The Cripple and His Talismans (6 page)

Yet, it is not what these bottles hold, but what once held them that stops me from smashing them all. My left arm, the one I lost. You eat with the right; you sign and shake hands with the right, but you always drink and smoke with the left. The right is your life; the left is your death. Never mix the two. As long as your right does not know what the left does, you will continue living.

The answer to my quest lies in my past. I must go back, far back, as the In-charge said. I will invoke my past by stroking an empty whiskey bottle. For the first time in my life, I hold a whiskey bottle with my right hand. Maybe it does not matter. For even if you have drunk only water, your manner can still suggest you have consumed bottles and bottles of whiskey.

I am always the first one to run through the corridor when the bell rings. I rush to the water tank to drink the contaminated water. It is not boiled. It is not filtered. There is surefire bravery in drinking it. Even though I get to the row of taps before my classmates do, I wait for them to show up. They must see me drink this water. I pull my red school tie over my shoulder so that it does not get wet when I bend down to cup the water in my hand. But even the seniors are not drinking water today. Maybe no one is thirsty.

The first few sips always taste like fresh lake water, but today seems different. I quench my thirst, make sure that the dryness in my throat is gone. I look outside and see that the walls of the church are being painted. They stopped taking our class to church after we were caught changing the words of all the hymns.

There is a tap on my back. “Did you not hear what Miss said to the class?”

It is Viren, worthless Viren.

“No cloud, no rain, it’s only Viren,” I shout. Viren, who wears a yellow tie, has yellow teeth, whose gumboots are also yellow. Just like a girl’s gumboots.

I wipe the water off my lips but let the tie stay over my shoulder, unlike Viren’s. His tie is as well behaved as a picnic photo.

“Did you not hear what Miss said?” he asks again.

“Which Miss?” I ask.

“Miss Bardet.”

“Did she tell the class about your mother?”

Viren’s tie stiffens. No cloud, no rain, and still Viren is upset. “Go to hell,” he says. “I will not tell you what she said.”

Viren turns and leaves. I do not like this. I must use some fancy English to irritate Viren. It is his favourite subject.

“I
forbid
you to leave,” I say.

Viren turns and looks my way. There are no bruises on his face. The bastard is beginning to heal fast. He likes to read and write. He keeps a diary.

“Come here,” I say.

“Otherwise?”

“Otherwise I will tell Shakespeare.”

I find that funny. Viren does not. I do not know Shakespeare, but Viren talks about him all the time. I do know that he is fancy and English. Apart from that, I am guessing he must be a family relative with lots of money. No, wait; I remember Viren quoting one of Shakespeare’s sayings. The fool must be a writer.

The only thing I like about Viren is that he is stubborn. Even though he is a girl, he is a stubborn one. He never learns that it is bad to answer back.

“Now tell me what Miss Bardet said,” I demand.

“Nothing.”

His face begins to crumple as if he is anticipating a slap. I begin to feel sick. There must have been something in the water. I want to vomit but not in front of Viren. Maybe
on
Viren, but not in front of him.

Now a few students have stepped out and are talking in the corridor. I see Rahul and his sister, also the fat girl from the other division with her pink lunch box. Viren turns around and sees them. There is also that new boy, who wears short pants, standing in the doorway. I will deal with him later.

I catch Viren by the collar and make sure that everyone is watching.

“Let me go,” says Viren.

“Okay,” I say. I let go of his collar and yank his tie so hard the knot becomes the size of a tiny ball.

“Now, Viren, tell me what Miss Bardet said.”

“No.”

I pull harder. No cloud, no rain, but every vein in his neck is choking up. I do not want him dead, so I loosen the grip.

“She said in class that a dead rat is in the water tank and that no one must drink the water.”

I let go of his tie. I feel even more sick. Miss Bardet takes the first class each morning. How can she expect us to pay attention at such an early hour?

Viren turns around and loudly announces, “He drank the dead-rat water. He drank the dead-rat water.”

Rahul and his sister laugh, the new boy in short pants laughs, the fat girl laughs, and I am sure her pink lunch box finds it funny, too. Viren runs back toward the class. I must catch him before he tells the whole world.

I run after him and slap him hard on the back and he falls to the concrete floor. His pretty yellow gumboots squeak as I drag him back to the water tank. I think of the dead rat lying on its back, floating in the water tank. If I throw up before beating him, I will never be able to study in this school again. Then all the new boys will wear short pants and no one will be there to stop them.

I put Viren’s head under the water taps and open two of them. Viren tries hard to get up but I push his chest against the parapet so that he cannot breathe. I turn his head so that his mouth is directly under the water flow, and I can see the tears. Soon they will be washed off with dead-rat water.

“Open your mouth,” I tell him.

“Please …” His voice shakes.

“Drink the water. Fast.”

I force open his mouth and watch the water gush in. Viren is crying and his hair is wet. He will get punished in class for this. Too much rain for Viren. As I squeeze his neck hard, I wonder how anyone can wear yellow gumboots.

As I caress the bottle, I look outside. Smells travel through the air. Of fried onions, from the plate of a cook to a hungry house. Of failure, as a man sends a letter to his wife in the village, explaining how he lost his job. Of parting, as a dead son rises through the dust and waves goodbye to his mother.

