Translated from the Gibberish: Seven Stories and One Half Truth

Raju had written down the names of the people most likely to be responsible, in the event of his death. There was Arjun the elephant trainer, Tariq the trapezist, Mohan Drummer, and Mr. Patil, who was already dead, although that did not deter Raju from listing him. Raju could not afford a bank lock-box, or any such luxury, so he had decided to hand this list to the one person he trusted: his friend Ghulam Ali, the ice-gola man.

He made this decision in the mid-afternoon, when Ghulam Ali was at his busiest, but Raju did not care. He was determined to hand these names to his friend immediately. These were ominous times. When he had woken up that morning in his tent, he’d felt a shiver in his tailbone. He had last experienced a similar feeling two years ago, and later that day an acrobat had fallen and fractured his skull. The sound was unforgettable—crunchy but rock-solid. He cringed at the memory as he joined Ghulam Ali outside the gates of Johnny’s Circus.

Ghulam Ali never smiled, except when he was making his delicious ice-golas. With his giant palm he would crush bits of ice against a thin stick and pour colourful syrup all over it: so red it looked like blood, so green it put grass to shame, so blue a thousand ink bottles could never match its depth. How he perfected these colours was his secret, and it had made him the most sought-after gola man in all of Byculla. For the past three months, ever since the circus had set up on the school grounds, Ghulam Ali’s handcart had been surrounded by hordes of people—children, old men, women in burkas, handcart pullers, all seeking relief from the heat. A cheap remedy of coloured syrup and ice, that’s all it took to soothe tongues and bodies.

But fame was not what motivated Ghulam Ali. His delight came from watching children slurp and bite with complete abandon. As soon as the children were gone, the smile vanished from his face and he took on the grimness of a security guard.

He hated being called a joker. He was a clown. Jokers were dumb duplicates, the equivalent of “Made in China” electronics, trying-to-be clowns who had no self-respect. They lacked inner sadness.

“Are you sure?” Ghulam Ali asked. “The sun is making a tomato of your face. This will cool you down.”

Instead, he offered Ghulam Ali his sheet of paper. But the moment Ghulam Ali reached out to take it, Raju pulled the paper away.

Ghulam Ali brushed his hands against his blue trousers. He dressed in a Western manner—pants and a white vest. In winter, the vest would be replaced by a white shirt. Rarely was he seen in anything else. Of course, there was also the skullcap that he always wore, a sign of his devotion to Allah—although, he would always clarify, he was not a fanatic.

The difference in height between the two men was comical. Ali was a giant and Raju far from tall. In fact, he was a midget—but call him that and he would erupt into a spitting, frothing ball. “Amongst small people, I am the tallest,” he would say.

Ghulam Ali squinted to read Raju’s handwriting. His friend’s Hindi was almost illegible, but Ghulam Ali had practice: he had read all the love letters Raju had written to Sheila, the young woman who performed in Arjun the elephant trainer’s act.

May 11, 2016. 12.30 p.m. Byculla (Mumbai).

I, Raju of Johnny’s Circus, feel threatened by the four people whose names I have written below. If I die, they all should be held responsible. In no particular order:

Arjun the elephant

Tariq the trapezist

Mohan Drummer

Mr. Patil

Regards, Raju Madan. Born August 17, a long time ago.

Raju was squinting in the sunlight, his lips stretched out into a long eeeeeeeee, exposing one chipped tooth and gums brown as puddle water thanks to an incessant stream of Shivaji beedies. “I want you to safekeep this,” Raju said.

Ghulam Ali was used to Raju’s shenanigans. Ever since Sheila had come into his life, Raju had lost his already precarious balance. He was unreasonable and always seemed drunk, even though he never touched liquor. And there was no point arguing with him. Once his mind was made up, he was cement.

“You’ve called Arjun an elephant,” said Ghulam Ali. “You mean to say elephant trainer.”

“He’s just as fat, isn’t he?” asked Raju. “And hasn’t the idiot named his elephant Arjun as well?”

“And who is Mr. Patil?” asked Ghulam Ali, hurt that he did not know. He and Raju were best friends. He knew about Raju’s chicken pox, his polio, his mother’s death, everything—or so he had thought.

