The Boat People
Monks, I do not quarrel with the world. It is the world that quarrels with me.
1.
It was from the local paanwalla that Amitabh first learned about the boat people.
The paanwalla was busy cutting empty cigarette packets into thin strips to serve as light-sticks. He said:
“The people in boats are coming. They want to get into the city.”
“Why ever are they coming? They should stay in their country.”
“Oh, their country. The people can’t stand it any longer. The hunger – no jobs – people are starving. They are desperate.”
“Their government should do something about their condition.”
“The government is good for nothing. That’s why the people are looking for a way out.”
“So they want to find a way to get into our city.”
“Yes, saab.”
The conversation with the paanwalla didn’t quite register in Amitabh’s mind. He more or less forgot about it.
Then a colleague at the office brought up the subject: “You know, Amitabh, the boat people are here. Here too, like so many other cities in the world.”
“Yes, I’ve heard about it.”
“It’s a nuisance really. They’ll find any means to get into the city, and get lost in the crowds.”
“The police will be after them. They’ll be watchful about any intruders.”
“I suppose so. I hear the Government has roped in the navy, too.”
“That was to be expected.”
“I hope this cloud over the city will go away as soon as possible.”
Amitabh didn’t make a reply.
***
Again the subject slipped out of his mind. But at night, stretched on his single bed, Amitabh suddenly remembered. He didn’t remember it as a ‘subject’; he merely remembered it as a vague image of small boats gathered together far into the sea. Under the darkening sky, the boats looked dark and insubstantial. Till they were swallowed by the general darkness.
2.
That day after office, Amitabh was to meet his girlfriend, Maya, at a restaurant. He waited for her. When she came, she made the usual to do about the loads of work, and about being dog-tired.
Letting her settle down, Amitabh, over cold coffee, broached the subject which was on his mind.
“Have you heard about the boat people that are around the city?”
“Oh, yes, everybody is talking about the boat people. Where are they? Nobody I know has seen them.”
“And what’s this craze about them? I mean, there are enough poor and destitute people in the city. Why do we need to import foreign destitutes to make matters worse?”
“Maya, the logic of hunger and beggary does not follow rules, or etiquette.”
“I guess so. But I don’t like it at all.”
Maya had a long draught of the cold coffee, as if to cool down her inner being, then said: “Amitabh, are we going to discuss the plight of the boat people, in addition to the plight of the local people, all evening? Good heavens! Let’s talk about something cheerful. Let’s plan to go to a movie this weekend. There are some good watchable candidates. But you don’t know much about them, I’ll fill you up on all the masala movies.”
They discussed movies threadbare, and decided upon one. It was the duty of Amitabh to book the tickets to the movies.
That night again, a fleeting image of the boats reeled off before Amitabh’s eyes before he succumbed to sleep.
3.
The day after was the second Saturday of the month, which meant a holiday. Amitabh unknowingly drifted to the beach. It was 11 o’clock in the morning, and at that hour there were not many people on the beach. Loiterers, stray children, some walkers. But the focus of attention for Amitabh was the sea, the open sea that was visible on this stretch of the beach. Amitabh stopped and scrutinised the rim of the sea. There was a receding tide, and the open sea was throwing up half-hearted waves.
There was not a sign of a boat or anything. Even the local fishing boats had mysteriously disappeared. Strain his eyes as he might, Amitabh never could see anything on the sea, no tell-tale sign of a boat.
Then he thought, he was very foolish. Were the boats to appear at an instant’s notice? And what kind of boats were they? They couldn’t be ordinary, small-sized boats. Apparently with the families, leastways five or six men, traveled by the boats. They had usually a shack to protect them from rain and shine. Boats like that would be clearly visible, and with such visibility, no fools were likely to make their boats clear as day.
The boats should be searched for at another time. The one promising time was night. The boats could lurk and maybe elusively appear.
But is my mind racing far ahead! What was the evidence for the boats? And the so-called boat people? There were only rumours. No doubt the police and the navy were on the alert. But beyond that there was no tangible evidence of the boat people. It was as if, through his strong and obscure desire, Amitabh conjured up the ghosts of the boat people. This kind of thing had happened before. One’s mind is restless conjuring up things, and then the things become real.
