This is 2007, and we are here in Djibouti. It’s a very small country on the northern tip of Africa. We are here as a little group of friends who have pooled money to dabble in the scrap business.
Africa has been strife-torn with civil wars and other disturbances, so the nearby port in Somalia is inaccessible for export and import of cargo through sea lanes. So this is where Djibouti, with its relatively better environment in terms of safety, comes in, because we have a French and American naval base here. In the presence of troops, there is comparatively better safety for foreigners.
Under the guidance of a Gujarati entrepreneur, small-time though, we are here looking for picking up scraps of various types, from light to heavy, and sending them to India for recycling.
Don’t be surprised if the water is steaming hot in your bathroom. Djibouti is a land of lava deposits. The volcano city below is still smouldering. The last explosion took place as recently as 1989.
The entire economy of this small country is driven by the port. Most of the things which define Djibouti in political, social, economic and cultural aspects are focused in the city only. So the city itself, you can say, is the state and the capital.
The rest of the small country is covered with blackish, grey, brownish lava deposits, small rolling elevations, acacia shrubbery, boulders and stones. As you move along the international highway, which is a pulsating tarred corridor to Ethiopia, you see big freight trucks moving almost without any hurdles. It’s a smooth journey.
Ethiopia, the relatively superior force in the region, has no access to the sea. So Djibouti enjoys the benefits of its port facilities.
Moving along the highway, you see sandy forlornness bounded, bracketed by volcanic ridges on both sides, and the panorama enclosed in between bears a standstill image of solitude, isolation, even forlornness.
You see little flocks of goats nibbling away green leaves while perched on the sturdy canopy of acacia trees. You see flocks of wild camels running towards the next rare green thing. Moving on the road, you see the hazy, misty yellow encroachment of the sea here and there, its water gleaming under the sunrays.
This wilderness is almost uninhabited, save some tin-roofed stone structures here and there. There are practically no industries. Where some underground water is available, you see its effect like a difference between life and death. Here the acacia trees are greener. Some tiny hamlets and kids playing around appear, inserting life into the lifeless panorama.
Now and then you come across abandoned trucks and cars along the highway. The poor machines which fell on the way—there is almost no technology to put them on the road again. No spare parts, no workshops. So they just are waiting for their return to the scrapyard.
As you move towards the tourist spot of Lake Assal, meaning salt lake, you see Americans and French moving towards the famous glittering white reserves of salt, along with a few greatly satisfying seaside views and rocky beaches. You see nomadic temporary hutments and structures, camels and goats on the move carrying the trashy cargo.
Well, that is how life is here: poor, needy, yet full of its own unique charm. There are some signs of development which carry some sad whisper to the future.
Interesting features include dormant volcanoes, lakes, the Red Sea coast and islands. The people here—60% of them are Somali, Afar comprise 35%, and then you have French, Arab, Ethiopian and Italians, which total up to 5% taken together.
The official languages are French and Arabic. Somali and Afar are also spoken and understood widely across the population.
Lake Assal and the younger volcano of Erta Ale, which erupted on November 8, 1978, are famous tourist attractions, especially for the French and American troops who are stationed here.
Then geographic uniqueness is defined by salt flats, the lowest surface at 155 metres below sea level. So you can imagine the saltiness of that stretch. It seems like, if you take a photograph, it will be snow white, and you can easily pass it on as standing on an ice sheet or a glacier.
So basically, it’s a stony desert dotted with scattered plateaus and highlands.
We have taken an apartment in the suburbs of Djibouti capital. The locality is known as Cite Hodan. It’s a reasonably well-structured apartment, having three rooms on the ground floor and one on the upper floor, and a little courtyard in front of it.
My friend, who is also named Sandeep, is a big guy, measuring about 115 kg and 6 feet 4 inches in height. And I am considerably smaller in proportions in comparison to him. So Djiboutians, in order to distinguish between us, call us Sandeep Jagir and Sandeep Kabir—Sandeep the big and Sandeep the small.
And our third friend, Sajan Pal, is a relaxed guy. All of us are from the same village.
My focus is to study and do research and make an entry into the scrap business, where we have our main competition against Arabs and Pakistanis, because they have a larger network here, given their religious affinity.
Sajan Pal is a relaxed guy. He prefers to smoke hookah and watch TV and lazily walk along wherever we force him to go.
Sandeep, the big one, is the youngest among us, and he is a Casanova. He is a hard worker as long as you can guide him, but he is very focused on having a new woman in his bed.
Presently, I think he has been stabilized a bit in his pursuit of females because Fatuma is the supervisor, caretaker and maid of our apartment. She manages everything, ranging from cooking and attending calls to giving much-needed intimacy to Sandeep.
So she is his girlfriend, and she is four or five years older than him, a very mature woman. She has trained him really well. So he speaks Arabic quite fluently within a year, because love will make you learn so many things.
The teachers back in India could not teach him English in his 12 years of schooling, but here he has mastered Arabic, and it’s quite surprising to listen to him speaking Arabic with more comfort and ease than English.
And when he moves in the bazaar, he is much bigger than most of the Africans around, and he jokes that in Africa they will give you respect in proportion to your size. So I have seen even strangers nodding to him with greeting whenever he passes, and this observation seems to be quite correct in Africa. The imposing figure is your entitlement to recognition and being noticed and being respected.
So he is having a great gala time here.
Fatuma has a younger sister, Khadiga. She also comes now and then to help her sister in the work. But thankfully, Sandeep, the big one, is not having bad intentions about her.
Just that sometimes, whenever Sajan Pal becomes a bit mischievous, he will try to touch her mischievously. She giggles and runs away. So that is a very naughty type of pursuit, but he is not serious about it. He is a complete family man. He has two lovely kids at home and a very loving wife. So whatever he does in that is just playfulness. No serious intentions of taking the girl to bed are involved in that.
Then in our circle there are two persons of Afar descent.
Abdullah—he deserves discussion later on. He was involved in the civil war from the Afar side. There is a big family, almost aristocrats. So they have a big estate where his mother moves around in an almost 30–40-year-old Land Rover, which was gifted to her by her husband.
Abdullah’s father stays in Ethiopia. They have dual citizenship. In Afar province in Ethiopia, they have an estate there as well.
So Abdullah works as a middleman for us to approach the influential parties for scrap dealings. It’s a small country, and the politicians manage business as well, including the scrap business.
Ahmed is a TikTok kind of guy. He also is an Afar, and he comes from a good family. He was educated there in Canada, good language management skills. So he’s managing the affairs of an influential woman minister. There are rumours that he is having an affair with the big woman as well, who is double the size of him. He is a slim, smart guy.
So things are quite interesting here.
Abdullah and Ahmed. Abdullah is a down-to-earth guy, unassuming. We can approach him just like he is our friend. We can slap him on the shoulder; we can walk while putting our hand on his shoulder.
But Ahmed is like a man of protocol. He is always in formals, talks like a manager. So when we approach him, there is a big distance we have to maintain, because he is a facilitator. He has connections with ministers; even in the presidential office he has some connection.
Khadiga—not Fatuma’s sister. This Khadiga is a different girl. She is a small-featured, round-faced girl full of life. She is of a mix of Arabic and North African descent, and that makes them quite beautiful, a crossbreed between Arab people and North African people.
Fatuma, that is Sandeep’s girlfriend, herself is quite beautiful in her ways. She has a colour like we Indians, with just a shiny brown shine, just like a shiny bronze shine, just like Khadiga, the girl from the neighbourhood where our apartment is situated.
Now this girl Khadiga, quite surprisingly, sings Hindi songs masterfully. You can imagine how much craze our movies have in North Africa. She cannot speak Hindi, but when she sings Hindi songs, you cannot make out that she does not know Hindi. Her pronunciation is amazingly correct, and she has a melodious voice, and she is quite tuneful. It’s quite a pleasure to listen to her.
This girl Khadiga from the neighbourhood visits us quite often because she is Fatuma’s friend. And Sajan Pal is full of mischief. Even here he would try to somehow touch her in a joking way. She would pretend to get angry. She knows that he does not mean harm or have bad intentions. So that playfulness between the two of them is quite a game to watch and laugh about.
And these women from the neighbourhood, they smoke hookah, and there is flavoured tobacco here in different flavours, apple flavour and strawberry flavour, and the special Arabic hookah is quite popular.
Since Sajan Pal himself is quite fond of smoking hookah, he has purchased a very nice hookah. Whenever we go to the city and go to a mall for making our purchases, he never misses an opportunity to buy different types of flavours of hookah.
And apart from that, he also borrows video cassettes of Hindi movies dubbed in Afar and Somali, which are quite popular here. He knows these are the two things which will act like jaggery, which will attract the bees or honeybees.
And that’s exactly how it happens.
Whenever he starts the hookah and the flavoured smoke goes travelling down the alley, carried by the gentle sea breeze, the maids, four or five of them, cannot help themselves. On one pretext or another, they would start moving towards our apartment, and within no time you have this little smoking party in our living room, a carpeted living room with round bolsters, Sajan Pal reclining against a bolster like an Arabic king, and the girls smoking hookah around him, making him feel royal.
And then he puts a cassette in the video player, and some Indian movie which hardly had any effect here in India, but when dubbed there in Somali or Afar, creates a big impression on those girls.
So there they are, smoking flavoured hookah and watching the movie.
Just imagine—a failed movie here, there being watched like it is a superhit. Amrish Puri speaking in Afar or Somali. Quite a hilarious sight.
This neighbourhood girl Khadiga is very much knowledgeable about what is going on currently in the Indian film industry. She knows who is going with whom, which actors and actresses are having affairs. She even knows about the birthdays and special occasions of all the stars and heroines in Bollywood.
It came to me as a big surprise.
And one day, I think it was a movie of Salman Khan that was playing on the video. Sajan Pal jokingly said, “Don’t you think that I am like Salman Khan?”
So this Khadiga jokingly said, “No, you look like Raza Murad, the villain.”
Then she raised her finger in my direction and said, “He looks like Salman Khan.”
So there was instant laughter around, and Sajan Pal, in mock anger, stood up and chased her across the rooms, tweaking her cheeks and giving a little pinch on her shoulder.
Those were the beautiful days.
And this slim girl, Fatuma’s younger sister, also named Khadiga, is slowly, slowly coming out of her inhibitions. She is opening up. She is a very shy girl, and Sandeep, the big one, is quite protective about her, like she is his sister-in-law.
So he is always putting a note to Sajan Pal not to play mischief with the slim Khadiga, whom he takes as a sister-in-law. Then Sajan Pal laughs, as if, “You have all the right to do whatever you want to do with her in future.”
And this little Khadiga, she is very, very efficient about her work. Whenever she comes and arranges the kitchen, small coffee cups on the little chest with a single drawer, she is very focused on cleaning utensils, cleaning the house.
Silent girl, but she smiles now and then. I have seen her speaking only a few words.
And there you have Sajan Pal, a chillum filled with tobacco, flavoured tobacco, with aluminium foil above, live coals, and the hookah’s glass bottom bubbling with the inhalations.
In a corner, the ceramic vase of dhomni. It is a little clay vessel where you put coals and, on that, a fragrant mixture involving certain earth extracts and natural herbs and branches and dried leaves or something, and it gives a very aromatic, scented kind of smoke that lifts your soul.
Go to any African house and you will have this fragrant smoke wafting around slowly, gently. It makes you so peaceful, and it is amazingly fragrant, a completely different type of flavour than you have ever smelled before.
So the entire house seems full of romance.
And the African sky, when you go out into the night—unpolluted air, simple people. Poverty has its benefits. You have simplified structures, unpolluted skies, silence and peace that you cannot imagine in a crowded metropolitan city like Delhi.
Africa has its own unique charms.
Little Khadiga is a girl of sixteen or seventeen, a shy, darkish-brown girl with a beautiful oval face, but her silence speaks volumes about what lies under her innocent, shiny bronze face.
She takes very long, long inhalations and coughs at the hookah, which is quite surprising. She can even compete with Sajan Pal in drawing in far more smoke than he can take, even though he has been smoking for long.
So these parties are amazing.
The smoking parties are quite popular in the neighbourhood because these are poor people. These are economically very modest maids and servants in neighbouring houses in the society. But it speaks volumes about the happiness that one can avail from little, little things.
In the entire neighbourhood, the aromatic fragrance of hookah going around, girls arriving and going, taking draws at the hookah, enjoying a bit of the movie that is playing on the television, and spending as much time as it is possible for them to take out from their busy schedules.
And Sajan Pal is very particular about making it a full party—cornflakes, snacks and chips in a tray.
It is quite joyful to see such female liberation and liberties under the hard Islamic rules. Djibouti women, they get lost under the uplifting spell of aromatic smokes, and it elevates their spirits. They enjoy smoking, all liberated from restrictions and injunctions of Islamic rules concerning women and girls.
Khadiga, the little girl, she sits against the wall. Her oval face would rest against the wall after taking big draws of hookah smoke.
“Aap Ki Kashish” is playing on the stereo, flying freely with the spirits. She fills the chillum again and tears open a new packet of tobacco to arrange a new round of smoking.
And these women, they have learnt even a few of the cuss words, thanks to Sajan Pal—cuss words like we speak here in the Haryanvi dialect.
“Sasu ki.”
Sasu ki means my wife, daughter of my mother-in-law.
And “Teri behen ki…”—leaving it unfinished, meaning something mischievous later on.
With every kash, bubbles rise in the glossy bottom of the hookah. Like a young goat, Khadiga, the petite girl, is now eating the cornflakes.
Fatuma comes in between after satisfying Sandeep, the big one, screaming upstairs to clear away the things scattered around by the smokers.
The Khadiga from the neighbourhood, considerably bigger than the smaller Khadiga, with her beautiful round face, a beautiful concoction of Arabic and North African mixture, both in colour and feature, both in structure and shine, giving her an exquisite beauty of her own type.
She is also competing quite expertly with her smaller namesake.
And then you have thick-set women in their robes. After having very, very long kash at the hookah, they now leave, leaving Sajan and Khadiga, the petite, alone, as he tries to have a look at her nipples.
She hits him with the hookah pipe’s mouthpiece on his bald head.
Sajan is, by the way, balding in his late thirties only. Sorry, he is in his early thirties.
So Fatuma, Khadiga the petite girl’s sister, puts an end to the episode. She takes away the chillum, because they might over-smoke and this mischief will graduate into something serious.
So she clears the garbage from the ground and the entire room. She knows that her sister is getting out of control. Earlier, she had given a few scratches on Sajan Pal’s arms, like a little cat, when he tried to become too friendly.
Djibouti women are comparatively liberal in comparison to Islamic women in Arab countries. They smoke, they have romantic link-ups, sing songs, enjoy life in their own poorly innocent ways.
And later on, as I come to know, Khadiga, the neighbourhood girl, is working as a maid in a neighbourhood house. She is an Ethiopian.
And whenever I come across her, it strikes me that she is so talented. She can memorize the words of an unfamiliar language like Hindi and sing quite well, reasonably well—in fact, better than any of us.
She is a freely flowing, bubbly girl in her early twenties, far away from her home in Ethiopia, working here to support her family.
And she knows that Sajan Pal is not serious about his pursuit, and she also knows that since he is married, she herself cannot have any ambition to allow him or to seduce him, because these women are very particular about respecting the sanctity of somebody’s marriage.
But if they find you are single, then they will give you an opportunity.
But she still allows him reasonably good opportunities to flirt with her.
A fan of Bollywood heroes, it seems as if she becomes a fan of anybody coming from India.
Jokingly, when I ask her if she will marry Sajan, she mutters a few words of English, some words in Arabic, and gestures, which make me understand what she means to say:
“No marry, no Hindi.”
She raises one finger to indicate herself, then puts forward four fingers.
“In India, even Dharmendra married twice,” I make her understand.
So this is what she wants to say. He is Hindi. Sajan Pal is Hindi. He is married. So he should not try to marry me, because that will break the rule of Hindus.
They call us Hindus “Hindi” here. People in Arabic and North African countries call Hindus “Hindi.”
So when she puts forward four fingers, she means that we people can marry—a man in our religion can marry four times. Had he been a Muslim, it would have been okay if he had proposed marriage to me, but since he is Hindi, he is not supposed to marry me.
Then I put forward a counterargument, and this is what I mean to convey:
“In India, even Dharmendra has married twice.”
So I make her understand through words and gestures.
She gets the meaning.
“Bobby Deol,” she mutters with feigned eyes.
And then she makes me understand through a smattering of words and gestures. She says:
“Sajan thinks, says marriage no problem.”
Then she moves her hand towards the telephone and says:
“Telephone, his wife.”
