They call me Motu, probably because of my thick thighs and rotund belly that sags like a sack of potatoes. My real name is Vishwanath Vasudev Kharwa, but nobody ever called me that. My mother used to call me Vishy, god bless her soul. She’s gone now. My father’s gone too. And my sister. They’re all gone. No one left on this planet but me.
When I was in the village, we slept on charpai cots under the stars, surrounded by open fields with fresh green grass. A mighty peepal tree spread its branches wide and gifted us fleshy fruit in the summer. We had our squabbles, but by and large had a serene existence. Until that day when our lives were upended forever…
When I was in the village, we slept on charpai cots under the stars, surrounded by open fields with fresh green grass. A mighty peepal tree spread its branches wide and gifted us fleshy fruit in the summer. We had our squabbles, but by and large had a serene existence. Until that day when our lives were upended forever…
I try to forget all that and remember the happy times instead. Once I was the headmaster in my village and the most learned man for hundreds of kilometers. They used to call me Masterji. Boys and girls would bend over and touch my feet. I taught them Maths, Science, History, Geography, everything. I was a man of respect then.
Now what am I? A man who opens and closes a black grille door, and presses buttons numbered 1 to 7. Four stainless steel walls make my cage. One white plastic stool with wobbly legs. A wheezing fan above, as noisy as it is useless in circulating air. I spend hours catching flies and gazing at my own hazy reflection on those walls.
The skin on my face is cracked, my lips are chapped, and strands of white hair peel out of my ears. When I was 5 years old, everyone in the village said I had bright, beautiful eyes. Now at 65, what’s left of them is two faded black balls shrinking deep into their sockets.
*****
“Lift man?” A shrill voice snapped. “What you sleeping there?”
I hastily scrambled to my feet. Neelam Madam was in a flush peach-colored salwar-kurta. She stepped inside the lift and a whiff of her lemony perfume wafted into my nostrils.
I closed the door with a rattle and pressed ‘7’. The lift juddered and grumbled before finally acceding to climb upwards.
Neelam Madam’s lips were pressed together, her face wound up tight, her eyes lasered on the mobile device that emerged from her purse. She said nothing to me. I was invisible to her. Even the flies got more acknowledgement of their existence when she swatted them away.
I let her out on her floor and went back down in my empty cage. The only qualification needed for my job is the ability to count to seven. No one cares that I’m a college graduate, that I understand differential calculus, that I speak five different languages.
The rest of the morning passed slowly. The flies kept buzzing from wall to wall. I admired their vigor, while I sat planted on the stool that was barely able to withstand my weight.
At noon, I stood and stretched my creaky bones. I lumbered out of the building and the biting glare of the sun made me raise a palm to shield my face.
Voices rang out from a shaded corner of Asha Bhavan building.
“…what a shot…”
“…India’s winning this…”
“I’m telling you, Hardik Pandya is the best allrounder we’ve had since Kapil Dev….”
“Were you even alive in Kapil Dev’s time??”
A group of building workers hovered around the watchman’s table. A mobile phone perched on top of the entry log book, played the match. Flanking it were open steel dabbas with neat little compartments of rice, roti and sabzi. A community lunch where everyone contributed and everyone partook.
There was Jadhav, the building watchman in his blue khaki uniform who loosened a belt buckle and sat back; Shankar, the building valet in charge of the cars; Pankaj, a bald gangly man who was Chawla saab’s driver, and few other drivers and cooks.
Somehow, I was not part of this clique. Maybe it’s because of my job stature. A lift man is the lowest form of life in a building, below watchmen, drivers, cooks, sweepers, everybody. I’ve also heard them say that I smell weird. I wouldn’t know how I smell, but I’ve seen the wet patch of sweat that perennially occupies my armpits.
Or could it be because of my past?? No, I don’t think so. No one here knows that story.
“Kya haal, Motu Bhai?”
Shankar walked over and was towering over me. He was all of six feet tall with a protruding chin and a beard that swamped his face.
