Three Bargains: A Novel Read online

  Madan had once asked Sharma-ji who wanted tins of corn when fields of maize as golden as the pictures on those tins surrounded Gorapur. “There’s always someone,” Sharma-ji said, “some poor sucker who wants to show off or taste something outlandish.” While waiting for this person to materialize, the bright green labels bleached to white, remaining unsold and unmoving as if they had staked their claim to that area of shelving.

  Sharma-ji flapped his dust cloth at Madan and began to descend, his short legs negotiating one rung at a time. “Ah, Mr. Madan, I knew you would come today.”

  “It’s the same day every month, Sharma-ji,” said Madan.

  “Yes, yes,” Sharma-ji replied, reaching behind the counter and taking out a roll of notes. He looked up at Madan as he handed him the money. “It seems like it was only yesterday you were this high . . . here with your father . . . now look at you. Tell me again, how old are you?”

  Madan smiled down at Sharma-ji. “Seventeen . . . nearly eighteen.”

  He unrolled the money and began to count it. He knew it would all be there, but still he counted it in front of the man. That way, in case there was a discrepancy he could take care of it there and then. “Even if you know they’ll not cheat, why let them feel too comfortable?” Avtaar Singh would say. “The moment they feel at ease, they might think of doing something you don’t want them to do.”

  Madan listened with half an ear as Sharma-ji talked on. Why did Sharma-ji always launch into the retelling of Madan’s first time at the store? Did he want to remind Madan that he knew his father, or was he trying to find common ground, some empathy for their shared experience at the hands of his father?

  The money all counted, Madan added it to the other rolls in his pocket. “Thank you, Sharma-ji,” he said, leaving the man in midsentence.

  “Wait, wait. I know you’re a busy man these days.” Sharma-ji darted around randomly, gathering up sundries and supplies.

  “Please don’t, Sharma-ji,” Madan said. Swallowing his irritation, he quickly exited the store. Sharma-ji should know better by now—Madan would never take anything more or anything less than was due to him.

  At Bittu’s Paan Stand, Madan reached through the smoke curling up from the burning incense stick and over the jars of gulkand and betel nuts and took out a pack of Gold Flakes. He flipped open the cover, tapping out one cigarette. The pan-wallah struck a match and lit it. “Put it on my account Bittu-bhai,” he said.

  “Oh, Madan-babu! Madan-babu!”

  Madan turned in the direction of the supplicating tone. Shuffling up to Madan was the crooked figure of 1984, his arm cradling a shehnai, the double-reed wood instrument scuffed and stained from years of rough use. His right arm stayed by his side, straight and stiff, as if in a splint.

  Bittu shooed him away. “Motherfucker, get out of here.” 1984 did a small backward dance, but kept his eyes on Madan, grinning, waiting, jiggling the shehnai in his good hand.

  “It’s fine,” said Madan. “Give me two more.” He tucked the cigarettes into the breast pocket of 1984’s shirt.

  “Salaam, saab. Thank you, saab.” 1984 bobbed up and down, following Madan through the market.

  Madan hurried on, nodding absently at passersby who wished him, “Ram, Ram.” There was no time to stop and chat. All they wanted was his support in approaching Avtaar Singh for assistance to ask for money for their daughter’s wedding or to acquire a contract for a government tender.

  With his lurching gait, 1984 kept up behind Madan. No one could recall 1984’s real name, and even 1984 claimed he couldn’t remember. When asked where he used to live or who he was born to, 1984 just chuckled. He had come to their notice after the riots following Indira Gandhi’s assassination, when, in towns like Gorapur, with their volatile mixture of Sikhs and Hindus, vengeful mobs pulsed down the streets, some with a torch in one hand, ax in the other.

  Rounded up in a colony on the southeast side of town, 1984 was part of a group of Sikhs dragged out of their homes and cars by their turbans. The mob shoved car tires around their waists, doused them with petrol, and set them on fire. Their women screamed, their babies cried, but mobs of any kind don’t listen. Rubber melts quickly, adhering to the skin, and in intense bursts of flames, those men were pools of grist and bubbling rubber.