Ghulam Ali nodded. He put the ridiculous piece of paper in his pocket. Two or three days later Raju would ask for it again, just to make sure it was not lost. Ghulam Ali kept up with Raju’s eccentric behaviour because he knew that deep down the joker was honest. What he lacked in height, he made up for in integrity. Raju treated stray dogs and children with respect, and circus owners with disdain. Only lately had his wisdom been replaced with a rabid passion for Sheila, but that too would pass. Ghulam Ali thought Sheila was too showy for Raju, her hips too curved, her powder too heavy, as though she was trying to hide something. But Raju couldn’t see any of that; in fact, these were the very things he liked about her. Raju would talk about Sheila’s hips all day long. He would tell Ghulam Ali that she was a real star and that when she put powder on her face, she looked like a gori.

Ghulam Ali wanted to tell Raju that Sheila did not look like a foreigner at all; she was as dark as the shade under a tree. But who was he to break his friend’s heart?

“I’m off to meet Sheila for a movie,” said Raju. “How do I look?” He adjusted his red shirt, pulling the hem down as far as it would go.

He had probably gone to the costume man, reflected Ghulam Ali, and used the man’s iron. The shirt looked so stiff it almost crackled when Raju moved.

In truth, the dark hue reminded Ghulam Ali of congealed blood, but he knew that would be of little help to Raju’s ego.

Raju nodded. How he looked would hardly matter in the darkened cinema. During the interval, when he would buy Sheila ice cream, all eyes would be on her anyway. At first. Then the odd glances would start. But Raju would revel in the jealous stares of men, feel their envy on his skin like the gentle lather of soap, which made the wisecracks less hurtful.

He left Ghulam Ali with a bounce in his step—you could call it a limp if you liked, but he preferred to think of it as a bounce—and the love in his heart and the tingling in his loins made him feel as if he had never been sick a day in his life, as if no chicken pox or polio had ever claimed him. If he could only rent Sheila a small room somewhere, a room for him and her, she would leave the circus forever. This was what she had promised him when he’d told her of his plan, his dream, and that he was close to having enough money to make it more than just a dream. She’d caressed his hand then, but it might as well have been his heart.

And when Raju took Sheila away from the circus at last, Tariq the trapezist, that gonorrhea-infested shit of a man, would never lay eyes on her again.

THE MOVIE WAS A DISASTER. Raju should have known better—matinees were always a mistake. A movie should be watched in darkness—darkness both inside and outside the cinema. But Raju knew that timing wasn’t the real issue. Sheila had looked better than ever, and this made Raju sink into his own ugliness. The psychological descent had been rapid as he’d travelled in his mind from the cool air-conditioned seat of the theatre to the muggy floor of the small room he’d once shared with his mother in a Bombay slum. When other kids his age had gone to school, only too glad to escape the flies and river of sewage that trickled through the narrow lanes of their neighbourhood like some undesired gift from the rest of the city, Raju had wished to have bones so malleable he could curl into a ball and hide in his mother’s lap until darkness came. She’d come to the corner of the room, where he shook and shivered in spite of the heat, and whisper to him, “Don’t worry, you are loved. You are my son.” But that only made him feel worse, made her kindness turn to nails, and when she combed his hair to get him ready for school, he always closed his eyes because he could not bear to see his own face in the mirror. His face was not deformed, but his state of being showed in his eyes—the terror of never being able to defend himself, or catch a bus, or run fast, or even walk without drawing attention—and his burden only became heavier when he found his father dead on the railway tracks after a drunken binge. Raju, at ten, held his father’s head in his hands and called out for help, but the only response was a sideways glance from a man squatting on the tracks, releasing the previous night’s meal. With his father gone, Raju had become the man of the house. And what a man he turned out to be—falling short on all counts.

They walked to a nearby hole in the wall. An old poster of Raju’s favourite actor brought the only hint of colour to the place. Johnny Lever was Raju’s role model because he was short, and when he delivered his comic monologues, he soared.

“It’s Tariq,” he said, and bit his lip the moment he blurted the trapezist’s name. When jealousy stirred within him, it took a long time to settle. Even his tea was tasting bitter.

“Why are you so obsessed with him? You do trust me, don’t you? Why can’t you just let it go?”

Let it go? Let it go? Let it go? He wanted to repeat her words endlessly so she could understand how ludicrous they were. Even Johnny’s expression on the wall had turned sceptical. His right eyebrow arched an inch higher.

“Never mind,” Raju said, and flicked a fly away from the rim of his glass. Never mind that he had once seen Sheila kissing that spandex-wearing freak and it had made his heart shatter into a thousand pieces. “I promise never to speak about Tariq again,” he said. “If I can ask you one last question about him.”

“Look, I’ve already told you, I don’t love him. And I kissed him before you and I were together. So I’ve done nothing wrong.”

“That’s not what I want to ask. I want to know something of a more serious nature.”

