A Fine Balance (28 page)

“My grandfather’s friend, Dayaram,” said Om, “he was forced to eat a landlord’s shit once, because he was late ploughing his field.”

Rajaram emptied the last drops of water from his can into his palm and slicked back his hair. “Did that Dayaram develop any magic power afterwards?”

“No, why?”

“I’ve heard of a caste of sorcerers. They eat human shit, it gives them their black powers.”

“Really?” said Om. “Then we could start a business – collect all these lumps from the track, package them and sell to that caste. Ready-made lunches, teatime snacks, hot and steaming.” Rajaram and he laughed, but Ishvar strode ahead, disgusted, pretending he hadn’t heard.

Om returned to the tap for another bucketful. The line had grown considerably. A few places ahead he saw a girl with a big brass pot balanced against her hip. When she raised her arms to lift it to her head, his eyes were drawn to the swell of her blouse. The weight thrust a fine sharpness into her hips as she passed. Water overbrimmed the pot and sloshed, trickling down her forehead. Glistening drops hung in her hair and eyelashes. Like morning dew, thought Om. Oh, she was lovely. For the rest of the day he felt he would burst with longing and happiness.

By the time the tap went dry, the hutment colony had finished its morning ablutions, leaving the ground charted with little rivulets of foam and froth. As the day wore on, the earth and sun readily swallowed it all. The smell from the railroad-latrine endured longer. The capricious breeze escorted the stench for hours into the shacks before changing direction.

Late in the evening, Rajaram was cooking on a Primus stove outside his door as the tailors returned from exploring the area around the slum. They heard the oil hissing in the frying pan. “Have you eaten?” he asked.

“At the station.”

“That can be expensive. Get a ration card as soon as possible, cook your own food.”

“We don’t even have a stove.”

“That’s only a small obstacle. You can borrow mine.” He told them about a woman in the colony who hawked vegetables and fruit in residential neighbourhoods. “If something remains in her basket at the end of the day – a few tomatoes, peas, brinjal – she sells it cheaply. You should buy from her, like me.”

“Good idea,” said Ishvar.

“Only one thing she won’t sell you – bananas.”

Om snickered, expecting a juicy punch line, but there wasn’t one. The monkey-man in the colony had a standing agreement with the woman. Her blackened or damaged bananas went to his two main performers. “The poor dog has to find his own food, though,” said Rajaram.

“Which dog?”

“Monkey-man’s dog. He’s part of the act – the monkeys ride him. But he is always in the garbage, looking for food. Monkey-man can’t afford to feed them all.” The Primus sputtered twice; he pumped it up and stirred the pan. “Some people say Monkey-man does dirty, unnatural things with the monkeys. I don’t believe it. But even if he does, so what? We all need comfort, no? Monkey, prostitute, or your own hand – what difference? Not everyone can have wives.”

He poked the sizzling vegetables to check if they were done, then extinguished the stove and spooned out a helping on a plastic plate for the tailors.

“No, we ate at the station, really.”

“Don’t insult me – have one bite at least.”

They accepted the plate. A man with a harmonium slung from his neck overheard them while passing. “Smells good,” he said. “Save one bite for me also.”

“Yes, sure, come on.” But the man squeezed out a chord, waved, and continued on his way.

“Have you met him? Lives in the second row.” Rajaram stirred the pan and helped himself. “He begins work in the evening. Says people are more generous if he sings when they are eating or relaxing. Have some more?”

Their refusal was final this time. Rajaram finished what remained. “It’s very nice for me that you are renting this house. On the other side of me,” he said, lowering to a whisper, “lives a useless fellow – drunk all the time. Beats his wife and his five-six children if they don’t bring back enough from begging.”

They looked at the shack, where all was quiet at present. The children were not in evidence. “Sleeping it off. To start again tomorrow. And she must be on the streets with the little ones.”

The tailors sat with their neighbour for the rest of the evening, talking about their village, about Muzaffar Tailoring Company, and about the job they were starting on Monday with Dina Dalai. Rajaram nodded at the familiar story. “Yes, thousands and thousands are coming to the city because of bad times in their native place. I came for the same reason.”

“But we don’t want to stay too long.”