“Did you get your Aadhar card finally?” He asked.
I shook my head.
“It’s easy, you can apply online,” Shankar whipped out his mobile, tapped some buttons, and showed me the screen. “Go to this website, fill up the details like your name, mobile number, birthdate.”
I blinked and stared. During all those lost years, the world had passed me by. These new-fangled gadgets and apps and what-not-all, they bounced way above my head.
Before I was the man who knew it all. Children came to me from three villages over with their questions:
Masterji, what causes rainbows?
Masterji, which is the biggest animal in the world?
Masterji, how far away is London?
There was no Google in those days, I was their Google. And I loved it. I was a man with a reputation. Now, I’m a pitiful old dinosaur who can’t tell ABC of their devices. Too much had changed.
“It’s not that tough, Motu Bhai,” Shankar caught my blank look. “If you can’t manage, I’ll do it for you.”
The colossal prick actually tried to sound magnanimous.
A ripple of laughter came from the other side of the building, and high-fives broke out between the group of watchmen and drivers watching the match.
“Chal, I’ve to go,” Shankar said. He half-turned, then hesitated. For a brief moment, I thought he was going to invite me to join them. I liked cricket too. I was even around in Kapil Dev’s time. I could’ve participated in their discussion.
“See you later, Motu Bhai,” Shankar said, and started walking.
My mouth opened, but no words were heard. I had my own dabba to contribute to their lunch. Maybe I should walk over there.
Or maybe all these chutiyas can go fuck themselves.
Their trailing laughter echoed in my ears as I retreated to my lift and descended onto the stool. I pulled the grille door half-closed and brought out my lunch. One pithy cheese sandwich, sitting alone in a plastic dabba. No wafers next to it, no ketchup to accompany it.
I bit and chewed and stared opaquely at the black bars of the lift door with their zigzag pattern that looked like rows of X’s. Their rusted metal smell, their cold touch. They felt so familiar, like they were a part of me.
After the food reached my belly, I swiveled sideways and rested my back on the wall. The mid-afternoon heat dulled my senses. My head started to sag to one side. Soon, I lost track of time…
“Lift Man!” A voice bellowed into my face, and made me jump up.
I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and when the blur cleared, I saw Chawla, the Sindhi baniya who owned a shop in Colaba. He wore a shiny purple shirt, a gold wristwatch, and sunglasses tilted above his forehead. The size of his bulging belly matched my own.
“I’ve been standing here for five minutes while you snore away.”
“Sorry saab, sorry,” I mumbled.
Chawla’s eyes were large and distinctive like billiard balls. They bore into me as he stepped inside.
“Why did we hire a lazy saand like you?” He said, as the lift began its ascent. His grating voice bounced around the confined space and drilled into my ear. “I’ll talk to the chairman and get you fired, you wait and see…this behavior will not be tolerated…”
And on and on he went.
It felt like an hour before the 3rd floor arrived. Chawla took one step outside, stopped, and turned.
“From now on, I want you standing at all times,” He hooked an accusing finger towards me. “I don’t care if no residents are coming or going, you have to be standing up. Always.”
My chin slumped to my chest. Decades of continuous standing in my past life had left permanent blisters on the soles of my feet. A meld of purple-black blotches were evidence of that, and the sharp pain that shot up my ankles. But how to explain all that?
“DO. YOU. UNDERSTAND?” Chawla barked, his belly heaving up and down.
I didn’t respond, but my shoulders drooped and my eyes cast downwards. I waited a full minute after he stormed off, and only then closed the door. I went back down in my empty cage.
*****
“Please saab,” I joined my palms and pleaded. “Please….you know I didn’t do this…”
Inspecter Saab shifted his weight from one foot to the other, and revealed a tiny glint of indecision in his eyes. But it fast disappeared, replaced by a mask of indifference.
“Take him away,” He ordered his subordinates.
