Road to karol bagh

M I C HAEL S M AL L, W RITER MONDAY, 7 FEBRUARY 2011

ROAD TO KAROL BAGH The taxi ride from Indira Gandhi airport provided an initiation totally unexpected.

The back seat, comfortable as it was, had Darcy bunched up with personal baggage that he was clinging to as if he might be hijacked by a gang of starving desperadoes.

He was already regretting that he had forgotten the recommended lock and chain that would secure his suitcase to a metal stanchion in bus or train compartment.

Hidden beneath his wide-brimmed hat flopped down over his forehead and behind a driver and courier’s glistening black hair gave little protection; in fact, seemed to attract attention.

The road running alongside the massive earthworks that gouged through the southwest of Delhi to allow for the Metro extension was chocked with four to six and a half streams of traffic that alternately snailed then gushed into invisible slip-streams.

How on earth did that refined lady in an indigo gold-trimmed silk sari sitting aloft in a cycle rickshaw contrive to look so aloof, indifferent, calm in this chaos, her cowled head riding on a wreath of black exhaust and showered with incessant blasts of horn and temper?

Occasionally caught off guard, Darcy was distracted by the dash of brilliant sapphire or flamingo or jonquil saris of elegant women balanced on the pillion of weaving, souped-up or sick Enfield Bullets without so much as clamping an arm about their husband’s cotton-clad waist. What a remarkable display of perpetual equilibrium, he had to concede, especially when he caught two women squeezed side-saddle onto one pillion swaying effortlessly with the sterterous rhythms of the bike, one with baby in a sling against her bosom. And no helmets either! Crazy stuff!

Suddenly, while the taxi was purring immobile, three raps and a face at the window made him start. Ducking into frame was a mother, probably no more than early twenties, with pitiable entreaties that softened into a complicit smile that instantly hardened into a withering glare followed by more urgent raps. And those dark chestnut eyes, the shade of battle-hardened conkers. Darcy nodded tersely and

looked away, but the knocking on the window became insistent. The driver craned round at the woman, perhaps the child rather, but said nothing; the easy-going courier just locked eyes ahead, particularly at any overbearing saloons and their tinted occupants.

The peering woman blocking his vision pointed to the baby snuggled against her breast, then held out a cupped hand, pointed more urgently to the baby again. Darcy was determined not to give way, in spite of a sense of helpless entrapment and hot prickles growing beneath him; fellow travellers on the road might identify him as a cold fish.

But then as trainee cultural anthropologist, he could hardly complain. Within half an hour, he had been offered a broad sample of human characteristics to absorb. A mature-age student, he had chosen to travel overseas in a gap year before commencing his master’s degree, his intention being to broaden his knowledge of foreign cultures. Why India? People had to find ways of living together, his studies had constantly made that clear, and the sub-continent was reputed to demonstrate so many antimonies in cultural diversity. Already the extremes between rich and poor were evident on this very road to Karol Bagh. In addition, he was intrigued by the concept that such a huge concentration of people could apparently live in both sacred time and contemporary time, a notion which he simply could not grasp but was discreet enough not to confide to his tutor. Studying anthropology certainly provided an angle for understanding the bewildering machinations of human behaviour.

Jeff Pomfritz, his tutor, had advised Darcy in no uncertain terms to go exercise his spirit, challenge his boundaries, get a different perspective, and not write his thesis tape-recording sophomores from Carlton. ‘For goodness sake, Darcy, surprise me, delight me, shock me if you must, but don’t hand in something safe and predictable for me to shred or archive without reading. Walk barefoot across burning coals, you’re young enough.’

So Darcy thought it professionally expedient to dip his big toe into change management.

Although he didn’t feel comfortable at that Whole Brain Symposium which focused

on more personal issues, about discovering your preferred mode of thinking, Darcy flattered himself on his left-brain aptitude, scoring high points for organization and logic. He was patient in gathering and analyzing data based on facts, and adept at evaluating the efficiency of sequential structures. He would not be swayed by emotion, certainly not by intuition. Precision in detail and meticulous testing are essential for generating rules, theories and precedents.

Darcy’s fondness for statistics had begun in his infancy when he had missed so much school with seasonal asthmatic attacks that had not disturbed his life’s orderly narrative but confirmed it. Tucked up in bed with his grandfather’s almanac, its maroon leather cover and thick, crackling pages like fading autumn leaves turning russet, he’d learn the names and dates of all the kings of England back to Harold Harefoot; the test averages of Bradman’s ‘Invincibles’, even though he took little interest in sport; and the evolution of the window from tenth century Saxon and oeilde-boeuf to lancet and oriel. He was entertained as quite the little memory man.

Then he graduated to pulling apart his grandfather’s bicycle pump and his mother’s much-valued self-winding watch. When she witnessed the know-how with which he had extracted the rubies from the hair-spring, pallet lever, balance wheel and all the other wheels in the train, she just knew he was destined to become another Benjamin Franklin and leave his thumb-print on the seal of progress.

That Symposium, though, had been an eye-opener.

Erik Glassky had asked him, ‘How did you go with your homework? Your Brain Dominance Profile.’

‘I didn’t do it.’

Glassky had looked askance at him.

‘I knew what the right answer was.’

Indeed, he did. He always aimed for balance in his life, compromise, subscribing to the middle way of the Greeks and a dispassionate approach to slings and arrows. And this attitude seemed borne out, a trifle smugly, whenever he overheard his immature fellow-students sounding off about their frustrations. He prided himself on his

independence, taking control of his own life and not getting flustered or pushed off course; or if he were, not to show unease, definitely not. Besides, gaining insight into what made others tick gave him a stronger sense of self; at times, though, he came over as a snoot.

Ideally, one should have scored exactly the same number of points on the four quadrants of the brain. No one would, of course. But Darcy had transcended the circle and practically toppled over the left edge of the laminated card. There was scarcely anything to show for the right hemisphere of the brain. He acknowledged to himself that he would never show weakness to others, lest they lost admiration, or at least respect for his ability. And it wasn’t as if he had turned his back on the emotional lives of others, particularly student peers, but he was careful never to offer anything of his own inner life. That was a sure way of being barred from positions of responsibility or having information held against one. Even Erik Glassky, who’d gained a double first, kept his cards pinned so close to his chest that he spoke in monosyllables and grunts, paralysed with paranoia that he might be judged and found wanting.

For an understanding of the emotional landscape, at times impenetrable in the culture of cool, Darcy relied on his powers of observation as well as his intellectual radar, pinning his ears back to more confessional types but struggling with the recommended reading programme. Joyce Carol Oates left him disturbed by the intensity of dark feeling she teased out and Anne Tyler frustrated by her wounded characters, who could neither glimmer the source of their pain nor articulate it. His knowledge of the younger generation derived from listening to his young cousin’s scrapes and tangles with girlfriends and authority figures, slipping in occasional questions in an unhurried, avuncular voice that suggested he himself had trod the same ground, but without being so hysterical.

The first thing that the courier had done at the airport was to rip the name of Darcy’s hotel from the voucher. ‘We aren’t going there.’

‘Why not?’

‘Don’t worry about it. I know nicer place,’ said Sachin, alert as a chipmunk in convict

stripes suddenly darting off in a different direction, then pausing to prick up its ears and peek about for other options. Ever a twinkle in his eye, he prided himself on sharing Tendulkar’s forename. ‘Then you won’t mind giving a generous tip to the driver.’

But at the nicer place, Darcy was obliged to camp in the foyer for two hours, as Sachin worked the hospitality digits of his mobile phone.

