A Fine Balance Part 43

At quitting time the tailors placed the covers mournfully over the sewing-machines. They rose heavily, sighed, and walked towards the door.

For a moment Dina felt like a magician. She could make everything become s.h.i.+ning and golden, depending on her words the utterance was all.

"What time will you return?"

"Whenever you wish," said Om. "As early as you like." Ishvar nodded in silence.

She took the opening; the pieces fell into place. "Well, no need to rush. Have your dinner, then come back. Maneck and I will also finish eating by then."

"You mean we can...?"

"On the verandah?"

"Only till you find yourselves a place," she said, pleased at how neutral her statements were the line drawn precisely.

Their grat.i.tude warmed her, but she cut short the offer of payment. "No. Absolutely no rent. I am not renting anything, just keeping you out of those crooked police hands."

And she made it clear that their comings and goings had to be reduced, the risk with the landlord was too great. The was.h.i.+ng trip to the railway station every morning, for one, could be eliminated. "You can bathe and have tea here. As long as you wake up early, before the water goes. Keep in mind, I have only one bathroom." Which made Om wonder why anybody would be silly enough to have more than one, but he didn't ask.

"And remember, I don't want a mess in there."

They agreed to all her conditions and swore they would be no bother. "But we really feel bad staying for free," said Ishvar.

"If you mention money once more, you'll have to find somewhere else."

They thanked her again and left for dinner, promising to be back by eight and sew for an hour before bedtime.

"But Aunty, why refuse their offer of rent? They'll feel good if you take a little money. And it will also help you with the expenses."

"Don't you understand anything? If I accept money, it means a tenancy on my verandah."

Stooped over the basin, Dina brushed her teeth with Kolynos. Ishvar watched the foam drip from her mouth. "I've always wondered if that's good for the teeth," he said.

She spat and gargled before answering, "As good as any other toothpaste, I think. Which one do you use?"

"We use charcoal powder. And sometimes neem sticks."

Maneck said that Ishvar and Om's teeth were better than his. "Show me," she said, and he bared them. "And yours?" she asked the tailors.

The three lined up before the mirror and curled their lips, exposing their incisors. She compared her own. "Maneck is right, yours are whiter."

Ishvar offered her a bit of charcoal powder to try, and she squeezed half an inch of Kolynos on his finger. He shared it with Om. "Taste is delicious," they concurred.

"That's all very well," she said. "But paying for taste is a waste, unless you are talking about food. I think I will switch to charcoal and save money." Maneck decided to follow suit.

The enlarged household turned the wheel of morning with minimal friction. Dina was the first to rise, Maneck the last. When she had finished in the bathroom the tailors took their turns. They were in and out so fast, she suspected a deficiency in matters of personal hygiene, till she saw their well-scrubbed faces and wet hair. A deep breath in their proximity confirmed the clean odour of freshly bathed skin.

Though the bathroom was unimaginable luxury, the tailors did not linger. High-speed was.h.i.+ng came naturally to them. Over the last several months they had honed their skills in public places, where time was critical. The faucet in the alley near Nawaz's awning; the single tap at the centre of the hutment colony; the crumbling toilets in the overcrowded railway bathroom; the trickling spout at the irrigation project: all these had helped to perfect their technique to the point where each could finish within three minutes. They never operated Dina's immersion heater, preferring cold water, and their tidy habits left everything neat.

But the thought of their bodies in her bathroom still made Dina uncomfortable. She was watchful, waiting to pounce if she found evidence that her soap or towel had been used. If they were to live here for a few days, it would be on her terms, there would be no slackening of the reins.

What she disliked most was Ishvar's morning ritual of plunging his fingers down his throat to retch. The procedure was accompanied by a primal yowling, something she had often heard emanating from other flats, but never at such close quarters. It made her skin crawl.

"Goodness, you frightened me," she said when the series of yips and yelps rang out.

He smiled. "Very good for the stomach. Gets rid of stale, excess bile."

"Careful, yaar," said Om, siding with Dina. "Sounds like your liver is coming out with the bile." He had never approved of his uncle's practice; Ishvar had tried to teach him its therapeutic effects and had given up, faced with a lack of cooperation.

"What you need is a plumber," said Maneck. "To install a little tap in your side. Then all you do is turn it on and release the excess bile." He and Om began baying an accompanying chorus when Ishvar started howling again.

After a few days of their combined teasing, Ishvar moderated his habit. The yowls were more restrained, and his fingers no longer explored his gullet to quite the same daredevil depths.

Om sniffed Maneck's skin. "Your smell is better than mine. Must be your soap."

"I use powder as well."

"Show me."

Maneck got the can from his room.

"And where do you put it? All over?"

"I just take a little in my palm and spread it in the armpits and chest."

