The Blind Gardener of New Delhi Junction

The Blind Gardner of New Delhi Junction

by Tony Smith

I awoke from a deep sleep, confused until the institutional smell of boiled stew and the omnipresent smell of antiseptic invaded my nostrils. Busy bustling feet came close to me, “You'll be alright” she whispered - her warmth against my skin stirred my senses.

Entering hospital, you surrender your body for maintenance, but not your mind, and not your senses. Inside my head I was free to travel in time and space and as the end of life approached I reverted to memories of being a child. Childhood leaves permanent creases in memory and I became eight years old again and the same feelings of anxiety arose in the laboratory of my mind.

My back is pressed against a pillar to protect my head from passengers alighting from the train. Uncle had told me to wait, he wanted the toilet and panic leapt in me like the crazed-eyes of a stampeding horse.

Before we left for Delhi mother clasped me to her breast and I shared her convulsive sobs and the tears sliding down her face, 'Don’t cry, mother, I’ll be back soon'. She only sobbed the more and slid coins in my pocket. Uncle, as I called the man who shared mother’s bed, angrily dragged me from her embrace. He never hit me but liked to crush my hand in an iron engineering fist. I didn’t cry; I never gave him that satisfaction.

As we approached New Delhi Station, the train guillotined within inches of the shacks of shanty town. The train stopped. When we alighted, uncle demanded the money mother had given me and told me to wait. I watched as uncle, a cardboard box under his arm, became submerged in the crowd.

The station clock signalled the travel of time with terrifying slowness. Two hours passed. The platform was empty of passengers and revealed the toilet block; the proprietor leaning against the doorpost held out a suppliant hand. In the gloom behind I could see the whites of children’s eyes; the family home was the windowless

cupboard attached to the toilet. My chin level with his knees, I asked if he’d seen a man with a cardboard box under his arm. A tightening of the lower jaw was the frowned response, he would not allow me to pee in his palace for free. Desperate, I fled the station. Outside, was an area where men were squatting, I searched for a place where faeces had dried, and released a stream of pee. Starving, I searched a waste bin: a hand grabbed my hair, a boot applied to my backside propelled me forward. I looked round to see a gathering of unsmiling toughs: clearly rights to waste bins had been ceded under franchise. The only solution was to beg, I was not good at begging, perhaps that’s why I’d been abandoned. I possessed all my limbs - you need serious disfigurement to be a successful beggar, my brother had eye-stopping swollen elephantine legs. They wouldn’t abandon my brother, he was the family support. It was getting late, all but one beggar had left for busier pickings. His legs, severed above the knees ended in wooden blocks; he lay on his stomach, one arm ending in a begging bowl. I spoke to him: I had fallen so low, so desperate, I was begging from a beggar. He turned, and I was unkindly drawn to empty eye sockets: with Olympian agility he leapt to his feet and trundled off on wooden stumps. 'Follow me' he said.

Competing with circling crows, we scavenged among the foul, sludge weeping, stinking, burning, rat-infested waste of the city dump. We discovered a half-eaten pizza and a bag of rice; after scraping off green algae we ate our evening meal. He told me his name was Ravi and while I followed him to his home, he explained the survival code, 'Wrap yourself in newspaper and hold your arse tight to the wall. There are perverts out there. If one comes, scream and fight'.

From the railway tunnel, came a stringent smell of amphetamine and burning cow dung. The old men inhaling drugs were transported to a place of their imagining: and who could blame them.

“This is my home,” Ravi announced proudly. His space delineated by cardboard boxes covered in plants. 'They call me, ‘The Blind Gardener of New Delhi Junction.’ His terrible infirmities he treated as a blessing, insulating him from the

harsh ugliness of this world, his head landscaped with flowers, it was a magical, an oasis of calm in a joyless place. Some have ramparts of money to protect against hunger: street people are one full-belly away from starvation - but his nature was free of resentment and his serenity shone as a lamp gives out light and it shone for me.

My fury deterred the most persistent of pederasts and life settled into a routine of protecting my arse, protecting my friend, and daily visits to the municipal dump. Soon I became adept at timing our visit to coincide with the arrival of waste collected from wealthy districts. It was on one such day when we had treated our bellies to the remains of a wedding feast, that I found the necklace. Made of wood, but shiny with the caress of many hands, it was clearly well loved but of no street value. I am not sure why, but I handed it to a policeman and walked on. I stopped when he demanded my name. Licking the lead of his pencil he recorded my name and asked for my address. I pointed to the tunnel under the railway line.

Crackling and popping plastic waste, the fat Mercedes trod its way carefully over garbage and stopped outside our tunnel dormitory. A window wound down, a peak-capped chauffeur shouted my name - I came running.

“Are you the boy who handed-in the necklace?” Dumb with surprise I nodded. I couldn’t speak.

'Get in.'

The palatial splendour of the car’s interior contrasted with my rags and I remembered thinking: I could live here. We reached moneyed gates and beyond, I saw the pink confection of a house. A uniformed flunky ran to open the gates, saluted, - I saluted back - he smiled as we purred inside.

We stopped on the gravel drive chinking like coins in the pocket. The chauffeur pointed to a shower-head bowing to the lawn. 'Get yourself washed.'

I played in the sun spangled water. I never knew water could be that clean. He returned and gave me a white towel as large as a Polar bear. 'Put these on,' he handed me pants, t-shirt and shorts.

It seemed that the necklace had been given by her son shortly before he died in a car accident. She never said she loved me but love is not what you say love is what you do and happiness was piled thick upon me.

As I lay in my hospital bed, guilt clutched at my throat, the so damaged gardener of New Delhi Junction, the kindest of men, shared the little he had with a small boy who had nothing. Guilt was heavy upon me, just as uncle had abandoned me, so I had abandoned Ravi and I sobbed just as mother had sobbed.

The End