‘What’s the problem?’ asked Darcy, growing restless, although he had been forewarned to stay patient in a land notorious for unexpected delays.

‘You have problems,’ said Sachin, himself growing tetchy. ‘There is no room nowhere.’

‘What about the hotel named on my voucher?’

‘No good,’ he shrugged. ‘Forget about it!’

After the eighth call, Sachin said, ‘You are in luck, Mr Darcy. I have found you a nice place at Singh. A very good place right in the heart of things.’

Although he was suspicious when the management informed him of the tariff, Sachin urging him to accept, for he could charm a yellow, black-eyed cobra from its nest without a flute, it wasn’t until Darcy was reading about the scam in Connaught Place, shoeblacks splattering dog mess on tourists’ shoes, then pointing out the mishap to the unsuspecting victims, before swooping down on the offending feet with a flourish of cleaning gear and exorbitant bill, that he realized that he too had been taken for a ride, Indian-style.

The desk clerk at his new hotel eventually found a map and inked in the hotel’s position in relation to the main roads, arrowed directions and circled landmarks.

Unlike Vasco da Gama, who discovered that India was not landlocked, Darcy was already feeling gridlocked. His poor sense of direction was compounded by the map being ludicrously not to scale, far too small and missing the scramble of streets and clutter of alleys. In any case, most of the routes and off-shoots near his hotel proved

nameless.

Standing there on the edge of a roundabout, turning this way and that, map in hand, he was accosted by a bulldog of an auto-rickshaw driver, all bulk and jowls and grunt and bulbous eyes, heralded by three or four blasts on his horn.

‘Hey, which temple?’

Darcy ignored him imperiously, looking into the unseen distance like a plaster mystic.

‘Hey, where you going? I help you.’

Darcy walked on, his head stubbornly erect, but the rickshaw followed, the driver growling out, ‘I help you! Sir, which temple you want?’

‘Don’t categorise me,’ Darcy thought. ‘Don’t make assumptions about me. You don’t even know me.’ He cut down a street that branched off at a sharp angle, only to find the driver chugging at him from the opposite end.

‘Where you want to go? I help.’

Darcy kept walking, more quickly to give the impression that he knew where he was heading, but not quickly enough because the rickshaw driver had turned his vehicle around, puttered up beside him and leapt out, almost blocking his path. ‘Where you want to go? I take you. Very cheap.’

Resolutely mute, studiously poring over his upside-down map, Darcy found himself growing more irritated.

‘Which temple you want? Chalo, chalo!’

He could restrain himself no longer. ‘I’m not going to any temple! Now just naff off.’

‘You want Connaught Place? You go in wrong direction. Come, I take you.’

Darcy bit his tongue, increased his pace and, swearing under his breath, went storming up to a main road he had stumbled along a few minutes before, past the sign: MAKE DELHI POLLUTION FREE PLANT A TREE ‘No, I wasn’t seriously angry,’ he reassured himself, wheezily. ‘Just faking. I did well to maintain my inner calm, my detachment. Now for the mother of all race drags.’

The stampede of rumbling trucks, buses laden to the gills, buzzing black and yellow Ambassadors pursued by the three-legged cripples, the tuk tuks, harrumphing tempos, the larger vrooming vikrams and finally the gallant cycle rickshaws, riders often standing tall but skinny in the saddle, came with a deafening cacophony of cheep-cheeps punctured by roars above guttural, spluttering exhausts and the thunder of a train rattling overhead on the Metro. The auditorium of Darcy’s brain broadcast in stereo the braying of brass from some sneering modernist, the spears of blood-curdling from a blind man’s nightmare, the hacking mockery of the ninth circle of hell. He dare not draw breath from the smoking black exhaust and smell of burnt oil and coal slag. The asphyxiating pollutants would bring back the asthma with a vengeance; already the back of his throat was sore whenever he swallowed. He breathed in through his mouth the stench from damp patches of urine splotching the dust, especially about dried-up trees concreted for life, trailing along the potholed rubble of pavement.

‘God, this is bloody disgusting.’

On a narrow concrete strip of island, three or four tousle-headed urchins huddled together, hoping to attract the attention of oncoming speedsters. The eldest, a girl of perhaps seven or ten, it was difficult to be sure since the local street kids seemed so stunted and slight and gaunt, turned to stare across the racing cars until Darcy looked back at her. Then she waved with a series of teetering nods to prompt him, dare him, catch him, whereupon a gleam lit up her grubby features.

Darcy, who was annoyed with himself for fretting about the rickshaw driver and unable to break out of the tight circle about these narrow, down-trodden causeways, that he bestowed a half-hearted salute in acknowledgment, certainly not a wave, and

continued walking in as dignified a manner as his buckled steps allowed.

‘Little blighters, pitiless when they scent weakness. Working the streets already.

Underclass regressing to a feral condition,’ he concluded. ‘Primatology 101.’

Suddenly, someone had jumped up against his back with such a whoop, he swung round angrily on the young girl.

‘Don’t you dare!’ he spat out, unsure of whether she had thrust at his side-pockets or was merely high-spirited, her eyes glinty and cutting as knives. ‘Now get lost!’ Two of her brother scamps in dirty shorts raced barefoot across screeching brakes and deviating careers and bumped into him, then yanked at his cardigan and shirt. ‘Nick off, the lot of youse!’

All three ragamuffins skipped little hopping steps back, faces louring over, making desperate open-palmed scooping signs from stomach to mouth.

‘I had to be sharp with them,’ he muttered to himself. ‘They were clingy as clematis.’

Darcy marched on, his lips almost invisible, then suddenly made a dash for it himself, prancing skittishly across the heaving road. He fetched up on what purported to be a crock of pavement by a body swathed in a threadbare, faded brown lungi lying on its back. At the moment of looking down, Darcy’s eyes were skewered by a pair of rheumy, grey eyes staring up and through him out of a face of stone tinged sickly yellow. The white-haired man was alive, barely it seemed, but did not beg, did not move, just lay there helpless, waiting, waiting.

Although he did not look back, Darcy ducked down the nearest alley, relieved that he was neither shocked nor sickened by what could have been imminent death. But he had to admit that he was overwhelmed by the throngs of people and cartloads of sacks bustling along narrow streets beneath skeins of looping black wires, walking reduced to a shuffle between the market stalls on either side of the road and driving to the speed of a hearse. Most of the women, he detected, were attired in bright, breath-snatching colours, the men making do with black slacks or blue jeans.

Automatically, he clamped one hand on his money-belt secreted under his shirt, Napoleon-style.

Yes, he knew that he would have to get used to this lack of personal space.

Regrettably, you could barely descend the steps of your hotel lobby before you were threatened with a manic taxi-wallah popping his horn like a six-gun or besieged by a caravan of cycle rickshaws lying in wait. He also sensed that his ignorance of Hindi would expose his vulnerability, but at least he had learnt to preface any speech with ‘Namaste’, his sole contribution to linguistic anthropology thus far.

Considering the ease with which one slips off a kerbstone or trips into a pothole, Darcy mused, the incidence of twisting or breaking an ankle will be high. Often it is easier walking in the gutter where the footing is more regular, but one risks the Boadicea Correlative of having one’s shins sliced off by any number of sparky old bangers.

Gradually, from the retreat of his hotel, he made tentative forays in widening arcs of ambulatory distance to observe the profile of street life around Karol Bagh, where it appeared that many targets for analysis hunkered down, day and night.

