Indra Sinha - Animal's People

“A friend. Yesterday. I saw her drinking out of a bottle. She didn’t know I was watching. The bottle was frosty.” He closes his eyes, swallows, you can almost hear his throat cracking. Poor bastard, every word is costing him. “I was imagining, no, I was longing for, the sensation of cold water going down the throat. The image of that bottle would not leave me, it just got worse. Last night all my dreams were about water, I woke with such a thirst.” He falls back, the long speech has exhausted him.

All of a sudden I am ashamed to my depths of what I have done to Zafar. “Zafar brother, forgive me. I came to tell you one thing, but first I must tell you something else.”

“Go ahead.”

“I have been jealous of you.”

“I know.”

“How can you know?”

“Nisha told me,” he says.

“You don’t know. Not how bad it was. It was like your fire, burning me up from inside. You know what, I thought of every way to split you up. Hindu girl, Muslim boy? I even considered fomenting communal troubles so your marriage would be impossible.”

“So what happened?” he asks, something like a gleam returning to his eye.

“Pointless, this is Khaufpur, na?” So many times the politicians have tried to stir trouble between the communities in Khaufpur. Always the Khaufpuris say, we have suffered together, we will not be divided.

“Fucker.” He’s still holding my hand and gives it a squeeze.

“Zafar brother, I have something else to tell you. It’s bad. Very bad.”

“Tell me, my brother.”

“Zafar bhai, I am afraid that I have poisoned you.”

Confession is like puking, you can’t stop till you’re empty. So I tell him about the pills, how Faqri had assured me they were for one purpose, which was the derogation of his sexual urge, Nisha vis-à-vis. Plus I wasn’t to know they contained datura.

“Datura?” he says. “Fucking datura. No wonder I felt so bad.”

Then I confess to climbing the tree, once, to spy on him and Nisha. He doesn’t need to know about the other times, only once can you be executed no matter how many murders you commit. I am expecting he’ll be livid, but he lies on his rug looking at me out of his reddened eyes.

“Aren’t you going to get angry?”

He sighs. “Animal, brother, I’m too tired to be angry.” Then he reaches out and taps my head. “So all this turmoil, chaos, this churning rage against the world, has been going on in here?”

“Anyway, no need to be cross,” says I, “for I did not see anything. You did nothing of that sort.”

An odd snort escapes him, and his chest is palpitating. I’m thinking oh shit the shock of this is killing him, but turns out he’s laughing. It’s a dried up kind of laugh, somewhere between coughing, sobbing and snotting.

“Animal, you are too much. By god in whom I refuse to believe there are limits, but you exceed them all.”

“Nothing that I saw, anyway.”

“Yes, I know that. Such things can wait till marriage.”

“What, not even a kiss?”

“Maybe a kiss.”

“Bastard.”

“Well,” says he, pushing up on one elbow, “at least it proves one thing, that you’ll look after Nisha. I can trust you to keep her honour safe.”

“Don’t joke, yaar. I am too ashamed.”

“Definitely, you are the right man.”

“I am not a man.”

“Well my brother,” says he, “definitely the right animal.”

Someone suggests that I should not keep Zafar talking any more, but Zafar says not to worry. “Old friends, it gladdens the heart to see them, and this bastard, with his impudence and his lopsided grin, he makes me laugh, and by god in whom I don’t believe I feel better for it.”

So then it’s time to give him the real news. Leaning right down to his ear, I whisper, “Zafar, the thing I came to tell you, it’s bad. I have proof that Elli doctress is working for the Kampani.” So I start telling him about what I saw at Jehannum, how I’d hidden under the table and caught Elli with the foreign lawyer, how he said she’d done a fine job and could go home, and then how he’d kissed her. Zafar listens to all this with no expression. When I’ve finished he says, “Animal, you have done right to tell me, but I already know. Last night, Elli told Somraj. I’m afraid it will be bad for her. Try to see she too is okay.”

After these puzzling words he says, “Brother, I’m burning up. Ask them to fetch ice. Crush it in a cloth and put it on my skin, please do the same for Farouq.”

“No deal! No deal!” The second demo in a week, here we are again, the paltaniyas of the Apokalis, the people’s earth-shaking platoons. This day, which is the seventh of the Nautapa, it’s the fiercest heat yet. Not yet ten in the morning but the steps outside the courthouse are like bars of hot metal. We’ve all arrived full of excitement because the Kampani’s deal has not been signed and the hearing’s about to begin. Zafar and Farouq are there, so weak that people must stand beside them and steady them. Zafar’s staring out of eyes that already look dead. “Sit, don’t stand,” someone says. Zafar says he’ll wait until they are inside. Then he will sit. Ten minutes are left before the court opens its doors and the hearing begins, but when the appointed hour comes, of the judge is no sign. We are used to their lateness, but people are saying the milord should have made an effort, he must know that some here are half dead with their fasting, and still refusing to touch water? After twenty minutes a court official comes out and mumbles a few words. People nearby exclaim in anger. “What’s happening? What’s going on?” The news spreads like fire in dry grass. “The hearing has been postponed. They’ve postponed the hearing.”

“NO DEAL! NO DEAL, NO DEAL!”

The chant begins again. People are furious. The judge, it seems, has been transferred, already he has left Khaufpur for some other court, they forgot to inform us.

Shouts someone, “The Amrikans are coming.”

With an escort of armed police the four lawyers arrive at the courthouse.

Will they really feign surprise? What? the hearing’s been postponed, well I never, who’d have thought it? The cops, knowing the mood and quality of the crowd, are not keen for the lawyers to leave their car, and once they’re out are anxious to hustle them back in, but it’s too late. They are surrounded by a gang of jarnaliss from the Khaufpur Gazette, Doordrishti etc., shouting questions. “Why is the hearing postponed?” “Has a deal been agreed?”

“We’re here to offer generous humanitarian aid to the people of Khaufpur,” says the buffalo.

“Are charges against the Kampani being dropped?”

“NO DEAL! NO DEAL!” Sound of a crowd working itself into a rage.

“Will you clean the factory?”

“Where are your clients? Where are the accused executives?”

“We’re confident that all outstanding issues will be resolved.”

“NO DEAL! NO DEAL! NO DEAL!”

“How much will the compensation be?” “What is your agreement with the government?” “Did you know the hearing would be cancelled?”

“NO DEAL! NO DEAL, NO DEAL!”

“Say again, quite a bit of noise going on here.”

Hear O paltaniyas, learn wisdom. You can shrill and cry as much as you want. You can scream in their fucking ears, still you will not be heard.

“When will the agreement be signed? Days? Weeks? Months?”

“Can’t be too soon for me,” says the buffalo. “I’m missing home. I have two Italian greyhounds. They sleep on my bed.”

An old woman hobbles forward out of the crowd, it’s Gargi, whose back is almost as bent as mine. “Mr. Lawyer, we lived in the shadow of your factory, you told us you were making medicine for the fields. You were making poisons to kill insects, but you killed us instead. I would like to ask, was there ever much difference, to you?”