Dreamt Lives
Anirudh Deshpande
This is a work of fiction.
For Anupama
Life is not what one lived, but what one remembers and how one remembers it in order to recount it.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
You cannot write more truly about yourself than you are.
- Ludwig Wittgenstein
*****
A word of Thanks
I thank my elder sister Anjali Deshpande who read an earlier draft of this once ‘secret’ novelas an accomplished novelist and story teller. This novel owes a lot to her remarks. If I have been unable to incorporate some of her comments on the draft, the fault is entirely mine because a time comes when an author must get a text out of his ‘system’. I have imagined this story many times in the last two years and it must be placed before the readers without delay.Sandeep Chatterjee, Saurav Vatsa and Shivangini Tandon,are my former students andnow dear friends with whom anything under the sun can be discussed. Earlier drafts of this yarn were imposed on them. They graciously read the drafts and encouraged me to finalize and publish it. I owe Sadan Jha a big thank youfor incisive comments on an earlier pdf imposed on him. His comments were valuable.He writes excellent prose and is a well-meaning person. I am grateful to all my students whose unstinted affection I have always received as a fortunate teacher. Many of them responded unconsciously to some of the ideas which went into the making this novel.Often these ideas, impinging on history and prose, were discussed with them as academic ideas! I am indebted to Neeraj Bhargava, friend and confidant, for having been by my side since 1974 when our friendship started on bicycles on Barron Road which time has erased from the map of Delhi. Many ideas in the novel were discussed with him in casual conversations. He understood them without inhibitions.Parul Pandya Dhar has been a great colleague and friend. She detached some time from a busy schedule to read the draft and allay my fears of publishing this novel. Her encouraging criticism has improved this story.Critical comments by Arani close to publication helped improve some sections of the novel.
Finally, I acknowledge a deep debt topeople known and unknown whose lives and memories have been re-imagined in this novel. They are the primarysource material from which I have unabashedly borrowed narrative threads to knit this storyas a robber of memories.
I
The Howling Beasts.
Three days after he left Gurgaon, Khem Bahadur’s polished kerosene Primus stove, four bottles of condiments and a small plastic bottle of mustard oil were removed from the shed in the backyard and stowed away on a concrete shelf in the store-cum laundry room. Ravi performed this task with a heavy heart. These things remain in a corner of a shelf in the store even today as memories of a good man. The old clever rat who pays a nocturnal visit to this roomhas left these objects alone despite his habit of chewing plastic in frustration whenorganic things are unavailable.
A half-finished pint of Bagpiper whiskey was discovered behind the shed a fortnight after the quiet highlander left. The pint was given to the grateful garbage collector who had drifted into dusty north India from lush green Bengal as a young man with a fresh face decades ago.
His faded eyes had lit up when Ravi handed him the pint.
The wizened Bengali downed the liquor in a quick movement. “Bhaalo” he said grinning.He wiped his mouth with the back of a shining blackforearm and turned his cart away from the lane.
Since then theBengalihas received a pint every Diwali and Holi. Ravi also gives him all liquor left over from the house parties collected in one bottle as a tribute to KhemBahadur and his alcoholic patient.
Ravi’s wifeisnot aprivy to this because of reasons a husband knows.
Khem Bahadur had returned four days before the oldest man in the house died. The patriarch died after suffering a long illness which destroyed his soulless body. The quiet Nepali vanished three months after his patient passed away. The family of the deceased, who had become used to his quiet presence in thehouse, never saw him after this.Those days seemed far away now. The drunks on the Faridabad Road witnessed a car or bus once in twenty minutes during that sleepy time. The vehicles were driven recklessly by drivers high on extra strong beer or desi liquor and the noise of the rubber tyres on the asphalt reverberated in the half empty locality. Older people, their siestas disturbed, cursed the drivers. The house remained silent mostly because acquaintances and friends had been left behind in Delhi. No one had time for Gurgaon in those days. The Mehrauli Gurgaonroad was a single pot holed track. Travelers avoided it after six in the evening. The road passed through some fearsome Gujjar villages. Today over this MG Road the Yellowmetro line snakes from Delhi into the heart of new Gurgaon.
Khem Bahadur never returned and his possessions remained unclaimed.No one had the heart to throw them away. To Ravi, they are reminders of a real and imagined past. A mixed history of pain and pleasure.
