Animal's People: A Novel Read online

  Jara and me, one day we are up to our tricks outside a cafe where I’ve not been before, it’s not one of my usual dirty dabas. This is a smart coffeehouse with a garden and a big sign saying Coca-Cola, I can’t read the sign but I know what it says. These girls are sitting at a table under a tree, drinking lassi. Three girls, college students by look. Often they’ll be quite generous, so I’ve started my patter about how we are perishing from starvation etc., at a sign from me, Jara, canny bitch, rolls on her back and plays dead.

  One of the three gets up. Comes out, stands looking at the dog and me. Some girls primp themselves up like film stars with kajal round the eyes, long sleek hair and all, this one isn’t like that. Her hair looks like it hasn’t been oiled for a month, kameez and scarf don’t match, nose is a touch too long. She doesn’t smile, doesn’t offer money. She doesn’t do any of the things people normally do when I pester them. She’s frowning, all serious.

  “Pretty clever. Did you teach her?”

  “For five rupees she’ll whine the national anthem.”

  “Is begging fun?”

  Well, this catches me, no one’s ever asked such a thing before. This girl bends to pat Jara and her hair falls over her face, pretty she may not be but there’s a sweetness in her which you sometimes see in people without looks.

  “Is it fun to be hungry?” I reply. “No, so then don’t mock, give me five rupees.”

  “Not I,” says she, chewing her lip. “You’ve a look of mischief about you, I’ve seen you before. You roam round the city doing scams.”

  “What scams? If you won’t give five rupees at least give a smile.”

  “You like winding people up. I think you enjoy being annoying.”

  “It’s all they deserve. People are cretins.”

  “Cretins? So is that what makes it fun?”

  “Fun was your idea, not mine,” I say, liking this girl. Most people who talked to me just told me to fuck off.

  “Get off with you, you’re up to all the tricks. I’d be surprised if you go hungry.”

  “What do you know about it?”

  But she was right. I was well schooled in street work. My teacher was Ali Faqri, he’d in turn been trained by the prince of scams, Abdul Saliq the Pir Gate beggar. Faqri told me to stop creeping round behind the eateries. There, if I was caught arse-up in the bins, best I could expect was disgust maybe a kicking. “Go round the front,” Faqri said. So I began parading up and down in view of the clientele, nothing puts a person off their food more than a starving Animal watching every mouthful. The proprietors hated me but they’d give me hand-outs rather than have me upset their customers. I got the same left-overs, only this time served nicely in a bowl. In this way I learned that if you act powerless, you are powerless, the way to get what you want is to demand it.

  “I’m Nisha,” says this serious girl. “What’s your name?”

  “Animal. Now you have to guess why.”

  “Okay Animal, you’re bright, you could do something more useful than this.” Nisha told me that if I came to her father’s house, which was in a part of Khaufpur known as the Chicken Claw, she would find me some work to do.

  “And,” says she, “you can meet Zafar.”

  I was stupid, I should have been warned by the way she spoke his name, but already I was walking in dreams.

  “Come tomorrow at noon. I’ll give you a meal. You can eat it in our garden. The dog too.”

  Well, Eyes, I guess you want to know what happened next, but while I’ve been chatting with you the sun has risen, it’s dropped down through the hole in the roof, making the floating dust catch fire. The thousand eyes have begun to fade, they are melting away or else somehow merging into just one pair of eyes, which are yours. You and me, we’re alone together now, but I can’t keep going. I’m tired of talking, tape’s nearly gone, mouth’s dry, I should make chai, plus it’s past time for my shit.

  TAPE THREE

  Aliya’s calling, “Animal, come and play.”

  Her voice comes flying in from outside, plus I can hear people talking as they go past, crow craarking in the tamarind tree. Sun’s well up, from far off a radio is playing the song, Ek tu jo milaa, meeting you I meet the whole world, one flower in my heart the world’s abloom.

  “Animal, come and play.” Again comes her voice.

  “What, with you? I’m not a kid.”

  “You are,” she calls, who’s herself maybe eight years. “Granny says you act like a kid all the time.”

