Indra Sinha - Animal's People

“Animal brother,” says Zafar kindly. He has me by a shoulder and I can see his face. “Try to understand. You did not die. By a miracle you are alive and we are taking you home.”

“This is my home now, it’s my place.”

“Then we shall come back again when you’re better. You have a fever, you are starving. One more day up here you would have died.”

But still I don’t get the message. For a while I’ve raved on about how dying was no big deal, that living in darkness and poverty was the real problem. “Zafar, it’s paradise for us. We’ve left behind the world of suffering.”

“Alas,” he says, “I fear not.”

Halfway down the mountain they stop for a rest. “Animal, are you hungry?” asks Bhoora. “We have food.” From a bag he produces a small tiffin of rice, daal soup, pickle.

“Did Ma send it? Where is she? I thought she’d be with you.”

A look passes between them. “Eat sparingly,” says Zafar. “First take a little soup. We learned this following our own fast.”

Zafar says that when news of the factory riot reached him and Farouq they decided to stop their fast. “Police came, they took us to a private clinic where the CM was waiting. He told us that rumours were flying round that we had died, he asked us to help stop the trouble.” Zafar and Farouq agreed to the CM’s request on condition that the CM swore by his temple gods to listen to what they had to say, and not to do anything or make any deal without their consent. This the CM promised. They were taken by a jeep to the places where the trouble was worst, to show themselves, that they were not dead, they calmed the people and sent them back to their homes.

“What about Nisha?” says I, beginning at last to doubt. “She knew you were dead.”

“The first place we went was the Chicken Claw, to show ourselves to Nisha and Somraj-ji. That’s when we heard you had run off. Nisha begged us to find you.”

“Now I know you’re lying. Nisha hates me.”

“She does not, she likes you more than me I think for she told me, ‘Zafar, you bring him back or don’t come back yourself.’”

“She really said that?”

“Yes, plus she told me when we found you to give you this.”

My heart fails. He hands me a cap embroidered in blue and scarlet silks.

By this gift, I lost my immortality, I knew then that Zafar really was alive and so was I. Life dropped like a heavy mantle about my shoulders and I began to weep for pity that I was to return to the city of sorrows.

When it’s time to move on, they go to lift me up again.

“Don’t carry me. On my own feet I’ll come.”

“I’ve been meaning to ask,” says Farouq. “Why did you run away and come all the way up here?” But this I don’t wish to tell.

With the dog jumping round all, we move slowly down through the forest where I’d done my dying, by daylight in company of friends it seems harmless. The animals that were absent before now choose to show themselves. Farouq exclaims when he sees branches dipping beneath a troop of monkeys. Birds we see, deer in the distance, something like a giant squirrel’s tail hanging out of a tree. Soft clouds of rain come drifting between the trees, by a place where water is running’s laid a long white snake skin, perfect from nostrils to tip of tail. Says Zafar softly, “ hameen ast-o hameen ast-o hameen ast. ”

Down by the road’s waiting Bhoora’s auto, he lifts me in. “Come,” says he. “Now we’ll go home.”

Zafar and Farouq squeeze in either side of me.

“Wait! What about Jara?”

“The dog is okay,” says Farouq with a grin. “Just look behind to see what a popular bugger you are.”

Right behind us is a bhutt-bhutt-pig full of people plus, I guess, Jara too.

“Bhoora brother,” says Zafar. “Let’s go. Back to my place.”

“No, no,” says I. “Just take me back home. Ma must be worrying.”

There’s a silence, then Zafar says, “You need a doctor, and Elli has gone back to Amrika. We’ll go to my place.”

Eyes, someone had mentioned Elli leaving, but not until now do I know that she has gone back home. “She’s not returning then.” Eyes, I’m not even thinking of my back, just sad it’s that things had to end this way. “I would have liked to say goodbye.”

“No need.” It’s Zafar. Something not right about the way he says this.

“Why are you smiling, you bastard?”

“They’re repairing Elli’s clinic. Your mate Dayanand is there, the blue-lungi foreman’s there chain-smoking beedis. It will be ready by the time she returns.”

“She’s coming back?”

“See, we bring good news.”

“Zafar brother, what does this glee mean?”

Says Farouq, “Elli went back to Amrika, but she took Pandit-ji and Nisha with her.”

“But,” says I, “she promised her husband, the lawyer, that she would go back to him. She told me this herself.”

Says Zafar, “She promised to go back to Amrika. She did not promise to go back to him. What it means…”

But I know what it means. It means the music of Elli’s promise will be heard loud and joyful at her wedding. So then I’m clapping.

“Congratulations, Farouq brother. Zafar brother, to you double congrats!”

“Why double?” Grinning like he knows the answer.

“Because there’ll be not one wedding but two. You will marry Nisha and I’ll be there cheering. I love the pair of you. I swear, my brother, may god in whom you don’t believe, be my witness.” With these words, which I had no idea would fly out of my mouth, a great peace enters my heart. “Zafar brother, this gift which you gave me, please wear it at your wedding.”

I’ve given him back the precious embroidered cap.

“So after all, we won. The power of nothing rose up and destroyed our enemies.”

Says Zafar, “When is anything ever as simple as that?”

The auto’s bumping along the road that leads south to Khaufpur, behind us the hills are dwindling. The countryside is green from recent rain.

After some time Farouq asks again why I’d run away. The way he asks this, it’s like there is another question hidden behind the first.

“After the factory went up, poison smoke came. Ma said it would be like that night all over again.”

“It was not,” replies Farouq. “This time people knew what to do, they got out. Even so, three died.”

“Three? I thought it must be thousands. That fire was hell itself. It was burning my back as I ran away from the factory.”

“Three is three too many,” says Zafar. “So you were in the factory. We thought as much.” They share a silence whose meaning I can’t fathom.

As we rattle along, Zafar and Farouq tell the story of what happened in the days following the fire.

Seems that after they had extracted their promise from the CM the city returned to a peaceful state. Right away the politicians got it into their heads that since things were back to normal they should after all quietly proceed with the deal. It would have to be done in secret. They reckoned that if they did the double-cross quietly plus delayed announcing it, it would be too late to stop. Zafar and Farouq were no longer in danger of dying, it would be difficult to make another demo, plus this time police and army were ready. So a meeting was set up, it would take place not in a government building, where all kinds of eyes would see, but right in the place where the Amrikan lawyers were, in other words, Jehannum.

The morning of the meeting came. Up and down the road from the old city to the hill above the lake, police were out in numbers. Jeeps were going back and forth. Unless they were guests, people were being turned away from Jehannum. The police would stop them at the gate. Nobody could get in. If people asked why this was happening, they were told it was because there’d been threats to the Amrikans. “We are taking no chances,” the police said.