The Soofganiots
Roy Lazarus
14 July 2009, 11:56It was a damp, gloomy morning – cloud speckled skies and occasional gusts of a weak but absurdly chilly wind – vestiges no doubt of last night’s merciless downpour. That had been bad enough by itself but what had made it worse a thousand times over was the civic corporation’s recent interest in the neighborhood; it had been inauspicious on too many fronts to say the least. They had dug up the main road, the one that led to the Paharganj side of the New Delhi Railway Station, with the apparent intention of repairing the rusting pipes that lay beneath, piling the caliginous, brown alluvial soil of the land up high on both sides of the trench.
The night’s great storm had seen it and had attacked it relentlessly, like only nature can, till the whole pile of dark earth had spread itself, in a marshier, muckier incarnation throughout the length and breadth of the busy road. Here and there, where there had been craters on the semi-tarred road, the damage the heavy traffic had in its incessant, indifferent passage inflicted on the path, and the result no doubt also of the inevitable neglect that afflicts most of the roads in this part of the world, there were now giant muddy pools. The water opaque with a lighter hue of brown than the surrounding mud, and several tiny rivulets followed the slope of the land and flowed faithfully into these miniature lakes. The refuse that used to line the street on any normal day, in small circular patches at fairly regular intervals had become indistinguishable from the sludge that had swamped the place. It was only when one walked in the mire, could one become sure, from stepping on tin cans and plastic bottles, that they were still out there somewhere, buried under the layers of slime.
It was also the first morning of Hanukkah. Sanil had stayed up for most of the tumultuous night helping his mother knead the dough for the many soofganiots that she would fry later this morning. Kneading dough was one of his secret passions, his amour caché so to speak. When he was a kid he would sit beside his mother, and beg her to let him knead, till, finally irritated, she would give in to his demands, and pulling out a small lump from the dough she was working on, hand it over to him. And he, with a twinkle in his brown eyes, would play with it for hours on end. Punching, and admiring the imprint of his diminutive knuckles on the dough, stretching it till it came apart in several smaller pieces, rolling them up into crudely shaped balls, and then pressing them back together into one single entity. He’d do this over and over and over again till the dough was no longer the smooth white it had looked when the flour came out of the mills, but instead became tinged with large smudges of dull gray from the dirt in his hands.
But last night it had been different, he hadn’t enjoyed it. In-fact, he had positively hated both kneading the dough and the dough itself, even though he had kept quiet and had refrained from saying anything out aloud to his mother. Perhaps it was because they weren’t making the soofganiots for themselves – they were Punjabi, not Jewish. They were making them so they could sell them to the guy at Ajay’s German Bakery, who in turn would sell them at a premium to the hordes of Israeli backpackers who lived in the numerous budget hotels that scattered the area, and who would come from the Chabad house, craving for some traditional Hanukkah delights.
So why be upset about it now, after all these years? They had been doing this from as far back as he could remember. Surely then, he thought, this couldn’t have been the right reason. Maybe it was just the depressing weather, having clouded up the skies, was now clouding up his bliss; the bliss that he should have felt holding that soft, malleable dough in his hands. That makes sense. His conscious, rational mind had demanded a reason for this uncharacteristic depression and that was the reason he gave it. It was satisfied and asked no more questions of him. But as he pressed the dough, somewhat savagely, he realized, as much as he didn’t want to, that that was not what was bothering him. It was Aditya that poisoned his thoughts – Aditya was getting married.
The cuffs of his jeans were rolled up to his ankles and he was wearing a pair of blue, worn out, flip flops. Unlike some of the daintier foreign tourists who were determined not to step into the slime, probably the filthiest thing that they had ever seen in their lives, and were jumping, quite ridiculously, from one high ground to another; unlike them he had embraced the sludge as his own and walked, dragging his feet along, right in the middle of the road where the sludge was the thickest and the crowd thinnest.
As he passed by where they had opened up the underbelly of the road he saw Parveen bibi standing ankle deep in mud at the edge of the trench, very bent, very hoarse, shouting without pause or breath at the workers below. Apparently they had messed up something and there had been no water in her taps since yesterday. She was convinced that they had done it deliberately, that someone from the neighborhood had put them up to the task. That it was all a conspiracy against her because she was Kashmiri and not Punjabi, and so in a broken voice that reeked both of paranoia and indignation she cursed the men in the choicest of abuses that the Kashmiri language had to offer.