Two years after his patient died, Khem Bahadur’s wasted body was discovered supine on a plastic mat in a room which had a cold mud floor in Sikandarpur, the graveyard of poor migrants. A field rat had nibbled at the corpse at night leaving it without an eye and some toes. The rat had cursed and left upon finding the cadaver parched and blood-less. Witnesses, on their way to the public latrines that morning, swore having seen a large cunning rat leave Khem Bahadur’s room.
The body was dry and light like a leaf falling from a Neem tree in May. The Nepali’s mountain blood had been sucked out by the heartless plains of North India. It was believed that the man had died of tuberculosis and alcoholism. Some Nepali tenants collected a few hundred rupees for the cremation and went through the motions at the cremation ground close to the open drains and overflowing sewers of Sikandarpur. They knew no one would claim the corpse.They said this to the two Haryanvi cops who arrived on the scene in response to the phone call made by RameshwarYadavthe landlord.
The disinterested policemen had entered the hovel and turned a few things upside down with their canes. After this show of duty they left the corpse to the small crowd of curious Nepali and Bihari workers. The policemen spoke briefly with Yadav before leaving. Yadavdonated two hundred rupees for the funeral of his late tenant who had punctually paid him a thousand rupees in rent every month for several months before his death.KhemBahadur treated himself to liquor, fish and chicken almost every day for a few months to cheat death which he felt approaching with a finite purpose. He left behind only fond memories andthe cigarette and paan vendors of the locality remembered him as a good man.
Khem Bahadur died of a broken heart. He was lonely and at fifty looked and felteighty-five. All he left behind was the memory of a wrinkled face, a soft voice and a smile of missing teeth.This image people carried for years after misfortune removed him from history. For many years after news of his death reached Ravi’s house, his presence was felt in the rare narrative infused family gatherings.
Some corners of the house bore strong imprints of his memory.Often Ravi and Smita remembered him sitting quietly in those corners darning his clothes or picking methi leaves or shelling fresh peas. To them he had been a patient quiet man from the Hills. His bearing carried the gravity of the Himalayas.
KB always wore clean and simple clothes and brown canvas shoes. Ravi’s daughter carried the nick names Khem Bahadur had given her for a long time. The old Nepali had been an additional grandparent to the child. His eyes would brighten at the sight of the little girl playing in the house. Ravi saw a grey shadow of the gentle Nepali pass through the rooms spreading benediction over the family on several occasions after he attendant had departed. The shadow startled Ravi and shook his faith in the non-existence of ghosts. Sometimes Ravi felt that Taniya, his caring man servant of a childhood in the North-East, had been reincarnated as Khem Bahadur to look after his father during the old man’s final illness.
Ravi often dreamt of Tanyaand KB.In his dreamsTanyacarried him across bamboo bridges perched high above gushing streams sporting KB’s face. And when Ravi dreamt of KB, the old man appeared in Tanya’s clothes; a white vest and khaki half pants. These dreams troubled Ravi.He thought these dreamswere premonitions of his meeting these two kind alcoholics in a world beyond mortal reality. Ravi consoled himself with the thought that as long as he lived the spirits of these two would guard him from disasters.
Ravi did not share these experiences with his wife and daughters because theywere scared of ghosts. They considered him odd enough in any case because he watched horror films with them without fear. “See, a camera is shooting all this and a team is standing next to it” he would say trying to spoil their fun as they shivered in a quilt on a winter night.
Ravi could nap anytime. Aspeople conversed around him at night he fell asleep suddenly. His naps were unpredictable. He left conversations midway for a nap and returned from the bedroom fifteen minutes later to resume them. Had he told his wife and daughtersthat he had seen the ghost of KhemBahadur walking through the house, they would have died of fright. His confession would have confirmed their suspicion that he was treading a path which leads to a lunatic asylum.
Anyway, knowing their character only as a husband and father can, these were not the only feelings he hid from them. If love makes men romantic fools, marriage makes them wise!
No one knew this better than Ravi.