And the sea was the ideal space to invoke the deities of the real. The sea is transcendence. That is why people go to the beach. They don’t swim or anything, like in the West; they just sit there and stare at the vast expanse. Their tired eyes take in the relaxation. The sea is the perfect place for ghosts and demons to materialise, to wade in through the salt waters, like the demons of Ravana.
But there was still time for that to happen. It was still too early. Consciousness is jumping ahead as it usually does.
4.
Consciousness is the disease. Consciousness is the primal sin, far earlier than the horror of sex, or the horror of incest.
One thing that has puzzled me is why people think of consciousness as light. They speak of the glow of consciousness. It’s the contrary condition.
Consciousness is darkness. Consciousness is a darkness in which we grope about. And there is no light at the end of the tunnel. Perhaps if people realised that consciousness is no more than endless darkness, they won’t be able to live. Let them have their illusions.
5.
“Look, Look! There they are!” Maya thrust the evening paper in front of Amitabh’s eyes. A front page picture showed the sea and, at the rim of the sea, some tiny objects that could have been boats.
“The Boat People! There you have it!”
“Looks like it,” Amitabh said.
“What are we going to do now?”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m sure this is just the beginning. What if they come in hordes? The police and the navy won’t be able to check them. It’s like the barbarian hordes of the past.”
“They have always been there, the barbarian hordes, as you call them. In one form or another. Their latest avatar is the Boat People.”
“But what are we going to do about them?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing? We must stave them off with all our might. Keep them at bay. Don’t let a single person enter our sacred soil.”
“Sacred soil! You are already talking like a politician, Maya!”
“There is no politics here, thank heavens. We must stand united. We must fight as one.”
“You mean we will fight on the beaches. Fight on the streets. Fight in the back alleys.”
“Yes. Now you are talking like a man.”
“But, Maya, why fight? Maybe they don’t want to fight. They want a few things from us.”
“You think so, Amitabh?”
“Yes. At least we must find out.”
“You think so?”
“Yes. Maybe they will teach us a few things.”
“Teach us!”
“Yes. Why not? There is a little dust in our eyes. We may be able to wipe it off.”
“Now, you are again talking in riddles.”
“Never mind.”
6.
Amitabh noticed that he generally spent his time in office distractedly. He saw the irony of it quickly. There was no trace of the boats or the boat people. There was only the flimsiest evidence of the supposed boat people. And yet, his mind was preoccupied with the idea. With the idea, precisely, and not the reality. The phantom boats were coming through his cerebral channels. Phantom boat people peopled his head. Amitabh’s distracted condition spurred a joke in the office: he, Amitabh was the advance guard of the boat people; he had been sent to see how things would work out; at the opportune time, the hordes would take over. Amitabh manly smiled at such pleasant fancies.
Every evening, his feet turned to the seashore. He had more or less abandoned the company of Maya. She found no point in turning up and down the limited strip of beach. When you have found the yeti, let me know, I’ll make a beeline for it, she said jokingly.
Amitabh soon found out that a walk by the beach in the evening was nonproductive. And will any of the boat people show their face in the crowded hour of the evening when people jostled by each other? It was a futile exercise. The thing to do was to visit the beach at late night, when the crowd had disappeared, and maybe, just maybe, one of the boat people might show his elusive face.
But at night, the police had increased their presence. They checked people’s credentials. Amitabh wrote for a Marathi paper occasionally, and on the strength of that, he secured a Press Card, with his photo and all. That made his passage through the throng of people and the police easy.
It was a bizarre situation. The newspapers were announcing that the Boat People were indeed coming in, that the conditions in the neighbouring country has deteriorated so much that people were driven to find shelter by other means. But in reality, there were no such people visible on the seas.
Amitabh continued his up and down circuits along the beach. From time to time, he glanced towards the sea. The sea in darkness presented a different face. If the sea in the day was transcendence, the sea in darkness was black transcendence. In pitch-black darkness, he had no view of the horizon. It was pure abyss. Once in a while the light of the patrol boats flashed in a circular fashion, which looked like a feeble attempt to encompass so vast a darkness.