  “Your granny wouldn’t like the kind of games I play.”

  “Ho,” says she. “Boasting of your thing again.” There’s no innocence these days even in a child.

  “Come on, Animal, let’s play.” Her voice is suddenly faint like it’s caught away by wind, or whispered on the moon, or lost in the crackling of a great fire. Eyes, I think I will go mad. I’m filled with sadness because Aliya is not really out there. Her voice is not real, it’s like people say, just another voice in my head.

  Shit’s over, I’m back in this heap of stones with grass growing out the sides enough to feed a cow. I’ve just rewound the tape like Chunaram did that time, heard my own voice. Sounds so queer. Do I speak that rough-tongue way? You don’t answer. I keep forgetting you do not hear me. The things I say, by the time they reach you they’ll have been changed out of Hindi, made into Inglis et français pourquoi pas pareille quelques autres langues? For you they’re just words written on a page. Never can you hear my voice, nor can I ever know what pictures you see. I was telling you about Nisha, how she had called me to her house in the Chicken Claw. Of course I didn’t go, that’s that, I thought. I was wrong. Next afternoon she comes looking for me. “I’ve been going all over,” she scolds, “asking people if they’d seen you. They told me places all over Khaufpur. Then someone said try the galla mandi vegetable market.”

  Eyes, a hundred times she has narrated the story of the finding of Animal, always she tells it the same way. “I went to the galla mandi, but you were not there. I went into the alley where the men play cards. There was a lot of wind, dust blowing, which the sun was making to glow. Out of the haze came these shapes, half a dozen starving dogs moving together with purpose. Among them was another shape, a boy walking on hands and feet. I called you and you turned and came to me.”

  Fuck, what was I? Her dog? Why did I go? I had fended off a hundred attempts by the nuns, police and god knows who else to get me off the streets. What was it about Nisha that made it impossible to say no? I think it was that from the first she took me exactly as I was. When she called me Jaanvar, Animal, it was a name, nothing more. She never seemed to notice that I was crippled, nor pretend I wasn’t. She was the only person I knew who treated me as completely normal. Nisha said she would find me some work, I’d even get paid. I said I did not know what work I could do. Nisha said I was clever. I’d learn new things. Zafar would know what job to give me.

  Zafarrrrr. It was the way she spoke his name that at last gave me the clue as to who he was. There must be a thousand Zafars in Khaufpur, I know at least three, but there’s only one who counts. This Zafar was a legend in the bastis, which is to say the bidonvilles, the slums, because he had given up everything in his life for the poor. Zafar bhai, Zafar brother, they worshipped him, who lived among them, dressed like them, shared their poverty and drank water from the same stinking wells. I had never expected to meet this hero. He was like I’ve said, a big shot, I was hustling and living rough. At that time I could never have imagined how tightly our lives would tangle.

  First time I meet Zafar, it’s at Nisha’s house, where she lives with her dad. Zafar’s eating a pomegranate, digging out seeds with a pen-knife, placing them on his tongue, three-four at a time. “So you’re Animal. Do you like anaar? Want some?” I would have liked to taste the pomegranate, but I’m feeling shy, I say no.

  “What’s your real name?” The great man is a long thin chap, curls plentiful and black has he, plus glasses that make him seem lost in clever tho
ughts.

  “It’s Animal.”

  “Animal’s a nickname, na? I mean your born name.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How come?” He gives me an interested look.

  I’ve just shrugged. From the time before nothing do I remember. True, I had a human name, it was given to me by the orphanage, I asked a nun once what it was, she told me, but I have forgotten what she said. This I tell to Zafar, who replies that he dislikes teasing of the disabled. Says he, “You should not think of yourself that way, but as especially abled.”

  “What’s especially abled?”

  “It means okay you don’t walk on two legs like most people, but you have skills and talents that they don’t.”

  “How do you know?” I’d not told him about my voices.

  “Because it’s true of everyone,” says Zafar. “We just have to find out what you’re good at. Plus you should not allow yourself to be called Animal. You are a human being, entitled to dignity and respect. If you haven’t a name then this is a great opportunity for you. You can choose your own. Jatta for example or Jamil, go ahead pick one, whatever you like, we’ll call you that henceforth.”