“Nobody does,” said Rajaram. “Who wants to live like this?” His hand moved in a tired semicircle, taking in the squalid hutments, the ragged field, the huge slum across the road wearing its malodorous crown of cooking smoke and industrial effluvium. “But sometimes people have no choice. Sometimes the city grabs you, sinks its claws into you, and refuses to let go.”

“Not us, for sure. We are here to make some money and hurry back,” said Om.

Ishvar did not want to discuss their plans, fearing contamination by doubts. “What’s your trade?” he asked, changing the subject.

“Barber. But I gave it up some time ago. Got fed up with complaining customers. Too short, too long, puff not big enough, sideburns not wide enough, this, that. Every ugly fellow wants to look like a film actor. So I said, enough. Since then I’ve done lots of jobs. Right now, I’m a hair-collector.”

“That’s good,” said Ishvar tentatively. “What do you have to do, as a hair-collector?”

“Collect hair.”

“And there is money in that?”

“Oh, very big business. There is a great demand for hair in foreign countries.”

“What do they do with it?” asked Om, sceptical.

“Many different things. Mostly they wear it. Sometimes they paint it in different colours – red, yellow, brown, blue. Foreign women enjoy wearing other people’s hair. Men also, especially if they are bald. In foreign countries they fear baldness. They are so rich in foreign countries, they can afford to fear all kinds of silly things.”

“And how do you collect the hair?” asked Om. “Steal it from people’s heads?” There was a sneer in his voice.

Rajaram laughed good-naturedly. “I go to pavement barbers. They let me take it in exchange for a packet of blades, or soap, or a comb. In haircutting saloons they give it free if I sweep the floor myself. Come – come inside my house, I’ll show you my stock.”

Rajaram lit a lamp to dispel the early dusk within the shack. The flame flickered, steadied, and blossomed into orange, revealing gunny sacks and plastic bags stacked high against the wall.

“The sacks are from pavement barbers,” he said, opening one under their curious gaze. “See, short hair.”

They held back from the unappetizing contents, and he plunged in his hand to display a greasy clump. “Not more than two or three inches long. Fetches twenty-four rupees a kilo from the export agent. It’s only good for making chemicals and medicines, he tells me. But look inside this plastic bag.”

He untied the string and drew out a handful of long tresses. “From a ladies’ barber. So beautiful, no? This is the valuable stuff. It’s a very lucky day for me when I find this kind of hair. From eight to twelve inches, it brings two hundred rupees a kilo. Longer than twelve, six hundred rupees.” He fingered his own hair and held it out like a violin.

“So that’s why you are growing yours.”

“Naturally. God-given harvest will put food in my stomach.”

Om took the tresses and stroked them, not repulsed as he had been by the mounds of short clippings. “Feels good. Soft and smooth.”

“You know,” said Rajaram, “when I find hair like this, I always want to meet the woman. I lie awake at night, wondering about her. What does she look like? Why was it cut? For fashion? For punishment? Or did her husband die? The hair is chopped off, but there is a whole life connected to it.”

“This must have been a rich woman’s hair,” said Om.

“And why do you think so?” asked Rajaram, with the air of a mentor examining the novice.

“Because of the fragrance. Smells like expensive hair tonic. A poor woman would use raw coconut oil.”

“Perfectly correct,” he tapped Om’s shoulder approvingly. “By their hair shall you know them. Health and sickness, youth and age, wealth and poverty – it’s all revealed in the hair.”

“Religion and caste also,” said Om.

“Exactly. You have the makings of a hair-collector. Let me know if you get tired of tailoring.”

“But would I be able to stroke the hair while it’s still attached to the woman? All the hair? From top to bottom, and between the legs?”

“He’s a clever rascal, isn’t he?” said Rajaram to Ishvar, who was threatening to hit his nephew. “But I am strictly a professional. I admit that sometimes, seeing a woman with long hair, I want to run my fingers through it, twine it around my wrist. But I have to control myself. Till the barber severs it, I can only dream.”

“You would dream a lot about our new employer if you saw her,” said Om. “Dina Dalai’s hair is beautiful. She probably has nothing to do all day but wash it and oil it and brush it and keep it looking perfect.” He held the tresses against his head, clowning. “How do I look?”