Cities are characterised by movement, circulation. His first speculation on a research topic was: What is the survival rate for pedestrians crossing a main arterial? The nearest main road to his hotel was Old Pusa, the dual carriageway that restricted his gateway to the east. At a snarly roundabout sprouting radials, there were faintly marked zebra crossings, but no vehicle heeded his patient waiting. First premise: No one stopped for bipeds. They were the lowest in the pecking order, he assumed, until a legless boy perched on a primitively cobbled wooden trolley scooted crabwise across the road, metal claws slapping the tires for all he was worth as the next wave bore down on his spindles. And yet, incredulously, this severely handicapped jaywalker, jay-scooter, was sporting a radiant smile. To Darcy’s consternation, it dawned on him that the boy’s face was locked into a permanent lop-sided grin of bucked teeth.

Darcy found himself hoofing the gutter for a slight gap in the flow of traffic, then skedaddled as if being chased by a herd of Pamplona bulls, but even then he noticed that the traffic didn’t slow, even as it approached the roundabout. Thus, he concluded, he could not afford to place any trust in the efficacy of zebras. His best bet was to hasten on the blind side of an old crone, or better still a young mother with

two or three toddlers in tow and a babe at her breast. A beggar was no reliable safety shield and was more likely run down and carried to the side of the street and left to rot than a mangy dog. In fact, dogs played dead to preserve their own life, often sleeping a metre out from the kerb or under a jalopy with some part of their bony anatomy protruding. Like cows, they defied road-users to harm a hair of their dustspattered body, instinctively sensing the Hindu respect for animals, if not kindness.

But no mongrel at that moment was bestirring itself in anticipation of crossing.

He soon acquired the knack of when to risk leaping out from the gutter before the next assault charged him down. To his surprise, Darcy steadily found himself graduating from intense life-or-death concentration to relaxing about the dangers, even smiling in collusion at other daredevils poised on tippy-toes to make a dash for it, and began to regard crossing to the other side as a game.

‘Hey, mate, if youse gonna surf the traffic in Old Pusa, never take a screw at a driver’s peepholes when they’s a-gunning straight for youse!’

Darcy was comforted by the distinctive twang of an Aussie backpacker, sensibly wearing a bush hat bobbling with fly-jerks.

‘Thanks, chum!’ he yelled. For the first time in his life he had tasted the exhilaration of sport. ‘Just doing a survey on the wild traffic!’

‘Child-trafficking? Yeah, it’s a shit storm ‘ere in the Big Choke!’

Next, Darcy sought to apply a sense of logic, a system of patterns, to the chaos of Karol Bagh traffic. He posited that drivers of tuk tuks, for instance, were uncanny in their positioning, even changing lanes when there seemed no space to do so. Often running red lights, these charioteers fearlessly challenged the assumption that every other warrior would sheer away from their newly carved wedge of space. Was this because they relied on the soundscape of horns, bells and curses to gain pole position? Or were they blessed with second sight? He resolved to test this theory on one of the few No Horn stretches of road, near a hospital. Unfortunately, he noted, the incidence of horn usage seemed even higher and louder here than on the Old Pusa speedway; everyone tooted, as if out of cheeky defiance of the rules. Belatedly, he noticed emblazoned on the backside of all trucks a sign: ‘Thankyou for blowing

horn’.

Some days later Darcy proposed to extend the boundary of his research to Connaught Place. It was a mere two inches away on the map. The hotel manager informed him that it was impossible, crazy to walk it. ‘Take tuk tuk to CP.’ Still too wary of rickshaw drivers and uncertain of the worth of things, he set out by foot with notebook, map, bananas and obligatory water bottle – sealed. He wore blue drize-a-bone hipsters and black Nike t-shirt to avoid drawing attention to himself, though his tall, slender build, a complexion only slightly tanned and the blond stalks of thatch straying out from his hat created the opposite effect. And the late spring heat clung to him, dry in nose and throat, moist on the pores of his skin.

He followed the road which picked up the overhead Metro as it curved eastward towards New Delhi. Again the traffic was foul, but he was eager for fresh facts, fresh images, fresh air.

A young man in smart casual Western clothes and open-necked shirt came up behind him. ‘Excuse me, good sir. From whence are you coming?’

‘What’s that?’

‘Are you looking for something particular?’

‘No, no, just observing how incredibly long the points of these leaves are. Gee, this is a magnificent tree with all these overhanging branches. Offers some welcome relief from the sun.’

‘These beautiful green heart-shaped leaves belong to the peepul tree. You know it as the sacred fig, which is good for digestion and calming for meditation. Hey, look at that lovely child perched on the wall behind that bough. She’s a shy one, watching the passer-bys.’

‘So she is. It’s a good observation post to study people,’ said Darcy, a tad enviously. ‘A veritable hide, in fact.’

‘It’s not wrong to stare in India,’ smiled the stranger with warmth in his prune-dark eyes. ‘Like the ladies in the maharaja’s harem at the haveli, secretly watching the parades of passer-bys unseen from a latticed window. Just don’t stare back.’

‘Thanks, I’ll make a note of that.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘Connaught Place, if you must know. Am I heading in the right direction?’

‘Just follow me, sir. I’m going there myself. Very nice place, not very far. Are you a Britisher?

‘No, Gen X Australian.’

‘You like cricket? India is number one. Green-baggies not good now.’

‘How come you speak English pretty well?’

‘I like to practise whenever I can. When I was a small boy growing up in Rajasthan bush, I had one pair of clothes only. I used to wash them in the lake every afternoon after school and wear them again next day fresh. I was my own dhobi-wallah,’ he laughed. ‘Unfortunately, the trousers developed holes.

‘One day my brother-in-law, he made good money, him being a lawyer an’ all, invited me to the mela, a fair, you know, but when he saw the holes in my trousers he called me a disgrace and dismissed me. I wept bitterly and told my mother I could not live in this poverty.

‘One day a politician visiting our village made a speech to the local people. He was speaking in English. No one understood a word. Including yours sincerely. But I was very impressed. That day I promised myself to learn English. Where was the money coming from? I started my own cycling business . . . ‘ ‘Cycling? You mean you repaired bikes? Or hired them out?

‘Sorry for my mistake, sir. I mean re-cycling. Nothing is wasted in India. Not nothing.

My business was stripping down old buses, so I could take lessons and later attend the university.’ In a more resigned, softly wistful tone of voice he added, ‘But I cannot continue my studying with little money. I have three brothers and sisters to look after.’

‘Sorry, mate. ‘Fraid I can’t help. Is it much further?’

‘Come with me. My name is Sunil. I take you to the Indian Tourism office.’

‘No thanks. I’m just looking around, making a few notes.’

Sunil laughed. ‘I don’t want your money. Come with me to the Tourism office. It is just by Connaught Place. Very nice building. Rajiv Chowk.’

‘No, no, you go on. I’m not your typical tourist.’

‘Please, you don’t have to buy anything if you don’t want. They might give me a small commission for taking you there, then you just walk out.’

‘Goodbye,’ said Darcy, who felt cheated somehow.

‘You have to fight to live in India!’ Sunil’s last words rang out behind him. ‘We Indian people are irre . . . irre . . . pressible!’

At last Darcy found himself on a corner of the outer ring, Connaught Circle, where he was tempted to take a break drinking in the exotic scents of cardamom and cinnamon wafting by a fast-food café selling masala chai. He hadn’t eaten much since his arrival except toast and a sickly-sweet raspberry jam immured in his hotel, hovered over by four waiters trying to look busy as well as solicitous, while gluing eager eyes to the cricket on television. He was still fearful of Delhi belly and being poisoned by water and ripped off by touts. From his own bottle of sealed water he took a swig but it was tasteless, warm and stale.

‘Sahib, you wanting astrology reading, horoscope?’