  You’re wrong, I’m thinking. Let me be as I am, like Nisha does, you would never say such things. I give Nisha a look, but she’s smiling at him.

  “My name is Animal,” I say. “I’m not a fucking human being, I’ve no wish to be one.” This was my mantra, what I told everyone. Never did I mention my yearning to walk upright. It was the start of that long argument between Zafar and me about what was an animal and what it meant to be human.

  When I say I’m not a fucking human, Zafar flinches. “Brother, don’t swear.”

  “Sorry,” I tell Nisha and go to touch her feet but Zafar stops me. “It’s not because of Nisha, I myself hate bad words.”

  “Then it’s sorry to you too,” I’ve said without in the least meaning it. “But my name is my name.”

  Zafar sits stroking his wise bastard’s beard that juts from his chin like Tuesday. “Animal it is then,” he says at last and right away begins telling me about the work he and others are doing in Khaufpur. Seems there’s a group of which Zafar is the leader. He himself does not say so, but it’s obvious. Zafar’s group collects money to help the sick. All these years after that night, he tells me, there’s still no real help for those whose eyes and lungs and wombs were fucked. Of course there are government hospitals but people won’t set foot in them unless they’re desperate.

  “You yourself are a poison victim,” Zafar says, looking at my back. “You know what it’s like in those places. You queue all day to be seen, the doctor doesn’t examine you because to touch a poor person would pollute him. Barely looks at you, then writes a chit, tells you, take this to so-and-so’s shop and say I sent you. The medicines are supposed to be given free, this is how they make money out of misery.”

  “All this is true, everyone knows it,” says I, wondering what sort of job he plans to offer me.

  Nisha’s been ear-ogling Zafar’s speech. “Animal, hardly can people afford food, how can they spend on medicines? This is why we have to help. Yesterday I had a case, a woman Lilabai needed blood for an operation, she was told she must find the blood, buy it, and take it to the hospital herself.”

  Well, Eyes, I know about this. When I was starving I sold my blood to get food.

  “Eight hundred rupees a bottle Lilabai had to pay!”

  “What? That fucker Chunaram sorry for cursing gave me only eighty!”

  “Who is this Chunaram?” asks Zafar kindly, removing his specs to wipe them. Freed from the prisons of the lenses his eyes appear a little watery, as if he has not been sleeping.

  “Has a chai shop in the Nutcracker. Mr. Ninefingers.”

  “Ah,” says he, as if this explains everything.

  I tell them how Chunaram once got the idea of selling blood, he could store it in his fridge. He needed a supply and I was the first one he bled.

  “What happened to this plan?” asks Nisha.

  “Somebody put it about that he was selling animal blood.”

  “I wonder who?” She raises an eyebrow at me, but I’ve replied nothing.

  “Part of our work,” Zafar says, returning to that matter, “is getting money to those who need it. Cash has to be carried, it’s something you can do.”

  “You’d trust me?”

  “Are you not trustworthy?”

  “I don’t know. No one has ever trusted me with anything before.”

  “So we’ll find out. What other work can you do?”

  Work? I had no clue. I had tried a few jobs while I was on the street, scavenging for rags, tin cans, plastic and the like, I wasn’t good at it because if you go on all fours you have only one hand plus mouth free to carry things. I tell this to Zafar who listens thoughtfully. He has reworn his glasses, chin’s propped on his fingers, which somehow are still finding ways to irritate the beard.

  “What about the scams?” It’s Nisha, all grinning mischief.

  “I told you, I don’t do such things.”

  Says Zafar, “You know the bloodstain scam?”

  “No idea what you are talking about.”

  “How about the spilled channa scam? No, that one you wouldn’t be able to convince.”

  Well I’m impressed. The bloodstain scam is not often seen, at least in Khaufpur. As for the spilled channa, it must be played by a boy who sits in the street surrounded by roasted gram. He has to know how to cry well, and moan that his father will beat him. A bent tray must be lying there, so it looks as if he’s a street-seller who’s tripped up. Obviously he’d have been carrying the tray on his head, which is why I could not have done it.

