Tooth and Nail, Fur and Scale Page 12

‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,’ said Appa. ‘I heard two of my colleagues talking about it, ma! They’re totally into all these black magic, satsang things, and I think they’ve actually done exactly that!’

  ‘What, they’ve written “naale baa” on their door?’

  ‘Ya! Can you believe it? You think these people will get less superstitious over the years, but they just get more and more so!’

  ‘Great!’ said my mother. ‘Now it’ll be easy to spot the gullible fools in the colony!’

  And they laughed for a full five minutes about it, and suddenly the threat of the Naale Baa bhootam didn’t seem so real any more. But that night when I fell asleep, I covered my head with my blanket and kept my torch under my pillow.

  The next day, I told Senthil what my parents had been saying—that it was all just a bunch of rascals spreading rumours and superstition. He rolled his eyes at me and said, ‘That’s all right then. If your parents know better than my parents, than Prakash Sir’s whole family—bless their souls—better than Kamini’s friend’s whole neighbourhood, then they must be right, and we all must be wrong!’

  So that afternoon, I stole a couple of pieces of chalk from the teacher’s table before I went home. At night, I waited until my parents had gone to sleep before opening the door and very carefully writing the two-word charm on it in big, bold letters, just above the little note that my mother had left for the milkman, telling him how many litres of toned milk, how many eggs and how much bread we needed the next day.

  I set my alarm clock for 5.55—five minutes before my mother’s would wake her up. My plan was to erase the writing from the door before my parents saw it. I didn’t want them to laugh at me.

  But the next morning, we were all woken up at 5.30 by the bell being rung fifteen thousand times. By the time I got to the front door, scared witless that this had something to do with my writing on the door, Amma and Appa were already there, arguing with the milkman, who was talking to them pretty rudely, I thought.

  ‘. . . madam, but what’s a man to think when he gets to his customer’s house and finds that they already have another milkman!’

  ‘Listen, man! First, stop shouting!’ said Appa, rubbing his eyes. ‘You could have come later and spoken to us, no? What is this ringing the doorbell in the middle of the night!’

  ‘Middle of the—? It’s five-thirty, sir!’

  ‘Well, it’s the middle of the night for me!’

  ‘Okay, okay,’ said Amma, adopting a stern but placatory tone, ‘listen, swami. We haven’t got another milkman. I don’t know who dropped these here, if it wasn’t you, but—’

  ‘Of course it wasn’t me, madam!’

  ‘Okay! Stop screaming! God! I’m telling you we don’t know who dropped these here. And anyway, it looks like this milk expired yesterday . . . and look at how dirty the bread packet is! Chhah!’

  I noticed that she was grimacing at something that she was holding, and went in for a closer look. It was a loaf of bread, and it did seem a bit grimy. Of course, I was more worried about the charm I’d written on the door.

  ‘Okay, madam, if you say so, I believe you. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

  ‘No, you won’t!’ said my father, grabbing the packet containing the milk and bread and eggs from him. ‘You’ll drop everything at the doorstep as usual, and come for the payment on the 31st at 9 p.m. in the evening!’

  The milkman went off, muttering, and before my father slammed the door shut, I craned my neck and got a glimpse of the other side of it. The note to the milkman had been taken off, but my chalked charm was still there. After my parents had gone in, I slipped outside to scuffit off and then casually walked into the kitchen.

  ‘Wha—what happened with the milkman, Amma?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Amma, frowning, as she dumped the old, dusty duplicates of everything she had asked for on the note to the milkman into the wastebasket. ‘Someone else left us the milk and bread and everything, it seems. And all of it bad! Who would do such a thing?’

  She went into the kitchen and lit up the stove to boil the milk while I stood there in the drawing room, staring at the door, the gears in my brain doing double time.

  Who would do such a thing? Maybe someone—or something—that followed any instructions written on the front doors of the people she came to kill?

  The realization sent a chill down my spine. I had been right! I could just write ‘come never’ on the door instead of ‘come tomorrow’, and I would be free of the Naale Baa witch for good!

  Or better still . . .

