“We must not look at goblin men,
We must not buy their fruits:
Who knows upon what soil they fed
Their hungry thirsty roots?"
I’m never less sure-footed than when I step into Iewduh, with its labyrinth of cobbled pathways and narrow lanes, dubious flights of steps, mini-drains and most of all, its intoxicating assemblage of wares all gathered together within a few square metres of space, beckoning loudly to be gaped at. Having tripped countless times, I was especially wary that one June morning, when a great downpour had lashed over Shillong all of the previous night, leaving runnels of water to stream through its streets, which, when met with the small mounds of dirt and garbage that routinely litter the town, formed a muddy mess of incoherent proportions.
I listened to my converse shoes making horrible squelchy noises as I followed Bei into the interiors of the market. Iewduh is ill-fitted to welcome the rains. The sewage mingles freely with rainwater, and heaps of discarded vegetables, fish scales and other waste get washed in the current, and land up just about everywhere. The rain had stopped, but the sky was still in a sombre mood, and the drizzle from the awnings of the shops lined on either side of the path fell down my neck, but as it was impossible to hold an umbrella in the shrinking space, I tried to brave the cold droplets, routinely shielding my head with the woven jute bag I carried, before I stopped caring altogether.
Bei made her way ahead of me briskly, as always sure of the route she wanted to take. I admired the way she knew her way so well around the multiple cross-sectional lanes. I had once come to Iewduh alone and was cockily sure I was headed for the spices section, where neat little women in their jainkyrshahs and cups of tea sat behind small mountains of colourful, pungent spices. Instead, I was bewildered to find I had landed in the beef market, that masculine domain, where young men in blood-stained banyans shouted out if I wanted the morning’s finest khmat lybong and lamjew (rear flank and loin), before they proceeded to thwack hard at the chunks laid out on the old tree stubs they used as chopping boards. It was quite a while before I could finish the shopping that day.
So I kept as close a watch on Bei’s movements as I could while I clumsily manoeuvred through the crowd of people that had variously gathered at the market this early on a Saturday morning, some to set up shop, some to avoid the afternoon crowds and shop in peace (although that often proved futile), some to lug sacks and backloads of wares from the sumos and buses stationed outside the market to the shops and back. We passed the chicken sellers, and Bei paused to enquire about the price of the syiar khasi, ‘Khasi chickens’, the non-broiler, colourfully plumed, locally bred chicken variety that she likes for their chewy bones and unmatchable flavour in a good jadoh. I looked at the fat white chickens resting in their large bamboo baskets, envying them for a moment as they gently clucked, arrayed cosily in a swathe of snowy feathers, unmindful of the din and wet. The girl minding the shop wore a tight white top that hugged her plump figure. She was ruddy-cheeked, and had a loud red lipstick on and dangling gold earrings with green stones in them.
‘Kane, Kong, shi kilo shiteng, plung bha’, she said, Take this, Kong, one and half kilos, very healthy, after plucking out one specimen from a basket and throwing it on the scales. My mother nodded in agreement, and I quickly averted my eyes as the girl handed the struggling bird to the boy behind her and he proceeded to plonk it into a barrel. I was an unrepentant meat-eater but was never prepared for the sights and sounds at this place: loud screeches followed by the subsequent flapping of wings, which died down piteously after a while. I told my mother I was off to the fruit sellers’ to pick some plums and that I would meet her at Mahajon’s, the grocer’s shop. I gingerly treaded over the damp ramp that led to the next lane, walked away, and that was when I first saw him.
He was sitting at the corner of a long line of fruit shops. The canopy over the last shop, weighed down by a puddle of rainwater, almost hid him, but something drew my attention and I stared. It was a gleaming silver pipe he had in his mouth, that shone brilliantly amidst the squalor. He seemed to be sitting under the shade of a jut of roof projecting out from the ramshackle buildings that sat in the heart of the market and had in front of him what looked like a heap of plums on a wooden stool. I was around ten feet away when I realised with a shock that he wasn’t sitting at all but was short statured: a shaggy-bearded dwarf of a man smoking jauntily on his silver pipe, relaxed and unrushed, at the end of a row of women busily doling out fruit to hurried customers, pocketing money and laughing and talking loudly. As I drew nearer, I was amazed to see that he was not in the least bit dishevelled or dressed-down like everyone else, but wore a brown suit with dark maroon stripes and pointed shoes. He looked in my direction, and beckoned to me. I looked around, but nobody seemed to heed him. When I looked back at him, he shook his head, pointed at me, and waved for me to come in his direction. I stared, astonished.
