Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

As they passed below the red walls of the mosque, Haresh, not being a native of Brahmpur, asked why black flags were hanging at the outer gates. Kedarnath replied in an indifferent voice that they had come up just the previous week when the ground had been broken for a temple in the neighbouring plot of land. For one who had lost his house, his land and his livelihood in Lahore, he did not appear to be embittered against Muslims so much as exhausted by religious zealots in general. His mother was very upset at his evenhandedness.

‘Some local pujari located a Shiva-linga in the Ganga,’ said Kedarnath. ‘It is supposed to have come from the Chandrachur Temple, the great Shiva temple that they say Aurangzeb destroyed. The pillars of the mosque do have bits of Hindu carving, so it must have been made out of some ruined temple, God knows how long ago. Mind your step!’

Haresh narrowly avoided stepping into some dog-shit. He was wearing a rather smart pair of maroon brogues, and was very glad to have been warned.

‘Anyway,’ continued Kedarnath, smiling at Haresh’s agility, ‘the Raja of Marh has title to the house that stands — stood, rather — beyond the western wall of the mosque. He has had it broken down and is building a temple there. A new Chandrachur Temple. He’s a real lunatic. Since he can’t destroy the mosque and build on the original site, he’s decided to build to the immediate west and install the linga in the sanctum there. For him it’s a great joke to think that the Muslims will be bowing down in the direction of his Shiva-linga five times a day.’

Noticing an unoccupied cycle rickshaw, Kedarnath hailed it, and they got in. ‘To Ravidaspur,’ he said, and then continued: ‘You know, for a supposedly gentle, spiritual people, we seem to delight in rubbing other people’s noses in dog-shit, don’t you think? Certainly I cannot understand people like the Raja of Marh. He imagines himself to be a new Ganesh whose divine mission in life is to lead the armies of Shiva to victory over the demons. And yet he’s besotted with half the Muslim courtesans of the city. When he laid the foundation stone of the temple two people died. Not that this meant anything to him, he’s probably had twenty times that number murdered in his own time in his own state. Anyway, one of the two was a Muslim and that’s when the mullahs put the black flags up on the gate of the mosque. And if you look carefully, you’ll see that there are even some smaller ones on the minarets.’

Haresh turned back to look, but suddenly the cycle rickshaw, which had been gathering speed downhill, collided with a slowly moving car, and they came to a sudden halt. The car had been crawling along the crowded road, and there was no damage to anyone, but a couple of the bicycle’s spokes had got bent. The rickshaw-wallah, who looked thin and unassertive, jumped off the cycle, glanced quickly at his front wheel, and banged aggressively on the window of the car.

‘Give me money! Phataphat! Immediately!’ he yelled.

The liveried driver and the passengers, who were two middle-aged women, looked surprised at this sudden demand. The driver half-recovered, and put his head out of the window

‘Why?’ he shouted. ‘You were coming down the slope without control. We weren’t even moving. If you want to commit suicide do I have to pay for your funeral?’

‘Money! Quickly! Three spokes — three rupees!’ said the rickshaw-wallah, as brusquely as a highwayman.

The driver turned his face away. The rickshaw-wallah grew angrier:

‘You daughter-fucker! I don’t have all day. If you don’t pay for my damages, I’ll give your car some of its own.’

The driver would probably have responded with some insults in kind, but since he was with his employers, who were getting nervous, he remained tight-lipped.

Another rickshaw-wallah passed, and shouted in encouragement: ‘That’s right, brother, don’t be afraid.’ By now about twenty people had gathered round to watch the sport.

‘Oh, pay him and let’s go on,’ said one of the ladies at the back. ‘It’s too hot to argue.’

‘Three rupees!’ repeated the rickshaw-wallah.

Haresh was about to leap out of the rickshaw to put an end to this extortion when the driver of the car suddenly flung an eight-anna coin at the rickshaw-wallah. ‘Take this — and fuck off!’ the driver said, stung to rage by his helplessness.

When the car had gone and the crowd had cleared, the rickshaw-wallah started singing with delight. He bent down and straightened the two bent spokes in twenty seconds, and they were on their way again.

‘I’ve only been a couple of times to Jagat Ram’s place, so I’ll have to make inquiries once we get to Ravidaspur,’ said Kedarnath.

‘Jagat Ram?’ asked Haresh, still thinking of the incident of the spokes and angry with the rickshaw-wallah.

‘The shoemaker whose workshop we’re going to see. He’s a shoemaker, a jatav. He was originally one of those basket-wallahs I told you about who bring their shoes to Misri Mandi to sell to any trader who’ll buy them.’

‘And now?’

‘Now he has his own workshop. He’s reliable, unlike most of these shoemakers who, once they have a bit of money in their pockets, don’t care about deadlines or promises. And he’s skilled. And he doesn’t drink — not much. I began by giving him a small order for a few dozen pairs, and he did a good job. Soon I was ordering from him regularly. Now he’s able to hire two or three people in addition to his own family. It’s helped both him and me. And perhaps you might want to see if the quality of his work comes up to the standard that your people at CLFC need. If so. .’ Kedarnath left the rest of the sentence in the air.

Haresh nodded, and gave him a comforting smile. After a pause, Haresh said, ‘It’s hot now that we’re out of the alleys. And it smells worse than a tannery. Where are we now? In Ravidaspur?’

‘Not yet. That’s on the other side of the railway line. It doesn’t smell quite so bad there. Yes, there’s an area here where they prepare the leather, but it isn’t a proper tannery like the one on the Ganga—’

‘Perhaps we should get down and see it,’ said Haresh with interest.

‘But there’s nothing to see,’ protested Kedarnath, covering his nose.

‘Have you been here before?’ asked Haresh.

‘No!’

Haresh laughed. ‘Stop here!’ he shouted at the rickshaw-wallah. Over Kedarnath’s protests, he got him to dismount, and the two of them entered the warren of stinking paths and low huts, led by their noses towards the tanning pits.

The dirt paths stopped suddenly at a large open area surrounded by shacks and pockmarked by circular pits which had been dug into the ground and lined with hardened clay. A fearsome stench rose from the entire zone. Haresh felt sick; Kedarnath almost vomited with disgust. The sun shone harshly down, and the heat made the stench worse still. Some of the pits were filled with a white liquid, others with a brown tannic brew. Dark, scrawny men dressed only in lungis stood to one side of the pits, scraping off fat and hair from a pile of hides. One of them stood in a pit and seemed to be wrestling with a large hide. A pig was drinking at a ditch filled with stagnant black water. Two children with filthy matted hair were playing in the dust near the pits. When they saw the strangers they stopped abruptly and stared at them.

‘If you had wanted to see the whole process from the beginning I could have taken you to see the ground where dead buffaloes are stripped and left to the vultures,’ said Kedarnath wryly. ‘It’s near the unfinished bypass.’

Haresh, slightly regretful for having forced his companion into accompanying him here, shook his head. He looked at the nearest shack, which was empty except for a rudimentary fleshing machine. Haresh went up and examined it. In the next shack was an ancient splitting machine and a wattle pit. Three young men were rubbing a black paste on to a buffalo hide lying on the ground. Next to them was a white pile of salted sheepskins. When they saw the strangers they stopped working and looked at them.