KB, asKhem Bahadur was nicknamed by Ravi and Smita in English, came back from a village in Nepal as quietly as he had left for it on a pleasant February morning in 1998. He had picked up his polyester jhola and departedfor the New Delhi railway station without speaking much. In his absence the condition of the patriarch had worsened. The old man was left to a number of untrained indifferent male and female attendants. What they did to him behind a closed door was a secret the incoherent patient took to his funeral pyre. The last attendant was a large female who deserted the post without a warning a week before the patient died. As long as Khem Bahadur remained in Nepal sorting out his family feuds, the patient’s room stank of urine, shit and blood.
“There is a family crisis because of a land feud. My relatives want to grab my share” Khem Bahadur had responded when Ravi had asked him the reason for his dash to Nepal.
“Will you come back? You know we cannot do without you. Babuji needs you more than anyone else and with you around my mother is less worried about everything. You know that these are my father’s last days. Please think of him before deciding anything permanently” Ravi had said, looking straight into a pair of soft wrinkled eyes sitting on high cheekbones.
“Who knows ChoteSaheb? Life has been uncertain. My love for drink and a hard life plying a rickshaw in Gurgaon has destroyed my health. I am grateful to you and Bhabhiji for giving me refuge. I was unwell when I joined service but due to your kindness I have recovered some strength. If I survive the troubles back home, I shall return to your threshold to work and rest. You have my word.”
Ravi took his hand and the warmth of his own handshake surprised him.
Then, handing him the dues, he walked with him till the main road before returning to his worries. A medical attendant had to be found urgently. He would miss Bahadur, the dependable tinker, tailor, soldier sailor of the house.
Now, with the pleasant north Indian autumn, Khem Bahadur had returned.
Khem Bahadur cleaned up the rotting patient with a wet towel which was washed in hot water and soap. The incoherent patient was shaved and given clean sheets. His psoriasis subsided miraculously. The bed pan was scrubbed clean with sand under the youngNeem tree outside the house.The toilet attached to the sick room became usable. The patient stopped roaming around the room naked in a stupor shouting the names of his childhood friends and young age beloveds. The room smelt of incense and phenyl. Ravi almost deluded himself with the thought that this state of affairs might continue.
He dreamt of his father sitting in the living room and playing with his daughter munching snacks.
On a November night Ravi and Khem Bahadur had propped up the breathless invalid on two large pillows to provide him some relief. Since the afternoon the patient’s breathing had become labored. His lungs had been consumed by emphysema caused by his addiction to unfiltered cigarettes and bidis. The fact that he did not develop lung cancer or a serious heart condition had baffled the doctors for several years. Ravi’s mother, a reputed doctor, would visit her husband on rare occasions with the aid of a walker. On that November night she shuffled slowly into the room. A stethoscope hung from her neck and she was dressed in a sweater and a faded flannel gown with a floral pattern. With difficulty she bent forward from her rheumatic waist and used the instrument to examine the dying man’s chest. She completed the examination and concluded that the man had only a few hours to live. She straightened slowly and her eyes met Ravi’s questioning gaze. She gently shook her head and shuffled to her room. Her tired mind was filling up with the memories of a loveless marriage which had ended her briefyouth. She pausedin the doorway and looked at the heaving chest of her husband. Later, she waitedfor his death in her room.
“Will you have tea Babuji” Khem Bahadur had asked the patient with a tenderness which surprised Ravi. The Patriarchhad nodded. With death lurking round the cornerthe patient wanted to live. Ravihad never seen his father say no to food or drink.
As Khem Bahadurwalked towards the kitchen Ravi asked him to make him a cup as well. He knew the Nepali prepared good tea. A moment later Ravi saw his father pointing towards the empty doorframe with a finger raised from his heaving chest with great effort.
The old debauch was trying to say something. Ravi leaned over him and brought his left ear to the level of the invalid’s lips which were quivering with excitement.
“What?” Ravi asked.
“Vaini” the dying man whispered,his eyes fixed on the open door.A gentle breeze smelling of garden fresh flowers passed through the room.Ravi felt he was not alone with his father. The scent lingered in the room hovering over the bed. It enveloped father and son before mixing with the smell of incense.
Ravi looked down andsaw his father holding his hand. His father’s grip was cold. “Vaini” the old man said softly and smiled to himself.
Years later Ravi concluded that he had smelt a bouquet of jasmine flowers in the room that day. A perfume worn by his wife had reminded him of that.
Jasmine wasthe love flower of the Deccan. Women wore it in their hair.