A loud swish behind me announced the passage of a daiju bearing a heavy load. He made a customary tchh tchh sound, which asked me not to dawdle. I suddenly felt uncertain of my step. I tried to move forward but there was another man blocking my path. I inched past him sideways holding my bag at an odd angle, and walked straight into something large and soft, just as the daijju, grumbling loudly, heaved himself past me and stepped right on my foot. In a daze of confusion and pain, I felt my grip on the bag loosening, and then I let go of it altogether to pat my aching foot. The something large and soft turned out to be a woman with a generous bosom and bulging belly, clad in a yellow-checked jainkyrshah, and a mouth profusely red with kwai stains. Peit bha seh khun!, she yelled at me. Look sharp, child! I muttered an apology before reaching out to pick my mud-speckled bag and quickly cast a glance in the direction of the solitary dwarf-man with his plums. He was gone.
I stood baffled for a moment, checked myself, and walked up to the woman who sat closest to the corner. The smell of peaches clouded my brain for a second. The woman saw me approaching and said, Kwah soh aiu khun? Shim soh plum, ba thiang kum uei! What fruit would you like, my child? See the plums, as sweet as anything! I touched the prickles of one of the jackfruits lining her counter, that looked like enlarged, frozen goosebumps. I shivered.
Ngan dang peit, kong, asking for time to look around.
There were big bunches of bananas hanging out of wooden boards on the side. Some were bright yellow, others a cool green. I noticed, tucked away in a nook, still more that were of a darker colour. I wondered what they did with overripe or rotten fruit. There was bound to be rotten fruit, I thought. I plucked up courage and put a question.
Kong, Do you know where that man has gone off to?
U briew aiu?, she replied, what man?
I swallowed. I told her about the man I had seen sitting next to her shop, selling plums.
Phi bakla phi! Tang ma ngi hi kynthei hangne ba die soh!, she returned. You are mistaken. It’s only us womenfolk who sell fruit here.
I was flummoxed. She looked at me in a strange way. Not wanting her to question me, I quickly asked her about the price of sohphie, the little berry-like fruits I used to love as a child. The red ones looked sweet but I preferred the sharp tart of the green ones, especially in a good achar. But at that moment all I was thinking about was the little man who had mysteriously disappeared.
I thought that maybe after I had bumped into the large soft woman, in the melee that followed, I must have missed him leaving his spot. But why did the fruit seller kong not seem to know what I was talking about? He’d looked solid and real, I was sure he wasn’t a figment of my imagination. And yet there had been something unreal about him, he had seemed out of place in some way. It wasn’t just what he looked like or what he was wearing, it was a certain air of insouciance that I could discern even from afar. He seemed untouched by the bustle and busyness of the marketplace. He had waved to me. He even looked a trifle amused, smoking his gleaming silver pipe. Was it actually silver? It may have been glass, and caught the light for a second and fooled me. But I looked at the sky, still ominously grey, and knew there wasn’t a spark of sunshine to be savoured that morning.
I paid for the sohphie and left, turning at the corner where I had seen the man. I caught a strong whiff of tobacco smoke. It was a smell that reminded me of the kind of tobacco my grandfather used to smoke way back- he’d roll out brownish flakes from a green pouch into his palm, add a pinch of lime, and rub the mixture with his thumb, like he was massaging his palm. He would then neatly tap the lot into the bowl of the pipe, hold a burning match to it, and as soon as it gathered smoke, he would hold it by the stem and take a deep puff. I would look on, fascinated, as the tobacco would shrivel up as he inhaled, and the smoke would come out in curly wisps from his mouth.
After taking a few wrong turns, I finally spotted my mother at a junction of sorts. She was buying putharo from an old woman who sat on a ledge-like projection at the side of the steps leading down to the jadoh stalls. I always wondered at how precariously perched she seemed to be, but when I reached closer, I couldn’t help noticing how snug and intimate her little corner looked. She had a light tapmohkhlieh wrapped around her head, and hardly any teeth. There was a tiny little charcoal Chula in front of her where she warmed her hands, and looking at how gnarled they were as she handed us the steamed rice cakes in their banana-leaf-and-twine packets, I recalled that the dwarf-man had also seemed old, or was it just because of his aspect of worldly-wiseness that I thought so? I felt uneasy thinking that I was obsessed with a mysterious creature no one seemed to know anything about. I thought of mentioning it to my mother but she would have simply laughed at the part where I got stepped on/collided with someone and so I desisted.
