A Son of the Circus

“And what do you do with tigers?” Ganesh asked.

“What you would do with tigers is clean their cages—tiger shit!” said Dr. Daruwalla.

“I’ll have to show them,” the boy repeated. “Maybe something with their tails—tigers have long tails.”

The dwarf entered the roundabout that the doctor hated. There were too many easily distracted drivers who stared at the sea and at the worshipers milling in the mudflats around Haji Ali’s Tomb; the rotary was near Tardeo, where Farrokh’s father had been blown to smithereens. Now, in the midst of this roundabout, the traffic swerved to avoid a lunatic cripple; a legless man in one of those makeshift wheelchairs powered by a hand crank was navigating the rotary against the flow of other vehicles. The doctor could follow Ganesh’s roaming gaze; the boy’s black eyes either ignored or avoided the wheelchair madman. The little beggar was probably still thinking about the tigers.

Dr. Daruwalla didn’t know the exact ending of his screenplay; he had only a general idea of what would happen to his Pinky, to his Ganesh. Caught in the roundabout, the doctor realized that the fate of the real Ganesh—in addition to Madhu’s fate—was out of his hands. But Farrokh felt responsible for beginning their stories, just as surely as he’d begun the story he was making up.

In the rearview mirror, Dr. Daruwalla could see that Madhu’s lion-yellow eyes were following the movements of the legless maniac. Then the dwarf needed to brake sharply; he brought his taxi to a full stop in order to avoid the crazed cripple in the wrong-way wheelchair. The wheelchair sported a bumper sticker opposed to horn blowing.

PRACTICE THE VIRTUE OF PATIENCE

A battered oil truck loomed over the wheelchair lunatic; in a fury, the oil-truck driver repeatedly blew his horn. The great cylindrical body of the truck was covered with foot-high lettering the color of flame,

WORLD’S FIRST CHOICE

——GULF ENGINE OILS

The oil truck also sported a bumper sticker, which was almost illegible behind flecks of tar and splattered insects.

KEEP A FIRE EXTINGUISHER IN YOUR GLOVE COMPARTMENT

Dr. Daruwalla knew that Vinod didn’t have one.

As if it wasn’t irritating enough to be obstructing traffic, the cripple was begging among the stopped cars. The clumsy wheelchair bumped against the Ambassador’s rear door. Farrokh was incensed when Ganesh rolled down the rear window, toward which the wheelchair madman extended his arm.

“Don’t give that idiot anything!” the doctor cried, but Farrokh had underestimated the speed of Bird-Shit Boy. Dr. Daruwalla never saw the bird-shit syringe, only the look of surprise on the face of the crazed cripple in the wheelchair; he quickly withdrew his arm—his palm, his wrist, his whole forearm dripping bird shit. Vinod cheered.

“Got him,” Ganesh said.

A passing paint truck nearly obliterated the wheelchair lunatic. Vinod cheered for the paint truck, too.

CELEBRATE WITH ASIAN PAINTS

When the paint truck was gone from view, the traffic moved again—the dwarf’s taxi taking the lead. The doctor remembered the bumper sticker on Vinod’s Ambassador.

HEY YOU WITH THE EVIL EYE,

MAY YOUR FACE TURN BLACK!

“I said no more bird-shit tricks, Ganesh,” Farrokh told the boy. In the rearview mirror, Dr. Daruwalla could see Madhu watching him; when he met her eyes, she looked away. Through the open window, the air was hot and dry, but the pleasure of a moving car was new to the boy, if not to the child prostitute. Maybe nothing was new to her, the doctor feared. But for the beggar, if not for Madhu, this was the start of an adventure.

“Where is the circus?” Ganesh asked. “Is it far?”

Farrokh knew that the Great Blue Nile might be anywhere in Gujarat. The question that concerned Dr

. Daruwalla was not where the circus was, but whether it would be safe.

Ahead, the traffic slowed again; probably pedestrians, Dr. Daruwalla thought—shoppers from the nearby chowk, crowding into the street. Then the doctor saw the body of a man in the gutter; his legs extended into the road. The traffic was squeezed into one lane because the oncoming drivers didn’t want to drive over the dead man’s feet or ankles. A crowd was quickly forming; soon there would be the usual chaos. For the moment, the only concession made to the dead man was that no one drove over him.

“Is the circus far?” Ganesh asked again.

“Yes, it’s far—it’s a world apart,” said Dr. Daruwalla. “A world apart” was what he hoped for the boy, whose bright black eyes spotted the body in the road. Ganesh quickly looked away. The dwarf’s taxi inched past the dead man; once more, Vinod moved ahead of the traffic.

“Did you see that?” Farrokh asked Ganesh.

“See what?” the cripple said.