Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts
‘Hello, Linbaba,’ he greeted me, in English. ‘You have been hugging it bears, everyone says.’
‘Hello, Naresh. How’s your arm? You want me to take a look at it?’
‘If you have time, yes,’ he answered, switching to Marathi, his native tongue. ‘I took a break from work, and I have to return in fifteen or twenty minutes. I can come back another time if you are busy.’
‘No, now is okay. Come and sit down, and we’ll have a look.’
Naresh had been slashed on the upper arm with a barber’s straight razor. The cut wasn’t deep, and it should’ve healed quickly with no more than a wrap of bandage. The unclean humidity of his working conditions, however, accelerated the risk of infection. The bandage I’d placed on his arm just two days before was filthy and soaked with sweat. I removed it, and stored the soiled dressing in a plastic bag for disposal later in one of the communal fires.
The wound was beginning to knit well enough, but it was an angry red, with some flares of yellowish-white. Khaderbhai’s lepers had supplied me with a ten-litre container of surgical disinfectant. I used it to wash my hands and then cleansed the wound, roughly scraping at it until there was no trace of the white infection. It must’ve been tender, but Naresh endured the pain expressionlessly. When it was dry, I squeezed antibiotic powder into the crease of the cut and applied a fresh gauze dressing and bandage.
‘Prabaker tells me you had a narrow escape from the police the other night, Naresh,’ I said as I worked, stumbling along in my broken Marathi.
‘Prabaker has a disappointing habit of telling everybody the truth,’ Naresh frowned.
‘You’re telling me,’ I answered quickly, and we both laughed.
Like most of the Maharashtrians, Naresh was happy that I tried to learn his language, and like most of them he spoke slowly and very precisely, encouraging me to understand. There were no parallels between Marathi and English, it seemed to me: none of the similarities and familiar words that were shared by English and German, for example, or English and Italian. Yet Marathi was an easy language to learn because the people of Maharashtra were thrilled that I wanted to learn it, and they were very eager to teach.
‘If you keep stealing with Aseef and his gang,’ I said, more seriously, ‘you’re going to get caught.’
‘I know that, but I hope not. I hope the Enlightened One is on my side. It’s for my sister. I pray that no harm will come to me, you see, because I am not stealing for myself, but for my sister. She will be married soon, and there is not enough to pay the promised dowry. It is my responsibility. I am the oldest son.’
Naresh was brave, intelligent, hard working, and kind with the young children. His hut wasn’t much bigger than my own, but he shared it with his parents, and six brothers and sisters. He slept outside on the rough ground to leave more space for the younger ones inside. I’d visited his hut several times, and I knew that everything he owned in the world was contained in one plastic shopping bag: a change of rough clothes, one pair of good trousers and a shirt for formal occasions and for visiting the temple, a book of Buddhist verses, several photographs, and a few toiletries. He owned nothing else. He gave every rupee that he earned from his job or made from petty thefts to his mother, asking her for small change in return as he required it. He didn’t drink or smoke or gamble. As a poor man with no immediate prospects, he had no girlfriend and only a slender chance of winning one. The one entertainment he allowed himself was a trip to the cheapest cinema, with his workmates, once a week. Yet he was a cheerful, optimistic young man. Sometimes, when I came home through the slum late at night, I saw him curled up on the path, outside the family hut, his thin young face slackened in sleep’s exhausted smile.
‘And you, Naresh?’ I asked, fastening the bandage with a safety pin. ‘When will you get married?’
He stood, flexing his slender arm to loosen the tight bandage.
‘After Poonam is married, there are two other sisters who must be married,’ he explained, smiling and wagging his head from side to side. ‘They must be first. In this, our Bombay, the poor man must look for husbands before he looks for a wife. Crazy, isn’t it? Amchi Mumbai, Mumbai amchi!’ It’s our Bombay, and Bombay is ours!
