Number 16

Where your neighbour has built his garage

Was the tennis court, and to the right

Of the street-light on Old Survey Road

The main gate. It was sold as scrap,

For almost nothing. I was born here, in

Number 16, and know this property,

Every pit and slope, like the back of my hand.

Tenants lived in the main house then

And your uncle, who came to escape

The heat of Allahabad, was a summer visitor.

He stayed in the same rooms

You stay in now. The ten weeks he spent here

Passed quickly. He suffered from this strange

Disease as you know and couldn’t

Eat his food or comb his hair unaided.

He went everywhere in a wheelchair,

That one of us had to push.

I was just a boy then, and my job was

To sit by his desk, on a high stool, and turn

The pages of the book he was reading.

They seemed like old books, for their pages

Were brittle and I had to be careful turning them.

He once scolded me for some mischief I’d done,

But the next day he sent for me and apologized.

I won’t ever forget that. My friends and I

Played hookey from school and came here.

There were always rocks on the ground, fruit

Above, and my arm never failed me.

If I told you the names of the mango

Varieties we had here you’d think I was

Speaking from an imaginary textbook

On horticulture. You call these trees?

They’re dwarfs compared to those giants,

Whose yield we sold by the cartload,

On the sly. You were our masters, but we

Had the run of the land. We couldn’t have

Survived on my father’s salary otherwise.

Eleven rupees a month it was, and

Never a paisa’s raise, till the day he died.

The eviction suit you brought against

The tenants dragged on for twelve years.

Seeing that my father was getting old

And had no savings to speak of,

They once offered him money

To change his testimony in court.

But we’d eaten your salt and couldn’t do that.

Eventually, they lost the case. The land

Got sold, your uncle died, and the house

Was divided. I was the one who

Put up the new boundary wall.

But the bad days lay still ahead. They came

After your father’s suicide, when your mother

Went to work in a school. The garden, or

What was left of it, became a jungle.

At night, bats flew about in the rooms.

Termite ants ate through the door-frames.

We servants lived in the outhouses at the back,

Without electricity. My sister lived

With us, along with her good-for-nothing son.

But it was Noma, the young sweeperess,

Who gave us untold trouble. She

Took up with Ratan, who was a bad sort.

One day two men, a third was in the getaway

Auto-rickshaw parked at a distance, came

Looking for her. It was pitch dark. I could smell

The alcohol on their breath before I could see

Their faces. Where’s Noma? one of them asked,

Putting a gun to my chest. I don’t know,

I said, smoke coming out of my ass.

He poked me in the ribs and repeated

The question. My sister must have heard us,

For she came out and stood in the doorway.

She saw the two men, she saw the gun, and

She saw me. She let out an almighty scream.

She was a big woman. The two men fled,

But before that we’d fled ourselves, disappeared

Into the bushes, which were everywhere.

We spent the night hiding in them, too scared

To come out. The next morning we trooped off

To your mother’s school and gave her an account

Of the night’s events. We told her we weren’t

Ready to mind this place in her absence

Any more. Noma, who’d seen everything

From her room, came with us. A few weeks later,

The police laid a trap and got Ratan.

He was killed right here, where the jackfruit tree is.

The news was all over town and in the papers.

You see these walls. They’re twenty-four inches

Thick, and you’re worried about the house falling.

It’s good for another generation at least.

As someone who’s repaired it

Times without number, I should know.