The Walls of Delhi by Uday Prakash

stuck to her aaji Putlibai’s lap and horsed around.
    That day Mohandas and Kasturi were busy weaving bamboo mats, bamboo pith helmets, and little purses woven from bamboo. They’d received such an enormous order from Vindhyachal Handicrafts – Mohanlal Marwari’s shop – that for the past ten or twelve weeks they’d done nothing but try to finish it. Kaba and Putli looked after the children. The order was for fifty mats, fifty hats, and thirty purses. Kaba got up from his cot when his cough wasn’t rendering him immobile and helped husk the bamboo; it was an ancient craft, and he had a lot of experience. Kasturi wove the mats as if her fingers were working a machine. Four-and-a-half year old Devdas had put a hat over his head and with a bamboo stick in hand was driving two-year-old Sharda as if she were a goat, shouting, ‘hurry up, get along!’; wee Sharda in turn crawled on all fours as best she could from one corner of the room to the other. Just then there was a knock on the door. It was Kasturi’s brother-in-law, Gopaldas, who, leaning his bike against the wall, came inside. He worked as a saw operator at Narmada Timber and Furniture at the bazaar, and the owner also sent him on errands to collect various small debts.
    Kasturi was delighted to see Gopaldas. It had been a long time since a visitor had come from a village near her home. After offering him something to drink and sharing a smoke, Gopal told Mohandas that he’d been at the Oriental Coal Mines three days ago on business. While there, he found out that Bisnathfrom Bichiya Tola had been working there under the name of Mohandas for the past five years as deputy depot supervisor, earning more than ten thousand a month. Gopaldas also found out that Bisnath’s father Nagendranath had gone to the clerk in the recruitment office and wrangled Mohandas’s employment letter out of him, then given it to his wayward son. Bisnath took advantage of the fact that the transcripts and diploma Mohandas had brought at the time of his interview didn’t have his photos on them, so he presented himself as Mohandas, and put his own photos where Mohandas’s photos would have been, then went to court and had all the documents notarised by the gazetted officer. Bisnath had transformed himself into Mohandas, son of Kabadas, caste Kabirpanthi Vishwakarma, and was taking home ten thousand a month as deputy depot supervisor, a position he filled with great confidence.
    Gopaldas had seen Bisnath near the mine at a food stall drinking chai. He saw the plastic ID card hanging around his neck: it was Mohandas’s name, but Bisnath’s photo. And on top of that, everyone drinking chai with him was calling him ‘Mohandas.’
    What’s more, Bisnath had left his home in Bichiya Tola village four years ago and had moved with his entire family to the workers quarters, called Lenin Nagar, where his wife made more than a few rupees with her own small time loan sharking; she also ran a shady chit fund. It was bizarre how all Bisnath’s fellow workers called him ‘Mohandas’ and his wife Amita ‘Kasturi Madam.’ Bisnath had not, like Mohandas, earned a BA, but rather was a tenth-grade drop-out; so rather than doing any work in the mine, he spent his time arse-kissing managers, skimming whatever coal he could, and busying himself with union politics.
    Mohandas’s mind was spinning as he heard what his brother-in-law was telling him. How could this happen? Even if the world’s turned upside-down, how can one man become another? And like this, out in the open, in broad daylight? And not just for the afternoon, temporarily, but for four whole years? And yet, in his poverty and powerlessness, Mohandas – given the days that he’d seen and the old stories he’d heard from Kaba about his own life – began to feel as if the officers and the hakims and the wealthy and the party members were so