“How can you be so sure, Dinabai?”
“He complains about headaches, and itches in private places. He eats a lot but continues to be skin and bones. Those are definite signs.”
Next day, she showed Ishvar the dark-brown bottle of vermifuge she had purchased at the chemist’s. “It’s the best wedding gift I can give the boy.”
The pink liquid was to be ingested in a single dose. He examined it, unscrewing the top to sniff: not a pleasant smell. How good it would be if Om were cured before the wedding, he thought. “But what if it’s something else, not worms?”
“That’s okay, the medicine won’t do any harm. It just acts like a purge. He must fast this evening, and take it late at night. Look, it explains on the label here.”
But the directions were quite complex for his rudimentary English, lost when it strayed too far beyond chest, sleeve, collar, waist. He promised to make his nephew swallow the dose before going to bed.
The more difficult part was to persuade Om to miss dinner. “Such injustice,” he complained. “Starving the cook who makes your chapatis.”
“If you eat, the worms eat. They need to be kept waiting hungrily inside your stomach, with their mouths wide open. So when you take the medicine, they swallow it eagerly and die.”
Maneck said he had once seen a film about a doctor who became very tiny, in order to go inside the patient’s body and fight the disease. “I could take a tiny gun and shoot dead all your worms.”
“Sure,” said Om. “Or a tiny umbrella, to stab them. Then I won’t need to drink this foul stuff.”
“One thing you are forgetting,” said Ishvar. “If you are very tiny in the stomach, the worms will be like giant cobras and pythons. Hahnji, mister, hundreds of them swarming, seething, hissing around you.”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” said Maneck. “Forget it. I’m cancelling my voyage.”
Dina lost count after Om’s first seven trips to the toilet next morning. “I am dead,” he moaned. “Nothing left of me.”
Then late in the afternoon he burst out of the wc, shaken but triumphant. “It fell! It looked like a small snake!”
“Was it wriggling or lifeless?”
“Wriggling madly.”
“That means the medicine couldn’t sedate it. What a powerful parasite. How big was it?”
He thought for a moment and held out his hand. “From here to here,” he pointed from fingertips to wrist. “About eight inches.”
“Now you know why you are so thin. That wicked creature and its children were eating up your nourishment. Hundreds of stomachs within your stomach. And none of you believed me when I said worms. Never mind, it won’t be long now before you put on weight. Soon you’ll be as well built as Maneck.”
“Yes,” said Maneck, “we have three weeks to make a strong husband out of you.”
“And the father of half a dozen boys,” added Ishvar.
“Don’t give bad advice,” said Dina. “Two children only. At the most, three. Haven’t you been listening to the family planning people? Remember, Om, treat your wife with respect. No shouting or screaming or beating. And one thing is certain, I will not allow any kerosene stoves on my verandah.”
Ishvar understood her allusion, veiled though it was. He protested that bride burnings and dowry deaths happened among the greedy upper castes, his community did not do such things.
“Really? And what does your community say about male and female children? Any preferences?”
“We cannot determine these things,” he declared. “It’s all in God’s hands.”
Maneck nudged Om and whispered, “It’s not in God’s hands, it’s in your pants.”
Om took a day to recover from the vermifuge. Next evening Maneck made plans to celebrate the return of the appetite with bhel-puri and coconut water at the beach.
“You are spoiling my nephew,” said Ishvar.
“Not really. It’s the first time I’m treating him. Previously his pet worm did the eating.”
Ishvar stared at the man in the doorway, trying to place him, for the voice was familiar but not the face. Then he recoiled, recognizing the greatly transformed hair-collector. His scalp was smooth and shining, and he had shaved off his moustache.
“You! Where did you come from?” He wondered whether to tell him to get lost or threaten to call the police.
Shoulders drooping, head bowed, Rajaram would not meet his gaze. “I took a chance,” he said. “It’s been so many months, I didn’t know if you still worked here.”
“What happened to your long hair?” asked Om, and Ishvar clicked his tongue disapprovingly. He didn’t want his nephew to get familiar again with this murderer.
“It’s okay to ask about my hair,” said Rajaram, raising his head. The expression in his eyes was empty, the fire of relentless enterprise extinguished. “You are my only friends. And I need your help. But I feel so bad… still haven’t returned your last loan.”
Ishvar withheld his disgust. To get involved in police business, with just days left before the wedding trip, would be most inauspicious. If a few rupees could get rid of the killer, he would do it. He stepped backwards to allow Rajaram to enter the verandah. “So what’s wrong this time?”
“Terrible trouble. Nothing but trouble. Ever since our shacks were destroyed, my life has been filled with immense obstacles. I am ready to renounce the world.”
Good riddance, thought Ishvar.
“Excuse me,” said Dina. “I don’t know you very well, but as a Parsi, my belief makes me say this: suicide is wrong, human beings are not meant to select their time of death. For then they would also be allowed to pick the moment of birth.”
Rajaram stared at her hair, letting moments elapse before responding. “Choosing the ending has nothing to do with choosing the beginning. The two are independent. Anyway, you misunderstand me. All I meant was, I want to reject the material world, become a sanyasi, spend my life meditating in a cave.”
She regarded this as much an evasion as suicide. “It’s all the same thing.”
“I don’t agree,” said Maneck.
“Please don’t interrupt me, Maneck,” she said, turning to Rajaram again. “And how is my old haircutting kit? Does it still work? It is a Made In England set, mind you.”
He blanched. “Yes, it’s working first class.”
Then he would speak no more of himself in the presence of Maneck and Dina. “Can I buy my two old friends a cup of tea? What’s that restaurant you go to — Aram?”
“Vishram,” said Ishvar, and checked if he had enough money in his pocket for tea. Although the invitation was the hair-collector’s, chances were, he would end up paying.
They walked silently to the corner, and settled around the solitary table. The cook waved an oily hand from his corner. “Story time!” he shouted happily. “And what is today’s topic?”
The tailors laughed, shaking their heads. “The story is, our friend is thirsty for your special tea,” said Ishvar. “He has come very far to meet us.”
Rajaram looked about him awkwardly; he had forgotten how tiny and exposed the Vishram was. But he was grateful for the privacy afforded by the din of the roaring stoves.
“So what’s all this fakeology about sanyasi?” asked Om.
“No, I’m serious, I want to renounce the world.”
“What happened to barbering?”
“That’s where the whole problem started. I was a failure right from the first day. My hair-collecting years had left me useless for barbering.”
Ishvar was unwilling to believe a single word from the mouth of this killer. “You mean you forgot how to do haircuts?”
“Much worse than that. Whenever a customer sat on the pavement and asked for a trim, he ended up almost a baldie.”