Ravi had felt like giving his father company over tea becausehe had never had tea with this man who was associated with a bottle of Aristocrat Premium whiskey in his imagination. It was customary in the family to drink tea at four in the afternoon everyday.On Sundays, if a local cricket match had not been fixed, Ravi saw his father drink tea noisily, a copy of ManoharKahaniyan or Satyakatharesting close by. The patriarch was fondof crime journalism while Ravi and his elder sister Nanda relished the Illustrated Weekly, Reader’s Digest and Sunday. Except the doctor, the family was consumed by reading. Ravi and Nanda picked up a great deal of written Hindi and Urdu from the crime magazines which had sleazy misleading covers.
Being propped up on the pillows eased the dying man’s breathing.His fadedgrey blue eyes remained fixed on the door. SoonKhem Bahadur walked in with a tray with three cups of adrak chai and a small plate of glucose biscuits in correct form. The healthier men drank tea in silence but the biscuits remained untouched. They waited for the patient’s tea to cool. Ravi noticed that the strong ginger smelling tea drove away the fragrance Jasmine. On the bed his father became agitated as the angel of death hovered above him. His eyes remained fixed on the door.
Ten minutes later,Khem Bahadurperformed the feat of feeding sugarless tea to a man about to die in a few hours. The patriarch stared vacantly at Ravi and drank his last cup of tea. Some tea trickled down his quivering chin into the towel which covered his night shirt as a napkin. Ravi marveled at the protocol of serving sugarless tea to mild senile diabeticdying man.
“How do you feel? Better?” Ravi asked his father.The patient’s eyes had expressed the taste of tea. The odor of death emanated from his open mouth. The patriarch closed his eyes and relapsed into a state of breathlessness. In between this breathlessness he opened his eyes and tried to raise himself from the pillows to catch a glimpse of the open door.
By then a cold breeze began to blowthrough the room.
“ChoteSaheb, please go and rest. You have not left this room for hours. If something happens I shall call you” Khem Bahadur said to Ravi.
“Do you think he will survive till morning” Ravi asked the Nepali before leaving the room. At the foot of the stairs Ravi and the attendant exchanged a glance.
“I do not think so. His speech is gone. He can only hear now. In my village the elders say that when this happens death for a man is near” the experienced man responded in a voice of resignation.
After taking a few steps the old Nepali stopped. He turned slowly towards Ravi and with hesitation asked, “Who was Vaini?”
“I don’t know. Maybe someone he knew as a young man” Ravi lied unconvincingly. For a moment his eyes fell before the attendant’s gentle gaze.
“I understand” the Nepali said before returning to his post.
The house was wrapped in sleep but life throbbed with a million desires outside.
The hoarse crying of the cicadas in heat came from the garden. The owls hunted rodents flitting from branch to branch and pole to pole. The howling of the Jackals feasting on dead cattle in the hills could be heard clearly. Later the jackals drew closer and their howls were interrupted by the occasional laugh of a hyena.
A nilgai herd entered the locality raising a dust cloud. Their snorting alarmed the street dogs and woke up the tired potbellied guardsdozing on the culverts and broken chairs.
The dogs in the forlorn streets barked incessantly in fear of wild animals. Feral instincts aroused, they chased the nilgaiswhich fled the locality by jumping over the wire fences. The monsoon was over and no bitches were in heat. The litters were yet to be delivered and children would soon pamper the pups. The pregnant bitches left the dogs with little distraction and they often spent the night howling at unseen ghosts. They were cursed by the residents and guards alike.
The doctor heard the beasts andremained sleepless.
The howls reminded her of the dark nights in Begumpet a place where the weather remained hot throughout the year except for mild relief during the monsoonsShe had started herlife as a battered Hindu bride in non electrified Telangana. She remembered the moonless nights, dense forests and the Communist rebels in the countryside armed with medieval muskets, spears and homemade pistols.Once again she saw the Nizam police and the Doras, the blood-thirsty sex crazy landlords. She was haunted by the oily faces of the Dora henchmen who were expert killers and professional rapists. Distorted faces of tribal girls raped and mutilated by the landlords’ private armies and the policehad given her nightmares for decades.