So this is actually what she means to say—that before marrying her, Sajan will have to telephone his wife back home and tell her.
And then she raises a fist and makes a fighting sign and says:
“Me here, she there.”
Both with raised fists.
She is trying to portray a mock fight between two women who have married the same man. It means that we both will not stay at the same place, because it will create a scene.
So these kinds of innocent pleasures, in the company of these simple but rich-in-heart people, allow us to forget about the intricacies and hardships of managing an unregulated scrap business, where rules change overnight, where anybody can vanish with your money, where you are even under the threat of physical harm.
Anything can happen.
You might find yourself behind bars. You might find yourself even killed, thrashed, duped, cheated.
But that’s Africa.
It gives you an amazing range of experiences.
****
People here in Djibouti like to travel in big cars, SUVs and wagons—Toyota 4WD wagons, Prados and Cruisers. Maybe it is a symbol of power and might.
People of the feudal aristocratic class almost rule over the masses in political and economic aspects. Almost all of them have French nationalities, having studied and stayed there. Empowered thus, they come back to rule.
The big one has developed a friendly relationship with a prominent Afar family. The family patron is old. Now he is staying in Ethiopia for medical treatment. Ahmed, the son, returned from Paris, is involved in many businesses: shipping, cargo trucks, import and export.
His elder brother Abdullah, who is more approachable, recently remarried after getting his daughter married from his previous wife. Abdullah is a lean man in his late forties, but looks much younger due to his tight, athletic build. He has a beautiful long face with a French cut, dabbled with grey strands of hair.
He was an important commander in the civil war against the Somali-led government. The Somalis constitute about 65% of the total population. After the civil war, some Afars, including the Prime Minister, were accommodated in the cabinet.
Abdullah is friendly enough to take us to Lake Assal in his Toyota 4WD wagon, battered and old with much usage.
Situated 155 metres below sea level, it is a vast deposit of a snow-white field of salt. It is rock solid. You can walk on it. Under the sun, it glitters like a vast snow field. If you take a picture standing on it, it becomes visible like a vastly sprawled-out glacier, and nobody would believe you that this is a picture you have taken on the northern tip of Africa, where the sun is scorchingly hot, almost shining on your head.
Coming back to what is happening between Sandeep and Fatima, nobody, either in the neighbourhood or nearby, believes that they don't have a physical relationship. It seems to be a common secret and almost accepted. She, after all, is a Muslim unmarried girl staying away from home. She shares the premises with males from outside the country, and that too belonging to another religion.
But very rarely does society look into the reality lurking behind the obvious. The world of emotions, softly surging titillations of the heart, is beyond the hardy gaze of the world. This world is, after all, inside—the world of emotions, affection, likes.
Maybe from the Djiboutian society's point of view, she is the most decent girl.
Her father married five times, so there are many sisters. Earlier she worked at a French home. She knows Somali, Afari, Arabic and a couple of local dialects, which involve many words from many languages. In the evening she goes for English and French language tuitions to enhance her suitability for better-paid jobs.
Sandeep pays her 20,000 DFR, Djiboutian francs. She, through her unflinching dedication, justifies each and every franc of her salary.
Staying at this home, at our rented apartment, I have not for a single moment felt that I am out of India. She epitomizes each and every sinew of the fabric of care, dedication and untiring devotion to the schedule followed by the ideal Indian housewife. Be it rice, salads, chapatis, sabji, pakoras or kheer, she prepares them like any Indian housewife.
She learns so quickly.
Sandeep has just made a few video calls on the computer, and his sisters and mother have introduced some basic recipes of Indian food. And Fatima, she has learned them very quickly and cooks them with the expertise of a seasoned Indian housewife.
The great principles of cleanliness and orderliness are followed to the core. Everything is always at its right place. The chaos created by us perpetually is ever swept off its dirty feet by the swiftly moving broom of her duty.
At 25, she is a bit overaged for the girls yet to be married. The major part of her earnings goes to the upkeep of her family. It's a big family, much in need of economic help from all the members.
Ironically, even with such examples, traditional Djiboutian society prefers males, just like anywhere else in most traditional societies. Even though they get dowry at the marriage of their daughters—in Djibouti, the girl's family receives dowry at the marriage of their daughter—and till their marriage they contribute to the meagre family budget, still there is a preference for the male child.
Now Fatima has brought her younger sister Khadiga along with her to train her for the job of kitchen maid and domestic help. Today she started to take her for the English and French tuition classes in the neighbourhood. If they learn these languages at a workable level, they might get jobs in American and French apartments, which pay better.
Khadiga is a shy young girl, in a shell before her sister, yet the naughtiness and excitement are bursting at the seams inside. Sajan Pal is often mischievous around her, while Sandeep has protective feelings about Khadiga, as she is, in a way, his sister-in-law. Fatima herself keeps a protective eye on her younger sister and does not allow Sajan's mischief to go too far.
In fact, it is a great drama.
After all, what is real in the world? Everything is drama in the real and ultimate sense.
Sandeep, the virtual husband of Fatima; Fatima as the elder sister and even the homemaker of this rented house, protecting Khadiga from transgressions; and Khadiga escaping Sajan's mischief whenever Fatima's eyes are not protectively following her around.
Coming to other aspects of life in the rented apartment, on the internet phone here we have an application which allows long-distance calls through VoIP calling. It is cheap. So Indians working in the companies make phone calls back home using our little office as a PCO.
In this way, the personal computer is also working as a PCO, which covers the monthly internet charges of 20,000 francs.
A young Sardar had a long and satisfying talk with his wife back home. He and his friends made calls worth 6,300 francs while I was on duty.
And coming to another aspect of life here, Sandeep, the big one, kisses Fatima, fondles her, but they cannot have a conventional physical relationship because her private parts have been stitched up.
It's a very tragic practice followed in traditional African societies. Only on the occasion of marriage are these stitches cut. That, I think, is their obsession about virginity.
A man might go and have fun at a hundred places, but a woman, she will be stitched up.
So you can just imagine how nasty things have been against women in particular, and the same applies to women generally across nationalities and continents.
The night before yesterday they slept together in the room on the ground floor. At one point she told him, weeping:
“What does it mean? I am not your wife, nor will I ever be in future.”
They both got emotional and started crying.
Her father owns a 500-ton launch, a boat, but he is married to five women and has dozens of offspring, meaning all of them are poor. She is the daughter of the first wife. From this first marriage there are five siblings: four daughters and a son.
When her father married for the second time, Fatima's mother went mad and had to be hospitalized. Presently, her husband is staying with his first wife.
Sajan Pal feels jealous of the Sandeep-Fatima romantic link-up. Not in that typical angry way, but of course it creates a reaction in a human system. A male ego will always have bruises, even if you are very committed and loyal to your partner.
So at the personal front there is something antagonistic smouldering inside between Fatima and Sajan Pal. Fatima feels that he is always taking any chance to have a go at her and find shortcomings in her work. I feel it might turn out really sharply and, in fact, end up harming their personal interests in the long run.
Sandeep has really protective feelings regarding Fatu. He calls her Fatu. He has similarly protective feelings for Fatu's younger sister Khadiga, while Sajan Pal remains ever mischievous around her.
Some problems have developed with Mr. Keshwani, the Gujarati businessman who guided us here, thinking that he would be able to use us and make us work like mules for his business interests. But some issues have cropped up.
Given that he is a nice human being, the worries of business are beyond such niceties.
He is a flyer. He jumps from one place to another place, from one scheme to another, from one plan to another, from one idea to another. In this manner he has gained experience—business experience, I mean—which indirectly means knowledge.
But to use that knowledge, you have to focus on a particular scheme for a reasonably sufficient time and consolidate at that point. You have to focus your priorities, use your knowledge, sort out your pros and cons.
But he has been flying from place to place.
All his former partners, including Mr. Zepal, the Sardarji, think well of him as a human being, but when it comes to real business, they see the same glaring fault in him: the itching personality to hop over from one idea to another.
The person who collects more than average knowledge of a particular field starts thinking in multiple perspectives. This multiplicity of ideas makes him an itching thinker, not a businessman.
In business, you have to choose from among the very few carefully chosen options. You can't go beyond them. Go beyond them, and you are an impractical, unsuccessful person.
Since his acquaintances, to whom the fuel oil and iron scrap were to be shipped, were not making any payments, Sandeep, the big one, changed the bill of lading at the last moment. The containers had already reached Mundra Port, India.
Now Mr. Keshwani is fretting and fuming that the chickens whom he helped in hatching are pecking at his feathering.
The situation has once again taken a wrong turn.
Anil, who had earlier eaten ten lakh rupees from our joint company account and had agreed to pay for the press machine, has now taken a U-turn again.
Mr. Keshwani has now gone into their favour—that is, Anil and Shekhar. Shekhar happens to be the other partner.
It is a seesaw battle.
That is the problem with business. You are an institution in yourself. You take yourself as the boss. It can be okay as long as you are working alone and all others are your subordinates. But when it comes to partnership, however great and long might have been the past between partners, the tragedy of it requires that the partners somehow and quite inevitably find themselves bossing over each other, and things fall apart.
The same thing is happening here.
Perhaps the crass world of business, the bloody goddess of materialism, bucks and profits, requires the bloody sacrifice of faith, trust, friendship and all the soft emotions in the human heart.
Very tragic, but that is how the world is.
It goes on and on.
How many more beautiful relationships will be sacrificed by it?
In fact, there was a very wonderful opportunity of making good headway in the scrap business through a mediator, a middleman whom Abdullah introduced us to.
Now that middleman was a class fellow of the President of Djibouti, and there was a big scrapyard running into many kilometres. There you could see the choicest heavy scrap of big vehicles, because here there is no maintenance industry.
Vehicles have a very short life on the road, and within four or five years they hit the scrapyard because spare parts are not available, mechanics are not available, and since other ports are locked at the moment due to civil strife, the scrap of a few countries, including Eritrea, Ethiopia, even Somalia, lands up here because Djibouti Port seems to be the only way out.
So as we roamed around in the scrapyard, I could see thousands of tons of scrap waiting eagerly to be shipped to the recycling plants.
And to make it even more lucrative, there were two or three entire aluminium frames of aircraft.
Now aluminium is very costly, you can imagine, and since there was not much competition and we were among the earliest to reach there, we needed a press machine which presses the light sheet scrap into bundles so that it takes less space in cargo containers.
Press machines were hardly available here.
So we had asked our two partners, Shekhar and Anil, who were managing things in India. We had left some ten lakh rupees for them to get a press machine loaded so that we could start working here.
And to start business here, we were required to pay a nominal amount. Once the containers started moving, with advances from the scrap dealers in India, especially a friendly scrap dealer from Ludhiana, a rich man, we could have started the cycle of making payments—getting advances from the scrap dealer in India and giving them to the people here.
So had it started like that, we would have ended up finishing off the entire thousands of tons and earning a lot of money.
But things were not supposed to be that way.
Anil, when he found himself the authorized signatory of the bank account, took out all the money. He married a spinster lawyer in Delhi, paid the debts he had to pay to many others, bought a second-hand small Maruti car and settled his life.
The press machine never reached us.
So that plan was somehow finished due to the greed of one of the partners going wrong.
And since then we have been trying our level best to somehow take up small consignments of scrap from here and there. Here you have to pay at each and every step to get your consignment finally shipped off.
Most of the things are managed by politicians indirectly. They are the ones who own the scrapyards, even though they have proxies who appear as the owners.
And we have also shipped a few containers of used oil.
The entire Djibouti capital is powered by a big thermal plant. This is a generator-based plant where massive generators, using fuel oil, generate electricity, and as a by-product you get used oil, which can be used in other ancillary industries like making mats and plastics and other lubricants.
So with help from the friendly businessman from Ludhiana, whom we call Babu Bhai, he has been sending us payments in advance, and we have sent a few consignments of that also there.
And that's how we have been managing here, working in yards.
And to make it worse, Mr. Keshwani then plotted to take Anil and Shekhar on his side, and instead of paying for the press machine here, they ended up in Djibouti to start another venture, a parallel venture.
And since Sandeep and Sajan Pal are tough farmer boys, and I happen to be the literary type, the skirmish was inevitable.
They ended up having a fistfight right there in the colony because Mr. Keshwani had taken an apartment just a few blocks away in the same residential society.
The police were called.
In fact, the surprised and shocked locals, especially the maids from the neighbouring apartments who come to our apartment for smoking hookah, said this was the first time they had seen a real fight happening outside television, which is primarily in the Indian movies they watch.
So even they told us that this was the first time they were witnessing a real fistfight.
The police were called, and here they are.
What do they do, the police? Poor policemen. What they do is pick up both parties irrespective of who is the complainant or who is the sufferer. They pick up both parties and take them outside the national capital, travel up or down the road across the lava-clad barren landscape, and then ask the people to just step out.
I mean, they stop the vehicle a few kilometres away and ask all concerned to step out of the vehicle and leave them there stranded.
There is no public transport. The roads are almost empty. So there is a 100 percent chance that one has to walk dozens of kilometres to reach home again.
So that is the punishment.
On-the-spot punishment.
How did it happen, this bloody fight?
Despite all these losses, I don't think things would have taken this bad turn to result in a real bloody fight between we friends, with Mr. Keshwani looking helplessly, scared like a chicken standing in a corner.
I tried to intervene, but all of them are far stronger than me, so my effort at stalling the fight was almost inconsequential.
On this particular day, we had been working at a scrap site about 15 kilometres from the main city, in utter desolation.
Volcanic deposits. The sun, extremely, extremely harsh. The tropical sun. The prickly acacia bushes and other thorn shrubbery standing out here and there, warning you, intimidating you.
So we had just this sackcloth spread over a small acacia tree, and that was our resting point while the loaders and cutters worked on the scrap.
The cutters, they cut it into small parts. The loaders, they lift the heavy stuff and put it in the container.
It's a very tough task.
That day we had hired Ethiopian labourers from the port. Now, because in North Africa Ethiopians are considered more enterprising, they are considered to be very hardworking. So these migrant Ethiopian workers, dockhands, would give you double the product and work for the same salary as compared to Somali workers.
Somali workers, in my experience there, were shrewd, lazy and quarrelsome. They didn't try to work hard. They would try to just have their way at the end of it.
So this day, while cutting and loading was proceeding in that desolation, sighing winds, hot winds, we found a Somali group of people approaching the site with their complaint:
“Why are you giving jobs to the outsiders? We are locals. We deserve to be employed first.”
So there was this scuffle between them and the Ethiopian labourers.
We had to call the police.
The police arrived with a big wagon, and there they took all the labourers from both sides. All of them were arrested, and we could see the wagon moving in the opposite direction, taking them further away from the city.
So they would be reaching their homes at night that day.
To make it worse, a jealous person informed the law minister—a big woman—whose scrapyard it was, in fact, even though the proxy was someone else.
While allowing us to take the scrap, she had put up marks for the light scrap only and forbidden us from taking the heavy one, especially a massive two-ton generator, which could easily be put into use in India by even an average mechanic.
But there, there was no mechanic, no spare parts, no repair shops. So it was there in the scrapyard.
She knew about its value, so she said, “At this price, you don't have to take this.”
Now Sandeep is always full of mischief and looking for ways of bypassing agreements to make more bucks, even though I was trying my best to keep our word.
By that time, he had said, “Just when we start putting the scrap into the container, we will put the generator first and then cover it up with the smaller pieces so that it won't be visible.”
So the generator was in the container and the smaller parts were being carried out to be put around it.
It was just partially hidden. It was clearly visible from outside when this fight between the Ethiopian and Somali workers started and they were taken away.
The work was stalled.
It was such a heavy piece that it could not be taken out.
Somebody informed the law minister—the law minister's wife, actually, the woman who owned this scrap.
Somebody informed her, and there she came dashing down in her 4WD, raising dust, fretting and fuming like a volcano.
A big, above-six-feet woman in her traditional robes.
And I can never forget the storm of obscenities and hard words that escaped her mouth. Even though she was speaking in a local dialect, you could make out it was terrible stuff.
And she chose Sandeep to hit, actually, because she found him a suitable candidate to vent her fury.
So she struck him a few times on the chest and called him a thief, and left fretting and fuming and ordering him to take the container out.
There were stern warnings of putting us behind bars if something of that type happened again.
So it was a very bad day.
We could not contact anyone. Even our taxi driver had run away. So we had no contact with anybody.
In the evening, work stalled, so many disputes.
We then walked all the way for 15 kilometres to our apartment in Cite Hodan.
The only cheerful point on the way was when we passed across a couple of small villages where smart, handsome, energetic, smiling boys, full of energy, were playing football.
This I can clearly see in my eyes even now.