On the next payment day, Om purchased a cake of Cinthol Soap and a can of Lakme Talc.u.m Powder.

The pattern of each day, thought Dina at the end of the first week, was like the pattern of a well-cut dress, the four of them fitting together without having to tug or pull to make the edges meet. The seams were straight and neat.

Ishvar, however, was still troubled that he and his nephew were taking advantage of Dina's goodness. "You won't accept any rent from us," he said. "You let us use your verandah and bathroom. You give us tea. This is too much, it makes us feel bad."

His declaration reminded her of her own guilt. She knew that everything she did was done from self-preservation to keep the tailors from being picked up again by the police, and to have them out of sight of nosey neighbours and the rent-collector. Now Ishvar and Om were wrapping her in the mantle of kindness and generosity. Deceit, hypocrisy, manipulation were more the fabrics of her garment, she thought.

"So what is your plan?" she said brusquely. "To insult me with fifty paise for tea? You want to treat me like a roadside chaiwalla?"

"No no, never. But is there not something we can do for you in return?"

She said she would let them know.

At the end of the second week, Ishvar was still waiting to hear. Then he took matters into his own hand. While she was bathing, he fetched the broom and dustpan from the kitchen and swept the verandah, the front room, Maneck's room, and the sewing room. As he finished in each, Om got busy with the bucket and cloth, mopping the floors.

They were still at it when Dina emerged from the bathroom. "What's going on here?"

"Forgive me, but I have decided," said Ishvar firmly. "We are going to share the daily cleaning from now on."

"That does not seem right," she said.

"Seems just fine," said Om, briskly squeezing out the mop.

Deeply moved, she poured the tea while they were finis.h.i.+ng up. They came into the kitchen to replace the cleaning things, and she handed two cups to Om.

Noticing the red rose borders, he started to point out her error, "The pink ones for us," then stopped. Her face told him she was aware of it.

"What?" she asked, taking the pink cup for herself. "Is something wrong?"

"Nothing," his voice caught. He turned away, hoping she did not see the film of water glaze his eyes.

"Someone at the door for you," said Dina. "The same long-haired fellow who came once before."

Ishvar and Om exchanged glances what did he want now? Apologizing for the interruption, they went to the verandah.

"Namaskaar," said Rajaram, putting his hands together. "Sorry to bother you at work, but the night.w.a.tchman said you didn't sleep there anymore."

"Yes, we have another place."

"Where?"

"Nearby."

"Hope it's nice. Listen, can I meet you later to talk? Any time today, anywhere, your convenience." He sounded desperate.

"Okay," said Ishvar. "Come to Vishram at one o'clock. You know where it is?"

"Yes, I'll be there. And listen, can you please bring my hair from your trunk?"

After Rajaram had left, Dina asked the tailors if something was wrong. "He's not connected with that other man, I hope the one who's squeezing you for money every week."

"No no, he does not work for Beggarmaster," said Ishvar. "He's a friend, probably just wants a loan."

"Well, you be careful," said Dina. "These days, friends and foes look alike."

The Vishram was crowded, and Rajaram was waiting nervously on the pavement when they arrived. "Here's your hair," Ishvar handed him the package. "So. What will you eat?"

"Nothing, my stomach is full," said Rajaram, but his mouth betrayed his hunger, masticating phantom food in response to aromas from the Vishram.

"Have something," said Ishvar, feeling sorry for him. "Try something, it's our treat."

"Okay, whatever you two are eating." He forced a laugh. "A full stomach is only a small obstacle."

"Three pao-bhajis and three bananas," Ishvar told the cas.h.i.+er-waiter.

They carried their food to the site of a collapsed building, just down the road, and chose a window ledge in the shade of a half-crumpled wall. A horizontal door served as their table. Its hinges and k.n.o.bs had been scavenged; the collapse was several weeks old. Four children with gunny sacks were clambering in the rubble, sifting and searching.

"So how's your work as a Family Planning Motivator?"

Rajaram shook his head, wolfing a large mouthful. "Not good." He ate as though he hadn't seen food for days. "They asked me to leave two weeks ago."

"What happened?"

"They said I wasn't producing results."

"Suddenly? After two months?"

"Yes," he hesitated. "I mean, no, there were problems from the very beginning. After the training course, I was following the procedure they showed me. I visited different neighbourhoods every day. I carefully repeated the things they taught me, using the correct tone, sounding kind and knowledgeable, so no one would get scared. And usually people listened patiently, took the leaflets; sometimes they laughed, and young fellows made dirty jokes. But no one would sign up for the operation.

"A few weeks later, my supervisor called me into his office. He said I wasn't pursuing the right customers. He said it was a waste of time trying to sell a wedding suit to a naked fakir. I asked him exactly what he meant."

