‘IT MIGHT SEEM strange to you,’ said the man with the sad eyes, ‘but someone’s entire life can be marred by a disfigured finger or toe.’
I smiled at his exaggeration. ‘Just one finger?’
The man averted his eyes. ‘A big toe, to be precise. I am not making it up. This has happened with a friend of mine.’
I was intrigued. I am always on the lookout for stories. You could say I am a sort of collector of curious tales. It irritates my wife. She considers it one of my small-town vices. ‘You and your plebian nosiness,’ she says. But whatever she might say, I have a treasure trove of strange stories because of my habitual curiosity. They serve as great ice-breakers everywhere I go, from client meetings to dinner with friends. I looked at the man with the sad eyes. He had gone back to eating his dosa, breaking small bits of the paper-thin crêpe, dipping it in sambar and chewing carefully.
WE WERE AT a popular eatery in Matunga. ‘Authentic South Indian Food’, the old signboard, faded by years of monsoon rains and blazing sun, declared in severe, straight-edged lettering. And authentic it was. It was the spicy, aromatic oily food that had drawn me here from the other end of Bombay on a Sunday afternoon. I had entered the restaurant at the fag end of the lunchtime rush. Another fifteen minutes or so and the tables would have emptied for the next two hours when the evening-snack crowd would begin trickling in. But I was hungry and didn’t wish to wait. So I pulled the first empty chair at a two-seater table and signalled to the waiter. There was no need to observe the formality of asking permission from the other occupant of the table. It wasn’t that kind of a place, eating was not a drawn-out ceremony here; it was a quick but intensely experienced ritual – you sat wherever you found a seat, ordered without consulting the menu that had remained proudly unchanged since the time of the restaurant’s founder, and left as soon as you finished your meal. Still, the man on the other side lifted his head and fixed me with his sad eyes in such a way and for so long that I felt obliged to offer my hunger as an excuse.
‘I ran seven kilometres this morning, and my wife insists that fruits are the only healthy breakfast, so you can imagine how hungry I must be. I hope it is not inconvenient, my sitting here.’
‘No, of course not. It is nice to have another person across the table. I eat alone all the time, always alone…’ he repeated in a low tone.
‘But that’s impossible. No one can be always alone in Bombay, there isn’t enough space in the city for that!’ I tried to share with him some of the Sunday brightness that brimmed inside me.
The sadness in his eyes only deepened. His lips moved soundlessly as if he knew that what he had to say wasn’t worth listening to. I tried again, ‘Take me for example. My wife and kids don’t like the smell of sambar-dosa or being served by waiters who wipe the tables down with a smelly rag and don’t wear uniforms, so I decided to eat what I like by myself. But here I am sitting with you instead of eating alone.’
‘Oh … if you’d like to eat alone … I … I can move to another table.’ Half-rising, he glanced around. ‘One is sure to become empty soon…’
‘I didn’t mean it that way at all’ – I tried to salvage the situation – ‘I was just illustrating the point that one can’t be alone in this city.’ The man with the sad eyes sighed.
Our food arrived. We had both ordered the house-specialties – paper-thin dosa coated with a spicy paste, a serving of mashed potatoes fried in ghee and garnished with a handful of lentils on the side, rasam tangy with tamarind, and chutneys. Rounding his shoulders further, my companion slipped back his shirtsleeves and began eating. I noticed he held his elbows close to his sides and kept his head averted slightly, as if he had somehow guessed my expensive car, my fat salary, the newly-bought apartment in the old part of the city. I tried to put him at his ease. ‘The food here reminds me of my student days when, every once in a while, I used to forget about my budget and splurge on south Indian thalis with friends. I remember the taste of that food to this day – appams and vegetables in a coconut stew and medu-vada fried in ghee. I would spend two hundred to three hundred rupees on it. In those days, that used to be a lot of money for me.’
The man looked at me through the corners of his sad eyes and wobbled his head. I was chagrined. Perhaps that sum was still a big deal for him. I am proud of my ability to talk to people from all classes, but today I seemed to be saying one wrong thing after another. I beckoned to one of the waiters and pointed to the empty chutney bowl. He hurried over and set small bowls filled with white, grainy coconut chutney and smooth, spicy tomato-and-lentil paste on our table. I noticed he had a tiny sixth digit hanging helplessly beside his right thumb. ‘Six fingers! You are a lucky man!’