The shopkeepers from the nearby shops had come out to watch the sight, not really unusual in this ghetto, grinning at her with delight, doing nothing to calm her down or to shut her up. Some of the foreign tourists stood and gaped at her menacing figure, while most of them scurried past, fearing it might turn violent or ugly. Sanil gave her a big smile and shouted at her from the other side of the road asking if everything was alright. She in turn gave him a nasty scowl, her face criss-crossed with numerous creases as she did so, and shook her hand with the universally recognized gesture of, I’ll give you a tight slap if you bother me again punk, and resumed haranguing the workers. Crazy old woman he thought to himself. But then again, anyone who had seen some of the things that she had seen, and been through some of the things that she had been through, would totally get her neurotic air.
She had come with her husband from across the valley, in search of peace and prosperity, back in the early nineties when the clash between the terrorists and the army had made living a normal life impossible for the peaceful civilians who had wanted nothing more than to be left alone. She was full of stories back then and Sanil and Aditya would come over to her house every weekend, when her husband would be away in Kashmir buying goods for his shop, Pashmina shawls and carpets mostly and other handicrafts, to eat with her and to listen to her stories.
They were mostly dark, cheerless stories, of horror and great suffering. Sordid images of the incomprehensible cruelty man inflicted on man. Sometimes though she would speak wistfully of her home; the serene lakes, and the beautiful alpine meadows; the dwarf rhododendrons, larkspurs and the fritillarias that she had known as a child; and the omnipresent blue poppies that intoxicated the air, for the valley was forever shrouded in mist.
Her husband had a make-shift stall here where he sold his wares, and she used to work as a domestic help in a nearby apartment. All had been well till, her husband was killed one night, by a bunch of irate, drunk Punjabi youths, who were pissed off because he wouldn’t remove his van from in front of their liquor shop, where it was blocking the view, and she was left all alone in this world. A leaky one-room house with cracks in every wall, and a bundle of unsold Pashmina shawls were all that her husband had left behind for her. Since then, everything for her had been a conspiracy, every individual either a Kashmiri or a Non-Kashmiri, and she even refused to talk to either Sanil or Aditya anymore.
Mika was stalking a young German fellow, following him around with sinister whispers of, “ Wanna smoke something my friend? I got pure Afghan ganja. You wanna buy?”, uttered in a very ridiculous sounding accent, part Cockney, part North American, part Punjabi, and the rest only God knows what, when he saw Sanil coming up from the other side of the street. The German guy was turning out to be disappointingly straight – he just kept shaking his head from one side to another, and muttering Nein. Sighing he gave up the pursuit. It’s like talking to the fucking Berlin Wall.
He waved to Sanil, who came right over. Did you hear about Aditya, he asked Sanil excitedly. Sanil replied, putting on an air of feigned nonchalance, that yes he had heard about the whole affair and that he wished them a long and happy married life, but well he didn’t really think it was that big a deal, really. But all the pretentious indifference in the world couldn’t soothe his heartburn, for when all was said and done, it was indeed a very big deal.
Aditya had forever been Sanil’s best friend. They used to live in adjacent buildings, two dull-red colored derelict structures that were built so close together that it seemed like they were joined together at the top. The ground floor of one of them was Monk’s Café owned by Aditya’s dad which specialized in Israeli dishes, while that of the other was a nameless Internet café that belonged to Sanil’s dad. Initially their friendship had been based solely on their spatial proximity as neighbors. But as they grew older, it became much more than that, much deeper than a mere neighborly acquaintance, and by the time they reached their teens, they were always seen together, conjoined like their two buildings, inseparable. The other boys of the neighborhood had thought this extremely queer, because everyone else their age would hang out together, en bloc. Playing cricket in some nearby fields, stealing country liquor and getting drunk, playing cards under the street lamps till their angry mothers dragged them back home, or heckling helpless cows and clueless foreigners. To them it was very strange that Sanil and Aditya wouldn’t take part in the activities of the gang, but would instead hang out like a couple of effeminate faggots.
