Cities Joyojeet Pal

Madras

“Don‟t give money to beggars”

I remember Paati, my grandmother, pointing out to me that the beggars on the streets of were all part of a larger mafia run out of Pudhupettai.

“Even Sivaji can learn some acting from them,” she said as two sets of leprous fingers rubbed against each other in a fervent plea for a meal in exchange for the Lord‟s blessings. I disagreed. Sivaji Ganeshan, who owned the face of vibrating contortion of cinematic tragedy, could make Paati part with much more with a shuddering jaw, despite his flawless purple suit and clumpy mousse. Perhaps, I thought, the pleader ought to invest in ticket to a Sivaji movie for a few tips, or perhaps Sivaji had something other than his histrionic ability to evoke emotion in Paati.

While the senior beggars moved us none at all, the kids got a bit further. Sometimes a kid would come up to us as we walked around the shops of , attracted like a moth to her crisp Kanjivaram saree. “Mother, mother, mother, I haven‟t eaten for two days, mother,” he would say, tugging at her saree without actually touching it. I noticed then how his little hand would just breeze at the edge of the saree rather than grip it and pull.

In my early indoctrination into untouchability, I realized that not only her skin, even her clothes were out of bounds. Had the boy gripped the sari enough to strain her shoulder, Paati would have had to reach for something to whack him without touching him, and thereby ended all possibility of continued dialogue. This instead would elicit the expected reaction, “Don‟t touch!” which made more headway towards annoyance than the elderly leper‟s plea did towards melancholy.

Paati told me how back in the day, there was no problem like this. Beggars sat outside temples and did not bother you, you gave them money if you wanted to. “See the courage of this little boy! Shameless.”

She was consistent in her policy towards beggars. She basically never paid. What was probably more interesting to me was watching her interactions. She did not really need to react, but she frequently felt the need to, specifically when I was with her. For her, this was a part of my education. Each retort was her way of arming me for life‟s inconveniences. “Great Actor!” she barked, “Stop pretending, you‟ve eaten very well. Now go away.”

Over the years, I had learnt much:

“He has eaten very well, just pretending.”

“His mother is not dead, just pretending.”

“She hasn‟t come from the village and lost all her money, just pretending.”

Cities Joyojeet Pal

“That plaster cast is a fake, just pretending.”

“He is not a cripple, just pretending.” - “But Paati, he has no legs!”

“Summa, these fellows cut off their legs so that they can make money begging.”

As a six-year-old, I wasn‟t sure who „these fellows‟ were, but I learnt early that begging was an insidious business.

It had drizzled lightly that afternoon, and groveling on the pavement was more inconvenient than usual. The boy knew fairly well how much near tugging the sari meant a dead end. He took a quick glance at me, his tragic face transforming slowly to one of indifference, as he turned his attention to me. In that first moment of Indian manhood, I realized for the first time that I was tempted to react, as my 6-year old equal, in what ought to be preparation for many years of shooing beggars away from women I accompanied.

Before the pressure to react could move me to action, he scuttled off to another passing Kanjivaram, and made a pointed accident to leap through a small puddle, splashing the edge of Paati‟s saree with some fresh muck. “Ayogya! (useless one!)” she screamed in instinct as the boy made off without turning back. A policeman was standing just behind her, and she swiftly barked, “Oi constable, catch him - See he did it deliberately!”

“Ay!” the constable shouted perfunctorily at the running boy. Then he turned back to her, “Let it go, mother.” Since we had picked up enough attention, the boy had to forego his next customer and just shoot for the alley to stay clear of attention.

“Let it go? Decent citizens are being harassed and you want me to let it go? This is a big mafia, that is the problem. You must be involved too!” That afternoon was multiple initiations. Now, I had to react to the police officer, confront the degeneracy of the state, and find that I caught a striking pain at the base of my spine whenever deeply embarrassed. Not till I was led away in cuffs for software piracy seventeen years later was I ever as embarrassed in public like this. My grandmother had just accused a policeman of being involved emotionally or economically with a street beggar. Given that a good part of the street had stopped whatever it was doing to turn around and face the constable, he probably felt a good share of what I was going through that moment.