Oh look, it’s Niasan Wa!, I heard my mother say. I turned to see Niasan, a doughty woman with short cropped hair and many chins greet my mother before she turned to me and slapped me on the back.
Ade! Da heh ko! You’ve grown up! What are you doing now?
I told her I had just completed my 12th board exams. I dreaded this question not because I wasn’t thrilled at this brief lull from studies that afforded me all the time in the world to laze around and read, but because it usually entailed a further query.
Ish! So what are your next plans?
I sheepishly muttered something about not being sure.
Weileh! Lai doktor ko nong!But why? Won’t she become a doctor?
I was thankful that my mother intervened and said, We’ll see, whatever she gets is fine, I’m keeping her occupied for these holidays.
The worst part of being on the brink of stepping out of your teens was this perpetual uncertainty. I was uncertain over whether I had any right to counter adults, of whether I had licence to say what I thought, or whether what I thought had any import at all. I hadn’t carved out a plan for myself and didn’t know if I was expected to have a shiny, polished blueprint of my life at the ready to show to curious distant relatives whom I met once in three years. My dreaded exams had come and gone, and I was none the clearer about what further course of study I wanted to take up. I kept thinking I would slide into wanting what everyone else wanted for me. But the uncertainty hounded me constantly. There was also my unceasing doubt over the validity of my own thoughts, the fear of being rejected outright and thus feeling like I needed to think twice before I brought up things like fanciful dwarf-men who apparently only I could see.
I remembered a story that had been taught in an English Literature class in school some years ago. A girl goes to a market to buy apples, when she suddenly sees a bubble emerge from the grocer’s head with the words, “Oh it’s just Tess, and not her mother today, maybe I can get rid of some of these bad apples.” Similar thought-bubbles appear all day when she talks to people she meets. At the end of the day she still hadn’t told anyone about them for fear of being laughed at. I realised that if there existed the strange possibility that I was the only one who had seen the man, it could be equally true that thought bubbles were right now emerging from my head, displaying my errant thoughts to Bei and Niasan.
I wrestled with this thought for a moment and knew I had to find him again, if just to convince myself that I hadn’t gone stark raving mad.
Bei, I’ll go get those plums, I couldn’t get them earlier, ok?
Oh yes, while you’re at it, go collect the onions, oil and tea at Mahajon’s shop, I left the bags there.
I nodded, said goodbye to Niasan Wa and hurried off, leaving the two women to do their catching-up. I hoped I wouldn’t get lost again.
Deep inside the market, profuse with wares of meat, fish, vegetables, fruits, spices and groceries, was a line of small cubby-holes that sold clothes, hosiery, shoes, knick-knacks and for as long as I remember, tiny red tubs of Chinese Tiger balm. I was always fascinated by the array of garments of display. I passed a shop where was hung a shiny pink satin top, a lime-green baby’s suit with orange piping, and a line of brassieres in pastels. A woman with long manicured nails sat chatting on her cell phone and she was biting into a plum. I could see how juicy it was inside, its pulp was the colour of blood. My mouth watered a little.
I kept walking, uncertain of where I was going. The market was getting more crowded and noisier now. I had had just a slice of bread in the morning and felt a sudden pang of hunger uncoil in my insides. The sky had started to clear up. I wiped a bead of sweat trickling down my temple with the back of my hand. I didn’t want to walk anymore. The ktung stalls came into sight and the force of the sharp smell of dried-fish slid up my throat and I felt a little faint. If I closed my eyes here, I thought, I could easily tell where I am. The thought wandered and I decided that if I closed my eyes anywhere in Iewduh, I could tell where I was simply by the smell around me. The pungency of ktung, the strong aroma of spices, the odour of beef-shanks, the fresh damp smell of carrots and beans and leafy vegetables with a bit of earth clinging to their roots, the fusty smell of labour, sweat and tiredness. I walked on in a daze, turned a corner, closed my eyes and inhaled. Somewhere along the fuzzy edges of my brain, I registered a familiar scent, a sweet juicy core covered by a sharp, estery skin. I opened my eyes to see the dwarf-man a few feet in front of me with a glossy mound of plums sitting before him.
I was astonished, but also felt a twinge of relief. I hadn’t imagined him after all. And there was something else- the delectable fruit in front of him which shone like they had been polished. I knew what I wanted to have a taste of then. Nothing else, and no one else’s would do.
This time the man was sitting between two empty stalls, which looked like the last occupants had been vegetable-sellers. There were some rotting pumpkins adorning one of the stalls. The man beckoned to me, and said as I approached him, Ale seh khun! Wan kloi! Come, dear child. Come quickly!
