The constant slap of footwear on the unpaved alleyway and the chime of rickshaw bells got louder till it started pounding Akeem’s eardrums. He groaned, rubbing his eyes with the base of his palm as his other hand slowly made its way to the back pocket of his jeans looking for his wallet. He needed a cigarette and water to wash out the hangover.

It was a good thing today was a Sunday. Akeem wiped the snot and dribble of vomit from his face with the sleeve of his jacket when he stopped. He looked at the frayed sleeve and then the rest of the garment. He was wearing a patchwork denim jacket which must have had at least two previous owners. It wasn’t Akeem’s jacket.

The thought of a cigarette and the ache evaporated as Akeem bolted up. His jacket wasn’t here. He wore it during weekends but wondered if he had left it in his room. Akeem looked around and realized he had passed out at the entrance to his residence. He ignored the scraping sounds of his wooden joints running up the narrow staircase, steadying his hand on the faded blue walls covered in graffiti and paan stains. He burst through the rickety door and upended his room in the hunt for his jacket. He looked under the creaky charpoy and the half-torn mattress, turned his steel cupboard inside out, but to no avail. Akeem could hear a strange broken whinge coming from his dry throat and his eyes started misting over when he understood the reality of his situation.

He tried remembering last night but no matter how hard he strained Akeem couldn’t dredge up anything other than the bittersweet aftertaste of rum. He knew that if he was drinking, he must have been with Chandu. He decided his best bet was to go ask his friend- perhaps he knew where his jacket was; maybe Chandu had the jacket. Energized by a fistful of hope, Akeem washed his face with the stale water from the earthen pot outside his room and drank some as he started towards Chandu’s workplace.

Akeem stumbled through the narrow lanes, bumping into people and slurring apologies. His mind was awake but his body craved rest and the fight between the two made him look like a child learning to walk. He hid his face and quickened his steps as he passed his school for fear of being seen by Mohan Singh, the owner and headmaster of the establishment. Though it was a Sunday and the school was closed, Mr. Singh did not live far from the premises. It had been extremely difficult to get a job and Akeem did not want to get fired; he liked teaching there.

Past the rows of shops and a swarm of orange and maroon-robed monks quite oblivious to his disposition and the world, Akeem reached the Shangri-La Restaurant. It was one of the many ramshackle eateries that dotted the neighbourhood serving a curious blend of Tibetan and Indian cuisine. He found his friend outside the kitchen standing with two other waiters in a lane which ran alongside the restaurant. Chandu held a chillum in his hand from which he took a long drag. As he exhaled the cloud of smoke, he saw Akeem and beamed, his eyes retreating further into their sockets, “Monti Bhai! Kaisan ba?” He extended his arm to offer a kush to his friend. The two others who were waiting for their turn on the pipe lost their smiles and any high they had achieved as soon as they saw Akeem. Waving away the chillum, he accosted the waiter, “Chandu! My…my jacket! It’s not there! Do you remember where it was last night…I think I was wearing it…it’s very important to find it, Chandu!”

Chandu looked annoyed. Before he could say anything, the restaurant owner, a man as pudgy as Chandu but with a fatter moustache and fewer hair on his head, stepped out the front door and looked into the alleyway. The two other waiters rushed into the kitchen to avoid being seen while Chandu was left standing with Akeem. “Bhosdike! Do I pay your for this? Getting stoned at work with blackies?! One bit of work you don’t want to do! Try coming to me for your salary, saala.” the owner barked, then looked at Akeem and grimaced, “Aye habshi…you want food, go to backside. Don’t get my staff high.” He turned around and penguin walked back into the restaurant grunting curses.

“Kya, yaar? You have got me into trouble by letting those two escape. Now the chutiya will cut from my pay for today.” Chandu admonished Akeem. “And what is this jacket-jacket you’re going on about?”

“My jacket, Chandu! The brown leather one I wear on Saturdays. I was wearing it yesterday, right? Where is it? Do you know?” Akeem repeated; he had to because other than his friend there was no hope.

Chandu blew on the chillum to keep it from going out, “Yes. I remember that. What about it?”

“It’s missing!”

“So?” Chandu scrunched up his face.

