Outside In Page 5

“But, teacher,” Rama said, “home is that way.”

  The holy man walked on. “There are many ways to reach home,” he said. “And there is yet more for you to see and learn before we return.”

  Where did they go?”

  “Another time.” Nek stands. “My lunch break is over soon.”

  Ram is surprised to see that he has licked clean his own dish. He doesn’t remember eating a single bite—only the story. He thinks of how easily Rama and Lakshmana handled the demon. If only he had as simple a time with that bunch of bewakoofs who had chased him and started all this trouble.

  Ram hands the dish back to Nek. “I’ll stay here and clean up the junk—”

  “No!”

  “But—”

  “I said no! You are not to be here without me!” Nek’s voice is firm. “You do it tonight. When I finish at the factory.”

  “But it is only tidying—”

  “And no sleeping here.”

  “I have a good place to sleep,” Ram says, thinking he doesn’t really need to confess that he already fell asleep here once. Though with the weather turning, he’ll need to start collecting cardboard and hauling it up to the rooftop to fill in the gaps in his sleeping berth, or maybe even find a different place to sleep out the colder months altogether. It would be nice to have a place to stay all year, he thinks, with windows to catch the breeze in summer and to shut tight in winter.

  But Rama didn’t need a palace. Ram doesn’t need windows.

  “Chalo.” At the street, Nek climbs onto his bicycle. “You may work this evening. After you’ve had your supper. I can’t feed you again today.”

  He pedals off, but Ram is quick enough to keep pace with the bike. “You come every day? During lunch and after you work at the factory?”

  “Most days,” Nek says.

  “Then I can earn my money back quickly,” Ram says.

  Nek snorts. “You can earn it back when I can afford to pay you.”

  They reach the heart of the sector. Nek dismounts the bike and pushes it the rest of the way to the gate. In the distance, Ram can hear the loudspeaker mounted to the wall outside the Sikh temple blaring the droning prayers, the harmonium buzzing along with it. “Bye,” Ram says. Nek ignores him as he joins the other workers reentering the factory gates.

  “Ram!” Singh is standing at the end of the lane. He waves Ram over. Ram rushes to him and finds Daya with fists clenched, feet planted, wearing a scowl as severe as the part in her hair.

  “Hello, Uncle ji!” Ram says.

  Singh points at the factory gates. “Who was that man you were walking with?”

  Ram shrugs. “No one.” He turns to Daya. “Shouldn’t you be in school?”

  Daya pulls a face, but Singh speaks before she can. “She should. But she came looking for you. And now you are going to make sure she gets back to school before she misses any more of her lessons—”

  “I don’t need him to nanny me!” Daya stoops slightly with the weight of the books in her knapsack. Does one of them have the story of Rama inside it? Maybe school wouldn’t be so terrible if some of those books had things like that to read. But Daya complains enough about grammar and penmanship to lessen the temptation.

  “Maybe not. But if the one person you’re out searching for actually escorts you to school, then at least I know you’ll be delivered,” Singh says firmly. His tone grows even gruffer when he speaks to Ram. “Hire a tuk-tuk. You won’t make it in time otherwise.”

  A tuk-tuk! Ram tries to hide his joy. He’s only ridden one once before.

  “And my fee?” Ram asks, snatching a pair of ten-rupee notes from Singh’s hand.

  Singh rolls his eyes. “There’s plenty there for the fare and your fee. Just go!”

  “His fee!” Daya squeaks. “When he owes me for—”

  Ram grabs her hand and begins dragging her to the corner where the auto rickshaws wait. “Sure thing!”

  Singh gives his daughter another stern glance. “We’ll speak about this again at home,” he says, adding, “With your mother.”

  Daya’s eyes grow big as onions. “She doesn’t have to know, does she, Papa?”

  Ram smirks. He knows enough about Mrs. Singh to understand why Daya is afraid.

  Singh considers, but doesn’t answer. “Go to school. I’ll see you at home.”

  Ram can’t believe his luck. Since yesterday’s calamity, he’s been fed twice, secured a job, and now gets to go for a fast ride in an auto rickshaw.