So it was almost nightfall when we reached our locality, and that is when we came across Mr. Keshwani and the culprit Anil and Shekhar.
And since we were so damn tired, things just flared up and ended up in a fight.
The hardships of doing business in Africa.
And there, even as far as the scrap trade is concerned, anything can change within a day.
Like today you have permission to export scrap from here. The next day, without any information or communication, somebody will tell you that it has been banned as of now.
So containers sometimes will lie in the scrapyard, filled up, sealed, ready to be shipped. But since, as per the latest regulation, they cannot be shipped.
We have seen many containers almost rusting because the policy was suddenly changed.
So it's quite tricky.
Africa in all its colours, ranging from humans to nature.
It is quite exciting, but you have to be very patient and open to any type of untoward thing happening to you while you are working in your capacity as a small businessman, almost unprotected because you are a small enterprise.
That makes it even tougher.
****
Ali is a Pakistani software engineer. He works from 6:30 in the morning to 9:30 at night in the rarest of rare software companies in this poor country. His wife and kid, consequent to the rarest of rare love marriages in the holy land of Islam, Pakistan, are in turbulently embroiled Pakistan. During the last two and a half years, he has been to Pakistan only once.
Since Sandeep and Sajan Pal have a computer, which is our lifeline, keeping our channel of business and relations back home open, that is our most prized possession here in this world cut off from the homeland.
Now, in such a country where finding a software engineer can be as tedious and tough as finding a ring in a big heap of husk, you can consider yourself extremely lucky if you happen to have one in your neighbourhood. After that, it becomes your duty to fulfil your obligation towards that favourable draw of luck by keeping good relations with that engineer.
So we have been doing just that.
But wizards, wherever we find ourselves, rarely think in such months-long, multi-perspectives. So at least I have tried to keep the decorum because I know that he can come in handy in this country. Suppose there is some problem with our computer, he can help us in sorting it out.
But Sandeep and Sajan, on the rougher side, started behaving with him like a typical Pakistani. We then searched Internet Explorer for anything that might help us avoid seeking his favour. So, me being their trump card, I tried my level best.
But, you know, with immature knowledge, it is a very tough task to function as a professional engineer.
Out of mischief, Sajan and Sandeep opened some adult websites on Internet Explorer. So the computer got infected.
And now our computer needs the services of Mr. Ali.
After a few calls and a couple of courtesy visits to his house, we have not yet seen his engineering hands doing something for the benefit of our computer.
As Mr. Ajay Pal is here, and the upper-storey room is not large enough to accommodate four persons, Sandeep once again has got another opportunity to sleep with Fatu in the privacy of a separate room.
The relationship seems to be on a sound foundation because the younger Khadiga becomes tentative and shy in front of Sandeep, as if he is her real brother-in-law. There is increasingly the atmosphere of a little family around the three of them.
Sandeep often talks of going to India in March for a couple of months. Fatu threatens that she will leave the house and its back-breaking services the day he leaves for India.
The other night they were alone in the ground-floor room. She wept and told him that if he doesn't marry her, she will never marry in life, will even die.
Sandeep also started crying.
Both cried and then sought physical intimacy and consolation in the limited manner available to them.
All the women of the neighbourhood tease her about this relationship. There are even some rumours that they are secretly married.
She has even faced family protests regarding her staying at night in a home often full of foreigners, males only. She demonstrated to her mother that she was still a virgin, showing that the traditional stitches remained intact, and closed the chapter.
Due to this relationship, she had to bear the brunt of Mr. Keshwani's anger. He had seen the couple in moderately objectionable proximity, had a quarrel with Fatu over salary, and threatened to send her back home.
Sandeep came to her rescue.
Keshwani said either she or he stays at home.
She, the nice girl with injured pride, started packing her belongings.
Sandeep ordered her to stay back.
Sajan has intrinsically antagonistic feelings for her. They both know that Sandeep pays her 20,000 francs instead of the 15,000 set by them.
Sajan's main complaint, apart from his major grouse of watching helplessly the fireworks of his lust going waste, is that she mismanages financially. The grocery bills are high, and she prepares meals well in excess of demand.
But he knows that business here is mostly dependent upon Sandeep because he knows the language. He has a more extensive network with the locals. So his stay here is, in some way, decided by this relationship with Fatu.
Sajan Pal just watches helplessly, waiting for his opportunity to strike.
Poor Sandeep's belly has to bear the brunt of Fatu's kitchen skills. His abdomen is bulging out like that of a middle-aged fellow.
He says that it is okay for a man to have a bulging paunch.
Me and Sajan discussed that maybe it is a typical feminine insecurity—to save him from the seductive looks of other attractive females by turning him into an unattractive middle-aged man in looks.
Well then, everything is fair in love and war.
Sajan is forever saying mischievous and suggestive things in Hindi and Arabic. Both sisters call him Shaytan. Khadiga teases him girlishly, sticking her pointed tongue out at him.
A few names that I remember from the neighbourhood: Ayesha, Aamna, Vikran, Ibrahim, Ahmed, Muhammad, Din, Abdullah, Abu Bakr, Musa.
Our kind partner from Jalandhar, Babu Bhai, has sent 9,000 through electronic transfer. Oil and scrap deals have been finalized.
Anil and Shekhar are now with Keshwani in Delhi.
God knows what they are up to.
Mr. Ajay Pal from Delhi, who has been in friendly business relations with Mr. Keshwani for the last 25 years, is now encouraged by Sajan and Sandeep's latest spat with Mr. Keshwani and company.
He knows that since we are staying here and are in contact with a few people, the middlemen who can arrange business deals, Mr. Ajay Pal is making business overtures to us.
He has laid out extensive business plans before us.
He is a very practical businessman.
Sajan, the realistic Jat, is not feeling too friendly towards him either.
Let us see what happens.
Sandeep has developed good relations with Ahmed Abdullah. He is almost a part of their family now. Their old mother looks at him with much fondness, as if he is her own son.
Ahmed Abdullah belongs to a prominent Afar family.
The third son, who studied in France just like two of his elder brothers, got married to a French lady. As usual, the lady divorced with a lump sum of money. Their son of mixed parentage, brown with cute features, now plays in the dust of their sprawling farm, dotted with palm fronds.
The family patriarch, the man who created much of the fortune, is now in Ethiopia at their sprawling estate in Afar province.
There is a big dairy at the farm here in Djibouti, but the rest of the land is left fallow without any agriculture.
The sprawling estate by the main road between Djibouti city and Cité Hodan, where we stay, is a relative oasis of prosperity, greenery and peace in comparison to the surrounding blackish-grey lava formations.
During the civil war, much of the family's fortune was spent sustaining the civil war from their side, being one of the prominent Afar families in revolt against the government dominated by people of Somali origin. Abdullah played a real part in it.
He commanded a little platoon and stayed among the volcanic formations outside the city with his armed men.
Now they are making an economic comeback.
The spacious farm is a great example of mixed farming involving a diversity of crops, poultry and dairy farming.
There are many date palms on the farm. Presently, bunches of tiny dates can be seen. A labourer was tying these tiny bunches to ensure that they don't sway and fall in the wind.
There are many wells, with rock walls lined inside, from which power generators pump out water.
There are small vegetable beds of maize, tomato and other vegetables.
There are numerous cows in enclosures formed by two lines of iron pipes. There are many sections for different varieties and age groups of cows. The breeders move proudly in their respective enclosures—the male cattle breeders, the sires.
In a poorly set-up wire-mesh structure, the poultry section ensures a delicious supply of eggs and meat all around the farm estate.
There are many old rustic bodies of big cars, a symbol of their changing tastes and automobile priorities over the years.
Sandeep has developed a very nice relationship with the family.
He calls the family matriarch Amma, and he says that he is their fourth son.
Whenever Ahmed denies him something, because Ahmed is the official type, a strict disciplinarian and always to the point, Sandeep puts it in the old matron's ear, and she then gives them a good lesson.
One of the family members works with the World Food Programme, and another has a butchery.
Mr. Ajay Pal says that women here are not as simple as they seem to be.
He says, if you enter the mud, ensure that the mud does not get spattered on your clothes.
He advises the young guys here to be careful and use protection. According to what Mr. Ajay Pal tells us, if somebody ends up having a physical relationship with a Djiboutian woman and she is able to present proof of sexual intercourse and approaches the court, you can be forced to marry her.
So this is the warning Mr. Ajay Pal has been giving us young guys here.
The great thing about this country is that there is not much of a stone wall between the VIPs and petty businessmen from India.
They say that their dream is to make it the Dubai of Africa, so they are making it very approachable, receptive and open to any type of entrepreneur, ranging from the richest one to ragtag little groups like ours, where we have just collected our little capital and are thinking of making it big.
And there are all the signs that one day it might become an African imitation of Dubai as well.
Even Mr. Ajay Pal has been successful in building up a relationship with Adem Deilate, the Djiboutian consul in Delhi. The Prime Minister here is, according to what we are told, the consul's brother.
He met the Prime Minister.
This availability, openness and accessibility of the top leadership, even to the petty businessman, will ensure that a very competitive environment is built up in future.
Today Khadija, the maid from the neighbouring apartment, came with pain around her navel—I mean pain in her stomach around the navel area.
I administered her Nux Vomica, a homeopathic medicine.
I don't know whether she was saying it out of feeling obliged, or whether the pain really was cured, but she said she was relieved of it and was very happy.
Many ladies, their heads covered with cloth, drive Toyota pickup cars, Toyota SUVs, Prados and Land Cruisers.
During our stay here, we have seen just a few small cars and two-wheelers, which can be counted on fingertips.
There are just cars, and that too big cars—the SUVs, the 4WDs.
There is no state carrier.
During the last year, many luxury minibuses imported from Dubai have come onto the roads here.
These imported minibuses have thus facilitated movement in and around the city, including travelling to and fro from Cité Hodan, where we are staying.
Coming back to Abdullah's farm, here we have managed to get space for our oil filling—iron drums, rubber-processing oil or fuel oil.
The trucker brings oil in his tanker from the power plant: 20,000 francs per truck as his fare, plus 550 USD for one container.
So that is the cost we have to pay.
Apart from it, there are some more charges, unofficial charges, to the middlemen. The President's former classmate, who arranges all this, gets this contract.
We have employed four labourers to do this job of filling the little iron drums from the truck, and we pay them 20,000 francs per month.
Two of them are Tanzanians.
One is Ali Hamish, and the other is Farhan.
Ali is a stout, short man with a very dark complexion, a long face and a booming voice. He understands Hindi because he was in India for a few months.
He was there in Bombay, illegally, of course.
He said, “I was travelling on a cargo carrier, and then we got down as it docked in Bombay. I could spend a week there in Bombay.”
Sajan always greets him with a crude Hindi slang word, grinning broadly.
Ali replies effusively in Hindi that he is nothing of the sort. He understands the joke because he picked up some Indian slang during his time in Bombay.
Farhan has a small face with a broad forehead. He is a silent worker.
Sajan and Sandeep are very satisfied with their services because, in comparison to the local workers we have employed, they work very efficiently and very hard.
Ali has a mobile phone, an expensive Samsung set. He has loaded some explicit pictures into it, including an interracial sexual image. It makes me think, somewhat humorously, about how histories of race, status and aspiration can find their way even into private fantasies.
It is quite funny, actually, how history plays a part in what we still do.
Thursday night is a type of carnival night here, for the next day is Jumma, a day of utmost repose, relaxation and piety.
So many people go on a shopping spree on Thursday evening.
Nightclubs are full of lust, fun and frolicking. Ironically, sex workers are available at a cheap rate in comparison to many other common commodities here.
I can recall one particular incident when Sandeep, the mischief-monger, was able to draw me and Sajan into nightclub revelry on a Thursday night in the city.
And it's just human to somehow let one's guard down.
And there we are on the discotheque floor in the nightclub, dancing to strange numbers ranging from anything Asiatic to Western.
Now, I have been a casual drinker on social occasions, but this time I got boozed up, and that was something very strange because I usually try to maintain a very sober face and remain in control of myself.
And then—monkey dancing.
I hardly know how to dance.
So Sandeep, the Casanova guy, was dancing with anybody, ranging from sex workers to ladies of class. He was dancing with everybody.
I was just hopping like a little monkey.
And Sajan—what a funny incident happened.
Sajan is quite handsome-looking if he puts a cap on his head to cover his balding head.
Bald head, actually.
So he is a healthy guy, and with a cap on, the handsome boy is dancing gently, holding the hands of an Arab woman.
And suddenly, on a certain whim, she happens to take off his cap.
And imagine—from a handsome man of 30, he looks like an uncle of 50.
Instantly there is such a big change, and she cackles with laughter, kisses his bald head, and then goes away laughing.
It was so funny.
Taken aback, Sajan puts on his cap, drinks more, and then I find him dancing gently in the typical Western-style dance where the gentleman holds the woman's hand, the woman and man facing each other and just swaying and imbibing the rhythm of the music.
So this is an elderly French woman in her fifties, of his mother's age.
They are dancing, but she is reasonably fit for her age.
Sajan gets excited.
Now, one particular fact about Sajan: he does not wear undergarments beneath his jeans or trousers because his thighs are quite heavy, and if he uses tight underwear, he gets an infection in his thighs. So to avoid that, he keeps it open—just trousers.
Now Sajan is drunk.
He has been away from his wife for so many months. His overtures have been repelled by the ladies in the neighbourhood where we stay.
He gets excited, and before long he exposes himself.
Now just imagine the decency, the understanding, the wisdom of age and maturity in that woman.
She is not shocked by it. She doesn't feel offended. She finds it something very natural for a man in close proximity with a woman.
Gently, with caring hands, she restores his clothing and zips him up.
I can never forget it.
It is such a strong moment which tells you so many things—how understanding one can be about another's position.
She did not get offended. She simply understood that he is an expatriate. He is staying away from his family. This is a rare moment of just getting out of control.
So she did not judge him.
She simply zipped him up again and continued dancing.
It was such a beautiful moment in all that mess.
I got over-drunk and I blacked out.
I don't know how and what happened after that in the wee hours after midnight.
I just remember that after getting heavily drunk, I passed out in the darkest corner on a sofa where there were some sex workers.
After that, I just blacked out, lost my sensation.
I came to a sudden jolt of consciousness and found myself walking in a downtown area, a deserted narrow street with very poor housing on both sides, almost a slum.
And a woman, a sex worker, held a tight grip on my wrist.
At this moment I regained my senses again.
I found myself there, and then I understood.
Instantly, I gave a big jerk to my hand and started running away.
She tried to follow in desperation.
A poor girl, you know.
She was not bad-looking. She appeared to be of mixed Somali and Arab parentage and was quite good to look at.
I stood at a distance.
She knew that she could not pursue me and catch up with me.
So I could see the desperation in her, driven by poverty.
Who goes into prostitution out of free will, with the good intention of it?
One is often forced into it.
So I could see the desperation in her voice, and she was calling me back.
And then I felt kindness for her.
I just asked from a distance, “How much do I owe you? How much do I have to pay?”
I had heard that sometimes people in the trade even steal wallets.
So instantly I took my hand to my pocket and found the wallet there.
That meant this girl was quite honest.
Actually, she could have very easily taken out my wallet had she intended to do it.
She hadn't done it.
Then she told me the amount.
I just gave that money to her.
When she took it, she again said, “If you want to come with me, you are most welcome.”
She said it with a sad smile.
I turned around and went to the main street to hail a cab.
Actually, it had happened like this while I had passed out. My friend Sandeep had availed himself of the services of this woman, and that's how I happened to find myself being led by the wrist through that isolated lane.
I remember a similar incident in the same context, even though it is not related to Djibouti.
While I was in India, I was still in the business of exploring opportunities in import and export of scrap of different types.
There is this big congested market in central Delhi, in the Old Delhi area.
So we used to go there with my friend and meet the traders.
Because of the congestion, it was impossible to take the car into those congested alleys. We used to park it well outside the area and walk down for one or one and a half kilometres to reach the innermost recesses where big businessmen sat in their little hovels.
Massive opportunities in small, cramped places.
As we walked, the path would cross the red-light area, the much-talked-about G.B. Road of Delhi.
And there you have the desperation and tragedy of women selling their bodies—some on account of their own follies, some being cheated, some forcibly kidnapped, some abandoned by lovers, ultimately ending up here in this ghetto.
Now this friend of mine, he was a colourful character.
So one day he said, “Why don't you just go and have a look at it? You are a writer. You still keep writing in your journals. So why don't you just see it from inside? That will possibly give you material for building a story.”
And a writer can always be convinced on these grounds.
So he said, “I will have my fun, but you can have a look around, and then you can write about it.”
So I followed him up.
On the ground floor, you have the usual market where common people are selling their wares of all types.
