Ten Rupees

By the time Rinku reached Diamond Video Parlour, a thin skin had formed over two of the teas.

He pushed the curtain aside with his shoulder and waited for his eyes to adjust.

The room was darker than the lane outside, though not completely. Afternoon light had found a gap near the top of the curtain and fallen across the floor in a narrow strip. Dust moved through it. So did cigarette smoke.

The television stood on a wooden table against the far wall, raised on two old cassette boxes so that the people at the back could see. A colour television, twenty-one inches, Gajendar said, though Rinku had never understood why the inches mattered.

What mattered was that Shah Rukh Khan was on it.

Rinku stopped just inside the doorway.

Someone behind him clicked his tongue.

He moved.

Twelve or thirteen men sat facing the screen. Two boys had squeezed onto the floor near the front. A man in a white vest occupied most of the wooden bench by himself, his knees spread wide. Another sat with his chin resting on the back of the chair ahead of him.

Nobody spoke. On the television, Shah Rukh was saying something to Mahima Chaudhry, and Rinku knew the scene. He balanced the aluminium carrier against his thigh and moved between the chairs, placing one glass beside the man in the vest, another on the windowsill and two near the front. A customer lifted his hand without looking away from the screen; Rinku placed the glass between his fingers. He knew which one had asked for sugar and which one would complain anyway.

The last tea went to Gajendar.

Gajendar sat beside the VCR on a low stool, one leg folded under him. He took the glass and pointed towards three empties beneath the television.

Rinku collected them.

Shah Rukh moved across the screen, and Rinku remained where he was until Gajendar pointed towards the curtain. Rinku bent to pick up another empty glass instead. A man behind him muttered, “Move,” and he shifted sideways.

The scene continued.

He had watched Pardes once from the floor near the curtain and most of it again three days later while delivering tea, collecting glasses and finding reasons not to return to Bansi’s. There were portions he had seen twice and others he still had not seen properly.

This was one of the good ones.

He knew what Shah Rukh would say next. The words came, and Rinku’s mouth moved with them, not enough for anyone to hear. When Gajendar pointed towards the curtain again, this time Rinku went.

Outside, the light struck hard enough to make him squint. The lane seemed pointlessly bright.

Across the road, a man stirred roasted peanuts in a iron pan on his cart. Farther down, a bus had stopped at an angle near the junction and half the street had disappeared behind it. A conductor was shouting at a rickshaw puller, who was shouting back.

Under a rickshaw, a brown dog slept through both.

Rinku looked once over his shoulder at the curtain, then started towards Bansi’s.

The dhaba stood near the old bus-stand turning beneath a sun-faded board that read BANSI DHABA in red letters. Underneath, in smaller paint: CHAI • NASHTA • KHANA.

The lunch rush had passed. A wide aluminium pot of dal sat near the stove with a steel plate over it. Three rotis remained beneath a cloth. Bansi was scraping the blackened bottom of a pan.

He looked up when Rinku arrived. “How long does it take to deliver six teas?”

“People were sitting.”

“They usually do that in a video parlour.”

Rinku put the empty glasses beside the washing tub.

Bansi held out his hand. “Money?”

“Account.”

“Of course.”

Rinku began washing. The water in the tub had already turned grey. He dipped a glass, rubbed its rim with his thumb and set it upside down on the wooden board.

“Which film?”

“Pardes.”

“Still?”

Rinku rinsed another glass.

Bansi glanced at him. “You’ve seen that film more than Shah Rukh has.”

Rinku ignored him. Bansi laughed to himself and returned to the pan.

From the transistor on the shelf came the last few seconds of a song, then the voice of a newsreader. Someone had been arrested somewhere. A minister had said something. Rinku listened until Bansi told him to fill the sugar tin.

A few minutes later a boy from Diamond came running across the road.

“Gajendar wants six more teas.”

Bansi turned towards Rinku, who looked at the boy instead. “He just had six.”

The boy shrugged. “Interval.”

Bansi began lining up glasses. “Take them quickly. And bring the old ones back.”

Rinku picked up the carrier.

“Quickly,” Bansi repeated.

Rinku was already halfway into the lane.

At Diamond, the curtain had been tied to one side. The room had changed. Men were standing now, stretching their legs, lighting bidis and arguing over the film. One had stepped outside. Someone else was complaining that the second half was too long. The two boys from the floor had seized the empty bench.

On the television there was only a blue screen.

Gajendar had the Pardes cassette in his hand. “You’re late.”

“I came quickly.”

“Then your quickly is slow.”

Rinku began distributing the glasses. Gajendar pushed the cassette into its plastic cover and reached for another lying beside the VCR.

“What are you putting on?”

“Nothing. Sit down and watch.”

“I have to go.”

“Then go.”

Rinku did not.

Gajendar slid the cassette into the machine. The television flickered. White lines rolled upwards, then music burst suddenly from the speakers.

Someone complained that the film should be restarted.

“Two minutes,” Gajendar said.

Several heads turned towards the screen.

Rinku was picking up an empty glass when he saw Madhuri Dixit. He stopped.

Lights filled a stage crowded with dancers. Madhuri disappeared, Shah Rukh appeared, then Karisma Kapoor. A basketball spun through the air. Shah Rukh laughed, ran, danced. The images changed too quickly for Rinku to hold on to any one of them.

Someone near the door whistled. Another man said, “New one?”

Gajendar shrugged.

The trailer continued.

On the television Shah Rukh stretched his arms wide. Rinku put the empty glass down.

There seemed to be more inside the picture than the television could properly contain: people, colour, stage, movement, all of it pressed within the plastic edges of the screen.

Then the music stopped.

Words appeared.

Rinku leaned forward. He managed the first one before the screen changed.

DIL...