‘No, I’ve seen enough horrors recently. Anyway, I’m not superstitious. You’re not a sadhu by any chance?’

‘For you, sir, I can be anything. Take off your sunglasses, so I can see into your eyes.

Oh dear, oh dear!’

‘What’s the matter?’

‘This is not being very well. When were you being born?’

‘I don’t know, but I finally saw the light of day on August 21, 1979.’

‘At what is the time exactly?’

‘I have no idea. To be honest, I don’t really care!’

‘Are you married?’

‘Not now.’ When he looked up again, he felt the hard bead of the old man’s eyes boring into him. ‘I’m divorced,’ he confessed, reluctantly.

The soothsayer was shaking his head, partly in disbelief, partly in dismay.

‘Look, forty per cent of marriages are liable to end in divorce in Australia. I’m not causing any harm to anyone. What’s more, I enjoy my own company!’

‘So how many children are you having?

‘None, if I can help it. Now buzz off!’ Then in more conciliatory tones when he saw the old man’s sadness: ‘I live with my dog.’

‘Bah! Sentimental nonsense!’ The old soothsayer turned away in disgust, then suddenly remembered: ‘Who is your god?’

‘Now that’s a gross invasion of privacy and nothing to do with you.’

‘I wish to be helping such an unlucky man. In India you have over three million divinities to choose, so there is no excuse to be not hoping.’

‘You don’t get it, do you? I’m not a believer and I’m not a disbeliever, but I certainly do not despair. I am concerned, though, about finding the truth. That’s why I’m collecting evidence that scientifically and rationally demonstrates how a society operates.’

‘Humble sir, our society, as you are calling it, our civilisation, has been lasting for over three thousand years. We are not having to understand how. Indian peoples feel very deeply the chi of our spirit, the prana all around us in the air. Why you are insulting us, you Western peoples with your manners of little respect?’

Darcy was set to flare up again, but suddenly fell speechless, almost as much frightened by his own welling temper as the soothsayer’s probing.

‘The words I am offering are very much more value than my bill of three hundred rupees –‘ ‘Three hundred! You must be joking! I never asked –’ ‘Be listening. You are like a body that is walking about carrying his head under his arm. You are like a blind man who is seeing nothing, not inside or outside. You are choosing to make journey only in the hills of dung. Why are you having this manner?

If you are wishing to be a tiger, do not behave like a rat. Do the needful and be going to one of our holy places to taking bath in the waters and washing away your sins and making pure your spirit.’

Darcy felt himself trembling with frustration, anger spilling close to tears. Quietly, but with determination, he spoke with principle: ‘The e-coli count in the Ganges is deadly.’

‘Hundreds and thousands wash in Mata Ganga every day. The miracle is if you have faith in your god, you won’t get sick. And you, lonely, ignorant, selfish man, are behaving like a spotted deer in the mangrove swamp listening for the prowling tiger.

Namaste.’

In spite of the vehemence of his speech, the old man clasped his hands as if in prayer and bowed before hobbling away on his staff.

Darcy’s heart was beating fast. He was sure to have a bronchospasm. He dried the moisture from his eyes, then tied a handkerchief over his nose and mouth. Perhaps he had limited his vision by the low-flapped brim of his hat and the kerchief, or perhaps he had lost concentration, disturbed by the soothsayer’s contempt for him more than his words. He made to step out into the road to avoid vendors of postcards, multi-coloured balloons that sprouted above their heads, stands of deepfrying samosas and sugar-cane juice, when he was bundled over by a man running a handcart of bananas and fell against a jagged piece of cement protruding from the pavement.

Darcy lay in the gutter, gently flexing his right leg. When he looked up, there was a small crowd of faces staring down at him. The pusher of the handcart said nothing but shifty anxiety.

When Darcy gingerly got to his feet, flexed his leg again, rubbed his right thigh where the handcart had struck and lifted his trouser leg above the ankle, he found a trickle of blood lining the slight gash where the jag had bit. ‘Shit!’ he exclaimed, envisioning the wound turning septic in the sultry heat and polluted air and blown up by flies and mosquitoes, then the subsequent search for a medico who didn’t use rusty instruments.

No one moved from the circle of curious bystanders, though the handcart man was itching to slope off. Darcy found in his carry-bag the roll of emergency toilet paper and wiped at the smear of blood. As he bent down, he felt incipient soreness in his thigh. He stood up and tested his right leg. He would have to limp a little till he had worked the stiffness out.

And walk he would. Stoical or bloody-minded, he would walk or limp on, even if spluttering tears within, not just from physical discomfort; it was more the wound to pride, the recognition that he was not easily coping. Yes, he had bragged about coming to India when everyone was talking about the Mumbai bombings and

cancelling their holidays back in Australia. How brave he had been then, yet he couldn’t even handle a few days in Delhi. He punished himself by pushing on to Connaught Place, head down, heeding neither hailing rickshaw drivers nor wisecracking touts. Save once: ‘Remember me? Your driver!’

He had never seen the drongo in his life.

When Darcy woke up in Central Park, it was already evening, but the park was still crowded with clusters of friends sitting on the lawns and commuters pouring from the underpasses manned by the odd beggar stealing out of the shadows.

‘Come, this is great place,’ Sandri was saying. ‘I take you up on roof. Getting you clean air. Be putting this one arm round my shoulder.’

Darcy put one foot in front of the other and hobbled up the flight of steps, steadied by Sandri. The pair came out onto a terrace where wooden tables with candles were set up around the perimeter. The air was pleasantly cool and easier to breathe.

‘Pleased to be sitting here,’ said Sandri. ‘I must be speaking to my friend.who is managing.’

Darcy shook his head as if to clear it. Candles were burning in boats of clay on his table but more light was thrown onto the terrace from a mosque floodlit in cambers of gold. Perched silent but vigilant on the parapet next to the stone pot of geraniums was a black eagle that glided away toward the bruised peach of sunset.

‘Good evening, most honoured,’ smiled a man with teeth of inlaid ivory who had approached briskly, Sandri bobbing just behind in fawning attendance. ‘Welcome to our Ashoka folk entertainments. I am of the understanding you are having a slight accident in our country. Sorry for this unhappy occasion. It will be happening,’ he shrugged. ‘We are many, many peoples. Can I be offering you some drink? Whisky?

Whisky very good.’

‘Just water, please. Sealed.’

‘You must be having something stronger. Lime soda, I think, will be making you better.’ He clapped his hands and whispered into the ear of a waiter in buttoned-up tunic and navy blue turban.

The musicians entered, five men, middle-aged to elderly, in traditional flowing robes, and seated themselves close together on a roll of rustic rug.

Suddenly, one of them wound out a wail, very nasal, above the drums, the cycle of pain never-ending till it rolled round and round inside Darcy’s head as if he were watching his own wake from the other side. He thought he would have throttled the singer if he had been compos mentis. All the musicians appeared through the glare of light to be looking straight at him from a distant past, as if he were at the centre of their dirge.

After several false subsidings and regurgitated leapings into another circuit of highly strung angst, the music stopped. There was a smattering of applause. Darcy signalled for another drink. ‘Just water. Lime too strong,’ he tried to explain to the hesitant waiter. ‘Me no speak Hindu . . . er Hindi.’

All of a sudden two figures in salwar kameez streaming ornis or gauzy scarves came flying out like banshees to a more up-tempo beat. A murmur of excitement stirred the audience, all tourists, as far as Darcy could make out. The two dancers were spinning round in centre-stage, girls tall and slender, in veils and cherry red tunics with flimsy material flowing and trousers, occasionally facing each other then turning full circle away, necks in rubbery gyrations and arms caressing the air.

