Hats and Doctors: Stories Read online

  ‘You don’t recognize me,’ he said. ‘I’m Bhola. We lived together in a room on Mall Road in Lahore in 1938.’

  ‘Bhola! Hargopal! What’s happened to you?’ I led him by the hand into the drawing room.

  He began to reminisce about those days in Lahore. As I listened to what he said I came to believe that he was not crazy; he perfectly recollected those days in their every detail.

  He sat down on a costly cushion in the drawing room with that same familiar and authoritative air of his.

  ‘What happened to you?’ I asked, hesitantly. ‘You were supposed to become an ambassador.’

  Bhola seemed not to hear what I was saying. In his perfect English, he remarked, ‘If it’s possible, could you please give me something to eat? I haven’t eaten in two days!’

  I called the houseboy and told him, ‘Dakkhilal, bring some food for this gentleman.’

  ‘Gentleman’—a gleam lit up in Bhola’s eyes and then a faint, barely noticeable, but grotesque, smile played on his face.

  The houseboy was about to turn away when I stopped him. ‘Listen, tell Rani Ma an old friend of mine has come, and to send some food here …’

  As he turned away again, I added, ‘Pick up this centre table and move it over there, bring that teapoy over here and take the gentleman over to the washbasin, so he can wash his hands.’

  ‘My hands are always clean,’ Bhola told the houseboy. ‘You bring the food.’

  The houseboy went away.

  I tried to learn something of Bhola’s life. But besides those days in Lahore, which bore a connection to me, he remembered nothing at all. He and I had once taken the Indian Civil Service exam together. We had lived together in one room for three months. Of the people who qualified in the exam, I had actually scored very low and Bhola had scored among the highest—he only had to retake the oral section. He remembered everything that had happened in those days as well as the year and the dates. About the rest of his life, he had nothing to say, save to dismiss it with a wave of the hand. It seemed as though the outline of Lahore was sketched in the upper portion of the blackboard of his mind, but the lower portion was completely empty.

  After I had entered the I.C.S. competition for the first time and had qualified, but was not selected, a friend of mine, Sudarshan, who had been admitted into the I.C.S., gave me some advice: ‘Listen, Bakhshi, I’ll tell you the secret of success: try to make friends with Bhola. He broke the record in English in the B.A. exam, he came first in English in the I.C.S. exam, he’s the second rank in the Aggregate; he wasn’t selected only because he has to take the oral again. But he will definitely be made an I.C.S. officer. It’s only thanks to him that I succeeded. If you can make friends with him somehow and move into his room, you can live with him and prepare for the exam there.’

  I was a student at D.A.V. College and Bhola was from Government College. The Government College students looked on the D.A.V. College students with a good deal of contempt. That made me feel nervous about meeting him. And then, I also lived with my uncle in Sutra Mandi and Bhola lived in a room in a three-storey building on Mall Road, near the Coffee House. His room was on the second storey. Outside the room there was a beautiful porch, with a small balcony jutting out from it that overlooked Mall Road. I asked Sudarshan to introduce me to Bhola. He took me to his place and said lots of nice things about me. From that day on I regularly visited Bhola at his flat and managed to make such good friends with him that three months before the exam I had moved into his room.

  Bhola’s store of knowledge was unparalleled. He told me dozens of secret recipes for success in the exam, and when, after three years, I was finally made an I.C.S. officer, those three months spent with Bhola had a good deal to do with it.

  The houseboy brought in the food and Bhola attacked it. It was hard for me to sit and watch the way he gobbled it down. ‘Why don’t you eat? In the meantime, I’ll take care of some important paperwork,’ I said and stood up.

  Bhola did not even look in my direction. He waved his right hand in the air as if to say, ‘Go ahead and do your work.’

  I went into the office and called for Dakkhilal. ‘Look, feed him until he’s full,’ I said. ‘Make sure there’s plenty of everything.’

  ‘Sir, that crazy … gentleman—’ he said, most certainly adding the word ‘gentleman’ to ‘crazy’ for my benefit—‘wanders around Chowk and Civil Lines all day every day, that’s why I didn’t let him come in here!’