  1984 ran to the canal when the mob moved on. They had used too big a tire on him, a truck tire on his scrawny frame, and he held it up till they were gone, slipping out of the ring of fire before it consumed him like the rest of his neighbors.

  “God saved me, Madan-babu,” he said.

  “God causes the problem and then saves you from it. Like a policeman who steals so he’ll have a job. You’re a fool, 1984.”

  Madan’s derision didn’t affect 1984. He salaamed and grinned, and asked for a bread pakora, his favorite food. The flames had licked his face and the puckered skin widened his eyes, his mouth was perpetually open and lopsided. His arm was the biggest casualty, fused to his side by scar tissue or, as 1984 reckoned, by melted rubber. The market was his home now. He followed people around, spreading news and gossip, earning money playing his old shehnai badly and shrilly with one useful hand, known only to everyone by the year he sprang into the town’s stream of consciousness.

  Madan was in the office when Avtaar Singh received news of the mob’s onslaught on his town, when he handed out missives to his men to go and control the streets of Gorapur—to do what the police were unable or unwilling to do. For those few days, as the town descended into an eerie calm and Madan served Avtaar Singh endless cups of tea, he waited and watched to see if Avtaar Singh would reveal to Madan what to think about the frightening events outside their door—for even in all the fear and confusion people still had opinions and took sides. Avtaar Singh’s ancestors were Sikhs, but through marriage and time, his faith had become twofold, the temple on Tuesdays and the gurdwara one morning each week.

  Yet, as he followed a pensive Avtaar Singh from home to factory and back again, he realized that Avtaar Singh had no side but his own. These few years later—now that the razed buildings had been rebuilt and the hustle and bustle had returned—1984 stood as the solitary reminder to Avtaar Singh of that time when the reins of the town briefly slipped from his tight grip. 1984 knew this better than anyone. That was why he would not follow Madan past the borders of the crowded market. His true survival, 1984 knew, depended on his staying away from the factory and out of Avtaar Singh’s sight.

  The fat brown dragonflies hovering over the open yard were the first to welcome anyone entering the timber factory. Madan and Jaggu had spent many afternoons pondering over why they droned over the arid factory floor, when a few meters away, surrounding the entire factory, were waterlogged fields of rice.

  Stopping to drop off his collections with the accountant, Mr. D’Silva, he wound his way to Avtaar Singh’s office. Madan could walk the factory blindfolded, steer through the workers, machines and trucks trundling through, by the smell, the noise and the heat.

  Nearby, the blade of a peeler screeched as it met a log of eucalyptus. Almost as if the blade were undressing the hapless log, it shaved off layers of bark into sheets as thin as paper. Madan picked his way through the debris obscuring the brick floor; already he felt the sawdust settle on him like a fine veil. Workers in scruffy white vests slathered a formaldehyde and urea glue mix onto dried sheets of bark. The toxic glue made the resulting plywood board resistant to termites. Overhead, tentacles of pipes crisscrossed the ceiling, dispersing the heat generated by the furnace to the pressing and bonding machines.

  The massive furnace was no more than part of the landscape of the factory now. Ma had never asked about his father, had never shown any inclination to know what had happened to him, though there were instances when she caused Madan some disquiet, when he caught her scanning him with a look that was unseeing, yet sharp as a talon. Other than that, she had settled into her changed situation. She stopped applying the vibrant slash of sindoor to her hair and quietly donned t
he plainer clothes of a widow. Every year during the dark fortnight of Shradh, she joined the throngs offering prayers at the temple to cleanse the sins committed by the dead. Madan never accompanied her, nor did she ever ask.

  She did not have much to complain about—a place to live, her work, hard but respectable, and money in the bank. He suggested to her in passing that she open a bank account. “Me? Your old mother, have an account like a big lady?” The idea took her by surprise yet pleased her, and she nagged him until he accompanied her to Punjab National Bank.

  She cherished her bank passbook. Her finger tracing each line of deposits, she asked Madan again and again to tally up the totals. “Maybe the bank people made a mistake,” she said, but he knew she wanted to hear the total amount out loud. “We’ll need it for your sister’s wedding,” she said to him. Madan did not have the heart to remind her that it would take more than a good dowry to find a man to marry Swati.