Rajaram repeated for the tailors the supervisor's reply that people in the city were too cynical, they doubted everything, it was difficult to motivate them. Suburban slums were the places to tackle. After all, there lived the ignorant people most in need of the government's help. The programme, with its free gifts and incentives, was specifically designed for them.

"So I took his advice and went outside the city. And would you believe it? On the very first day my cycle got a puncture."

"A bad beginning," said Ishvar, shaking his head.

"Puncture was only a small problem. The real trouble came later." While the tyre was being fixed at a cycle shop, said Rajaram, he got to talking with an elderly man waiting in a bus shelter, not far from a fire hydrant. The elderly man needed a wash, and was hoping that street urchins would come along and turn on the hydrant.

For the sake of practice, and to see how long he could hold the fellow's attention, Rajaram began telling him he was a Motivator involved in the good works of the Family Planning Centre. He described the birth-control devices, named the sterilization operations, and the cash inducement for each: a tubectomy was awarded more free gifts than a vasectomy, he explained, because the government preferred intervention that was final and irreversible.

That's the one I want, interrupted the old man, the expensive one, the tube-whatever one. Rajaram almost fell off his perch on the bus-shelter railing. No no, grandfather, it's not for you, I was just talking about it for the sake of talking, he said. I insist, said the old man, it's my right. But tubectomy can only be performed on a woman's parts, explained Rajaram, for a man's parts there is vasectomy, and at your age even that is unnecessary. I don't care about age, I'll take it, whichever is meant for my parts, persisted the old man.

"Maybe he badly wanted a transistor radio," said Om.

"That's exactly what I a.s.sumed," said Rajaram. "I thought to myself, if this grandfather desires it so much, who am I to argue? If music makes him happy, why deny him?"

So he got out the proper form, took a thumbprint, paid the tyre-repairer, and escorted his patient to the clinic. That evening, he received the money for his commission, his very first.

Now he regarded the puncture as the harbinger of good fortune: the pointed finger of fate, flattening his tyre and his bad fortune. The badge of Motivator clung with more honesty to his s.h.i.+rt. Br.i.m.m.i.n.g with confidence, he returned to the suburban area, certain that he could round up vasectomies and tubectomies by the score.

A week pa.s.sed, and his peregrinations took him to his first customer's neighbourhood. He cycled among the shacks, seeking to motivate the ma.s.ses, his head overflowing with various ways of saying the same thing, formulating phrases to make sterility acceptable, even desirable, when someone from the old man's family recognized him and began shouting for help: Motorwaiter is here! Aray, the rascal Motorwaiter has come again!

Rajaram was soon surrounded by an angry crowd threatening to break every bone in his body. In response to his pleas for mercy and his terror-stricken cries of why? why? he learned that something had gone wrong with the operation. The old maris groin had filled up with pus. When the rot began to spread, the clinic was no help, and the old man died.

Ishvar nodded in sympathy as he peeled his banana. He had always felt that the hair-collector's new job was fraught with danger. "Did they beat you badly?"

Rajaram unb.u.t.toned his s.h.i.+rt and showed them the purple bruises on his back. Across the chest was a gouge, starting to heal, made by some sharp tool. He lowered his head to point out the torn patch of scalp where an attacker had pulled out a clump of hair. "But I was lucky to escape with my life. They told me I should have known better, the only reason their grandfather went for the operation was because of the cash bonus and gifts. The old man had wanted to help with his granddaughter's dowry.

"I returned straight to my supervisor and made a complaint. How could I produce results, I said, if the doctors killed the patients? But he said the man died because he was old, and the family was simply at all blaming the Family Planning Centre."

"Goat-f.u.c.king b.a.s.t.a.r.d," said Om.

"Exactly. But guess what else the supervisor told me. From now on my job would be easier, he said, because of a policy change." The new scheme had been explained to Rajaram it was no longer necessary to sign up individuals for the operation. Instead, they were to be offered a free medical checkup. And it wasn't to be viewed as lying, just a step towards helping people improve their lives. Once inside the clinic, isolated from the primitive influence of families and friends, they would quickly see the benefits of sterilization.

Rajaram picked the crumbs from his pao-bhaji wrapper, then tossed it in the rubble. "Even though I didn't like the new system, I agreed to try it. By now, everyone realized that Motivators were giving bogus talk to people. Wherever I went, city or suburb, they insulted me, called me a threat to manhood, a dispenser of napusakta, a castrator, a procurer of eunuchs. And here I was, just doing a government job, trying to make a living. How can you function like this day after day? No, I said, this is not for me."

He told his employers he was willing to work in the old way, distribute leaflets and explain procedures, but no more deception. They said the old way was no longer an option quotas had fallen behind badly. Concrete results were needed to justify each Motivator's food, shelter, and bicycle.

"So last week I lost all three when they threw me out. Now I am desperate. There is nothing to do but go back to my old profession."