Arzee the Dwarf Read online

  ‘Let go! Let go, Deepakbhai! I promise I’ll pay you!’

  ‘When? When, you rascal?’

  ‘Very soon! As soon as my next payday comes!’

  ‘You’ve been saying that for months now.’

  ‘But this time it’s for real!’

  ‘So you’ve been playing around with me all these months, smart man?’

  ‘No no – what I meant was – I meant that –’

  ‘All right, stop struggling. Stop it. Ow, don’t kick! Stop it!’

  ‘Let go, Deepakbhai, my arm is hurting.’

  ‘Okay, you stop it too. Look, I’ve let go of you. Turn around and face me now, man to man.’

  Arzee turned around, and stared up at Deepak. He was breathing heavily, and so was Deepak, who was grimacing as he rubbed his shin, and clenching his teeth, so that his mouth was shut for a change.

  ‘What a brute you are!’

  ‘It’s you who started it, Deepakbhai. I thought we were only talking, but then –’

  ‘I started it? I’ve been kind to you. Think about it. If you’d have been in my place, you’d have given me far more trouble than I have. Now my leg’s going to be sore for a week. You’ve really been getting on my nerve, small man!’

  ‘I’m sorry, Deepakbhai.’ Arzee pulled out a red handkerchief and rubbed the dirt off his palms. ‘It’s just that…it’s just that life is so hard, and it’s not easy to raise so much money when things are already so tight. You know as well as I do, we projectionists don’t make much. But this month I’m going to get a promotion, and a small raise, and then it’ll become easier. I know I’ve made a mistake. I shouldn’t have gambled away what I didn’t have in the first place. But now I’ve made it, and I’m suffering for it. Try and understand, Deepakbhai. It’s not easy for me.’

  ‘Ha! You think you’re so badly off? You think it’s a party for me, managing a family on ten thousand a month?’

  ‘Family? You have a family, Deepakbhai? You look so young, I never guessed you were married.’

  ‘Don’t lay on the butter now – I’m not going to bite,’ said Deepak. ‘But yeah. I’ve got a wife and two kids.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have ever believed it! What’s your age, Deepakbhai?’

  ‘Twenty-nine.’

  ‘Completed, or running?’

  ‘Running.’

  ‘And married with two kids already!’

  ‘It’s better to get married early – take my word for it. The later you do it, the harder it is to adjust. You’re too used to your freedom by then.’

  ‘But you need to find someone, no, Deepakbhai? You can’t get married to yourself.’

  ‘Then you need to look harder, because I’ve seen people worse than you who’ve found someone easy enough. I’m not even saying that to cheer you up. I’m being honest.’

  ‘My mother is looking, Deepakbhai. But it’s not as easy as you think, because…because people think all sorts of things about people like me. I’m not really a man for them.’

  ‘Again…it’s not as easy as you think, it’s not as easy as you think! It’s amazing how, just because you’re a runt who only comes up to other men’s belt buckles, you think you’re the only one with troubles. Open your eyes a bit wider and you’ll see the truth. Each one of us is struggling and suffering in this world.’

  ‘We never got to talking like this in all these months, Deepakbhai. Shall we go and have a cup of tea?’

  ‘Cup of tea my ass. Don’t change the subject. I’ve come here for a reason, not for a cup of tea. Let’s settle this matter once and for all.’

  ‘I told you, Deepakbhai – just give me a little time. I’m working on it.’

  ‘Ok, I’ve got an idea,’ said Deepak. ‘I can see now why we’ve been having so much trouble. It’s because we’ve been going about this the wrong way. We’ve been thinking of this payment as one large egg. But now I think, why can’t it be four or five small eggs? You can lay them month by month.’

  ‘The restaurant round the corner makes good omelettes, Deepakbhai. My treat.’

  ‘Stick to the subject and don’t act smart. That’s the problem with you. You act smart even when someone’s trying to help you. You probably get away with it with everyone else, but understand that it won’t work with Deepak.’

  ‘Sorry, Deepakbhai.’