Then the blue screen returned.

Nobody spoke until Gajendar reached for the Pardes cassette.

Rinku asked, “What was that film?”

“Dil To Pagal Hai.”

“When is it coming?”

“How would I know?”

“You have the trailer.”

“So?”

Rinku looked at the cassette Gajendar had just removed. “Will it come to Shalimar?”

Gajendar glanced at him. “Ask Shalimar.”

He slid Pardes back into the VCR.

Rinku lifted the carrier. At the curtain he stopped.

“Play that trailer again.”

Gajendar stared at him. “Chal.”

Rinku went.

Outside, the bazaar had returned to its usual noise: a rickshaw bell, a bicycle chain slipping, someone calling the price of guavas, a bus reversing somewhere beyond the junction. Rinku walked towards Bansi’s with the empty glasses knocking softly against one another.

At the corner he looked across the roofs. Only the upper part of the cinema could be seen from there. The paint had faded around the letters, but SHALIMAR was still large enough to be read from the bazaar.

Rinku slowed.

He had passed Shalimar hundreds of times. He knew the ticket windows, the bicycle stand and the posters pasted three and four layers thick along the outer wall. He knew Rafiq, who watched the bicycles there, and where Kallu stood when a new film was running. He knew the rear wall better than the front because that was where he and Gopi sat when they had nowhere else to go. He had even heard films through it.

He had never seen one inside.

A truck horn sounded behind him.

Rinku moved out of the road, looked once more at the letters above the rooftops and continued towards the dhaba.

By the time Rinku returned, Bansi had stopped asking why the second delivery had taken longer than the first. He pointed instead towards the washing tub, where six glasses stood beside it, one with half an inch of tea still at the bottom.

Rinku tipped it out.

For the next hour there was enough work to keep Shalimar out of his head. A bus came in from Meerut and emptied more than twenty passengers into the market. Four wanted tea, two wanted parathas, one wanted to know whether there was a toilet nearby, and an old man left a cloth bag beneath the bench and returned ten minutes later accusing everyone of stealing it. Bansi found the bag with his foot. The old man opened it, checked inside and left without apologising.

Rinku wiped the table after him, carried more onion to a driver, swept up the pieces of a broken glass and chased a fly out of the sugar tin with a spoon.

By late afternoon, the sun had moved behind the row of shops opposite the dhaba and the road had begun to lose its glare. Bansi sat down for the first time since lunch and watched Rinku stack the same three plates twice.

“Go.”

Rinku looked up. “Where?”

“Wherever you’ve been trying to go for the last half-hour.”

“I wasn’t going anywhere.”

Bansi lifted his tea. “Then stay.”

Rinku put the plate down. “I’ll come back.”

“I know.”

He was already across the road before Bansi could say anything else.

Gopi was not at his father’s puncture shop, near the bus stand or outside Diamond, though Rinku checked through the gap beside the curtain. He found him eventually where he should have looked first: behind Shalimar.

The rear wall of the cinema ran along a narrow strip of unused ground between the building and an irrigation drain that carried more plastic than water. The plaster had fallen away in patches. Someone had painted RAJU LOVES PINKY in red across one section, and somebody else had later attempted, with limited success, to turn PINKY into PINKU.

Gopi sat beneath it with his back against the wall, throwing stones at an empty cigarette packet.

“You missed.”

Gopi looked up. “I was aiming there.”

“There’s nothing there.”

“Exactly.”

Rinku sat beside him. The wall still held some of the afternoon heat.

For a while neither spoke. Somewhere inside Shalimar, a song had begun. Through the thick wall it arrived without words, only a faint pulse of music that disappeared whenever the sound dropped and returned when the chorus came.

“What are they showing?” Gopi asked.

“I don’t know.”

“You know everything.”

“Not everything.”

Gopi threw another stone. This time it struck the packet. “See.”

“That time you were aiming.”

Gopi gave him the look of someone whose achievement had been deliberately diminished. He was eleven too, but three months older, a fact he produced whenever an argument required authority.

Rinku waited until the song inside had faded into dialogue.

“There’s a new Shah Rukh film coming.”

Gopi’s stone remained in his hand.

“Which one?”

“Dil To Pagal Hai.”

“You saw the poster?”

“Trailer. At Diamond.”

Gopi turned towards him now. “Today?”

Rinku nodded.

“Who’s in it?”

“Madhuri.”

Gopi gave a small whistle.

“And Karisma.”

“Both?”

“Both.”

This required some thought.

“Madhuri will be better,” Gopi said.

“You haven’t even seen it.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Karisma was good in Raja Hindustani.”

“Madhuri is Madhuri.”

This was difficult to argue with, so Rinku moved on.

“There was a big stage. Lots of lights. Dancing. Shah Rukh was playing basketball.”

“What’s it called again?”

“Dil To Pagal Hai.”

Gopi repeated it slowly. “Dil To Pagal Hai.”

Then he grinned.

“Good name.”

“And good film too.”

“How do you know?”

“I saw the trailer.”

“That’s not seeing the film.”

Rinku picked up a stone and threw it towards the cigarette packet. It bounced once and went past.

“The trailer looked different.”

“Different how?”

Rinku searched for the right answer.

He could still see the television at Diamond: Shah Rukh, Madhuri, Karisma, the stage crowded with dancers, colours changing before he had taken in the ones before them.

“Big,” he said.

Gopi looked at him.

“It was on a twenty-one-inch TV.”

“I know.”

“Then how was it big?”

“That’s what I mean.”

Gopi stared at him for another second, then seemed to understand enough not to ask.

“When’s it coming?”

“Gajendar doesn’t know.”

“Gajendar never knows anything.”

“He had the trailer.”

“He has Pardes too. He didn’t make that.”