  ‘When did you see him?’

  ‘Sir, I see him every day. When I go to take letters and paperwork to the Deputy Sahib I see him. He wanders around all day long. He never sits down. He never gets tired. He’s completely insane.’

  ‘Well go on and feed him anyway. Stand near him. If he asks for anything bring it to him.’

  When the houseboy had gone away, I pulled some files in front of me, trying to push Bhola from my mind. But I must have taken care of only three or four files when my mind returned to that room, that verandah and that balcony on Mall Road.

  One day, we had grown bored from sitting in the room since morning. A little before evening we went out and sat on the balcony with our books. But perhaps we were tired of reading. We started chatting. Nowadays, people are selected for the I.C.S. in the very first competition, but it was nothing like that then. There was no shortage of competitors who sat for the competition three times and ruined their eyes with studying, but never met with success. Bhola told me that he had two more chances—his father had had the foresight to enter his age as two years less than it actually was—and because of his previous ranking he had got an offer for a job as an Executive Officer. He thought he would accept it after taking the exam. If he got into the I.C.S. he would quit the job; if he did not get in, he would continue to enter the competition until he turned thirty. He would definitely be made an I.C.S. officer at some point while working there.

  I was astonished by his self-confidence. I secretly decided I would do the same thing. If Bhola had not told me that secret of success I would have grown discouraged. In the end, I got in only after taking the exam five times. But at that moment, when he shared his secret with me, I laughed and said, ‘If the government knows what’s good for them, they’ll just keep quiet and take you this time.’

  ‘But the government isn’t that smart,’ he replied.

  And we both chuckled.

  ‘If I get into the I.C.S. just once,’ he said, ‘no one can stop me from going into the Executive Council. And if India ever gets Independence, I’ll live to see the day I am made an ambassador. You wait and see.’

  I sat and gazed at him, astonished. I felt sure he would be made an ambassador.

  I had been living there for a month or a month and a half. During that time I noticed that, after working tirelessly for several days, Bhola would sometimes disappear in the evening without telling me where he was going, and then return home rather late at night, and get back to his work with renewed zeal. I asked him where he went, but he tried to put me off. When I insisted he tell me and assured him that I knew how to hide my friends’ secrets in a deep well where the outside air would never reach them, he said abruptly, ‘I went to a whorehouse.’

  For an instant I was struck speechless. I felt I must have heard something wrong. ‘Do you mean a brothel?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, yes!’

  ‘What have you gotten yourself into?’ I asked. ‘If you get the clap, my friend, you can kiss both your P.C.S. and I.C.S. goodbye.’

  ‘I’ve taken care of that.’ And he proceeded to enhance my knowledge on the subject, explaining that science had made great advances in that area.

  ‘But have you abandoned your vow of being made an I.C.S. officer one day?’ I asked.

  ‘That’s the reason I’m doing all this.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘What I mean is: I was unable to concentrate continuously for a number of days; my eyes would be on a book but my mind would run off and wander all around. I c
ouldn’t sleep at night. Then I decided to get at the root of my restlessness. One should always have some kind of a safety valve. I can’t get married, and such is the state of our society, we can’t even get near the shadow of a girl. So, when it became impossible in every way to keep my mind on my work, I got up and went there, and then I came back.’

  I had got out of bed, wrapped the quilt around me and sat down on the charpoy to listen to what he was saying. When I heard his reply I laughed and said, ‘You say, “I went there and then I came back,” as if you just went to use the toilet and then came back.’

  ‘That’s about how I see it.’

  Then he changed his clothes, turned out the electric lights, lit the table lamp on the teapoy next to the head of his bed and lay down with a book.

  ‘Where did that pig Dakkhilal go! Get someone to bring me more bread and vegetables.’

  I looked up. Bhola had come into the office, his hands smeared with food. I pressed the bell angrily, all the while wondering how he had remembered Dakkhilal’s name after hearing it only once. The houseboy who was sitting outside the office came running in.