The waiter, a skinny boy with ribs peeking through his worn shirt and thin legs sticking out of a pair of dirty shorts, glanced at his hand with shy pride. ‘I had wanted the vaid in my village to chop it off; the boys used to tease me so about it. But my folks said it is very lucky. So I kept it.’ He touched the digit softly. It was a mere piece of cartilage with no bones. For a moment, the man with the sad eyes looked at the tiny finger, trembling and useless like a severed tail, and then quickly looked away.
‘I see that you do not believe in such superstitions.’ I felt an urge to engage my melancholy companion in a conversation. How could he be downcast in this place humming with sated voices, redolent with fried food, and reminiscent of a time when I was young and the world was just opening up for me? Life had turned out fine for me, I had done well, earned my place in the world, and I wanted the man with the sad eyes to cheer up a bit. It was right then that he made the dramatic statement about fingers and toes ruining lives.
My curiosity was tickled. I pushed my chair back and stretched my legs. The lunchtime rush had abated, and the restaurant was emptying swiftly. ‘I must say I have never considered fingers or toes to be of such importance that they have the power to ruin a life! I have a misshapen digit myself.’ I spread my right hand and displayed my squashed thumb. ‘I caught this in a gate one summer vacation. You can say it was a just punishment. I was throwing stones at the ripening guavas in the neighbour’s orchard. The guard came after me and I just sprinted out the iron gate, pushing it shut hurriedly behind me. That’s when I caught my thumb in it. I still remember it hurt like hell.’
I have never felt disadvantaged by my squashed thumb. It has always been an object of interest. In the early days of marriage, my wife used to caress its rough, discoloured surface with her pretty fingers. ‘Guava thief,’ she would say, her eyes alight, and kiss it. It also makes for a connection with others like me who grew up in small towns and made good in the big world. The story of my guava-theft has broken the ice in many a meeting and invoked nostalgia in successful entrepreneurs and professionals with bright, shining, big-city lives, for the homes they had once been impatient to leave. You can say that my thumb has served as a bridge to memories of lost times and forgotten places.
The man with the sad eyes cast a furtive look at my thumb. ‘It must have been painful – the injury, I mean … But there’s not much wrong with your thumb. It is slightly squashed and the nail is curved, but it is otherwise normal in shape and a healthy colour. My friend’s case is completely different. Your thumb can’t be compared with his big toe…’
The waiter brought over aromatic, chicory-flavoured filter coffee in steel tumblers. The man with the sad eyes spooned more sugar into the already sweetened coffee and poured some into a steel bowl to cool.
‘A toe is bound to be different, but it has the added advantage of being hidden most of the times, unlike a thumb which is out there for all to see,’ I said. ‘Unless you are a surgeon or a thief and wear gloves!’
He took a sip of the coffee. The cloying sweetness reached some secret place inside him and, for a moment, the despondency in his eyes lightened. ‘If you give it a thought, you’d be surprised to note on how many important occasions and places we have to be barefoot. Birth, death, temples, ritual banquets, in bed … And for my friend, it wasn’t even possible to completely hide his big toe. His situation was very bad … and through no fault of his own, his whole life was ruined…’
‘All because of a misshapen big toe? It has to be an acute case for that to happen.’
‘Yes. I see you find it difficult to believe, but if you knew his story you’d understand.’
I smiled encouragingly. I could see he wanted to tell me the story. It happens to me a lot. People want to tell me their stories. God provides sugar for the one who feeds on sugar, as the saying goes. ‘Then why not tell me? What could be a better way to relax on a Sunday afternoon after that big meal we ate than listening to the story of the life-destroying big toe? That is, if you have the time.’
The man with the sad eyes looked at the open door. Outside, the weekend hawkers’ market was in full swing. Women in shiny sarees, chains of white and orange flowers adorning their hair, were thronging the shops that sold stainless steel utensils and other household articles. Children dressed in stiff, occasionally worn clothes, faces sticky with sweets, ran everywhere. Men with faux-leather belts encircling their pot bellies walked about complacently, casting satisfied looks around. The whole atmosphere was of a minor festival, and no one seemed to mind the harsh midday sun. He let out a sigh. His shoulders drooped even further. ‘Time isn’t an issue for me but … my friend’s life-story is not for a relaxing Sunday afternoon. His life … In fact, he has no life, not in the real sense.’