Rinku smiled.

Inside Shalimar, somebody shouted at the screen and several voices answered. A whistle followed, long and sharp.

Both boys turned towards the wall. Gopi leaned back against it.

“If it comes here,” he said, “we’ll see it.”

Rinku said nothing.

“What?”

“I am seeing it inside.”

The grin disappeared from Gopi’s face.

“Inside Shalimar?”

Rinku nodded.

Gopi said nothing at first, then sat up.

“How much do you have?”

“For what?”

“The ticket.”

Rinku looked at him. “How much is it?”

Gopi’s confidence weakened slightly. “Eight.”

“Eight?”

“Maybe.”

“You don’t know.”

“I know.”

“How?”

“My cousin went.”

“The Mithun one?”

“He watches films.”

“How much?”

Gopi thought. “Ten.”

“You just said eight.”

“Eight before.”

“Before what?”

“Before they increased it.”

“When?”

“How would I know?”

Rinku looked towards the corner of the building. The ticket windows were only a short walk away, yet until that moment he had never had any reason to care what was painted above them.

“Let’s see.”

Gopi stayed where he was. “You go.”

“You don’t want to know?”

“I know already.”

“You know eight and ten.”

“Both are correct.”

Rinku stood. Gopi watched him take three steps before getting up and following.

The front of Shalimar faced the wider road leading towards the bazaar. Its two ticket windows were shut behind metal grilles. Above them, the rates had been painted directly onto the wall and then repainted at least once, leaving pale ghosts of older numbers beneath the new ones.

Rinku read slowly.

FRONT STALL — 10.00

REAR STALL — 15.00

BALCONY — 20.00

“Ten,” he said.

“I told you.”

“You said eight.”

“I also said ten.”

Rinku moved closer, as though the figure might change if inspected closely. It did not.

On the wall beside the window, three old posters sat on top of one another. A man’s eye from the lowest layer appeared beneath somebody else’s shoulder. Above it, a heroine Rinku did not recognise had been torn neatly across the mouth.

Rinku stepped back.

Ten rupees.

He knew exactly what a ten-rupee note looked like. He had carried them from one shop to another. Customers handed them over at the dhaba without examining them. Bansi handled two or three at a time without seeming to think much about it.

Until now, ten rupees had never seemed especially large.

“How much do you have?” Gopi asked.

Rinku kept looking at the board. “Something.”

“How much something?”

“Why?”

“Because you need ten.”

Rinku lowered his voice despite there being nobody near them. “Two rupees. And some change.”

Gopi considered this. “Then you need eight.”

“Less.”

“You said two.”

“And change.”

“If the change isn’t two rupees, you still need almost eight.”

“I know.”

They returned to the rear wall and sat down again. Gopi drew lines in the dirt with a broken matchstick while he thought.

“Your mother gives you anything?” Gopi asked.

Rinku laughed.

“And Bansi?”

“My pay goes home.”

“All of it?”

“It buys food.”

Gopi drew another line in the dirt.

“Tips?”

“Sometimes.”

“Then tips.”

“Ten rupees from tips?”

Gopi picked up a stone. “You wanted to see the film.”

Somewhere inside Shalimar the audience erupted.

Both boys listened.

“Fight,” Gopi said.

“Could be a song.”

“Who whistles for a song?”

“People whistle for Madhuri.”

“That’s different.”

Rinku thought again of the trailer: Shah Rukh with his arms spread, lights behind him, Madhuri turning across the stage, the whole picture seeming to press against the edges of Gajendar’s television.

“When it comes,” he said, “I’m seeing it here.”

Gopi threw a stone at the cigarette packet and missed.

“So, Shalimar.”

“Only Shalimar.”

He nodded. “Then we need ten rupees.”

“I need ten rupees.”

Gopi smiled. “Fine. I’ll stand outside and listen.”

Rinku shoved him. Gopi shoved back, and the ten-rupee problem disappeared beneath the more immediate question of which of them could push the other off the raised strip beside the drain.

Neither succeeded.

By the time Rinku returned to Nai Basti, evening had settled into the lanes. Women stood near the municipal tap with steel buckets. A pressure cooker whistled behind one of the houses. Two younger boys were playing cricket with a plank of wood and a rubber ball that had lost most of its bounce. From a window at the far end came the sound of a radio loud enough for half the lane to follow.

His mother sat outside their room cutting potatoes into a steel plate.

“Wash your hands.”

“They’re clean.”

She looked at them.

Rinku went to the tap.

When he returned, she had carried the potatoes inside. Their room held one charpoy, a wooden trunk, two shelves and a row of clothes hanging from nails in the wall. A small framed picture of Hanuman hung above the shelf beside a tyre-company calendar still turned to the previous month. His father had not yet returned.

Rinku crouched beside the trunk.

Near the floor, one brick sat slightly farther back than the others. He worked it loose with his fingers and pulled out the old shoe-polish tin hidden behind it.

Sitting on the edge of the charpoy with his back towards the doorway, he opened it.

Two one-rupee coins. One fifty-paise coin. One twenty-five-paise coin.

He laid them on the bedspread and counted.

Rs 2.75.

He counted once more, although the amount had not changed.

From the next house someone tuned the radio to another station. A song disappeared and a woman’s voice replaced it.

For no particular reason, he arranged the coins from largest to smallest.

Ten rupees.

He needed another Rs 7.25.

The number was large.

But not impossible.

Once Rinku began looking for money, he discovered that it appeared everywhere. Not much of it, and almost never where it was useful, but everywhere nonetheless. It passed from palm to palm across Bansi’s counter, disappeared into shirt pockets, came folded inside bus tickets and emerged from the knots of handkerchiefs old men carried at their waists.

By the end of the first day he had begun sorting customers.