He went out without thanking me, as was usual with the people I treated at my hut. I knew that he would invite me to dinner at his house one day soon, or bring me a gift of fruit or special incense. The people showed thanks, rather than saying it, and I’d come to accept that.
When Naresh emerged from my hut with a clean bandage, several people who saw him approached me for treatment. I attended to them one by one—rat bites, fever, infected rashes, ringworm—chatting with each, and catching up on the gossip that constantly swirled through the lanes and gullies like the ubiquitous dust-devils.
The last of those patients was an elderly woman accompanied by her niece. She complained of pains in her chest, on the left side, but the extremes of Indian modesty made examination a complex procedure. I asked the girl to summon others to help. Two of the niece’s young friends joined her in my hut. The friends held a sheet of thick cloth up between the elderly woman and myself, completely obscuring her from my view. The girl was standing beside her aunt in a position where she could look over the blanket and see me sitting on the other side. Then, as I touched my own chest here and there, the young niece imitated me by touching her aunt’s breast.
‘Does it hurt here?’ I asked, probing my own chest above the nipple.
Behind the screen, the niece probed at her aunt’s breast, asking my question.
‘No.’
‘How about here?’
‘No, not there.’
‘What about here?’
‘Yes. There it is hurting,’ she answered.
‘And here? Or here?’
‘No, not there. A little bit here.’
With that pantomime, and through the invisible hands of her niece, I finally established that the elderly woman had two painful lumps in her breast. I also learned that she experienced some pain with deep breaths, and when lifting heavy objects. I wrote a note for Doctor Hamid, detailing my second-hand observations and my conclusions. I’d just finished explaining to the girl that she should take her aunt to Doctor Hamid’s surgery at once, and give him my note, when a voice spoke behind me.
‘You know, poverty looks good on you. If you ever got really down and out, you might be irresistible.’
I turned in surprise to see Karla leaning in the doorway with her arms folded. An ironic half-smile turned up the corners of her mouth. She was dressed in green—loose silk trousers and a long-sleeved top, with a shawl of darker green. Her black hair was free, and burnished with copper tints by the sun. The green of warm, shallow water in a dreamed lagoon blazed in her eyes. She was almost too beautiful: as beautiful as a blush of summer sunset on a sky-wide stream of cloud.
‘How long have you been there?’ I asked, laughing.
‘Long enough to see this weird faith-healing system of yours in operation. Are you curing people by telepathy now?’
‘Indian women are very obstinate when it comes to having their breasts handled by strangers,’ I replied when the patient and her relatives had filed past Karla, and left the hut.
‘Nobody’s perfect, as Didier would say,’ she drawled, with a smirk that fluttered just short of a smile. ‘He misses you, by the way. He asked me to say hello to you. In fact, they all miss you. We haven’t seen much of you at Leopold’s, since you started this Red Cross routine.’
I was glad that Didier and the others hadn’t forgotten me, but I didn’t look her in the eye. When I was alone, I felt safe and satisfyingly busy in the slum. Whenever I saw friends from beyond those sprawling acres, a part of me shrivelled in shame. Fear and guilt are the dark angels that haunt rich men, Khader said to me once. I wasn’t sure if that was true, or if he simply wanted it to be true, but I did know from experience that despair and humiliation haunt the poor.
‘Come in, come in. This is a real surp
She came over and sat on the wooden stool as I gathered a plastic bag containing used swabs and bandages, and swept the last of the litter into it. I washed my hands with spirit once more, and packed the medicines into the little rack of shelves.
She looked around the small hut, examining everything with a critical eye. As my gaze followed hers, I saw my little house for the shabby, threadbare hovel that it really was. Because I lived alone in the hut, I’d come to think of it as luxuriously spacious, in contrast to the crowding that was everywhere around me. With her beside me, it seemed mean and cramped.
