A Free Man A True Story of Life and Death in Delhi (17 page)

5

‘A
man bhai, you need to send Ashraf away,’ Lalloo shouts into my ear. ‘Since Satish died, something has broken inside him.’

‘Where do you want me to send him?’ I yell back over the noise of my motorcycle. ‘We can’t just push him onto a train.’

‘Why don’t you ask him? I’ve tried, but he told me to mind my own business.’

‘What about Patna?’ I slam the brakes and up-shift frantically as a scooter nips out of a side lane. I’m not quick enough on the clutch; the engine gargles and stalls.

‘Oho, sorry, sorry,’ Lalloo apologetically wipes away the white powder he has spilt all over my back. ‘I don’t think he will agree to go to Patna.’

We are headed to Kasaipura, a ten-minute ride away from Bara Tooti. I spotted Lalloo at a paint store in Sadar Bazaar and offered him a ride. Ashraf is already there, paring the wall down to its base coat. Lalloo is taking along the ingredients for the patti—a paste of porbander mitti and paint that they shall slather onto the naked wall and leave to dry overnight.

As I struggle to kick-start the motorbike, Lalloo explains the purpose behind the various powders stuck to my sweater. ‘The patti works like a binder between the wall and the paint; without it the paint has nothing to hold on to. Tomorrow, we’ll arrive early to smoothen the wall with emery paper and then slap on the paint.’

‘What colour does the maalik want?’

‘Pink.’

‘Why pink?’

‘Wait till you see Kasaipura.’

The smell of blood is overwhelming; it prowls along the alleyways of Kasaipura like the ghosts of the buffaloes that lie dismembered before me. The floor is sticky—a chip-chip texture that holds my shoe soles just a fraction more than the tarmac road outside, but could as easily turn slick and treacherous. It’s a bit like walking on congealed blood—in fact, that’s exactly what it is.

Lalloo walks alongside, pushing me out of the way as a young boy pulls a wagon loaded with buffalo heads through the narrow passage. Just behind him, a wagon of hooves, a wagon of haunches, a wagon of ribs—and Mohammed Ashraf.

‘What are you doing here, Aman bhai?’

‘Lalloo brought me.’

‘Lalloo’s a chootiya. Come, I was stepping out for a beedi anyway.’

‘What’s the problem? I just want to see the place.’

‘There is no problem, but you don’t always need to go everywhere and see everything.’

‘True, but…’

‘This is a butcher’s area. It’s sensitive, Aman bhai. People get nervous when you presswallahs walk in with your recorders and cameras and ask all these questions. Now let’s go!’

He calms down once we are outside. ‘People are worried that you will write about how you saw a thousand heads of cattle in a cart. All you need to do is mistake a dead buffalo for a dead cow and tomorrow a mob will burn the place down.’ He looks like he’s upped his drinking again. I realize, not for the first time, that a significant number of my conversations with Ashraf are when he’s either slightly maudlin or hungover. It could explain why my timeline is still incomplete.

Ashraf shivers and hugs himself; he’s obviously working his way out of a week-long binge. ‘It’s a horrible time in Delhi,’ he offers by way of explanation. ‘It’s the todh-phodh. The demolition.’

•

‘Mr Kutty? Is Mr Kutty present?’ The judge looked up from his desk, the lawyer appearing on behalf of the Municipal Corporation nodded his assent.

‘Mr Kutty, Additional Commissioner, Engineering, Municipal Corporation of Delhi, is present in court today,’ continued the judge. ‘He has placed on record the details asked for by us. According to him in 2001 there were 2,765 cases of unauthorized construction; in 2002 there were 4,385 cases of unauthorized construction; in 2003 there were 3,749 cases of unauthorized construction; in 2004 there were 4,466 cases of unauthorized construction; and in 2005 there were 2,934 cases of unauthorized construction, making a total of 18,299.

‘We find that there has been a steep rise in unauthorized construction each year… What does it show? It shows that the officers of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi, its engineers, are hand in glove with those who indulge in unauthorized constructions and that without their active or passive connivance it was not possible for such mushrooming of unauthorized constructions in the capital of this country.

‘We make it clear that in terms and on the basis of the said report unauthorized construction in the area should be demolished forthwith by the MCD at the expense of the owner/occupier of the property concerned. Status report of the Committee appointed by this Court be filed within a period of two weeks.’

