The Walls of Delhi by Uday Prakash Page B

underling appeared immediately. Mohandas couldn’t make out exactly what the clerk said to him, but they were clearly words of scolding. He emerged from the room, drew the curtain, and looked Mohandas over from head to toe with a scowl. ‘What business do you have here? Go sit on the bench outside. How the devil did you get in here?’ Mohandas wanted to tell the clerk that his name was Mohandas, and that four years ago he’d been offered a job here at the coal mine, and that all of his papers were sitting in that office, but then what happened was that some other man stole his name and stole the job ... But Mohandas’s voice was too feeble, and the underling manhandled him over to the bench, and his utterances made no sense. There was a lump in his throat and he was stammering. Breaking free with one of his arms from the underling’s grip he managed to spit out, ‘ Dada, I need to see that clerk, just for a minute to pick up my papers and transcript.’
    The underling more or less pushed him over onto the wooden bench that sat against the wall, turned around, and went back. Mohandas knew that he’d never be allowed back in; this was his last chance. He called after the man, who was just about to disappear inside the employment office.
    â€˜Hey! HEY! Go tell that clerk that Mohandas, BA, is here, and he wants all the papers and certificates back he deposited here on 18 August 1997. What a bungle! Give you a nice room and big chair and then it’s nothing but anarchy? Grab a piece of paper, take down my name. Then go show it to your boss!’
    The underling’s jaw dropped. Here was a guy dressed in rags who looked like a hobo, yet the language that came out of his mouth was quite lucid, even eloquent, and his manner equal to a educated manager, or clerk’s.
    The man remained planted in the doorway and just stared at Mohandas: his washed-out, patched-up jeans; his mended, dirty checked shirt; his balding head, hair that’d turned half-grey; his lustreless, burnt-copper face, criss-crossed with crooked wrinkles; deep-set eyes, gloomy and weak, as if they were seeing a reflection of themselves; his cheap sandals stuck to his feet, their ancient rubber molested by penury and despair, now turned into dirt and wood and paper.
    â€˜You son-of-a-bitch!’ the angry underling muttered under his breath. ‘You crazy bastard! Hey motherfucker, you think the big man will help your beggar butt?’
    Mohandas surmised that the underling didn’t really believe what he was saying, even though god himself knew it was all true, so he stood up from the bench and walked toward the man with sure steps, maybe even with a little swagger. He had in mind that he would go in and try to explain that it wasn’t justthat Bisnath had taken him for a ride, but had played the entire Oriental Coal Mines for a fool.
    The way Mohandas was striding toward him, the impatience and swiftness, the taut wrinkles on his face that mirrored the distress in his mind, his deep-set eyes radiating an agitation, his dry, crusted, quivering lips, and the extreme upset in his words: the underling was scared out of his wits.
    â€˜Whoa! Whoa! OK! One more step and you’re out the door! Stop right there, old man, stop, STOP!’
    â€˜B-B-Buddy! Brother! Just hear me out...’ Mohandas said, a little on the loud side, trying to calm things down a little. But there was too much desperation and not enough supplication in his voice, and things got worse. The man straightened his back and screamed, ‘Get out! Stop right where you are or I’ll rip you a new hole, old man! One more step and out on your arse!’
    Hearing the shouting and screaming, four or five guys emerged from the office. They were dressed like higher-ups, and gave Mohandas the hard once-over.
    â€˜Who is this? How’d he get in here?’
    â€˜Where’s security officer Pandey? He chews tobacco and sleeps on the