As the night advanced, there were only policemen – and a stray journalist – for company. Amitabh struck up a friendship with a policeman with the eponymous name of Sakharam (like Chaucer’s Knight, Squire, Lawyer, or Reave is the Sakharam of the local police force.)
“The neighbouring country’s coastline was so far away. Then how come the so-called Boat People were gathering near our coastline?” Amitabh asked Sakharam.
“It is a strange thing,” Sakharam replied. “Or, maybe not so strange. It appears that all the Boat People of all the destitute countries are heading in our direction.”
“How come?”
“I guess they have heard that ours is a hospitable land – ahimsa, brotherhood, and all that – and they look upon our country as the refuge for all the homeless, hungry people of the world.”
“Of half the world,” I corrected.
“Yes. In the other half, there are no homeless, hungry people.”
“That’s what we think any way. That’s what their governments like to think.”
“So, all the hungry, homeless people crowd around our shores?”
“Yes, my friend.”
“People from Bangladesh, Vietnam, Cambodia, China, East Timor – and little countries that we don’t know the names of.”
“That’s exactly the case.”
“And you – my eponymous hero, Sakharam – you have to keep a perpetual vigil to keep them in check – I like you, Sakharam.”
7.
Gradually, Amitabh discovered that he had become kind of obsessed with the idea of the Boat People. I say ‘idea’ because the Boat People, so far hadn’t transcended the state of ideas. Every one was talking about it, but no one had seen it. The newspapers published what they claimed to be photos of the Boats, if not of the Boat People. In the photos were tiny, minuscule dots of the boats at the far edge of the sea.
The papers might have printed pictures of the Yeti, or the Loch Ness monster.
True, the papers might have printed aerial, enlarged photos, but the navy had forbidden that. Beyond the coastline, all territory was forbidden land.
Perhaps because of that, the obsession that had gripped Amitabh, had begun to spread to wider numbers. People talked about the Boat People on the bus stops, on the buses, in the crowded suburban trains, as they would talk about the latest cricket match. What the people were doing is to internalise the phenomenon of the Boat People, so that it would soon become part of their subconscious, and, given time and thought, of their unconscious, like the flying saucers.
8.
“Hello, Amitabh. I’m Maya here.”
“Hello, Maya, darling.”
“Darling! Do you mean it. I thought you had practically forgotten me, Amitabh.”
“Oh, Maya, why ever did you think of such a thing. It hurts me.”
“Because you have not phoned me for ages. You have not talked to me at all.”
“Look, Maya, I’ve been kind of lost in this matter of the Boat People. You know the Boat People, don’t you? I think we mentioned them once.”
“Oh yes. And ever since everybody has been talking about them.”
“Can’t blame them, can you?”
“I guess not. But Amitabh, let’s go this Sunday to Copper Chimney. Have nice food. But on one condition.”
“What is that ?”
“That, my dear Amitabh, is, the whole evening, neither you nor me will mention the ‘B’ People. I’ve had enough of the ‘B’ People.”
“Okay, Maya.”
“And then, we will go to a nice masala Bollywood film.”
“And stuff alternative dreams in our subconscious, I guess.”
“Again, darling, you are speaking in riddles.”
9.
One day, Suhas phoned. Suhas was an old friend of Amitabh. They talked or met once in a while.
“Amitabh, I have news to tell you,” Suhas said.
“What kind of news?”
“Very exciting. I know you are interested in the Boat People.”
“What is the news, Suhas?”
“One of those elusive creatures has found his way ashore. He is hiding in the city.”
“Really, Suhas?”
“Yes, my friend Shiv met him. Shiv promised him protection. Helped him in little ways. Getting food etcetera.”
“Is he still here?”
“He is. He is looking for ways to get into the interior. He is waiting.”
“Can we see him? Maybe talk to him?”
“Yes, that’s why I phoned you. I said me and my friend would like to meet him. We won’t tell the police. We are his friends. We may be able to help him get to the interior.”