Bus passengers in a hurry were promising. Shopkeepers were not. Rickshaw pullers paid exactly what they owed because they knew exactly what everything cost. Drivers sometimes tipped after a long journey, but usually only if they had eaten. Policemen were useless. Men who called him beta were particularly dangerous; they tended to leave advice instead of money.

The fund began moving the next day. A bus conductor sent him across the road for a packet of bidis and let him keep the twenty-five paise change. A woman travelling with two children gave him fifty paise for carrying a cloth holdall to the bus. A travelling salesman left another twenty-five beneath his saucer.

Over the next few days the money rose in irritating increments.

One afternoon a man who had been drinking paid twice. The extra rupee lay beneath Rinku’s palm. He could have kept it, but called the man back.

Gopi, when he heard, stared at him.

“He wouldn’t have known.”

“I would.”

Gopi shook his head as though Rinku were beyond help.

By the end of the week the shoe-polish tin held four rupees and seventy-five paise. Soon it was five, then five-fifty. At five-fifty, Rinku made the mistake of beginning to think of ten rupees as close. It was not close, but it was no longer impossible.

The mistake made him careless.

On Sunday afternoon a man spread film photographs on a cloth near the bus stand. Rinku saw them while carrying tea to the puncture shop.

Amitabh.

Govinda.

Sunny Deol.

Madhuri.

Kajol.

Two Shah Rukhs.

One from Pardes: Shah Rukh in a white cap, his face beside a big red violin. The other was smaller and badly printed, the colours slightly wrong, but recognisable.

Rinku stopped.

The glasses clicked against one another in the carrier.

“How much?”

“Fifty paise.”

“For one?”

The man looked up. “No, for my whole shop.”

Rinku crouched.

The Pardes photograph was better. Definitely better. He had five rupees and fifty paise; if he bought it, he would still have five.

Five was half of ten.

That sounded almost responsible.

He picked up the photograph, put it down, walked away, then came back.

The man did not look surprised.

By the time Rinku reached the puncture shop, some tea had spilled into the carrier.

Gopi found out that evening.

“You bought it?”

Rinku showed him.

Gopi stared at the photograph, then at Rinku.

“You spent fifty paise on Shah Rukh because you’re saving money to see Shah Rukh?”

“It’s not the same.”

“How?”

Rinku studied the photograph.

“It just isn’t.”

Gopi held out his hand.

“Give it.”

“Why?”

“I’ll keep it. Otherwise tomorrow you’ll buy another one.”

“You’ll lose it.”

“I don’t even want it.”

“Then why are you asking for it?”

“To protect your money.”

“From what?”

“You.”

Rinku slipped the photograph inside his shirt.

For two days he regretted buying it. On the third, he stopped. By then the fund had climbed back to five rupees and seventy-five paise.

When Rinku returned home that evening, his mother was sitting beside the stove with the kerosene can tilted in her hand. She shook it once, listened, then tipped it farther towards the light.

“Rinku.”

He was sitting on the charpoy, looking at the Shah Rukh photograph.

“Hm?”

“Do you have two rupees?”

Rinku glanced at the can.

“No.”

His mother said nothing. He kept his eyes on the photograph.

“There’s no kerosene.”

He said nothing.

“If there’s no kerosene, there’ll be no dinner.”

“Can’t you get it tomorrow?”

She looked at him again.

“Will you eat tomorrow?”

Rinku did not answer.

Only the sounds from the lane entered the room: a radio playing, a child crying somewhere nearby, someone calling for water from the municipal tap.

His mother set the empty can down beside the stove and began cutting an onion.

Rinku stayed where he was. He knew exactly how much lay behind the loose brick.

Five rupees and seventy-five paise.

He knew what two rupees would leave.

Three seventy-five.

He hated the number before he had even seen it.

After a while he got off the charpoy, shifted the trunk and worked the loose brick free. His mother did not look up.

The shoe-polish tin was where he had left it.

He opened it, took out two one-rupee coins and closed it again. He held them in his palm before carrying them to his mother.

She wiped her fingers on the edge of her dupatta.

“Take the can,” she said. “Bring kerosene from Sharma’s.”

Rinku looked at the empty can.

He had not expected that part.

He picked it up by the wire handle.

At Sharma’s shop the kerosene was measured into the can through a dented metal funnel. Rinku watched the level rise while Sharma wiped the spill from the rim with an old rag. Then he watched the two coins disappear into the cash drawer.

On the way back he recalculated twice.

Three rupees seventy-five.

There was no other answer.

By the time he reached home the stove had already been cleared for cooking. His mother took the can from him, poured kerosene into the stove and pumped the small handle until the flame caught.

Rinku sat on the charpoy with the Shah Rukh photograph beside him.

For the first time since buying it, fifty paise seemed like a lot of money.

His father came home later, smelling of sweat, dust and bidi smoke. He washed at the tap outside, sat cross-legged near the doorway and ate two rotis with potato and onion while complaining about a passenger who had argued for fifteen minutes over a one-rupee fare.

“One rupee,” his father said. “Fifteen minutes.”

“Did he give it?”

“Eventually.”

“So he was right to argue.”

His father stopped chewing and looked at him.

Rinku concentrated on his plate.

After a moment his father laughed.

“You pull the rickshaw tomorrow.”

Beside Rinku’s plate, the Shah Rukh photograph rested against the steel tumbler.

His father noticed it.

“This fellow again.”

“What’s wrong with him?”

“Nothing. He’s young.”

“So?”

“So Amitabh would eat him for breakfast.”

“You haven’t even seen Pardes.”

“I don’t need to.”

“That means you don’t know.”

His father pointed a piece of roti at him. “You should have seen Sholay in Shalimar.”

Rinku’s hand paused.