On the upper floors, you have that tragic life of women in the sex trade.
So we moved up a dark, narrow staircase lined with paan marks because people spit gutka and paan, humanity being made so cheap in those grey corridors.
And the moment we reached the threshold, like claws, we found that our hands had been grabbed.
Now during the day it is very odd to have clients because mostly the business happens at night. And with more liberty for male-female proximity, the visitors to these houses are diminishing in number.
So business is very down.
They don't want to lose an opportunity to get a client, even if it means almost dragging somebody inside.
My friend, I saw him being willingly led away into the interior of the establishment, but I remained stuck at the door itself.
I supported myself with one hand against the doorframe, putting all my force into it, while two women were grabbing me and trying to make me enter the house.
They were cajoling:
“It will be good fun. Come, come.”
I just slumped down on the ground so that they wouldn't at least be able to lift me up.
Then they thought maybe I didn't like them, so they called somebody they thought I might find more attractive.
Then I started pleading with them:
“Please, please leave me. I just came out of curiosity.”
I even said that I was dysfunctional in that area, so I could not do what they were expecting. (Haa.. Haa one ought to tell lies to save oneself from such nasty situations.) I am functional, by the way. But one shouldn't bother about typical male egoistic honor when saving the real honor. So tell the lie and chicken out. That's better than being forced into sex by greedy hookers.
But they said they can easily make me operational provided I gave them a chance. So then I tried emotional blackmail.
That was quite funny.
I told them that I write for the welfare of women in this trade. I have a research-scholar friend who is writing on your issues and bringing about more awareness about this and that.
And I even said that I am your guest.
“You should not be treating me like this.”
I spoke so personally and gave so many pleas while just lying there on the ground that they finally had to loosen their grips.
And I came down readily.
So that was quite funny.
But that also shows the tragedy of life in such corridors.
****
Cité Hodan is the posh colony to the west of the capital city of Djibouti. It is built by Lootah Builders and Construction, Dubai, on a high lava ridge. From the city, its wide blocks of flats, three-storeyed and two-storeyed residential blocks are visible as a slightly better streak of accommodation.
Still to the west of Cité Hodan are higher ridges where a World War II-time network of bunkers looks over the highway with an ironical look.
Nearby this network of bunkers are the residential single-storey barracks of Lootah construction workers. Roofs are made of two iron sheets filled in with a non-conductor of heat.
There are so many Indians, unskilled and semi-skilled workers, in these barracks with their stories of pain and struggle.
They visit our PCO, defined by the application on our personal computer. They come for international calls. One call rate is equal to 100 DFR.
One guy ended up spending 45,000 francs in one call. Must be talking to his girlfriend there in the subcontinent. He was Bangladeshi.
Another guy had sent 45,000 rupees through Hawala. His people were yet to receive it even after two months. His passport was with the company. He is here for the last eight months.
He says he is getting only 9,000 to 10,000 Indian rupees.
What is the use of being out of the country, away from home and earth, for this type of money?
So he says he will fake illness to somehow get out of this country.
Lootah Group has an agreement with Dhaloo Airlines of Somalia. They purchase out-of-date and out-of-service aircraft from former Soviet republics and fly them on these routes in the Third World.
It's risky travel at concessional rates.
Even travelling by Ethiopian Airlines is not totally without its share of troubles, especially the connecting flight from Addis Ababa to Djibouti. They sometimes cancel it altogether.
Sometimes you get a very small aircraft whose fuel might let you down even during the short flight of 45 minutes.
Sandeep had a horrendous experience on this account when the fuel tank of the tiny aircraft gave way on its journey from Addis Ababa to Djibouti.
Thank God there was a famous potholed airstrip available nearby. It was an airstrip dating back to the Second World War era, and the small aircraft almost fell on the runway.
The Chinese inside the plane were crying.
China is spreading its wings in Africa like anything. You can see China-specific articles even in Ethiopian Airlines magazines available in front of your seats.
So the Chinese people were crying, thinking it was all over.
Sometimes, when you are a bit luckier, you get an opportunity to reach your destination by the cargo plane bringing its routine supply of khat.
These are narcotic leaves supplied from Ethiopia, and they give a high, just like cannabis.
Sandeep tells me that he came to know about the fuel getting spent in the small, old-looking, noisy aircraft when, after some time following the bumpy landing, he saw fuel tankers reaching for refuelling.
So that was quite funny.
And sometimes the passengers will find themselves availing the opportunity to reach the destination by the cargo plane which is bringing the supply of khat, the cannabis-type natural leaves which are supplied daily by cargo plane to Djibouti.
Mr. Keshwani travelled that way with four or five other passengers.
Khat.
Some people call it khat. It is available in small packets costing anywhere from 500 to 5,000 Djiboutian francs.
Small wooden boxes, just like paan sellers in India have. On these small boxes women sell these packets.
So Coke and khat—the soothing lap of the great mother.
You can see almost all Djiboutians chewing on these leaves. They retain them in their mouths, just taking the juice in, and it gives them a high just like cannabis does.
Islam prohibits drinking, that is liquor. But there are so many other substances which can give an equal high. So this is permissible.
As you set out in the afternoon, the most usual sight that you can come across is somebody chewing the leaves, having sips of Coke and just going into a trance of forgetfulness.
Then nothing bothers.
The hard reality is somewhere else altogether.
So these narcotic leaves have a drugging effect, like cannabis has. They are much in demand.
There is a special cargo plane for daily supply from Addis Ababa to the Djiboutian capital, and if you stand on the roof, you can see people waiting for it, looking into the skies, because there are so few flights and this particular plane is so recognizable with its old body and rusting paint.
Everybody knows:
Here comes the fuel-guzzling monster carrying the leaves of liberty.
The day it gets delayed or the flight gets cancelled on account of any other factor, you can make it out instantly from the reaction of the people.
People become cranky, snappy.
You can see more brawls.
Everything seems to go out of hand. There is more disorderly traffic, shouts, brawls.
So that shows how khat is managing life, giving an opportunity to poor people—a labourer working at a bone-breaking hard task under the scorching sun for a pittance of money and just looking forward to a relaxation-filled evening with khat leaves and Coke sips, and then sleeping in the folds of dark night.
The substance, without going into the morality of it being good or bad—here I am puzzled whether to call it good or bad because, when I see its significance in the life of poor people, you end up even feeling that if not for this chewing of these leaves, life will be far more intolerable and difficult for these people.
Now coming back to the more practical matters, we went to the law minister's office. His wife runs a company, the export-import of scrap and other items.
Aziz is a relative of theirs. He manages the company.
He is an educated Muslim. He got his education in Canada, and to facilitate his services as a middleman, having connections with influential people in business and political circles, we paid him 5,000 USD.
So that happens to be his salary, in fact.
As an educated person, he takes it as his rightful salary. Having got management training, he talks of management efficiency, work culture and turning Djibouti into something significant in Africa.
And he always cracks jokes at Sandeep and says:
“You have chased so many Somali women. You have night-long escapades with Somali women and sleep late at night and get up almost at noon the next day. Look at your bulging paunch. Why don't you get up early? Enough of chasing Somali women. You should exercise now.”
He jokes. He laughs.
Apart from having fun at the cost of Sandeep, he is also venting out his feelings against the majority Somali community because Somali and Afar, in my observation here, do not see eye to eye in Djibouti.
He is from the Afar community, which has been given some representation after the civil war, including the post of Prime Minister in the government.
Now some work culture is evolving here.
Since some material had been stolen from their scrapyard, this time he has asked us to come with a written plan mentioning the names of persons who will be visiting the yard during the cutting of the scrap, the type of machinery used, the registration numbers of vehicles allowed inside the yard, time, schedule, etc.
I think his policing is management knowledge that he learned in his college in Canada.
When I tell him that we have been duped of 20,000 USD, he firstly puts the blame on us, saying:
“Indians drink beer and think they are the smartest persons around. You people chase women, get duped and then make complaints.”
My God, again Somali women in the picture.
There is an Indian in his mid-forties who has forfeited his passport with him for roughly 1,300 USD.
This man worked for a Dubai-based company, squandered 35,000 USD in a month from the company account on debauchery, a major portion of it going into the furnishing of his favourite sex worker's room.
His boss slapped him.
The poor guy was taken in by police.
Now he is lost in the poorly drawn-out two- and three-storeyed blocks and poor quarters of Djibouti.
His family, including wife and kids, is waiting for him back in India.
During these days of disgrace, he comes to dine with Sandeep sometimes, but then he stole his 200 USD while Sandeep was drunk.
He also spent a month or two with Indians working for Lootah Group, but again ended up stealing money from them.
Our neighbouring block at the street corner is full of a big widow and a brood of girls and boys.
The family patriarch was in the army. He died in service.
Out of the compensation money, they have bought a second-hand SUV, opened a little eatery on the ground floor.
Now they have started a telephone booth as well.
So they are our business rivals now.
When Sajan and I were coming from the evening stroll, the woman—a big woman, bigger than both of us—approached us with one of her boys who could speak English.
She started talking in Somali, while a thin young man translated.
They explained that our using the internet phone, used by most of the Indian and subcontinental labourers, was illegal.
Since they have got the registration for a proper landline and pay the money to the government, they said it was not a threat. They were not going to the government.
It was just neighbourly advice:
Be careful and stop allowing people to call from your internet phone.
Maybe Ali, who says he has reasons to be angry with us, as well as Mr. Keshwani, is behind this thing.
Muslims are always preferred over any other religion in a Muslim country. That is not a surprising fact.
The same applies to Djibouti as well. They hold a bigger clout.
Ali, the short and dark 26-year-old Pakistani software engineer working with a Kenyan company, has taken an apartment opposite us across the lane.
His brother Taj is a 38-year-old bachelor.
Mr. Keshwani, ever sticking to his habit of leaping from one project to another, took Taj to Dubai for setting up a new business venture.
As is always to be expected, things did not go the way they had been planned.
Now Ali and his brother are blaming Mr. Keshwani, saying that Mr. Keshwani has used them.
Most of the local women, even migrant workers working in the nearby houses and apartments, prefer Taj and his comrades for the reason of their bearing the same religion, that is Islam.
Even an Indian Muslim barber from Bombay stays with them like he belongs to their country only.
It only proves, at least to me from what I am seeing here, that for them their first identity is that of religion. The rest of the identities, like nationalities and ethnicities, come secondary.
Thanks to Sandeep and Sajan's mischief of watching porn sites, our computer is infected with a virus, but Ali is not doing anything about it.
Maybe he is taking revenge in this manner.
Today they have brought a French lady from the company. She was taking pictures while smoking in front of the mobile camera, passing on instructions about what to do, but it could not be accommodated.
And I think ultimately we will have to take the services of Ali himself.
We have to somehow, possibly, use Fatu's network to start a reconciliation and then convince him to visit our place and sort out the issue.
Another gathering was arranged, this time Anina, Fahan and Ayesha were invited.
As usual, Sajan Pal flirted and smoked the water pipe.
I introduced myself as Raja from Pakistan.
I just wanted to play mischief.
These girls are very particular about their religious identities.
Next day, Sajan, Anina, Khadija and I sat down for the smoking session in the privacy of a wall in the backyard.
Khadija showed her open, unhindered choice for Muslims.
“I have three boyfriends in the town,” she says. “You are kafirs. You sleep with girls before marriage. You will go to jahannum. You burn.”
She particularly points me out as a worshipper of Shaytan, putting out her tongue like Mahakali, indicating upstairs where I do my puja in the morning.
I worship Mahakali.
So she says I worship Shaytan.
She seems even offended.
So it is very surprising to come across this aspect.
It was a quarrel, in fact.
Let me clarify it a bit.
The girl is saying that I worship Shaytan, and she is pointing towards the place where I do my morning puja, lighting an oil lamp in front of Mahakali. She even takes out her tongue to imitate Mahakali as she says I worship Shaytan.
It turns into a quarrel, in fact.
I indicated the brightest star upstairs and tried to answer her. Fatima translated between us.
And Khadija, venting out her not-really-girlish fury against me, again says:
“You don't know Somali, Afri, Arbi. Just Hindi, English.”
I do not know why she has been fighting with me today.
All in all, we end up saying that we will no longer talk to each other.
She had a burning-hot spoon, with the help of which she warded off Sajan's overtures, and tried to touch my hand with the end of that hot spoon to conclude the fight in real physical terms.
Negative.
Sajan was carrying a big burning scar on his forearm, and I asked him what happened to him.
He said:
“She failed to brand you with her hot spoon, but she did it on me because I was too nearby.”
And then I laughed.
“You deserve this treatment because you are always hovering near her.”
He says that he is doing all this to ward off the possibilities of a breakup arising due to girls and women involved in the matter.
Sandeep has got such special affection for Fatu.
It is not good for business.
God forbid that it might turn out to be a painful, heartbreaking story.
So Sajan is quite right in this thing that possibly such relationships and affections should not be brought into the picture when we are here, thousands of kilometres away from our home, trying to make a niche in an unorganized sector in an African country where there is hardly rule or regulation.
And most of the time, for Sajan, it is just innocent fun, teasing out of mischief.
That's it.
I watch him very closely and find him somehow detached and not under the risk of falling into the pit of affection or any type of relationship.
He is a good family man, after all.
Sandeep has gone head over heels in love with Fatima, but that also seems to be good because he has been a womanizer in his life here and in India.
So if he is tied to one particular woman, that is good. At least his energies won't be straying too much off the path.
Coming back to the business, in the world of business all your principles, ethics, skills and voices are put at the anvil.
Mr. Ajay Pal is with us since the 19th of this month.
During this period, the common oxygen for this hesitant, suspicious relationship has been the ever-persistent criticism of Mr. Keshwani, whatever might have been the reasons and faults committed by Mr. Keshwani.
Given all these facts, Ajay Pal, considering their friendship of 25 years and also their status of being neighbours in Delhi and their kids being friends, should not have said what he actually said during the last week.
So that somehow lowers Ajay Pal's esteem in my eyes.
Because friends are friends, and despite any type of mishappening, one should not come down to this level to start condemning somebody who has been a friend for so many decades, in fact.
Now Ajay Pal is becoming very serious.
He has paid about 6,700 USD to us, and the work is yet to proceed further.
He has extended his stay till the second of March.
And Sandeep is very mischievous.
Sandeep forced him to pay 100 USD for two full boxes of Heineken beer. So many beer cans on the terrace. Sandeep had seven or eight; Sajjan perhaps five; Ajay Pal had four (much beyond his capacity; as if he was trying to drink as much as possible to make up for the loss of hundred dollars); even I was caught in the ebriated loop on this odd occasion and ended up having two. Then shouts, lewd jokes, bawdy Haryanvi songs burst forth from Sandeep and Sajjan. Much elder to us, Mr Ajay Pal, tried to sing and shout as if--again--trying to draw out as much as possible for the loss he suffered. (The next day the neighbors would exclaim: 'Beiraa, baaden Hindi magnoon phi!' Means, after guzzling beer Indians go madly crazy.)
Once you are drunk at this level, the real beast in you strikes roots, drunk to the extent of manifold potential.
They were looking out for an opportunity for more and more fun, and jokes followed.
Anina, who looked so plain earlier, today looked really gorgeous, in the lingo of Sajan Pal.
She had pants with side slits up to calf length on both sides, beneath a black piece of cloth draped around her bosom. She wore a black top.
Sandeep cuddled her.
I was at a distance.
Sajan Pal would have done the same, but could not because she ran away and didn't come again.
Then Fatu and Khadiga came back.
Khadiga remained inside.
Fatu again went out to fetch some crunchies, and then Sajan Pal smelled the opportunity and left Sandeep and Ajay Pal talking drunkenly by the main gate.
Sajan Pal found young, petite Khadiga below the space under the staircase, a cosy resting place where food-wears, empty luggage trolleys, bags, cardboard boxes, and dresses were stacked up.
And Sajan Pal, plainly drunk, pinned her down there and began forcing his physical affection upon her.
I was standing at a distance.
I could hear her whispering fearfully that Sandeep might come in. That seemed to be her main concern rather than the looming intimacy. Sajan, in his drunken excitement, grabbed both her hands and continued trying to get physically closer to her. He planted a full kiss on her budding pouty African exotic lips.
She was resisting him, trying her best not to give in to the full fury of that river of sensuality. Again out of fear that Sandeep might come in and object to this. Then the African panthress responded in her majestic fury.
She bit him on his hand, but as Sajan Pal later told me, he didn't even feel the pain. Was it a bite of spite. No it was the raw passion of a young girl. Again she tried to check herself. Looking outside to check if Sandeep was there. She wasn't bothered about me standing there and watchging.