  “How come you know such things?”

  “Lost coins you could do, broken bottle you could try but no one would believe.”

  “What do you mean?” says I, who’ve performed that trick more times than I can remember.

  “Aha,” he says, smiling. “So you do know. Well, I’m not interested in what you have done, but in what you will do.”

  “I’m an animal, I can’t do much.” I say this to put an end to him feeling superior and also, if I am honest, to annoy him.

  “You’ve the gift of the gab.”

  “An animal must use its mouth, no other tool does it have.”

  “How does it see?”

  “Uses its eyes.”

  “You can do that,” says he. “How does it find food?”

  “Smells it out.”

  “We need a good sniffer. Your dog,” he says, indicating Jara who is lying in the sun asleep. “How does she know when to play dead?”

  “There’s a word.”

  “She hears, plus is clever enough to understand. We need someone like her. Use eyes, nose, ears, brain, this is another job.”

  “Namispond! Jamispond!”

  “Shabaash,” says he with a grin.

  “I would like this job better than carrying cash.”

  “That we’ll see,” says Zafar. He shades his eyes to glance at the sun and tells Nisha he has to be going because it’s nearly four o’clock.

  “So! What do you think of Zafar?” Nisha asks as his motorcycle farts away through the Claw.

  “Such an important fellow should at least get a watch.”

  Nisha says, “You’ll understand when you get to know him.”

  From her I heard Zafar’s story. Seems he’d been a scholar who left his studies to take up the cause of the poor.

  “I met his old professor once,” Nisha said. “He told me Zafar was his most brilliant student. He could have been anything, but when he got news of that night, he straight away quit his college and came to Khaufpur to organise the fight against the Kampani, which he has been doing ever since. Who do you suppose has kept the case against the Kampani alive so long? So many times they have tried to stop him. He’s been threatened, beaten, but Zafar is not afraid of anything or anyone. He speaks the truth and he never gives up. These ar
e the things that make the ordinary people love him.”

  You too, I thought, getting the drift.

  So Eyes, this was my job, to keep my eyes and ears open and report to Zafar if anything unusual was going on in the bastis. I was to listen in the streets and chai shops, find out what the government, munsipal etc. were up to, because those buggers are always up to no good. Thus within weeks I caught a plan to evict some people from near the railway and told Zafar, who put an end to it. People showed me respect because I was one of Zafar’s.

  Zafar’s gang, how would you describe us? Saints, said the slum folk who could never take the name of Zafar without adding a spice of blessing. Subversives, said Zahreel Khan, he’s Khaufpur’s Minister for Poison Relief. To me, if I’m honest, we were just a bunch of fucking do-gooders. Okay, we did good, what else should do-gooders do, but I couldn’t be bothered with the political shit, I hated all that talk of “poison victims,” I don’t want to be pitied, I refuse to be some fucking bhonsdi-ka victim. As for Saint Zafar, don’t make me laugh. I’d seen the lust in the man’s eyes when he looked at Nisha, saints and angels don’t feel lust, which is how I know I’m not one.

  Such feelings I kept to myself. Four hundred rupees a month I earned for my work, which was easy, in this life good fortune too seldom comes along and when it does you don’t want to be twisting its balls. Chunaram soon got wind of my new riches because Zafar for some reason had taken a shine to him, his chai shop in the Nutcracker became like a second headquarters. Chunaram told me that four hundred rupees was a lot of money, he offered to keep it safe for me but I wasn’t falling for that. Instead, I gave it to Nisha. She said I should open a bank account.

  “How can I, who can neither read nor write?”

  “Then I must teach you.”

  At that time she was enrolled at Iqbal Bahadur Women’s College in the walled city, but I think she was not taking her studies very seriously.

  “You shouldn’t come home at midday,” her father said.

  “Then what will you do for lunch? Papa, Zafar gets me back in time for my afternoon lectures, plus this boy needs at least one good meal a day, if he will insist on sleeping rough instead of under a roof like a human being.”