The Fantabulous Fens Page 5

  “As I was telling her,” Father Fen explained again, pointing to the woman with a movement of his eyes, “it’s my son’s birthday today, and he would like all of you to enjoy this food. I’d be very thankful if the two of you could portion it out among everyone.”

  The man did not say a word. Father Fen wondered if he was mute. He put the bag down on the pavement, threw another look at the woman, and was about to leave when, in a squeaky voice that had to be heard to be believed, the man asked, “How old is your son?”

  “Seven years,” Father Fen lied.

  “I don’t know if our blessings do any good,” the woman who was cooking responded in a voice that was much baser than the man’s, “but may your son grow up to be a great man. He has a heart of gold. May he always do good to others, and may he always be happy!”

  “First check what’s in the bag,” the squeaky-voiced man advised unkindly, but Father Fen pretended he had not heard and walked back to his car. Every other Fen there was watching him with the keenest interest. Naturally, they all wanted to know exactly how things had gone, and as Father Fen began driving, he filled them in on all the details.

  “Why did you lie, Papa?” Panchu wanted to know.

  Koala looked at him in wonder. No one except Panchu could ever speak to their father like that!

  “It was a white lie,” Pinchu commented.

  “Oh, lies come in different colours also?” Panchu asked, quite taken by surprise.

  “Panchu, you shouldn’t ask your father questions like ‘Why did you lie?’ It sounds very, very rude,” Mother Fen intervened. “You could say, ‘Why did you say it was your son’s birthday?’”

  Panchu was a quick learner. He re-framed his question and asked, “Papa, why did you say it was your son’s birthday?”

  “On a birthday some people like to give out things,” Father Fen replied. “It sounds natural. I didn’t want them to think you were taking pity on them: it would make them feel small, wouldn’t it?”

  “Now do you understand, Panchu?” Mother Fen inquired.

  “Half.”

  “Half?”

  “Why only one son’s birthday, Papa? We are five.”

  “I can answer that one,” Mumbo volunteered, greatly amused, but keeping himself under strict control.

  Mother Fen turned around and nodded at him, which meant that he could go ahead.

  “If Papa said ‘It’s the birthday of all my five sons,’ there’d be a lot of explaining to do. We’d still be near the garbage dump. There aren’t many five brothers or five sisters who were born on the same day.”

  “How do you know?” Panchu demanded.

  “I found out.”

  At this point Mumbo could not hold himself back any longer. He began to laugh in that special rollicking way he had. Mother Fen and Father Fen and Koala joined him. However, Baby Panda, who had dug into the comfortable seat and fallen asleep, refused to wake up, and Panchu and Pinchu could not help blocking their ears with their forefingers.

  8 - Daku and Bhoku

  In the area where the Fens lived, there also lived two good-for-nothing rascals by the name of Daku and Bhoku. Daku was tall and lanky. His jaws were loose and always hung down a little, but what was most remarkable about him was the tremendous blankness of his eyes, as if he had never thought a thought or felt a feeling. Bhoku, on the other hand, was squat and solid and had lively eyes. Looking at him you would think he was not at all tall, but when he stood next to Daku you realized he was not as short as he seemed to be. Their names sounded so similar that many people thought they were brothers, but actually they were friends who thought so much like each other that it was only natural that they should be friends. They did no work because all kinds of work bored them and, anyway, they were not good at any kind of work. Whether every kind of work bored them because they were not good at any kind of work, or whether they were not good at any kind of work because every kind of work bored them, was something that was impossible to say.

  They had both been in the same class of the same school together, they had both kept failing together, and they had both dropped out of school together. After that, their friendship had grown even stronger. They had become more of a nuisance to everyone around than they had ever been before. Sometimes they broke other people’s window-panes playing cricket, sometimes they teased neighbourhood girls, sometimes they stole from others’ houses, sometimes they got into fights with other children, sometimes they talked rudely to elders twice or thrice their ages.

  They grew up and began to stay together in a rented flat, where there were no parents to object to their bad behavior. How did they make a living? They learnt how to shoot a gun and wield a knife, and there wasn’t in either of them the slightest trace of mercy. A powerful but wicked politician had noticed these qualities in them and put them at his service. Whatever dirty job he had to do, like frightening a rival politician, or forcing money out of shop-keepers and businessmen in the name of collecting donations, he did through Daku and Bhoku. If these two got caught by the police, the politician quickly bailed them out. He paid them fat sums of money, and they made more fat sums of money by themselves as well, by stealing, burgling, and bullying people. Their landlord came to know what dangerous characters they were, but he was too scared to do anything.

  Daku and Bhoku lived ten houses away from the Fens. When the news of Miracle Evening reached them, they were amused by the account but not otherwise very interested. Suddenly the situation changed.