“But I want you to think about your answer. Don’t just say the first thing that comes into your mind.”

“When Tariq wears that body-hugging spandex unitard of his, how does he manage to divide each ball so perfectly? I mean, neither an inch here nor there, each testicle in perfect harmony?”

This made Sheila laugh, and she looked at him in a way Raju had never seen before, as if from a new angle. Her eyelids crinkled, her lips spontaneously erupted like a pink flower trying to blow a kiss at a passerby, and now there was a scent in the air that made their little chai stall smell like a perfumery. Even the rat that scurried past Raju could not dampen his success. This, he knew, was why she loved him—he made her laugh. And he had laughed all the way into her bed, and he intended to stay there until he died. And if she died first, well, he would just lie on her body until it stank, and her putrid flesh became one with his. Of course, he would never tell her that because it was kind of extreme—but love does that to you, he told himself. Love had also made him spend no little part of his savings on a wedding ring. Each time he looked at the ring, it was not the shiny stone that caught his eye, but the hole that the finger would go through; when you bought a ring, you were simply buying a hole, an opening for a new wound. For a month he had stared into that hole and thought of returning it. But today, as Johnny in the poster looked over him, Raju realized that there was no such thing as the perfect day, the perfect moment. He would think of the hole as a hoop, and he would jump through it, into a new life.

THAT EVENING, AS SHEILA got ready for the show, as she stared into her large mirror and powdered her face for the third time, Raju stood beside her, in costume, grinning at the thought of being married to her. When she bent down and adjusted his purple bow, he licked a drop of sweat off her neck, making her squeal.

When it was time for Sheila’s entry, the band sent out a spectacular drum roll that rose above the crazy whirring and hum of the giant fans spread throughout the tent. Raju stood backstage and watched Arjun lower his trunk for Sheila. It was so loving and natural, like a tree branch moving towards a human being, offering comfort and support. Sheila lay on his trunk, sparkling and precious. Raju knew she was so much more than a showpiece; she could sing, she could dance. But the circus owners didn’t want her to. She was Nepali, after all. Her orientalfeatures meant some people looked down on her, thought of her as cheap, as flesh to be bought and sold at night after the circus lights went down.

As Arjun and three other elephants circled the circumference of the ring, close to the audience, the children started clapping and tried to touch elephant skin. Raju wanted children of his own someday, although he worried they would come out like him and stay small forever. This was not a fate he would wish upon any child, least of all his own, and he feared his guilt would course through him with greater intensity than the jealousy he felt when Sheila waved and winked at the crowd. Why did she have to wink? A queen simply waved. A wink gave people the wrong impression. He understood that she was a performer, it was all an act, but to have men breathe upon her, to feel their hunger and have a dirty film running through their minds…The wink could be avoided, in his opinion. But it didn’t matter. A ring on her finger would give her respect, and would once and for all change the way people looked at her.

He slunk away from the bright lights and decided to warm up for his act with a few strong puffs of a beedi. He went in search of Ghulam Ali. Raju hated smoking alone. To him, one shared a beedi; it was a communal act, a communion with nature. The tobacco, the rough paper, the fire of the match, these were all elements of the Earth, and because he felt that way, he never coughed, his lungs were always clear.

“Ali,” he said, offering a beedi to his friend. He always called Ali by his last name just as Ghulam Ali always called him Joker Babu. “I’m going to propose to her tonight.”

“I’m surprised, that’s all,” said Ghulam Ali. He was speaking the truth, but he did not want to tell Raju exactly what kind of surprise he felt.

The honesty with which Raju asked that question made Ghulam Ali shrink even more from the truth. He could see that when Raju lit his beedi, his hands were shaking. Perhaps they were shaking with disappointment in his friend.

“I’m hurting anyway,” said Raju. “When I am with her, I hurt because I feel I do not deserve her. When I am without her, I hurt because I long to be with her. Love is a screwed-up thing.”

Ghulam Ali took a large dum, keeping the tobacco smoke inside him for longer than usual. Then he coughed out the truth. “I just hope she stays with you.”

Raju understood what his friend meant. Anyone could see that he and Sheila were a mismatch. But was Raju doomed to spend his life only with someone his own size? Did the size of the heart not matter? Was the expanse of love he felt for Sheila not as wide and deep as any sea? She could feel that, she could sense it, which was why he could pleasure her during their lovemaking. All the love he had never received from his father, all the longing that he still had for his mother, all the rejection he’d faced as a child, all the taunts he continued to bear as an adult—all this he converted into something good when he kissed her. No other man, no matter how tall and strong, could give her that.