  The thing about popularity is you don’t appreciate it until it’s gone. When you’ve got people clamouring to talk to you all the time, to be your friend, to invite you to parties, every person approaching you seems like a bother. Sometimes, you just want to be left alone, you know?

  I don’t remember when exactly I realized that I was popular. The first day I brought Toblerone chocolate bars for everyone in class, they just said ‘happy birthday’ and looked surprised when I said it wasn’t my birthday. I think a little more attention was paid when I brought in a dancing robot—one that they (and I, for that matter, until that very morning) had only seen on TV. Even the teachers were interested, until they found that it caused more ruckus than scientific curiosity.

  And when I started wearing Nike shoes (in those days, you have to understand, Nike shoes were very rare) and a Swiss watch to birthday parties, I suddenly found that some of the kids who had made it a point never to be seen talking to me were suddenly starting conversations.

  Around that time, my biggest problems revolved around sleep—I was going to bed late every night because I had to leave the note with the instructions on the door for the witch, and that had to be done after my parents had gone to sleep. I was also waking up early—before the milkman came in and saw the witch’s deliveries at the doorstep. Then, of course, there was the fact that I was running out of space at home to hide all my new stuff. So I started giving some of it away—and that only made me more likeable in school, I guess.

  But the witch wasn’t just good for getting new stuff. She would do things for you as well. Only you had to be really specific with your requests. For example, when I put my Kannada homework assignment on the doorstep and asked her to please do it by the next day, I got a bit of a shock. She’d filled in the answers, of course, but it was all done in what looked like dried blood. I had to make a copy in ink before I left for school. The next time, I made it a point to mention exactly how I wanted it done. Unfortunately, she was rubbish at maths and science, and only okay at social studies, so I had to do that stuff myself.

  Then there was the time Sudhakar Kini—the class bully—literally arm-twisted me into giving him the Twinkies I’d brought for lunch. I’d only ever seen Twinkies in the ads in Archie Comics, and hadn’t even tasted the one the witch had got me yet. But he took it away and stuffed it into his mouth before I could do a thing about it. Almost swallowed it whole. Didn’t even enjoy it, I’ll bet!

  That night, I told her to make sure he didn’t mess with me again. Of course, I made it a point to tell her not to hurt him.

  He stayed well away from me the whole of the next week, after which he convinced his parents to put him in another school. People who still know him say he’s become rather jumpy and that his hair is greying at an alarming rate from the constant stress.

  No one asked why the Naale Baa bhootam left. For all the furore over her arrival, I always wondered why nobody ever questioned why the sightings stopped.

  No one asked why I suddenly stopped getting cool new things to school every day either. Well, they might have talked about it among themselves, but no one asked me directly.

  It started when my older cousin came to visit from New York. Ranjit had just finished high school and had a few months to go before college, so he wanted to see India. He was over six feet tall, athletic and spoke in a deep voice with an American accent, so you cannot blame me if I fell into a little bit of hero w
orship.

  He was nice enough to me. Even took me to MTR for idlis. But then I wanted to do more than just hang out with him. I wanted to impress him—show him that I could be not just his cousin, but his friend as well. But there’s little that a thirteen-year-old boy can do to impress a man of eighteen, so I resorted to showing him the amazing things that I’d got the witch to bring me. The remote-controlled helicopter, the to-scale replica of Castle Grayskull from the He-Man cartoons, the Superman action figure that shot laser beams from its eyes, the Polaroid camera, the latest Walkman and the Rolex watch with the gold dial that I had seen in one of Appa’s magazines. He was a little surprised, but then he just smiled and tousled my hair and went off on a solo trip to Mysore with his camera slung around his neck.

  There was only one thing I ever saw Ranjit captivated by. Those sneakers of his, which had the silhouette of a man jumping while doing the splits or something on the side. He was very careful with them. He’d clean them with a special kit the same night he’d get back from each of his sightseeing trips. He talked about them to my dad, explaining how they were his greatest pride, and described the lengths to which he had gone to get them.

  So one day, I took a picture of them with my Polaroid while he slept and stuck it outside the door, and wrote that I wanted the exact pair in my size.

