…and serves only as a traffic roundabout. The streets around the Well house a
number of middle-class housing colonies. Professional people of all castes —
Bunts, Brahmins and Catholics — live side by side okay here, although the Muslim
rich keep to the port.
The Canara Club, the most exclusive club in town, is located here, in a large
white mansion with lawns. The neighbourhood is the “intellectual” part of
town: it boasts a Lions Club, a Rotary Club, a Freemasons’ lodge, a Baha’i
educational group, a theosophist society and a branch of the Alliance
Française of Pondicherry.
Of the numerous medical institutions located here, the two best known are the
Havelock Henry General Hospital and Dr Shambhu Shetty’s Happy Smile
orthodontic clinic. The St Agnes Girls’ High School, Kittur’s most
sought-after girls-only school, is not far from the junction.
The poshest part of the Cool Water-Well Junction area is the hibiscus-lined
street known as Rose Lane. Mabroor Engineer, the richest man in town, and
Anand Kumar, the MP from Kittur, have mansions here.
“It’s one thing to take a little ganja, roll it inside a chapatti and chew it
at the day’s end, just to relax the muscles — I can forgive that in a man, I
really can. But to smoke this drug — this smack — at seven in the morning,
and then lie in the corner with your tongue drooping out, I tolerate that in
no man at my construction site. You understand me? Or do you want me to
repeat this in Tamil or whatever language your people speak?”
“I understand, Sir.”
“What did you say? What did you say, you son of…?”
Holding her brother by the hand, Soumya watched the foreman chastise her
father.
The foreman was young, so much younger than her father — but he wore a khaki
uniform that the construction company had given him, and twirled a cane
stick in his left hand, and she saw that the workers,
instead of defending her father, were listening quietly to the foreman.
He was up on a blue chair on an embankment of mud; a gas lamp buzzed noisily
from a wooden pole driven into the ground next to the chair.
Behind him was the crater around the half-demolished house; the inside of the
house was filled with rubble, its roof had mostly fallen in, and its windows
were empty.
With his baton and his uniform, and his face harshly illuminated by the
incandescent paraffin lamp, the foreman looked like a ruler of the
underworld, at the gate of his kingdom. A semicircle of the construction
workers had formed below him. Soumya’s father stood apart from the others,
looking furtively at Soumya’s mother, who was muffling her sobs in a corner
of her sari. In a tear-racked voice she said: “I keep telling him to give up
this smack. I keep telling…”
Soumya wondered why her mother had to complain about her father in front of
everyone. Raju pressed her hand.
“Why are they all scolding Daddy?”
She pressed back. Quiet.
All at once the foreman got out of his chair, took a step down the embankment,
and raised his stick over Soumya’s father. “Pay attention, I said” — he
brought his stick down.
Soumya closed her eyes and turned her face.
The workers had gone back to their tents, which were scattered about the open
field around the dark, half-demolished house. Soumya’s father was lying on
his blue mat, apart from everyone else; he was snoring already, his hands
crossed over his eyes. In the old days she would have gone to him and
snuggled into the side of his body.
Soumya went up to her father. She shook him by his big toe; he did not
respond. She went to where her mother was making rice, and lay down.
Mallets and sledgehammers woke her up in the morning. Thump! Thump! Thump!
Bleary-eyed, she wandered up to the house. Her father was up on the bit of
the roof that remained, sitting on one of the black iron crossbeams; he was
cutting it with a saw. Two men swung at the wall below with sledgehammers,
and clouds of dust rose up from their blows, and covered him as he sawed.
Soumya’s heart leapt up.
She ran to her mother and shouted: “Daddy’s working again!”
Her mother was with the other women; they were coming down from the house,
carrying large metal saucers filled to the brim with rubble on their heads.
“Make sure Raju doesn’t get wet,” she said, as she passed Soumya.
Only then did Soumya notice it was drizzling.
Raju was lying on the blanket where his mother had been; she woke him up, and
took him into one of the tents.
