The Storyteller (5 page)

At school I reminded Miss DeSouza about the storytelling session.

‘Later,’ she mumbled absent-mindedly. Her face was flushed and her eyes sparkled as she led us to assembly.

Mrs Prasad began by congratulating Miss DeSouza on her forthcoming wedding. ‘Miss DeSouza will be away for a few weeks,’ the headmistress announced. ‘When she returns, she will be Mrs Fernandez.’ Cheering and clapping.

I was possessed by a terrible rage. Swirling clouds and vengeful winds howled inside me. I was convinced that Mrs Prasad had orchestrated the calamity. I understood how
wretched the demon of my nightmare might have felt. My howl of protest frightened the other children and startled the teachers into a state of inaction. (‘A wolf in pain,’ Mrs Prasad later described the sound to the police. ‘Something from a darkness deep inside him.’) I stumbled to the front of the room and rammed into Mrs Prasad. Her legs were targeted with fists and head butts. The terrified shrieks goaded me into an inadvertent discovery of my most potent weapon. I sank my teeth into the flaccid calf muscles of her left leg.

That evening I cried for one of the few times in my life. It wasn’t because of the pain in my back or the throbbing of my swollen face where Vijay had repeatedly struck me. My tears were for Maji. The sadness on her face, and the defenceless silence with which she accepted her husband’s accusations and abuses, threw me into a worse state of turmoil than I had experienced earlier at school.

The day had been agonisingly long. Hysterical children and agitated parents. Stern-looking policemen, uncertain about the nature of the danger that warranted their presence. Someone grabbed me by the neck and dragged me away. I became a showpiece locked up in a classroom. The windows were soon crowded with adult faces. High-pitched voices and raised fists declared the communal intention. I shouted back. Fragments of the day remained pasted in my memory. Maji sat next to me in a police jeep, her arm around my shoulders. She spoke sparingly, her voice trembling as she endeavoured to console me. We were driven to the central police station where I was kept waiting among strangers while she filled out forms and spoke to khaki-clad men. Vijay hovered in the background, talking to his former colleagues and glowering at me.

Then I was driven to a large building where men and women, dressed in white, moved purposefully in the quiet corridors. Were they angels on earth? No one bothered to
answer my question. I fell asleep on a chair and dreamed of a wedding.
My
wedding to Miss DeSouza. I didn’t know what a wedding was meant to do. At that stage in my life it betokened an uninterrupted togetherness. We would be the only ones in the entire school. She was exclusively my teacher, encouraging me to do whatever I pleased.

A hand gently rubbed my chest and invaded my state of bliss. A room with white walls. An electric fan whirred overhead. I did not have to move to see the ceiling. I was almost convinced that I had passed into a life beyond death. The face of an elderly man, with a long nose and bushy eyebrows, appeared over me. For an instant I thought that God was visiting me.

‘Good! You are awake now. Did you sleep well?’ He sneezed and blew noisily into a handkerchief.

I wasn’t in Heaven after all. He began to ask all kinds of silly questions.

‘Do you have a favourite toy? Vamana? Is there a toy you like very much?’

The walls became transparent. People fought and clawed their way to reach me. There was Mrs Prasad, demanding that I be punished. She had a tail and…talons.

‘My stuffed giant.’

‘A giant? Does it have a name?’

‘Ravana.’

‘Ah! You have heard the story of
The Ramayana.
Why do you like Ravana?’

‘He is my friend. I can talk to him at night.’

‘What do you say to him?’

I closed my eyes and did not answer. That was a secret of the night. It happened inside, a special place where only my friends were allowed to enter. The noise again, from out there. My right eye saw him seated on a chair. He was staring at me.

‘Vamana, what would you like to be when you…er…later in your life?’

I didn’t understand what he meant. Mrs Prasad had disappeared behind the wall. Its blankness was comforting.

‘Is there anything special that you like doing?’

‘Telling stories.’

‘Who do you tell your stories to?’

‘My friends.’

‘Do you tell happy stories?’

‘I don’t know…No.’

‘Don’t you want to make your friends happy?’

‘No.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I want them to feel like I do.’

The chair squeaked. He leaned forward, watching me intently. ‘Who are your other friends? What are their names?’