  This is how it happened. The more money Daku and Bhoku spent on enjoying themselves, the more money they needed. They could never enjoy themselves enough —- whatever they found enjoyable today bored them tomorrow. One day they started feeling very strongly they should go to the USA on holiday. It seemed they could never be happy until this wish of theirs was fulfilled. They just had to see Hollywood with their own eyes — Hollywood and all the famous movie stars who lived in Hollywood. And then there was Disneyland, of which they had heard so much, and the glittering night-life of New York, the city that never slept. But they doubted if they had enough money to visit all these places in comfort and style. It wouldn’t do to go there and run out of cash after a week or two. An idea came to Bhoku. As far as he was concerned, it was such a great idea that he screamed “Eureka!” as soon as it struck him. He had picked up the expression from a TV serial, and thought it sounded very fashionable.

  “What’s that?” Daku wanted to know.

  “Remember Miracle Evening?”

  “Miracle Evening?”

  “The Fens! The Fens! — the children! The two reeeal small ones, the Lilliput types!”

  “Yeah — what about them?” Daku demanded dumbly.

  “If somehow we could kidnap them and take them to the USA, we could sell them for a million dollars! You know what a million dollars means? Wouldn’t you like us to be the owners of a million dollars? Wouldn’t you love to live in the lap of luxury for the rest of our lives? — that too without having to do anything? Keep as many servants as we like! You don’t even have to tie your own shoe-laces if you don’t want to!”

  “What’s wrong with tying your own shoe-laces?”

  “It takes effort.”

  “You think it’s all that easy, huh?”

  “Who said it’s all that easy; did I say it’s all that easy? But it’s not impossible either, no! These Americans are rich, bloody rich, and they are willing to pay through their noses to see anything unique or unusual or out of the way!”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “Between what and what?”

  “Between unique and unusual and out of the way?”

  “No difference.”

  “Then why do you have to say it thrice?”

  “Because I’m so excited! Because those two Lilliput Fens are unique and unusual and out of the way …”

  “I heard all those children are.”

  “Right, but it’s the little ones we need. Ask why.”

 
“Why?”

  “Because they are so small we could stash them away somewhere without people noticing or suspecting. We could carry them with us to the USA and no one would suspect a thing!”

  Daku’s blank eyes took on a semblance of life. He was sitting slouched, and now he sat up a little straighter.

  “Hey, that’s not bad, not bad at all!” he remarked. “But how do we go about it? We know nothing about the Fens. First we’ve got to find out all we can about them — their daily routine, their habits, where they go and when, what the small ones do...”

  9 - Mumbo Comes to the Rescue

  The Fen children, who hardly came out of their houses when they first moved in, now sometimes stepped out for a walk together in the company of their parents. This happened in the evenings, and whenever it happened, it was something of an event in the area. Many people stopped doing whatever they were doing to walk up to a window and take a look at the Fens; still others went up to them to exchange smiles and chat. The Fen children had become so famous that they had many fans among the other children living on that and in neighbouring streets, and they came with paper or autograph books or little notebooks to get the signatures of the Fen children. When this happened the very first time, the Fen children were quite at a loss, for they had never signed their names before and, to tell you the truth, they didn’t even know how to do it. But Panchu was not one to admit such ignorance in public. Though he felt bad at first, he quickly got over it.

  “Look, it’s not that we’ve come out because we have a lot of free time. We’re actually discussing something very important, and then we have to go back to our house. Next week at this time we’ll come out for a walk again — then we’ll give you our autographs.”

  Koala looked at Panchu in amazement. What his brother had said sounded to him like a lie, but he found it difficult to believe that Panchu could lie.

  “Must be a white lie,” he said to himself. “White lies are good lies.”

  Mumbo coughed to hide the laughter that was building up in him; but there was so much laughter in him that he had to cough and cough and cough until his face went red.

  All the children there who were not Fens thought Mumbo had a coughing fit, and looked worried, but Mother Fen told them, “They are so young that they haven’t learnt to sign their own names, but they can learn it in a week.”

  She turned to her children and asked, “Would you like to do that?”

  They all nodded or said yes.

  “Good,” remarked Mother Fen, and then she told the other children, “They’ll keep Panchu’s word and give you their autographs this time next week.”

  A wave of happiness passed over all the other children, and they cheered. When they went away, Mother Fen looked at Panchu. Though he was naughty, Panchu was very clever, as you have seen, and he knew exactly why his mother was looking at him.

  He put his eyes down and said, “Sorry, Ma.”

  “That’s a good boy,” said Father Fen. It wasn’t a white lie then, Koala thought.

  An autograph, really, is meant to be more than a signature: the person giving the autograph is expected to write a few words of wisdom or good wishes or both, but all this would be too much for little children, and all that the Fen children were made to learn was to sign their own names. For the next few days they spent many hours trying out all kinds of signatures and showing them around to one another and Mother Fen and Father Fen to see who said what. Only then was the final choice made. Mumbo settled for a big M, curling its end backwards and fitting in the other letters within its body, as it were. Baby Panda wrote the initials of his name in such rounded letters that you just had to look at them and then at Baby Panda to realize that the signature could not be anybody’s but his. Koala settled on a playful kind of signature — after putting down the K he marked three apostrophes and then wrote an ‘a’; the three missing apostrophes, of course, stood for the three missing letters of his name, namely ‘o’, ‘a’, and ‘l’. Pinchu joined a small “i” to a capital P and then scrawled the rest of his name, like he thought a good signature should be. Though Panchu tried very hard to think up a very special signature, finally he did much like Pinchu, joining a small “a” to his big P, but after that he pulled a long, fancy, curved line that ended his signature with a grand flourish.

