Gulshan Arora was by then totally alone; his wife had died a dozen or so years ago. He had detained Chandrakant at his house on several occasions for late-night rum-drinking and chicken-eating sessions. He told Chandrakant not to worry about his inevitable death: he had left the store to his younger daughter, and had made a provision in his will for Chandrakant to the amount of 200,000 rupees. After the third or fourth drink, Gulshan Arora got animated and waxed philosophical. Chandrakant was aware that his boss, in spite of his age, brought home call girls, and was continuously taking herbal supplements and vitamin boosters called ‘Lion Life,’ ‘Shot Gun,’ and ‘Hard Rock Candy Man’ — these were the days before anyone had heard of Viagra or 40–60 Plus.
Chandrakant, while listening to his seventy-year-old boss’s elaborate stories, would often begin to long for the man’s death — and just then, Gulshan Arora by some means sensed his thoughts, smiled from ear to ear, and said, ‘Chandu! Enough with your dreaming of my death. My father was eighty-two when he came here from Lahore in ’47, and when he died in ’74, he was over a hundred and ten. The neighbourhood had a huge celebration for his funeral procession, and we even hired the Daulatram Band and gave away endless sweets.’
It was then he showed the palm of his hand to Chandrakant. ‘The astrologer told me that I’ve got at least thirty-five more years. Then, after I turn one hundred and five, I’m gonna get me on that morning train, loud and high right up to the sky! But don’t you worry, Chandu. Your job’s even more secure than a government one.
‘Wrap up the rest of this chicken for your wife and be on your way,’ he said to Chandrakant in a hushed voice. ‘I’ve got a working girl on her way, and she’ll be here any second. You get to work over there in Jahangirpuri, and I’ll get to work over here in Model Town.’
But the children of Chandrakant and Shobha never got as old as Gulshan Arora’s. One after the other, the babies born to them in that half flat in bylane number seven kept dying. None lived longer than four months.
Not one or two, but seven babies in a row. ABHANG SONGS, KHUSRAU, THE DARGAH, AND THE FIRST SURVIVING CHILD
It happened perhaps some winter’s evening in 1995, some ten years ago. I went to the Kwality Departmental Stores in Vijaynagar. I had quit my day job five years prior and was then as I am now a freelance Hindi writer.
I had my mortgage and other expenses to pay. Winter was around the corner, and I still hadn’t managed to buy warm clothing for the kids. I myself had been wearing the very same sweater twenty winters in a row. My wife hadn’t been able to treat herself to a nice sari or buy any jewellery since the day we married. We avoided weddings since we lacked proper attire, and couldn’t afford a present for the bride and groom in any case. We cut each piece of mango pickle into quarters, and rinsed whatever slices of onion were left on the thali, saving them for next time. We horded five rupee coins during the year, saving them up to give away on Divali. I thought a few times about ending it all, or running away, but then my kids always brought me back. They were still in school. Books came into my life like a curse, and took everything I had. Sometimes it was the stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer, or else Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London, or Gorky’s autobiography — reading them brought me some respite. Maybe every writer’s fate is to live on the street, in the gutter. Or maybe I just worried more than most because I wasn’t famous and wasn’t important.
Whenever I sat down and opened a book or tried to write something in those days, the full terror of my reality at home cast a long shadow. I saw strange, sinister hues on the faces of my wife and children that I couldn’t pinpoint or understand. Death, illness, penury, hearsay, and sorrow skulked through the house with heavy feet. At night sobbing sounds permeated the rooms and corridors. A cat screeched on the rooftop. The plaster was falling off the walls, and the doors opened and closed with a strange, sad groan.
It was also a time rife with illness: dengue fever, food poisoning, the flu. My wife had a thyroid problem, and our younger son was so thin, so frail, so shy and introverted, that we were racked with doubt about whether he would be able to take care of himself in the future. Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’ and Muktibodh’s ‘In Darkness’ echoed in my head. I woke up ten times a night. I considered the possibility that I had been duped and driven onto a surreal landscape of terror and nightmares, where each work of the honest writer puts his family in a condition more critical, makes them more unsafe — reality substituted by the awful surrealism of a poem.
The twentieth century was turning into the twenty-first, and with each new work I wrote, my life was plunged more deeply into the abyss. Delhi, along with the rest of the world, was changing fast, other capitals even faster. Here, only one beacon remained that still had any power, and it attracted cruelty, barbarity, greed, injustice, money — no other options were possible. When I tried explaining my troubles to Delhi’s influential writers and thinkers, I felt as if I were a snail that had surfaced to the world above, telling the divine bipeds patting their fat bellies about his wild, weird, othercaste experiences from his home at the bottom of the sea. My language was incomprehensible. They viewed my utterances born of sorrow, vulnerability, and nerves with indifference, curiosity, wonder. They were of a totally different class. Their scraps were my meal. A poet had written something to that effect a few years ago, perhaps coping in similar circumstances.
In the middle of all this, I went one late afternoon to the general store in Vijaynagar where Chandrakant worked. The store was empty when I arrived, apart from Chandrakant, who I found lounging in the chair behind the counter singing an abhang devotional song. But there was a heartbreaking loneliness in his voice, as if he weren’t singing for others, but as a crutch to steady himself. The previous July when I had gone to Pandharpur in Maharashtra on a film project I was shooting, I had seen the Gyaneshwar and Namdev pilgrim and chariot processions coming from Alandi. While sitting on the steps of the Vithoba temple I heard the abhang songs. The rain had just stopped a few moments earlier, but dark, menacing clouds still covered the sky. The voices of the singers in the shade, drenched from the monsoon humidity, were like a salve soothing my loneliness and vulnerability. Like a cure that fills vessels with a new blood of life. That day standing in the doorway at the store in Vijaynagar, I felt as if I was on the steps of the Vithoba temple rather than in Delhi.
Chandrakant didn’t see me. His feet were stretched out on a stool in front of the chair, eyes closed, lost in the music.
‘What a voice! Are you Marathi?’ This was the first sentence I said to Chandrakant Thorat. He blushed.
‘Are you looking for something?’ This was the first sentence he said to me.
We introduced ourselves, and soon became friends. The two of us were trapped in our own respective hells. That first day I found out that he still hadn’t become a father, despite having been married for so many years, and that one after the next his children had died from mysterious illnesses, as if cursed. None lived longer than four months. His wife Shobha was shattered.
The next week I went to his home: the half flat in bylane number seven, Jahangirpuri. Some of Shobha’s hair had turned grey, and there was a hardness to her face, but she was still a beautiful woman. When she laughed, a softness sometimes peeked through. This, however, was rare. That night I listened to the whole story of their lives.