Free The In-Between World of Vikram Lall by M. G. Vassanji Page A

about four, the two men met by the road. Dadaji liked to take me along, and I was encouraged to go, it being implicit that this was just in case something untoward happened and a fleet-footed messenger were needed. We were sent off from the house with much fanfare. The sight of two old cronies more than seventy years old going out for a walk together, with a grandson to accompany them, was enough to warm the hearts of all. Even the servants would smile and well-wish, with admiring comments like, He who takes the road truly finds the elephant’s tusk, meaning that these two muzees had come from afar and had finally acquired large families and well-being as their just rewards. I cannot imagine them, always unassuming, dressed simply in white drill pants and plain jackets, ever being the target of attacks. They were both compact in build, Juma-dada somewhat stouter and rounder in the face. I would walk beside them patiently, dutifully, and when not called away by some boyish diversion like climbing upon a rock or throwing a stone at a lizard or vainly chasing a passing car, I watched and listened, enthralled. I did not know of any relationship like these two old men’s, their utter familiarity with each other, their constant chatter followed by a long silence except for the sound of their short breaths and the taps of their walking sticks, and then the sudden effortless resumption of their conversation, asif an engine had simply been allowed to idle awhile and was now back in gear. Their arms would occasionally brush against each other, as they spoke of Chhotu and Motu and Ungan and Ghalib (who had regaled them with poetry around a fire on many a night) and of Buleh Shah (who had the voice of a nightingale), and of such-and-such who had settled in Eldoret, and another who had recently lost his wife in Eastleigh, and so on. I remember Juma-dada chortling one time, and—to my shock—my grandfather breaking into a brief giggle, and then after a short exchange Juma-dada, with a look toward me, saying, But he’s too small.
    During another of these walks the two men suddenly stopped in their tracks and extended their arms toward each other, as if enacting the beginning of an Indian wrestling match or a fight. Then pointing out my anxious face to each other, they laughed and walked on.
    My grandfather as I had known him at home was simply Dadaji, father of my father, a kindly old man with close-cropped white hair who had been born in faraway India in a faraway time, who had a certain past from which he pulled out partly recalled and perhaps exaggerated stories on Sundays when the mood struck him, the dada who after giving the children candies took a nap in the armchair in our sitting room. His mouth would hang partly open, he snored. But on these strolls with Juma-dada another person came out from inside him like a genie. I wished I could understand all that they said. But they spoke in a fluid Punjabi too quick for my ears, and the words and phrases I grasped were often alien to me.
    A short walk away, our street met the perpendicular road, which led first to the shopping centre and then to the Nairobi highway, where it met the railway station. The yellow building of the station, visible in the distance, beckoned like a magnet and every few times the old men succumbed and turned toward it, heedless of the reminders from their families not to go that far, it was quiet that way and not entirely safe on aSunday. Having decided to walk to the end, they picked up a discernible spring in their step, a purposiveness to their manner; the talk became less, the breathing heavier though steady. We would walk past the car park and up the station steps and through the gate to the platform, check the time by the station clock—presumed unimpeachable—walk up and down, examine the arrivals and departures notices on the blackboard, cross the pedestrian overpass to the other side. The all-important Nairobi–Kisumu and Nairobi–Kampala trains