He was threatening me, like a dark hand trying to break a door. He wanted to reach inside to confront me with the tangled confusion I had learned to avoid. I felt as if he were trying to untie the knots that I did not wish to be touched. I retreated among the murky alleys and lanes that meandered endlessly inside me. I was swallowed by the shadows. Soon his footsteps could not be heard, only the faint echo of his voice repeatedly calling my name. He would never catch me. My smile must have prompted him to plead with me.

‘Vamana? Vamana! Please listen to me! I am told you can read very well for someone at your age. Do you write stories?’ There was a hint of annoyance in his voice.

I had managed to lock him outside. The banging stopped. My sanctuary was safe. I went into the garden to seek the company of those I created. It had been so simple to outmanoeuvre the man. Yes sir!
Ek dum seedah!

‘Do you write stories?’

Now that there was no danger, I decided to be helpful. ‘No. They are inside my head. Like moving pictures. With words.’

‘Do the words come before the pictures?’

I shook my head. Voices called me. I would have to leave.

‘Never?’

‘Never.’

‘Are the pictures in colour?’

‘No. In white, with lots of darkness.’

‘Are there people in these pictures?’

‘Yes.’

‘Can you tell me something about them?’

‘They are different.’

‘How are they different?’ I allowed the silence to intervene.’Where do these people live?’

‘Under the sea. In the sky…in forests.’

‘Not in houses?’

‘No.’

‘Would you like to tell me one of your stories?’

I wouldn’t say anything more, I decided. There were more questions. Lengthy pauses. Questions again, hammering me like hailstones.

‘Would you like to tell me something about yourself?’

‘My name is Vamana. I come from the sky.’ I couldn’t help myself. The words slipped out before I realised that I had spoken.

‘Yes?’ He waited.

I managed to elude him again.

A different school. And another one after that. There were excuses to get rid of me. Abnormal behaviour. My presence was a disruptive influence. Children were scared of me. Parental complaints. I was rude to teachers and did little work. I was dangerous. Dangerous? Was it my fault that someone left
a box of matches in the playground? I was only curious to see if pretty, orange tongues could reach up and lick the ceiling of the classroom.

More punishment at home. Vijay’s yelling accompanied his kicking and punching. Maji stopped speaking to me for several days. I was confined to my room. One morning I accompanied her to the library where she worked.

‘This is most unusual, Mrs Dev!’ The balding man shook his head, unable to take his eyes off me. ‘I am not at all certain whether I should have agreed to this arrangement. Just remember! Any trouble, even a slight hint of disturbance and…This is a reputable library!’ He turned around abruptly and walked away.

‘That is the chief librarian,’ Maji whispered. ‘You heard what he said.’ An index finger wagged in front of my face like an erratic pendulum. ‘Behave!’

At my insistence Maji allowed me to sit under her table that faced a window. I felt secure in the tiny space, reading the books she provided. This was so much better than school. No scolding. Without teachers to instruct me. No arithmetic. The absence of other children was my greatest relief. I was spared the taunts and missiles hurled at me. Under the table the world was a quiet place where I found solace in the company of words and whatever I was able to imagine. When Maji sat on her chair, I was hemmed in on three sides. There was enough space between the table and the wall for me to stick out my head and view the sky and the potted plants on the windowsill. The sterile sameness of what I saw every day was reassuring. There was nothing that threatened or mocked me.

At the time, I did not understand the extent of my desperation to cling to my unexpectedly found haven. All that I vaguely perceived was the opportunity to be free from the interference of authoritarian figures and their feverish efforts to
mould me into a cog of mainstream conformity despite my differences in mind and body.

Initially, Maji determined where I could go and what I might read. If the pattern of my unpredictable behaviour worried her into confining me to the immediate vicinity around her table, then my meek acceptance of her rules was seemingly a cause for much greater concern. Her suspicion of my motives did not contend with the remote possibility that I might have found contentment in my strange environment. My own space. Solitude. A state of calmness. My aggression subsided. I said very little. Repeatedly Maji asked whether I was unwell. Her solution to what she perceived was my state of ill-health, was to feed me at regular intervals from a large tiffin-carrier crammed with savouries, a cooked lunch and a variety of sweetmeats.

