The Easy Day Was Yesterday (21 page)

‘Shine that torch down here,’ I called to him.

He grunted and left.

‘Fuck it, dirty horrible bastards.’

I got up and dug into the Calvins for the light. On inspection, the bite was minor and only drew a little blood, but the thought ensured I didn’t sleep again. This was fucked, and what the hell was kissing my ear?

My thin mattress supplied by the High Commission guys was great and made sleeping easier (or it would have if I could have kept the rats away) and my old bones didn’t hurt as much when I got up. I knew the day was going to be quiet so I didn’t spring off the mattress when the caveman grunted and unlocked the door.

No visitors came today, so I spent the day very much on my own. I still had the usual morning routine to get through before I could relax. As usual, I emptied my pee bottle into the garden and then ran the gauntlet as I made my way to the drain for a pee. I walked with the politician, took my cold bucket bath, then relaxed with my book. The High Commission guys also brought me some additional food for which I had no appetite, so I gave it to the old man and the sick guys next door. They were rapt when they got more chocolate.

I was slowly acquiring more and more possessions, so the politician told me to watch my belongings and ensure I always closed my cage door when I left. On one occasion he even told the old man to stand at the gate as we walked. I felt terrible for my old mate, but he didn’t seem to mind. I think my presence had taken the old man from a life of boredom to a life of purpose. He had gone from sweeping my floor to being my personal assistant. He did everything for me; it kept him occupied and he made a few bucks on the side and certainly made my life easier.

There was a Hindu temple in the middle of the yard with a series of tiles depicting various Gods cemented to the side, and a bell suspended from the mango tree adjacent to the temple. The prisoners rang the bell at the start and at the finish of their prayer sessions. The politician told me that the prisoners rang the bell to wake the gods so they’d be alert when the prayer was said; then they rang the bell so the gods would know they’d come to the end.

‘I think the gods must be bloody pissed off because that bell rings every five minutes so the gods aren’t getting any sleep.’

‘Yes, you are for sure very correct. This is why all these people are here because the gods are tired and grumpy all the time.’

Others prayed while they took a bucket bath. Apparently they worshipped a water god and uttered prayers as they poured water over their heads. Clearly they were not in drought.

The police brought in a very old man who could barely walk. He moved along very slowly, was all bent over and used an old stick to avoid collapsing onto the ground. I wondered why the police had him in chains. He wasn’t going anywhere and if he did try to make a run for it, you could have put the kettle on, made a cup of tea, cooked a batch of Anzac biscuits and apprehended the guy before he got five metres away. He wore spectacles with one side shattered as if the lens had been hit with a rock. He was dressed in a filthy old sarong and nothing else. I later learnt that his family had him arrested because of dowry issues. He’d refused to pay a daughter’s dowry, so they had him arrested. Unbelievable! That old guy should have been in a nursing home, not in the prison. But they wouldn’t know what a nursing home was in Bihar Province.

There was always some excitement in the yard when an interesting prisoner arrived. It certainly happened in my case — and I was generally still a curiosity — but the bloody old bloke created a stir and certainly some comment, and then a kid of about 15 years old arrived. He looked like I probably did, despite trying to look tough. He was clearly shitting himself and had a crowd of a few hundred milling around him. The poor little bastard was almost in a state of shock and I knew that this was going to be compounded after lock-in when some of these long-term prisoners got hold of him.

