The Walls of Delhi by Uday Prakash Page A

powerful, they could turn anything into anything: a dog into an ox, a pig into a lion, a ditch into a mountain, a thief into a gentleman. Mohandas could hardly catch his breath. O guru, what kind of time are we living in when not one person in four long years has been able to step forward and say that the man working at the Oriental Coal Mines who calls himself Mohandas and earns ten thousand a month isn’t Mohandas, but Bisnath; that his father isn’t Kaba, he’s Nagendranath, his wife isn’t Kasturi, it’s Amita Bhardwaj, his mother isn’t Putlibai, but Renukadevi, who isn’t from Purbanra village, but lives in Bichiya Tola? Who doesn’t have a BA, but who dropped out of tenth grade?
    Mohandas lost focus that day and kept stopping weaving the mats. His gaze wandered off and he became lost in thought. His hands slipped as he wove the bamboo, and he nearly cut his thumb with the sickle. Katuri kept an eye on him the whole time, knowing exactly the kind of roiling was going on inside. She took the knife from his hand and said, ‘The sun’s a bit much today, why don’t you wash up and have a rest?’
    The next morning Mohandas caught the seven o’clock bus and set off for the Oriental Coal Mines. The night before he couldn’t sleep. The bus arrived at the mine at half past ten.
    Who could he go talk to? That was the first problem. He didn’t know anyone. On top of that, the way he looked would make it hard for people to believe that he was the real Mohandas who’d graduated with a BA at the top of his class at M.G. College, and whose photo just a few years ago was in the newspaper. Another problem was that he didn’t have any copies of the newspaper, and therefore wouldn’t be able to point to the photo and say, ‘Look, that’s me, Mohandas, son of Kabadas, resident of Purbanra, district Annuppur, Madhya Pradesh, the one who a few years ago got his BA at M.G. Degree College, the one who graduated at the top of his class and was number two in merit. See the resemblance? It’s me, Mohandas!’
    It wasn’t easy, but Mohandas managed to sneak in through the gate and into the company compound. His jeans were torn at the knee, and were beginning to rip at the back, too, but Kasturi had patched those bits up with matching colours she’d used from scraps of fabric from a sari top or bedcover. Exposure to the elements and heat and cold and hunger and hard work had turned his skin a dark copper. Sorrow and calamity had scored his face with so many wrinkles that no one would ever believe he was younger than forty. Enduring want and quietly eating insult and injury had made the hair on his head and all over his body a little greyer. Mohandas was in his early thirties but looked as if he was in his fifties.
    Mohandas stood in front of the same office where, four years ago, he’d brought his diploma and certificates, and where the employment clerk assured him that his name could never be crossed off the list since he’d had the highest marks for both the written and physical exams.
    And sitting in the very same office was the very same clerk. He had a bigger chair now and a bigger desk in front of him to match; the air conditioner behind his desk provided him with a constant cool breeze. Mohandas stood in the doorway watching him busily eating tea biscuits and drinking chai, while two people sat in front of his desk chatting with him, as if they had all the time in the world.
    At once the clerk noticed Mohandas, who quickly pressed his hands into a namaskar, and smiled a big smile with the hope that it’d jog the clerk’s memory. But the clerk looked put out – maybe he didn’t recognise Mohandas? He tried again, joined his hands again into a namaste and said brightly, ‘Sir, it’s Mohandas...!’ But by then the clerk had pressed the button beneath his desk that rang the bell. It had a hard clanging ring, and the