Well, Eyes, with Aliya’s help the water is no problem because although Khaufpuri pump water stinks it is free.
On the way back from the pump, Aliya’s walking ahead with the big pot balanced on her head, I call to her to carry on to our place while I knock on the door of the local shopkeeper, Baju. By this time it’s maybe ten at night, he’s probably in bed giving his wife one but my banging gets him up again.
“Oh it’s you,” says he with a surly expression. “What is it?”
“I need an aubergine and a teaspoon of tea,” says I with my sincerest look. “I’ll give you the money tomorrow.”
“You haven’t paid me for the last time yet,” says Baju.
“Listen, I wouldn’t ask, but Ma Franci is ill, there isn’t even a humble onion in the place, for the poor nothing is easy.”
“Hope it’s not malaria,” says he, somewhat softened. “If it’s for Ma then there’s no charge.”
“I’ll also need some sugar.”
“Anything else?” he asks with a resigned air.
So I give him the list. Garlic and then, because he’s offering, “milk, salt, a few cardamoms, some black pepper, thumb of ginger, cinnamon stick, couple of cloves.”
“What? Is that all?”
“It’s for Ma. You know what they say about proper chai, the old women say it will make a dead man warm.”
“It must be malaria,” he says. “She has had it before. You’d better take some aspirins as well, if the fever hasn’t gone by morning come back and I’ll find something better.” As I’m leaving he says, “This lot’s on me, but mind you pay me for the last time.”
Tight bastard.
News of Ma Franci’s sickness must have reached the nuns because a few days later I come home to find her growling at the dog, who’s curled up with her paws crossed over her nose, almost it looks like she’s trying to cover up her ears. Ma isn’t swearing, not exactly, she does not use the kind of bad language I do, putain con, bordel de merde etcetera, which I was taught by a jarnalis français, he and I sat on a fallen log for half a day swapping gaalis, but Ma’s cursing in a way that sounds more terrible because she really means it, il vient encore, cet glos pautonnier, qu’il se morde sa langue de douleur. It means, again he’s coming, that…
“Ma, what is glos pautonnier.”
“A bad hearted person who eats too much.”
Someone’s coming who is an evil glutton, may he painfully bite his tongue.
“What is all this about?”
“Son, these wretched people can’t let me be, again they’re trying to send me away from here. A padre is coming, I am supposed to go with him.”
She shows me an envelope. Slowly I trace out the Inglis writing, Mère Ambrosine, St Joseph’s Convent, Khaufpur, over which someone has scrawled in Hindi, Ma Franci, About-To-Fall-Tower-By-Factory-Corner, Nutcracker.
Ambrosine, so that’s Ma’s real name, all these years I never knew. The thought of her leaving gives a lurch to my stomach. This old woman who calls me son, she’s the only mother I’ve known.
“I don’t want to go back,” she says. “What will I do there? It’s been so long, hardly can I remember that place.”
“When will the padre come?”
“The letter does not say.”
I’ve right away gone to see Aliya’s granny Huriya Bi, Ma’s best friend in Khaufpur she’s, not a word of each other’s speech do they understand, yet sit cackling like a pair of old hens.
“Maybe it is best for her,” says Huriya. She’s making tea, which she does whenever I, or anyone, comes to her house. Her wrinkled hands push twigs into the clay hearth, causing tiny flames to spurt under the kettle. That kettle with blackened bottom and sides, must be hundreds of cups of tea I’ve had from it. Let others believe in god, for goodness and a kind welcome I’ll believe in that kettle.
“Dadi, Ma does not want to go to France, she wants to stay here. There she has no one, here are many who love her. We are her family now.”
“The boy is right, what will she do in some foreign country?” says Hanif Ali, Huriya’s husband.
“Animal, I think in the end Ma will do what she wants to do.”
“Yes, so we must find a way to help her.”
Ever since Ma’s illness I’ve had to avoid passing Baju, until I can pay him I’m having to dodge round behind his place through a labyrinth of huts to reach “I’m Alive” Ajmeri’s shop in Paradise.
Paris has its Champs-Elysées, in Delhi is Chandni Chowk, even Khaufpur has Nilofer Road where the rich go to shop, we people have Paradise Alley, it’s that boulevard of dreams that runs from the corner of Kali Parade to the heart of the Nutcracker. Here is the shop of Uttamchand “I’m Alive” Ajmeri. This shop, to someone like you I daresay it’s not much, an open-fronted shack with packets of gutka and supari dangling from strings, twirling in the breeze, not so grand it’s as Ram Nekchalan’s shop in the Chicken Claw, which has a metal shutter, but it’s a step up from Baju’s hole in the wall. In I’m Alive’s place every lad in the Nutcracker buys his first cigarette, rupee a clope. Kids come bringing coins they’ve scrounged for kites and tops and marbles, those who can afford buy glass marbles, others like me had to use clay ones or pellets of dough baked hard in their mothers’ hearths, which, not having a mother I used to ask Huriya Bi.
On this day I’m approaching I’m Alive’s from the back, when I hear kids up ahead shouting “Aiwa! Aiwa!” So then I know there’s a foreigner in the basti. From that way’s come someone wobbling on his bike. I’ve asked him what’s happening. Says he, “Arré, nothing it’s. Some jarnalis going into houses on Paradise along with a government-waali doctress.”
Near I’m Alive’s place I find a crowd of kids with the proprietor frowning at them. “Bugger off,” he’s croaking. Like all shopkeepers, he hates children. “Fuck off, go upset your mothers.”
The kids ignore him, they are still saying “Aiwa,” but not with gusto like when a foreigner’s eye is on them, they’re saying it in bored voices, because it’s what they do but the heart has gone out of it. A big-arsed government-waali doctress is stood outside a house, talking to the foreigner. Coming close my heart gives a jolt, no jarnalis is this, it’s Elli Barber. Why is she here? Why is she with a government doctress? Well, jamisponding is my job so I’ve sneaked closer to ear-ogle their conversation.