Animal's People: A Novel Read online

  “You could leave some chappatis in a tiffin,” I said, giving a glance at her dad, of whom I was afraid. Grim, terrifying bastard he was, but with good cause, when you knew his story. “Plus I’m not a human being.”

  “Don’t you like my cooking?”

  “Animal’s right,” said her father.

  “I could get something outside,” says I, who’d newly discovered the pleasure of spending a little of my earnings on a samosa here, pau bhaji there.

  “Should my dad also eat street food?”

  “I can manage fine,” her father said. Both of us knew that it was not for our sakes that she came home. Zafar too came, most days. He would eat with her father, spend some time with Nisha, then take her back to college on his motorbike.

  “You give so much time to Zafar’s work,” I said once when we were alone. “Is it a good idea?”

  “Because it’s important.”

  “And your studies?” To me, being a student, getting educated was not just an impossible dream, it was an impossible dream inside a dream.

  “Worry about a roof over your head,” said Nisha, with a casual flip of the subject. “How many places has Zafar found you? Why do you keep refusing?”

  “I have a good place to sleep, fully private.”

  “Where?”

  “That’s my secret.” She would be horrified if she knew.

  “Where?” she demanded. “Come on, tell.”

  “Difficult to describe,” I said, which was nothing but the truth.

  Ever since that night the Kampani’s factory has been locked up and abandoned. No one goes there, people say it’s haunted by those who died. It’s a shunned place, where better for an animal to make its lair?

  When jarnaliss and foreigners come to Khaufpur they always think the factory is a big building. It isn’t. Its wall seems never-ending, and inside is an area equal to the whole of the Nutcracker. It takes more than an hour for me to circle the whole thing, enough steps to fill two miles. Here and there are holes in the wall as if a giant has banged his fist through, it’s where people have dug out bricks for their houses, our end of the Nutcracker is made mostly of death factory. Look inside, you see something strange, a forest is growing, tall grasses, bushes, trees, creepers that shoot sprays of flowers like fireworks.

  Eyes, I wish you could come with me into the factory. Step through one of these holes, you’re into another world. Gone are city noises, horns of trucks and autos, voices of women in the Nutcracker, kids shouting, all erased by the high wall. Listen, how quiet it’s. No bird song. No hoppers in the grass. No bee hum. Insects can’t survive here. Wonderful poisons the Kampani made, so good it’s impossible to get rid of them, after all these years they’re still doing their work. Once inside, in the grass, it’s careful hands, careful feet. Fucking place is full of cobras. Dogs too you’ve to watch for. See a dog, keep away. If it comes close drive it off with stones. These dogs have foaming mouths, I’m afraid for Jara but not for myself. This is my kingdom, in here I am the boss. I’ve been in and out of here since I was small, I’d come in to hide where no one could find me. Sometimes I’d bring other kids in to play marbles and spin tops when we didn’t want the grown-ups to know where we were. To make sure they didn’t come back on their own I’d tell them stories of children who had wandered into the factory and were never seen again.

  the ghosts will get you, you’ll never escape

  I’d tell how I found their bones in the jungle, gnawed by animals with fangs of fire. How come you’re still alive then, they’d ask.

  the ghosts run away from my twisted shape

  Eyes, imagine you’re in the factory with me. See that thing rising above the trees, those rusty pipes and metal stairs going nowhere? That’s the place where they made the poisons. It used to be bigger, but bits keep falling off. Each big wind pulls more iron sheets loose. We hear them banging like angry ghosts. All that’s left now is its skeleton. Platforms, ladders and railings are corroding. Its belly is a tangle of pipes like rotting guts. Huge tanks have split, stuff’s fallen out that looks like brown rocks. How often did Zafar warn that if the dry grasses inside the factory ever caught light, if fire reached these brown lumps, poison gases would gush out, it’d be that night all over again.

