Five Past Midnight in Bhopal - Dominique Lapierre [71]
Just like on the day when the property deeds were handed out, Ganga Ram, Mukkadam, Salar the bicycle repairman and all the other members of the usual team directed arrivals to sit down in a semicircle around the teahouse. When there was no more room, Ganga greeted the crowd and signaled to the musicians to break into the first piece. Music was a necessary part of any Indian public gathering, much to everyone’s delight, and a raucous din immediately enveloped the assembly. After a few minutes, Ganga raised his top hat. The music stopped.
“My friends!” he exclaimed. “I’ve gathered you together to share in an event so happy I couldn’t keep it to myself. Now you’re all here, I’m going to fetch the surprise I have for you.”
He signaled to the musicians to clear a way for him. A few moments later, the little procession was back, to a cacophony of trumpets, a roll of drums and the crash of cymbals. Behind the musicians, walked the former leper with all the majesty of a mogul emperor. He was carrying in his arms his wife Dalima who was draped in a blue muslin sari embroidered with gold patterns. With her tattooed wrists and pendant earrings shining in her ears, the young woman was smiling and greeting people with all the grace of a princess. When the procession arrived outside the teahouse, Ganga and the musicians turned to face the crowd. The din of the trumpets and cymbals increased by another few decibels.
With a nod of his head, Ganga stopped the music. Next, throwing out his chest like a fairground athlete, he held his wife out at arm’s length as if presenting her as a gift to the crowd. Then with a face flushed with pride, he allowed Dalima to slip gently down to the ground. As soon as her feet touched the earth, she straightened up with a thrust of her loins and, cautiously, began to walk. Astonished and completely at a loss, the people of the bustees could not believe their eyes. There stood the woman whose silent torture they had witnessed for so many years. She was fragile and tottering, but on her feet. People stood up to get a closer look at the woman who had been so miraculously healed. Her husband had thought of everything; garlands of sweet-smelling yellow marigolds appeared. Padmini and Dalima’s son, Dilip, strung more flowers around her neck. Soon the young woman disappeared beneath a pile of garlands engulfing her from her shoulders to the top of her head. Ganga was crying like a baby. He brandished his top hat to speak to the assembly again.
“Brothers and sisters, the celebrations are only just beginning,” he cried in a voice choked with emotion. “I have a second surprise for you.”
This time, it was young Dilip who went off with the band to fetch Ganga Ram’s latest surprise. Dilip no longer “did” the trains. He was now a sturdy young man of eighteen who worked as a painter with his stepfather. He was known to have only one passion: kite-flying. His paper-and-rags kites were a potent symbol of an immured people’s fantasies for freedom and escape.
What the former leper would give his companions that day was a rather different means of escape. Preceded by the six musicians bellowing out a triumphal hymn, Dilip returned, carrying on his head a rectangular shape concealed beneath a red silk cloth. Dalima followed her son’s progress with the anxiety of an accomplice. Ganga ordered the young man to put the object down on a table that Mukkadam had prepared for the purpose. His mischievous smile betrayed how much he was enjoying his position.