“Let’s meet him Suhas.”
“He has agreed to come to the paanwalla shop at Kale Chowk at four in the afternoon.”
***
Much before four o’clock that afternoon, Suhas and Amitabh gathered at the appointed place. They bought cigarettes from the paanwalla, and donned a carefree air. After the cigarettes were finished, they bought paan. As a matter of fact, Amitabh didn’t smoke at all. And he hated chewing paan. But he did both things for the sake of an encounter with the BP (that’s the acronym they use for Boat Person).
It was now half past four. There was no sign of BP. Suhas was dejected.
“It appears the man has given us the slip.”
“Let’s wait a while longer. He may yet appear.”
They waited.
“Maybe the police have got him already.”
“Maybe. Or maybe he has fled to some place else.”
“We have waited in vain.”
“Still, it was worth it.”
“In what way?”
“Waiting itself is of value.”
“If that is what you believe, Amitabh, we haven’t waited in vain. Is that what you mean?”
“Yes. Nobody waits in vain.”
“I guess, it’s some sort of consolation.”
They dispersed.
10.
It is at such a point that the truth that consciousness is the disease hits home. Not a disease, it is the disease that pervades mankind. Many are the persons who are felled by this disease. Waiting agonisingly, continuously reminds you of consciousness, like a thousand pinpricks alternately pricking you even if in a benign fashion.
Consciousness is not light. (Nor a lighthouse!) The Boat People know that consciousness is darkness. Waiting for a person may be an abyss, waiting for entry to a place, days on end, is a greater abyss. It is at such a time that one understands consciousness is darkness.
11.
Suddenly, the pressure on the coastline seemed to rise. Perhaps the agony of the Boat People had reached a breaking point. Perhaps there was increased pressure from behind. “You ought to cross over, or make way for us!” The urgency was apparent. Some of the Boat People made a wild, foolish leap into the sea under cover of darkness. They were easily spotted by the search-lights. They were taken into custody briefly, and then sent by whichever boat or group of boats they wanted to be handed over to the authorities.
The Government had given instructions to treat the Boat People leniently, compassionately. They were not to be sent back, without harassment and show of military might.
The most visible change in the situation was that for the first time, the Boat People were visible at a distance. In the evenings, their dark presence could be observed on the horizon. Their small, rickety boats loomed impassively; the occupants of the boats, sometimes squatting, sometimes standing, were still. What can people do whose fate is waiting? Waiting for darkness. Waiting for a wild chance. For waiting is darkness.
***
Now that the Boat People were visible at sea, many city residents waited to have a look at these strange, alien beings. But the police discouraged such idle curiosity. They drove them back. It was made a rule that none could visit the beaches without official permission. Amitabh had a journalist’s press card, so he was fortunate.
The city went on its measured way. Busy bread-earners had no time to give a cursory look on the phenomenon. It was out of sight anyway. Out of sight, out of mind. Citizens, when they thought about it, at best thought of the intruders as a nuisance, a different kind of pest.
There must have been a few people who showed symptoms of the kind of interest Amitabh showed in the Boat People. But apparently, they were isolated, and they kept to themselves.
Now that the Boat People were daily-nightly visible, they sank into the alert observer’s mind with an incisive edge. Amitabh showed clear signs of distraction. He seldom thought of his office work; or at best, did what was minimally necessary. It was only because he was a Government employee, and that too on a nondescript job, that nobody bothered with him.
12.
Strangely, there were times when Amitabh felt very lonely, very helpless. It was the feeling of an impasse, but he did not understand its nature completely. At such times, he remembered Maya. He thought if he talked to her, his mind might be lighter.
“Hello, Maya,” he said.
“Yes, is it Amitabh?”
“It’s Amitabh, Maya.”
“Hello, Amitabh! How come you phoned me? You seldom phone me. I was beginning to think it was a one-sided affair. But you have given me a pleasant surprise! Go on – say some sweet nothings to me!”
“Oh, Maya, you know I’m not the guy to talk sweet nothings.”
