Indra Sinha - Animal's People

I liked it when she smiled at me, this is how it started. So I’d do things to make her smile. Next I started noticing every time she smiled at Zafar. This is how the poison of love enters the blood. If ever their hands touched I’d feel a jab. I began making snidy remarks and did not like it when sometimes they would take themselves off to her room and I was not invited.

“So what’s the big secret?” I asked the second or third time this happened, I was trying to make a joke of it. Zafar danced his eyebrows in a wouldn’t-you-like-to-know style, but Nisha told me not to be foolish, they simply wanted to leave her dad to listen to his music in peace. In truth who knew what the fuck they were doing?

Of course I had no chance with Nisha. She was besotted with Zafar and my back was bent as a scorpion’s tail. Over and over I’d tell myself, if only I could stand up straight, it might be a different matter, that old guy wouldn’t have a chance. This made me feel better, but changed nothing. What hope was there that my back would ever unbend? I complained to Nisha that everyone else would one day get married, but no girl would ever look at me. She said, “It’s not what’s outside that matters, inside you is a beautiful man.”

“I’m not a man,” I said. Even notions like these she got from Zafar. When I talked of my situation she chewed her cheek and fell into long thoughtful silences. Her hair would drift over her eyes, she’d brush it off as if it were some annoying insect. I would have liked to stroke her hair, but I didn’t dare. Once, I tried in a subtle way to show her my feelings, I said, “Nish, if you’re ever unhappy, just remember, for your sake I’ll do anything.”

She laughed and told me I was sweet and she was not unhappy. This did not satisfy me, I wasn’t sure she had got the point. In Khaufpur we have an expression, kya main Hindi mein samjhaun ? Should I say it in Hindi? In other words do I have to fucking spell it out? “Sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t presume.”

She placed a finger to my lips. “Hush. Silence also speaks.”

“Silence is what makes sound into song.” This is what Nisha’s father Pandit Somraj told me one time, amazed I was that he talked to me. This was not long before Elli’s arrival, which I’ll come to soon. It was the rainy season and I was on the verandah peeling potatoes, admiring the large frangipani tree that grew in his garden. During the monsoon it would make flowers, white with golden hearts and such a scent, somewhat like jasmine. On this day the tree was full of flowers, rain was dripping through its leaves. Pandit Somraj came out and stood for a while beside me.

“Are you hearing it too?” he asked, solemn as ever.

“Hearing what sir?” As you know I was scared of Somraj, plus he’s the kind of man you can’t say a bad thing about, nothing’s scarier than that.

“In Inglis,” he says, “there is a word SILENT, which means khaamush, it has the exact same letters as the word LISTEN. So open your ears and tell me, what can you hear?”

I could hear nothing save a frog calling, crikkk-crikkk, crikkk-crikkk, happily looking for another frog to fuck.

“Just a frog.”

“ Just a frog? Let me tell you, that frog contains more music than most pandits. This song of his is said to inspire the note of dha , which is the sixth note of our scale.”

“Sir,” I said, “I think you are making me a Cha Hussain.”

“Not a bit, I am quoting the opinion of a sage called Kohala, he was the son of Bharata, who wrote Natyashastram , it’s our earliest book on music.”

He looks so solemn, standing with his head cocked on one side listening to the randy frog, that I can’t help it I start laughing and he says to me be quiet and listen, music does not all have to be made with strings and bows and pipes, it can also be made by drops of rain or wind cut by a leaf.

“Sir, I don’t understand.”

“Do you like music?”

“Very much, sir,” says I whose deep voice can carry a film song, oh yes it’s chai chappa chai with full wiggling of upraised backside, wah wah darlings, where will you find better entertainment? Of course I could never speak of such things to the great Aawaaz-e-Khaufpur, these low performances are reserved for Chunaram’s chai shop.

“Would you like to learn singing?”

“I would be no good, sir.”

“Sing a note for me please.”

“Please no sir.” Who was I to sing to him?

“Go ahead without fear,” he says kindly, which I’ve dared not refuse so I’ve opened my mouth and sung, “Aaaaa!”

“Well, you make a pleasant sound. So then, if the frog is dha then you have just sung ga , the third note. So sing again, ga . Now if I sing pa, the fifth note, then between you, me and the frog we have a tune, we can even say it’s like raga Deshkar. Like this, listen, ga pa dha ga dha, dha pa ga, ga pa dha pa ga, ga dha, ga pa dha, pa dha ga pa.”

But these notes he does not sing, he speaks them. “Animal, if you know how to listen you can hear music in everything.”

Then he says that according to the old writers, peacocks, goats and even the grey herons which sometimes we’d find dead beside the Kampani’s lakes, these creatures too sing notes of the scale, and if you listen carefully you can hear the same notes in many other things which you wouldn’t expect such as the creaking of bicycle wheels and bhutt-bhutt-pigs because all things make their own kind of music. “Listen to how the rain is dripdrop dripping into the pond, plink PLONK plank, it’s raga Bilaval.”

Never had I heard him utter so much, nor had ever he addressed so many words to me, I sat thrilled as he spoke on, until at last he came to an end, gave me a friendly look and said, still without a smile, “Please don’t mention this conversation to anyone else, especially to Nisha, I know you are close to her, if I talk to her of such things she becomes afraid that I am losing my wits. But I understand that you too have a power of hearing, so you will understand.”

Actually what I understood was never mind bicycles, if the poor sod hears music in such things as bhutt-bhutt-pigs, he must be fully fishguts. If he had not been such a forbidding man with good reason to have lost his noddle I might have made a joke of it, but on every subject other than music he was totally sane, and the fact that he was Nisha’s dad, plus I had my lunch every day in his kitchen were good reasons to be civil.

On a morning of rain, cloud horses pissing in the eye of the world, Nisha says to me, “Animal, coming to the court?” Seems there’s yet another hearing in the case against the Kampani. I’ve no particular love of the court, who’ve seen more than enough of it in my scamming days, but “Why not?” I hear myself say. “I’ve nothing better to do.” Well, it’s Nisha.

Normally Nisha would have gone on Zafar’s motorbike, but today as there’s three of us, we take Bhoora’s auto. Eyes, you want to know what is an auto, it’s a scooter-rickshaw with three wheels, except the way Khaufpuris drive they spend more time on two. Bhoora hangs round the Chicken Claw, if you see a guy curled up asleep in the back of his auto, spirals of orange peel on the ground nearby, you can be sure it’s Bhoora. Wake him up his deep-set eyes will open and look at you as if you’re part of his dream, then slowly he’ll start to grin. “Kyoñ Khãn, aaj kahaañ chalogé?” So, brother, where to today?

The three of us are in the back of the auto, Zafar is looking at papers, Nisha’s just gazing at the passing city and I am pressed tight between them feeling the warmth of her thigh against my hip. Things start happening in my kakadu shorts, relief it’s when Bhoora from the driver’s seat turns to engage Zafar in conversation.