  Daya drags her feet as Ram pulls her toward the tuk-tuk stand. “You’re so lucky you don’t have to go to school.”

  “Won’t you be out for the holiday soon?”

  “Not till Saturday.” Daya flips her braids. “It isn’t fair. All the older kids don’t even come this week. I don’t see why I—”

  “Because you’re not older,” Ram says, holding tightly to Daya’s wrist.

  Daya is probably only a couple of years younger than Ram, but he has no way to be sure, since he isn’t sure how old he actually is. Judging from the size of other kids, and how he hasn’t lost any baby teeth for over a year, he and Daya worked out that he must be at least twelve, maybe as old as thirteen. Daya is only ten.

  All the tuk-tuk drivers ignore them at first, feet up on the front seats as they lounge in the back, chatting and smoking. Then Ram holds up the money, and the one nearest them tosses his cigarette to the ground. “Where do you girls want to go?”

  Daya snickers into her hand. Ram fumes. His hair is too long, he knows. But still, how can anyone think he’s a girl? He forces his voice lower. “Bhavan Vidyalya in Thirty-Three!”

  Their driver does a double take; the others hoot and whistle.

  Ram’s cheeks burn as he negotiates the fare. At least he gets a decent rate. The driver pulls the starter cord, and the engine coughs black smoke as it awakes. Ram and Daya climb in the back. Daya reaches over to tug at Ram’s curls. “You should cut it, Ram.”

  He wishes he could. But haircuts cost money. There’s a barber with a chair set up beneath a big almond tree near the lake who Ram can sometimes get to cut his hair if no one else is around. But there are usually lots of people around. Boys watched by crossed-arm mothers, making sure they get their trims. Ram can never understand why those boys are so sullen about it. He’d love to have someone to make sure his hair was tidy, and to pay the barber full price instead of whatever Ram can afford.

  He swats Daya’s hand away to study the driver’s movements, mentally ticking off each step before the driver makes it. The driver uses his heel to drop the choke back into position, removes the parking brake, and puts both hands on the handlebar. He cranks hard to the right, twists back on the throttle, and eases the auto rickshaw toward the road. The driver thumbs the horn, laying heavy on the button. All the other cars and trucks and tuk-tuks on the road blare back in response. Daya holds her hands over her ears and grimaces, but Ram only smiles wider.

  The tuk-tuk merges with the stream of vehicles and picks up speed.

  Wind swirls inside the open frame. On hot days, Ram sometimes wishes for a ride just to cool him off. But today Daya wraps up tightly in her jacket, loops her scarf around her neck, and tucks her hands into her armpits.

  Ram doesn’t care about the cold. He grips the bar between the driver’s seat and their bench with both hands, leans his head sideways, and lets the wind lash his face. Someday he’ll move this fast everywhere he goes. Someday he won’t be limited by how far he can run or walk.

  They beeline up the road, straight as an arrow, barely slowing as they reach the traffic circle at the corner where four sectors meet. The driver goes three-quarters of the way around, veers north, and takes that lane—as straight and wide as the last one—for almost a whole kilometer. Traffic zips by in both directions, on either side of the little median filled with scrubby grass. Alongside the street, shops and apartments and office buildings rise up, all with the same sharp right angles, the same square shapes, the terraces fronting the street som
etimes bearing a clothesline or a potted lemon tree. The walkers on the sidewalk flow like a countercurrent to the traffic, the streams muddying and eddying where the pedestrians cross at the corners.

  They pass the open pit where the new museum will go. The footers have been dug. A few dozen men are already dumping concrete from wheelbarrows into what will be the foundation.

  At the next sector, Ram looks away as they pass the orphanage. Singh convinced Ram to try it out once. Told him about how Chandigarh was special for having one with a school attached. Ram lasted one night. He ate better on the streets, slept better on his own, and didn’t have to trouble with school. Maybe the children’s home was fine for babies. But he didn’t belong there.

  All too soon, the driver throttles back, slows, and slides off the road in front of the tall wooden gates of Daya’s school. Ram hands the notes over to the driver, who hands back a smaller coin.