“People sitting in the aisles,” his father continued. “Standing at the back. They stopped selling tickets and still people kept getting in.”

“How?”

His father shrugged. “People found ways.”

“What ways?”

“Ways.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“It was twenty years ago. You want names and addresses?”

Rinku lowered his eyes to his plate.

After a moment he asked, as casually as he could, “Could you see properly from the front?”

“Front stall?”

Rinku nodded.

“Your neck hurt afterwards.”

“How badly?”

His father looked at him. “What are you planning?”

“Nothing.”

“Then why do you care about my neck?”

“I was asking.”

His father shook his head and returned to his food.

“Balcony was better.”

“Twice the price.”

This time his father looked up.

“How do you know?”

Rinku realised the mistake immediately.

“It’s written outside.”

“Balcony people paid twice as much and watched the same film.”

“That’s stupid.”

“Exactly.”

His mother, still by the stove, said, “Both of you finish eating.”

Rinku did not mention Dil To Pagal Hai. Later, lying on the charpoy, he thought about the aisles at Shalimar filling with people after the tickets were gone, and about his father, years earlier, somewhere among them.

Then he thought about the shoe-polish tin behind the brick.

Three rupees seventy-five.

Tomorrow he would start again.

Rinku began next morning with three rupees and seventy-five paise. It was not five seventy-five, but it was also not two seventy-five, where he had started.

He decided this mattered.

When Rinku reached the dhaba, Bansi handed him a glass of tea and nodded towards the puncture shop.

Rinku carried it over.

Gopi was crouched beside the iron trough with a bicycle tube beneath the water. A row of bubbles rose near his thumb.

“You ordered this?”

“Yes.”

Rinku held out his hand.

Gopi sighed and produced fifty paise.

Rinku looked at the coin.

“You have fifty paise for tea?”

“I have money.”

“How much?”

Gopi lifted the tube from the trough, dried the leaking spot with an old rag and rubbed the rubber with a fine file until the surface turned dull.

“How much do you have?”

“Three seventy-five.”

Gopi looked pleased with himself.

“Seven-fifty.”

Rinku stared at him.

“Yesterday you had seven.”

“My father gave me one rupee for fixing two punctures.”

“You fixed them?”

“I found the holes.”

“That’s not fixing them.”

“It’s the difficult part.”

Rinku looked at the fifty-paise coin still in his palm.

“You just spent fifty on tea.”

“I was thirsty.”

Rinku found this offensive in a way he could not explain.

Gopi laid the tube across his knee.

“I only need two-fifty now.”

“You need two-fifty because you had more to begin with.”

“Yes.”

“That’s not an achievement.”

“I never said it was.”

Rinku crossed back to the dhaba.

Dil To Pagal Hai began appearing around Gamrauta before the film itself did.

The cassette shop near the grain market played the songs loudly enough for half the bazaar to hear them. At Diamond, Gajendar began showing the trailer often enough that Rinku stopped inventing reasons to be there whenever it came on.

Gopi eventually saw the trailer at Diamond, standing just inside the curtain with his hands black to the wrists.

When it finished, he said, “Madhuri is better.”

Rinku stared at him.

“That’s all?”

“What else?”

“You saw the stage?”

“I saw it.”

“And Shah Rukh?”

“I saw him too.”

Gopi wiped his hands on his shorts.

“It will look good in Shalimar.”

That was enough.

The fund rose again, though not quickly: twenty-five paise from an errand, fifty from a passenger who sent him running back to the bus stand with a forgotten packet, another twenty-five for carrying a parcel to the post office, nothing for two days, then another fifty.

Rinku stopped reporting every coin to Gopi. Gopi kept asking anyway.

“How much?”

“Enough.”

“How much is enough?”

“More than yesterday.”

Gopi’s own money climbed with considerably less drama. By Thursday he had eight rupees.

Rinku had five and a quarter.

He tried not to think about the difference.

For the next few days, his total did not move. Every bill was paid to the last paise, every errand apparently included in his job, and twice Rinku watched customers pocket their change down to the final twenty-five paise. By Monday morning, he still had five and a quarter.

That afternoon, Rinku heard the loudspeaker before he saw the rickshaw.

The voice approached from somewhere beyond the bus stand in pieces, distorted by distance and the cheap speaker.

“…Shalimar Talkies…”

Then music.

Then the voice again.

Bansi was pouring tea through the strainer. Rinku had both hands inside the washing tub.

The rickshaw turned into the junction.

A plywood board had been fixed upright behind the passenger seat, pasted with a colour poster Rinku could not make out because the rickshaw was moving. A loudspeaker was tied to the top with rope, and beside the driver sat a thin man holding a microphone and a bundle of handbills.

“Starting this Friday,” the voice announced, far louder than necessary, “at your own Shalimar Talkies—Yash Chopra’s new presentation—Dil To Pagal Hai! Shah Rukh Khan! Madhuri Dixit! Karisma Kapoor!”

The cassette cut in.

Music burst across the junction. Rinku’s hands stopped in the water. Across the road, Gopi stopped pumping air into a bicycle tyre, and the two boys watched the rickshaw pass between them.

The announcer repeated the title as it went towards the market. A few children began following behind. Someone at the paan shop shouted for another handbill. The driver rang his bell unnecessarily.

Then it was gone around the corner, the music fading after it.

Bansi tapped the side of the washing tub with a spoon.

“Those glasses won’t wash themselves.”

Rinku looked down. He had been holding the same glass for nearly a minute.

That afternoon the advertising rickshaw passed twice more. By the third time Rinku no longer stopped working, though he could tell exactly where it was in the market from the rise and fall of the loudspeaker.

Gopi managed to get one of the handbills from a boy following the rickshaw and folded it into his pocket. By the time they met behind Shalimar, he already had it open.

