‘Well,’ said Haresh with a smile, ‘that’s more than I can.’
4.11
Meanwhile, the brogues were sitting on their lasts in Jagat Ram’s workshop. Two days passed. On the appointed day at two o’clock, Haresh came to collect the shoes and the lasts. Jagat Ram’s little daughter recognized him, and clapped her hands at his arrival. She was entertaining herself with a song, and since he was there, she entertained him too. The song went as follows:
Ram Ram Shah,
Ram Ram Shah,
Alu ka rasa,
Gravy made from spuds,
Mendaki ki chatni—
Chutney made from female frog—
Aa gaya nasha!
Drink it, and you’re drunk!
Haresh looked the shoes over with a practised eye. They were well made. The uppers had been stitched excellently, though on the simple sewing machine in front of him. The lasting had been carefully done — there were no bubbles or wrinkles. The finishing was fine, down to the coloration of the leather of the punched brogue. He was well pleased. He had been strict in his demands, but now he gave Jagat Ram one and a half times as much as he had promised him by way of payment.
‘You will be hearing from me,’ he promised.
‘Well, Haresh Sahib, I certainly hope so,’ said Jagat Ram. ‘You’re really leaving today? A pity.’
‘Yes, I’m afraid so.’
‘And you stayed on just for this?’
‘Yes, I would have left in two days instead of four otherwise.’
‘Well, I hope they like this pair at CLFC.’
With that they parted. Haresh did a few chores, made a few small purchases, went back to Sunil’s, returned his brogues, packed, said goodbye, and took a tonga to the station to catch the evening train to Kanpur. On the way he stopped at Kedarnath’s to thank him.
‘I hope I can be of some help to you,’ said Haresh, shaking his hand warmly.
‘You already have, Veena tells me.’
‘I meant, by way of business.’
‘I certainly hope so,’ said Kedarnath, ‘and, well, if I can help you in any way—’
They shook hands.
‘Tell me—’ said Haresh suddenly. ‘I have been meaning to ask you this for several days now — how did you get all those scars on the inside of your hands? They don’t look as if they’ve been caught in a machine — they’d be scarred on both sides if they had.’
Kedarnath was silent for a few seconds, as if adjusting to a change of thought. ‘I got those during Partition,’ he said. He paused and continued, ‘At the time that we were forced to flee from Lahore, I got a place in a convoy of army trucks and we got into the first truck — my younger brother and I. Nothing, I thought, could be safer. But, well, it was a Baluchi regiment. They stopped just before the Ravi Bridge, and Muslim ruffians came from behind the timber yards there and started butchering us with their spears. My younger brother has marks on his back and I have these on my palms and my wrist — I tried to hold on to the blade of the spear. . I was in hospital for a month.’
Haresh’s face betrayed his shock. Kedarnath continued, closing his eyes, but in a calm voice:
‘Twenty or thirty people were slaughtered in two minutes — someone’s father, someone’s daughter. . By the greatest of luck a Gurkha regiment was coming from the other side and they began to fire. And, well, the looters fled, and I’m here to tell you the story.’
‘Where was the family?’ asked Haresh. ‘In the other trucks?’
‘No — I’d sent them on by train a little earlier. Bhaskar was only six at the time. Not that the trains were safe either, as you know.’
‘I don’t know if I should have asked these questions,’ said Haresh, feeling atypically embarrassed.
‘No, no — that’s all right. We were fortunate, as these things go. The Muslim trader who used to own my shop here in Brahmpur — well. . Strange, though — after all that happened there, I still miss Lahore,’ said Kedarnath. ‘But you’d better hurry or you’ll miss your train.’
Brahmpur Junction was as crowded and noisy and smelly as ever: hissing clouds of steam, the whistles of incoming trains, hawkers’ shouts, the stench of fish, the buzz of flies, the scurrying babble of passengers. Haresh felt tired. Though it was past six o’clock it was still very warm. He touched an agate cufflink and wondered at its coolness.
Glancing at the crowd, he noticed a young woman in a light-blue cotton sari standing near her mother. The English teacher whom he had met at Sunil’s party was seeing them off on the down train to Calcutta. The mother’s back was turned towards Haresh, so he could not get a proper glimpse of her. The daughter’s face was striking. It was not classically beautiful — it did not catch at his heart as did the photograph he kept with him — but it had a quality of such attractive intensity that Haresh stopped for a second. The young woman seemed to be determinedly fighting back some sadness that went beyond the normal sadness of parting at a railway platform. Haresh thought of pausing for a little to reintroduce himself to the young lecturer, but something in the girl’s expression of inwardness, almost despair, stopped him from doing so. Besides, his train was leaving soon, his coolie was already quite far ahead of him, and Haresh, not being tall, was concerned that he might lose him in the crowd.
Part Five
5.1
Some riots are caused, some bring themselves into being. The problems at Misri Mandi were not expected to reach a point of violence. A few days after Haresh left, however, the heart of Misri Mandi — including the area around Kedarnath’s shop, was full of armed police.
The previous evening there had been a fight inside a cheap drinking place along the unpaved road that led towards the tannery from Old Brahmpur. The strike meant less money but more time for everyone, so the kalari’s joint was about as crowded as usual. The place was mainly frequented by jatavs, but not exclusively so. Drink equalized the drinkers, and they didn’t care who was sitting at the plain wooden table next to them. They drank, laughed, cried, then tottered and staggered out, sometimes singing, sometimes cursing. They swore undying friendship, they divulged confidences, they imagined insults. The assistant of a trader in Misri Mandi was in a foul mood because he was having a hard time with his father-in-law. He was drinking alone and working himself into a generalized state of aggressiveness. He overheard a comment from behind him about the sharp practice of his employer, and his hands clenched into a fist. Knocking his bench over as he twisted around to see who was speaking, he fell on to the floor.
The three men at the table behind him laughed. They were jatavs who had dealt with him before. It was he who used to take the shoes from their baskets when they scurried desperately in the evening to Misri Mandi — his employer the trader did not like to touch shoes because he felt they would pollute him. The jatavs knew that the breakdown of the trade in Misri Mandi had particularly hurt those traders who had over-extended themselves on the chit system. That it had hurt themselves still more, they also knew — but for them it was not a case of the mighty being brought to their knees. Here, however, literally in front of them, it was.
The locally distilled cheap alcohol had gone to their heads, and they did not have the money to buy the pakoras and other snacks that could have settled it. They laughed uncontrollably.
‘He’s wrestling with the air,’ jeered one.