  “Nahi!” Daya glares at the driver. “That wasn’t the price!”

  Daya does have her uses. The driver digs deeper into his pocket, pulls out another coin to match the one he’s already handed to Ram. The children clamber out and the tuk-tuk drives away.

  Daya holds out her hand. “Give it.”

  “What?”

  “You owe me for yesterday,” she insists. “Give it.”

  Ram groans. “I lost that money we won, Daya. All of it. Hitting.”

  “Someone actually beat you? Who?”

  Ram wants to tell her. But he promised Nek he wouldn’t tell about the clearing in the forest. “Just some man.”

  “The one Papa and I saw you with? Why did you challenge him?”

  “He challenged me,” Ram says. The loss still stings.

  She shakes her head. “Well, it isn’t my fault you got greedy.” She holds out her hand, wiggles her fingers.

  Ram sighs, utters a mild curse Rakesh throws at him sometimes, and gives Daya one of the precious coins. The bell inside the school clangs, echoing to the street.

  “See you after school,” Daya says, starting for the front door.

  “I can’t,” Ram says. “I have somewhere to be.”

  Daya stops. “Can I come?”

  “You heard your father. Your maa wants to talk to you after school.”

  Ram can’t resist needling her, not after she was so ruthless about the money. But she only wrinkles up her nose at him and heads inside with the other kids coming back late from lunches at home.

  As Daya passes through the school gates, he hears a familiar voice call out, “Little girl!”

  Ram goes still.

  Peach Fuzz is just on the other side of the wall.

  “Where’s your friend?” Peach Fuzz asks.

  Daya’s voice comes back a little thinner than Ram is used to hearing it. “I’m going to class, Vijay.”

  “Your beggar pal got away last night, but we’ll find him. He can’t keep my watch.”

  “You lost it fair and square. It isn’t his fault—”

  “He cheated and you know it!”

  Cheated! Ram is tempted to charge around the wall and tackle the boy now, though he knows it wouldn’t help. And he’d be the one to get in trouble: a street kid attacking a student at his own school. And he’d surely lose the watch in the process. Besides, Daya can handle this, can’t she?

  “He didn’t cheat! You can’t even cheat at gilli! And you’ll never find him. So leave me alone!”

  Ram grins. He can picture her, toe to toe with the bully. She’s safe enough. Even that bully wouldn’t hurt a girl, especially one so much younger.

  Then he hears the sound of something falling to the ground. “Hey!” Daya says. “Pick those up!”

  “Pick up your own books. And get the watch back from that street rat. It’ll go better for him if you give it to us rather than us finding him ourselves.”

  Daya mumbles a phrase that Ram knows her mother would not be pleased to hear, but another voice shouts over them. “You lot,” a teacher calls. “Get to your lessons!”

  Ram waits a second longer, after he hears the pack move off. Then he peeks around the gate in time to see the door swinging shut behind Daya.

  He hadn’t thought the watch would cause trouble for Daya, too. But after the way Peach Fuzz just treated her, he certainly doesn’t deserve to get it back. And Daya’s tough. She can handle it. And school will be out soon and she won’t have to see them for a couple of weeks and they’ll forget about it.

  Won’t they?

  The question lingers all the long walk back to his sector.

  That evening Ram helps Nek organize the supplies under the tarp. When they finish, Nek studies the statue in the middle of the ring. “I suppose it is time for him to join the others.” He lights a torch from one of the burning tires and hands it to Ram. Then he hefts the statue, more easily than Ram would have guessed the man could. Hauling all those rocks has made him stronger than he appears. “Chalo, Ram.”

  Ram follows him down the path he mistakenly took last night. The path twists and bends madly, and Ram realizes why it scared him so last night: it is the exact opposite of the streets he knows so well. He wonders if Nek built it this way on purpose.

  Overhead, monkeys whistle warnings and scatter as Nek and Ram wade beneath the vines and branches. Farther in, an animal plated in gray scales over his rounded back and down his long, thick tail shuffles away from a rotten log. Ram barely has time to note the pointed snout and black eyes before the creature disappears, leaving behind it a musky odor like Ram’s alley on a hot summer day.

