Three Bargains: A Novel Read online

  Dedicated to my parents,

  Rita and Ranbir Gambhir

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Acknowledgments

  THREE

  BARGAINS

  CHAPTER 1

  Gorapur, 1983

  SAWDUST, SOFT AND FINE AS MA’S BEST MUSLIN DUPPATA, tickled Madan’s nose, making him sneeze. His father’s grip on his hand tightened, as if the sudden movement would make Madan lose his footing on the timber mill’s uneven brick floor. Madan flexed his fingers to make his father loosen his hold, but his father was using the tightness of his grip to navigate Madan through the obstacle course of whirring saws and hot clanging plywood presses. Everywhere, piles of logs lay in misshapen triangles. Madan felt his grimy kurta adhere to his skin, the sweltering temperature of the midafternoon intensified by the raging furnace in the center of the factory. Struggling to keep pace with his father’s determined step, Madan faltered, and his father grunted impatiently.

  “Keep up, you son of a bitch,” his father said. “He’s waiting for us.”

  By the time they reached the offices at the far end of the factory, Madan had lost sight of his mother and six-year-old sister sitting outside the high iron gate. Swati was asleep, curled up in Ma’s lap, her sari’s pallu protecting Swati from the sun and flies.

  His father knocked on the glass half of the factory owner’s office door. “Stay here till I call you. Okay?”

  Madan jerked his head up and down in a gesture he hoped conveyed deference. His father’s lips twisted into what Madan took for a smile, but it was not one of reassurance or welcome. If his father could, he would pack the family back on the train to their village, continue to send them money intermittently and visit them only when he wanted. But now they were here, and his father was adjusting to this development as if he’d discovered that someone had taken a piss in his morning cup of tea. The smile hovered around his father’s lips but Madan didn’t bother returning it. He knew to fear the capriciousness of that smile, how it teased and promised many things yet was easily tempted away by a quarter liter of desi tahra.

  He nodded again but his father, responding to the call of “Aaho!,” disappeared into the office.

  Placing his back to the office wall, Madan looked out onto the factory floor. Men, black as the cawing crows above and shiny with sweat, worked in groups around large machines. They glanced curiously at him. He turned and faced the wall. It was yellow and chalky, with ridges and bumps, and when Madan rubbed his hands against it, they came off covered with a delicate white dust.

  The door opened suddenly and his father’s hand reached out, catching him by the collar and pulling him to the other side of the wall.

  He kept his head bowed. He dared not raise it. Through the opening at the bottom of the large desk he saw two monstrous feet, dried and cracked like parched earth. Broad-strapped leather sandals, each with a big brass buckle in the center, glinted up at Madan.

  “This is my boy,” his father said.

  “Come here,” he heard.

  His father pushed him forward. “Say salaam to saab.”

  Madan lifted his head and his first thought, even before he could articulate the “Salaam . . .” was if Avtaar Singh stood up, he would surely go through the roof. He loomed over Madan and his shiny wooden desk, in a striped blue short-sleeve shirt hanging loose over his trousers, his hair swept away from his face and cropped short to the fold of his shirt’s collar. A thick, hooded mustache dominated his otherwise clean-shaven face, and the deep blackness of his eyes twinkled with the reflection of the bright overhead tube lights.

  “What’s your name, boy?” The sound boomed in his ear like the thundering train he’d just got off. Madan lowered his gaze to the watch ticking on Avtaar Singh’s wrist, his only adornment besides the deep red mauli string looped tightly around the other wrist.

  “Madan.”

  Avtaar Singh swiveled his chair toward him. Madan had never seen a chair do that, let alone have tiny wheels under its legs. It looked like a ride at the fair.

  A hefty hand cupped his chin. Though the hand wasn’t packed with heavy muscle, every action seemed generated from some explosive power source. “And how old are you, Madan?”

  “Eleven . . . twelve,” he stammered.

  “Eleven or twelve, boy?”

  “Twelve . . . saab.”