Besides being a big mouth, my grandmother was also reasonably street-smart, and immediately estimated a few of the consequences of what she had just said. Luckily, the cop too would probably like a confrontation with a geriatric woman to go no further than this. Following a moment of brief silence in which both Paati and the cop stared at each other waiting for an escalation of altercation or conciliation. Paati made the first move, “Younger brother, you should help us, isn‟t it?” She shone like mother nation as she said it with the endearing vulnerability of an aged freedom-fighter just hit on the head with an imperialist baton by the British masters.

Cities Joyojeet Pal

“Please go, mother. He has run away now, but I will definitely catch him the next time,” he answered. And all was well with the world.

As we walked away towards the Saree shop, Paati turned to me and said, “Nothing will ever change in this country.”

**

Twenty four years later, I was back in Mylapore. I had to find „Amutham Fancy Store‟. It was supposedly by the temple pond, the most crowded part of an already overstocked neighbourhood. Despite the calamitous shock of populace around the Kapaleeshwar temple, I stuck out like a goiter. I did not like to stand out anywhere, but especially not in Madras. It was one thing being the only brown man on a street in Helsinki, but the feeling of being an outsider in your own home is thornier on several fronts. I am still not sure what scent emanated from my stonewashed jeans that made it so obvious that I wasn‟t a temple-going kind, but seemed to me that everyone around amply well saw me for the tourist I was that moment.

Mylapore, one of Madras‟ central shopping locations, was something of what a city planner would call a mixed-use neighbourhood, with residences alongside businesses, public services, and God, frequently all co-located. Everything was built around a massive temple and its adjoining tank, one of the oldest neighborhoods in the city. It was the instant first image in my mind when I thought of the Indian urban ambiance. As far as the retail trade goes, it felt like the Indian tongue stuck out at the idea of the Walmart experience. There was no anonymity. Every transaction was a deeply personal exchange, everyone had to deal with people. A slip of eye contact would destine whether you‟d turn customer for flowers, for a temple guide, for bangles, or for alms. My goal at Mylapore would be to walk straight to the shop I needed to get to, and walk straight back to the car and out of here.

This was my first time back in Madras in almost seven years, and probably my first time in Mylapore since Paati. Most of my time here since returning had been around the broader avenues of Mount Road and and the redeveloped areas across the . I was amazed, frankly, how wrong Paati was. So much had changed. Paati herself was dead.

I was told it was the techie‟s city, and I believe it. I still remember the day I was leaving to go to the US for the first time seven years ago. The wounds of my public slapping at the hands of the police at the rarest of rare public round-ups of software pirates at , for buying a copy of Windows 95 still rang fresh in my ears. On the way to the airport, my father told the taxi to take a detour on Mount Road past the Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) building, so that I could see admire one last time. For a frugal man who would insist on the shortest route even where there wasn‟t one, it was a momentous gesture. At thirteen floors, the LIC building was the pride of the city. It was the insignia of the Madras jingoism of his boyhood, and that of every film producer in town, as

Cities Joyojeet Pal commemorated through their featuring the edifice in almost every major movie from the sixties and seventies. The detour through LIC also meant we would drive over the Gemini Flyover, the first in Madras, the one superstars Kamal Haasan and Rajnikanth rode down on their Enfield motorbikes en route simulated daredevilry.

It was for me that the city had changed. “This is the city of the techie surprise!” I was told my friend Arvind. It was a curious little term, but quite apt. The techie in Arvind‟s eye was the software engineer who went abroad to cash in on the boom. I was one of that crowd. The reason why my group qualified for a surprise was that many, like me, were returning for the first time in several years, given as we were either waiting for our US green cards to come through or for the student visas to segue into work permits. We were the first returning batch, the unsuspecting recipients of the generous surprise.

Now the surprise.

For most people, urban change is represented through retail institutions. Our homes don‟t change much, and when they do, we expect it, because we plan for it. All the techies ended up back at the homes where they started, at least on the first trip. The neighbours were the same, the food tasted the same, perhaps there was more on TV. But outside of the home, there had been considerable surprise.

First, if you left in the early nineties (as I had) you left Madras when you needed to eat at a “Military Hotel” to get a nice fill of meat. In this, the most conservative of Indian cities, vegetarian food was the standard at restaurants, and Dasprakash for dosas (rice crepes) was your typical meal out, and the food was cooked by safe high-caste hands. The Military Hotel was a secular spot, with the sole exception that the name itself served as warning for the god-fearing Brahmin to stay out. Now the army did not own the military hotels, nor typically were the waiters or owners veterans of any combat. However, the nomenclature was entirely valid on several fronts.