The gavel falls with a bang—and two weeks later, the city is aflame.

•

Looking back now, it’s hard to map out everything that happened after the 14 December 2005 Delhi High Court order that called for the demolition of all unauthorized constructions in Delhi. The todh-phodh, as the regulars at Bara Tooti called it, spread rapidly across the city as the Municipal Corporation’s demolition teams fanned out into markets and residential colonies. Some colonies, like Seelampur in the east, went up in flames as rioting traders and workers flung stones at policemen and the police responded by opening fire. A fourteen-year-old schoolboy was shot through the throat as he made his way home from school. The newspapers bemoaned the disruptions to traffic. The Delhi Police offered its security cameras to spot illegal construction in real time. The Minister of Science and Technology contemplated the use of GIS mapping to keep a close watch on the fast mutating city.

In January of 2006, the todh-phodh appeared in Sadar Bazaar as a creeping silence that made its way up the radial roads from Connaught Place. First the markets closest to the railway station shuttered their shops; further west, safediwallahs in Choona Mandi near Ramakrishna Ashram dropped their brushes and picked up their bottles and went on a prolonged drinking binge. Fearful of the circling bulldozers, Kalyani declared her place off-limits till further notice and went back to her main business of sifting grains. In Bara Tooti, Kaka contemplated doing the same—his shop was of dubious legality as well. An uncle had promised to help him out in case the police came, but had then stupidly aligned himself with Madanlal Khurana, a former Delhi Chief Minister who now had neither a party nor a support base. ‘If only Tauji had stayed with the Congress,’ Kaka would say with every cup of tea he poured, ‘my children wouldn’t have to worry about my health. I am an old man, Aman bhai, I can’t keeping taking stress like this.’

For Ashraf and Lalloo and Rehaan and everyone else who sat around at Bara Tooti, the todh-phodh meant that no one in Sadar wanted any work done at all. Not very many labourers in Bara Tooti built a house from the foundation up; large projects like those were usually given out to contractors who brought their own mazdoors, supervisors, and foremen. At Bara Tooti, Ashraf and Lalloo converted balconies into bedrooms, divided a large living space into two bedrooms using partitions, or made subtle encroachments onto the pavement by extending the front of the house to the footpath.

After the todh-phodh began, no one was willing to risk additions to their already overburdened homes. No one even wanted any paintwork done, fearing that a bright new coat would draw attention to the architectural peculiarities of their home. For the two months, mazdoors lived off their meagre savings, assuming that the demolition drive, like most sarkari drives, would slowly run out of steam and stop. But as the drive continued, many left for home. Others, like Ashraf and Lalloo, walked the bylanes of the bazaar in search of work. The only work to be found was where there was a wedding in the family, or in places like Kasaipura.

‘Kasaipura is one of the oldest parts of this area.’ A chai and beedi have loosened Ashraf up. He waves away the offer of a milk rusk, but bites into a fen. ‘It is run by a very powerful clan—the Qureshis. Good connections with all the political parties. The butcher wanted pink—he said the blood doesn’t show up so much on pink. I suggested red, but he said, “Isn’t there enough red around you already?’’’

I see the butcher’s point.

‘And pink is a good shade for summer,’ says Ashraf, displaying his delicate sense of aesthetics, ‘light pink and light green. But with these light colours matching is very important.’

‘So Ashraf, where do you want to go?’

‘Nowhere. Patna ka toh no chance. All my friends have become collectors and policemen and lawyers and judges. What face shall I show them? I can’t be a mazdoor in my own town, Aman bhai.’

‘So who builds the houses in Patna?’

‘Runaways from Kanpur.’

•

The todh-phodh dragged on all through the summer; mazdoors at Bara Tooti grew more desperate. On one of those oppressive afternoons, Kaka confided that he had saved enough money to buy his son an aerated drinks stall in East Delhi and so was thinking of shutting shop once and for all. ‘But don’t tell anyone at the chowk just yet, Aman bhai,’ he pleaded. ‘If they find out I’m finished.’

‘I’ll be sad to see you go, Kaka, but I don’t think you have anything to worry about,’ I replied. ‘Everyone will miss you, but I’m sure we can find chai elsewhere.’

The next day I was to find out exactly how much everyone would miss Kaka if he left.