  ‘So like I said, we’re going to do this in instalments. Of a thousand each. Starting tomorrow. From now on, I’m not going to chase you any longer. You’re going to come over to my place at six tomorrow, and give me a thousand. And then the same again next month, and the next, and as long as you’re regular we’ll be done with this wretched business by the end of the year, which is the longest time we’ve ever given anybody. There – you’ve got a special deal just because you’re small, and because nothing is easy for you. What do you have to say to that?’

  ‘It’s – it’s – it’s a good plan, Deepakbhai. But I’ll come at seven, not at six.’

  ‘Have it your way. At seven then. But you fool around any more after this, and you’ll come to grief. This is just the good side of me you’ve been seeing all along. When Deepak decides to be nasty, he’s really nasty. Here, keep this piece of paper. It has my address on it. Flat Number 27, Building Number 2, Old Wadia Chawl, Chira Bazaar.’

  ‘The Old Wadia Chawl? I know somebody who stays there! Phiroz, the head projectionist of my cinema.’

  ‘It’s nuts to me whether Phiroz, or any other rose, stays there. The only thing that matters is whether you come over at seven tomorrow with the money. You can go and see your friend after that. Is that understood?’

  ‘I’ll come, Deepakbhai. I know you won’t believe me, but even I’ve been feeling bad about it.’

  ‘I’ll believe you when I see the cash. Now I need a smoke, because you’ve stressed me out. Really, you little people are the biggest trouble. It’s the same with my children.’ Deepak went through his pockets, but came up only with his wallet, his phone, a bunch of keys, a train ticket, and a plastic lizard. ‘Got a cigarette on you?’

  ‘I do, Deepakbhai. Here. Sorry it’s a bit crushed.’

  ‘It’s okay – can’t be helped.’ Deepak lit the limp cigarette with some difficulty, and took a long drag. ‘What’re you looking at? You can go now.’

  ‘It got bent when I fell right now, Deepakbhai, so it’s not my fault. I should carry my cigarettes in my shirt pocket instead, but that’s where I keep my bus fare, and it’s hard to fish the coins out when there’s a packet of cigarettes in the way. It’s like chasing somebody around a pillar.’

  ‘It’s okay – it’s only a cigarette, not a flower for your girlfriend that it has to be all beautiful and fresh,’ said Deepak. ‘What a talker you are!’ When he exhaled the smoke came out in beautiful round rings, but Deepak didn’t look like he was doing anything unusual, which maybe was part of the act. ‘So. How’s that cinema of yours? Getting a promotion, is it?’

  ‘Yes, Deepakbhai. I’m going to be in charge of the projection room. You must know what the projection room is.’

  ‘I do. It’s the place where the movie comes out from, like a turd,’ said Deepak, and laughed raucously, scaring away several birds which had edged close to them, and one small pig.

  ‘Perhaps you haven’t thought about it before,’ said Arzee, ignoring this scurrility, ‘but without projection there’s no movie. And the better the projection, the better the movie. It’s not like TV, which you just switch on. It’s complicated work, Deepakbhai.’

  ‘Sure, sure,’ said Deepak.

  ‘A cinema stands or falls by the quality of its projection – everything else is secondary. Or at least that’s how it is in a proper cinema. In some of these new cinemas I think people mostly go for the quality of the popcorn. That’s not cinema, Deepakbhai, it’s popcorn! You must come along one day, Deepakbhai. Mostly we play reruns of old movies, but that’s the fun of it. New movies you can watch anywhere, but old movies, only at the Noor.’

  ‘Really? What’
s playing this week?’

  ‘Saathi. It’s a film from the early nineties. I’ll tell you the story in short. It’s about two friends from childhood, one of whom becomes a junkie and a gangster, while the other becomes a cop. It’s got Mohsin Khan, who used to be a Pakistani cricketer of the eighties. Made a double-hundred in England once. It’s a hummer.’

  ‘Is it as good as Satya?’ asked Deepak. ‘In my opinion there isn’t any Indian gangster movie as good as Satya.’

  ‘Good choice, Deepakbhai! That’s the best gangster movie you can hope to see if you also want songs and dancing in it.’

  ‘I’ll tell you what I like about that movie. The hero hardly says a word in the whole three hours. Talking’s not his thing, action is. Even when he falls in love, he can’t bring himself to say much to his girl. That’s why she finds him sweet.’