She had treated surviving girls in the local hospital as a young intern. The girls were brought in with unmentionable wounds on their breasts, thighs and vaginas. They were beaten, raped and buggered but often remained undefeated. They stared at her, their eyes vacant but defiant, their features outlined in the flickering light of the kerosene lamps. Many were saved to be raped again and probably killed by the police during encounters. The loss of fear in their eyes disturbed the young doctor brought up in a lower middle class repressive home controlled by a patriarch who could barely provide for his large family’s needs.
No police cases were lodged for those unfortunate tribal and dalitwomen.Indeed the reverse had often happened. Their husbands were incarcerated or shot in fake encounters.
She wondered whether her demented husband had raped some of those girls. She conjured her husband’s buttocks thrusting between dark female thighs while his inferiors awaited their turn caressing their erect members. She saw her husband as a shameless young nude man with an erection. She imagined this because he had alwaysbeen a heaving body in the darkness to her. For years she suffered his demented sexual behavior in silence. When they had been young she had seen him staring at her attractive class mates with lustful eyes. No woman, including the occasional shapely female sweeper, escaped his attentions. Now thesethoughts revolted her. She quickly tried to focus on something else to escape these sordid memories. From sex her mind travelled to food.
“Feed him well. He loves good food” her mother in law had said to her before the wedding.
She saw him gulping down enormous quantities of food she served him. His obsession with food made her hate cooking.
She heard his loud public farts and snores and hated him.She revisited the disgust on her colleagues’ faces as he broke wind loudly looking straight at them. He had been a public embarrassment without even realizing it. As the first male child in alarge jagirdari family he had been brought up in his maternal grandparents’ home near Parbhani.They had brought him up on milk, yogurt and ghee.He became the village bully at twelve. At sixteen he ran away to Belgaum join the Indian Army. Before that he slept with many cousins and, it was said, a couple of young aunts.
He had gathered a band of village idlers around him regaling them with imagined stories. His addiction to tobacco, liquor and whores dated from this period. The Doctor thought of all this and sighed.Hadher parents known better her life might have been different!
The cries of the jackals transported Khem Bahadur to his village.
His consumptive wife had died years ago childless. He never married againand preferred the occasional company of a whore to his absconding brother’s wife.He could have legitimately taken her. His brother had joined the Maoist guerrillas.The man came forrare night visits in an olive uniform and hunter shoes, an AK-47 slung across his back. On those nights the young attractive woman prepared mutton and rum was served to the brothers.
Khem Bahadur slept in a room adjacent to the one in which the couple made love on a bed which creaked loudly causing much male distraction in the house. After this nocturnal visit the guerrilla vanishedbut returned after a few weeks to repeat his performance. This went on for two years after which the man did not return.The family assumed that he had possibly been killed in combat. Several men had vanished from the district in similar fashion. People spoke of them in hushed voices because the risk of being reported by government spies was high.
Khem Bahadur’s youngest brother and nephews grabbed his portion of the family inheritance while he plied a rickshaw in Delhi. Later he shiftedto Gurgaon where the fares were higher. His visit to Nepal in February yielded nothing. First the refractory family refused to open the doors to him. Finally after a long argument the nephews beat him.
“Go and dirty yourself with the whores of Delhi. Who asked you to come back?” they screamed as the neighbors stood and enjoyed the tamasha.
They had no use for anageing man who was thrown out of the house. He went to the village headman for relief but the old man looked at him and shrugged his drooping shoulders. It was obvious that he had been bribed by the family.
“You can approach the police and they will ask you to go to the court and hire a lawyer. This may take years in the courts and do you have the money to fight the case?” the wily headman had said to him.
Khem Bahadur did not fight againstthe forces of change. While his nephews beat him he realized that his soul was trapped in Gurgaon. In between the blows which rained on him, he thought of his patient and the patient’s kind daughter in law and her unemployed awkward soft spoken husband. He remembered the shriveled Doctor and her kind words and the little angel who played on her bed.
He knew his time was up in Nepal.
With his meager savings tucked away in a secret pocket he left the hamlet knowing that he would never see the mountains and valleys of Nepal again.
He remembered all this sitting on a stool next to the patient’s bed and waiting for the man to die. A late afternoon nap made him sleepless, a condition he was used to. He briefly interrupted his vigil to go behind the shack in the backyard to gulp down a quart of cheap whiskey. Whiskey steadied his hands and gave him courage.
Drinking in the midst of a funeral would be impossible, he thought with a grin on his wrinkled face.
*****