“I know, I know. I was teasing you. By the way, I like you because you don’t go in for that sort of crap.”
“Maya, I thought we might meet one of these days.”
“Excellent, how about this Sunday?”
“Yes, but cut out the Bollywood film. We’ll eat, and then have a long chat together.”
“Good. The ideal place for that is King’s Ransom.”
“Fine.”
***
That Sunday, they met at King’s Ransom.
Before Amitabh said anything, Maya did: “Amitabh, today, the person who wants to talk about the Boat People is going to be me. Yes, it has been there for so long, and different people are saying different things about it, that I thought I want to get to the bottom of it.”
“Oh, Maya, if you think I’m some sort of an authority on the Boat People...”
“You don’t have to be an authority, Amitabh, you have to be genuinely interested in the subject – deeply, profoundly interested – and I think you qualify for the post.”
“I hope I do.”
“First of all, Amitabh, tell me why you are so interested in the thing – interested would be an understatement, of course. Why are you so obsessed, so possessed by this matter which doesn’t concern you one bit?”
“That, Maya, I would like to understand. And that’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”
“Do you think of them as the epitome of destituteness, the down at heels, the abject, the wretched of the earth, as some intellectual of yesteryears put it.”
“Something like that, I guess.”
“But Amitabh, there are enough abject, destitute people in this city! In our country! Why don’t you think of them?”
“What you say, Maya, is true. But I don’t have an answer for that.”
“And why don’t you – if you are so moved by the paupers of the world – do something for them? Join the brigade of the selfless who work for the paupers round the clock? Wouldn’t that be more consistent to your view?”
“Again, Maya, I don’t have an answer to your barrage of questions.”
Amitabh, somewhat crestfallen, was silent. Then, like a cornered rat, he said with transparent bitterness, “Do you, then, think I am an imposter, just a fraud?”
“Oh, Amitabh,” Maya clasped his hand across the table, “Don’t think like that. Don’t ever think of that. I was kind of testing you. It wasn’t necessary. I’m sorry. Okay?”
“As you say, Maya, I’m obsessed by those people, possessed by them. In some inexplicable way. They are people that surface from the depths of the slime of the mind. And they have become iconic. They are emblems of the tattered slugs of humanity.”
“Given a chance, Amitabh,” Maya said with a smile, “you will talk like an oracle.”
“I talk like a man. Nothing more than a man. And nothing less than a man.”
“Anyway, Amitabh, what are you going to do now? I mean, about them?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s your favourite answer. Or may be, that is the favourite phrase of most Indian men. They are full of loads of feeling, but beyond that they are paralysed.”
“I guess that’s true.”
“The Western writers you are so fond of talk about action. What they want is action. But that, dear Amitabh, we cannot provide.”
“For us, there is another emblem that has gone deep in our unconscious. That of the warrior who cannot pull the trigger, meaning the string of the arrow.”
13.
Who were these people? They said they had come from all over. People everywhere who could not bear to live at their house. They were hounded out. Their fate was made insufferable. Their only recourse was to get hold of a ramshackle boat, and sail to the opposite coast. Which may not have been inviting, but where they could set their foot. The tragedy was that most shores were barred. You could not set foot on the coasts. Every coast belonged to some people. They prevented – sometimes with all their might – strangers landing on their coast. Sometimes they brutally shot the people in the boats. Wiped them out.
But the Boat People have always been there. Sometimes not in boats. Hiding in trains, buses. Desperate to get away.
Maybe from earliest times, the Boat People have, driven by hunger, or by promise of sylvan lands, left their shores and traveled to far lands. They went to Africa, to India, to Australia. The Boat people were everywhere, are everywhere.
14.
Watching day in and day out, those, by now familiar shapes – the silhouettes of the boats, the dark contours of the human embodiments – Amitabh saw them as more than mere forms. Of course, it was not mere fascination, mere curiosity that had drawn him to the boats and the people in them. He didn’t much know what moved him in this affair. Amitabh was a person who moved more or less subliminally like a whale in deep, dark blue waters. He was intelligent, but he didn’t much see any use for intelligence, except for the usual, minimal amount.