At the end of their first dance, each of the girls chose a male member of the audience and led him by the hand onto the dance floor. The twangy strings teased out a zithery, sinuous rhythm, the tabla a more ominous beat. The pressed men looked embarrassed, even ridiculous, their bottoms protruding as they minced their shuffle to imitate the dancers’ quick, neat steps and whirling arcs. There was just a hint of flirtation from the girls, as their tunics came close to touching the men whose hands they took, encouraging them to turn full circle. Even the female companions laughed at their men’s lumbering awkwardness. Darcy began to feel nervous and took another

slug from his drink and promptly choked.

The girls refused to let their partners sit down but waited for the next raga to begin.

One of the men took a note from his wallet and held it aloft as he tripped about, teasing, or pretending to, by withdrawing his outstretched hand from the reach of the dancer. Darcy leaned along to the next table and asked how much he should give.

‘At least, fifty,’ said the woman, glammed up in a sari of midnight blue. ‘Baksheesh is the tradition.’

The dreaded moment arrived when one of the girls extended her arm towards Darcy.

He was far too self-conscious to be a good ballroom dancer, but game enough to lose himself in the twist in an emergency. But now he had a good excuse.

‘No, sorry, I’m injured,’ he squeezed out a smile and nodded, pointing to his outer thigh.

The girl ignored this quibble, hoisted him to his feet and escorted him across the dance floor.

Darcy soon gave up looking down at the nimble footsteps of his partner and simply did his own bottom-wriggling grind, much to the guffaws of the audience. In fact, he completely forgot about his discomfort, particularly when the girl too seemed to be performing a jerky swaying routine with dangerously mobile hips. Eventually, he dared to sneak a look into the girl’s veil, but could only discern the outline of dark, impassive features and hollows of kohl for eyes.

Then she seized one of his shunting hands and drew him into her dark orbit. Darcy felt a warm flush tremble over his face. Confidence growing, he wriggled more violently, closer and closer, may even have brushed the girl’s tunic at waist-level, whereupon the girl held him at bay and turned him about and let go his hand. Darcy went floating round and about till he spun close to the parapet, quite dizzy and light, as if he had let go a swag of anxiety into the alleyways below.

‘How you are liking Indian dancing, baba?’ asked the manager, a trifle concerned, as he ushered the reeling Darcy back towards his coolly self-possessed partner.

‘Good fun. Whoopee!’

‘You will be liking very much to show her.’

Darcy had inserted the faded ten-rupee note in his cuff and now held it folded aloft in such an awkward gesture that he was clomping about like a pantomime horse. The girl easily snatched the note and sallied away for one of the seated women.

‘Not much kinaesthetic empathy there,’ joshed his sari-clad neighbour, sipping a glass of Kingfisher, ‘but you’ve obviously taken lessons from Chubby Checker.’ Fortysomething, with long, frizzy, magenta hair, she wore a gold stud in the flare of one nostril, a vermilion-splashed bindi in the middle of her forehead, some pink and orange threads round her right wrist, brown inky patterns on her palms and gold varnish on her fingernails.

‘Thank you,’ replied Darcy, very breathless, his chest pounding with excitement, beads of perspiration tacking his cheeks and a vacuous grin fixed on his open mouth.

‘Yes, it’s terribly cool. These young men do such convincing impersonations, don’t they?’

‘Men?’ said Darcy, scraping back his metal-framed chair with a violent kick-back.

‘Of course. Didn’t you notice the hairs above the wrist or the strength of their grip?

Take a closer look at their physique. Boys dancing the female roles is common in India, especially in rural areas where communities are far more conservative and won’t allow unmarried women to dance.’

Sick with embarrassment, Darcy drank off the remains of his glass. And gasped. His throat was inflamed.

‘Anything wrong?’ said the woman.

‘Jeez, I feel awful. My guts are burning. They’ve spiked my lime soda.’

‘I’m afraid anything’s possible in India. With luck, it’s only a dash of vodka. Problem is, which still did it come from? Waiter! Over here! Bring some water quickly!’

The manager came scurrying across. ‘What is being your problem, baba? Are you being not very well?’

‘Did you put rotgut in my drink?’ Darcy was growing surly. ‘Wait, the ice! Where did the ice come from?’

‘We are only serving very best lime soda. Here is coming the water. Very good water.’

Darcy was groaning, head sunk beneath his knees, thinking back to the pakora risked at the roadside kiosk. Had it been fried in rancid oil? ‘Not tap water! Sealed!’

‘You like jasmine rub with one of the dancing girls?’ the manager whispered.

Darcy retched up a thin streak of watery yellow bile across the concrete.

‘I think we’d better be going,’ said the woman. ‘How legless are you?’

‘Not so much as I couldn’t give his nibs a kick up the royal dhoti!’

‘Easy, now, easy. My name’s Kamalasundari, by the way.’

‘Pull the other leg, the unscarred one,’ he said, negotiating the steps with caution, mindful now of the smooth bruise on his thigh while the cut on his ankle was itching.

‘Just call me Lotus. Give me your arm. I thought you must’ve gotten high on the hookah.’

‘No happy hookers for me, thank you, not even for an A++ for my case study.’

‘I meant the water pipe. You know, smoking the poppy to attain nirvana. Come on, let’s make ourselves scarce before the zamindar get wind of this.’

‘The what?’

‘The zamindar. The local protection racket. Any excuse and they send in their goondas to put the boots in.’

‘Oh, god, that’s all I need. I’ve had to put up with a bloody awful start to my trip.

What have I done to deserve all this . . . this . . . ? Why me?’

‘Well, what did you get up to in your past lives?’ Her chuckle dried up on Darcy’s stony blankness. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘but even the poor Untouchables daren’t think like that. There’s no room for self-pity. They may be trapped by caste, but they accept their lot. Or seem to. Otherwise you’d think they’d psychically break down.’

Back at ground level, the atmosphere was sticky-warm, the fumes choking dry.

‘God, this noise,’ complained Darcy. ‘It’s bedlam. How do you put up with it?’

‘You don’t hear it after a while. Silence can be more unsettling, for a woman at least.

The quest for spiritual nourishment doesn’t come easy. Remember that whatever happens to you serves a purpose. My punishment for past demeanours was to be born a woman. But what’s one life-time in the scheme of things? With every moment of enlightenment, the arc of resurrection draws a little nearer. I hope that one day you will find a scarab in the dung. Have you met your guru?’

‘No, no, my mission in India is strictly to collect material for my thesis. I’ve wasted too much time already.’

‘Would you like to come back to my pad and lie down? Later when you feel better I can give you an ayervedic massage that will truly iron out the wrinkles.’

‘No, no, very kind, I’m sure, but I feel fine. Much obliged for your help. Good night!’

Darcy turned heel abruptly and endeavoured to walk upright, straight for the Panchkuin Marg, the road to Karol Bagh, even though he was holding onto his insides. ‘That Lotto was one nutty entomologist. And a cougar into the bargain,’ he figured. ‘The last thing I want in this midden is relationship.’

‘Paramapada!’ she called out.

But Darcy was not listening, even if he could have understood.

He was growing afraid of the dark even before he sensed the zamindar men were tracking him. He could not increase his pace because he had little energy and his tread was heavy-footed and slightly meandering, as if he were about to lose balance.

The further he went, the darker it got, till he perceived he was at some sort of park.

Which meant he was lost. The two trackers closed in with an unfit trot and a volley of Hindi, presumably.

‘I don’t understand. What do you want?’ This might be a replay of three o’clock on Sunday morning in King Street.

