“They looked like the weapons in that old film, Mughal-e-Azam,” said Maneck, and Om added they would be useful to arm all the Chamaars in the villages, conduct a massacre of the landlords and upper castes, which made Ishvar frown disapprovingly till the boys’ laughter reassured him.
And so they devoured their holidays with youthful appetites. The wonders of the city tumbled from their tongues for Ishvar, who enjoyed their sightseeing vicariously, and for Dina, who, in the tide of their enthusiasm, rediscovered something of her own school-days.
Halfway through the vacation a late monsoon surge darkened the skies. Heavy rain kept the boys indoors. Bored and restless, Maneck remembered the chessmen. Om had never seen a set, and the plastic figures captivated his imagination. He demanded to learn the game.
Maneck began naming the pieces for him: “King, queen, bishop, knight, rook, pawn.” The sculpted words fell with a familiar caress upon his own ears. He took pleasure in feeling the pieces between his fingers again after so long, resurrecting them from their maroon plywood coffin in their customary squares, ready for battle.
Then, abruptly, the sound of his voice became the faraway echo of another — a voice that had once named the chessmen thus, for him, in the college hostel. He stopped, unable to proceed with explaining the game. The voice began disinterring the bones of his recent past, the ones he was trying to forget, had half-forgotten, had never wanted to see again. Now they were suddenly surfacing with grotesque alacrity.
He stared at the chessboard, where every piece harboured a ghost within its square. Thirty-two ghosts began their own moves, a dancing, colliding, taunting army of memories willing to do battle with his will to forget. Then the dancing chessmen changed partners, and it was the face of Avinash smiling at him from all sixty-four squares.
With an effort, Maneck abandoned the board and went to the window. Rain was pounding the street. Someone’s motorcycle lay covered under a loudly thrumming tarpaulin. The puddles around it were muddy and uninviting. There were no children playing or splashing, the street joyless in this rain that had stayed too long and was too torrential. He wished he had never opened the box of chessmen.
“What’s wrong?” asked Om.
“Nothing.”
“Come on, then. Stop wasting time, show me how to play.”
“It’s a stupid game. Forget it.”
“Why do you have it, if it’s stupid?”
“Someone lent it to me. I have to return it soon.” He watched the sewer’s whirlpool swallow empty cigarette packs and soft-drink bottlecaps. Kohlah’s Cola would not be among them. Not while Daddy continued in his stubborn ways. What a success the business could have been. And he would never have had to come to this bloody college. Must have made a wrong move somewhere in life, he thought, to walk into this check.
“You just don’t want to teach me,” said Om, sweeping the pieces into the box. They fell with an accusing clatter. Maneck looked, and opened his mouth as though he would speak. Om did not notice, sliding on the lid.
Maneck lingered at the window a little longer before returning to the chessboard. “I don’t want to give you any trouble,” said Om sarcastically. “Are you sure you want to teach me?”
He said nothing, set the board up and began to explain the rules. The rain was beating hard on the motorcycle’s tarpaulin.
Over the next two days, Om learned how the pieces were moved and captured but the concept of checkmate continued to elude him. If Maneck constructed an example on the board, he grasped it perfectly, feeling the trapped king’s helplessness with a visceral anguish. But to reach a similar dénouement on his own during play was beyond him, and he became impatient.
Maneck felt the failure was his — he was just not as good a teacher as Avinash. The corollaries of stalemate and draw were equally difficult. “Sometimes there aren’t enough pieces left on either side, so the king keeps endlessly moving out of check,” he explained over and over.
Again, Om understood when it was illustrated on the board; but the metaphor of kings and armies was not sustained to his satisfaction, and he refused to proceed beyond it. “Makes no sense,” he argued. “Look, your army and my army are battling, and all our men are dead. That leaves the two of us. Now one of us has to win, the stronger will kill the other, right?”
“Maybe. But the rules are different in chess.”
“The rules should always allow someone to win,” Om insisted. The logical breakdown troubled him.
“Sometimes, no one wins,” said Maneck.
“You were right, it is a stupid game,” said Om.
After five days of rain the skies did not let up, and the two were a thorough nuisance in the flat. They amused themselves watching Ishvar and Dina at work. “Look,” whispered Maneck. “His tongue always pokes into his cheek when he starts the machine.” And they found hilarious her habit of hiding both lips between her teeth when measuring something.
“That’s too slow, yaar,” observed Om, as his uncle paused to load a bobbin from the spool. “I can wind it in thirty seconds.”
“You are young, I am old,” said Ishvar good-humouredly. He slipped the fresh bobbin into the shuttle and slid the metal plate over it.
“I always keep six bobbins ready,” said Om. “Then I can change them phuta-phut, without stopping in the middle of a dress.”
“Aunty, you should also grow long nails on your little fingers, like Ishvar. It will look great.”
Her patience quickly ran out. “You two are becoming trouble with a capital t. Just because you have a vacation doesn’t mean you sit and eat up our heads with your nonsense. Either go out or start working.”
“But it’s raining, Aunty. You don’t want us to get wet, do you?”
“You think the whole city pulls a blanket over its head because of a little rain? Take the umbrella, it’s hanging from the cupboard in your room.”
“That’s a ladies’ umbrella.”
“Then get wet. But stop bothering us.”
“Okay,” said Om. “We’ll go somewhere in the afternoon.”
They removed themselves to the verandah, and Maneck suggested a second visit to the aquarium. Om said he had a better idea: “Jeevan’s shop.”
“Boring, yaar — there’s nothing to do there.”
Om revealed his plan: to convince Jeevan to let them measure female customers.
“Okay, let’s go,” grinned Maneck.
“I’ll teach you this game,” said Om. “Measuring the chest is easier than playing chess. And much more fun, for sure.”
The shop was quiet when they arrived. Jeevan was taking a nap, stretched out on the floor behind the counter. On a stool by his head a transistor radio played soft sarangi music. Om turned up the volume, and Jeevan awoke with a start.
He sat gulping air for a minute, his eyes bulging. “Why did you do that? It’s a joke or what? Now I’ll have a headache the whole afternoon.”
He refused to even consider Om’s offer of free help. “Measure my customers? Forget it. I know what you are up to. That swelling between your legs will drag my shop’s good name through the mud.”
Om promised to behave professionally and not let his fingers wander. He declared that his skills were rusting due to working from paper patterns. “I just want to keep in touch with real tailoring.”
“Tits are what you want to keep in touch with. You can’t fool me. Stay away from my lady customers, I’m warning you.”
Maneck wandered into the changing booth behind the curtain. “Wouldn’t it be fun to hide in here when they came for a trial.”