Other Writing

 

 

The Summer Of ....2005 - 2005

 

My master is not just my sahib, sir," Jagdish says, his eyes as wide as two chapattis, his raggedy straw broom presented at attention by his side. "My master is my god."
Eighteen years as a practising Catholic had got me nowhere near heaven, but only one week into my first Indian summer I'm already a deity.
I am lost for words. I didn't know what to expect when we moved to the subcontinent, but I certainly didn't anticipate this grand declaration from our new sweeper, the man whose job it is to mop the floors and sweep the front and back porches free of leaves and the ubiquitous red New Delhi dust. Jagdish smiles up at me and wobbles his head slightly from side to side, like a paper fan being blown this way and that by the breeze. He is small and fine, like a sparrow. He is also bright and eager, someone who, it seems to me, will be either cherished or exploited. He is not much younger, or shorter, than me. We both have children and we are both unshaven. His English is bad, my Hindi is worse. But for a twist of fate the tables could easily have been turned. I smile back.
The sweat runs in rivulets down my forehead as we loiter uncertainly on the porch. I pluck my wet shirt away from my skin. I am not prepared for this heat that wraps itself around me like a suffocating blanket. I'm also not ready to be someone else's god, least of all the cleaner's.
Perhaps I should tell him that I was born in a two-roomed Victorian tenement in the grimy east end of Glasgow where the toilet froze over in winter. That might put us on a more equal, if slippery, footing. Or that when my parents and their three boys emigrated to Melbourne in 1969 we didn't have two pappadams to rub together. That could put things in perspective.
Maybe I should mention that my first Australian summer was as discomfiting as this one, that when we arrived from a wintry Scotland smack bang in the middle of a Melbourne heatwave I felt like I was melting.
Should I confide in Jagdish that I met my very own deity at the end of the Altona pier?
Her name was Christine and she was a goddess. She was all tits and cigarettes. With hindsight, she was well-developed for a 14-year-old. Coming from Glasgow I thought I had the patent on bad language, but she could have written a new dictionary of swear words. She had long, wavy brown hair and freckles, and wore a suggestion of a maroon bikini.
As all the contemporary literature acknowledges, the migrant experience can be a difficult one, characterised as it is by a profound sense of loss and dislocation. But for this 13-year-old boy the troublesome process of transition across the rickety bridge between former and future lives was eased by the glorious sight of Christine Buckley clambering up the metal ladder from the cool green sea to the splintery wooden pier above.
As I watched her slowly take each step towards me, her skin wet and glistening, the specks of salt that encrusted my sunburnt nose felt like a thousand sparkling jewels.
"What are you fuckin' lookin' at soccer choc?" she said, pushing and tugging at her bikini top. Her chest nicely rearranged, her mate Tammy Vanderpoel handed her a Winfield Blue. Tammy was a big blonde Dutch girl who walked like she was wearing clogs even though in summer she always went barefoot.
I scratched at my peeling shoulders and mumbled something noncommittal. They lit up and laughed at my Glaswegian accent and wandered off to buy a milkshake, 10 cents worth of chips and half a dozen potato cakes.
Still, Christine turned out to be lost and confused just like me, and became my entree into a strange new world and some strange new friends. We played at going out together and we got along happily enough until she sent Tammy to meet me outside the local library one day after school.
"Christine says you're dropped," Tammy said, mustering the same amount of compassion as she would when ordering a hamburger with the lot.
"What d'ye mean?" I countered swiftly.
"She doesn't like you anymore. She likes Martin Barlow."
I couldn't believe it. Martin was in my class at school. He was 15 and had already lost most of his teeth. He had to leave his falsies in the locker room when we had a double period of phys ed. He was also repeating form two.
"Barlow's thick as two planks," I said, having quickly mastered the local patois.
"Yeah, but he's got a horse," Tammy replied.
I tried to think of a quick rejoinder, but nothing came immediately to mind. Marty had a horse. It was a scraggy old mare with a limp. But a horse is a horse. There was nothing more to be said.
That's the thing about life. Sometimes you just don't know what to say, especially when it's 43 degrees on the veranda and the bloke who does the floors and sprays a bit of Mr Sheen on the woodwork places you firmly within a divine frame of reference, puts you up there with Ganesh, Shiva, Vishnu and the others.
A bit more incense wafting around the living room would've been fine with me, but not this. I want to tell Jagdish that we are both the same, he and I. But then I know that in this life at least, we are not. I've left my slum behind and have the big house and the car, flowers in a vase and several different breakfast cereals to choose from. His slum is still there when he finishes work and there's probably no Weety Bix in his cupboard.
I tell him anyway that my dad had a little cleaning firm and that I used to wash windows and swab down filthy pubs full of fag ends and vomit, but I suspect he thinks I'm having him on. Still, we have a laugh about it and there's a mischievous glint in his eye. I wouldn't be surprised if there's been a Christine Buckley somewhere, sometime, in his life.
"I'm from Australia," I say, placing my hand on his shoulder, not yet ready to admit defeat. "Just call me Graham."
Jagdish's smile is as broad and bright as a white-capped wave off the Great Ocean Road. "Yes, master," he says, picking up his bucket.

 

© Graham Reilly