Next door, the lunatic was at it again. He obviously had some severe mental issues going on and, like the kid and the old bloke, should never have been in the prison. Had he been diagnosed correctly, he could probably have been medicated and lived a relatively normal life. But this was India, and Bihar, so the chances of there being a psychologist close by were next to zero. He decided to take his pants off in front of my cage and go nude for a while. The old man, realising the guards would not be happy, pleaded with him to behave himself and put his clothes back on, but the lunatic seemed to have no idea what was coming and continued to enjoy the freedom of nudity. The other prisoners weren’t as kind as the old man. They yelled abuse and moved away. Nudity is a strange thing in India and is not culturally acceptable. The men bathe, as I did, in underwear, so having the lunatic prance around with all his kit hanging out wasn’t on as far as they were concerned. I just shrugged my shoulders and felt for the poor bastard as I knew he was in for it when the guards saw him. Sure enough, Ugly arrived and attempted to shackle the lunatic. The lunatic resisted, so Ugly let fly with a pretty solid short drive with his right fist into the lunatic’s solar plexus. This certainly confirmed that the lunatic was a bit slow, because the punch came from way back behind Ugly’s back and any normal boxer with very little training could have landed three straight jabs on Ugly’s chin in the time it took for his low punch to connect with the lunatic. The lunatic let out an almost silent noise as all the air in his lungs was abruptly forced out of his mouth, and he went down in a gasping heap. Then Ugly dragged his sorry arse to the front of his cage and shackled his hands to the bars on the gate. The poor bloody lunatic stayed on the ground struggling to find his breath after Ugly’s cheap shot had winded him so badly. He then proceeded to cry for the next few hours. Great. That was all I needed. Here I was just minding my own business trying to relax on a Monday afternoon with my book for company, and Ugly goes and destroys that by belting the only person in the place he stands a chance of beating in a fight. Now I had to listen to this crying. What was the world coming to?

I grabbed my cream biscuits from my stash and walked to the cell next door. The lunatic looked pretty pathetic. He was still nude, but had a filthy old sarong thrown on him. Snot ran from his nose taking the short cut straight across his mouth rather than going around it. Tears ran from his eyes following the paths laid by the litres of previous tears. He looked up at me and seemed a little frightened. I suddenly realised that I was probably doing the wrong thing. You know what it’s like when you feed a stray dog — not that I’m comparing the lunatic to a dog — but when you feed a stray dog it decides you are now its best friend and hangs around for attention and more food. What if I gave the lunatic these biscuits and he decided to harass me for more? Ah, bugger it. Should have thought about that and asked the old man to give him the biscuits. But I was already there and the lunatic had seen the biscuits in my hand, so I placed the biscuits in his manacled hands. But the way Ugly had shackled his hands, he couldn’t bring them to his mouth, so he dropped his mouth to his hands and shoved the biscuits in, all the while keeping a watchful eye on me — I suppose just the way a stray dog might.

Another new arrival was in the sick cell next door. He had a fresh bandage around his head, arm and shoulder. In fact he looked as if he should still be in hospital receiving ongoing treatment. But this being India, he was thrown in the slammer. He looked as if he was in constant pain and the medic in me wanted to help this guy with some Panadol Forte. He looked pretty sad and sorry for himself. As well as the bandage wrapped around his head, he had burn marks over his body. That afternoon, as I strolled the yard with the politician, I asked what had happened to the injured bloke. The politician looked at me, then walked up to the injured guy, pointed and said, ‘This boy?’

Embarrassed, I replied, ‘Yes.’

The politician spoke to the man for a while and I listened to the Hindi conversation as it went back and forth. Finally the politician turned to me and, momentarily gathering his thoughts said, ‘This man is a thief. He was caught stealing and the village people beat him before calling the police.’ He related the man’s tale without accusation or emotion. ‘Oh, right,’ I said, immediately regretting any feelings of pity I had for the dirty, thieving prick and wanting to add my contribution to his injuries. I hate thieves. If you want something, work for it, but don’t steal what some other bloke has worked hard to get.

Sallie left for New Delhi today. What a mess this was that she had to go to all that effort to come and rescue me. To say that I felt like a fool would have been an understatement. I couldn’t wait to see her though, but would rather she didn’t see me like this. My dream was that she would arrive and the Magistrate would agree to release me at the same time and we would go home together. Sallie has a wealthy friend in the USA who was incarcerated in New Zealand when he was caught with a very small amount of personal-use marijuana in his pocket at the airport. He spent two days in the lock-up with members of the notorious New Zealand Mongrel Mob. He had some idea what I was going through and told Sallie he’d fly me home first class — bloody nice of him. Frankly, I’d be happy to get a third class bus home if they let me out now. But if we could leave together we could enjoy first class and maybe a day or two off in Bangkok on the way home. It was just a dream, but all I had for now.