The „Military Man‟ had to eat meat to grow big and proteinated to protect the nation. He also had to eat food cooked by whoever was available to cook it. Thus, the sin of meat was partially washed clean by the taxonomy of military hospitality. Years later, it felt like every restaurant I had casually strolled into over my first week back here served meat. They did not even bother to put up a warning of “Veg and Non-Veg” which they consistently did in the past alongside “A/C and Non-A/C” for discerning customers. Now I don‟t know where that flashy Madras nightlife depicted in the movies came from, but I clearly recall that back then if you wanted to eat rice pancakes after 9 PM or so, you were pretty much out of luck. If you wanted to go party, you‟d do better taking a flight to Bombay because save for the bar at the Adyar Park hotel with its Anglo-Indian guitarist and crooning partner, you could pretty much expect to go enjoy peanuts and Arun‟s triple chocolate bar by the sea breeze by the newly erected MGR memorial. Now, Adyar Park was with the Sheraton group and their disco was the bomb in town, not to mention the smattering wonder of clubs owned by politicos and frequented by real men and women, not movie extras.

Cities Joyojeet Pal

Then, the malls. As a disclaimer, it is true that we had the Nilgiris supermarket, with its plush aroma of lentils against tight plastic packaging, before Bombay or Delhi knew that groceries could be purchased in air conditioned store. But that was a bubble unto itself, clearly not representative of the city as a whole. The explosion of megastores was truly surprising to me. There were massive clothing stores which had separate sections for cooking pans and perfume and whatever else went even remotely with clothing. And the windows! Shops in Madras used to have little windows, sometimes a few display windows, but that was that. There were entire floors with glass walls, and glass elevators sticking out of the facades for customers to gloat at the proletariat outside. Even the escalators had become commonplace while I was gone. Okay, so there was the occasional crowding at the first step of the escalator when an entire family would gather to assist the grandmother get onto this remarkable invention, but there were others, men with sarongs or women with saris dragging the dirt, who embarked and disembarked as though they had been doing it daily. How distant seemed those days when tourist buses drove to the LIC building to show villagers the new wonders of Tamil architecture.

But nothing had changed more than the streets. It wasn‟t just a metaphorical song that I could no longer find my way home. It was true. It felt like there were flyovers with unmarked exits everywhere. Nobody went to drive on the Gemini flyover, just to drive on the flyover anymore. That wonderful thrill of flight as the car started the ascent up the flyover with the pedestrians and cylists moving at ground level was now humdrum. The slightly queasy feeling and rush of blood to the head when the car started its descent down the flyover was so archaic that I felt like a bumpkin admitting I ever felt that.

But as a „techie‟ riding the internet revolution myself, it would comically be I that cast the first reservations on this change. I was returning after seven years to a city that was once mine. My association with the city was the key to my identity. But even calling it Gemini flyover now was a sign of my own recidivism. It had been renamed Anna flyover a long time ago. Even Madras was now Chennai.

Now, there I was, pondering over the gratuitous change in the city in the back-seat of an air conditioned car in Mylapore. No more buses for me, certainly not auto rickshaws who lost me as a customer ever since they introduced flexible pricing. I decided to cough up the ten dollars a day for an air-conditioned car with chauffeur instead of two on auto. The annoying possibility that the prices had been upped fifty cents for my tight jeans would further entrench me in the belief that I was no longer a son of the soil, that I was fair game, like the tourists.

But back in Mylapore, there was something comforting. There were a few changes, but a lot of the old shops were there, the street seemed like it hadn‟t been widened. The population density certainly had not changed.

A young boy came up to the sun-shaded window of my rented car. There was no Paati for me to turn to anymore. Now I was the potential philanthropist or sucker. My instinct was to wait. Perhaps if I could rationalize the decision long enough, the traffic light would

Cities Joyojeet Pal turn green and the car would make the decision for me in lieu of Paati. The boy said the usual, “Please help me, I haven‟t eaten.”

