Aravind Adiga - Between the Assassinations

Raju could not be left alone, even though he would be a real nuisance on a trip like this. Once she had left him alone and he had swallowed a piece of glass.

“Where are we going?” he asked.

“To the Bunder.”

“Why?”

“There is a place by the Bunder, a garden, where Daddy’s friends are waiting for him to come. Daddy cannot go there-because the foreman will hit him again. You don’t want the foreman to beat Daddy again in front of all the world, do you?”

“No,” Raju said. “And when we get to this garden, what do we do?”

“We give Daddy’s friends at this garden ten rupees, and they will give us something Daddy really needs.”

“What?”

She told him.

Raju, already shrewd with money, asked, “How much will it cost?”

“Ten rupees, he said.”

“Did he give you ten rupees?”

“No. Daddy said we’ll have to get it ourselves. We’ll have to beg.”

As the two of them walked down Rose Lane, she kept her eyes on the ground. Once she had found five rupees on the ground-yes, five! You never knew what you’d find in a place where rich people live.

They moved to the side of the lane; a white car paused for a moment to go over a bump on the road, and she shouted at the driver:

“Where is the port, uncle?”

“Far from here,” he shouted back. “Go to the main road, and take a left.”

The tinted windows in the back of the car were rolled up, but through the driver’s window Soumya caught a glimpse of a passenger’s hand covered with gold bangles; she wanted to knock on the window. But she remembered the rule that the foreman had laid down for all the workers’ children. No begging in Rose Lane. Only on the main road. She controlled herself.

All the houses were being demolished and rebuilt in Rose Lane. Soumya wondered why people wanted to tear down these fine, large, whitewashed houses. Maybe houses became uninhabitable after some time, like shoes.

When the lights on the main road turned red, she went from autorickshaw to autorickshaw, opening and closing her fingers.

“Uncle, have pity, I’m starving.”

Her technique was solid. She had gotten it from her mother. It went like this: Even as she begged, for three seconds she kept eye contact; then her eye would begin to wander to the next autorickshaw. “Mother, I’m hungry”-rubbing her tummy-“give me food”-closing her fingers and bringing them to her mouth.

“Big brother, I’m hungry.”

“Grandpa, even a small coin would…”

While she did the road, Raju sat on the ground and was meant to whimper when anyone well dressed passed by. She did not count on him to do much; at least if he sat down he would stay out of other kinds of trouble, like running after cats, or trying to pet stray dogs that might be rabid.

Toward noon, the roads filled with cars. The windows had been rolled up against the rain, and she had to raise both her hands to the glass and scratch like a cat to get attention. The windows in one car were rolled down, and she thought her luck had improved.

A woman in one of the cars had beautiful patterns of gold painted on her hands, and Soumya gaped at them. She heard the woman with the gold hands say to someone else in the car:

“There are beggars everywhere these days in the town. It never used to be like this.”

The other person leaned forward and stared for a moment. “They’re so dark …Where are they from?”

“Who knows?”

Only fifty paise, after an hour.

Next she tried to get on the bus when it stopped at the red light, and beg there, but the conductor saw her coming and stood at the door: “Nothing doing.”

“Why not, uncle?”

“Who do you think I am, a rich man like Mr. Engineer? Go ask someone else, you brat!”

Glaring at her, he raised the red cord of his whistle over his head as if it were a whip. She scrambled out.

“He was a real cocksucker,” she told Raju, who had something to show her: a sheet of wrapping plastic, full of round buttons of air that could be popped.

Making sure the conductor couldn’t see, she got down on her knees and put it on the road right in front of the wheel. Raju crouched. “No, it’s not right. The wheels won’t go over it,” he said. “Push it to the right a little.”

When the bus moved again, the wheels ran over the plastic sheets and the buttons exploded, startling the passengers; the conductor poked his head out of the window to see what had happened. The two children ran away.

It began raining again. The two of them crouched under a tree; coconuts came crashing down, and a man who had been standing next to them with an umbrella jumped up, and swore at the tree, and ran. She giggled, but Raju was worried they would get hit by a falling coconut.

When the rain stopped, she found a twig and scratched on the ground, drawing a map of the city, as she imagined it. Here was Rose Lane. Here was where they had come, still close to Rose Lane. Here…was the Bunder. And here-the garden inside the Bunder that they were looking for.

“Do you understand all of this?” she asked Raju. He nodded, excited by the map.

“To get to the Bunder, we have to go”-she drew another arrow-“through the big hotel.”

“And then?”

“And then we go to the garden inside the Bunder…”

“And then?”

“We find the thing Daddy wants us to get.”

“And then?”

The truth was, she had no idea if the hotel was on the way to the port or not: but the rain had driven the vehicles away from the road, and the hotel was the only place where she might be able to beg for the money right now.

“You have to ask for money in English from the tourists,” she teased Raju as they walked to the hotel. “Do you know what to say in English?”

They stopped outside the hotel to watch a group of crows bathing in a puddle of water. The sun was shining on the water, and the black coats of the crows turned glossy as scintillas of water flew from their shaking bodies; Raju declared it was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

The man with no arms and legs was sitting in front of the hotel; he yelled curses from the other side of the road.

“Go away, you devil’s children! I told you never to come back here!”

She shouted back, “To hell with you, monster! We told you: never come back here!”

He was sitting on a wooden board with wheels. Whenever a car slowed down at the traffic light in front of the hotel, he rolled up on his wooden board and begged from one side; she begged from the other side of the car.

Raju, sitting on the pavement, yawned.

“Why do we need to beg? Daddy is working today. I saw him cutting those things-” He moved his legs apart and began sawing at an imaginary crossbeam below him.

“Quiet.”

Two taxis slowed down near the red light. The man with no arms and legs rushed on his wooden board to the first taxi; she ran to the second one, and put her hands into the open window. A foreigner was sitting inside. He stared at her with an open mouth: she saw his lips making a perfect pink “O.”

“Did you get any money?” Raju asked, when she came back from the car and the white man.

“No. Get up,” she said, and dragged the boy to his feet.

By the time they had crossed two red lights, however, Raju had figured it out. He pointed to her clutched fist.

“You got money from the white man. You have the money!”

She went up to an autorickshaw parked by the side of the road. “Which way is the Bunder?”

The driver yawned. “I don’t have any money. Go away.”

“I’m not asking for money. I’m asking for directions to the Bunder.”

“I told you, I’m not giving you anything!”