Raju began whimpering, saying he wanted to sleep some more. She went to the
blue mat; her father had not touched the rice from last night. Mixing the
dry rice with the rainwater, she squeezed it into a gruel, and stuffed
morsels into Raju’s mouth. He said he didn’t like it, and bit her fingers
each time she fed him.
The rain grew stronger, and she heard the foreman roaring out: “Sons of
bitches, don’t slow down!”
The moment the rain stopped, Raju wanted to be pushed on the swing.
“It’s going to start raining again,” she said, but he wouldn’t change his
mind. She carried him in her arms to the old truck-tyre swing near the
compound wall, and put him on it, and gave him a push, shouting: “One! Two!”
As she was doing this, a man appeared before her. His dark, wet skin was
coated in white dust, and it took an instant for her to recognise him.
“Sweetie,” he said, “you must do something for Daddy.” Her
heart was beating too fast for her to say a word. She wanted him to say
“sweetie” not like he was saying it now — as if it were
just a word, air that he were breathing out — but like before, when it came
from his heart, when it was accompanied by his pulling her into his breast
and hugging her deeply and whispering madly into her ear.
He continued speaking, in the same strange, slow, slurred way, and told her
what he wanted her to do; then he walked back to the house. She found Raju,
who was cutting an earthworm into smaller bits with a piece of glass he had
stolen from the demolition site, and said: “We have to go.”
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 port.”
“Why?”
“There is a place by the port, 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 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 10 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 10 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 head to the ground and
looked. Once she had found five rupees on the ground — yes, five! You never
know 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 got it from her mother. It went like this:
even as she begged, for three seconds she kept eye contact; 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 it to her mouth
rapidly).
“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 much on him; 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.
Towards noon, the roads filled up 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 this way.”
The other person leant forward and stared for a moment. “They’re so black…
Where are they from?” “Who knows?”
Only 50 paise, after an hour of work.
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 his red cord of his whistle over his head as if it
were a whip.
She scrambled out.
“He was really a cocksucker,” she told Raju, who had something to show her: a
plastic wrapper, 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 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 it moved again, the wheels of the bus went over the plastic perforation,
and they exploded, and some of the passengers were startled, and the
conductor poked his head out the window to see what had happened. The two
children ran away.
It began raining again. The two of them crouched under a tree; the coconuts
came crashing down, and a man who had been standing next to them with an
umbrella jumped like a frog, 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 port. And here — the
garden within the port.
“Do you understand all of this?” she asked Raju. He nodded, excited by the
map.
“To get to the port, we have to go…” she drew another arrow, “through the big
hotel.”
“And then?”
“And then we go to the garden in the port…”
“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 away the vehicles 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 cows bathing in a puddle of
water. The sun was shining on the water, and the black coats of the crows
turned glossy as scintilla of water flew away 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, monstrosity! 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 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 with 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 it all figured
out. He pointed to her clutched fist. “You got money from the white man. You
have the money!”
She went to one autorickshaw parked by the side of the road: “Which way is the
port?”
The driver yawned. “I don’t have any money. Go away.”
“I’m not asking for money. I’m asking for directions to the
port.”
“I told you, I’m giving you nothing!”
She spat at his face. Then grabbed Raju by the wrist; they ran like mad.
The next autorickshaw driver they asked was a kind man.
“It’s a long, long way. Why don’t you take a bus? The No 343 will get you
there. Otherwise, it’ll be a couple of hours at least, by foot.”
“We don’t have money, Uncle.”
He gave the children a rupee coin, and asked them: “Where are your parents?”
They got into a bus, and paid the conductor. “Where are you getting off?” he
shouted.
“The port.”
“This bus doesn’t go to the port. You need the No 343. This is the
number…”
They got out and walked.
They were near the Cool-Water Well Junction now. They found the one-armed,
one-legged boy working there, as always; he went hopping about from car to
car, begging before she could get there.