Since I was in no urgency to cough up change, I thought to what motivates people to respond to a plea. My mind went back to New York where beggar is a politically incorrect word. “Spare change for some booze” “Spare change for coffee” “Spare change to start a revolution” and then to gangland assassination legends from : “Please, spare my life, I have little children.” or molestation legends, “Please spare me, for God‟s sake”

I was told that what the philanthropist does not empathize with seldom makes for a good marketing pitch. Now I had never known hunger, and frankly, Paati‟s words of wisdom for beggars‟ histrionics, “They are all pretending.” and that sealed the case for the boy. The window between me and the boy stood him at a substantial disadvantage. If the window had been light enough for him to have seen my face, he could have gauged better my propensity to crack under his pleas. But perhaps precisely for this purpose, hired taxis in Chennai had dark-enough one-way windows in which the kid could mostly see his own face in reflection.

Paati was from the conservative school, which believed that begging is never to be encouraged. This was a simple political message. The liberal school, which I thought I belonged to, felt that there were the needy, and they should be assisted in some way possible, but that these were easily overshadowed by the opportunistic, which should be appropriately weeded out in making assistance decisions. In short, like most liberals, I had caveats.

I subscribed to conventional wisdoms on this matter. Children who beg should never be given money, since they should in school, women who beg with children in their arms should never be encouraged either since they were unethically using the child, and adult male beggars, generally few and far between, should not be encouraged because they plan to blow it on booze. In other words, money is hard to come by, and now that I had earned it, it wasn‟t for me to waste it on someone who could earn it too.

That still left the old and the infirm who could not earn it. Of course, even within those categories, there were exceptions. Beggars with minor mutilations could easily get jobs, and therefore ought not to be encouraged to beg. The blind frequently sold lottery tickets or combs on the street so some of the blind beggars could look for inspiration in their examples. Finally, the infirm when accompanied by assistants who did the begging for them were almost certainly never to be helped since the able-bodied assistant would invariably keep the money and spend it on booze.

The boy‟s instinct for self-preservation worked very well because he had a good knack for locating those that were potential customers and those that weren‟t. He had quickly moved on from my car. Typically when that happens, other beggars at the traffic light realize likewise that a specific car is not worth the investment. But one couple at few cars away had not seen the boy take off.

Cities Joyojeet Pal

It was a blind man, probably in his thirties, accompanied by a woman who took him from car to car and placed him in front of each window and held out her hand with a little plate. He was very well dressed for a beggar. Clean shaven with his hair neatly parted, a short sleeve shirt and clean brown trousers. His accomplice on the other hand „looked more like a beggar‟ – scruffily dressed in a torn sari, her hair matted, covered in dirt.

The two made an odd couple. The man, with a half smile, seemed happy to be along on the ride. He said nothing at all to any of the cars he was placed in front of, neither did she. She held him by the right elbow, took him to the first car, put her hand out, waited a few seconds, then moved on, and so on. The woman had an urgent sense of purpose about her and spent no time on wasted expression. As she stood in front of one car, she would look to the next and chart their path past the fenders and bumpers to the next car. She did it with a swiftness that made you wonder if her companion was an inflatable dummy or a man with perfect sight.

I was watching them past several cars. I wasn‟t sure what was my motivation in pulling down the window, but I did. Perhaps the man‟s face was one of such peace that I needed to see it closer. Perhaps I needed to get a cleared look to see if he was really blind. Perhaps in my mind I had settled on a one-rupee donation for this traffic signal, and the least offensive customer for my generosity seemed to have stood up.

The woman caught on to the opening window with characteristic haste. In a moment, they were over at the car, and she placed the man in front of me, with his hands a the window. I opened the window further and I put the coin into the little plate in the woman‟s hand and prepared to put my window back up. She had already turned her face in surveying the rest of the traffic away by the time the coin landed.

But the man stood frozen, as though the transaction was incomplete. I saw her tugging at his elbow, first as she looked around the other cars at the signal, and then at his face. He stood with his hands now opened with palms facing the open window. She tugged him harder, but he stood planted, smiling wider now. The traffic signal started to get restless in the anticipation of green.

His two hands stayed planted vertically, at the level of my face, as though in gracious blessing. I wondered if this was a moment of cinematic beauty, if his hands were held out in approval of my return. As if the change I had wanted to undo was hidden in my first human contact.

With an expression of absolute delight, he turned to her. “Wait here for a moment. How cool it is…..Aaaah! Air conditioned car!”

I waited with my window open, looking straight at his sunglasses, convinced they hid nothing. I wonder what Paati would have said.