  Later, I would understand the term ‘limited edition’ much better, and how Nike released their sneakers on a schedule and how they would all be snapped up by collectors as soon as they were released. Much later, I would realize that my once amazing growth spurt would stop at a measly five feet and seven inches, and that my feet would be stuck in that inconvenient twilight zone between sizes 7 and 8, which wasn’t a big market for American sneaker manufacturers.

  Of course, by then I had stopped expecting her to turn up ever again. Somewhere out there, she was looking for that one perfect pair of shoes I’d instructed her to bring me. Perhaps she’d gone across the ocean, to America, and was confused by all the English signage. Maybe she had become disheartened and decided that she couldn’t turn up at my doorstep again without fulfilling this one request.

  Or perhaps she was gone forever, locked in an infinite conditional loop, because they never made Air Jordan sneakers in my exact size.

  And then, perhaps one day they will. And following their scheduled release around Christmas time, I’ll hear a knock on my door and open it to see that once precious footwear for one last time before she severs my head.

  I live in Cambridge now—Massachusetts, not the one in England—with a wife and two children who are not yet at that age when they realize that their world is so much more interesting than their parents’. They’re still curious about the way I do things, and they sometimes ask me what those curlicues etched deep into the wooden lintel above our doorway are. And my answer always makes them chuckle. They’re a charm to protect us, I say, in case she ever finds the shoes.

  NAALE BAA

  In the late eighties and early nineties, an urban legend was circulating around Karnataka about a spirit called the Naale Baa bhootam, or the ‘come tomorrow’ ghost.

  The bhootam (some called it a witch) was an apparition dressed in rags, who would appear outside people’s doors at night and call out to them in the voices of their loved ones. And if they opened the door, it would murder them in a sufficiently brutal manner. Looking through the peephole wouldn’t help either, because the witch could take any form it chose. Sounds like a pretty unwelcome visitor, doesn’t it?

  Except that the legend came with a solution built in. All you had to do to keep the Naale Baa away was to inscribe the Kannada words ‘naale baa’ outside your door. The witch then had no choice but to obey the words and leave, only to return the next day, read the words and leave again, and so on.

  And so lots of people started writing ‘naale baa’ outside their homes, just to be safe. What’ve you got to lose, right? In fact, you might still find the two-word charm etched into the doors of a few old houses in the state capital.

  Looks like Bangalore was doing recursive algorithms and viral ad campaigns years before it became an IT city!

  THE SHADOWHUNTERS

  Hari had been told two things about the man he was to pick up from the airport. The first was that he would be white-skinned, and the second, that he would be tough-looking. But since he had been dropped in front of the Arrivals gate, Hari had been anxious. Would these characteristics be sufficient for him to make the visitor out, or would he have to count on the man identifying him by the large placard he was holding?

  When the man arrived, though, Hari knew him immediately. He looked about twenty times as tough as the three other foreigners who had deboarded the plane from New Delhi, and he was so white that he was almost red.

  ‘Mr John!’ Hari called out, standing on tiptoe and raising the sheet of chart paper over his head.

  John Cruywagen stood at the gate, wiping the back of his neck with his scrunched-up boonie hat and squinting for his name among the sea of bobbing signboards held up by the drivers, bellboys and junior government officers lined up behind the stainless-steel railing.

  ‘John Sir!’ said Hari, jumping as high as he could. He landed on the toes of the guy behind him, who yowled in pain. About a hundred heads turned in their direction, including Cruywagen’s.

  ‘Welcome to Pune, Mr Cruywagen!’ said Hari, shaking the man’s enormous gnarled hand and reaching for his large duffel bags. His black insulated vest, khaki cargo pants and camouflage-patterned hat gave Cruywagen a rather military air. Those, and the fact that he was lean, over six feet tall and had a Spartan crew-cut.

  ‘Aren’t you too young to drive?’ inquired Cruywagen, swinging the bags out of Hari’s reach, clear grey eyes sizing him up.

  ‘Oh, I’m not the driver, sir,’ said Hari after taking a moment to parse the man’s accent. ‘I work at Hemant Babu’s house. The driver is in the car, with Hemant Babu himself. Not that way, sir!’

  Cruywagen had started marching towards the parking lot, a bag in either hand, and he stopped short at Hari’s earnest call.