  Madan knocked and entered, in a quick second taking in everyone who was in Avtaar Singh’s office. One could tell the time of day by the occupants who happened to be in there.

  During the day, Avtaar Singh was busy with the running of the factory—vendors, buyers, tree farmers coming and going. But in the evening, a different type of mood overtook him. Then Feroze with his cloudy green eyes and pockmarked face, Gopal with his nunchucks, Harish and his psoriasis, the flaky, peeling skin bugging Avtaar Singh no end, and their cohorts, mainly wrestlers from the akhara, would come by. They would discuss everything from politics to the latest film star visiting Chandigarh for a live show. Madan was neither part of the day crowd nor one of the evening visitors. He was everywhere. He was where Avtaar Singh wanted him to be.

  “There he is,” said Avtaar Singh, and the men squirmed, making room for Madan. He pulled up a chair and sat near Avtaar Singh, who patted him on the shoulder. There was a snort from the corner of the room. Madan recognized it as Pandit Bansi Lal’s.

  “Look who’s here today,” Avtaar Singh said to Madan, indicating the man sitting next to Pandit Bansi Lal on the sofa. Madan acknowledged Ved Prakash, the legislative assembly member from their area, who usually visited Avtaar Singh when he was under pressure to follow through on one of his many election promises. He would come to Avtaar Singh to see what he had permission to do and how best to do it. The elections were coming up and Madan assumed that Ved Prakash was probably hoping for a repeat of the landslide victory Avtaar Singh had orchestrated for him the last time around. Descending on the polling booths on election day, Avtaar Singh’s men had no trouble persuading the arriving voters that it was better to go back home. Then, while Feroze and the others held the election officials at bay and the police kept watch outside the polling booths, Madan and Jaggu, electrified with their inclusion in the electoral process, stuffed the boxes with bunches of ballots premarked in favor of Ved Prakash.

  There was much celebrating after Ved Prakash’s win, especially by the politician himself, who promptly announced to everyone present that he would name any future sons after Avtaar Singh. No one paid much heed to the inebriated sixty-four-year-old politician’s rhetoric, since he was already a father to four grown children. But nine months later, as promised, he produced a son who was duly named after Avtaar Singh, and it went down on Ved Prakash’s curriculum vitae as one of the only promises to his constituents he had ever fulfilled on his own volition.

  “Ved Prakash comes with interesting news,” said Avtaar Singh. “You know the land near Jobal? It seems Kishan Sood’s son has returned from Bombay and he wants his father’s land.”

  “No one owns that land,” Ved Prakash cried out as if he couldn’t help himself.

  “All land is owned by someone,” said Avtaar Singh impatiently to the politician. “If you had taken care of this with the father we would not have to deal with the son now.”

  A large swath of fertile agricultural land encompassed the Jobal area and, as with much of such land directly around Gorapur, farmers paid a yearly fee to Avtaar Singh in exchange for tilling the land. Aware of only the rudimentary facts of the land’s murky provenance, Madan nevertheless knew this parcel of earth held a mythic importance to Avtaar Singh, for tucked in a small corner was Guru Gianchand’s akhara.

  “Many years ago I wanted to buy the land where the akhara sits so I could gift it to Guru Gianchand,” Avtaar Singh explained. “That bastard Sood would not sell. Offered him cash, offered him land on the other side near Jagadhari. It was like he wanted to start a fight with me. So I accommodated, and took that land and the rest of his property around it. Ved Prakash told Sood he was going to claim the land for the government . . . What did you say it was for?” he asked

  “Hydroelectric power plant,” whispered Ved Prakash.

  “And my boys went to his house and gave Sood a more personal message from my side. He disappeared from town with his family after that.”

  “It was the subdivisional magistrate,” said Ved Prakash. “He was supposed to issue the papers in your name. If I ever see that motherfucker again . . .”

  “This is a small thing,” said Pandit Bansi Lal, consoling his friend. “Avtaar Singh will take care of it.”

  “I shouldn’t be taking care of small things!” Avtaar Singh banged his hand against the desk. “All you had to do was to arrange for the title in my name.”