The bare earth floor was cracked, and formed in lumpy undulations. Holes as big as my fist punctured every wall, exposing my life to the brawl and business of the bustling lane outside. Children peeped in through the holes at Karla and me, emphasising how unprivate my life there was. The reed matting of the roof sagged, and had even given way in a few places. My kitchen consisted of a single-burner kerosene stove, two cups, two metal plates, a knife, a fork, a spoon, and a few containers of spices. The whole of it fitted into a cardboard box, and was stored in one corner. I was in the habit of buying only enough for a single meal at a time, so there was no food. The water was stored in an earthenware matka. It was slum water. I couldn’t offer it to her because I knew Karla couldn’t drink it. My only furniture was a cupboard for medicines, a small table, a chair, and a wooden stool. I remembered how delighted I’d been when those sticks of furniture were given to me; how rare they were in the slum. With her eyes, I saw the cracks in the wood, the stains of mildew, the repairs made with wire and string.
I looked back to where she sat on the stool, lighting a cigarette and blowing the smoke out through the side of her mouth. A rush of irrational resentment seized me. I was almost angry that she’d made me see the unlovely truth of my house.
‘It’s … it’s not much. I …’
‘It’s fine,’ she said, reading my heart. ‘I lived in a little hut like this in Goa for a year once. And I was happy. There isn’t a day goes by when I don’t feel like going back there. I sometimes think that the size of our happiness is inversely proportional to the size of our house.’
She raised her left eyebrow in a high arch as she said it, challenging me to respond and meet her on her level, and with that gesture it was all right between us. I wasn’t resentful any more. I knew, I was certain somehow, that wanting my little house to be bigger or brighter or grander than it was had been in my mind, not hers. She wasn’t judging. She was only looking, seeing everything, even what I felt.
My neighbour’s twelve-year-old son, Satish, came into the hut, carrying his tiny, two-year-old cousin on his hip. He stood close to Karla, staring unselfconsciously. She stared back at him just as intently, and I was struck by how similar they were in that instant, the Indian boy and the European woman. Both had full-lipped, expressive mouths, and hair that was night-sky black; and although Karla’s eyes were sea-green and the boy’s were dark bronze, each pair wore the same grave expression full of interest and humour.
‘Satish, chai bono,’ I said to him. Make some tea.
He gave me a quick smile, and hurried out. Karla was the first foreign miss he’d ever seen in the slum, so far as I knew. He was excited to have the task of serving her. I knew he would talk about it to the other kids for weeks afterwards.
‘So, tell me, how did you find me? How did you even get in here?’ I asked her when we were alone.
‘Get in?’ she frowned. ‘It’s not illegal to visit you, is it?’
‘No,’ I laughed, ‘but it’s not common either. I don’t get many visitors here.’
‘Actually, it was easy. I just stepped off the street and asked people to take me to you.’
‘And they brought you here?’
‘Not exactly. They’re very protective of you, you know. They took me to your friend, Prabaker, first, and he brought me to you.’
‘Prabaker?’
‘Yes, Lin, you want me?’ Prabaker said, popping through the doorway from his eavesdropping post outside.
‘I thought you were going to drive your taxi,’ I muttered, adopting the stern expression that I knew amused him the most.
‘My cousin Shantu’s taxi,’ he said, grinning. ‘Was driving, yes, but now my other cousin, Prakash, he is driving, while I am taking it my two hours of lunch breaks. I was at Johnny Cigar, his house, when some people came there with Miss Karla. She wants to see you, and I came here. It is very good, yes?’
‘It’s good, Prabu,’ I sighed.
Satish returned, carrying a tray with three cups of hot, sweet tea. He handed them to us, and tore open a small packet containing four Parle Gluco biscuits, which he presented to us with a solemn sense of ceremony. I expected him to eat the fourth biscuit himself, but he placed it on his palm instead, marked it off into even sections with his grubby thumb nail, and then broke it into two pieces. Measuring the fragments against one another, he picked the one that was minutely larger and handed it to Karla. The other went to his baby cousin, who sat in the doorway of the hut and nibbled at the biscuit happily.