He continued trying to take further physical liberties, but she shrank almost into a shell and resisted his attempts. So the struggle between his drunken persistence and her resistance continued. At this stage she giggled very seductively, as if it was part of the game to hurt his male ego by remaining unattainable. Then suddenly shedding away the fake slough of resistance, she clung to him like a powerful sinewy vine taming a big banyan.
Here at this moment Sajjan appeared to be coming out of his grip in the throes of passion. There was something that seemed to come between Sajan and the fullest loss of control.
Maybe it was the stern warning put by his wife. And his word to her that he won't sleep with any other woman as long as she was alive.
Or else, I interpreted it philosophically: perhaps even in such moments there remains somewhere inside us a struggle between the senses and whatever little control or conscience survives.
So there I stood, imbibing the moment, still feeling the excitement of witnessing all this, but at the same time increasingly disturbed by what I was seeing.
God knows where it might have led, because you never know when one crosses the threshold.
But then Fatu came.
Since I have genuine respect for the girl, I left the scene immediately.
Sajan Pal also got up suddenly. More relieved than he would have felt if he had carried it all through to the end. I'm glad that he kept his word to his wife. He is a very nice guy. Far more honest and simple than so many other people I have come across in my life. He is a rare man who has kept his word to his wife even though there are opportunities for him to cheat his wife thousands of kilometers away her. But he has kept his desire firmly reigned in and limited himself to the kind of entertainment we have discussed earlier.
I don't know why and how, because Sajan does not lack confidence. He too is a co-master of the house.
But still he said:
“Sorry.”
So I think he must have felt that he was doing something wrong.
And Sajan Pal just walked out and joined the discussion outside as if nothing had happened.
And I was feeling bad about the girl because I felt that it was something that was being imposed upon her -- even though she herself was responding with full passion later on. But it had started by the man, and a man should bear the onus for any negative situations coming as a consequence.
I was even feeling angry at Sajan Pal for having done this.
This is the main problem in having a poetic heart and nurturing poetic sentiments.
In the morning I observed Sajan Pal, but I could not see any traces of sorrow hovering around him.
As if nothing had taken place.
As if whatever had taken place was an illusion and was gone, just vapored off. .
But I think, in my personal opinion, nobody should have any right to take such liberties without the other person's willing consent.
After that incident, I haven't properly looked at her, as if I share the blame from the side of all men.
Since last night, I have been trying to avoid her, afraid that there might be some accusation against collective mankind in those eyes.
Being a sensitive man, it would accuse me in some prickling manner.
Having these poetic sentiments creates new and painful sensations even when you are not directly involved in the matter.
I was just a witness to it.
But since all of us are partners in the venture and share this small business and this house, I somehow feel equally responsible as a partner for all the rights and wrongs committed individually—even if that means somebody taking liberties with a helpless servant girl in a drunken state.
But I am happy that Fatu came at the right moment and nothing more serious happened. But again I'm sure Sajjan would have stopped within limits. He really loves his wife.
On top of it, if despite everything things had taken a final path, I am sure that I would have stepped in to avoid many repentances at both ends later.
That I am sure.
That much sensitivity, dignity and respect for a woman I have, even if I was a drunk watcher from a distance. And I respect Sajjan's promise as much as I do the girl's dignity. So any intervention would have been for the benefit of boyth parties.
But thankfully, nothing of that sort happened.
But as far as my state of mind while observing it is concerned, we are a cocktail of emotions.
We are a mixture of good and bad, perfection and imperfection.
As I was watching all this game unfolding before me, a part of me felt excited, a part of me felt repulsed, a part of me wanted to see more, and a part of me wanted to put an end to it.
It was a testing and teasing duality duality.
And I am happy that, at the end of it, when I look at it now, despite the streaks of excitement and enjoyment, a major part of me condemns the act and sees that it should not have happened.
What remains important to me is the state of mind it exposed.
We are a cocktail of emotions.
We are a mixture of good and bad, perfection and imperfection.
There are moments when a part of us can feel excited, another part repulsed; a part wants to watch, while another wants to put an end to what is happening.
It is a duality.
And when I look back at that night, whatever momentary and contradictory emotions might have passed through me, the stronger feeling that remains is that certain things should not have happened.
Perhaps that is also part of the problem of having a poetic heart and nurturing poetic sentiments.
Even if you are not directly involved in something, you can carry its burden.
Since all of us are partners in the venture, sharing this small business and the same house, I sometimes feel responsible as a partner for the rights and wrongs committed individually by anyone of us.
That is perhaps the strange burden of sensitivity.
You witness something, and long afterwards it continues to prick you.
****
The conditions for business are very, very challenging here, and there is always an insecurity breeding the thought that we might one day just pack up our luggage and return to India, never to come back again.
Because, given my bookish ways, even though I have been somehow operating as a businessman, in the long term I do feel that I don't have it in me—I mean the typical shrewdness that one requires to succeed in business.
So this thought of not being able to build up a permanent business base here and consequently having to return to India, it makes me feel a very, very sensitively rumbling pang, and that somehow enables me to keep aloof even from casual, harmless playing with women here.
What is the use of making any type of beautiful beginning, even though facilitated by loneliness and staying away from home? What is the use of making a beginning, allowing somebody to enter my heart?
So I don't see any point in engaging in frivolous, even flirting type of behaviour, because these are innocent girls. They may start dreaming an entire heaven of love, sex, trust and other allied emotions born by that stamping of immense crazy lust.
Who knows how many pleasantly furious love storms have arisen, born of such overtures committed under the shell of love, lust, curiosity, by two souls?
Instigated by the last quarrel, we bought a smoking pipe for 5,000 Djiboutian francs, plus 1,000 francs worth of fragrant tobacco and a sack of coals, to tease the girl from the neighbourhood who had quarrelled with us.
To tease her further, we declared that it is an all-men hookah.
So we would not allow any woman or any woman's friend to the party. We won't allow any woman to touch the smoking pipe.
We had an all-male smoking party, but that sweetening agent, which is sprayed by petty female nudges, giggles, ogles, rebukes—a kind of langoorness—was absent.
Bound by that stubborn announcement, now we are looking for the first opportunity to somehow unwind ourselves from the iron coil and smoke in the company of these girls.
Today another, and perhaps the making-or-breaking one as well, chapter has been started by the shrewd nib of Mr. Keshwani's Sindhi brain.
During his fifteen long years in the world of export and import, he has been moving around in the world of business tentatively, without consolidating his position at one particular station or one particular item in trading.
He is such a swaying and insecure soul that it never allows him to take a foothold at a place.
Now I am his latest target.
After having balked out all the negative things about Sajan and Sandeep to Mr. Babu, our financer-trader in Jalandhar, apart from poisoning the ears of Anil and Shekhar, now he has arrived suddenly again.
He did not tell anyone about his arrival.
Only after arriving at Addis Ababa did he call Sandeep to tell him about his sudden arrival.
The man has not spoken even a single word to me after his arrival.
He is a short man with a big appetite.
That is what I have been able to judge about him during the lunch we had together.
His hands and legs are very delicate, but his torso is like a potato sack, especially the paunch—the place where so many things and ideas go in for a churning concoction.
I can feel and smell his antagonism towards me.
The free-flowing and informal environment which was prevailing in the house has suddenly taken a reminding sigh, forcing it to shrink into the shell of formality, hostility, narrow-mindedness and everything which goes into turning a happy home into an office of strangers.
How the things will turn out during the last two days of this month, only God knows.
Not minding much about my own interests, I still pray to God that everything turns out well in the group and the group comes together, because we can survive as a unit only.
There is no option left for we, the budding businessmen.
We are young hatchlings in the domain, while established sharks are always there to wipe us out.
Mr. Keshwani, who hates Fatu, has ordered her sister Khadiga to go back.
That refreshing environment is no longer present.
The night on which we were having a go in the club, dancing madly, came as a thunderbolt on the heads of the poor girls.
Since we sleep in the same room, those girls in a corner, Mr. Keshwani, driven by his dirty mind, cannot believe that three young boys and two young girls will sleep in the same room without having a physical fling.
Mr. Keshwani scolded them, shouting at them during the night when we were enjoying our dance in the nightclub.
He ordered them to sleep under a small alcove beneath the staircase, a small alcove crammed with so many provisions.
When we returned in the wee hours, their sleepy looks said so much that I cannot explain it in words.
Next day Khadiga, silently suffering, went away.
Fatu went into a shell.
We were asking and trying to convince her that she no longer needed to be afraid of that shaitan baba, as she calls Mr. Keshwani.
Now a bit about the club.
Promiscuity, desire, lust, madness, greed, passions were floating over the heads of the dancing crowd, and prostitutes were trying their best to look charming in their unique ways.
Look at a woman in a physically starved manner or sexually starved manner, and every woman becomes charming.
Most of the Indians in petty business like ours, they were embracing, fondling, crazily squeezing the dancing women. I cannot have enough words to describe the orgy that was going on there.
Karan, a businessman from India, is a slightly built Brahmin boy from Sonipat.
He has got Arabic looks, but he has been very sharp and has built up a Casanova reputation here in Djibouti.
He has been here for the last few years, knows the tricks of the trade, earns a lot, but squanders away most of it on women and wine.
So he was fully drunk.
His trail of carousing is famous in club circles here.
All girls, prostitutes, bartenders, bouncers and owners know him quite well.
Many a time he fights with French, American and local people.
Once he misbehaved with a French girl. Her boyfriend tried to put him away.
Karan hit him.
The strong guy, in return, hit Karan so hard that the reedy, thin boy was found lying unconscious for about fifteen minutes.
Other Indian scrap dealers had to take him away.
Indian kabadiyas, or scrap dealers, are in the good books of club owners because they drink really hard and almost all of them go madly after the call girls.
Now a slightly built, moderately tall, dark Keralite is with Karan.
Earlier he was staying with a call girl in her quarters, sharing half the rent.
He also knows many local dialects.
Now coming to our workers, Ali and Haji, working as gas cutters at the Pikaduz Yard of Aziz.
They are from Tanzania.
Locals call them Habshis.
Both are without passports and papers, so the police repeatedly pick them up, only to let them out after a couple of days.
Ali is a very dedicated worker who speaks only when required.
The burning red-hot torch eating into the iron draws his full attention.
Naturally we like him because he gives his best.
He is cutting the scrap into smaller pieces for loading.
Haji is a chatterbox.
In his pleasantly tickling, thickly accented English, he demands money or favours whenever he spots any one of us.
“Hey man, get me a sponge bed, a woman and a bottle of whisky so that I can relax after hard work in your yard. I am a very dedicated worker, you know.”
He said this, teasing us the other day.
Both Ali and Haji have been educated till college back in their country, but the love and passion for seafaring life—they had once dreamt of becoming seamen—has found them travelling illegally on ships, working at foreign ports without visas.
Till that time they can fake that they are refugees from the badlands of Africa, and then they are deported, and now finally, badly clad in dirty clothes, they are workers in a scrapyard.
They are anguished against life, venting it out through the red-hot nozzles of their torches, the cutting set, working in our scrapyard.
They seem to have lost all meaning of life except earning a few bucks, eating and sleeping in the open, being picked up by police now and then, and carousing with women whom they pay as per their meagre capacities.
I feel pity for them.
They are caught in a vicious circle and the ever-persistent threat of catching HIV and having AIDS.
Yesterday Ali did not come back to work.
Aziz said maybe he was caught by the police again, or maybe he is sick.
Like a vulture who eats money only, Aziz doesn't want them to sleep on the stones and iron of his yard.
He wants money for that.
So Ali started out last night, ate little, frugally, and slept in the space of a stone mansion somewhere near Balbela.
Hashim, the long-faced Tanzanian with the nicest of smiles I have ever seen, has been left with Haji at the yard.
“Too much work,” he mumbles.
But his protest is very meek.
So he has been left with the iron work in the scrapyard under the mercilessly scorching, none-sparing African sun.
Now coming to Farhan.
Farhan is a small-built, dark fellow with stone-hard muscles on a slim body.
He belongs to the Mechoosa tribe in Tanzania.
His parents are dead.
His elder brother is an electrician back there in Tanzania.
His only sister stays with his grand-uncle, who is a wealthy man.
The old man has many butchery shops, and Farhan used to work for him, but he did not treat him well and did not even give him his salary on time.
So somewhere in July 2003, Farhan ran away from home to become a seaman without any papers.
He reached Djibouti through the lawless lands of Somalia.
From there he took services on board a ship which took him to Dubai.
He worked there for many months before he was caught.
He slept a few times with a Filipino call girl.
He has a special liking for ladies of East Asian origin.
When he was caught, he told them he belonged to an Omani tribe.
So they dumped him there.
In Omani waters he worked as a fisherman for two years.
Once they caught a shark.
The main problem with the fishing boat pilots is that they are illiterate and thus cannot use the GPS system.
He saved a lot of money there.
Only on very selected occasions he utilized the services of paid ladies.
Even then he used protection.
He is very particular about using protection while having a physical relationship with ladies of the trade.
The way he utters the word AIDS only goes to show the extent of the newfound dread for the disease among at least a select section in African countries.
From Oman he was deported to Somalia.
From Somalia he again entered the port city of Djibouti.
Then he went out on a ship to Bombay and remained in India for a month on papers issued by the UN, granting him UN refugee status in India.
Another ship's captain promised him work in China.
In China he stayed for 40 days.
His work permit as a refugee was not accepted, and he was again deported back to Africa.
This time, presently, he is in Djibouti without any papers, thus picked up regularly by the police and let out again after a couple of days.
Here he keeps a mobile.
He has a very interesting story to tell in his sweetly accented, reasonably good English about how he saved his mobile from the greedy eyes of a policeman.
He, after all, knows how to dodge the perilous waves in the unsettled seas while having no oar-support of legal papers, passport and work permit, working in the dusty corner of the Hashma family's estate dotted with date palms and grass beds.
He seems somehow meaning to stay on the line of life.
His oil-worker clothes and his own colour say nothing about the kind of interesting life he has led so far.
Now he says that he will go back via Somalia because entry through Ethiopia needs legal papers.
He will return to his sister.
The old man has lost his leg and needs his help in his butcheries now.
So he, after almost five years, seems to have to go back after such a long trail of experiences in so many countries.
He is proud of the moderate, relatively peaceful society of Tanzania.
There are Christians, Muslims, about 30 major tribes with satisfactory representation in the government.
The type of Islam they follow there is not rigid.
Either read Quran or not, either read namaz or not, either drink or not—all these do not make any difference in the life of a common person.
This is what he informs me.
But one thing is must: whatever might be your way of life, you cannot criticize others at any cost.
Dar es Salaam, he says, is a big place.
In the nightclubs of Dar es Salaam, he tells me, there are many call girls and hookers from all parts of the world, including India, because there are so many Indian business families settled there, especially from Gujarat.
“It is not tasty when you use protection,” he says, “but what to do?”
Again he utters the word AIDS like he has been hit with a thunderbolt, and then he grumbles that this is the price we have to pay.
Then he tells me very dirty jokes about his experiences with ladies of the trade, including his preference for oral sex instead of using protection.
Work of loading the oil drums into containers at the yard is not going on satisfactorily at all.
Ahmed's Transit Company, named Chabi, has only one forklift machine to lift the oil drums and carry them into the container.
It's an old and rickety, noisy one.
The machine gives in repeatedly during the loading procedure.
It consumes and wastes a lot of time.
That way, the system of work culture that can streamline and facilitate the operation is yet to be established here.
But they are learning.
It will take some time for the work culture to be established properly.
One container was being loaded, and in the absence of a proper coolant, the lifting machine got overheated.
Then it gave in.
So today's ship will be missed.
That is a loss to us.
The next ship is after 15 days.
Again loss.
Uncertainty.
How will it work?
So this is very challenging, but you have to depend on this particular forklift machine only because there is no replacement available.
In any case, the ship is missed, and we have full 15 days to loiter around and look for other business opportunities and go and visit other scrapyards.
So Africa, it will draw you into its lazy, relaxed mode of life.
However hard and sharp and shrewd and clever businessman you are, you have to tame down the urgency and excitement.
And then you have to mellow down and move with the pace of life here because they do not seem to be taking things too seriously.
But that has its own charm and beauty.
****
I sometimes feel wonderstruck at human beings' capacity to communicate across linguistic barriers. Communication seems to be a fundamental characteristic in the universe. It's beyond the human science of linguistics and the work that says we have developed it.
The birds, insects, even microorganisms—studies have found that they have their means of communication. In fact, even roots of trees communicate under the surface, conveying so many things that if the entire knowledge about it is brought into light, it will fill us with wonder.
