Aravind Adiga - Between the Assassinations

“Ladies and gentlemen! All of you know that we live in a rat race, where there are few jobs and many job applicants. How will your children survive, how will they get the jobs you have? For life in this day and age is a veritable rat race. Only in this booklet will you find thousands of useful general knowledge data, arranged in question-and-answer form, that your sons and daughters need to pass the civil service entrance examination, the bank entrance examination, the police entrance examination, and many other exams which are needed to win the rat race. For instance”-he took a quick breath-“the Mughal Empire had two capitals; Delhi was one of them. Which was the other? Four capital cities of Europe are built on the banks of one river. Name that river. Who was the first king of Germany? What is the currency of Angola? One city in Europe has been the capital of three different empires. Which city? Two men were involved in the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. Nathuram Godse was one of them. Name the other man. What is the height of the Eiffel Tower in meters?”

Holding the pamphlets with his right hand, he staggered forward, bracing himself as the bus bumped over the potholes of the road. One passenger asked for a pamphlet and handed him a rupee. Ratna walked back, and waited near the exit door; when the bus slowed down, he dipped his head in silent thanks to the conductor and got off.

Seeing a man waiting at the bus stand, he tried to sell him a collection of six colored pens, first at a rupee a pen; then at two pens a rupee; finally offering three for a rupee. Although the man said he would not buy, Ratna could see the interest in his eyes; he took out a large spring that could give much amusement to children, and a geometrical set that could make wonderful designs on paper. The man bought one of the geometrical sets for three rupees.

Ratna headed away from the Sultan’s Battery, taking the road toward Salt Market Village.

Once he got to the village, he went to the main market, took out a handful of change, and sorted it out on the flat of his palm as he walked; he left the coins on the counter of a shop, taking in exchange a packet of Engineer beedis, which he put into his suitcase.

“What are you waiting for?” The boy in charge of the shop was new to the job. “You have your beedis.”

“I usually get two packets of lentils too, included in the price. That’s the way it’s done.”

Before entering his house, Ratna ripped open one of the packets with his teeth and poured its contents onto the ground near his door. Seven or eight of the neighborhood dogs came running, and he watched them crunch the lentils loudly. When they began digging at the earth, he tore open the second packet with his teeth and scattered its contents on the ground too.

He walked into his house without waiting to see the dogs devour this second lot of lentils. He knew they would still be hungry, but he could not afford to buy them a third packet every day.

He hung his shirt on a hook by the door, as he scratched his armpits and hairy chest. He sat down on a chair, exhaled, muttered, “O Krishna, O Krishna,” and stretched out his legs; even though they were in the kitchen, his daughters knew at once that he was there-a powerful odor of stale feet went through the house like a warning cannon shot. They dropped their women’s magazines and busied themselves with their work.

His wife emerged from the kitchen with a tumbler of water. He had begun smoking the beedis.

“Are they working in there-the maharanis?” he asked her.

“Yes,” the three girls, his daughters, shouted back from the kitchen. He did not trust them, so he went in to check.

The youngest, Aditi, crouched by the gas stove, wiping the leaves of the photo album with a corner of her sari. Rukmini, the oldest sister, sat beside a mound of white pills, which she was counting off and pouring into bottles; Ramnika, who would be married off after Rukmini, pasted a label on each bottle. The wife was making noise with plates and pots. After he had smoked his second beedi and his body had visibly relaxed, she built up the courage to approach him:

“The astrologer said he would come at nine.”

“Uhm.”

He burped, and then lifted a leg and waited for the fart. The radio was on; he placed the set on his thigh, and slapped his palm against his other leg to the beat of the music, humming all the while, and singing the words whenever he knew them.

“He’s here,” she whispered. He turned off the radio as the astrologer came into the room and folded his palms in a namaste.

Sitting down in a chair, he took off his shirt, which Ratna’s wife hung for him on the hook next to Ratna’s. While the women waited in the kitchen, the astrologer showed Ratna the choice of boys.

He opened an album of black-and-white photos; they gazed at the faces of one boy after another, who looked back at them out of tense, unsmiling portraits. Ratna scraped one with his thumb. The astrologer slid the photo out of the album.

“Boy looks okay,” Ratna said after a moment’s concentration. “The father does what for a living?”

“Owns a firecracker shop on Umbrella Street. A very good business. Boy inherits it.”

“His own business,” Ratna exclaimed with genuine satisfaction. “It’s the only way ahead in the rat race; being a salesman is a dead end.”

His wife dropped something in the kitchen; she coughed and dropped something else.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

A timid voice said something about horoscopes.

“Shut up!” Ratna shouted. He gestured at the kitchen with the photo-“I have three daughters to marry off, and this damn bitch thinks I can be choosy?”-and he tossed the photo into the astrologer’s lap.

The astrologer drew an X across the back of the photo.

“The boy’s parents will expect something,” he said. “A token. ”

“Dowry.” Ratna gave the evil its proper name in a soft voice. “Fine. I’ve saved money for this girl.” He breathed out. “Where I’ll get dowry for the next two, though, God alone knows.”

Gritting his teeth in anger, he turned toward the kitchen and yelled.

The following Monday, the boy’s party came. The younger girls went around with a tray of lemon juice, while Ratna and his wife sat in the drawing room. Rukmini’s face was whitened by a thick layer of Johnson’s Baby Powder, and garlands of jasmine decorated her hair; she plucked the strings of a veena and sang a religious verse, while looking out the window at something far away.

The prospective groom’s father, the firecracker merchant, was sitting on a mattress directly opposite Rukmini; he was a huge man in a white shirt and a white cotton sarong, with thick tufts of glossy, silvery hair sticking out of his ears. He moved his head to the rhythm of the song, which Ratna took as an encouraging sign. The prospective mother-in-law, another enormous and fair-skinned creature, looked around the ceiling and the corners of the room. The groom-to-be had his father’s fair skin and features, but he was much smaller than either of his parents, and seemed more like the family’s domestic pet than the scion. Halfway through the song, he leaned over and whispered something into his father’s hairy ears.

The merchant nodded. The boy got up and left. The father held up his little finger and showed it to everyone in the room.

Everyone giggled.

The boy came back, and squirmed into place between his fat father and his fat mother. The two younger girls came with a second tray of lemon juice, and the fat firecracker merchant and his wife took glasses; as if only to follow them, the boy also took a glass and sipped. Almost as soon as the juice touched his lips, he tapped his father and whispered into his hairy ear again. This time the old man grimaced; but the boy ran out.