‘I can’t agree with you here. However miserable you might think someone is, there is always something that keeps them going.’
‘Most of the time it is the habit of living that keeps them going,’ the man said slowly, ‘and inertia and the utter unfamiliarity of death. Life’s just more familiar than death … If,’ his voice rose slightly, his bunched-up body straightened, ‘if death were not wrapped in such mystery, if we were not taught to fear it and knew exactly what would happen after death, if we were sure that consciousness, memory, the burden of a lifetime would be extinguished in one stroke, half the world would choose death over life.’ White foam collected in the corners of his mouth. He placed his elbows on the table and leaned forward. ‘If you think about it, the solution to all of life’s problems is just one – death. Once everyone discovers that, why only half the world, the entire human race would choose death. That’s why religion and law employ all kinds of tricks to make death seem fearsome when it is the only relief … the only cure … to living out of habit and fear…’ His mouth curved in disdain.
I raised my eyebrows. ‘You mean your friend’s life is not worth living and he should commit suicide?’
He shrank away. His elbows slid off the table and his shoulders rounded again. ‘My friend doesn’t have the courage…’ He gave me his sideways, defeated glance. ‘Believe me when I say that from the day he was born, he has been hated because of his cursed toe. Even his own mother … He was in breach position and the doctor had to cut open his mother’s belly to birth him. The first thing the doctor saw was the large, misshapen toe; she thought it was some kind of worm or parasite that had attached itself to the baby’s foot. It was only her years of training that prevented her from dropping the baby. When she thrust him into the nurse’s arms, the young and inexperienced nurse let out shriek after shriek. Her screams were heard outside the operation theatre, and my friend’s father, who was of a nervous temperament, suffered a heart attack and had to be hospitalized. The task of looking after the baby and the unconscious mother fell upon the relatives. They swaddled the baby, taking care not to look at the toe, for even a glimpse of it set everyone retching, and did not say a word to the mother…’ He took out a large handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his face.
‘But why didn’t they tell his mother?’
‘Because his mother had a special liking for feet…’
‘A foot fetish?’
‘No, no, nothing like that … She was just very fond of tiny baby feet. She had knitted dozens of socks and booties for her baby and had bought silver anklets … No one had the courage to tell her about my … my friend’s toe. They were revolted themselves, and pitied her…’
‘I am still unable to understand what could be so wrong with his toe to cause such revulsion in everyone.’
‘If you saw it, you’d understand. It was … it was darker than the rest of his body, misshapen with coarse folds of skin hanging from it. It looked nothing like a toe…’
I tried to imagine a toe that looked nothing like a toe. ‘Perhaps it was a disease,’ I suggested. ‘There was a girl on the TV the other night. Her skin was turning into the bark of a tree. With each passing day she looked more and more like a tree. Doctors said it was some rare disease, they couldn’t seem to find a cure for it.’
‘Turning into a tree is not a disease, it is a blessing. What we cannot understand we term as disease,’ he muttered, ‘or God. Anyway, my friend’s big toe was examined by many specialists. They ran all sorts of tests on it, but in the end, they couldn’t find anything medically wrong with it. His toe remained as ugly and inscrutable as his fate.’
‘At least your friend did not suffer from any disease. Surely that was good?’
‘You think that was good?’ The sadness in his eyes deepened. ‘My friend wouldn’t agree with you. If the toe were diseased, at least there could be hope for some cure. As it is, his case is hopeless…’
‘When did his mother finally find out about his toe?’