  ‘That’s just it, Deepakbhai. Excellent analysis!’

  ‘There’s no need to lay on the butter. I just have a clear point of view, that’s all. I know what I like and what I don’t like.’

  ‘That’s the way to be.’

  ‘And speaking of Pakistanis,’ said Deepak, ‘they shouldn’t be allowed to work in our films until they return what they’ve taken of Kashmir. Make as many double hundreds in England as you want! But don’t come here and steal roles off our heroes and screw our girls. Kashmir first! Then we’ll see.’

  ‘But what’s Kashmir got to do with all this, Deepakbhai?’

  ‘It’s all connected. You can’t put all these things in different boxes. If the Pakistanis are going to come over to this side and eat up our jobs, then let them bring some land over as well! No give, no take.’

  ‘It’s a thought, Deepakbhai. I hadn’t looked at it that way before.’

  ‘You will now. Everything in his world is connected. If something goes up, something else somewhere has to go down.’

  Deepak’s phone began to buzz. The expression on his face changed when he saw who was calling. ‘Okay, I’ve got to go,’ he said. ‘See you tomorrow at seven.’

  ‘All right, Deepakbhai. You be off – that seems like an important call.’

  ‘Number 27, Building Number 2, Old Wadia Chawl, Chira Bazaar. Remember, no more excuses. Don’t say you lost that paper! Yes sir…yes sir, I can hear you.’

  It was quite fascinating to see how Deepak could carry on a conversation, smoke a cigarette, and take a leak at the same time, nonchalantly watering the weeds and shrubs from left to right and back.

  FOUR

  At the Noor

  Walking to work, Arzee stopped at the top of Grant Road Bridge to look down at the railway station. He stood there with his chin on the wall for a long time, oblivious to the people passing by. Although he rarely took a train, he loved to admire the long sinuous lines and the expanse of the railways, the stationary and the moving elements. The gleaming tracks that came all the way from distant Virar, the asbestos roof pocked with holes and bits of rubbish being sifted by birds, the little figurines of people in their ill-fitting clothes standing in slack poses on the platform, and the shoeshine men beating their brushes on their boxes – there was something vivid, life-giving, about this scene, just as there was about the projection room with its heat and light and the celluloid running down the tracks of the machine. A train came in, moaning and swaying, disgorged a hundred people, who instantly seemed to be dragged up the stairs by some invisible force, and swallowed up some others. Arzee saw the motorman lean out of his cabin to spit on the tracks. Then the train lurched forward again and pulled out of the station, its wheels clacking upon their runners. Men, and then women in the women’s compartment, passed by, standing at the doors with their heads sticking out, taking the breeze. One girl was so beautiful, Arzee wished he could reach down over the bridge and lift her up with long, long arms. Now the tracks were empty again. Only a foraging ragpicker wandered across. In the distance, another train was already approaching, just as one reel smoothly followed another.

  ‘Nothing’s ever simple or easy in this life of mine,’ Arzee thought. ‘Even on a day like this, when I rise up to another station, first thing in the morning I have to be told by Mother that she thinks I’m drinking too much, and then I dirty all my clothes by falling into muck, and get assaulted by a gangster. My working day begins in the afternoon, that’s the thing – so there’s a lot that can go wrong between the two points. Deepak! He’s thin, but he slaps like a demon. Still, I kicked him one too, real good – I can still feel his shin on my toe! A thousand – it’s a lot of money. Ten hundreds. Twenty fifties. A hundred tens! But I’d better go tomorrow, else these good days of mine will be shat upon by unpleasantness, violence, curses. I’ll give him a thousand this month, and then next month we’ll see – he’s not going to get the money out of me so easy! I used to hate him too, all this time, but now…I’m not so sure. He wasn’t so bad today…he talked about things, and asked me questions. It’s all about vibrations! He felt the new strength in me, and had to give me more respect. I should get him on my side if I can, because he might be of use to me later on…this life is full of situations which require contacts and rough dealings. If he comes to the cinema once, and brings his kids, then I’ll have a hook on him.’ He raised his head. ‘This wind – it’s picking up again, and the sky’s black with rainclouds. Let me get a roof over my head before it rains. Run, my friend! The day’s troubles are left behind – run towards the finish line!’