  ‘Look, where did that lazy boy Dakkhilal go?’ I thundered. ‘I told him to feed the gentleman and not to go anywhere.’

  ‘Sir …’ the other houseboy glanced at Bhola in his old tattered clothing, his gaze travelling to Bhola’s filthy hands.

  I stood up, even angrier. I rushed inside with my hand on Bhola’s shoulder, sat him down on the couch and then went behind the bungalow to call for Dakkhilal. I scolded him, asking where he had he run off to when he had been told to feed the gentleman. He started to say something about Rani Ma calling for him, but I refused to listen and ordered him to bring the gentleman more bread and vegetables and not to take them away until he had eaten his fill.

  After I had given my orders to the houseboy and patted Bhola on the shoulder, telling him that the food was about to arrive, I went back into my office and sat down. For a few minutes I worked quite diligently. But then my mind started to wander about, drumming up memories of those days spent with Bhola.

  When Bhola had first told me about his ‘safety valve’ I had laughed at his foolishness. ‘When that idiot gets the clap and starts boo-hooing over his wounds, he’ll figure out the meaning of safety valve,’ I said to myself. Bhola had gone to sleep after reading for a while, but I kept thinking about him for the rest of the night, and for the first time I was happy I had married a little sooner than usual and did not have to deal with such a situation. After I fell asleep, I dreamt that Bhola was ill, his nose was runny, his body was covered in sores—and then I saw him, a leper, sitting on a railway bridge, begging—but when I opened my eyes I found I was not sleeping, I was watching all this wide awake.

  But when Bhola disappeared again a week later and, on his return, began to recount his exploits, I began to feel quite excited about his adventures; I begged him to take me with him next time, no matter what.

  At first he tried to put me off, but when I insisted, he gave in. ‘Put fifteen or twenty rupees in your pocket,’ he said. ‘Let’s go.’

  ‘Let’s go.’ He said it like a true degenerate—one who has spent his entire life trekking across that particular desert—even though there was no way of telling from his face that he had ever been there.

  ‘I’ll bring some money, but I just want to take a look,’ I said.

  ‘There’s hardly a show on there,’ he laughed. ‘I go when I’m anxious; the exam is coming up soon.’

  But when I again expressed great interest, Bhola agreed to take me to see it all the very next day.

  ‘But you’ll have to act as though you always go to such places,’ he said. ‘If they figure out you’re just a spectator, not a participant, they won’t even talk to us.’

  ‘Don’t you worry about that,’ I said, ‘I won three drama prizes in college. I’ll put on such an act, they won’t be the least bit suspicious.’

  The next evening, I tossed an overcoat over my shalwar kameez, pulled on a nightcap, loafer style, and set off with Bhola. I left behind whatever money I had in the trunk, so I wouldn’t have any money on me and wouldn’t feel tempted. But I didn’t tell Bhola.

  First we went to a hotel on Beadon Road. Bhola was familiar with the hotel—so even I couldn’t hear what he asked for under his breath when he went to the counter. In response to whatever it was he had said, the butler took us inside to a room with two beds made up in it, and said, ‘This room is ready right now.’

  ‘What did you say to him?’ I asked, when the butler had gone away.

  ‘I asked him if we could get any goods here, or what.’

  ‘What does “goods” mean? Did he get what you meant?’

  ‘Yes, they understand everything in Indian hotels. If it’s an English hotel you ask if there are any “game girls” or not.’

  Just then the door opened. Bhola said, ‘Look, just make sure they have no idea we’re only here as spectators.’

  ‘Don’t you worry about that, we’ll just take a look, then go,’ I said, just to say something, but my heart was beating fast. I did my best to hide any sign of my anxiety.

  The butler entered with a girl. The girl was not really a girl, she was a woman, full-breasted. She was fair and ripe, a healthy woman with a beautiful body. She must have been about thirty—she was only two inches taller than Bhola and about the same height as me. Everything about her was fine, but she squinted slightly and that one flaw destroyed all her beauty.

  The butler left her in the room and went away. For a moment, the room was shadowed by silence.