‘Kaka owes me two thousand rupees, the bastard. He better not go anywhere,’ said Lalloo in alarm, when I said that Kaka was looking unwell and casually suggested that the overworked chaiwallah go on holiday.

‘Kaka owes
you
money?’

‘Of course, Kaka owes us all money—except Ashraf of course. Ashraf has no money.’

‘I always thought that you owed Kaka money.’

‘That’s only in the short term. In the long term, Kaka owes us.’

‘How does Kaka have your money?’

‘Well, I gave it to him! He’d better have it.’

I realized I had seriously misjudged Kaka’s importance all these years. It’s true that Kaka’s tea was fractionally better than some of his competitors’, but that was obviously not why everyone patronized him. Kaka wasn’t just everyone’s chaiwallah, he was everyone’s banker!

Lalloo, Rehaan, everyone except for Ashraf, routinely dropped off a few hundred rupees with Kaka for safekeeping on the condition that he return the money on two or three days’ notice. The system worked well as long as there were enough depositors and withdrawals were few: the mazdoors managed to save some money and Kaka received a substantial number of small, but useful, zero-interest loans that he invested in things like his son’s soft drinks stand.

Lalloo’s morning cup of tea was more than just a morning ritual; it was reassurance that his banker was hale, hearty, and solvent.

With the todh-phodh, work suddenly dried up and more and more mazdoors began asking for their money. Thus far, Kaka had managed to keep pace with the withdrawal, but the strain was beginning to tell. If word got out that Kaka was thinking of leaving, it would prompt a run on his bank—Kaka would never be able to pay off his loans fast enough and the mazdoors would lose all their savings.

I don’t know why Kaka ever let on that he was thinking of leaving; it would have been so simple to pack up one night and never return. But where would he go? What would he do? And as Ashraf always said, you can’t run all your life.

It takes years to build a clientele, and still more time to win their trust. Perhaps he was simply sending out a signal that he was in trouble too; that he needed some breathing space. The chaos of the todh-phodh continued till the end of the year, but the danger at Sadar Bazaar passed. Kaka stayed and honoured most of his debts.

four

AJNABI
,
or Stranger

1

O
ne morning, five years ago, Mohammed Ashraf forgot the phone number of the house where his mother lived.

For a long time, it was the only number he remembered. He would call her; she would ask him to come home. He would cry, she would cry. Then one day he forgot the number.

‘I woke up one morning—drunk—and the number had slipped from my mind while I was asleep. It dribbled out of my open mouth; it escaped while I lay snoring. I asked Kaka if he remembered it; he was the one who punched it out for me. But his fingers forget the number the moment they press the buttons. They dial hundreds of numbers a day—how many numbers can they remember? Kaka says he only remembers his father’s number.’

Ashraf thought of writing to her; but he had forgotten how to write. He tried a few words, but he kept getting confused with the matras, his hand started to hurt, and then he realized he had forgotten her address. The only address he remembered was 207 Patliputra Colony, Patna. But that was not her house—that was Dr Hussain’s house. But even he didn’t live there any more.

‘I can remember roads; I’m brilliant at remembering roads. Once I walk along a read, I can always find my way back home. If I travel along a path more than once, I am almost certain to remember most major landmarks; and when there aren’t any, I make my own. I remember the way to Grace Ma’am’s house, I remember the way to school; but I don’t know where my mother lives any more. She shifted after I left Patna.’

But he remembers the way to Raja’s house. ‘Remember Raja? Double BA Raja?’ Even if you are a stranger to Calcutta, even today, after all these years, Ashraf can still tell you the way to Raja’s; and if you make it there, he can tell you the way back home—if you still remember where you live, that is.

‘When you get out of the Kalka Mail, it will be around seven o’clock in the morning, or maybe even eight. Sometimes protesters squat on the tracks, so count yourself lucky if you make it to Howrah by evening. Once out of the station, turn left. The Hooghly is on your right now, and you are walking up a road towards a gigantic steel cage of a bridge. You might recognize it from your childhood if you ever watched Doordarshan; they call it the Howrah Bridge—the new one.

‘From the roundabout under the bridge catch the bus from Howrah to Sealdah—it’s another railway station—and ride the bus from terminus to terminus all the way through Bara Bazaar. At the terminus keep the station on your right hand and walk on steadily past the bus depot towards the main chowk of Raja Bazaar.