  He hastened towards the stairway that went down from the bridge into the market. The air stank strongly of piss, but he couldn’t complain, because just last night on his way back home he’d taken a long leak right here, behind that hoarding. On the pavement a man had drawn a picture of Shirdi Sai Baba with orange and yellow chalk for people to leave their coins on. Arzee dropped the change from his bus fare onto the picture, although as soon as he had done so he thought it wasted. At least he could have given the money to a beggar child. But it couldn’t be recovered now – people would think he was stealing money, and justice would immediately be judged guilty! Vexed with himself, he kicked at a stone and disturbed a rat, which shot out from its hiding-place and disappeared into a hole. How many creatures were carrying on all around, unnoticed! Arzee was small, and knew about many things that others didn’t, but he would have had to be much much smaller to see all these things.

  A sombre grey light had infused the scene of his daily descent. Down below in the market shopkeepers were exaggerating, customers haggling, feet advancing and retreating, hands pointing and waggling. Any moment hissing raindrops would come pouring down, umbrellas would sprout everywhere, and tarpaulins would bloom; people would take refuge beneath the shop awnings, and drenched dogs squeeze in amidst their legs. Arzee spat in a corner and went skipping down the stairway, whistling through his crooked teeth. Suddenly he stumbled on a crack in the steps, but as he was about to fly headfirst into the street, he grabbed at the railing just in time to save his skull. And at this sudden threatening motion all the pigeons amassed at the kabutarkhana under the stairway rose up around him and went skittering away into the sky with a great beating of wings, and at that very moment the first raindrops began to come down. Exhilarated, Arzee put his collar up and began to run. As he leapt over a wheelbarrow lying aslant on the street, he felt as light and free as air itself, and he almost did not come down.

  In front of him, further away than it looked, the Noor was looming. A yellow light was on in its turret, where old Phiroz was working on the morning shift. The word Noor meant ‘light’ in Urdu, and that was exactly right, because it was through a beam of light that the illusion of life in the cinema was created – it was for that beam to thrive that darkness was generated all around. The Noor’s glory days had long since vanished. It was so old and decrepit now that most of the light had gone out of its name, its power. Yet the name still made ears prick up. When Arzee and Phiroz went to the annual meeting of the Bombay Projectionists Union (BPU) – now Mumbai Projectionists Sangh (MPS) – making for a st
range spectacle as they entered together, one so old and one so short, seats in the front row were always vacated for them, and other projectionists always spoke of the Noor in such a familiar way, as if it were there that they wanted to work, not in their own theatres. Looking down at the world from his envied turret of the Noor as he drank his coffee or sucked at an ice-cream stick, Arzee always felt secure, well-defended, and in all his dealings with people he tried to address them keeping in mind his position.

  The Noor had many Noorian quirks. The first thing to note about it was that from this distance, hedged in by other buildings, it projected an air of stern and perpetual rebuke, which was one of the many things about it that Arzee loved. If you halted to buy a cigarette and glanced at the Noor as you lit up, you found it was saying NO. And if someone you knew stopped to exchange a few words with you, then above his head the Noor was saying NO. And if you were contemplating a wager, or a confrontation with a friend or family member, its advice was NO. No matter what you did or thought or asked, the Noor’s stoical and never-changing response was NO, NO, and NO. The Noor presented itself to the world as a grouchy bystander, a great negator.

  It was only when one passed beneath the big banyan tree in front of the cinema, its tendrils swaying in the breeze – only when one entered the Noor’s field of influence – that the two big red letters running down from the top of the building revealed themselves to be actually four, and spelled out the word N-O-O-R. And now from up close the Noor emanated a welcoming energy, as if pleased that you had made it here after all. More than the residence he shared with Mother and Mobin, the Noor was Arzee’s home in the world. His days were here, his work here, his past here, and his future here. When his brain was fevered, he sank into the vast embrace and the comfortable silence of the Noor, or found diversion in the cheerful golden light and happy rumble of the Babur, twice his size. So, he knew, did Phiroz, but now Phiroz was leaving, and the engine-room of the empire was all his. He pushed open the gate of the Noor’s courtyard and went in.