“I’m going to get her pregnant. That will make her fat and large for a while. Then the next year she’ll be breastfeeding, so she’ll be busy. After that, I’ll get her pregnant again. So the same cycle will repeat. Then I’ll get her pregnant a third time. By then, there’s a good chance she’ll go into a depression. So she’ll need me even more.”

“Just be happy for me, Ali. That’s all I ask. Give her a chance. Give us a chance.”

Perhaps, thought Ghulam Ali, he was being unkind about Sheila. After all, she had stayed with Raju for more than three months now; maybe she genuinely cared about him. Except that there was something about her, about her and Tariq, that Ghulam Ali did not trust. Whenever he saw Tariq on the trapeze, he was reminded of a long lizard, hanging upside down, its beady eyes scanning the entire tent from up above. It was a cold gaze, the way one felt when a fridge door suddenly opened and sent a warning through the body. He just hoped he was wrong.

THE BEEDI WAS BITTER, but life was sweet. There was a lilt in Raju’s walk as he entered his tent. He still had a few minutes left before he was on. He went to his steel trunk and removed the red velvet pouch that he had placed at the bottom, underneath his clothes. When he drew open the strings of the pouch, he could feel a new life opening along with it. The ring tucked inside would help him fulfill his dreams of having a family. Everything that he had saved up so far, all the money earned from somersaults and slapstick stunts performed in front of an audience, was stored in this ring; hours spent perfecting falling through the cane web of a chair, then walking with the rim of the chair around his waist, seemingly unaware—that was the trick of the clown, to be an acrobat who was a total nincompoop, and to be a nincompoop, one had to feign a lack of awareness. While the acrobat concentrated on every move, the clown had to go one step further: he had to forget everything so that his actions looked natural. In this sense he, Raju, was far more gifted than Tariq, even if the local public did not understand his talent. But now, this no longer mattered—all that hard work had paid off, all that hard work rested in this ring. It was all Raju could afford, but his intention was pure. And that was why the ring sparkled so intensely. That and the special woman it sparkled for.

The day had started badly, with the list of names of those who were gunning for him, but tomorrow Raju would ask Ghulam Ali to return that note. He would tear it up, or even burn it. Or perhaps he would write a new note, listing the names of people who had given him life: his mother, Ghulam Ali, and now Sheila. Sheila had made his insides change; if a doctor were to cut him open this very second, he would be astounded to find, in the place of Raju’s intestine, a long garland of marigolds and lilies, such was the hope flowering within. Raju put the velvet pouch in his pocket and went towards the tent. It was time.

He sat on a tricycle and rode it around the ring. Five red balloons were tied to the seat of the tricycle, and as he pedalled Raju made a mental note to tell the band that their tempo was too slow. Or was he speeding out of sheer excitement? He was in a hurry to get to the centre of the ring, but not before he made sure that Sheila was watching. He had told her earlier that he was trying out a new routine and wanted her opinion on it. As he got off the tricycle, he faced the audience. Behind him, the tricycle was rising in the air, the balloons helped by an invisible cable. This always got a laugh. In response to the laughter, Raju looked at his fly to see if it was undone, then smelled his underarms to check for bad odours. Finally, he gave a shrug and turned around, then smacked his own head with his hand when he saw that the tricycle was missing, hitting himself so hard he knocked himself out. As he went through his routine, Raju felt great. He was timing his falls beautifully tonight.

Next, he took a piece of paper from his pocket. He checked his shirt for his reading glasses, but found a pair of dark glasses instead. He put these on, tried to read the note, then shouted: “Who turned the lights off?” Another round of laughter. Upon realizing his folly, he found his reading glasses. Throughout his routine Raju could feel the ring in his pocket, the pulse of a future life. At one point, as he roped in a little boy from the audience and included him in his routine, he noticed Sheila looking on, approvingly. There was no doubt he would be a good father. Boy or girl, he would welcome the child. As he tumbled through the air and fell expertly on his buttocks, he tried out names. He would call the girl Julie. The boy he would call Johnny, after Johnny Lever. Johnny and Julie. Why not have two? As his act ended, he signalled to the band, and they began to play Raju’s favourite Hindi song: “Mere Sapno Ki Rani.” It was an instrumental version, but Raju thought of how he had sung this song to Sheila a hundred times, calling her the ultimate Queen of his Dreams.