Aditya and Sanil on the other hand had found solace in each other’s company. It had nothing to do with the neighborhood kids’ taunts however, they paid no attention to those unruly, scrawny bastards. For them it was a shared hatred for this place that brought them together, a mutual revulsion for the way of life of the ghetto and a common dream of eventual escape, of sweet deliverance. They would sit for hours on end in Monk’s café, casting careful, sideways glances, pregnant with awe and silent admiration, at the the firangs who came to dine there.
They watched them dexterously handle the knife, cutting up anything from pancakes to chunks of meat, with smooth, definitive strokes. They observed them lifting up the pieces to their mouth, elegantly, without spilling a single morsel. Such sophistication! After watching them eat, it appeared to them that the people of the ghetto must undoubtedly be the most primitive of the human race; eating clumsily and hungrily with their hands, tearing up their chapatis the way carnivores tear up the flesh of their victims, with their paws and talking and drooling as they ate spilling their food from their mouth all over. It now seemed to them intensely vulgar, almost bestial. They beheld wide-eyed, with wonder and amazement, the stuff the foreigners would take out of their pockets and lay on the table; maps, swiss knives, clay pipes, tobacco pouches, and wooden bongs. Aditya and Sanil saw all that and craved for a piece of their world. A strange land, a kind of paradise that appeared to them so civilized, refined, and pristine.
Of the two Aditya was the one who was more patient and forbearing, capable of enduring his lashes without complaining, yet plotting all the time his escape from hell. Sanil on the other hand was prone to sudden violent emotional outbursts. Often disillusioned, disappointed, and embittered he would angrily punch a brick wall, stamp his boots on the ground in rage, or throw stones with all his might and viciousness at some mangy dog or a passing cow cursing his luckand asking God, “Why did you have to send ME to this stupid place? Why ME?”
He often thought about the punishments that God was doling out to him, and wondered which of the two was more terrible; casting him off to be born in a dump like this, or giving him enough consciousness to comprehend that this was a dump. Aditya would in these times calm him down and appeal to his sense of reason. There’s no use arousing the animosity of the others living here, after all we might very well need their help in getting out. So they kept quiet, venting their frustrations only when alone or in each others company. It was their terrible consuming secret. To the rest of the world, which in their case wasn’t much, probably just the other guys of the ghetto, not including the backpackers since they were just transient passersby, they were just two very weird guys, always seen together; possibly closet gays, as everyone suspected.
While the older people of the locality kept quiet and left them alone. the other kids would often be demeaning, subtlety not being one of their strong points, and taunt them with cries of homos, faggots and hijras. At those times Sanil would swallow his pride quietly and try to ignore them, though his mind would keep throwing inane questions such as: which of the two is worse that I am being forced to listen to their crap or that I am being forced to suppress myself and not give them the punch on the nose that they deserve. Or, which is worse, that these motherfuckers are too stupid to understand me, or that they are too stupid to understand their own appalling stupidity. Finally he would sigh, and involuntary begin to speculate which was worse, that he had a mind intelligent enough to understand that this was a shit-hole, or that he had a mind that was stupid enough to throw up such asinine questions at times like these.
It was on a sunny Sunday morning about four months ago that Aditya met Ahuva. His father had been away for sometime, and he was behind the desk taking care of business in his absence. It was about eleven in the morning, too late for breakfast, too early for lunch, a time when the café usually remained empty, when she walked in. A massive backpack strung on her shoulders, she was wearing a light blue Sweetheart neck, a pair of dusty black capri shorts, and hiking boots that looked too big for her frame, and looking very lost and distraught. She said she was starving, and that she would have anything that was available quickly.
Usually at this time of the day, he would have told his customers that it would be an hour until lunch time, but seeing her sitting there, alone, hungry, helpless, scratching her thick, brown messy hair, something moved inside of him. He strode into the kitchen leaving the shop unattended. In about five minutes he reappeared with a plate of french fries and a pita bread. She took the plate from him eagerly, and ignoring the presence of the knife and the fork grabbed the fries hungrily and stuffed them in her mouth one after the another untill she almost gagged and had to pause for breath. When her intense hunger had been appeased somewhat, and when she had calmed down, she took out a map and a Lonely Planet guide book from her bag, smiled sweetly at him, and asked him if he could help her out.