So here in Africa, I have also learned a few words and phrases of Arabic and Afar dialects. And these few basic phrases in the local dialect, coupled with simple basic words in English, enable me to at least convey what I want to say or communicate.
These are a few basic words and phrases that I have learned:
Inshallah khair.
Another is mushkila. Ki mushkila.
Kef is how are you. Kef hal means kya hal hai.
Tamam, pakka means poora.
Mustamam—not complete, poora nahi.
Mafis means nahi hai.
And falus is paisa. So when they say falus mafis, it means I don't have any money. We have to use it a lot of times while going through the bazaar, where we come across beggars asking for charity.
Hada means yahan, here.
Hina, hina means idhar.
Kida kida means yahan, yahan, or ye—this one.
Anta stands for main. That's I, me.
Bukra is kal, tomorrow.
Baden means baad mein, later.
Shukra—thank you.
Shasha—chalo chalo.
Jozi jozi means roko roko, stop, stop.
Op op also means roko.
And then shaitan is pretty easy to understand.
Habibi is a friend.
Then Baba, of course, for father.
Kalam is kaha, said.
Kullu—poora, saara, entire, whole of it.
Allah kareem means God will provide, Bhagwan dega.
And Habba means one.
Then Timira is khajoor, date.
Aika is ladka, boy.
And Ayesha is ladki.
And these, in company with some more words and basic, simple, elementary English words, give me a basic and rudimentary capability to at least say something which is beyond monologues.
It's Tuesday today, and Fatu is keeping a fast, penance and prayers. Today she got up at three in the wee hours, read her namaz, reciting Quranic verses.
Since the last week, the house is almost bursting with tension.
She understands, most probably, that our little business venture might go to pieces, which will mean us going back to India—or especially Sandeep going back to India—because she seems really in love with him.
I know this relationship might have started with her need and a requirement to have some support, financial as well as otherwise. Later on, a woman cannot help falling deep in love with a man, and thus the way she looks at him, it shows loving devotion in her eyes.
She can go to any extent to defend his interests.
One day, while tipsy, Sandeep was even joking that Fatu is my shield here in Djibouti. Even if the government of Djibouti comes to take me away, she will stand in front of the main gate and won't allow anybody to enter.
So she seems determined and just cannot think of letting this happen at any cost—that is, our business going into the dumps.
So the poor girl is just putting all the force of her faith in Allah to get our business going and, as a result, to keep Sandeep here in Africa.
Allah might exist. To we outsiders, it might be doubtful whether Allah listens to prayers or not. But if there is Allah, then he has to listen to her prayers.
Whatever it might lead to, one thing is for sure: she will not be able to marry Sandeep, and that is the tragedy of it.
Just like her mother had gone mad when her father married for the second time, she will also go mad. This is what I think if Sandeep leaves her to return to India forever.
There are so many walls between them.
Sandeep is the sole boy from a traditional conservative Hindu family based in a farming community in rural India, and I don't think they will accept Fatu as his wife.
But it is a sad but uplifting sight to watch her praying, ready to pay full penance, her black headcloth covering her head. And she looks, from her features and colour, like a typical Indian bride. And on top of that, she has mastered all the skills of house management, including cooking Indian food.
She has mastered it to perfection.
She is ready from her side, and that is where the sadness of it lies: boundaries between nations and religions.
On the Keshwani front, the old man seems to have reconciled to his fate.
His friend Deepak Mehta, a man from Dubai, is in Djibouti presently. Karan saw the old man at the Saba Bank with the young entrepreneur.
He doubted that the shrewd Sindhi might escape with the money from the Indo-Djibouti account of our company.
So, in the morning tomorrow, we are planning to withdraw all the money from the company account there.
The world of business thrives on the sacrifices of relations, friendship, trust and faith.
Anil and Shekhar are in complete puzzlement back in India.
Anil, though he has taken ten lakh rupees from the company account, when it comes to paying for the press machine, feels that he is paying the money from his own pocket.
Then he has doubts that he might be thrown out of the company even after paying for the machine.
So before making the final payment, he is trying to make it sure that he stays in the group by requesting a visa.
He almost pleaded over the phone, “Make a call at the embassy, because they are not facilitating my visa.”
Now Sandeep has got connections even in the embassy here and in Delhi.
It's a small country, and things can be manipulated and managed if you have proper connections.
Nothing is sure in the world of business. All that seems most probable goes wrong, and all that seems impossible comes good.
Aamna—the fat girl who was our first maid when we shifted here—now comes to spoil the chances of Fatu.
She was not keeping well, and as a temporary arrangement she brought Fatu to our apartment to provide the services.
Fatu has all the qualities to serve in different roles, so we retained her services.
Aamna had a quarrel with Fatu.
She now says to Sandeep that she will get a great girl for him, just to put a fracture between Sandeep and Fatu's relationship.
As far as sports are concerned, the boys are all concerned only with football here.
The playing grounds have stones, and they play with passion and naked feet outside the city.
There is a stadium with light towers.
On a happy note, more and more kids of both sexes are now going to school.
Style of dress is also changing.
Traditional loose cotton robe and skirt of bold prints and big headcloths are now giving way to long jeans, long and short skirts, tops, and even pants and jeans.
French and Americans will ensure that westernization spreads fast here.
Just thirty years into independence, the French culture, especially perfume, is palpable, visible—smell it.
Streets, poor and crowded, carry thick waves of perfume and fragrance.
The most popular and common sight along the roads is people chewing khat leaves and sipping Coke.
People of established classes drink lots and lots of black tea and coffee during the day.
Among cigarettes, Marlboro is quite popular.
There are a few supermarkets in the city which cater to the needs of mostly foreigners and prosperous locals.
But the most bustling part is the Magala, Magala Square, and the alleys leading in all directions from it.
It also serves as the bus stand, where you have minibuses, second-hand imported from Dubai, plying to the suburbs.
Under the open sun you have grocery sacks, grains, clothes, cosmetics, bras, petticoats, underwear, nuts, bolts and whatnot.
The sides of these narrow streets are crammed with cheap, small-time commodities.
Here the hustle and bustle of life survives, like breath in and breath out in the form of selling and purchasing.
Here you come across all the encouraging signs that things will be considerably better in future.
The single white-painted minar of the mosque facing Magala Square bears witness to a considerably progressive society.
Only tension seems to be the still-persisting fracture between the Somalis and Afars, a big social division between these two ethnic groups.
Isas, of both parentage, somehow act as a buffer.
So between Somalis and Afars, you have the crossbreeds between Somalis and Afars, called Isas, sharing the parentage between the two.
So they act as a buffer.
Yesterday, when we were waiting frustrated at the oil drum site because the forklift was not working, a lanky man in his mid-forties came to the shop owned by Abdullah's family driver, where we spent most of the time while there was work going on at the site.
He was an Isa and spoke fluent English.
When we told him what exactly our problem was, he had many things to tell sympathetically.
He had his barren estate just near the famed Hashma estate.
Most probably his estate was destroyed during the civil war, yet the man seems to have all the energy required to put it on the road again.
We spent a day at the site and made a very good friend, Abu Bakr, the son of Hashma's driver.
On the barely functioning—but from Djiboutian standards, quite good—Hashma estate, some other families belonging to the farm workers stay in ragtag structures made of sheet iron, planks, acacia logs and boards.
One such structure belongs to the family driver, who normally drives the 20-year-old Prado which the senior Hashma bought as a symbol of power and prestige.
It is a haphazardly contrived structure.
You enter a ragtag porch.
It has a sitting place on a few-inches-high platform for drinking Coke and eating khat leaves.
On one side is the wooden table for khat vending.
A door leads to a small shop crammed with provisions.
The long refrigerator has Iljano and Crystal water bottles, Nido milk pouches, Nido milk pouches.
Above the sitting place in the porch is a small wooden-framed type of port, which is closed for most of the time.
It opens to give messages from the small living quarter behind the shop.
The whole section is fenced with a few acacia trees, wires, poles and other things.
Abu Bakr is a boy of around 13.
He is a nice dark boy, having gracious features and very eager to talk to us and let out a friendly hello.
Whenever the work is going on at the farm and we are here, he wears loose sports shirts and loose knee-length boxers.
His three nieces—that is, his mother's sisters' nieces—they stay with them.
All of them are buxom, dark young ladies, most probably unmarried.
His sister is a glossy ebony-coloured lady of smart, chiseled features.
She has gracious features.
One day, when the loading of drums into the containers was taking place, we had to stay at the site throughout the day, so we had to take our lunch there.
We took milk pouches, biscuits and water.
The bill came to 1,000 Djiboutian francs.
The poor girl could not count it.
Shyly she counted and fumbled, and after each failure she would smile and strike her forehead with her hand.
Ultimately, we counted the bill for them.
Wearing her best dress and scenting herself to the extent that she carried waves of fragrance with her, she set out in the evening for the city.
She said something while passing by the container, but we could not understand her.
While she was waiting for the bus by the road—Obli is the place where the yard is situated here—Sajan loitered around like a brown moth around a beautiful ebony-coloured flower.
He should have shown some guts and ought to have gone to the town with her and taken her for coffee.
Next day, while I was sitting at the khat table, she opened the peeping port in the wall and looked very sweetly at me.
That was good.
It felt good.
Such looks need no language.
She speaks pure Afari, which is not understood even by Sandeep.
Abu Bakr goes to school.
Apart from Arabic, French and English, they are taught a few more subjects.
His English teacher is very strict, he tells me.
Also, he resents slaps, giving a practical demonstration with his hands and fingers on his cheeks and ears.
But he laughs sweetly.
****
Abdullah is a very good friend of ours, especially Sandeep, because Sandeep, given the fact that he has been trained so well by Fatu, can converse more. And of course, more conversation will provide more depth to one's friendship.
In any case, Abdullah is a friend in the real sense.
He is a totally down-to-earth fellow. Though he belongs to such an influential, prestigious Hashima family, yet he walks around just like any other Djiboutian, lost in the small world of needs and rising aspirations and increasing exposure to the outside world.
He is a very practical man on the field. Even though his farmhands are waiting by his side, he starts working like any one of them.
He is presently an indirect partner in our venture. Most of the things are done by him because the business environment is not that friendly here.
Workflow and operations are not laid out properly. It's a vague world where you progress with your networks, paying your way up the hierarchy. You have to involve a local to get things done.
At least some of the laws are business-friendly here. One of them is that if you slap somebody, you are to be put in jail for at least six months without bail. It is really helpful to the foreigners, who are always at risk everywhere from the aggressive behaviour of the locals.
Now a bit of the yard talk.
Umar, the naughty, agile boy who stays in a tin hut in a corner of the Hashima estate, is really fond of Sajan.
Whenever Sajan reaches the yard, he, like a real friend or even family member, snatches away his mobile and flaunts it before other poor boys.
Once he played with the keypad and a number was connected. Sajan gave him a slap.
More than a slap, it was the hurt to his childish heart.
After that he didn't speak to Sajan for at least a week.
Finally, Sajan had to force him back into a friendly mould through his fondling, tickling him in his ribs and cuddling his chubby cheeks.
Today he took Sajan's watch, shortened the chain, put it on his thin, round wrist and was gone for at least an hour.
The poor boy had taken such a liking for it that he fell asleep, his watch-wearing hand on his chest.
Finally, Sajan was forced to take out the watch using anger and twisting of his limbs.
Yes, of course, he was faking anger.
Coming to Abu Bakr's sister, the mildly dark, decent-featured girl named Alima.
She is a decent, mannered and reserved girl, but such persons, whenever they decide to open the gates of their smiles and words, shower a purifying spray of affection around.
She is not like other girls of her kin who are easily approachable.
This girl knows her limits.
Today also she opened the peeping port in the back wall of the sitting place in the porch. Her looks appeared a bit uncertain as she looked from the little port, but she gave hesitant glances to both Sajan and me and then saw through us into the vague horizon of uncertainties, as if trying to find out some meaning from the world of class differences.
She seems to understand the position between her and ours, and she seems to be a very mature girl and looks capable of thwarting any affection-building from her side, because she knows that the heart might put up one emotion, but the mind has to give logic.
That's just being practical.
Maryll Transport Company's truck easily lifted the container full of oil drums.
With the modern system of jack chains and pullers deployed on the carrier back, the whole uplifting and loading operation is done through remote control.
So even here now we have up-to-date technology.
After all, it's a port city, and they have to at least deploy loading and unloading machines and systems.
Mankind is reaching up to greater and greater heights of efficiency and mechanization.
Due to the loading and filling of drums, the area around Alima's shop has become dusty. Whenever you go through it, your footwear lose their identity to become the colour of Mother Earth.
Yesterday, Sajan and I had a long talk with Haji and Hamish during the lunch break at the scrapyard where the gas cutting is going on.
The Tanzanians hold India in very high esteem, except for the entertaining power of Bollywood.
Most Bollywood films are available in Somali dialogues with an Arabic transcription at the base of the screen.
They give respect to the enterprising resourcefulness and businesslike attitude of Indians. They talk of Dar es Salaam with nostalgia.
“Djibouti, this is a sucking, aridful place. No sweet water, no fruits, too hot climate, etc., etc.”
In Tanzania, fresh gold mines have been discovered, Haji informed me.
There the nightlife is very attractive. Apart from sex and alcohol, even work keeps many people awake.
“Here people are lazy, complacent and fools,” he says.
Hamish, whose favourite Hindi word is “Gandu,” thanks to the fact that Sajan always calls him, “Hey Gandu, how are you?”
And with an effusive smile, he always counters with a nice expression:
“Gandu nahi hai.”
Hamish is a nice-mannered, very gentle type of a giant.
Both of them are good in English conversation because in Tanzania, I think, English is one of the main languages there. A major section of the population speaks English because Tanzania was a colony of the Britishers.
On a sorry note, they eat frugally in relation to the kind of hard work they put in under the red-hot hammer of heat in the scrapyard.
They had coffee mixed with water in a bottle and a few crumbs of the cheapest bread for lunch.
Hamish appears funny in his off-work dress: a chocolate-coloured T-shirt and black trousers.
It was grabbed by us to sit on.
He protested mildly and then winsomely said, “Okay, okay, sit on them, sit on them. No problem.”
A lot is going on at the business front.
Mr. Keshwani is out of the house for the major part of the day.
It is a kind of ceasefire between the parties, save some minor skirmishes in the mornings or at night.
Abdullah is very happy, for there is a proposal for him to become the director of Djibouti Indo General Trading SARL, the name suggested by him by reversing the first two words of the earlier company.
Actually, this is our trade that is registered under this name.
So in order to save ourselves from the predatory onslaught of rivals, we have him as the director of our company.
Working on the new plan, Abdullah took us to the lawyer's office to get the things done.
The man in charge is a very soft-spoken, gracious and imposing, in his own unique way, fellow of 75.
We are to get the instructions in English so that we can move ahead with the registration of this new company with Abdullah as director to save ourselves—a proxy director shielding us.
In Delhi, Anil and Shekhar, so eager to fly to Africa, again went to the Djiboutian embassy to get the visa.
They even gave the reference of Aden Delaita, the counsellor.
But Ajay Pal, in talk with Sandeep, managed to thwart their visa-grabbing effort.
They must be really disappointed.
Maybe both of them are now in talk with Mr. Keshwani again.
We might have a new group with Mr. Keshwani, Anil and Shekhar forming the core to get more and more scrap, as Ajay Pal is playing his business cards very shrewdly.
Babu, the nice human being he is, our Sikh friend from Punjab, is also playing his easy-mannered and winsome efforts in business.
Babu, the nice human being he is, is also playing his easy-mannered and winsome efforts in business.
From Magala Square, in one of the streets leading to the central block, is the fruit, vegetable and fish market.
It is March, and big watermelons are heaped below cloth canopies. Oranges, vegetables, flies, fishes, poor vendors waiting complacently behind their provisions are the chief features here.
These people are not in a hurry.
Sticking to schedules and appointments is considered tiresome and boring, called “English appointment” for the Englishmen's stiff upper lip, diehard work culture.
Maybe the French influence makes them believe this way regarding the Britishers.
Presently, the scrap industry is blossoming.
There are no spare parts, no technicians, no mechanics.
Big powerful machines, vehicles, SUVs and cars go into the scrap graveyard after being on the road just for three or four years.
But now they are coming to know the real value of these throwaways because Indian scrap dealers, who squander so much money in the nightclubs, have shown to the locals the real value of these throwaways.
Now these poor people have started taking small, small discarded items to the scrapyards themselves.
There are some instances of thefts of small items from the yards also.
Hamish and Haji are still in the cutting process at the yard.
Hamish is the nicest guy in Djibouti.
Sajan now takes his kiss on the cheeks, pouting well in advance from a distance, giving out a raucous chirp in his ragtag dress.
