Crab Orchard Review Vol. 12, No. 2, our

Sita Bhaskar
Swayamvaram
The paper in Gaja’s hand was limp with perspiration. He
unfolded the sheet as if to allow it to breath, as if being clutched in
Gaja’s palm was suffocating the paper and choking the message it held.
Surely it was important—to Madras, to Tamil Nadu, maybe even to
all of India—important enough for the Chief Minister’s henchmen to
have plucked Gaja off the street like he was a chicken that had escaped
the coop and herded him into a police jeep to be brought to the Chief
Minister’s residence. No, not the Chief Minister’s residence—he was
getting carried away. Being so close to the center of power had turned
his brain to mush—he’d been brought to the street where he could get
a glimpse of the crowd that thronged the enclosure which housed the
sycophantic Ministers seeking an audience with the Chief Minister.
Gaja worried about his fate as he jostled for space in the packed line
of forty-five men on the barricaded road, clutching the sheet of paper
that had been thrust into his hand as he took his place in line. Just an
hour ago he had been pushing his freshly-painted newly-remodeled
bright-yellow cart on the road, admiring some new features added
during remodeling: a small prayer niche that held pictures of God
Ganesha, the elephant God after whom Gaja—short for Gajendra,
the Lord of Elephants—had been named; a mirror in a red, green,
and yellow frame as a prop for Gaja’s thick, black, wavy hair and soft
mustache; a closed shelf under the cart for his supplies—charcoal, an
orange comb, a clean cotton shirt with a frayed collar, and a pair of
blue flip-flop slippers. He should have stayed close to the sidewalk, but
it had been dug up for repairs. With construction debris overflowing
onto the road, Gaja’s cart had encroached onto the path of the kings
of the road—buses, cars and trucks. Surely his traffic offense had not
been so serious that he had to be hauled before the Chief Minister?
Initially he hung back in line like a shy bride, apprehensive of what
a trip to the Chief Minister’s residence meant to him, but as rumors
snaked their way through the line, they brought with them the same
allure of a snake charmer.
Crab Orchard Review ◆ 5