The two strangers looked uncertainly at each other. The balding one with droopy moustache in grimy kurta and pajama nodded at the younger man in patched-up jeans, who spoke haltingly as the elder snivelled into a terrible keening.

‘How are you saying in English? . . . You are being a man of night . . . walking very long . . . looking . . .’ - he made a pair of goggles with forefinger and thumb held before his eyes - ‘. . . looking . . . to finding . . . childs . . . very small . . .’

‘Sorry, chum, I’m not with you. Now if you’ll excuse me . . . ‘ As Darcy made to walk away, the snivelling wailer thwacked him with his heavy stick on the buttocks and cursed him bitterly. ‘Angrezi!’

The youth grabbed his comrade and pulled him back, speaking into his ear before releasing him. Then he turned to Darcy, who had a pinched expression on his face and was briskly rubbing his posterior.

‘Bloody goons! I’m going to report this assault to the Australian Consul,’ he said, through gritted teeth. ‘And the police will know all about you zamindar men.’

‘Zamindar?’ said the youth, bewildered. ‘We are knowing not zamindar man. ‘We are

looking at . . . looking for my bhaiya . . . my brother . . . is having a . . . my brother is . . . being all right? ‘ ‘I don’t know your brother. I haven’t seen your brother. I am not your brother’s keeper!’

The youth looked at the crumpled senior and shrugged his shoulders in despair.

‘Acha, acha. Sorry for beating with lathi, sahib . . . Very sorry . . . You are understanding . . . in night in Delhi . . . many boys, many are going . . . are being taking by bad men . . . very bad men . . . away.’

‘The zamindar?’

‘Zamindar, no. Dirty men . . . old men . . . wanting boys in gullis . . . for sex.’

‘How old is your brother?’

‘Manesh is having seven years. My father . . . he is thinking the thugs are taking him . . . for slave . . . for sex or hard work . . . or taking parts of him . . .’

‘You mean they dissect his body? They cut him up?’

The old man began his terrifying howl once again.

‘Come on then! Let’s go to the police at once!’

‘No, no, sahib. Policeman are not listening to poor persons. Baksheesh no good,’ he shrugged. ‘In one year in Delhi, hundreds of childs are taking away, very many hundreds.’

‘So what can you do?’

‘Now we must be going to mandir to offer puja.’

‘Puja?’

‘Yes. I am saying to my father . . . to die is . . . we say, moksha . . . it is meaning to be free . . . free of all our suffering. But we must be saying prayer and good wishes to our god. Please be coming along.’

After the goods had been delivered to the markets, the busiest time of night, the roar of traffic became a distant hum. More hypnotic were the chants from a sacred text in Sanskrit intoned through those early hours by the occasional holy man in a shanty room that resonated through the darkness. The billowing crowds walking the streets had all but disappeared. The air was slowly turning colder and the fog already settling.

Acting as guide, Dilip, the elder son, asked every chowkidar they came across if they had seen young Manesh. Old Darpan was shuffling behind, moaning in Hindi, as if in prayer, occasionally breaking out in sobs and invocations.

Wheezing slightly, Darcy was cold and headachy and weak in the legs. He was suffering visions at the shrine of the banana lassi. ‘I have no water left, Dilip.’

‘Are you liking this?’ Dilip was fumbling in his pocket for a paper bag.

‘What on earth . . . ?’ said Darcy, sizing up the leafy-looking lump that smelt of lime and gastroenteritis.

‘This betel nut. Tastes good. Do not be eating quick.’

Darcy reluctantly put the whole sticky wodge into his mouth. It was too large to gain a good purchase with his teeth so he continued to push it round his mouth with his tongue, which prevented him from speaking and almost from swallowing.

‘Good, no?’ said Dilip, throwing away the bag.

Darcy couldn’t taste anything much except the lime and aniseed, but he had succeeded in chewing the lump into a mushy paste that stuck to the roof of his mouth and into the gaps between his teeth. At first he appreciated the trickle of saliva, but then his jaw became stuck-up and he was obliged to execute a series of yawns to force

a gap between his lips. After several minutes, when Dilip and old Darpan weren’t looking, he spat out the mess, alarmed at first by the splatters of blood-red trailing behind him.

But Darcy did find one measure of satisfaction. How he enjoyed that sensation of release and defiance beneath a street sign: KEEP YOUR BLOCKS CLEAN AND GREEN PLEASE DO NOT BE URINATING HERE ‘Come,’ gestured Dilip. ‘You must be taking your shoes off.’

‘I don’t know that I want to come in,’ said Darcy, but he left his sneakers at the base of the temple steps and tentatively approached the open portal. He observed Dilip and his father slowly circling the altar several times, uttering prayers through their sobbing. Then his eyes were drawn to the glittering gold ceiling of bossed motifs.

All of a sudden, he was taken aback by the two small dots of piercing eyes staring back at him, the hideously deformed visage. The idol, such as it was, had a pink trunk for nose, a long trunk twirling to one side like a drain-pipe, then kinking a little twist at its orifice. Then he noticed how big the ears were, sticking out sideways from the head. It was the head of an elephant! Just below the eyes were two bulges for belly, plumped over a green sash and red robes. The elephant or half-man was seated on a gold throne bejewelled.

Dazzled, dazed, Darcy hung back, almost headily overwhelmed by the exotic fragrance of sandalwood. What was he doing here? He had no right to intrude on these ancient customs. He shouldn’t meddle in things he didn’t understand.

Instinctively, he bowed his head and closed his eyes, but no clear thoughts unravelled in his addled brain. When he opened them, he caught in one of the mirrors amid the gilt ceiling a fleeting image of a haunted face, oblique and distorted, that bore a likeness to his own.

Darcy shrank back to the base of the steps, where he slumped down, head in hands. A prayer man had followed him out and put a hand on his shoulder. When Darcy raised

his head, the prayer man dabbed a finger of ochre powder on his forehead while mumbling a few words and gave him a small paper boat of cooked rice, a couple of ruby-red lollies and marigold flower heads.

He was still chewing the marigolds mechanically when Dilip returned, obviously impressed by the newly recruited devotee’s consumption of both stems and petals.

‘Thank you, Sri Darcy. We are feeling better now . . . a little. Dharma of Ganesh is going to saving us . . . looking after Manesh . . . We will be finding my brother now.’

‘How much for the Singh Hotel?’

‘Which Singh?

‘Oh, er . . . Singh Singh? . . . er Singh and Son? You know, the one in Karol Bagh.’

‘There are many Singhs in Karol Bagh. Singh is most popular name. What is name of the street?’

Darcy searched for his map by the light of the taxi’s headlights, but the cross marking the hotel was in the middle of a triangle of roads unnamed. ‘Wait a minute, I have the hotel’s card.’ He rummaged through his pockets, his wallet, inside his vest for his money-belt.

‘I’m sorry . . .’ he faltered, as he emptied out his pockets. ‘Oh, what the hell!’

‘Come, I take you to Faiz Road.’

‘I don’t know where that is.’

‘I take you there. It’s near Karol Bagh. Very near.’

Darcy was beginning to panic. He didn’t remember any street names, not even that of his hotel. Nor could he trust anyone. Instead, he would follow the overhead Metro line, stumbling on towards the grey light of a very foggy dawn, badly in need of a long

lie-down.

Now something of a participant-observer, albeit lacking the realization, Darcy knew where to scrounge scraps. He’d seen mangy dogs with growths on their shrunken flanks and scabs on their fly-festered faces and sores on their patchy backs poking about the heap of rubbish next to the cycle rickshaws wrangled tight up against one another at the fag-end of the day, some riders snoozing on the seat, quite out to the dinning world, their legs stuck out over the handlebars like withered sticks. It reminded him of a knackers’ yard about to boil the bones to blubber.