  Avtaar Singh fixed his gaze on Madan, and Madan tried to glance toward his father but the tight grip on his chin wouldn’t let him.

  “What is that?” Avtaar Singh asked, and Madan flinched. He followed Avtaar Singh’s gaze to the top buttons of his kurta. A folded comic book peeked out of his collar. Madan felt the smooth paper disengage from his sticky skin as his body cooled down in the air-conditioned room. He’d stuck it in there before they’d left the village.

  “Show it to me.” Releasing Madan’s chin, Avtaar Singh held out his hand.

  Madan reached into his shirt and unfolded the comic, handing it to him. He watched Avtaar Singh scan the comic book.

  “But . . . this is in English?” Avtaar Singh looked from Madan to his father. For a moment Madan thought Avtaar Singh’s bulging eyes looked comical. But just for a moment. Avtaar Singh shook the flimsy pages at his father, saying again, “Did you know this is English?”

  Madan, relieved that his chin was finally free, also looked to his father for an explanation.

  “Saab.” His father laughed, but it sounded like an abrupt cough. “In the village . . . there was a crazy army-wallah, saab. Some retired colonel. He tried to teach the children English. My wife told me Madan used to wait for him every day to come and teach. But what are we people going to do with this fancy-type language? Children . . . they don’t understand. Don’t worry, saab. I’ve got him a job at Prem Dhaba, serving tea, earn a little money for the family . . .” His father trailed off when he saw Avtaar Singh wasn’t listening.

  This was the first Madan had heard of a job, but before he could begin to daydream about what he would buy with the money earned, Avtaar Singh asked, “Can you read this, boy?”

  Madan glanced at his father. He didn’t want to get into trouble, and the look on his father’s face promised a belt on his back.

  “Don’t look there. I’m talking to you.”

  Madan forced himself to look at Avtaar Singh. Slowly, he nodded.

  Avtaar Singh’s finger moved along the title. “Start.”

  “ ‘Amar . . . Chitra . . . Katha,’ ” Madan read. “ ‘Pan-cha-tantra.’ ” He was not sure if he was saying it right. “ ‘The Brahmin, the Goat, and Other Stories,’ ” he finished quickly.

  “And this?” Avtaar Singh opened the comic and pointed again before Madan could catch his breath.

  “ ‘How . . . could . . . the villiager . . . villager . . . pl-ay such a . . . treeck . . .’ ”

  Avtaar Singh brusquely whipped the comic book away before Madan finished. He folded it back up and handed it to Madan, but did not let go right away. Unsure what to do, Madan held the comic by the other end.

  “Can you read this, Prabhu?” Avtaar Singh asked his father.

  “No . . . n
o, saab,” Madan heard his father’s quiet reply, sounding distant and inconsequential. Madan wanted to go to the toilet, but he willed himself not to tremble or look in his father’s direction.

  Avtaar Singh finally released his hold on the comic and Madan scrambled back to his father.

  “So, Prabhu, now your family is here, I want no more excuses. I want to see hard work, that’s what I pay for.” Avtaar Singh appeared more preoccupied with the papers on his desk.

  “Yes, saab.”

  “Where’s your woman?”

  “She’s outside, saab.”

  “Send her to the kitchen tomorrow. I’ll tell memsaab and she’ll work out her pay.”

  “Thank you, saab.”

  It was time to go. As his father swung open the door, ushering Madan out, Avtaar Singh spoke once again, still not looking up.

  “Prabhu, bring the boy in next week. He’ll go to school. To my Gorapur Academy. I will take care of it. No dhaba work for this boy.”

  They stood paralyzed within the doorframe, his father’s fingers digging into the nape of his neck. Madan glanced up to remind his father of whose neck was in his pinching grip, and caught the whiplash of anger across his father’s face, the sharp intake of breath and then the quiet, “Yes, thank you, saab.” The door swung shut behind them.