Someone had given him a radish today, so he went about begging with a large
white radish in his hand, tapping it on the windscreens to get the attention
of the passengers.
“Don’t you dare do any begging here, you sons of bitches!” he shouted at them,
waving the radish threateningly at them.
The two of them stuck their tongues out at him, and shouted: “Freak!
Disgusting freak!”
Raju began crying after an hour, and refused to walk any more, so she picked
in a rubbish can for some food. There was a carton with two biscuits, and
they split the biscuits.
They walked some more. After a while, Raju’s nostrils began bubbling.
“I can smell the port from here.”
She could, too.
They walked faster. They saw a man painting a sign in English by the side of
the road; two cats fighting on the roof of a white Fiat car; a horse-cart,
loaded with chopped wood; an elephant, walking down the road with a mound of
neem leaves; a car that was smashed up in an accident; and a dead crow,
belly-up with its claws drawn in stiffly to its chest, whose belly was open,
and swarming with black ants.
Then they were at the port.
The sun was setting over the sea, and they went past the packed markets,
looking for an open park.
“There are no parks here, by the port. That’s why the air is so bad here,” an
old Muslim man, a seller of peanuts, told them. “You’ve got the wrong
directions.”
Looking at their crestfallen faces, he offered them a handful of peanuts to
munch on.
Raju whined. He was hungry… to hell with the peanuts! He shoved them back at
the Muslim man, who called him a devil.
That got Raju so angry he left his sister and ran, and she ran after him until
Raju came to a stop.
“Look!” he shrieked, pointing a finger at a row of mutilated men with bandages
on their limbs, sitting in front of a building with a white dome.
Gingerly they walked around the lepers.
And then she saw a man lying down on a bench, with his palms crossed over his
face, breathing heavily. She came near the bench, and found, right at the
water’s edge, fenced off by a small stone wall, a little green park. Raju was
quiet now.
When they got to the park, there was shouting. A policeman was slapping a very
dark man. “Did you steal the shoes? Did you?”
The dark man shook his head. The policeman hit him harder. “Son of a bald
woman, you take these drugs, and then you steal things, and you… son of a
bald woman, you…!”
Three white-haired men, sitting in a bush to her side, gestured to Soumya to
come and hide with them. She took Raju into the bush, and they waited there
for the policeman to leave. She whispered to the three white-haired men:
“I’m the daughter of Ramachandran, the man who smashes rich people’s houses
in Rose Lane.”
None of the three knew her father. “What do you want, little girl?”
She said the word, as well as she could remember: “…smack.”
One of the men, who appeared to be their leader, frowned: “Repeat it.”
He nodded when she said it the second time. Taking out a pouch made of
newspaper-skin from his pocket, he tapped it: white powder, like crushed
chalk, poured out. He then took out a cigarette from his pocket, sliced it
open, tapped out the tobacco, filled the white powder inside it, and rolled
it close. He held the cigarette up in the air, and gestured with his other
hand to Soumya.
“Twelve rupees.”
“I’ve got only nine,” she said. “You’ll have to take nine.” “Ten.”
She gave them the money; she took the cigarette. A horrible doubt seized her.
“If you’re robbing me, if you’re cheating me, Raju and I’ll come back with
Daddy and beat you all.” The three men crouched together. They began
shivering, and they were laughing together. Something was wrong with them.
She grabbed Raju by the wrist and they ran.
Glimpses of the scene to come flashed through her mind. She would show Daddy
what she had brought for him from so far away. “Sweetie,” he would say — the
way he used to say it — and hold her in a frenzy of affection, and the two
would go mad with love for each other.
Her left foot began to burn after a while, and she flexed her toes and stared
at them. Raju insisted on being carried; fair enough, she thought — that
little fellow had done well today.
It began raining again. Raju cried. She had to threaten to leave him behind
three times; once she actually left him and walked a whole block before he
came running after her, telling her of a giant dragon that was chasing him.
They got on to a bus.