“I was planning to find you a wife,” said his uncle. “If you prefer, we can find a husband.” Laughing, Rajaram took back the hair and replaced it carefully in the plastic bag.

“But I am thinking,” said Ishvar. “Wouldn’t a hair-collector get more business in a place like Rishikesh? Or a temple town like Hardwar? Where people shave their heads and offer their locks to God?”

“You are correct,” said Rajaram. “But there’s a big obstacle in the way. A friend of mine, also a hair-collector, went south, to Tirupati. Just to check out the production in the temples there. You know what he found? About twenty thousand people a day, coming to sacrifice their hair. Six hundred barbers, working in eight-hour shifts.”

“That must produce a huge hill of hair.”

“Hill? It’s a Himalayan mountain of hair. But middlemen like me have no chance to collect it. After the hair is dedicated, the very holy Brahmin priests put it in their very holy warehouse. And every three months they hold an auction, where the export companies buy it directly.”

“You don’t have to tell us about Brahmins and priests,” said Ishvar. “The greed of the upper castes is well known in our village.”

“It’s the same everywhere,” agreed Rajaram. “I’m still waiting to meet one who will treat me as his equal. As a fellow human being – that’s all I want, nothing more.”

“From now on you can have our hair,” said Om generously.

“Thank you. I can cut it for you free, if you like, as long as you’re not fussy.” He tucked away the sacks of hair and brought out his comb and scissors, offering a crop on the spot.

“Wait,” said Om. “I should first let it grow long like yours. Then you can get more money for it.”

“Nothing doing,” said Ishvar. “No long hair. Dina Dalai won’t like a tailor with long hair.”

“One thing is certain,” said Rajaram. “Supply and demand for hair is endless, it will always be big business.” As they returned outside into the evening air, he added, “Sometimes, it also turns into big trouble.”

“Why trouble?”

“I was thinking about the hair of the beard of the Prophet. When it disappeared from the Hazrat-Bal mosque in Kashmir some years ago. You remember?”

“I do,” said Ishvar. “But Om was just a baby then, he doesn’t know.”

“Tell me, tell me. What happened?”

“Just that,” said Ishvar. “The sacred hair disappeared one day, and there were big riots. Everyone was saying the government should resign, that the politicians must have something to do with it. To cause trouble, you know, because Kashmiris were asking for independence.”

“What happened was,” added Rajaram, “after two weeks of riots and curfews, the government investigators announced they had found the sacred hair. But the people were not happy – what if the government is fooling us? they asked. What if they are passing off some ordinary hair for the sacred one? So the government got a group of very learned mullahs and put them in complete charge of inspecting the hair. When they said it was the correct one, only then did calm return to the streets of Srinagar.”

Outside, the smoke of cooking fires had taken control of the air. A voice yelled in the darkness, “Shanti! Hurry with the wood!” and a girl responded. Om looked: it was her, the one with the big brass pot. Shanti, he repeated silently, losing interest in the hair-collector’s story.

Rajaram propped a rock against the door of his shack so the wind wouldn’t blow it open, then escorted the tailors on a tour of the neighbourhood. He showed them a shortcut to the train station through a break in the railroad fence. “Keep walking through that gully, till you see the big advertisements for Amul Butter and Modern Bread. It will save you at least ten minutes when you go to work.”

He also warned them about the slum abutting their field. “Most of the people in that bustee are decent, but some lanes are very dangerous. Murder and robbery is definitely possible if you walk through there.” In the safe part of the slum, he introduced them to a tea stall whose owner he knew, where they could have tea and snacks on credit, paying at the end of the month.

Late that night, as they sat outside their shack, smoking, they heard the harmonium player. He had returned from work, and was playing for pleasure. The reedy notes of his instrument, in the bleak surroundings, were rich as a golden flute. “Meri dosti mera pyar,” he sang, and the song about love and friendship took the sting out of the acrid smoke of smouldering fires.

T
he Rations Officer was not at his desk. A peon said the boss was on his meditation break. “You should come back on Monday.”

“But we have to start our new jobs on Monday,” said Ishvar. “How long is the meditation break?”

The peon shrugged. “One hour, two hours, three – depends on how much weight is on his mind. Sahab says without the break he would turn into a madman by the end of the week.” The tailors decided to wait in line.