‘When they returned home and she undressed the baby for the first time. She fell in a faint at the sight of the toe. The father, who had been discharged from the hospital by then and knew about the toe, revived her with the help of their neighbours. For days she refused to have anything to do with the baby except feeding him. She trembled with aversion every time she had to pick him up. When the naming day arrived, the relatives saw how puny he was, how thin and wrinkled. They scolded the mother and told her to take better care of him. He was after all a boy and the carrier of the father’s lineage. Who bothers about the shape of laddus made from ghee and sweet jaggery, they said. Still there were murmurings about the big toe, speculation about whether it was some sort of a punishment or curse. The mother pulled herself together after that and knitted new boots, one for a normal foot and one to hide the foot with the misshapen toe. She looked after the baby, and he began to thrive. The only thing she was adamant about was not having another child. “Here’s your son, he will bear your name,” she would answer whenever my friend’s father mentioned another child. “If you want another baby, you will need to find another wife.” She would not let my friend’s father come near her.’ The man picked up the coffee tumbler and put it down again. The coffee had gone cold and a thin, brown skin had formed over it. ‘So you see, my friend’s big toe ruined his parents’ marriage and caused him to grow up a lonely boy.’
‘That indeed sounds serious. It must have impacted his childhood.’
‘Yes, though in the beginning he wasn’t aware of the havoc his big toe was causing in his life. He didn’t even realize it was different from anyone else’s. Children accept everything until they are taught differently. But he did notice that no one caught him up in their arms and smothered him with kisses or tickled him to make him shriek with laughter or called him by silly endearments. There were only furtive glances and whispers…’
‘So, when did he find out?’ I found it difficult to believe in the mythical big toe but was caught by his tired, slow, hypnotic monotone.
‘When he started school. Because of his monstrous big toe, he needed special shoes which his mother got a cobbler to hand-stitch. At school, other children noticed the asymmetrical shoes, the right one broader and bulging, and his uncertain walk. They teased him, but it was a good school – English medium, expensive. Children had learned to pretend to behave and satisfied their instincts by copying his gait and calling him “shoe-boy”. Things came to a head when the principal decided that all children must learn gymnastics. That was the year gymnastics was fashionable, and schools in big cities were teaching it. A young teacher was recruited, and children were issued shorts and T-shirts to wear to class. My friend was excited. He had watched gymnasts on television, and they had seemed liked wingless birds to him, light and untied to the earth. Like other students, he took off his shoes, carefully tucked his rolled-up socks into them and joined the queue of his classmates. For a moment, complete silence fell. The teacher, a young man, looked stricken. Then, a couple of girls screamed, then, a couple more. In no time, everyone was screaming. Some of the smaller children were crying. In a trembling voice the young teacher ordered my friend to put on his shoes and socks and go to the class. That day no one wanted to sit next to him or talk to him. He ate his lunch alone and watched other kids play. When he reached home, his mother washed his tear-stained face and gave him a sweet snack. She did not need to see the marks of tears on his cheeks to know what had happened at school, though. The principal had already called. The next day my friend’s parents went to meet the principal. They showed him reports of all possible tests and certificates from doctors that said the disfiguration was not due to any disease. His mother urged the principal to take a look for himself and asked my friend to take off his shoe. The principal couldn’t stand the sight of the toe and turned away. In the end, my friend’s parents were told to withdraw him from the school.’
‘Because of his toe? That was very unfair.’
‘Yes’ – he nodded slowly – ‘yes, it was. But if we are to question the fairness of things, we would need to go to the root of the matter: Why did my friend have a big toe like that in the first place? There was no fault on his part…’
Clearly this wasn’t a question I could answer. I motioned to the server to bring more coffee.
‘My friend’s parents found it difficult to get him admitted to any of the better schools in the city. My friend was a quiet, obedient child, and had good report cards, but word about his big toe had gotten around. In the end, his parents applied to the nearby government school where the principal took one look at the big toe, spat in the dustbin, and said that even if my friend had three heads, he would have to admit him, he was bound by rules to do so … but he took the precaution of warning the teachers.’ He dropped his gaze into the fresh cup of coffee. ‘In that school, my friend fully realized the effects of his accursed toe. Kids deliberately stepped on his foot, threw muck and worms at him if he ventured into the playground … My friend was careful and none of the children had seen his toe, but they knew all about it and called him slug, drain worm and worse. He figured that there was no point hiding his toe; he must hide himself, for, to others, he was his big toe. As long as he was visible, his misshapen toe, though hidden in his shoe, was visible as well. So, he decided to make himself invisible.’
‘Invisible? What do you mean?’
‘I mean he found places to hide from his classmates. The darkest corners of classrooms, the windowless library, a shed ambitiously called the laboratory. He became so good at hiding that eventually his classmates forgot about him. When they talked about him, it was as if they had been told a story about someone with a misshapen toe who had been a student at the school, someone they themselves had never met…’
I clicked my tongue. ‘It must have been difficult for your friend. He must have found it tough to study under such circumstances.’