If he could, he would have helped those people any way that he can. So would have most of us. But he had no opportunity to help them, or even talk to them. The ubiquitous NGOs and the aid agencies were strictly kept at arms length by the government.
In such a situation, Amitabh was struck by a wild idea: he would go and meet these people.
It was indeed a wild idea. But the moment it came, Amitabh’s whole being experienced an electrifying shock. Those people, the mysterious aliens – to actually see them at close quarters, to talk to them! Even if they didn’t understand your language!
And, surely, they too would have been glad to meet him. They had so long lived an outcast life; they would be happy to meet someone who had gone the extra mile to welcome them.
Sobering down, Amitabh thought over the matter more calmly. Of course, it was not a matter to be looked at breezily. It was like crossing a barbed wire fence, if only an invisible one.
But then he saw the favourable side of the challenge: he was going to do something unexpected. Something which was not anticipated. Enemy one, the police, the guards, their minds were conditioned to finding transgressors from the other side. They didn’t dream of, in the normal course, encountering a transgressor from this side.
The idea made Amitabh look at things in a new perspective. He began watching the police and the police boats, their to and fro movements, carefully. He bided his time.
Then a still more crazy idea hit him: Why not ask Maya to come along? They, the two of them, both go and meet the Boat People. They would make friends with them. There would be all smiles around. A camera ! But a camera will be frowned upon by the navy and the police. Otherwise, the couple could have taken close-range photos of the Boat People. Maybe Maya could have smuggled some photos to the newspaper Amitabh wrote for. A scoop ! Everybody will talk about Amitabh and his daring. The journalist in Amitabh woke up.
Amitabh phoned Maya. He told her about the idea.
“Are you crazy, Amitabh?” was Maya’s instant response. “How could you think of such a thing? Leave aside the near-impossibility of carrying off such an idea. But have you thought of other risks involved in the plan?”
“What do you mean, Maya?”
“Suppose you got to the boats of these people. What is the guarantee that they might welcome you?”
“You have got a point there, Maya.”
“Or worse, they might treat you shabbily.”
“Hmm...”
“And you want to take a decent woman along with you. That’s a still more dangerous idea. The Boat People, at best, some of them, will be illiterate, boorish men. They will be rough, violent. I might get raped. Do you want that to happen, Amitabh?”
“Oh, no. God forbid You have opened my eyes, Maya. I wonder why I didn’t think of all these things.”
“To tell you the truth, Amitabh, you live in a dream world. Empathy, compassion and all that stuff. Those ideas have blanketed your vision. Come down to earth, Amitabh.”
15.
Amitabh was alone on the shore, biding his time for what he thought of as the moment of truth. The familiar time of the evening, the time when his whole being seemed to cross the waters, and meet with strangers, strangers who would not be strangers any more.
The colours of the evening sky as always seemed to invest one’s life with urgency, with the goal, of his desire etched with dark, clearcut simplicity. The dark boats and the dark human figures against yellow and orange and red spelt a signal that at no time was so unearthly in its clarity. The evening was the time on this tropical climate when the sky shed its blueness boldly, so that it never seemed to have been blue. This was the precious hour when a boat might be set adrift.
Amitabh accepted the invitation and stepped into the boat. The lesson learnt for years together and which had become an instinct, became his guiding hand: never to tarry too long, never to hurry too much. In this manner, Amitabh crossed the waters towards a goal which was, at the back of his mind, still possibly an illusory perplexity.
16.
In the dark, the boat approached the stationary boats. Two or three people spotted the unfamiliar boat, and talked to the others in tones of surprise and alarm. The boat did not look like a patrol boat going on its rounds. Nor did it look like a boat belonging to one of their own. Amitabh waived to them as if to say that he had come in peace, that there was no cause for alarm. But that did not seem to have much effect.
Amitabh came close to one of the stationary boats. The stationary boats were not just canoes or light boats; they were, in spite of their ramshackle looks, large and tall in the waters. Amitabh could not have climbed into one of the boats without help.
“Help me climb up ! I tell you, I have come in peace. I have no evil intentions.”
