TAPE THREE
Aliya’s calling, “Animal, come and play.”
Her voice comes flying in from outside, plus I can hear people talking as they go past, crow craarking in the tamarind tree. Sun’s well up, from far off a radio is playing the song, Ek tu jo milaa, meeting you I meet the whole world, one flower in my heart the world’s abloom.
“Animal, come and play.” Again comes her voice.
“What, with you? I’m not a kid.”
“You are,” she calls, who’s herself maybe eight years. “Granny says you act like a kid all the time.”
“Your granny wouldn’t like the kind of games I play.”
“Ho,” says she. “Boasting of your thing again.” There’s no innocence these days even in a child.
“Come on, Animal, let’s play.” Her voice is suddenly faint like it’s caught away by wind, or whispered on the moon, or lost in the crackling of a great fire. Eyes, I think I will go mad. I’m filled with sadness because Aliya is not really out there. Her voice is not real, it’s like people say, just another voice in my head.
Shit’s over, I’m back in this heap of stones with grass growing out the sides enough to feed a cow. I’ve just rewound the tape like Chunaram did that time, heard my own voice. Sounds so queer. Do I speak that rough-tongue way? You don’t answer. I keep forgetting you do not hear me. The things I say, by the time they reach you they’ll have been changed out of Hindi, made into Inglis et français pourquoi pas pareille quelques autres langues? For you they’re just words written on a page. Never can you hear my voice, nor can I ever know what pictures you see. I was telling you about Nisha, how she had called me to her house in the Chicken Claw. Of course I didn’t go, that’s that, I thought. I was wrong. Next afternoon she comes looking for me. “I’ve been going all over,” she scolds, “asking people if they’d seen you. They told me places all over Khaufpur. Then someone said try the galla mandi vegetable market.”
Eyes, a hundred times she has narrated the story of the finding of Animal, always she tells it the same way. “I went to the galla mandi, but you were not there. I went into the alley where the men play cards. There was a lot of wind, dust blowing, which the sun was making to glow. Out of the haze came these shapes, half a dozen starving dogs moving together with purpose. Among them was another shape, a boy walking on hands and feet. I called you and you turned and came to me.”
Fuck, what was I? Her dog? Why did I go? I had fended off a hundred attempts by the nuns, police and god knows who else to get me off the streets. What was it about Nisha that made it impossible to say no? I think it was that from the first she took me exactly as I was. When she called me Jaanvar, Animal, it was a name, nothing more. She never seemed to notice that I was crippled, nor pretend I wasn’t. She was the only person I knew who treated me as completely normal. Nisha said she would find me some work, I’d even get paid. I said I did not know what work I could do. Nisha said I was clever. I’d learn new things. Zafar would know what job to give me.
Zafarrrrr. It was the way she spoke his name that at last gave me the clue as to who he was. There must be a thousand Zafars in Khaufpur, I know at least three, but there’s only one who counts. This Zafar was a legend in the bastis, which is to say the bidonvilles, the slums, because he had given up everything in his life for the poor. Zafar bhai, Zafar brother, they worshipped him, who lived among them, dressed like them, shared their poverty and drank water from the same stinking wells. I had never expected to meet this hero. He was like I’ve said, a big shot, I was hustling and living rough. At that time I could never have imagined how tightly our lives would tangle.
First time I meet Zafar, it’s at Nisha’s house, where she lives with her dad. Zafar’s eating a pomegranate, digging out seeds with a pen-knife, placing them on his tongue, three-four at a time. “So you’re Animal. Do you like anaar? Want some?” I would have liked to taste the pomegranate, but I’m feeling shy, I say no.
“What’s your real name?” The great man is a long thin chap, curls plentiful and black has he, plus glasses that make him seem lost in clever thoughts.
“It’s Animal.”
“Animal’s a nickname, na? I mean your born name.”
“I don’t know.”
“How come?” He gives me an interested look.
I’ve just shrugged. From the time before nothing do I remember. True, I had a human name, it was given to me by the orphanage, I asked a nun once what it was, she told me, but I have forgotten what she said. This I tell to Zafar, who replies that he dislikes teasing of the disabled. Says he, “You should not think of yourself that way, but as especially abled.”
“What’s especially abled?”
“It means okay you don’t walk on two legs like most people, but you have skills and talents that they don’t.”
“How do you know?” I’d not told him about my voices.
“Because it’s true of everyone,” says Zafar. “We just have to find out what you’re good at. Plus you should not allow yourself to be called Animal. You are a human being, entitled to dignity and respect. If you haven’t a name then this is a great opportunity for you. You can choose your own. Jatta for example or Jamil, go ahead pick one, whatever you like, we’ll call you that henceforth.”
You’re wrong, I’m thinking. Let me be as I am, like Nisha does, you would never say such things. I give Nisha a look, but she’s smiling at him.
“My name is Animal,” I say. “I’m not a fucking human being, I’ve no wish to be one.” This was my mantra, what I told everyone. Never did I mention my yearning to walk upright. It was the start of that long argument between Zafar and me about what was an animal and what it meant to be human.
When I say I’m not a fucking human, Zafar flinches. “Brother, don’t swear.”
“Sorry,” I tell Nisha and go to touch her feet but Zafar stops me. “It’s not because of Nisha, I myself hate bad words.”
“Then it’s sorry to you too,” I’ve said without in the least meaning it. “But my name is my name.”
Zafar sits stroking his wise bastard’s beard that juts from his chin like Tuesday. “Animal it is then,” he says at last and right away begins telling me about the work he and others are doing in Khaufpur. Seems there’s a group of which Zafar is the leader. He himself does not say so, but it’s obvious. Zafar’s group collects money to help the sick. All these years after that night, he tells me, there’s still no real help for those whose eyes and lungs and wombs were fucked. Of course there are government hospitals but people won’t set foot in them unless they’re desperate.
“You yourself are a poison victim,” Zafar says, looking at my back. “You know what it’s like in those places. You queue all day to be seen, the doctor doesn’t examine you because to touch a poor person would pollute him. Barely looks at you, then writes a chit, tells you, take this to so-and-so’s shop and say I sent you. The medicines are supposed to be given free, this is how they make money out of misery.”
“All this is true, everyone knows it,” says I, wondering what sort of job he plans to offer me.
Nisha’s been ear-ogling Zafar’s speech. “Animal, hardly can people afford food, how can they spend on medicines? This is why we have to help. Yesterday I had a case, a woman Lilabai needed blood for an operation, she was told she must find the blood, buy it, and take it to the hospital herself.”