  “What was that?”

  “Pangolin,” Nek says. “Very rare.”

  “Is it dangerous?”

  “Only if you’re an ant. But he’s strong. He can roll up into a ball and not even a tiger can break through his armor. When I was your age, I startled one and it sprayed me. I stank for weeks.” Ram backs away.

  Soon they reach the wall studded with those odd spiky pieces.

  Ram lifts a hand to test their rough edges. “What are these?”

  Nek wiggles a loose one. “For holding bulbs in light fixtures. Porcelain. The collars are fragile. When they began building Chandigarh, they leveled many old villages. Some of the great mountains of trash you see around the city still are from those huts and buildings. I pulled these from those piles.”

  “Why didn’t they just build around the villages?”

  “People like new things. Fresh starts. Sometimes chucking old, worn-out things makes people hopeful.” He sounds unconvinced.

  “Do you wish they hadn’t wrecked the villages?”

  Nek takes a long time to answer. “I wish for many things. But if they hadn’t torn down the villages, if they hadn’t built a new city from scratch, I guess I wouldn’t have supplies.”

  They duck under the curved doorway. Then Nek climbs up a waist-high embankment reinforced with a sloppy concrete retaining wall, and walks among the statues, a giant amid children. He waves Ram forward.

  “Why do you make all of this stuff?” Ram asks.

  Nek doesn’t hesitate. “Because we are all created to make things. Some people make bread. Some people make clothing. Some make music—”

  “And you make bicycles at the factory,” Ram interrupts.

  “And you make trouble,” Nek says.

  Ram looks around at the statues. “But why do you make so many of the same thing?”

  “Why do you ask so many questions?” Nek shoots back, but Ram can tell he doesn’t mean it. Nek kicks some leaves off the base of one statue. “They’re not the same. They’re an army. Every man in the army is a man unto himself, though when they stand together, they stand as one.”

  “But . . .” Ram is still not sure how pagal the man might be. “They’re smiling.” He recalls the soldiers he’s seen marching outside the cantonment, or guarding buildings. Are they even allowed to smile?

  “No.” Nek carries the statue up the slope to an open space. “They’re laughing.”

  “Laughing?”<
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  “Have you ever laughed so hard you couldn’t do anything else? Even if you tried?” Nek positions the statue on its feet. “Or have you heard another’s laugh so pure that you can’t help but join in?”

  Ram waits. He isn’t sure about either.

  Nek fusses with the statue, turning it a centimeter at a time to get the angle right. “If they’re laughing, they can’t fight. If they’re laughing, who will want to fight them?”

  Ram has no idea what the man is talking about.

  “No more war,” Nek says, as if the answer is as simple as the sums Daya does to make change with the rickshaw wallah.

  “That’s it?” Ram asks. “That’s why you made all these? To stop . . . war?”

  “Truly, boy, if you have so many questions, go to school or read a book. Don’t bother me with them.”

  When Ram doesn’t answer, Nek sighs. “You know about Partition, yes?”

  Ram draws himself up taller. “My friend Singh uncle told me. And I’ve heard old men—older than you—talking about it. If you were Muslim, you went to live in Pakistan. If you weren’t, you came to India. Bad things happened when people moved back and forth. People got killed or separated from their families.”

  Nek climbs back down and takes the torch from Ram.

  “Why, though?” Ram persists. “Why do you make them, really?”

  Nek rises. “Maybe it is easier if I just show you so you’ll stop pestering me. Chalo.”

  Ram hurries to keep up, following Nek through another arched doorway and then up a little rise.

  “How big is this place?” Ram is now wondering why a man rich enough to have so much land is so stingy in paying him back.

  “My garden is always growing,” Nek says.

  Garden? Ram starts to ask why a garden when Nek’s torchlight reflects brilliantly off cobalt-blue glass. An eye. An eye in a stone tiger, its stripes made of black rubber, the bicycle tread still visible in patches. “Wah ji wah,” Ram says. He squints into the darkness. There’s a monkey. A peacock with a fanned tail made of broken dishes and mirrors. A whole menagerie. “These are—”

  “Not now,” Nek says.