The Priest and Robert de Niro

The Priest and Robert de Niro

We would meet every afternoon in Rajiv's room on the first floor,
because that was the smoking room. It was always kept open, a chair
propped up against the door and the smoke lingering like the smell of
burning leaves in a garden. It was odd that the smell of stale
cigarette smoke should remind you of the world outside, but the Bombay
monsoons were like that. They kept you locked inside the four walls of
your office room, curtains drawn, staring down at your files, your
fingertips stained an inky grey. You could go mad if you kept the
curtains open, because the clouds descended upon the sea with such
force that it seemed as if the skies were crumpling into the world. You
had to forget about the world outside for at least three months, every
day, until it was time to go home. Then you had to rush to the trains,
push into the packed locals, and shift from foot to foot all the way
until you reached home some two hours later. That is if the trains
didn't stop midway in the knee-deep brown water.

So Rajiv would send his peon to get chai, and we'd all meet in his room
and shut the door behind us, and we'd talk, sometimes, and the men
would sometimes just smoke quietly, because there wasn't that much to
talk about, and besides how could you think of new things to say day
after day, week after week? We'd gossip desultorily about work, about
the tenth floor, where all the bosses sat, and I would sometimes wonder
what they would do in the afternoons, those bosses in the tenth floor,
because after all they had no bosses to talk about.

Sometimes we just needed a space to vent. We were all on shoestring
salaries. Sachin told of how after he moved to the suburbs, his monthly
expenses had come down by a third. Manju told of her tall, hefty
mother-in-law who had wrapped herself in a razai in winters and held
her asthmatic baby granddaughter in her lap through the nights. Now
that her mother-in-law had died of cancer, Manju had no one at home, so
she was quitting her job.

All of us had stories to tell. In our jobs, that's what you have: not
much, but stories, you have stories, such tellable stories that you
have to tell them. Leela, who was late for the session one afternoon,
told of the woman whose funeral she had gone to that day, who, after a
lifetime of paan-chewing, had got cancer of the throat and had been on
life support in the hospital, and who went blind in the last two days
before she died. Amit told of the old sunken-cheeked tribal who came to
his office everyday to claim that he was still alive. His sons had
forged a death certificate and got his land transferred in their names.
The old man didn't exist any longer in official records, and no one
knew how to bring him back to life. For every witness who was willing
to say the old man was alive, the sons had five people agreeing loudly
that he was dead and had been cremated, and that this was a fraud.
Jamila told of her days in the Education Department, when a senior
medical student killed a freshman, chopped his body into small pieces
and threw them into the river. We winced when we heard this
story.

Rajiv had one of the strangest stories. He had been posted in all sorts
of remote forest areas. In one such place, he claimed, eligible young
men had to wear black burqas while traveling in rickshaws. Because
otherwise they could be kidnapped and married off by force to women
they had never met. That was the only way fathers could marry off their
daughters if they had no dowry. Hah, we laughed, but half-believing
him. Anything was possible, after all; it was a huge country, and most
of us had only lived in the cities, where nothing happened.

There was an East European priest in one of the villages: Father Tomas.
Rajiv would sometimes have a drink or two with him on his way to the
powerful Kali temple in the forest, surrounded by tall, broad-leaved
teak trees. Tomas was young, blond, tall, the archetypal Aryan. Rajiv
didn't know what he was doing there. His English wasn't very good, but
he was fond of action movies. Jean-Claude Van Damme, Schwarzenegger,
that sort of thing. But his favourite of all time was Robert de Niro in
Raging Bull. He had of course seen Taxi Driver and the other Scorcese
films that had Robert de Niro in them, but Raging Bull was his
favourite. He had the video and would watch it repeatedly, whenever
there wasn't a power cut, week after week, weekend after weekend. There
was nothing else to do in the village. And so Jake La Motta became his
role model, almost.

An unlikely role model for a priest, murmured Jamila. Wait, wait, I'm
coming to that, said Rajiv. The priest, obsessed, decided to start
boxing sessions in the village. He even managed to get a hooded
leopard-skin robe from somewhere. Quite possibly poached by one of the
boys from the forest. The hood made him look even more like a monk, and
the leopard-skin was a further symbol of asceticism. Then he chose a
tribal youth, Malu, as his boxing partner. Malu, who did a part-time
job sweeping the crumpled teak leaves outside the Kali temple in the
forest, was Tomas's chapel helper. He stayed in a hut next to Tomas's
house with his wizened mother bent over with age. Tomas and Malu would
box every evening, after prayers, for an hour. Soon the priest had
strong hefty biceps. Malu was smaller, but swift. They could go on for
hours like this - sweaty, silent, serious. They enjoyed their
bouts.

Rajiv told the story desultorily, with arbitrary detail, taking long
drags on his cigarette. He would stub out his cigarettes halfway, take
a sip of his chai, which he drank so long after it had been brought
that it was almost cold - and then he'd glance restlessly at his
computer screen before returning to his story. He was almost unwilling
to tell the tale. But we, who knew his stories were good, waited. Even
the rain, which had calmed to a soft murmur outside, seemed to wait
with us.