Reluctantly, Maji accepted my reclusion. I was not even reprimanded when one day I wandered outside the room to browse among the bookshelves in the main reading area. My only misdemeanour, that fortunately remained undetected, occurred when I tore two pages from a book with coloured pictures of monsters and demons, and swallowed them. Maji’s colleagues began to relax and accept my presence. Instead of unbridled hostility and uncharitable comments, I now received the occasional smile and the odd greeting.

And how many days, months, years did I pass, soaking up words and imagining distant worlds? I cannot tell. I was an adventurer, too busy with discoveries and learning to be conscious of time. The tentacles of my mind reached into sunlit landscapes and dark chasms. Gradually I lost the fear that I might run out of places to discover.

But it wasn’t as if my life was entirely peaceful. There were tedious visits to doctors and people called specialists. I was observed, measured, questioned, probed and prodded.
They told Maji what she obviously did not wish to hear. I was a hypopituitary dwarf who displayed symptoms of diastrophy. Words! Sometimes they made no sense. I reacted by dragging down a dictionary from her table and immersing myself in definitions.

Maji’s bravery was a shield that warded off the pity and spite of strangers. In front of her garrulous relatives and friends she bubbled with enthusiasm and praise for my unorthodox education. But I knew…Her despair in her private moments hurt me more than she could have imagined. At home I avoided her husband. More than anything, I managed to guard my nocturnal secret. My extended afternoon naps under her desk were a source of some concern for Maji. Had she even remotely suspected the reason for my fatigued slumber, I might have lost the freedom I had inadvertently discovered. But she didn’t know. It all began one tortuous summer’s night, long after I had first appeared in the library with Maji.

Darkness devoured the city after the molten heat of an unforgiving sun had paralysed Delhi. I lay in bed watching the night sky crowded with the traffic of distant stars. Noises. A muezzin’s drone of resigned submission. Late night vendors with their pushcarts of leftover food. Stray dogs howled, as if they were mourning the pillaged city of kings and poets, the ruined centre stages of nobility and treachery, the scene of grand deeds and abominable wickedness. Scattered around, bare-bodied men slept in courtyards and terraces, on
charpais
or on straw mats, in lanes and on footpaths. In sleep they were oblivious to the stink of overflowing gutters. The droopy henna trees were homes to sleepy sparrows and crows. And, of course, what the senses couldn’t grasp—Delhi’s past, teeming with restless victims. Spirits…ghosts…shadows.

‘
Aao sunno yeh raath key kahani
…’ A young voice. An invitation!
Come and listen to night’s story.

How could I possibly resist? My room seemed like an insufferable prison. I rushed to the window. It was my telescope to a world I often observed in minute detail. I had a deep-seated longing to experience its diversity, to merge with its mystery and become a part of its allurement. I resented the predictability of my life. Library and books were fine. But at home: bath, dinner and bed. I was not allowed to go out by myself, and it was rare to be taken anywhere by Maji. When there were visitors, I was confined to my room. In the house I was no more than a prisoner with the privilege of restricted movement. Any whiff of the outside world was like the aroma of food to a starving person.

A light bobbed unsteadily in the lane. It winked and beckoned me like Miss DeSouza’s eyes. I tugged and heaved in an effort to widen the space between two of the iron bars in the window. They were firmly set in the wooden frame and refused to budge.

‘
Aao sunno yeh raath key kahani.’

It was my voice! How could it be? The rest of me had to go. I crept to the kitchen, climbed on a chair and unbolted the back door. The feeble arc of a solitary streetlight was just around the corner. I walked rapidly. A black cat slunk out of an alley and ran in front of me. It purred and licked my foot. An omen of good fortune, I decided.

‘Tell me the story of the night!’ My plea was loud enough to awaken the homeless men sleeping on the edge of the gutters. A groan. Mumbled curses. Then…then…in the distance, a light. I closed my eyes and shook my head. The light did not disappear.

They were standing under a tamarind tree. Alert. Sensing danger. Gasps of surprise. Backward steps.

‘A creature from the depth of the night!’ a reedy voice piped. ‘Born from an evil spirit.’ There was no malice in the tone.