The printing was cheap and slightly crooked. Shah Rukh occupied the centre. Madhuri and Karisma appeared on either side. Across the bottom, in thick letters, was the line that mattered.

FROM FRIDAY

Gopi tapped the words.

“Four days.”

“I can see.”

“How much do you have?”

“Five twenty-five.”

Gopi stared at him.

“You need four seventy-five in four days.”

“I know.”

“That’s more than one rupee a day.”

“I know.”

“You don’t even make one rupee every day.”

“I know.”

Gopi folded the handbill along the same crease and opened it again.

For once he had no immediate scheme.

Inside Shalimar, something heavy struck something else and the audience reacted with a burst of clapping.

Rinku looked at the wall.

For weeks the film had been coming.

Now it had a day.

Four days changed the way Rinku looked at the dhaba. Until Monday, a day without a tip had been disappointing. Now it was a day lost.

He reached Bansi’s early and volunteered for every errand that came his way. By noon he had earned nothing.

Gopi crossed over from the puncture shop while Rinku was slicing onions.

“How much?”

“Still five twenty-five.”

“You?”

“Eight-fifty.”

Rinku pressed the knife harder than necessary.

“You’ll get yours,” Gopi said.

“I know.”

“You don’t have to say it like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like you know.”

By late afternoon the shadows of the shops stretched across most of the road. Bansi let Rinku go a little before sunset.

He met Gopi in the middle of the road and they started towards the rear of Shalimar.

Near the bus stand, beneath a peepal tree, a sadhu had appeared.

He sat on a folded sack with saffron cloth over one shoulder, three lines of ash across his forehead. In front of him lay a brass bowl, a bundle of red thread and a handwritten board promising relief from illness, court cases, marriage difficulties and enemy trouble.

Gopi slowed.

Rinku did not.

“You are worried,” the sadhu said.

“He is,” Gopi replied, pointing at Rinku.

“There is an obstacle.”

That stopped them.

“Can it be removed?” Gopi asked.

“Everything can be removed.”

Rinku was about to walk on when the sadhu said, “Friday.”

Gopi turned.

“What Friday?”

“Something important.”

Then Rinku noticed the Dil To Pagal Hai handbill sticking out of Gopi’s pocket.

The sadhu noticed him noticing it.

“What happens Friday?” Gopi asked.

“That depends.”

“On what?”

“A small puja.”

“How much?”

“One rupee.”

“Fifty paise.”

The sadhu frowned. “You bargain with God?”

“Not with God,” Gopi said. “With you.”

Rinku looked away.

The sadhu held out his hand.

“Why me?” Rinku asked.

“It’s your problem,” Gopi answered.

“You’re the one who started talking to him.”

“And I got it down to fifty paise.”

Friday was three days away. Rinku still needed far more than fifty paise, which somehow made spending fifty paise seem almost reasonable.

He handed over the coin.

The sadhu asked his name and his mother’s name, tied a red thread around his wrist and muttered something under his breath.

“Don’t remove it before Friday.”

“What will happen?” Gopi asked.

“What is meant to happen.”

Gopi looked at Rinku.

“That sounds promising.”

They continued towards Shalimar.

The evening show had already begun. Behind the cinema, they sat near the wall for a while, listening to the muffled rise and fall of voices from inside. Once, music became clear enough for Gopi to recognise the song.

He looked at the red thread around Rinku’s wrist.

“Don’t take it off.”

“I wasn’t going to.”

By the time they started back, the light had gone from the road and several of the kiosks near the bus stand had pulled down their shutters.

Behind a row of closed kiosks, they saw the sadhu again.

He sat with two other men on overturned crates, the saffron cloth folded beneath him. Between them stood a quarter bottle of country liquor, sliced onion, green chilli and namkeen.

Rinku stopped.

Gopi almost walked into him.

The sadhu lifted a steel tumbler and drank.

Rinku looked at the red thread around his wrist.

Then at Gopi.

Gopi’s face changed slowly.

Not shock.

Calculation.

“Our fifty paise,” Gopi said.

Rinku caught his arm before he could move.

“Come.”

Gopi said, “He bought liquor with our money.”

“There were other coins in his bowl.”

Gopi considered this.

“Ours was probably the first.”

Rinku let him believe that.

They walked the rest of the way back, bickering over who was responsible for losing fifty paise to the sadhu.

The following afternoon, Rekha, one of the hijras often seen around the market, came into Bansi’s with two companions, wearing a pale green salwar suit, glass bangles at both wrists and dark lipstick. A black handbag hung from her right shoulder.

“Strong,” she said, taking the end of a bench. “And less sugar.”

“I know.”

“Last time you drowned it in sugar.”

“You drank it.”

“I had paid for it.”

One of the others laughed.

Bansi pointed towards Rinku. “He’ll make it.”

Rekha looked at him. “He makes it better than you?”

“No,” Bansi said.

“Then why are you paying him?”

“To wash your glasses.”

“Good. At least somebody here is useful.”

Rinku turned to the stove. He let Rekha’s tea boil a little longer and added less sugar before pouring it through the strainer.

He carried the glasses over. Rekha took a sip.

“Well?” Bansi asked.

She considered it.

“Drinkable.”

“That’s praise,” Bansi told Rinku.

Rekha ignored him. She called out to a woman passing with a vegetable basket, then asked one of her companions whether they had missed the afternoon bus to Meerut.

When they stood to leave, Rekha put two rupees on the counter. Bansi reached for the change, but by the time he looked up she was already at the road.

“Rekha!”

She waved without turning.

Bansi looked at the fifty paise in his hand, then at Rinku.

“You made the tea.”

He put the coin on the counter.

Rinku picked it up.