  In these dry grasses that Zafar said were a danger to the city I used to make my sleeping nest. On warm nights I could dream in comfort under the stars with no insects to trouble me. During the rains and in cold weather there were rooms that the Kampani, when it fled from Khaufpur, left knee-deep in papers. The Kampani papers made a thick quilt, plus I had the dog to keep me warm. In the offices the chemical stench was less. Inside the warehouses I never went, they were full of rotting sacks that poured out white and pink powders. Too long near them, you’d soon be breathless, with pains in the chest. Sometimes moving through the jungle I’d get dizzy and feel a sharp metallic taste on my tongue, those were regions to avoid.

  Eyes, are you with me still? Look throughout this place a silent war is being waged. Mother Nature’s trying to take back the land. Wild sandalwood trees have arrived, who knows how, must be their seeds were shat by overflying birds. That herb scent, it’s ajwain, you catch it drifting in gusts, at such moments the forest is beautiful, you forget it’s poisoned and haunted. Under the poison-house trees are growing up through the pipework. Creepers, brown and thick as my wrist, have climbed all the way to the top, tightly they’ve wrapped wooden knuckles round pipes and ladders, like they want to rip down everything the Kampani made.

  Here we can climb, up the ladders and up, to where the death wind blew. At the top of the highest stair, a single black pipe continues into the sky. You can rest your hand on it, it’s wider than the rest. Up this pipe the poisons flew on that night. Still black and blistered it’s after twenty years. Its paint was burnt off, so hot were those gases, yet that night was a freezing night of stars.

  “Wah! what a view!”

  It’s the first thing they say when they get up here, from here you can see clear across Khaufpur, every street, every lane, gully, shabby alley. That huddle of roofs, it’s Jyotinagar. Lanes in there are narrow, I don’t like to think about what happened in them. My friend Faqri, he lost his mum and dad and five brothers and sisters in those lanes. See the flashes where the naala flows? It’s Mira Colony, then Khabbarkhana and Salimganj. East’s Phuta Maqbara, to the west Qazi Camp, killing grounds all. Those minarets far off are the big masjid in Chowk. There, see the Delhi road? On that night it was a river of people, some in their underwear, others in nothing at all, they were staggering like it was the end of some big race, falling down not getting up again, at Rani Hira Pati ka Mahal, the road was covered with dead bodies.

  Eyes, there’s such a thing as bhayaanak rasa, the kind of terror that makes your little hairs stand up and tremble, which is called romanchik. I feel it when I come back to this high place, I see mother Kali stalking in the forest below, her skin black as a roasted corpse. She’s got these massive fangs and a red tongue hanging to her waist and a belt of chopped-off heads, each one wears a face of agony which is how they looked when they died. Eyes, you see a black pipe climbing into the sky, I see Siva dark and naked, smeared with ashes from funeral pyres. His eyes are red from hash and smoke of burning flesh, dancing he’s, from all sides I can hear the screams and cries of dying people, because when Siva dances the world comes to an end. Do you suppose anyone can explain, why did the Kampani choose this city to make its factory? Why this land? Is it by chance that the old name for this place is Kali’s ground? Is it by chance that Siva her husband wears cobras round his neck?

  Up here with just the wind how quiet it’s. Isn’t always. You should hear the ghosts, the factory is full of them, when a big wind blows, their souls fly shrieking up and down the empty pipes. Some nights, there’d be nothing here, just the ghosts and me, a four-foot creature climbing in the trees and pipes. Perched like a monkey on top of this poison-khana I’d watch the moon making shadows, and the stars cutting t
heir circles, and I would look at the lights of the city and wonder if this pipe had been mended, that wheel tightened, I might have had a mother and father, I might still be a human being.

  Each morning I would creep out of the factory to do my work in the bastis. At noon I’d head to Nisha’s. Her cooking was good, her company fun. I’d eat my lunch and do my best to avoid her frightening father.