In the course of their conversation which ultimately lasted six hours he learned quite a bit about her. She was from Tel Aviv and had been traveling around trying to savor the world with her boyfriend who had just completed his term in the army. She had been to Turkey, Iran, and Pakistan before coming to India. Her boyfriend though had left her at the last moment, in Lahore, abandoning her for a local Gujjar girl whom he had met at some stupid NGO meeting. Furious and humiliated, she wanted to show him that she was not dependent on him for anything, that she could very well travel and go on in life without him, and thinking thus had boldly come to India. Now she was here, all alone, confused, finding the country hopelessly complex and impossible to figure out. She had already been duped by her hotel owner who had charged her a thousand rupees for one night. She paused for a moment, and then quite suddenly broke down in sobs. You know, the truth is I AM dependent on him. I’m so pathetic. SO completely pathetic. He did not know how to react to this. His senses wanted him to go up to her and hold her in his arms. Comfort her and tell her that everything was going to be okay because he was here to protect her. Instead, he took her hand and squeezed it tightly and passed her the napkin.
That had been the first of their many lengthy conversations, and in due course, he did get to hold her in his arms and to comfort her and to say all those words that he had wanted to tell her the day when he had first met her. Four months after this first encounter when they were in Goa (he had become her tour guide, cum travel partner, cum boyfriend) Aditya proposed to her in a romantic little shack on Anjuna beach, where a local mariachi band was playing cheesy love songs, and she had been overwhelmed with joy and had happily said yes. They were planning to get married in the city, spend Hanukkah in Goa and then fly back to Tel Aviv in time for New Year’s and a pleasant family surprise.
He had had a long and singularly bad day today. He was tired of hearing everyone talk about Aditya and his blasted wedding. Everyone he knew would come up to him and ask him, at first with a neutral air, whether he had heard about the wedding. Then, when he would answer them bitterly, that yes he had heard about it, they would shake their heads and affect a voice of concern and sympathy so phony in its pretentiousness, that he felt like ripping their guts out then and there. They said various things: that they were sorry for him, that Aditya shouldn’t have left him, that they knew no one loved Aditya more than Sanil, but they all had the same mocking insincerity in their eyes. Although verbally sympathetic, they were merely taunting him, and enjoying what they imagined to be his discomfiture.
There was a big crowd at the German bakery when he entered it. Groups of people, mostly Israeli tourists, sat all around, playing pool, smoking, but most of them talking and eating livivots and soofganiots – his soofganiots. By the north wall stood a small menorah, one arm of which was lit. He walked up to the display case where they kept all the bakery items, and ordered a soofganiot for himself. He sat down in a corner, next to a Jewish couple who were holding hands, and giggling wildly.
People in love, how pathetic! He looked at them with distaste, the way they just wouldn’t stop laughing, the way he reached out his hand and wiped away the jelly from around her mouth, the way she looked at him with undisguised adoration, everything about them was so disgusting. Somewhere faraway, probably Aditya was doing the same thing with his newly acquired Israeli girlfriend, and his mind filled with loathing and aversion at the thought. He looked away.
He thought of old times, when they used to hang out together trying to chat up the firangs, trying to sell them drugs, or just plain gawking at them. He tried to remember all the things Aditya used to say, all the plans Aditya shared with him – become a drug dealer and get rich and run away, rob a rich man of his money and run away, rob a tourist of his passport and forge it and run away, and the one that he used to talk about all the time, hook up with a firang chick, marry her and run away. Run away. He had been so consumed with running away, so much in love with this idea, so obsessed with this plan of action – that it had ultimately succeeded in convincing his unconscious mind into thinking that he was truly, madly, deeply in love with Ahuva, succeeded in blinding him to the glaring, obvious love that had always been there for so long – right in front of him, right next door. As he was thus thinking, the boy from the bakery came in with his plate of soofganiot, and he set about devouring his own creation with uncharacteristic viciousness.
It’s a beautifully written piece. The writer is so subtle and sensitive. It’s a work by a master.
Hope to see more of him. :)
— Spain · Jul 24, 04:19 · #