My hands were twisted behind my back and sharp steel handcuffs snapped onto my wrists.
“I didn’t do this,” My voice rose in pitch and volume till it hit an ultrasonic high. “You know I didn’t do this….”
Rough arms seized my shoulders and shoved me forward. I screamed and wriggled, but a palm clamped around the back of my neck and steered me towards a dusty white jeep with a red siren whirring above…
I awoke with a startle and hopped to my feet. Bitter-tasting saliva filled my mouth and drooled from my lips. I took out a handkerchief and wiped my face in disgust. I peered into the reflective steel walls of the lift and straightened my hair.
The incident that ravaged my life would regurgitate again and again in my nightmares. Like a bile in my stomach that just wouldn’t go away.
I was still the village headmaster when the bleeding body of a teenage girl washed up in the gutter near my house. I discovered it in the morning and reported it to the police. She turned out to be the daughter of a bigshot Municipal Corporator who raised a ruckus.
The pressure on the local inspector was intense. You could tell by the knot in his face and the restless tugs of his moustache. They couldn’t find the killer, so the lazy, spineless scoundrels pinned the murder on me.
They concocted a story about an illicit affair and fabricated some evidence. The judge denied me bail. I found myself behind bars for supposedly killing a girl I’d never seen before.
Jail for a qaidi is punishment for the entire family. My parents sold their land to pay for the protracted legal battle that followed. I was never convicted, but I remained under trial for what felt like a lifetime.
Under-trials in jail are like the kachra that overflows from the dustbin. We were crammed into a temporary hall by the thousands where we crawled around like insects. We bounced from one courtroom to another, awaiting trial dates. Sometimes a lawyer was unavailable, sometimes a document went missing.
That ’temporary’ incarceration went on for 25 years. During that time, my father died of a heart attack, my sister never got married. And my mother? On her countless visits to jail, I saw the lines being etched on her face, and the life-force ebbing from her pores, bit-by-bit, till there was nothing left…
I shook myself to return to the present. The past was a whirlpool, always ready to suck me in. Those memories were so full of pain and loss that I had to trample upon them and shovel them into dark corners of my mind.
Two sets of polished black boots appeared in front of the lift and forced me to snap out of it. Two men with smooth shirts tucked into thin belts and trimmed trousers. Firangs obviously, from their milky-white skin and sandy-brown hair. They had rigid faces and sharp jawlines. One had a small black mole on his cheek, the other’s face was spotless. Apart from that, they were xerox copies of each other.
Both stood ramrod straight in the lift with their arms stiff by their sides. The one with the mole raised three fingers to indicate the floor. When the lift started moving, they started speaking.
“Why do we have to dress like this?” Mr. Mole said in thick, accented Russian, a language I had studied during my M.A. degree. Though my knowledge was rusty, I got the gist of it.
“We look like mudaks.” It was a Russian word for chutiyas.
“The boss said we’re to look professional,” Mr. Spotless said. “Else they’d have sent Sharad Bhai and his goons to do the job.”
“Look professional?” A snigger. “We’re ubitsy.”
The Russian word for assassins has a peculiar malevolent ring to it, and it made me quiver abruptly. I swallowed a breath and willed myself to not glance behind.
“This man’s a shopkeeper, so we should look like we’re representing a company or selling something,” Mr. Spotless shrugged.
Mr. Mole muttered something indistinct.
“Narayan wants the fat fuck finished off in his own home. He was clear about that,” Mr. Spotless said. “This is personal to him. He has zero tolerance for anyone who tries to steal from him.”
The lift grunted to a halt at the 3rd floor. My chest thumped and my hands tingled a little as I pulled aside the door. I kept my gaze steadfastly at the floor while the twin black boots exited the lift and turned left in lockstep with each other. They made a clacking sound against the granite flooring.
Asha Bhavan had never seen a murder in fifty years. I knew who they were going to kill. The world would be a better place without him.
*****
No comments:
Post a Comment