Father Tomas zealously believed in healthy outdoors activity. He
organized gloves from somewhere, and a small group of boxers, four
pairs, to practise every day at dusk. There they would assemble, in the
little chapel outside the forest and on the way to the Kali temple,
and, after a little pep talk and a prayer, they would jog outside in
their t-shirts and tattered shorts, dance up and down like professional
boxers, ready for a bit of fistfight. Initially, as always in a
village, everyone was curious, and a small crowd would collect to cheer
on their favourites; besides, everyone thought this new form of prayer
was pretty good, what with fighting and all; but soon people got bored
and everyone went their own ways, leaving the boxers to slug it out for
themselves, without supporters and without cheers. Only Malu's new
bride Bomi - for his mother had quickly found him a wife in the middle
of all this boxing - would come out of her hut and watch, observing the
match from a distance. She was very beautiful, very quiet.

But life had to go on in the hours that the two men weren't busy
boxing. In the village, everyone knew everything, and no house could
hold a secret. Especially when the walls were so thin, made of sticks
and leaves. The whole village knew that Malu wanted a son. Everyone
also knew that there were no signs of a curve on Bomi's firm belly.
Tomas saw Malu getting drunk and beating up his wife every night. Bomi
was dark, young and lovely. She was easily the loveliest girl in the
village, but all over those slender limbs were fresh bruises where Malu
had kicked and slapped her. When Malu didn't listen to the advice that
Tomas gave him, Tomas began to issue warnings. When Malu didn't listen
to his warnings, Tomas acted.

Rumours spread like wildfire round the village. Tomas had challenged
Malu to a boxing match; the stakes were high. If Tomas won, he'd win
the girl her freedom. If he lost - but who ever thought the man would
lose? He was blond, tall, Teutonic. Tomas laughed. Anything you like,
he told Malu. I'm a priest; I have so little that you can take anything
I have. It was true: he had only the VCP and the Raging Bull video -
those were his most cherished possessions. But he shrugged. You can
take what you like, he told Malu. If you win.

There was a crowd that evening. Rajiv heard about it later, from his
driver. Tomas had won, of course, and Malu got drunk that night. He ran
into the forest and didn't return for days. Bomi, whom Malu had thrown
out of their hut, got a kind of freedom. She moved into the priest's
house. She had no other place to go, after all.

But several days later, Malu returned from the forest, red-eyed and
loose-limbed. The driver told Rajiv that Malu had challenged Tomas to
another match. But Rajiv was packing his bags by then for a transfer to
Delhi. The orders had been issued from the headquarters that day after
much pleading; he wasn't going to stay on here a moment longer, in case
the orders got cancelled. He would have liked to know how the story
ended, but he couldn't stay.

Once, years later, visiting the village to pray at the Kali temple for
his wife's health - because it was a famous temple and his wife was
very ill - Rajiv went to have a drink with Tomas.

Rajiv! Tomas was glad to see him. Come inside. Rajiv found that
everything had changed. Tomas had adopted the family - the young tribal
wife and the aged mother. He had moved to another house where he lived
in the same courtyard, they lived downstairs, and all the children of
the village still called him Tomas Baba. He had given up his robes and
wore t-shirt, jeans, and a black shawl wrapped tightly around himself.
Outside in the courtyard, there was a pale spotty child playing alone
in the dust. The child had fair hair. He wore a loose, hooded
leopard-skin, and gloves. He was punching a bag.

They went inside for chai. But as Bomi brought the tumblers, Rajiv
noticed that she looked like an old woman and had long burn marks on
her arms. On the VCP, Jake La Motta was wearing a hooded leopard-skin.
Scorcese was right to make the film in black and white, said Tomas, so
you can't see so much red. He was now a tour guide for foreign tourists
in the area. He showed them the best spots from where they could watch
the elephants drinking water.

But what had happened to the match? Did Malu lose again, asked Jamila
for all of us.

Long pause. Rajiv pulled on his cigarette. He looked at the rain
pouring down outside.

No, Malu won this time. When I met him, Tomas was wearing a shawl. As I
was leaving, I asked him - I couldn't resist - do you still box? He
took off the shawl. And I saw for the first time that his arms ended at
the elbows.

Malu, he told me when I gasped. I thought he would ask for her back, he
said, pointing his foot at Bomi. But she had been with me, so he
wouldn't take her back. I thought he would ask for this, he said,
pointing at the VCP, and I was ready to give it to him. But what would
he do with it? He wanted these - and he looked down at his elbows and
shrugged. You remember that scene, Jake and Joey have a fight? I mean,
Jake tells Joey to hit him, hard as he can? And Joey says, what does it
prove?

But you couldn't have lost to him, Tomas! You never lost to
anyone!?

Tomas was silent.

What happened to Malu? Where is he?

He went away. To the forest. Maybe to work on the river. There are many
ferries now. They always need men. Who knows? He never came back.

And Tomas turned to the television screen, where the steak scene was
playing. You overcook it, it's no good, it defeats its own purpose, he
recited like a chant, along with La Motta. Look, he'll push the table
over now, he said, and La Motta did. Tomas knew the film by heart,
frame by frame. Give it to the bitch, he yelled, waving his stump in
the air.

Rajiv's cigarette had burned to a long grey column of ashes in his
hand. He stood up to throw open the windows. The scent of moist earth
filled the room. That was how we knew the story was over, so we all got
up to go back to our rooms and to our files and wait for the next day's
chai session.