  Somraj is the name of Nisha’s dad, Pandit Somraj Tryambak Punekar. Unlike his daughter he’s tall, twists my neck to look up at him, he has the same zapaat nose as hers, long and pointy, his fingers also are long, but the most important thing about him is that he used to be a singer, and not just a singer but a famous one. His name was known throughout India, so many awards and honours he won, they called him Aawaaz-e-Khaufpur, the Voice of Khaufpur. Nisha told me that in his younger days her dad was always singing on the radio plus he gave concerts and the like, until that night took away his wife and baby son and fucked up his lungs. Nisha never knew her mother or brother, she says that when the Kampani stole away her father’s breath it also stole his life, because breath is the life of a singer. From that night on he would listen to other people’s records, but never his own. He became a solemn and private man. Later he started teaching music, his students won prizes, to them he was like a god but he seemed to get no pleasure from it since hardly ever would you see him smile.

  Like every Khaufpuri, Somraj hated the Kampani, he ran a poison-relief committee which did what it could for the locals who were still coughing their lungs up so many years after that night. The people he helped were among the poorest in the city, which is why no politician gave a shit about them and hardly a lawyer would take up their claims for compensation. Through this work he had met Zafar, through him Zafar met Nisha. I used to wonder how Somraj felt about those two. His daughter, a Hindu girl not yet twenty, with a Muslim man twice her age, but whatever Somraj thought about it he kept to himself, he approved of her work with Zafar, where he and she differed was on the question of how the battle should be fought. The case against the Kampani had been dragging on endless years. It stood accused of causing the deaths of thousands on that night, plus it ran away from Khaufpur without cleaning its factory, over the years the poisons it left behind have found their way into the wells, everyone you meet seems to be sick. The Khaufpuris were demanding that the Kampani must pay proper compensation to those whose loved ones it killed, whose health it ruined, plus it should clean the factory and compensate the people who had been drinking its poisons. Trouble was that the Kampani bosses were far away in Amrika, they refused to come to the Khaufpuri court and no one could make them. So long had the case been running it had become part of our Khaufpuri speech such as if I blagged six rupees from Faqri he’d say, “Be sure to pay me back before the case ends.” Or someone says something unbelievable like Chunaram is serving free kebabs, others will pipe, “Oh sure, and the Kampani’s come to court.”

  One day I came as usual for lunch and found Nisha and her dad having an argument. “Every accused must have the chance to defend himself,” Somraj was saying. “Even the Kampani. In the end the law will reward us.”

  Nisha was standing looking upset with her hands covered in white paint and her hair dishevelled. “Papa, the Kampani has never even turned up to the court, so how can the law reward us?”

  “It may take years, but its attempts to escape will not succeed.”

  “What attempts? It has no need to escape, it got away scot free.”

  “Justice is on our side.”

  “Darling Papa,” said Nisha with a small sigh, “you are a kind and a fair man, everyone knows it and praises you for it, but you’re either being naive or you have not noticed how the world has changed. Maybe you remember such a thing as justice, but in my lifetime there’s been no sign of it. If we want justice, we’ll have to fight for it in the streets.”

  “Violence isn’t the way.”

  “Who said anything about violence? It’s just a march.”

  “Stone-throwing? Like last time?”

  “Zafar did his best to stop it, but how long must people suffer in silence?”

  “To that, alas, I have no answer,” said her father, and left the room.

  “What are you doing?” I’ve asked Nisha. She shows me this big banner she has made for the juloos, the demo, painted on the black cloth are large white letters.

  “What do you think? Is it strong? Does it have power?”

  “How should I know? I can’t read.”

  She gives a big sigh and says, “This very day we will start your lessons.”

  It was hard at first, reading. Take two letters like and , they look almost the same, but the sounds they make, ka and la, are different. Slowly the letters began to make sense. , a shape like a begging hand, was ja. , a shape that reminded me of an elephant’s head with trunk and tusks, like Ganesh on the front of a beedi packet, this was ha for haathi, elephant. Signs in the street gradually came to life. , I already knew it meant Coca-Cola, which I had never tasted. I learned to spell my own name, , Jaanvar, meaning Animal. Nisha said that it was my name and I should be proud of it. Jaan means “life.” Jaanvar means “one who lives.”

  “Life? You’re full of it,” she said, casting her eye over a page of scrawled jaanvars. “I’ve never known anyone with so much jaan as you.” Then spoilt it by adding, “Except Zafar.”