On Thursday evening Gopi was waiting outside the dhaba.

“He’s back.”

They found the sadhu bathing by the canal, his saffron cloth and slippers lying on the bank.

Gopi looked at the cloth.

“No,” Rinku said.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You don’t have to.”

By the time Rinku caught up, Gopi was already holding it.

The sadhu came out of the water.

“Give that here.”

“Our fifty paise.”

Then he recognised them.

Rinku raised his wrist. The red thread was still there.

The sadhu stared at it, then laughed.

Gopi did not.

“Our fifty paise.”

The sadhu picked up a small pouch from beside his slippers and held out a coin.

“You boys have no faith.”

Gopi inspected it carefully before handing back the cloth.

The sadhu draped it over his shoulder and pointed at the coin.

“You see? The puja worked. Your fifty paise came back.”

He walked away along the canal.

Gopi watched him go.

“Fraud.”

Rinku held out his hand.

Gopi dropped the coin into it.

Five rupees and seventy-five paise.

Fifty paise more than he had before the sadhu.

By Friday morning there was no part of Gamrauta that seemed unaware of the film.

The rickshaw had begun its rounds early. The cassette shop was playing the songs again, and outside Shalimar a new poster had been pasted over the old one sometime during the night. Rinku saw only the upper half when Bansi sent him towards the market: Shah Rukh larger than anyone had a right to be, one arm raised above Madhuri and Karisma, the colours bright even from the far end of the road.

At the puncture shop, Gopi had a scooter wheel propped against his knee.

“Don’t bother today,” he said when Rinku passed.

“With what?”

“Shalimar.”

Rinku stopped. “Why?”

“Rafiq said the first shows are gone.”

“Advance booking?”

“Hmm.”

“You have ten now?”

Gopi nodded. “Since yesterday.”

“All ten?”

“All ten.”

Rinku glanced towards the cinema.

“And there’s no ticket.”

“Not today.”

“How does Rafiq know?”

“He works there.”

“He watches cycles.”

“He watches cycles outside a cinema. That is still more than you know.”

Rinku continued towards the market.

He had not been planning to buy a ticket that day. He was still well short of ten rupees. Even so, the information irritated him. Until then there had always been one problem: money. Now, apparently, a person could have money and still not be allowed to spend it.

By late afternoon people had begun moving towards Shalimar in groups.

Gopi was waiting when Rinku finished work.

“Come.”

Rinku looked towards Bansi.

“I’m not asking for money,” Gopi said. “We’ll just see.”

That required less thought.

They followed the road towards the cinema.

Shalimar looked different with a crowd in front of it.

The bicycle stand had spread beyond its usual rope boundary. Rickshaws stopped in the road to let people out. Men stood beneath the posters smoking and arguing, while boys too young to have tickets moved through the gaps between them as though there might still be some secret way inside.

Above the ticket windows hung a board Rinku had never seen there before.

HOUSEFULL

He read it twice.

One of the windows was shut. At the other, a man kept telling people there were no tickets while people continued asking him for tickets.

Gopi pointed.

“Kallu.”

Kallu stood near the paan stain at the side wall, speaking quietly to two college boys.

They moved closer.

“How much?” one of the boys asked.

“Twenty-five.”

The boy laughed.

“It says ten.”

Kallu glanced towards the closed window.

“Then buy it there.”

The boy looked at the HOUSEFULL board.

“Twenty.”

“Twenty-five.”

“You’re mad.”

Kallu shrugged and turned away.

The boy followed him.

Rinku looked at Gopi.

“Twenty-five?”

Gopi shook his head with genuine disgust.

“For a ten-rupee ticket.”

They stayed, though there was nothing for them to do and neither suggested leaving. As showtime approached, the crowd thinned in pieces. Tickets appeared from pockets, cigarettes were crushed beneath sandals and bicycle tokens were tucked away.

A group of boys ran past them at the last minute, laughing and pushing one another towards the doors.

Then the entrance swallowed them too.

Within a few minutes the road outside Shalimar seemed strangely large.

Kallu disappeared.

The grille gate had been pulled shut across the entrance. Rinku and Gopi went back to it and pressed their faces between the bars. Inside, the foyer was already dim. They could make out the backs of a few men, a faintly glowing ENTRY sign above a door and the brief sweep of an usher’s torch.

Gopi shifted to another gap in the grille.

“Can you see?”

“No.”

“Move.”

“You move.”

They stayed there a little longer anyway.

Then they walked around to the rear wall and sat in their usual place.

For a while there was nothing.

Then, faintly through the brick, came music.

A few seconds later the audience inside erupted. The sound reached them softened by the wall but unmistakable—whistles, clapping, someone shouting something they could not make out.

Rinku turned towards the wall as another cheer rose from inside.

Gopi leaned back against the bricks.

“Told you.”

Rinku looked at him.

“What?”

“Opening day is useless.”

“You didn’t say useless.”

“I said don’t bother.”

“That is not the same thing.”

“Almost.”

Another burst of cheering came through the wall.

Neither spoke until it faded.

When they returned to the front, Rafiq was arranging bicycles into a second row.

“When will there be tickets?” Gopi asked.

Rafiq pushed a bicycle farther into the stand.

“Not this weekend.”

“Monday?”

“Maybe.”

“Tuesday?”

“Maybe.”

“When not maybe?”

Rafiq thought.

“Wednesday matinee.”

“Sure?”

Rafiq pointed at the bicycles.

“I watch cycles. I don’t run Shalimar.”

Rinku glanced towards the HOUSEFULL board.

Wednesday.

Five more days.

On the walk back he said very little. The extra days did not feel like a reprieve; they felt like time he had been given and could no longer waste.