  CHAPTER 2

  MADAN WATCHED SWATI’S SLEEPING FACE BUMP ALONG ON his father’s shoulder. He trailed behind his parents as they kept to the dirt sides of the road. Trucks and cars whizzed by with a ferocity that blew sand in his eyes and made his head spin.

  “It’s a good-size room,” he heard his father say to his mother. “The servants’ quarters are behind the main house. There are two more rooms for the other servants.”

  From the train Madan saw the Yamuna River curving around the eastern end of Gorapur, but the rest of the town seemed to have forfeited this grace, erupting haphazardly through the fields of millet and rice, a checkerboard of green and concrete. They had made their way to Avtaar Singh’s factory down wide thoroughfares constricted with houses and storefronts with no beginning and no end. Walking back now, they skirted deep green paddy fields and pyramids of flaxen hayricks between eucalyptus trees. In ponds crusted with algae and scum, brown-feathered dabchicks and their young bobbed attentively along.

  Ever since they’d left the village, his mother chanted, “Ram, Ram,” and Madan wished she would stop. He was tired and thirsty. His feet throbbed, and he was tempted to sit down right there and cry. Avtaar Singh’s words whirred like crickets in his mind. He knew his father didn’t want him to talk but he had to ask this one question. He didn’t know how he could go another step without knowing.

  “Bapu,” he said. “Remember that man—will he make me go to school?”

  His father stopped suddenly, making Madan run into him. He grabbed Madan’s arm.

  “Aah, Bapu!” Madan protested, but his father ignored his yelp of pain.

  “You listen to me and remember this. Don’t put so much faith in the words of these types of people, these saabs. They like to put high and big ideas in our minds. Then, when they lose interest, your fall from such height will leave every bone in your body broken.”

  “Bapu, I don’t want to—”

  But his father pushed him on ahead. Rubbing his arm where the force of his father’s grip still stung, he kept on walking, avoiding his mother’s reproachful gaze, ashamed about breaking his promise to refrain from agitating his father in any way. He was not sure how long they walked but he dared not complain about his chafed toes or his legs shaking with weariness.

  After a while, Swati awoke and his father said, “Your grandfather is waiting to see you both.” Madan hadn’t seen Bapu’s father since he was much younger, but knew that his grandfather had moved in with Bapu after retiring from his job in a ball bearing factory.

  When Madan saw the walls surrounding Avtaar Singh’s house, the vastness of the structure did not surprise him. It should be that way for a man as immense as Avtaar Singh. They stood at an intersection, and his father pointed to the gravel driveway visible through the bars of a latticed front gate and to the creamy white stucco house beyond. From their vantage point, a line of windows was visible through the tapering tips of the Ashoka trees abutting the outer wall. There was some intermittent traffic, a car or a lorry. They seemed to travel a long way before they came to the end of the property. Across the road was a grassy field, and a stout cement marker emerging from the ground stating DELHI 200 KMS, but apart from that, nothing but Avtaar Singh’s house occupied this stretch of land.

  When Ma made a move toward the gate, his father said, “No, no. This way for us.”

  He turned left, leading them into the narrower street running along the outer wall. They passed a rickshaw stand, fruit and vegetable stalls, carts piled high with spicy dried channa and puffed rice poured into twisted cones of old newspaper for a quick snack. At the end of the road, a dhaba with a corrugated tin awning gave welcome shade to its hungry customers. Madan saw a boy, not much older than himself, running between the worn wooden benches and taking orders for food and tea. From a distance, the boy could have been Madan, all flailing limbs and skin the color of turned earth. Was this where Bapu was planning to send him?

  Toward the end of the outer wall was an opening with a low rusted gate. His father shepherded them through. They were at the back of the main house now. A cement courtyard led to three adjoining rooms. On one side was a communal toilet and bathing area with a plastic bucket. A second opening provided access to the main house.

  His father shouted, “We’re here!”

  Out of the darkness of a room at the far end, his grandfather emerged leaning heavily on his curved cane. Ma went up to touch her father-in-law’s feet and Madan did the same.