  And during that one moment, I suddenly wondered, ‘Why did I come here? What right do I have to sit here looking at this girl and judging her beauty this way? It’s true I don’t have any sisters; my wife is sitting at home enduring the pangs of separation while she waits for me to become an I.C.S. officer. She’s more beautiful than this squinty girl. But this girl is also someone’s sister or wife. Who knows why she was reduced to working at this hotel?’

  Then Bhola asked her softly, ‘What’s your name?’ Quickly I recollected my duty.

  ‘Rose!’ replied the young lady, pretending to be a little bashful and turning her squinty gaze to the floor.

  After that Bhola could not think of what to say. Or perhaps he was thrown into a quandary. The girl lifted her eyes to me, and, a little startled, I managed somehow to gaze at her lustfully—I smiled and recited a couplet:

  Roses don’t bloom dry on my lover, only

  when she becomes a rose does her body smile

  ‘Wah!’ The girl’s forced modesty turned to a bold smile. She lifted her squinty eyes to me and thanked me for the couplet.

  Just then the butler came back and raised his eyebrows in query. Before Bhola could say anything, I motioned to Rose to go outside.

  When she was gone I went up to the butler, pulled my hat forward a little more and winked at him, saying, ‘Yaar, you could’ve given a little thought to the difference in age between her and us. Bring us something fresh. What kind of a washed-up hen was that?’

  ‘Right now she’s the only one,’ responded the butler, a little shortly.

  ‘Okay, so we’ll come again. Bye bye,’ I waved and I took off, as if I had not come with Bhola, Bhola had come with me.

  When we got outside, Bhola said, ‘But yaar, the goods were nice.’

  ‘Forget it!’ I said with revulsion. ‘I was suffocating in that place.’

  ‘But you didn’t look at all bored,’ Bhola said. ‘You put on such an act it was like you’d been playing this game for years.’

  ‘It was an act, that’s all, all I really wanted to do was get up quietly and leave. Come on, let’s go home now.’

  But perhaps Bhola’s appetite had been whetted now that he had seen the meal. He said, ‘No, no, come on, I’ll show you the Grand Hotel.’

  ‘I’ve seen it before. I’ve had enough.’

  But Bhola’s desire had grown stronger. The more I insisted o
n going home, the more he begged to go to the Grand Hotel. ‘You don’t have to do anything, you can just watch,’ he said, and then with some irritation he added, ‘First you insist on coming and now, like a child, you start whining to hurry up and go home. If you’re just scared of going to hotels, there are dozens of whorehouses around here.’ My enthusiasm had completely subsided, but I was the one who had rooted Bhola out to come here, so it seemed wrong to leave him and go home. I set off with him towards Station Road. I told him he could do whatever he wanted, I would just sit quietly.

  ‘Oh come on, you can come too,’ he said. ‘When the time comes, I’ll send you out of the room. I didn’t even say anything back there. Just watch this time! I don’t know any couplets, but …’ and he winked.

  But my mind was wandering off on rugged paths. I wasn’t listening to what Bhola was saying. After walking about two miles, during which it was only Bhola who spoke most of the time, we arrived at the Grand Hotel. It was about a quarter past nine. The building was quite splendid—the words ‘Grand Hotel’ were written on crescent-shaped signboards over both gates. Since the bar was closed by now, there was not much light outside and the splendour of the building was all the greater in the semi-darkness. I would never have had the courage to go there by day, let alone at night, but Bhola had already been there once or twice before. He went forward and spoke with a man who looked like a chauffeur, wearing a khaki uniform and a nightcap like mine. Later, we found out he was the hotel’s guide. He took us directly from the outside of the hotel into a room where he told us to take a seat, and then he left through an inside door.

  The room was not very large. There were two bare beds in it, one dressing table and nothing else except two easy chairs. I was a little tired by then from walking two or three miles, so I sank into an armchair. Bhola sat down on a bed frame.

  The next instant, the guide sent in a beautiful plump girl of medium height. She came and stood next to the bed.