  ‘They’re waiting over there.’ Hari pointed at a white Honda City that brazenly sat on the road about a hundred metres away, right in front of the terminal. A CISF1 officer with an annoyed look on his face was walking towards it, gesturing wildly.

  ‘Why’re they parked in front of the airport?’ asked Cruywagen.

  ‘Not parked, sir,’ said Hari, nonplussed. ‘The driver is inside only.’

  By the time they got to the car, the CISF officer was screaming at the driver, who was arguing fervently, albeit in apologetic tones. When the driver saw Hari and Cruywagen, he pointed at them excitedly, and the officer walked away, looking disgusted. The boot popped open and Cruywagen gingerly lowered his bags into it. Hari opened the door to the backseat for him and then scrambled into the passenger seat in front.

  ‘Mr John!’ said Hemant Dalvi, extending a stubby hand as Cruywagen got in. Dalvi had occupied most of the car’s back seat, and smelled distinctly of spices and talcum powder.

  ‘Mr Dalvi,’ said Cruywagen, reaching out to shake the man’s hand. His long, sinuous fingers closed around soft flesh and cold metal. Dalvi’s fingers were sheathed in gold rings, each set with a colourful stone.

  ‘Why didn’t you carry his bags, idiot?’ Dalvi shouted with a sudden change of tone that indicated he was talking to Hari.

  ‘I-I asked sir if I could—’ Hari began.

  ‘I’ve got all my equipment in them,’ Cruywagen cut in. ‘I wanted to carry them myself.’

  ‘Oh! Okay, okay, Mr John. Sometimes this boy is lazy, so I was just checking. Pleased to meet you! Had a good flight?’

  ‘It was all right,’ said Cruywagen, shrugging.

  ‘Great, great. How do you like India so far? Delhi is just fine, but there is something different about our Pune—you’ll see!’

  Cruywagen watched the traffic through the windscreen. ‘I flew in from Joburg this morning,’ he said.
‘Didn’t get a chance to see Delhi.’

  ‘Oh! Then you must be tired. I have booked you a room at my friend’s guest house. After that, we can go to my home and—’

  ‘I’m not tired. We’re good to go. I plan to spend the night at the loft, and my flight back is tomorrow noon. So I won’t be needing a place to stay.’

  Dalvi exchanged a puzzled look with the driver, who had already made the turn towards the guest house. ‘Er, would you like to go home for lunch first? My wife has prepared an authentic Konkani—’

  ‘I ate on the plane, Mr Dalvi, and I’m afraid I’ll need all the time we have to set up my equipment.’

  Dalvi stroked his stubble, peering at the stone-faced man he had hired. Cruywagen had come highly recommended, and no one had mentioned that he’d be hard to work with.

  ‘Driver,’ he said, ‘loft le chalo.’

  Hari had always liked the smell of pigeons. They reminded him of home. His father kept a small coop in the village, and he was used to that heady combination of feathers, droppings and feed.

  Mr Dalvi’s loft was to Hari’s father’s coop what the Siddhivinayak Temple is to a roadside shrine. The ceiling was three-storeys high, the odour smacking you in the face as soon as you entered.

  ‘I have 254 pigeons here,’ said Dalvi, raising his voice over the cooing and the fluttering that filled the building, ‘out of which about a hundred might be raceworthy.’

  Hari studied Cruywagen as Cruywagen studied the loft. Usually, newcomers found the sheer number of excitable birds ruffling and darting about in an enclosed space quite overwhelming, but this man didn’t even seem to notice them. To him, they were already part of the background noise—easily ignored. He was looking past them, observing the structure itself.

  ‘Of course, I used to have more,’ Dalvi continued. ‘That darned beast has taken forty-seven of my birds—and all of them racers!’ He waddled forward with a bag of grain in one hand, replenishing the birds’ feeding troughs as he led the tour. ‘As you might have guessed, Mr John, I’m very attached to my birds. I don’t watch cricket, I don’t go to clubs and I’m not interested in this Bollywood stuff. Racing pigeons is my only hobby, and that blasted bhootbilli’s been making my life very, very difficult!’