Amitabh raised his voice again, soliciting request.
Two women and one man in the boat had come to the edge of their boat. There was still curiosity and alarm on their face. They spoke to him in a strange language.
“Help me up first. I will explain things to you.”
But nobody stretched his or her hand out. They continued to jabber in their incomprehensible language.
“Help me up please! I have come to help you, if I can!”
Amitabh continued his supplications at intervals. Then a man came up from inside the boat shelter, and approached the stranger:
“Who are you? Why have you approached the boat at this time?”
Amitabh heaved a sigh of relief to find someone who could speak English.
“I am a local resident. I have come to visit you to offer a hand of peace.”
The English-knowing man translated Amitabh’s words in the Boat People’s language. There was a guffaw and a shower of excited, amused chatter.
“They say, what is a hand of peace? They have no need of a hand of peace.”
“Tell them, we can make friends. Come to know each other.”
The conversation continued in this manner in a desultory fashion. The People in the boat were still suspicious of Amitabh. They thought he was a spy, or a policeman in disguise. One of the men suggested he might be thrown overboard and deliberately drowned. The English-knowing man seemed to take his side. Amitabh decided to make friends with the man in a more tangible form.
“I am Amitabh Rawat. I am a teacher in the city.” Amitabh felt he had better hide his connection to the newspaper, lest the boat people be alarmed, and become suspicious again. Friendship is founded upon small lies like these.
“And your name, my dear friend?” Amitabh asked.
“Shouk Skingko is my name,” the boat friend replied.
“Shouk Skingko? What an exotic name.”
“Exotic to those who are unfamiliar to it.”
“Yes, yes. As a matter of fact, I quite liked the name. How do you spell it in English?”
Skink told him the spelling. Amitabh repeated it, and committed it to memory.
“Skink Skiungko, we are friends. Tomorrow morning, please convince your people that I am a friend.”
“Okay. Now you can go to sleep on the floor here.” Shouk told him. Trying to sleep on the open boat floor Amitabh watched the stars in the clear sky, and thought about his adventure. He thought about his friends on the boat, among whom he could count Skink Skiungko at least, the others no doubt thought of him as just a stranger, thought probably with suspicion and mistrust. Amitabh thought they probably wondered why he was here; and he also thought he too was wondering why he was where he was. Human motivation is always a complex perplexing phenomenon. But he thought of his situation as a sort of parallelism, and found in this a kind of brotherhood, at the least, the beginning of a brotherhood.
17.
For a few moments the next morning, Amitabh didn’t know where he was. A cool morning breeze was blowing on, and the sea’s calm expanse induced a mood of tranquility. Then he turned, and saw faces of strange men and women.
Amitabh spent six days on the boat. He found that there was little that he could do to help anyone, and little to communicate. Skink’s wife, Lim, spent most of her day washing and scrubbing, and doing what cooking she could do. Most of the people that Amitabh talked to were interested in finding out whether he could help them to go ashore, and when they learnt that he could not, lost interest in him. Lim, Skink’s wife, thought of Amitabh as a freeloader, though Amitabh paid Skink handsomely in local currency. But she looked at him as a house guest, and could make demands on him. Lim constantly told Skink to bring pressure upon Amitabh to help Skink and Lim to escape ashore. She was convinced Amitabh had high connections, and, if he wanted, could do the needful easily. As she harassed Skink, Lim constantly cast glances upon Amitabh that were alternately malevolent, or contemptuous, or suspicious, or cajoling. This kind of regimen was difficult for Amitabh to stomach, and he said so to Skink; but Skink smiled, and laughed off. He advised Amitabh to ignore words that he couldn’t understand anyway.
Amitabh struck up with Skink what he thought as a genuine friendship. He thought of Skink as a man with a heart of gold. He had many hours of conversation with Skink. Skink told him about his life in the fishing village, the government, why he had to leave, the death of his own children and a hundred other things. Skink never asked for a favour, though he too was as eager to go ashore to find a better life. Amitabh really felt that he wished he could do something for Skink.