When Sajan pats him with affection, Hamish says:
“Mushkile Baba.”
And then he says:
“Gandu nahi hai. Kya haal hai? Theek hai.”
These Hindi words are just proven beyond their linguistic capabilities when spoken by him.
He heard them while he spent some time at the Bombay port.
Haji, his countryman, is just the opposite.
My friend is a character, just full of life and energy.
So he would accost us, “My friend, hello,” with pride and high notes.
He has handsome features.
Whenever he sees Sandeep, he asks for 5,000 Djiboutian francs.
Standing on the rubble of his work, a big truck cut by him, he shakes his ass and says:
“I will cut it with my ass,” he proclaims.
This man is so full of life, despite the kind of hard work he is into, holding the flaming torch and cutting the scrap, dealing with iron under the hot, scorching sun.
The guard, an old man with a hennaed beard, is in good spirits after getting a few hundred in baksheesh from us.
****
Haji, the Tanzanian scrap cutter, is a dark man of 32 with naughty, smart features. He is athletically built. His two brothers and two sisters are back there in their home country.
“I was really fat and big when I used to work in the shop factory of my sister, but now this working place has taken my extra meat away from my bones,” he jokes.
His passion for the sea took him away from home.
“There is too much control over sex and women back home. Here I earn and roll in both things,” he says, adding further that he will remain here for another two or three years.
One of his brothers, working in a sea cargo company, is married to a girl of Holland and Israeli origins. His brother stays there in Holland for work, while his another wife, Tanzanian wife, and kids are back in Zanzibar.
He makes complaints about Djibouti, calls it a “fucking place,” calls its water “bloody salty,” just equal to sea water.
For the last 20 days he is working at the yard on 4,000 Djiboutian francs salary.
He is repeatedly picked up by the police, but then they leave him out after some days inside, because even the police department seems to have resource shortage and they cannot afford to keep the people that they regularly pick up for too long. So they just let them out after some time.
When there was a fight at the yard between the Somali labourers and the Ethiopian ones, whom we hired for better work and efficiency from the port, and the police came, both poor Haji and Hamish were gone from the scene, like you have horns vanishing from the head of a donkey.
Madam Saba, the law minister's burly and foul-mouthed wife, came with her manager, Mr. Aziz, the handsome man who is Canada-educated and, most probably, as people say, alleged to be her lover.
She created hue and cry.
She pulled Haji's collar and dragged him around the yard.
“Don't do this, don't do that. Don't even dare to touch this particular big machine engine.”
So she was pointing out the do's and don'ts.
And Haji, he looked so meek, like a mouse caught in the paws of a big cat.
Hamish, the man with a genuine laughter coming from the deep source of goodness, honesty and decency inside him, keeps going like an intermittent hammer of commitment.
He is the pride of our scrapyard, working for 25,000 francs plus 500 daily allowance.
His output surpasses any other worker vis-à-vis his salary which I have seen during our work stay here.
He understands the language of love.
Sajan gives him a kiss and he mutters in his booming voice:
“Mushkil hai, Baba.”
The way he is putting the Ethiopian labourers in the yoke of task, he might end up cramming 35 tons inside one container meant for just 25.
Gesturing, speaking some words of English, Arabic, Somali and Ethiopian, he is always pushing them to work, work and more work, like a magnificent grizzly bear looking for a honeycomb inside a big trunk in the jungle.
He has such acute, pleasant and big presence.
He is the last one to go for lunch in some cheap, sand-covered shack of cardboard, sackcloth and tin iron.
Lunch here is as cheap as 100 francs.
Walking against the dull blue outline of the sea and the volcanic ridges, one can see his outline slowly moving, moving with a majestic relaxation, saturated with honesty, commitment and decency, walking, almost gliding uncomfortably, over the burning-hot black terrain of the lava deposits.
He appears a majestic figure.
After lunch, he is the first one to go towards the workyard again without wasting any time.
This man is so committed to his work.
Work seems to be his worship.
I have been observing both of them, Haji and Hamish, eating a cheap pasta plate for 120 Djiboutian francs at the tiny hovel, almost a shack, which serves as an eating point on the dusty, stony terrain.
This is operated by Ethiopians, and you see cargo trucks flying by on the highway between Ethiopia and Djibouti port.
Inside you find Ethiopian drivers and catering boys, working with a relaxed air.
They are more smart bodily and mentally in comparison to the poor people in the poorer countries in the surrounding region.
So Ethiopians here are considered to be smarter, and they have distinct physical and colour characteristics because Ethiopia is a kind of buffer between Arabia to the north and pure Africa to the south.
So here you have a beautiful cultural buffer, cultural, racial, ethnic buffer, where the Arabic features and colour slowly melt into the African features and colour.
A beautiful genetic transfer.
So Ethiopians have a bronzed shine and some smart, pretty, beautiful-featured faces.
Haji eats his pasta noodles with style and finesse. A twist and turn of the fork finds a big coil around it, neatly swathing the fork's lower end, while Hamish takes big lumps using his hand.
On being pointed out the table manners, he says with his typical laugh:
“After sleeping and easy stroll, you eat in that manner. But I, being a hard worker, prefer to eat in this manner.”
Haji cackles with laughter and then retorts and says he comes from bushes and deep jungles. He is a jungle boy, hardly any manners.
“Can you expect any civilization deep in the jungles and mountains of his native place in Tanzania?”
His place is so remote. For two days, he rides on a donkey—tuk-tuk, tuk-tuk. Then for the next two days, he rides in a rickety bus, and on the fifth day he reaches Dar es Salaam.
Haji is very naughty and he bubbles out. He never ever loses an opportunity to crack jokes at the cost of Hamish.
Hamish is unperturbed and balanced.
Hamish says hungry and angry people are like Haji from Dar es Salaam. They don't know the meaning of life. Today they have money, tomorrow gone and squandered after wine and women.
And in the same vein, Hamish informs us that people from Zanzibar are good.
Zanzibar Island is good according to him—good climate and a potpourri of racial mix involving people from Africa, Arab, Asia and Europe, all intermixed in a rich blending of ethnicities.
And due to the greenery and exotic ethnic and racial cultures, there is a good tourist flow—foreigners, whites.
“They get drugs as well. Drug trade,” he mumbles, with his eyes still widened.
So in this way Haji and Hamish are always in a friendly tussle, trying to give each other a washing.
Haji does it directly and in an uncouth, raw way; Hamish in a subtle and polished way.
One late evening, when the working hours were stretched beyond the day's reach, Haji hadn't got any money from Sandeep for the last few days.
He went muttering bad and angry words from the yard and saying he would not come the next day and our work would stop.
Next day Haji came a couple of hours late in the morning.
During this time his compatriot Hamish complained in his typical graciously flowing manner.
He said:
“Yesterday was bad. To me, money no problem, but Haji's work as a gas cutter is very dangerous. So much heat and dangerous gases. If he does not get money, then of course there is problem.”
So he is speaking very kindly of his fellow countryman.
When a labourer in the yard got injured, he showed real concern for his injured foot.
Too much problem here, working in the dusty, stony lap of the scrapyard, where most of the machine lives come to an end after dying a premature death because of the absence of servicing and maintenance industry and lack of spare parts.
Somalis who control the power in the form of president are notorious people. Hire them and they will just fuck you with the help of their almost non-existent work culture.
You have to become a labourer to get even the lightest material fast to the container, and to save your economic skin, you hire the powerful, smarter and better Ethiopian labourers from the port side.
But the moment you do it, they come barging in—I mean the Somalis—and they fight with you and the poor guys from the neighbouring country.
There have been a few instances when we had to call police to sort out the issues between the two categories of labourers.
The law minister's wife, instigated by a fretting and fuming mechanic, comes barging in, calling us thieves.
“Shark! Shark!” she bellows.
She condemns us as thieves who steal spare parts from the yard.
Then the forklift gives in repeatedly, and by the grace of some mechanic god, when it again starts working properly, Samuel Deleta, the prime minister's brother, who is a partner in Chab Transit along with Ahmed Hashma, comes barging into the yard and takes the forklift away for his own work.
This forces us to get the labourers ready to break their bones by using their hands and willpower to put the heavy, dangerous iron pieces in the remaining containers.
One Ethiopian boy, modestly robust, with an anxious expression on his good-featured, bronze-coloured face, looked at us with an elaborate expression on his face.
Yesterday the Somalis ordered them out, ordered them not to work here.
“What will save them from the problems?”
That is all I can expect.
****
Fatu's love grip on Sandeep is tightening, and as the famous saying goes, the way to a man's heart goes through his stomach, especially for a big man like Sandeep, who has to put a lot of fuel into his evolving paunch.
And Fatu seems to be doing her best to bring him as much close to her culture and faith as it is possible to bridge the gap and make him almost a Djiboutian man.
So today Sandeep ate beef pakoras, served with loving eyes, showering love, lust, passion and care from the big eyes of Fatu.
Fatu is well aware that cow is sacred for we Hindus, and when Sandeep breaks that sacredness, she feels the power of their love.
Me and Sajan did not eat the pakoras, and she appeared to be angry even about it.
I hear her muttering:
“Lukma hada, baden mauti.”
And in love, you learn languages quite fast. Sandeep is a live example of that.
I do not think that he would have learned it in any school under the guidance of the best of teachers, but those love-drenched moments shared with Fatu got him so many Arabic words that now he speaks Arabic fluently, and that is working as the base rock of his increasing network.
Yes, I have to accept that it is helping us in our business, but then the kind of deep personal roots that are developing in a relationship where there is hardly any future, if we look at it realistically, might create problems as well, because a wounded woman will create troubles, especially in a foreign country.
After a sun-beaten, dusty, lava-like hot-baked day, evening comes with a khat-like soothing conclusion on the stony, dark, undulating terrain.
The fastly unfolding curtain of evening falls to hide away many a glaring, pinching reality, and then, as if encouraged by the azaan from the mosques, lights come on the scene one after another.
From a ridge in Cité Hodan, Djibouti town glitters and glares in all its majesty.
It then is no longer the poor place with two- or three-storied French-styled blocks, with the simple people rapidly moving in the streets to catch up with the modern goddess of life.
Light hides many a painful dark corner.
Cats here in Djibouti are really lazy, even wild cats which you find in the stones surrounding Cité Hodan.
They move slowly, not with the typical feline agility and predatory excitement. They move slowly as if they have forgotten to catch mice a long time ago.
If you stare at them, they greet you with a welcoming meow as well.
If you develop some urge to cuddle their soft fur, they will give you every chance to fruitify that urge by lying on the ground just a few feet away.
So Sajan seems to be making it up after the episode with Fatu's sister. He seems to be making it up with the other girl, the bigger one and the fairer one of Ethiopian origin.
So he seems to be making it up by going into extra cuddling puns with this Khadiga.
But even after many tries and consequent pinchings, bruises and burnings she gives him while smoking hookah, this Khadiga also does not allow him a kiss, nor cuddling and caressing her.
In one of the drinking sessions involving Ajay Pal, Sandeep and Sajan, and me sitting at a distance because I have not taken a drink after the last time when Sandeep got Ajay Pal paying 100 USD for the two boxes of beer, I jokingly, because the mood is light, tell them about the tussle between Fatu's sister and Sajan.
Now Amuni is here.
Amuni has come of age. She is just one or two years younger than Fatu.
Now Amuni is here and Sajan is making advances—hearty, hot, passionate. But of course he is sure that he won't cross the line. It is just the game on the surface.
And Amuni is much taller than any of her sisters. She is Fatu and Khadiga's sister. She is crazy after Indian songs. She is silent, introvert, shy and speaks a few words.
A material for intimate transgressions on account of her age-related curiosity.
But to be frank, I feel a bit discomforted about it.
A woman has the power to put fissure in any relation, however strong and mighty it be. The fortress of friendship between two friends can be easily shaken by the jealous chisel work of the love for a woman, and greed, and jealousy.
They were alone during the whole noon on hookah.
“What went between them?” I asked him, I mean Sandeep.
Now coming back to the episode when I gave a hint that something happened between Sajan and Khadiga under the staircase.
Since then Sandeep has been prodding him to get out the details, and he is very curious.
I can even see pangs of jealousy because he takes Khadiga and Amuni literally as his sisters-in-law and is very protective about them, as if it's a family.
So he seems to be quizzical about what went between them, to what extent it reached.
So I ask him:
“Did Sajan tell you anything?”
And he grumbles:
“He is not telling. Maybe he is good in taking some things in store. Maybe it is not good for our friendship.”
So what I have been apprehensive about—relations going sour on account of girls and women—is looming large in the air.
Even though Sajan is just for flimsy fun on the surface, I know he is going to keep his promise to his wife throughout his life.
That much I am 100% sure.
Now coming to this great personality.
They call him Mota.
His name is Ibrahim.
He is perhaps the fattest person I have ever seen in a real scene.
He was a class fellow of the president and uses the president's power quite well for his business benefits.
His hands are exceptionally small for his bulk, but whenever he sits, he gives the thing a befitting responsibility as per its supporting job.
The massive power-generating plant, the only one in Djibouti which supplies electricity to the capital, has a lot of fuel waste for recycling that can be exported.
The plant is called EDD.
So EDD's chairman, he was a Somali migrant and was brought up by Ibrahim Mota's father.
So quite naturally, at EDD too, Ibrahim moves like a snail, as some gains wait patiently for him.
By the way, all taximen in Djibouti have nightmares regarding the fate of their green cabs, for the fat man has no car, cannot drive, in fact, because he won't fit in on the driving seat, and all the day he moves around in the cabs.
Well, talking of EDD, Ibrahim manages to sell the used oil coming out of the massive generator sets producing electricity in the power station.
Then EDD scrap is also there, and it also comes in bulk, and it is a matter of contention among the horde of scrap dealers, including we, the people.
Ahmed Arabi is the first dog these days who eats away a major pie from EDD to garner Ibrahim Mota's favours.
Abdullah arranged a khat party.
So we gave him 20,000 Djiboutian francs for the same.
The party of khat leaves at our cost took place at Ibrahim's home.
Abdullah, clad in a dashing white shirt and red tahmad, looked a man on a mission when we reached the venue, that is Ibrahim's house.
Both of them were already high on khat.
Ground cushions were arranged by the three walls of the room.
Ibrahim Mota eats like an elephant.
Quite naturally, his collar fronts, all his shirts, bear a permanent imprint of his gluttonousity, whether the shirt has been washed or not.
So that day it was the greenish dye of khat leaves which he was chewing, and the saliva was trickling down the sides of his mouth and giving his shirt a new colour.
This sight welcomed us as we entered the room.
Such rotundity, such robustness, such fatness is better left naked.
But Africans too have come out of the Middle Ages cave of ignoring tribalism, animism and leaving one's body open to nature.
So the big man had a large piece of cloth tied around his washless, sprout-out middle.
Though it would have been a terribly exciting thing to see such comprehensively laid-out nakedness.
Poor man, when he gets up, it requires a mountain of an effort. Then, sitting at the opposite side, you can see some parts of his nakedness while he heaves himself up, thus forgetting to arrange the drapery on account of single-minded concentration to force himself up.
Djiboutians eat khat in a special way.
All the leaf extracts have to be collected between jaw and cheek on one side of the mouth, and repeatedly the constituents have to be ground to get the constant supply of saliva for the innards.
After that they cannot sleep throughout the night, then just have the entertainment in bed, the typical intimacy.
For spitting, Ibrahim Mota had just a polythene bag.
Green spit almost filled it to half.
Big bunches of eaten khat were laid in front of him. Big bunches of just mere stalks, with the leaves gone, were laid in front of him, and the fresh ones also lined up.
This is where our 20,000 Djiboutian francs had gone into.
With a gloating glee, he seems to be all interested in the bunch of fodder in front of him, like a majestic elephant.
He just arranged and rearranged the fodder of khat leaves with slowly yawning greed, and Coca bottles were put slowly to be emptied, so that the business will still continue outside India even if Swami Ramdev in India made louder noises against the beverage.
Coca-Cola here seems to be the lifeline of anybody, from the highest to the lowest.
Ibrahim Mota spoke almost drunkenly, the effect of khat leaves clearly visible in his still more stiff manner.
In any case he is so slow, but after khat it is almost like a massive snail or sloth.
His Arabic words came out through laboured breathing and much force.
Muslims put a very high value, and in most of the cases justifiably so, on their promises.
Throwing out the tied, green-saliva-filled plastic bag on the ground, a few drops even hit our shocked feet—so to say, shocked feet.
He promised that if at any cost oil reached India, it would be through Indo-Djibouti only.
That is Indo-Djibouti Corporation that we have set up with Abdullah as its proxy director.