“Tickets,” the driver shouted, but she winked at him and said: “Brother, let
us on for free, please…” His face softened, and he let them stay near the
back.
It was pitch-black when they got back to Rose Lane. They saw the lamps in all
the mansions lit up. The foreman was sitting under his gas lamp, talking to
one of the workers. The house looked smaller: all the crossbeams had been
sawed off.
“Did you go begging in this neighbourhood?” the foreman shouted, when he saw
the two of them. “No, we didn’t.” “Don’t lie to me! You were gone all day —
and doing what? Begging on Rose Lane!”
She raised her upper lip in contempt.
“Why don’t you ask if we begged here, before accusing us of something!”
The foreman glared at them, but kept quiet, defeated by the girl’s logic.
Raju ran ahead, screaming for his mother. They found their mother asleep,
alone, in her rain-dampened sari. Raju ran up to her, butted his head into
her side, and began rubbing against her body for warmth, like a kitten; the
sleeping woman groaned and turned over to the other side. One of her arms
began swatting away Raju’s face.
“Amma,” he said, shaking her. “Amma! I’m hungry! Soumya gave me nothing to eat
all day! She made me walk and walk and take this bus and that, and no food!
A white man gave her a hundred rupees but she never gave me anything to eat
or drink.”
“Don’t lie!” Soumya hissed. “What about the biscuits?” But he kept shaking
her: “Amma! Soumya gave me nothing to eat or drink all day!”
The two children began wrestling each other. Then a hand lightly tapped
Soumya’s shoulder.
“Sweetie.” When he saw their father, Raju began to simper; he turned and ran
away to his mother. Soumya and her father walked to a side. “Do you have it,
sweetie? Do you have the thing?” She drew air. “Here,” she said, and let the packet
into his hands. He took it to his nose, sniffed, and then put it under his
shirt: she saw his hands reach through his sarong into his groin. He took
his hand out. She knew it was coming now: his caress.
He caught her wrist; his fingers cut into her flesh. “What about the hundred
rupees the white man gave you? Where is the money?”
“He didn’t give me a hundred rupees, Daddy.
I swear. Raju is lying, I swear.”
“Don’t lie. Where is the hundred rupees?”
He raised his arm. She began screaming.
When she came to lie down next to her mother, Raju was still complaining that
he had not been fed all day long, and forced to walk from here to there. He
saw the red marks on her face and neck, and went silent. She fell to the
ground, and went to sleep.
About this author
Aravind Adiga The 34-year-old surgeon’s son was born in Madras, India,
and attended St Aloysius College, a private Jesuit school in Mangalore,
until his mother died and the family moved to Sydney. Adiga finished his
schooling in Australia, and at 18 left for New York to major in English
literature at Columbia University. As a graduate he travelled on a
scholarship to Magdalen College, Oxford, and in 2000, after completing an
MPhil in English literature, started an internship with the Financial Times
in Washington before moving to New York as a financial correspondent. Adiga
returned to India in 2003 as a correspondent for Time magazine, where he
travelled extensively throughout India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri
Lanka — trips that became invaluable sources of material for novels. Adiga’s
book of short stories, Between the Assassinations — written while Adiga was
living in Delhi — will be published in the United Kingdom next year.
Set in Kittur, on India’s southwest coast, in the seven-year period between
the assassinations of Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi, it’s a vivid portrait
of the town and its inhabitants across class, caste, religion and occupation
— themes that appear in this story about Soumya and her drug-addict father,
published here for the first time. Adiga’s first novel, The White Tiger — a
first-person confession of a murderer described as “an unflinching portrait
of the dark side of modern India” — won the Man Booker prize last month,
making him the second-youngest novelist to win the prize
Next week: Deborah Moggach
An exclusive — and unpublished — story in which an unusual discovery in a
London park leads to a compelling intrusion into the life of a stranger
To come: Lionel Shriver, Hari Kunzru, Andrew O’Hagan, Roddy Doyle