He’d already found a tiffin tin but the bristle-backed pigs had beaten him to any comestibles.

‘Aha, what a blessing! Thank god!’ He caught sight of a flap of cardboard jutting out from the sweepings of soggy paper and saggy hessian, cola cans, vegetable waste, stalks and ferns of chick peas, banana skins, cow cake, dead flowers and marigold leaves, bits of matting or fur-on-skin. A cow with the gentlest of eyes and sweetest warm breath was chewing a plastic bag. Darcy tried to wrench the bag out of her mouth. ‘Come here, you stupid cow. That will kill you!’

A scrawny old bamboo rake in cruddy dhoti and patina of sawdust tottered bowlegged out of his workshop, spoke a vehement Hindi, and prodded him in the chest.

Two pedallers leapt off their passing rickshaws and pinioned his arms.

‘Bugger off! I was trying to stop that cow from suiciding!’

‘You must not harm the cow,’ said a well-intentioned English gentleman, alighting with a nonchalant air, as if from a palanquin while casting an eye over the prompt respect of servants. ‘Otherwise you will be going to prison! In former days you would have kissed the hangman’s noose.’

‘Yeah and I’m Lord Curzon!’

‘But this is a matter of survival for the old boy. Can’t you see? He feeds the cow

sawdust and inedible scraps from this dump he regards his own. In return, he gets his pats of dung from the cow for cooking his dahl.’ The nattily dressed man in cool khaki revealed his tobacco-stained teeth in a facetious smile. ‘Such is the cycle of life.’

‘I think I need a drink.’

‘You’ve certainly come to the right dump. The old boy makes a very healthy and appetizing gau jal.’

What’s that?’

‘A fizzy drink concocted from the cow’s urine. It’s toxic-free.’

‘Yuk!’ ‘Just look at how the old boy gently touches the cow’s forehead for good luck and utters a prayer of respect. Mother Cow is more important to him than his own mother. Holy cow, you might say.’

‘O, for god’s sake!’

‘It would be wise not to invoke your god in such an angry manner. The locals might spot the snake in you.’

The disturbance had attracted other squatters. One of them was booting aside the rubbish to claim the cardboard flap.

‘Hey!’ yelled Darcy. ‘I saw it first! That’s my cardboard, not yours.’ He broke away from the slackened hold of the rickshaw drivers and scrabbled clumsily over the mounds of rubbish, grabbing at the cardboard that the skinny old bag of bones would not relinquish, till the flap to which the latter was clinging tore away and the oldtimer fell on his back.

‘Serves you right, you bastard!’ yelled Darcy, glaring round at the ring of men watching him with curiosity, hugging the collapsible carded rectangles to his chest with defiance on top of the slag.

‘Now if I can only find some old hessian.’

As he kicked over a mud-caked shred of sacking, a large, plump rat bolted from cover.

‘I suppose that rat’s holy too,’ Darcy sneered.

‘Yes, as a matter of fact, it most certainly is,’ smiled the English gentleman.

Darcy woke up with a start. Moving shapes were emerging from flattened cardboard boxes like ghouls from underground blindly groping about the steaming mists of graveyards. But it was the wild laughter that had violated his sleep, laughter deeper than screaming banshees, but not so diabolical, yet more sinister than the madhouse.

He raised himself slowly from his bit of cardboard and sack, stood up and tested his sore leg. The bruise was cobalt blue, but he was more anxious about the itchy cut on his tibia. He wasn’t confident about washing it under the hand-pump.

Another gale of wacky laughter reminded him of kookaburras running amok.

Wearily, he scaled the hill in the park behind. A motley crew was rushing towards the centre of a very ragged circle, arms flailing, all the while laughing, bouncing up and down, laughing their heads off, then holding hands as if in prayer and shaking up and down with forced, hollow laughter, next clapping hands in unison while braying like jack-asses.

‘Excuse me, good gentleman. How much are you laughing every day?’

‘What? What is this? Who are these raving nutters?’

‘I am doing question-paper on our laughter assemblies,’ the polite young beanpole beamed beneath a raven-black moustache, jogging on the spot and snickering selfconsciously. ’Laughter is very good medicine, you know. It is cure for angry persons, persons with nerves.’ Darcy’s steely, suspicious expression did not encourage him; in fact, almost daunted him to a stand-still. ‘How will you be valuing the quality of your laughing today?’ he added solemnly.

Darcy was like a confused bull pawing blood-spattered sand in the arena.

‘Join our club and we giving you training. You can be Certified Laughter Yoga Leader.’

‘Fuck off!’

More than respect for the humble banana, Darcy had acquired dependence on this ubiquitous life-support, even if its appearance was off-putting: squat-midget, brownskinned tapering to black pointy ends, squishy if you left it frying in your pocket for a couple of hours. Never did bananas taste so soft and appetizing; nothing like those tasteless, hard, pumped-up with goodness-knows-what that he bought at the supermarket back home. In Delhi he would buy half a dozen each day, so he knew his bananas. In Karol Bagh they were most expensive opposite the tourist hotels, but two or three times cheaper in the markets. Over the road was a fruit stall watched over by a mute, gap-toothed woman dressed in black from head to toe who appeared not to understand English.

Never one to make snap decisions, Darcy took some time to make his selection, the best bunch of a truly browned-off collection.

‘How much for these four bananas?’

The wizened woman looked at him sternly but uncertainly, then looked along the line of stalls.

‘How much?’ repeated Darcy, holding up his bunch. ‘Four bananas. What is cost?’ He took out a ten rupee note.

Again the woman looked sideways, from whence came an urgent shuffling of feet and a raised hand in the air, as if its stout owner were making a bid.

‘Twenty rupees!’ shouted the man, whereupon the old woman deftly took the bananas, wrapped them in a plastic bag, pushed them into Darcy’s hand and held out

for the money.

Darcy laughed theatrically. ‘Twenty rupees? You must be joking!’ And promptly dropped the bag on the piles of fruit and stomped off muttering daylight robbery.

Just behind him the stall-owner was waving his fists in the air. ‘This is good price.

You will not find better price!’ He was toddling along trying to catch the longerstriding Darcy.

The potential customer was tempted to stop and vent his outrage, but once cheated he would never deal with this pair of rogues again.

‘You will not find better price!’ yelled the man, waddling and puffing badly, but his voice was drowning in traffic.

‘Bargain!’ he shouted. ‘You must bargain!’

It wasn’t long before Darcy caught up with a barrowload of bananas and bought five for ten rupees. It was the first battle he had won.

When he got back to his temporary residence, his two-by-one metre block that his tattered scrap of cardboard lay claim to, he made an appraisal of all the other downand-not-quite-outs who were growing a slum: mothers were washing babies over the gutter in stagnant water; an old man with a discarded weighing machine with rusted chromium, who made three rupees a day if he struck lucky; standing bent over, the barber with razor in hand was chatting with animation while cruising up and down the soapy upper throat with look-away glances at his customers seated on the ground.

The busiest tradie was a dentist with grey walrus moustache decked all in white, turban to pants specked faintly with washed-out pink stains, who was obviously proud of his range of pliers in different sizes and plump syringes and a plastic icecream container of water poured from a bottle to cleanse the instruments laid out on a faded, white cloth before him and to wash his hands after an extraction. Frequently seated alongside was a girl sobbing and clinging fast to an older woman, mocked by a

semi-circular display of dentures laid out on the cloth; or a woman spitting blood into the gutter, before sitting back and holding her head tight to compress the pain, as a mynah bird was turning the tooth over on the ground with its beak.