  Along came the appointed day, and the Fen children were fully ready. They were confident. They were eager. When they went out onto the pavement the other children crowded round them and pushed and shoved one another for their autographs. It took them slightly more than an hour — sixty-eight minutes, to be exact — to sign all the autograph books and pieces of paper that the other children had brought. (One boy even took Mumbo’s signature on his shirt). This was not only because there were many, many children, but also because, in spite of all their practice, the Fen children were still not very used to signing, and it took them some time and effort. After sixty-eight minutes of signing they were all quite tired, and longed to return home and do other things, like watching Cartoon Network on TV or painting pictures or playing some game, and Pinchu could not wait to get back to his laboratory.

  Of course, Daku and Bhoku could not have possibly learnt all that I have told you here, but they thought that what they had learnt was enough for their purpose, which was to kidnap Pinchu and Panchu. They learnt that the Fen children sometimes came out of their house in the evenings. The trouble was that there was no definite day when the Fen children came out. It could be any day of the week, or any two days of the week, or any three days of the week. But it was always early in the evening that they came out, and before it got dark, they went back.

  Daku and Bhoku hired two street urchins to keep a watch on the house of the Fens every evening. As soon as they spotted the children stepping out, one of them was to run to Daku and Bhoku and give them the information; the other was to keep a close watch on the children till his companion came back with Daku and Bhoku.

  One Monday evening the Fens came out for a walk. The children were not mobbed by the other children like they had been earlier. All the children living in the locality had already taken their autographs, and now what they did was to smile and wave out from their windows, and quickly call their parents to have another look at the Fen children; if they too happened to be out of doors they came up and shook the hands of the Fen children or hugged them or, in the case of Panchu and Pinchu, offered a finger for them to hold. Many — and that included grown-ups as well — wanted to call them home, but by now everyone knew that, though the Fens were a friendly family, they did not normally visit other people’s homes. They did not know for sure why this was so, but they learnt to live with the fact that it was so, and there was nothing they could do about it.

  As soon as the Fens came out of the house, one of the street urchins made a dash for Daku and Bhoku’s flat. Daku and Bhoku were experts at doing nothing, and they were doing nothing at the time. They were neither sleeping nor eating nor working nor playing nor watching television — they were simply doing nothing, like they often did. As soon as they heard the message about the Fens, they snapped out of their nothingness and came rushing to where the Fens were last reported to be. But they were no longer there, and neither was the second street urchin. Maybe he was following the Fens, or maybe he had just disappeared. The three looked this way and that, together and separately they went this way and that, but the Fens they could not find. It was as if by some magic they had vanished from the face of the earth.

  Doubts entered the minds of Daku and Bhoku. Not being very trustworthy themselves, they did not very easily trust others, more so if they were street urchins.

  “So you think you can make a fool of us?” Daku charged the little bloke.

  The ‘little bloke’ had spiky hair. He was the first street urchin in the world to have spiky hair.

  He gave his spiky hair a ruffle and demanded, “Make a fool of you? What are you trying to say?”

  Like most street urchins, he was not one to b
e easily bullied.

  “What am I trying to say? You really want to know?” Bhoku asked threateningly, whacking the little bloke at the back of his head.

  “Yeah, I really want to know — what are you trying to say?” the small fellow demanded, his eyes flashing fire.

  “You good-for-nothing! You son of a bum!” Daku flared. “I’ll teach you to look at us like that! You know who we are? — we’ll gouge out your eyes!”

  There were quite a few people on the streets then, and they started gathering around to watch the goings-on.

  “Try it and see!” dared the urchin.

  Just at that moment Mumbo walked out of a cyber café with Panchu standing proudly on his shoulder with his hands in his pockets. (He was in no mood to get into the “sling-seat” on Mumbo’s back). Daku was the first to see him, and his jaw dropped open. What if so many other people were there — he had never known the meaning of discipline, and he just couldn’t control himself. He flew from his spot, pushed past the young lookers-on blocking his path, stormed his way to Mumbo and snatched at Panchu. It all happened in a jiffy, and Panchu did not even get time to get scared, but Mumbo was equal to the situation: just as Daku got hold of Panchu, Mumbo also got hold of Daku, just below the elbow. Mumbo’s was a mighty hold, as you can well imagine. Daku’s grip on Panchu eased. He had been lifted perhaps an inch from Mumbo’s shoulder, and now he fell that very inch.

  “What a chweet brother you have!” exclaimed Daku, pretending he had just been trying to pet Panchu; but he was sweating heavily, his hand was hurting, and all the other Fens were in the process of coming out from the cyber café, where they had gone for Mother Fen to take down some Thai recipes, which all of them wanted to taste.

  “You naughty man!” Panchu shouted, “you tried to kidnap me!”

  The public which had gathered around Daku, Bhoku, and the urchin now surrounded Daku, Mumbo, and Panchu. They joined their voices to Panchu’s.