  Though Madan was enjoying Pandit Bansi Lal’s discomfort, he was anxious to share the information he had recently gleaned from his friends at Monty’s Taxi Stand. “They were talking about a visitor staying at Dawn Guesthouse,” he told Avtaar Singh. “The man wanted a taxi to the financial commissioner’s office.”

  “Ha?” Ved Prakash perked up. “Why? What does that mean?”

  “Arre! He doesn’t know anything,” Pandit Bansi Lal consoled the worried politician. “He’s just a child. Don’t worry about what he says.”

  “I—” Madan spat out, half rising from his chair. Avtaar Singh’s firm squeeze on his shoulder silenced him. Swallowing his resentment, he turned to Avtaar Singh, but refused to meet his eye. He understood why people like Ved Prakash associated with someone like Pandit Bansi Lal, but he could not understand why Avtaar Singh entertained the pandit, no matter how long their association or Avtaar Singh’s religious convictions.

  “Pandit-ji,” said Avtaar Singh, “I give more credit to Madan’s word than anyone else’s in this room. I’ve told you this before.”

  Though he knew he shouldn’t, Madan shot Pandit Bansi Lal a smug look. Avtaar Singh tut-tutted, but Pandit Bansi Lal got up, whipping his cotton wrap around him. “Avtaar Singh-ji, this is the respect I get after all my years of service to your family? This is how an old friend is treated? Because of this . . . of this—I am going,” he said with finality. “Ved Prakash-ji, if you want to stay, then stay, but I will not . . .”

  “What?” said Ved Prakash, looking overwhelmed and confused by the words firing like loaded cannonballs through the room.

  “Sit,” said Avtaar Singh. “Sit, Pandit-ji. Why do you get upset so easily? No one means any disrespect. If you feel Madan has insulted you in some way, he will apologize.”

  Madan felt the focused gaze of Ved Prakash, Pandit Bansi Lal and Avtaar Singh on him while the other men in the room looked on.

  Avtaar Singh looked pointedly at Madan, so he said, “Sorry,” under his breath and at the same time Pandit Bansi Lal said, “Really, I’m above these little things but sometimes . . . sometimes—” he sat back down like he had said all he wanted to say.

  “Good,” said Avtaar Singh. “Financial commissioner’s office means he’s going to file a complaint. He could name all of us.” His gaze flitted over the worried men on the sofa and then came to rest on Madan.

  Madan had come to learn that Avtaar Singh was a man who was never alone. Whether it was by design or because of his busy life, his men or his factory workers, his wife, his children, his friends or someone or other from the town orbited around him at all times.

  And then there was Madan.
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  Madan, whom Avtaar Singh called for every morning when he took his first sip of tea and whom Avtaar Singh demanded stay on his right side and on his left, whichever way he happened to turn, until he was back in his bed at the end of the day.

  Madan looked around Avtaar Singh’s office at the strong-armed men, the high-ranking politician, the influential pandit. After they took their leave, and the machines shuddered to silence and the crickets began their own musical labors, he would be back here with Avtaar Singh.

  Madan would pour him a glass of Chivas Regal and get himself a Campa Cola, for he never drank alcohol in front of Avtaar Singh, and they would discuss the pros and cons of all sorts of business matters. Avtaar Singh would talk about land or real estate he wanted to acquire, or ask Madan about school and studies, and these days they were thrashing out the details on the new factory Avtaar Singh wanted to open.

  When Avtaar Singh was done, they would drive home with the windows rolled down, Avtaar Singh sitting up front with him, the deserted streets making it seem like there was no one else alive but them.

  Madan sat among these men here, went out on jobs with them, but now and again he saw flickers of confusion when Avtaar Singh solicited his opinion, giving it consideration before making a decision. It made them wary of him and unsure of his position among them.

  When he had brought this up with Avtaar Singh, he was told, “You and I have to be sure of no one but each other,” answering and ending any further concerns about the matter on Madan’s part.

  Madan knew what Avtaar Singh needed from him. “I’ll take care of it, saab,” he said.

  Everyone started filing out and as Madan got up, Pandit Bansi Lal addressed Ved Prakash. “See what I told you? Avtaar Singh-ji will take care of it, he takes care of all of us . . . even those who should’ve long ago been dumped at some roadside truck stop.” He murmured the last part so no one but Madan, passing by him, heard.