Next to Darcy’s own crash-pad was a pile of crutches of various sizes continually encroaching. The crutch-wallah issued a closely matching pair to small boys and old men alike as prop for their occupation of professional beggars. Some of the little tackers were urgently dispatched by their parents to go hopping off on their beat. A handful of teenagers exchanged their crutches for folder and text book and trailed off to their university courses. The older beggars were grateful that their work didn’t immediately require them to take their ablutions at the pump, but Darcy wondered if he would have dared splash his body down with cold water before the public gaze had he a dhoti to gird about his nether parts. As it was, he ached for a hot shower.

He squatted down on the cardboard he had scrounged and slowly peeled his banana.

It was barely more than a finger in length, but he savoured its sweet pulpiness very slowly. Staring straight ahead, his eyes strained and head heavy with lack of sleep, his abdomen swollen with gas, he felt strangely lethargic, as if time itself was taking a ginormous yawn. So much had happened in the past twenty-four hours that it was all a jumble, as if every event had happened to someone else. He eased up his trousers to check the cut on his lower leg. Yes, that had happened to him, all right. He examined the open wound. Was it turning septic already or weeping? Was that dark red line dried blood or where the wound was trying to knit? He felt too exhausted and apathetic to stir, too depressed, just staring ahead but seeing nothing. His fieldwork was a categorical ‘Fail’.

‘I should never have come to India,’ he thought. ‘What the hell am I doing here? I haven’t even broken out of purdah. What’s more, there’s no point attempting my master’s. I’m an outsider, an outcast. I’d be better off starting up my own housecleaning business.’

The word ‘Moksha’ escaped from his lips. Slowly, he realized what he had said.

‘Moksha,’ he whispered, tasting the sound.

An old dog with a crusty, grizzled face plodded up on stiff legs waggling his tail, sitting up at his feet with cheery optimism.

Reminded of his own dog, a high-spirited kelpie, Darcy instinctively held out a hand to stroke him behind the hairless, chewed-up ears burnt mottled brown and red in the sun. An ugly, red-raw lump the size of a crab-apple was sticking out from his scabby thigh. ‘Sorry, old feller, I’ve got nothing to give you. And how do you manage to battle on, eh?’

Someone was walking past the line of the homeless and distributing chapati to the kids, who were happily jumping up and down and reaching out. She stopped to put some coins into his tiffin tin. ‘I wouldn’t touch that dog, if I were you. It’s probably got rabies.’

Drowsily, Darcy looked up and saw the wayward strands of magenta hair peeping out from a midnight-blue sari scarf. ‘Lotto! Lot!’ The lady turned in surprise. ‘I don’t think I know you.’

‘Yes, it’s me, Darcy.’

‘I don’t know anyone by that name.’

‘Yes, you do. We had quite a bit of fun together last night.’

‘I don’t think so,’ said the woman curtly, whoever she was, looking nervously about her for stares of recrimination from the slum-dwellers, before hurrying away towards the press of people going about their business.

‘I’m sure that was her,’ he thought. ‘Why did she snub me? Am I so changed?’

The woman had stopped to bar the progress of a holy man ambling with staff and billy tin. Three stripes of ashy paint made his forehead a ghastly grey beneath his grey top-knot. She bowed her head and offered alms. The holy man looked straight ahead, as if blind, while holding forth his tin. The woman reached out for his arm and appeared to grasp and plead. The holy man stared straight ahead as if unseeing the affairs of mere mortals and broke her hold in resuming his journey. The woman halfturned, then hurried on her way.

‘Lottie, wait!’ Darcy’s long-drawn-out cry of anguish startled his fellow-slumdwellers, startled himself. He pulled the bit of hessian over his head and lay on his front, banging his head twice on the ground. If only he could shed some tears, but those chakras of feeling had frozen. Worse than disorientation, a sense of utter displacement overwhelmed him. He felt as desolate as he had ever suffered in his life.

A pathetic, frightened incognito. ‘Is that the label I have to hang round my neck?’ he thought. He pulled off the hessian disguise, sat up, and looked about him at the ruins of his own self-esteem.

‘Swami! Swami!’

A leper scuttled past so close that Darcy could see the lesions on his legs. He cringed with horror. It seemed as if the leper might wrap his arms about the holy man, but no, he danced some fidgety steps before the ambling gait of the sadhu, who continued walking, expressionless, silent, untouchable. The leper put his fists together in an attitude of prayer, as if seeking to be blessed with an emanation of the divine. Darcy noticed the leper had no fingers to speak of. Still the sadhu offered no crumb of comfort, absorbed elsewhere, as he seemed. For a second or two, Darcy wondered if the holy man was pukka or just another avatar from the team of professional beggars.

Then the holy man did stop. Opposite Darcy. And fixed a fierce gaze directly down at the stray. In a voice husky with infrequent use, he measured his words in unfaltering, almost sing-song English: ‘Where there is fear, there is no love. Where there is no love, there is no God.’ The holy man lingered for a few seconds, as if to allow his maxims to penetrate, then continued his journey.

A little girl stopped and stared with doubtful expression at a fair, blond-haired beggar who looked so very miserable. Instinctively, she held out a tiny hand. In her palm was a small rice cake.

Darcy was slow to react, but the girl trigge d out in a brocaded jacket of grenadier red stood staring at him, biting her lip and anxiously looking round at her mother.

The odd stick with red-rimmed eyes tentatively made to accept the cake, halfexpecting the youngster to withdraw her hand quickly and run. ‘Thank you,’ he said, barely audible.

The little girl puckered up her nose, then squealed with delight, revealing the whitest of teeth, then glanced back at her mother, who had stood off, her face the first rays of sunshine peeping through bruised clouds.

‘Idlis,’ the girl said.

‘Id . . . lis. That’s a very nice name. Me, Darcy,’ he managed to get out, pointing at his own sunken chest. ‘Thank you, Idlis.’

The mother hurried forward, highly agitated. ‘No, no, that cake. Idlis . . . cake. She Koorina.’

The little girl broke into giggles, then the mother, trying to stop herself, began to titter, apologetically. Darcy bobbled his head from side to side in Indian style, straining to find a smile beneath the tears masking his eyes.

Michael Small April 20 - July 3, 2009 P O S T E D B Y MICH A EL A T 02:57 EMAIL THISBLOGTHIS!SHARE TO TWITTERSHARE TO FACEBOOK

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SNUFFLING FOR BLACK GOLD

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THE SCORN OF BECKY PILBEAM

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THE WAY OF THE WARRIOR

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WHERE THERE’S A WILL

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A LEGEND LAUNDERED

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BRIEFED FOR BERLIN

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ROAD TO KAROL BAGH

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CYCLONE CORAL

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A BITTER SPACE

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BEYOND THE GIRRAHWEEN STEPS

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THE BOUNCING STONES

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PUSKAS

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HER MASTER’S VOICE

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M’CRACKEN’S GHOST

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DUST IN YOUR EYES

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RAKING THE ASHES

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VEGETABLE LOVE

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HARVEST–TIME IN PROVENCE

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I DON’T TELL STORIES

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IMMEMORIAL RUN

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THE ODD FLUTTER

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HOMEWARD BOUND

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SOVRAN KING

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L’OSSESSIONE

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THE MODEL UNVEILED

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RESTING PLACE

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CAT’S PAW

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HER NATURAL LIFE

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THE PLAY’S THE THING

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ROADSCAPE

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BORN LOSER

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ALICE SAFARI

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