‘Oh, no. In fact, he did well in his studies. While he was hiding from other children, there was nothing else for him to do except read and reread his textbooks. He was of average intelligence but had a good memory and got good grades. He was awarded a scholarship and got admission in a premier engineering college.’
‘I am glad something good came out of his ordeal.’
‘You think so?’
‘Why, you don’t?’
The man with the sad eyes looked at me. ‘What you and I think makes no difference. My friend definitely did not think so. After the solitary invisibility at school, he found himself in the glare of communal life in a college hostel. It was impossible to hide his toe there, living four to a room. Soon word got around to his seniors. He was made to show it during ragging sessions. Some girls vomited when they saw it for the first time. They began calling him a crude word, one that meant penis in the local language. That’s when my friend began to get the nightmare that continued to disturb his sleep for years. He dreamt that his whole body had turned into his big toe, dark folds of skin hung all over him, and in the deep wrinkles on his body grew rows upon rows of misshapen big toes. Every night he woke up gagging with repulsion at his own self…’
‘Tch, tch. Didn’t he make any friends? No one with whom he could share what he was going through?’
The man with the sad eyes shook his head slowly. ‘He wasn’t the only loner in the college. There were others. But loneliness is a strange quantity. When one loneliness touches another, it increases exponentially…’ he fell silent. The restaurant had emptied completely. The clatter of utensils in the kitchen had ceased and the man in a smart shirt at the cash counter was enjoying a cup of coffee. The boy who had served us was cleaning the large grandfather clock with a rag. ‘The end of college was liberation for him,’ the man resumed. ‘He got a job with the municipality in a big city. This was the best time of his life…’ He crumbled sugar in his fingers and sprinkled it on the table where its fine crystals caught the receding sunlight and shone like crushed glass. ‘The best time … In the city, no one had the time to bother about his big toe, and he was a government officer. People gave him respect, bowed before him. He liked his work and threw himself completely into it. Sewage, garbage dumps, landfills – he wanted to cure all the deformities of the city. His hard work bore fruit. Citizens’ associations felicitated him, and some large contractors and mafia-types began to regard him as an enemy. When he visited the parts of the city he was responsible for, people recognized him. His parents began to search for a bride for him. He would read their letters eagerly and examine the photographs they sent. In preparation for marriage and a wife, he applied for a government quarter and collected cuttings of scenic places to visit from magazines and newspapers. Around this time, somehow word got around about his big toe. Perhaps it was an old batchmate from college or the garrulous cleaning-woman … he never could figure, not that it mattered either … Everything he thought he had left behind, started again … whispers, sniggers, people looking at him differently, their eyes wandering to his shoes during meetings … Some suggested herbal and magical cures … That was the last straw. After that, my friend gave up…’
‘What do you mean “gave up”?’
‘He accepted defeat at the hands of ugliness. He gave up all hopes of his life coming to fruition, of leading a meaningful life. Like others, he, too, merely moved files from one desk to another, from one office to the next. He threw away the photographs his parents had sent to him, gave up the flat he had been allotted and moved back into a paying-guest accommodation.’
I glanced at my watch and rapped on the table with my knuckles to attract the attention of a waiter drowsing by the wall. ‘Tell me,’ I asked, ‘did it not occur to your friend to consult a plastic surgeon for his toe? Science has made such advances that surgeons give people entirely new faces; a toe can’t be complicated to fix.’
The man with the sad eyes raised his head. Dark, unrelenting sadness was pooled in his eyes. ‘What difference would plastic surgery make to my friend? Would it make him forget that such ugliness was a part of him? Would it make his parents forget it too and take him in their arms, caress him, call him by loving nicknames? Would he be able to make friends and talk and laugh with them uninhibitedly? Marry a woman and never cause her embarrassment? Would all ugliness disappear from his memory?’
The waiter came with the bills. The man with the sad eyes paid with crisp notes from an old wallet and rose. Involuntarily, my eyes gravitated towards his feet. He let out a sigh.
‘The taint of ugliness never washes off … never … It is eternal, like the taint of mortality…’