As I drew near, I took a look of him and noticed that he looked old and gray, although his eyes twinkled mischievously. There was spittle around his mouth, and he chewed kwai continuously. The smell of tobacco smoke was strong. That quality I had noted – of being carefree and untouched by the commerce of the marketplace – was more visible than before, it seemed to emerge out of his very eyes, out of his short stature, out of his prim get-up. I was not tall for seventeen, but he was at least a foot shorter than I was . There was no sign of the silver pipe.
Thied seh khon, thied! Thing kum ba phim juh ioh mad mynno mynno ruh! Sweet like you’ve never tasted them before.
I looked first at him, then at the glistening pile of plums. I could feel their fragrance wafting up my nose. I must have looked doubtful, because he said, Wat ju artatien, khun. Theid beit, nga kular dei u ba thing! Do not doubt. I promise you they are sweet.
Em bah,nga shu theid tang ban bam mynta. No sir, I thought I’d just buy a few to eat now.
He tossed his head and laughed. Hooid, hooid, shim, shim! Yes yes, here, take.
I meant to ask him how he had vanished from his previous station and why the woman there said she hadn’t known he was there. I wanted to ask him about his silver pipe and why he wore the clothes he wore, why he sold only plums, where he got them from and why they looked so irresistible, whether he came there regularly or was only there today, where he came from and why he seemed to enjoy being alone.
Instead, my hand reached for one of the plums. I remembered my mother being picky about where she bought every single vegetable from. They had to look and be priced the best. I thought, surely, if she saw these plums, she would agree they looked better than any other that could be bought elsewhere. The man seemed overjoyed. I suddenly remembered stories I had heard when I was younger, about bad spirits that took the form of dwarves, who could only be vanquished if one kept one’s head up. My grandmother had said that if I looked down when encountering a dwarf, he would grow taller and taller while I would become smaller and smaller. In a flash, he would walk over me and I would shrink to nothing. If I looked up, however, the opposite would happen, and I would thus conquer him. When I was younger, left alone, I would walk with my chin held up for fear of accidentally looking down when I met a dwarf. That was when I first started bumping into things and missing my step.
The man looked at me quizzically. The smell was getting heady. I banished all thoughts from my mind, took the plum, gave it a wipe on my shirt, and bit into it.
It was bliss. It was sweet and succulent, like nothing I had had before. The pulp was ripe and juicy and the skin had a sudden sour tang that seemed to shoot down my spine. My parched throat felt soothed and relieved. I sucked the seed dry. I took another.
Wat ju artatien.
I ate four plums. All the while, the man watched, delighted. Bam khun, bam, wat ju artatien! Eat child, do not doubt!
I felt doubt slip away. I ate till I was sated. I forgot that I must have looked a sight standing in the middle of a busy market area eating plums while the seller looked on, but I didn’t care. Strangely, I felt like no one was interested anyway. The market seemed to get on, and no one gave a second thought about the dwarf-man and me. There were now only specks of clouds in the sky and the sun came out in a brilliant moment, and we were flooded in warmth.
I made to pay, but the man waved me off.
Ym lei lei khun, he said. Tang ba phi lah bang.
It’s alright, my child. As long as you have eaten well.
I gulped, but could not refuse. I thanked him, gave him one last look and turned to leave. I did not look back until I had gone many steps ahead and when at last I did, he had gone.
I felt feverish that night, thinking about the long walk, my slightly swollen foot, the heavy bags, the tired ride home. But I lay awake pondering over what the man had repeated so often. Wat ju artatien. Do not doubt. I slept fitfully, with images of the little man, silver pipes, throngs of people, Niasan Wa, baskets upon baskets of fruit, fat little chickens, and, above all, juicy plums, parading in a blur through thick, enveloping rain in my dreams.
When I woke up in the morning, my head was a lot clearer, except for the words Wat ju artatien which kept resounding like a mantra in my head. I didn’t know why, but I felt, for the first time in long time, a sense of certainty. I felt that I wasn’t going to let people put ideas into my head, because there were more than enough of my own to deal with. I was going to have my fill of the holidays and would then begin something new because I wanted to, not because I was made to feel I did. I had sought out my little man, and he was right there, as real as anything, as sure as the big fat droplets of rain that fell from the sky.
A year later in college I read Christina Rossetti’s Goblin Market, and I remembered the ripe, glistening plums that I had had that day, and I was sure they had been as good as any magical, dew-slicked goblin fruit could ever be.