I raise the bottle to my nose and inhale the dank smell of whiskey. There is dust on the bottle mouth, which I wipe with my hand. I cut myself on the glass. The mouth is sharp and angry. It feels good. Blood trickles down the bottle. A few drops fall in. Where there once lived whiskey, there is blood. But the two know each other well — there is a lot of whiskey in my bloodstream.

As I watch the drops fall, I understand what my next step should be.

My past has drawn blood. It is what I must do to my present. I must suck my own blood until there is none left.

I must kill myself.

There is an unwritten rule, or, if it is writ, it lies sculpted on God’s arm. Once your journey begins, you cannot end it. You can propel yourself off track, skid in different mud, but it will only make your journey that much longer. There is another rule, that of widows and mad dogs. It lies under their beds. God has never read it for he does not visit their homes. I will find out which rule holds true.

I do not have the proper tools for the test, but my qualifications are excellent. The rich succeed at suicide but not because they are adept at it. They have the facilities: the guns and expensive rope. They live in tall buildings from which they can jump. But if I jump from the ground floor, it will be like trying to drown a fish.

I am not skillful with knives. I might cut the wrong vein, slash my throat at an inappropriate angle and bleed insufficiently. In my delirium, I will be too weak to cut again. I might be rescued by a misguided individual who means well. That would be tragic.

I walk to the kitchen, to where the rectangular grinding stone rests on the floor. I wear white, the colour of death. Before death, our faces go white. The hospitals we die in have white walls, white sheets, nurses and doctors who wear white. The bedpans and bowls we spit our sickness into are white. Even the stray dogs that walk the hospital grounds are white. I am dressed for the occasion.

I wish the grinding stone was not black. I lift it a little and rest it on my thigh. It is very heavy. I tuck it under my arm and walk to the door. Even though I have money for a taxi, I want to take a bus. It will make my death seem more tragic. If God is not paying attention, he will think I am poor — a public transit user. I will get extra points in heaven. God favours those who travel by bus and train. The reason is simple — he sympathizes with them. In fact, hell’s design is loosely based on a railway platform: no urinal, lots of people, and you have to buy a ticket even though you do not want to be there.

What is wrong with me? I am about to die. I must speak kindly of God.

Thinking about God has suddenly drawn my attention to my fatty bank account. I will certainly not donate any money to the poor. If I give them money, I am tampering with karma. I do not wish to alter God’s work.

Let them remain poor. He wants it so.

Let the bank managers worry about what to do with my mutual funds, provident funds, drinking funds, and my weekly prostitute allowance. They will wait for relatives to come and make a claim, but no one will step forward because I am known as a drinker and as a bad man who goes to bad women, and they want nothing to do with me. As the months pass, my relatives will tell themselves that all that money lying in the bank is a terrible waste. So they will fight over it and there will be more death.

I wish I could leave a legacy. It is most important. Even though you die, your work must live on. But I have never worked in my life.
It is a dreadful thought, really. Work. The only thing that sounds more depressing is marriage.

But doing nothing also takes a lot of work. Trust me, I know. It was very hard for me to wake up seven days a week and do nothing. So I slept two days at a time. I was a master at it. I do have my reasons for not working. I was either in a brothel, or I was thinking about being in a brothel; I was either drunk, or I was thinking about getting drunk. When I look back, my time was well spent.

Who would have thought that a bright child like me would turn out this way? It makes my heart bleed. “He comes from a privileged background,” they used to say. His father’s a surgeon. (But the poor man used to cut himself while shaving. That they did not know.) His mother’s a lawyer. (She had an affair with a Supreme Court judge for years. That they
did
know. I found out when I came home from school one day.

They gave me lots of money. They were good parents. But love is overrated. I would take hundred-rupee notes over hugs and kisses any day.

As I wait for the bus outside the iron gates of my building, flying cockroaches come toward me. They are graceful in flight, like dancers. They are good and brown. The afternoon sun coats them with light. They fly in peace during the day, and at night a few of them, older ones, circle the stars and name them.

An old man joins me at the bus stop. He stares at the grinding stone I carry. This man has one arm, he must think; why does he carry a grinding stone? I will pose my own question: If we have two eyes, why do we close one when aiming a gun? Or wink? Why not wink with both eyes? Why use only one leg to kick and one hand to slap? That is why we have been given just one heart. If we had a pair, one would remain unused and closed.

I wonder if the old man sees the flying cockroaches.

From around the corner emerges the dark shadow of a red double-decker bus. The bus tilts to one side, a curse waiting to fall on the street. I have been told this tilt is necessary and scientifically sound, that my worry is ridiculous. The bus charges toward us even though the driver knows he has to stop.

I let the old man get on first. He takes very small steps. I must act quickly or else the bus will leave without me. There is a boarding area, a square that is always crowded by standees. One must get onto it in seconds or wait for the next bus only to meet with the same fate. Old people, children, and cripples are damned. The god of public transit does not indulge in frivolity. For sentiment and mush, please visit your local cinema hall.