I was sitting on the straight-backed chair, and Satish came over to squat on the floor beside my feet. He rested his shoulder against my knee. I was big enough to know that the rare show of affection was a breakthrough with Satish. At the same time I was small enough to hope that Karla had noticed it, and was impressed by it.
We finished the tea, and Satish gathered the empty cups, leaving the hut without a word. At the door, he gave Karla a long-lashed, lingering smile as he took his cousin’s hand to lead her away.
‘He’s a nice kid,’ she remarked.
‘He is. My next-door neighbour’s son. You really sparked something in him today. He’s normally very shy. So, what brings you to my humble home, anyway?’
‘Oh, I just happened to be in the area,’ she said nonchalantly, looking at the gaps in my wall, where a dozen little faces stared in at us. The voices of other children could be heard, questioning Satish about her. Who is she? Is she Linbaba’s wife?
‘Passing by, huh? It couldn’t be, maybe, that you missed me, just a little bit?’
‘Hey, don’t push your luck,’ she mocked.
‘I can’t help it. It’s a genetic thing. I come from a long line of luck-pushers. Don’t take it personally.’
‘I take everything personally—that’s what being a person is all about. And I’ll take you to lunch, if you’re finished with your patients.’
‘Well, I have a lunch date, actually —’
‘Oh. Okay, then —’
‘No, no. You’re welcome to come, if you like. It’s kind of an open invitation. We’re having a celebration lunch today, right here. I’d be very happy if you’d … be our guest. I think you’ll like it. Tell her she’ll like it, Prabu.’
‘We will have it a very nice lunches!’ Prabaker said. ‘My good self, I have kept it a complete empty stomach for filling up to fat. So good is the food. You will enjoy so much, the people will think you are having a baby inside your dress.’
‘Okay’ she said slowly, and then looked at me. ‘He’s a persuasive guy, your Prabaker.’
‘You should meet his father,’ I replied, shaking my head in a resigned shrug.
Prabaker’s chest swelled with pride, and he wagged his head happily.
‘So, where are we going?’
‘It’s at the Village in the Sky,’ I told her.
‘I don’t think I’ve heard of it,’ she said, frowning.
Prabaker and I laughed, and the vaguely suspicious furrows in her brow deepened.
‘No, you won’t have heard of it, but I think you’ll like it. Listen, you go on ahead with Prabaker. I’ll wash up, and change my shirt. I’ll just be a couple of minutes, okay?’
‘Fine,’ she said.
Our eyes met, and held. For some reason, she lingered, watching me expectantly. I couldn’t understand the expression, and I was still
Our slum, like many others in Bombay, came into being to serve the needs of a construction site—two thirty-five-floor buildings, the World Trade Centre towers, being built on the shore of the Colaba Back Bay. The tradesmen, artisans, and labourers who built the towers were housed in hutments, tiny slum-dwellings, on land adjacent to the site. The companies that planned and constructed large buildings, in those years, were forced to provide such land for housing. Many of the tradesmen were itinerant workers who followed where their skills were needed, and whose real homes were hundreds of kilometres away in other states. Most of the workers who were native to Bombay simply had no homes, other than those they found with their jobs. In fact, many men accepted the risks of that hard and dangerous work for no other reason than to gain the security of one of those shelters.
The companies were happy enough to comply with the laws that made land and huts available because the arrangement was eminently suitable to them in other ways. The kinship fostered in workers’ slums guaranteed a sense of unity, familial solidarity, and loyalty to the company, which served employers well. Travelling time to and from work was eliminated when men lived on the site. The wives, children, and other dependants of employed workers provided a ready source of additional labourers. They were hired from that pool and put to work, from day to day, at a moment’s notice. And the entire work force of several thousand people were much more easily influenced, and to some extent even controlled, when they lived in a single community.