As per his size, the fat man had a vast-size music system in front of him and played with a cassette for a while, put it inside the stereo, listened to the song just for a minute and safely landed on the scene of practical business again.
Most Djibouti households turn the air inside their homes redolent with the fragrance let loose by a natural bark-like herb, along with a few special types of lumps of some special type of soil.
There is a special lightweight fire container for keeping the coals. The bark and the crush of that material put on the coal let loose such a blissful smoke of oblivion that your conscience starts knocking at the gates of Jannat.
So in that khat-abbreviated environment, the servant girl came at intervals to put fresh bark in the fragrance pot, and the smoke would shoot up, rise high, uplifting the spirits to a newer and newer dimension.
Every place, rich or poor, civilized or backward, has some specials of uniqueness, which provide almost a definition to the socioeconomic and cultural unit.
This fragrant smoke and the lightweight coals are one among many other small, small things which make this poor country rich aesthetically and beautiful in its own simple way.
Still under the spell of khat-juice-induced easiness, Abdullah and Ibrahim heard the azaan call and rose for the prayers in their antipodal ways: Abdullah, the featherweight former guerrilla fighter, with alertness, lightness and easiness; Ibrahim with an elephantine effort.
Muslim prayers need a lot of bending and rising.
For a man like Abdullah it must come as the easiest thing in the world, but for a purely bulky fellow like Ibrahim, the mere thought of going to his praying mat must give terrible cramps.
How I wish that I could see the big man performing his fair share of duty towards Allah.
As they returned from the prayer room, some more easy-mannered, less calculated and easy exchanges proceeded through the evening, jesting and joking.
The big man gesticulated teasingly:
“Baba salit mafiish.”
“Baba salit mafiish” means, “Son, oil has finished,” to which all of us laughed, taking the very opposite as the true meaning of what he had said.
As we were saying goodbyes, the fat man even showed his English prowess:
“Thanks for the visit.”
He managed to say it amidst a guffaw of laughter.
Obviously he was so happy because he was looking up to eating a big part of the profits that would take place from the deal.
****
This is 8-8-8.
8th of August 2008.
A day considered unlucky.
Imagine 8-8-8-.
A day considered unlucky for various reasons throughout the world, except China.
In China, 8 is the prime number. People pay extra money to get the digit included in their flat number, vehicle registration, phone—any type of number that denotes identity and serialization.
So while the rest of the world just wants to hurry through the date, China opens its another claim to super superiority through the most expensive opening ceremony in sporting history.
Following the path of 8, the opening ceremony opens at 8 o'clock in the evening.
In the first week of July, Sandeep had gone to China with Babu Bhai, the businessman from Punjab, and with Babu Bhai's brother-in-law, Inder.
Now Sandeep and Inder, they have this savoury taste in the beautiful fun of life, basically centred around wine and women.
Inder had arranged with a small flexi-tank exporting firm to supply flexi tanks to us because putting the oil in small drums and then loading them in a container is a very tedious task, and it involves risks of spillover as well.
So usually the exporters of used oil, they set up the flexi tank within the container and then pump the liquid into it through a nozzle.
So that is quite safe.
The outer iron shell of the container, and inside you have the thick flexi tank fitted quite snugly. That is safe.
So Sandeep and Inder, they went to Qingdao, the beautiful, spacious, developing seaside city of China, and it is, as we searched on the net, a hub of many manufacturing companies as well.
So our partners were there for purchasing flexi tanks for used oil import.
And today, as we look at the pictures and the stories of fun that Sandeep had there, they seem to open a floodgate of memory in a chamber to pull him back into that pleasantly exclusive environment of traditional Chinese hospitality, impressive signs of uncluttered development.
It is so discernible even from the pictures that are in front of me.
Sandeep tells that just a month away from the Beijing 2008 Olympics, at that time everything seemed put on hold to allow the great sporting event and to make it surpass all levels of success in the past.
Impressive hoardings—“Beijing 2008, One World One Dream”—dotting the roadside, as is clear from the pictures.
But I reflect, does China believe in One World One Dream?
Maybe, maybe not.
If yes, then it is bound to be China's dream, which I am convinced after what they have been aiming to achieve—the superpower status.
Not only as a rival to America, but also we are threatened by disputed borderlands, and China, with its superior military power, might pose a risk to us militarily.
So we Indians always have this apprehension about China. Even here they are giving such a headache to us as rivals. The Chinese are prowling with focus and determination in Africa. They are more disciplined than we Indians. You rarely find them in revelries and money squandering ways like the rest of the people from the subcontinent do here.
Let us see where things move in future.
****
Aziz, the law minister's manager for her scrap business. Canadian educated, trying to force operational protocol in the business procedures here, but that seems such an unsustainable grafting in this business environment where there is hardly any seriousness to follow any properly laid-out plan.
But since he takes his job so seriously and decks up from head to foot officially like the CEO of a multi-million-dollar firm, while in reality it's just heaps of scrap lying here and there, and the process being facilitated through payments, socializing and making your way by building confidence—but basically about payment of money outside the channels.
But still he seems to be taking a lot of sadistic fun in forcing us to prepare a properly laid-out plan, as he gives us a lease for taking away a little bit of scrap from their yard.
So, continuously pushed by him, we have prepared this small plan, even though I know that not even a single line of it is under the surety of being followed either from them or us, because of so many uncertain factors, and things always just go the wrong way at each step.
So here is a little bit of what I have written.
Subject: Loading and Cutting of Scrap Iron, HMS 1 and HMS 2
Sir,
As per our contract, we present the following plan, including our machinery, workers, laborers and time schedule.
Machinery: Small three-ton forklift for loading, one lift, four oxygen cylinders, two LPG cylinders, two torches and pipes, two cutters.
Workers: Sandeep, Sajan and Sandeep Contractors; Ali and Haji cutters, along with their two laborers. Four loading laborers.
Transitor: Chab, owned by Ahmed.
Time: Expected time of work on the yard as per our resources: two months.
Can be increased or decreased due to exigencies and uncertain situations.
Now the last one seems to be the most important, because this is what usually happens here.
Meantime, my vocabulary of local dialects is increasing, and I am very happy that I can remember so many words that give me a broader linguistic platform to converse even beyond business.
Milk is haleed, doodh.
Curd is jubadi, dahi.
Door, darwaza is Albab.
Sugar is mukhta.
Pants, salwar, is sarwar.
Towel, toliya, is tuwala.
T-shirt is garam, and banyan is shamash.
For patloon they say patlon.
Goat, bakri, is ganham. So any cattle that is chopaya is ganham.
Hizam, peti, belt.
Hamam is taking bath, nahana.
Juli, bathroom.
Latrine is khaka.
Hookah is madaha.
Shamees is kameez.
Kalil, kalil is thoda thoda, little little.
When they say the phrase akhud saman, it means saman yahan se le jao, take the things away.
Talata is teen, three.
Ana beit raha, it means main ghar par hoon, I'm at home.
Wahd is ek, one.
Khamsha is five, five.
Habub is beautiful.
Hada hada means ye ye, here here.
Arba is chaar, four.
Hani, meri, mine.
Katir, katir means puri puri, Almost complete.
Aesh mushkila, maafish mushkila.
Avval, pehla, first.
Anta, anti means you. Anta, you for male; anti, you for female.
Alyom, aaj, today.
Itnen means two.
Wahd, ek, one.
Shagul means work, kaam.
Nush nush means half half.
Fainak? Fainak? Where are you? Kahan ho?
Meit, dukaan, shop.
Fain anta maujood dhan? Ab tum kahan ho? Wherte are you today?
Intijar is wait.
Nahash means copper.
Loha, hadeed, iron.
Ana beit, means maujood. I am available at home.
Aluminio, for aluminium.
Aywa. Haan haan, yes yes.
Khamshin, five hundred.
Alf is one thousand.
Alyom, dahan, bukra.
Now, dala dala means dheere dheere, slow slow.
Katir is enough, bahut.
Shani baras, go straight. That is seedha jao.
Sawa sawa fee, ek sa ek sa, means almost same or similar.
Es fee, kya hua?; what happened
Ams is raat, night.
Tariq is bijli, electricity.
Shahan is plate.
Monaka, spoon, chammach.
Ubaya, cups.
Kaj, mirch, chili.
Tamatam is tobacco.
Pyaas is wasal, thirst.
Jangir is adrak, ginger.
Aate means डकैत, dacoit.
Dough is harur, that is wheat duff, harur.
And chobara is matbakh.
चादर, tur raha. Bed sheet is tur raha.
तकिया is makadda, pillow.
Lukma means खाना-पीना, eating and drinking.
Moya is पानी, water, also called biyo.
Kura is breakfast.
Kadaa is lunch.
Asha, dinner.
Meen, कौन है, who is this?.
Dohar, दोपहर, noon.
Babura is vehicle.
Sharf, खुले पैसे.
Shamoon is साबुन, soap.
Dahan, आज, today.
Anta, तुम.
Ana, मैं.
Biro is office.
Gudafa, garbage.
Hada, here, yahan.
Jageer, छोटा.
Kabir, बड़ा.
Isbur, stop. Ruk jao.
Regal, लड़का.
Binati, लड़की.
Now, all these words that I have learned belong to the linguistic concoction of Arabic, Afar, Somali and other dialects that present one linguistic unit.
But these are sufficient to help me go through the day even when Sandeep is not here.
****
August 14, 2010, and here I am in Delhi slogging it out.
What am I doing here?
Well, it will become self-explanatory as I put my notes in the diary.
The world of business is unbearing, and even in our case, where there was lots of friction right from the beginning, between Mr. Keshwani, Anil, Shekhar, Ajay Pal, the three together, Fatu, in combination with other girls around her, which had a very big determining factor, especially as far as Sandeep is concerned.
So things fell apart as they should, as they must, as they ought to, as they are expected.
I think it's beyond should, ought to, or must.
It seems to be a kind of natural law that the strongest shark in a group, when it comes to a startup, a small business, will end up eating the entire pie, and exactly the same happened here.
And I'm not being judgmental about it, because naturally that's how life has been set up on planet Earth—survival of the fittest—and all of us are fighting for basically our self-interest.
So even at the beginning, even if it seems to be a coalition, a selfless coalition, I think the foundation is about preserving one's own interest.
All of us are fighting our individual battles, even though on the surface it might appear like a common goal.
Sajan Pal, the nice and honest and forthright person, who in fact happens to invest the maximum in the venture, has never been as clever as one should be in making a headway in a first-generation business.
He is a good worker. He is a good learner. But the deep passion to succeed at any cost is missing in him, and he has his certain boundaries which he cannot cross, which is symbolized by his vow and promise that he gave to his wife.
So the same can be applied generally to his life.
His wife, whom he calls Fruity with affection—I think staying away from her for so long, he was basically missing her, pining for her presence, and I think whatever just fun he wanted to have on the surface with the girls around, by cracking jokes, by touching them, pursuing them, it was just to somehow enable him to forget the absence of his wife in his life at that phase.
And he would take long inhalations of hookah and would say:
“I just want to go back to my wife, my Fruity.”
It was really hard for me to keep him going there, but after a time he just couldn't manage it, and he flew back, thinking that we two will manage the business.
But is it possible to stay away from the milk and to get it defended?
Now the two of us, me and Sandeep, we fought it out, but then the balancing factor, Sajan, was gone, and Sandeep was getting more and more under the influence of Fatima.
It appears as if I am staying in their household, not office, as if they are man and woman, as if husband and wife they are, and I am just an extra person in the house.
And on top of that, so many challenges as we have been talking—the uncertainties, anything going wrong at any step, the possibility always remaining open—and on top of that the most important factor that business has never driven the core of my passion.
I have been a literary person, and I just happened to be in this venture out of chance.
I think maybe after facing strings of failures in civil services examinations, where I got toppled from the last step, and even after getting selected for PCS, not being allowed to join, that bred frustration, and this seems to be an outlet for that—dabbling in this business affair, at least trying to prove myself, making some money as well, and also staying away from the place where I was failing.
So many big failures.
And on top of that there was always this literary undercurrent: books, reading, writing. They have been my staple food.
I need them as much as I need oxygen.
So my enthusiasm to struggle in that challenging environment, it also just got vapored off with the passage of time.
And here I am in Delhi.
My father left his body on 1st of March, on Holi this year, and now, being the elder one in the family, I have to take up the responsibility, the real responsibility of earning some money, and I am in a publishing job here in Delhi.
Sajan is doing part-time farming, or rather full-time farming.
I am in here.
Both of us are still managing the business affairs side by side, thinking that maybe Sandeep over there in Africa will be honest.
And what role we are playing here in India, at the moment—Sajan as a farmer, me as a publishing professional—because we really need to support our family here.
This kind of role will be a short-term affair, and I am trying my level best. Whatever time I can find out after office hours, or Sajan can find apart from his farming, we devote in searching for buyers here.
I am always in touch with Babu, the nice gentleman businessman from Punjab.
In fact I am the one whom he trusts, and I am the only reason that he has been sending all this money in advance.
He has told me clearly, and to all of us together, that I am the sole person responsible for his thousands of dollars that he transfers, and which somehow is keeping the affairs going there in Africa, meeting the lavish lifestyle of Sandeep with his mistress and her family.
He spends a lot of money unnecessarily also.
But what to do?
That's how it is.
And today, this is August 14, in 2010, a day before our Independence.
And this August 14 also happens to be Pakistan's Independence Day.
By the way, which fact do the Pakistanis celebrate on this day?
What is more celebratory in nature to them?
Is it partition and separation from India, or is it freedom from Britishers?
Without going too far into the controversial issue, let us come back to Delhi on this day.
Rain gods have been really happy this season.
It rained quite beneficially throughout the day.
Rain trends Delhi, and its suburbs have their own pleasantly muddy charm of their own.
And this wet atmosphere, ultra-modern congestion, and the duality of the wealthiest side by side with the poorest makes me stand in a completely different environment from that which is there in Africa at the time—a forlorn, sandy, volcanic, graveyard desolation, but still so empty and full of ease, with traces of joy hovering over the hot winds.
Corporate offices here, mega malls, mega malls, sky-high apartments and other blocks, the glittering clarity—a clarity blessed by rains, because the dust seems to have been put down by the rain.
But then dusts many, but then dusts many—that is mud—swishes, swashes and sways freely, feeding on the blocked drains and nullahs.
You look upwards, and a good sense saunters down.
You look down at your footwear, and the romantic poet vanishes at the sight of almost-gone footwear and stigmatized lower trouser ends.
After the office hours, it was a horrible experience to reach home from Noida after forcibly banging my bottom on some part of an autorickshaw, shared one.
I was carried perilously among the angry, honking, wet cars, scooters and bikes—mother of accidents—gleefully ogling at any jutting-out knee or limb to give a rubbing blessing to anybody's kneecap or elbow or any other limb.
From the Ghaziabad red light, I go on to the pride of DTC, Delhi Transport Corporation: low-floor green CNG bus with automatic doors.
The conductor does not move along the crowd.
The back portion is quite high, and there on the seats poor passengers sit with a rich attitude, as if on a lofty throne, as if they own that height and high platform.
Bus number, RN from electronic scoreboard.
Sitting there I can see the bus number written on the electronic screen.
On dry days these buses ply with a decent amount of order.
But on this rainy Independence Day eve, when one-billion-plus India eagerly awaits to celebrate its another birthday with one Olympic gold, thanks to Abhinav Bindra, chaos overflowed over the poor green creature—I mean this DTC bus.
People broke all limits of commuting decency, which they surprisingly show in case of Metro and these buses on normal days.
But today people just plundered any chance to get into the crowded confines of the green bus.
People all wet, their footwear drenched with mud and squelching and squeaking with disgust, they thronged the footboard.
Whenever the bus slowed down, there were more people ready to latch on to any possibility of clinging to any part.
There was no longer any need or room for the gratifying job of switching on and off the door system, as it was jam-packed with people.
The conductor cursed and swore.
The driver gnashed his teeth and used cuss words.
The bus rolled with effort, but who can control the great Indian mass?
The experience in the train from Sabzi Mandi was even more terrifying.
It was a journey which perhaps should not have started.
As the train started to move from the station of my boarding, it was a massive relief.
Indian Railways are the humongous iron pythons who digest so many agonies, ecstasies, loads, flesh and materials on their creaking, screeching iron trail.
It being the weekend—the holiday next day—the entire train is just crammed to the gills.
Drop a grain and it would not touch the floor.
Jam-packed humanity carrying its sweaty, smelly tale of daily monotony of plying between home and the workstations here in this congestion and packed in the crowd.
I am sitting thinking of exotic Africa, where there was so much space even in that poverty.
****