Skink said to Amitabh that he could live on the boat as many days as he wished. As it is, he, Skink was eking out a living by catching small fish by the side of the boat, and catching a little more would be no problem.
If it were not for Skink, Amitabh would have been kicked out of the boat, and out of the boat people’s lives long back. Even so, Amitabh had to cope with the malevolent or contemptuous looks that the boat people cast at him at every opportunity. Amitabh knew fully well that he was living there as a hated person. That which we call friendship, or affection, or even love, may be found in the world in a small quantity; so large is the hate in the world. That quantities of it may be found everywhere, in all shapes and hues and deceptive disguises.
18.
That day, Skink said to Amitabh in a whispering voice, “Amitabh, I want to tell you something important.”
Sensing the gravity of the communication, Amitabh moved closer to Skink, and listened as closely as possible. Amitabh noticed that Lim was not on the boat, and there was no one within hearing distance.
“Amitabh, there is danger to your life.”
“Danger? To my life? How?”
“You know that evil guy Ling?”
“Ling? Yes, yes. I have talked to him three or four times. But what about Ling?”
“Ling has come to know that you have got a Reporter’s I.D. from your Government. Ling plans to steal it from you, and use it for himself as a fake I.D. That way, he can make a getaway in your country.”
“Steal my ID ? Hmm...I’ll take better care of the ID.”
“That will not be enough. Ling plans to kill you, and take away your I.D.”
“Good God!”
“Ling is a vicious person. He will do as he says.”
“I’m sure of that. But what am I supposed to do on this situation, Skink?”
“There is only one thing you can do, Amitabh.”
“And that is?”
“Run away yourself. Vanish from the boat.”
“Vanish?”
“Yes, vanish.”
“Go away for good from you, from the people in the boats.”
“Yes, Amitabh.”
“There is no other way?”
“There’s none. Or you’ll be a dead man.”
19.
Amitabh and Skink considered the way in which Amitabh could make his getaway. Amitabh could use the canoe he had used to reach the boat people.
They decided that Amitabh should wait till the nightfall and then slink away. Skink pointed out that going to the shore directly might involve risk. Amitabh might be taken for a fugitive, and shot at by the coast guards. To row the boat away, Amitabh would have to sit in the boat, and thus make an easy target for the guards or the police.
The best way for Amitabh was to stretch flat in the boat, and float with the receding tide. He would be picked up by the police.
“Goodbye, Skink Skiungko,” Amitabh said as the dark fell.
“Goodbye, Amitabh. God be with you.” Skink said with a rare emotion. Amitabh lay flat in the boat. No part of his body was directly visible to an outsider.
Fortunately, Maya had said that she would inform the police that Amitabh was missing on the sea; this she would do a week after his getaway to the boats. So the police would be informed, and would be on the look out for the fugitive. All that Amitabh had to do was wait for the coastguards or the police to pick him up.
Supine in the boat, Amitabh floated . The sky was as clear as when he had rowed his way to the boats. Lying flat on the boat, he could see nothing but the benign sky. Numerous stars seemed to watch over his eventual return to the world that he knew. It was not a return journey with a sense of the passage. Amitabh was simply floating with the waters, without a clear direction. It was as if he had entrusted his life to the waves of the sea.
As he watched the stars that watched over him, Amitabh thought of the days that he had spent in one of the boats that he had watched from the shore for many days. Amidst countless little experiences, he thought of the friendship, the brotherhood with Skink Skiungko as something he would remember.
Lost in thoughts of his adventure, Amitabh did not hear the faint shouts coming in his direction from the sea.
Vilas Sarang (1942–2015) was one of the most significant modernist Indian writers and wrote remarkable short stories, poems, novels, and criticism in his first language Marathi as well as in English. Born in Karwar and educated in Mumbai and at Indiana University, he taught English literature in various countries and was head of the English department in Mumbai University for several years. His short stories have been collected in The Women in Cages. He also published four novels – In the Land of Enki, The Dinosaur Ship, Tandoor Cinders, and The Dhamma Man – and two collections of poetry – A Kind of Silence and Another Life.