  When I could read and write Hindi, Nisha set me a new task. There was a group of kids to whom she was teaching Inglis. I should join them. I hadn’t been to school since the orphanage, where all of us children sat together in one room and chanted our lessons. The nuns were strict, get something wrong it was a ruler cut, edge down, to the palm. Ma Franci was kind, but she did not have to teach because no one including me could understand a word she said, and she could not understand us.

  “Will you beat me?” I asked Nisha, she laughed. Such a patient teacher was she, hard it’s to remember she was at that time not yet nineteen. Never did she complain as we struggled to wrap our tongues round the uncouth Inglis words, mayngo, pawmgront, cushdhappel, gwaav, bunaan, which were the names of fruit trees in her garden. In truth I didn’t find Inglis very difficult. Like I’ve told you, Eyes, I’ve always caught the meanings of speech even when I could not understand a word, I had not just an ear but an eye for meanings. I could read expressions and gestures, the way someone sat or stood, but being taught by Nisha really brought out my gift for tongues. Like water flooding into a field, the new language just came. Cat sat on the mat house burns down people rally to the banner, thus my Inglis progressed. Zafar too would sit and listen to me, both would praise me and marvel at my quickness to learn.

  One day comes Zafar with a small book he has printed. “It’s about that night,” says he all proud, “it shows what was wrong in the factory that caused the poison to leak. There are pictures so children can read and understand.”

  Nisha hands me the book and asks me to read from it. I’ve given it a flick through, in it are drawings of the different buildings inside the factory, I know every one of them, but in the book they are shown as they must have been before that night, not rotting like now. Arrows show where things went wrong, here, there, there, there, all over.

  “I won’t read this,” says I.

  “Why not?” she asks.

  “I am not a child.”

  “So, big man,” asks Zafar, “what will you prefer to read instead?” He’s laughing but secretly I think he is hurt that I don’t want to read his book.

  “I am not a man. Give me that other one that you are carrying.” Zafar used to read a great deal, never was he without a book.

  “This one? I think you might find it too difficult.”

  I open the book to the first page and taking great care slowly read aloud, It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in position of good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

  Nisha starts clapping. She says I am her best pupil. Then she stoops down and gives me a hug. No girl
had ever touched me till then, less hugged. It sent a thrill through me straight to my cock. This was the first time I caught myself thinking, if only things were different with me, if I could walk upright, it might be my praises she sang instead of Zafar’s.

  It was my clever tongue, which could curl itself to any language, that ended my days of living rough. Nisha loved to chatter, and when I was in her house having my lunch we would talk of all kind of things. One day I say, “Nisha, after Inglis, I will learn français, then at last I’ll know what Ma Franci used to yell at us kids in the orphanage.”

  “Who is Ma Franci?”

  “She’s a nun, came from France more than forty years ago to spread the word about Isa miyañ and do good works.”

  “And français?”

  “The language of France, it’s all she knows.”

  “After forty years here she can’t speak Hindi?”

  So then I get to telling Nisha about Ma Franci. It’s a sad sort of story, Ma’s, though in another way funny.

  On that night all sorts of people lost all kinds of things, lives for sure, families, friends, health, jobs, in some cases their wits. This poor woman, Ma Franci, lost all knowledge of Hindi. She’d gone to sleep knowing it as well as any Khaufpuri, but was woken in the middle of the night by a wind full of poison and prophesying angels. In that great mela of death, those rowdy, unforgettable festivities, her mind was wiped clean of Hindi, and of Inglis too, which she had also been able to speak à sa manière, she forgot all languages except her childhood speech of France. Well, this by itself was no problem, so many foreigners come to Khaufpur, how many can speak Hindi? But there was a further twist to Ma Franci’s madness, when she heard people talking in Hindi or Inglis, or come to that in Urdu, Tamil, Oriya, or any other tongue used in Khaufpur, she could no longer recognise that what they were speaking was a language, she thought they were just making stupid grunts and sounds.