Over the weekend he volunteered for every errand Bansi offered and several he did not. A shopkeeper gave him fifty paise for carrying a sack from the bus stand. Two passengers gave him a rupee for dragging a steel trunk from a bus to a rickshaw. At the grain market, a trader kept him running between three shops and gave him seventy-five paise when he was done.

By Sunday evening there were other coins: twenty-five paise from a conductor, fifty from a passenger who sent him back for a forgotten packet, another twenty-five from an old man who made him carry tea farther than the tea deserved to travel. Most customers still drank, ate and left without giving him anything.

Even so, the shoe-polish tin sounded different when he shook it that night. He emptied the coins onto the floor and counted.

Nine rupees.

Wednesday was three days away.

Monday gave Rinku twenty-five paise and Gopi another fifty. Gopi had already reached ten, so naturally he mentioned this more than once.

Tuesday gave Rinku nothing.

By Wednesday morning there were nine rupees and twenty-five paise in the shoe-polish tin, with another twenty-five in his pocket from carrying a parcel to the transport office before breakfast.

Nine-fifty.

He counted it once before leaving home and again in the lane outside, crouched beside the wall with the coins cupped in his palm.

Still nine-fifty.

For the first time since Friday, the missing amount looked small.

That made it worse.

At Bansi’s he volunteered for the bus-stand orders, watched customers more closely than was useful and carried change back with a care that seemed almost insulting. A truck driver left nothing. Two shopkeepers paid together and waited for the last twenty-five paise. A clerk from the tehsil asked him to fetch cigarettes and told him to hurry, then took the change without looking at it.

By noon he was still at nine-fifty.

The matinee started at two.

Rinku stopped checking the clock because every time he looked, less time remained.

By the time Gopi crossed the junction, he had scrubbed most of the grease from his hands. Rinku noticed that first.

Gopi stopped at the counter.

“How much?”

“Nine-fifty.”

Gopi looked at the clock above the counter. It was ten to two.

“Ask Bansi.”

“No.”

“Why?”

Rinku folded the cloth in his hand.

“Borrow it,” Gopi said.

“From who?”

Gopi had no answer.

For a few seconds they stood there with the noise of the dhaba moving around them: a spoon striking a glass, the hiss of the stove, someone outside calling for tea.

Gopi checked the clock again, then put his hand into his pocket and counted his money in his palm. Once, then again.

Rinku watched without asking.

Gopi separated one fifty-paise coin from the rest.

“Take it.”

Rinku stared at the coin.

“No.”

“Why?”

“It’s yours.”

“I know.”

“You need your ticket.”

Gopi closed his fingers around the remaining money.

“I have ten.”

Rinku looked at him.

The fifty paise was still in Gopi’s other hand.

“I’ll give it back,” Rinku said.

“Fine.”

Rinku almost smiled.

Bansi called from behind them.

“Rinku, take these glasses inside.”

Neither moved.

Gopi pushed the coin into Rinku’s palm.

“There. Now you have ten.”

Rinku closed his fingers around it.

Gopi looked at the clock.

“Ten minutes.”

Rinku glanced towards the road, then back at Bansi.

“Run.”

They ran.

Rinku was first out of the dhaba, Gopi half a step behind. They cut across the junction between a rickshaw and a bicycle, squeezed past a vegetable cart and turned into the road leading to Shalimar. By the time the cinema came into view, Rinku could hear the coins striking against one another in his pocket.

Ten rupees.

Exactly.

The crowd from Friday had gone. The HOUSEFULL board had disappeared, bicycles stood in loose rows behind Rafiq, and one of the ticket windows was still open.

“Front stall,” Rinku said when his turn came.

The man behind the grille held out his hand.

Rinku emptied his pocket onto the ledge. As he pushed the coins beneath the grille, the red thread at his wrist caught briefly against the metal. He pulled his hand free.

For weeks Rinku had counted those coins himself, one by one. Now another man counted them in a few seconds, swept them away and pushed a small coloured ticket through the opening.

Rinku picked it up.

Gopi was already holding his.

“Come.”

At the entrance a man tore the ticket and handed one half back to him. Rinku examined the torn edge, then slipped it carefully into his pocket and followed Gopi inside.

The brightness of the afternoon disappeared behind them.

For the first few steps he could see little beyond the weak beam of an usher’s torch moving over feet and seat backs. The hall was warmer than outside and held the mixed smell of bidi smoke, damp cloth, dust and something fried. Ceiling fans turned overhead, stirring the heat without quite removing it. Men called to one another across the rows while somewhere near the front a child was being told repeatedly to sit down.

Their seats were close to the screen. Rinku sat and looked up.

His father had been right about the neck.

He shifted lower in the seat.

The screen in front of him was pale and enormous, marked faintly in places. Even blank, it seemed to occupy most of the room.

The lights began to dim. Conversations dropped slowly rather than stopping; somebody whistled, while a few latecomers pushed along a row behind them, complaining about feet and knees. From somewhere high at the back came the soft mechanical rattle of the projector.

A beam appeared above their heads. Rinku turned to see it crossing the darkness from a small opening in the rear wall, carrying thousands of particles of dust through the light.

Then the screen changed.

The censor certificate appeared, bright and official against the dark.

Rinku stared at the stamped letters.

Even with his ten rupees paid, the film was making him wait.

Beside him, Gopi shifted impatiently.

The certificate disappeared.

The hall went dark again.

Then Madhuri appeared on the screen. She filled the space in front of them as she began speaking to Shah Rukh.

Gopi leaned towards him.

“I told you Madhuri would be better.”

Rinku did not answer.

He was still looking at the screen.

A few moments later the image changed and the title spread across the screen.

DIL TO PAGAL HAI

The first time, he had managed only the first word before the television at Diamond turned blue.

Now there was nowhere for the words to disappear to.