  “How they’ve grown,” his grandfather said to their mother, beaming down at Swati and Madan, his loose lips flopping and smacking against each other, but he made no move toward them and instead seemed distracted as he twirled around on his cane.

  “There they are.” Picking out a set of teeth from a glass of water, Madan’s grandfather shoved them into his mouth with a snap.

  His mother began to survey the room, removing the bundle with their few belongings from atop her head with a sigh of relief. Bapu left to get some food and Madan watched his grandfather shuffle after him, calling, “Don’t forget my beedi. You ran off today without getting me even one, so don’t forget now, ha?”

  Madan and Swati took off their rubber slippers and ran around the room in circles. The cool concrete soothed and tickled their burning soles, making them giggle. In the corner was a charpai, which, Madan could tell from the acrid smell of beedi emanating from the dirty white sheet, was where his grandfather slept. A small stove attached to a red gas tank sat on the floor on the other side of the door. The rest of the room was open and clear, strewn here and there with Bapu’s things. Madan knew it wouldn’t remain that way for long. Ma would fill it up with what they needed; she had a way of doing that without much effort.

  “Ma, I want . . .” The rest of Swati’s sentence disappeared in Madan’s and their mother’s uncontained laughter. It was a running joke among the three of them, how Swati, ever since she could talk, would begin everything with, “I want . . .” as if she had emerged from the womb needing more than they or life could give her.

  Most times, it was ridiculous things that caught her eye—a runaway kite in the sky, a flower of uncommon hue in a far-off field, a knock-kneed horse clopping by. Sweet as a stick of sugarcane, she would gaze up like a dog asking for a pat from its master as she made her guileless request, the thick sweep of her lashes enough to make one catch one’s breath in wonder, her tight braids angling her ears forward as if anxious to hear her verdict. When explained to her, she accepted the impossibility of her many requests with a touch of disappointment, but with overriding equanimity, never fussing, deferring with a sideways tilt of her head to their greater authority. “I-want Swati . . .” Madan
and Ma affectionately called her, and she too played along, as amused by her own self as they were.

  “I want water,” Swati said, a practical appeal in this instance. Madan shared another smile with his mother. It was such a relief to be in Gorapur finally, to be with Bapu whatever his opinion on the matter, to be laughing like they had not for so long. Ma took the cover off a large earthen pot and poured water into the two steel tumblers stacked next to it.

  “Here.” She handed Madan a tumbler as well. “It’s nice and cold.”

  Swati glugged the water down and stepped outside to gawk at their grandfather mumbling at the compound’s exit. His mother sighed. “Don’t mind your father. He’s a man whose life doesn’t seem to move ahead without some sort of trouble.” Then, casually, “What was that about the saab and school?”

  He told her about the man with the great mustache and the chair that spun in circles and how he said that Madan would go to school.

  “But Ma,” he said, anxious to share what else he had learned, “Bapu said he’s got me a job at a dhaba. I’ll bring money for you, Ma.”

  She rose from the floor, wincing as she stretched her legs.

  “I’m so happy we got this place, this . . . room,” she said. “But it’s only one room. That’s all your father will ever get us and I’m grateful for it. But an education . . . an education is a way to get a house full of rooms and food to quiet your stomach and clothes that don’t fall off your back.”

  His mother dipped a corner of her sari in the remaining water in the tumbler, wiping his dirt-streaked face. “Just don’t upset your bapu,” she said.

  He looked down at his feet, the toenails framed with dirt, feeling the lingering touch of her roughened hands on his face. Since Bapu had gotten this job in Gorapur, Ma had been pleading with him to bring them here. “My place is by your side,” Madan would hear her whisper to his father when he visited. What she feared was the way people looked at her, the men, who smirked and asked where her husband was, or made remarks about what Bapu was doing in Gorapur. “He’s fucking every whore in town, like this,” they said, jerking their hips like someone was biting their backside. “Why don’t you enjoy with us too?”