I could feel myself developing a cold — excellent and just what I needed. Normally, when I get the first indications of a cold approaching, I start to overdose on vitamin C tablets and start drinking calcium ascorbate powder. This rapid intervention has, in 95% of cases, crippled the cold and sent it on its merry way. But I didn’t have these drugs on me and, even if I wasn’t in the big house, Bihar didn’t look like the sort of town that had a local Terry White chemist. These people weren’t big on tissues either, but I refused to lower myself to their filthy behaviour. They spat everywhere and then lay around all day on the ground in that spit — repulsive. Every morning, 580 prisoners went through a routine of clearing their throats. It’s a cultural thing that everyone seemed to do. This activity continued through to about 7.00 am when they all tried their hardest to cough up some lung tissue or spew out their stomachs. I remained in my cage while this was going on because I just couldn’t stand it. Then, when I did walk, I found myself dodging oysters everywhere. The contrast is that they are personally clean people. They washed every day and sometimes twice a day. They washed their bedding and clothes regularly and no-one smelt of body odour. But I wasn’t going to start spitting on the ground.

Another habit these guys had was to chew this pre-packaged betel nut. It came in a little foil packet and they thumbed the contents in their palm before throwing it into their mouths and chewing on it. The content turns red and they start spitting the residue into a bucket or on the ground. Talking to people who are chewing on this stuff was not an attractive process as they invariably tried to store it in one part of their mouth while attempting to string some words together. I couldn’t stand it and, on a few occasions, told Manish to go and spit. The first time he spat a great gob of chunky red shit in front of my gate. I made it very clear that I’d rather he didn’t do that. In fact, I said, ‘Are you fucking right? Spit that horrible shit over there somewhere.’

‘Sorry, okay, sorry.’

Dotted around the yard were five old-fashioned water pumps used for drinking, washing and cooking. The water from the pumps flowed into a system of drains that ran around the yard. The drains were made of concrete ‘U’ channel, were about 250 millimetres wide and were also used for pissing into. The end result was a very long urinal that stank of stale urine like an old, seldom-cleaned public toilet. But I suppose that smell was better than the general smell of shit that emanated from the very soil in the yard. The place was simply a toilet. I was living in a fucking toilet, sleeping on a floor of ancient turds.

The place was also a huge rubbish dump. There was rubbish everywhere. Again, I refused to be drawn into this bad behaviour that seemed to be a cultural thing. The people just threw rubbish on the ground where they stood. I was sure they weren’t even aware they were doing it. Before I was arrested, I drove to Biratnagar from the eastern side of Nepal with Ujwal and a few of the students. We stopped to grab a drink and some chocolate to snack on as we kept driving. As these guys finished their drinks and chocolate, it was like a continuous delivery of litter out the window. When I finished mine, Ujwal grabbed my litter and, thinking he was helping, went to throw it out the window as well. ‘No,’ I said, grabbing my rubbish, ‘I’ll find a bin later.’ But there were no bins. I had to take my rubbish to my room where there was a small bin. In the cage, I put all my rubbish into a plastic bag and the old man emptied it for me every day. This all sounded good until one day I happened to see the old man disposing of my rubbish. He found a spot in the yard, emptied my rubbish on the ground and returned the bag to my cell. Periodically, a guard would force a prisoner to sweep the compound and all the rubbish would end up in the drains causing the piss and water to overflow into the yard where people walked and sat. Oh, life was good.

The guards were generally good to me. They would come to my cell after lock-up and try to be friendly, but knew I couldn’t speak Hindi. Ugly would come to my cell during the day. He was supposed to be posted at the entrance, but had become lazy and taken to sitting on my mattress with my fan turned to face him instead of me. When Ugly was in my cell, the old man would come in and Ugly would start to order him around. It pissed me off a bit and I wanted to take charge and tell Ugly to go fuck himself, but obviously couldn’t. One day the old man brought a plastic seat into the cage for me to sit on. It was great, but short-lived when Ugly came looking for his stolen seat and I was unceremoniously told in Hindi to ‘move arsehole’. On one occasion Ugly told the old man to get him some water, so the old man picked up one of my small buckets and went to fetch the water. Ugly didn’t thank the old man when he returned with the water and gave it to the guard who took a good, long drink. The old man gave me a sideways glance and I detected a hint of a smile as we both watched with some satisfaction as Ugly sculled water from my arse-wiping bucket.