Now he looked over at Sheila and waved for her to walk out and join him. For a second, she seemed confused, but Raju pointed to the band, as if to say, “Can’t you hear my love for you?” The spotlight hit her and she became a silver thing in silver light. Raju felt as if he was in a trance. He had never before seen a being such as Sheila. It was time to go down on one knee. But first, he put his hand in his pocket and removed the velvet pouch. It was Ghulam Ali who nudged Sheila forward. The audience was hushed, not sure if this was part of the act. But now the ringmaster took over, calling into the microphone that this was real, and that Raju the Clown was hooked, booked, and cooked, and the crowd went wild. They only fell silent again when they saw Raju, the tiny man, drop to one knee, opening himself up to love.

Sheila was only a few steps away from him now, and when he looked up at her, he saw she was smiling. Was there a tear in her eye as well? If only his mother was alive to witness this: five hundred people watching Raju propose to his wife. The same Raju who had wept in her lap every night because he could not make a single friend. His mother would love Sheila; yes, perhaps she might not approve of Sheila’s short dress, but that was okay.

Still on one knee, he placed the ring on Sheila’s finger and looked up at her face again, and as he did, he caught a glimpse of the trapeze hanging high above. It was still and empty.

THAT NIGHT, AFTER A HUNDRED congratulatory thumps on Raju’s back from his fellow circus performers and audience members, Raju and Sheila lay next to each other in Raju’s tent. On most nights, Raju felt uncomfortable lying alongside Sheila, but tonight, with both their heads on the pillow, the fact that his feet reached her knees did not dampen him.

“But how? All the money you spent on this,” she said, raising her finger, admiring the ring. “How much did this cost?”

“In the shop it cost too much,” said Raju. “But on you, it costs nothing.”

“I don’t deserve this. I don’t deserve you,” she said softly, facing away from Raju.

He longed to have a church wedding. He did not care much for religious ceremonies or vows, but he liked the way the light fell through stained glass windows. That was all. The circus would come to an end on Saturday night and the next morning he and Sheila would get married. On Sunday evening the circus would move from the school grounds of Clare Road to the suburbs, where he would perform for another three months. This would give them both a decent amount of cash—nothing great, but enough to allow them movies and clothes from time to time, and late night auto rickshaw rides along Bandstand.

She moved it back and forth on her finger, and the diamond turned as she did so, like a small planet showing its shiny face then moving away to grace another part of the universe. Raju clasped his hand around hers and held it to his chest. Nothing needed to be said. After a long time, luck was with him, or perhaps kindness. To have a kind person next to you, and just one hand to hold. He fell asleep, sinking into the blessed future of his own life.

SOMETHING WOKE HIM. It was the smell of elephant dung, unusually strong. He opened his eyes. Sheila wasn’t next to him in bed. Through the fabric of the tent, he could see shapes, two human shapes. He recognized one of them: a tall, lanky male with long hair; maybe what he had smelled wasn’t elephant dung at all but this male, whose rottenness was hidden by his beautiful physique. He heard Sheila’s voice whisper hoarsely, “No.”

Raju jumped out of bed and went outside. Only Sheila was there, scanning the ground for something.

“I can’t find it. I went for a walk. It was on my finger…but now it’s not there.”

But Raju was no longer sure what he had seen. His thoughts were confused. Why had Sheila gone for a walk in the middle of the night? What had happened to the ring? He fell to his knees and started scanning the grass inch by inch.

“Why did you go for a walk?” He kept his head down, searching frantically, casting pebbles aside.

“I was so happy, I couldn’t sleep. I thought of home…of my sister and mother…how happy they would be,” she said.

Her voice cracked, and so did Raju’s life. He was sure of what he had seen. He had seen shapes. And shapes could not be trusted. Weren’t shapes illusions? Weren’t shadows meant to scare people, to make things seem larger than they were? He could feel Sheila beside him, crying. Even though she hadn’t made a sound, he could sense her going under, the way a beautiful cat hides under a chair when there is too much noise. He could not bear to look at her, so he stayed on his knees. He was walking on them now, quickly covering ground. Luckily for him, the outside lights were still on. He would scan every inch around the circus tent even if it made the skin on his knees raw, even if all he had found so far were bottle corks and chewing gum wrappers and a five-rupee coin, which he threw aside along with more pebbles and some worms. Was everyone in on it? Everyone on his list from yesterday morning, all the ones who wanted him gone? Had Tariq managed to seduce them all? Had Ghulam Ali joined them as well? No, no, that was unthinkable.

He remained on his knees, head down, kneeling before the earth, where he and the ring surely belonged—anything to prevent him from looking at the face of his beloved, where he knew exactly what he would find: more shapes, more shadows.