Akeem was losing patience. Perhaps it had been his fault that in the eight years he had known Chandu, he had often laughed off the loss of possessions. He forced himself to form complete sentences, “I was wearing my jacket last night when I was drinking with you. Do you remember? I have lost it. I need it back. Do you know where it went, or who took it? Or where we were last night? I woke up with this an hour ago.” He grabbed the dirty denim he was wearing.

Chandu scratched his cheek, “Yes…yes, you were wearing it last night…I was there…you bought the rum which we drank with them. Then…you left with those boys, don’t you remember?”

Akeem saw a ray of hope and despair. While Chandu remembered, he wasn’t with him when he had passed out. Akeem asked, “Which boys? What was I doing? I don’t remember anything…”

“Arre those Gujjar boys. You wanted charas and I wanted to…you know…” Chandu patted the pit of his elbow, “so you left with them because they had some to sell…did you pay?”

“What?” Akeem still couldn’t remember last night and Chandu’s account made him doubtful. He never bought hash. Weed was cheaper and he preferred the high. Apparently, in his drunken haze, he had purchased it, because when he opened his wallet he saw a black, flat resin nestled between two hundred rupee notes. He had managed to finish half of it since according Chandu, he had bought one tola worth of the stuff. Akeem gulped. This was a costly transaction.

“See? They must have taken your jacket for payment when you passed out.” Chandu surmised. “Chalo…mystery solved.” He shrugged and moved towards the kitchen door.

Akeem placed his hand on Chandu’s shoulder, “But I need it back, Chandu. I really need it. It is very important that I have it.” He was pleading, and for the first time since the interrupted smoke session, his friend’s expression seemed to soften. It was the same face he made whenever Akeem told Chandu about his past or his home during birthdays. Akeem smiled pleadingly as his only friend in the neighbourhood came to a decision.

“Okay okay…I know those boys. I have met them a few times. Let me ask if they have it.” When Akeem brightened up, Chandu warned, “Most probably they would have sold it to cover cost. If they still have it, they’ll need the money for the charas.”

Akeem inhaled. “If you give me three thousand, I think I can persuade them. No guarantees…but I will try.” Chandu said as Akeem tried to calculate the expenses of the situation. The jacket was worth way more than three thousand rupees. But it was a lot of money; it was more than half his rent. Akeem had never defaulted on his payments, firstly because he wanted to keep a clean record, but more importantly, it was a luxury he couldn’t afford. Other tenants in the building often gave their rent a week or two late, but Akeem couldn’t. Rules were different for black men from another country. He would have to starve for a few days and work extra hours at the coaching centre. He worked out the amount of time and meals to skip and realized that it was a considerable sacrifice. But it was his jacket.

He gave Chandu the money that evening, his friend repeating, “I’ll try my best…but no guarantee. Wait a day or two.”

Akeem was unable to sleep that night. He kept tossing in his bed, which squeaked and put him off sleep even more. He turned on the solitary bulb in his room and in the dim light could see that he was sweating. Why was this happening to him? He had given up things that belonged to him before. He remembered selling the watch his brother-in-law gifted him to pay for the deposit on the room. He remembered selling his sneakers his friends from law school gifted him on a reunion a few years ago.

Akeem hadn’t felt this way at all back then. Then why was a jacket, which was a lot cheaper, making him so restless? Was it because through the act of losing possessions over the years, the value of the lost objects added itself to the only constant he had, saturating it with the meaning of everything Akeem ever owned? Or was it because the jacket was a reminder to him of Akeem, a name he stopped using since he came to this city? Was it the essence of his ‘Akeemness’ that he felt if he lost, it would be akin to losing himself? Had he become so pathetic that his meaning lay in a leather jacket?

The questions became unbearable. Akeem took out the hashish from his wallet and started crushing it, piling it into the chillum. He hoped that it would make him forget, albeit temporarily, about the jacket that haunted him. He took in a deep drag, breathing out the smoke from his nostrils like the dragon mural painted at the Shangri-La Restaurant. His thoughts went off rail as he felt giddy and eventually crawled off into a dream where he was still wearing his jacket.

***

The next day did not bring a change. Akeem was distracted throughout his classes, much to the amusement of his students. He confused tenses while teaching English and showed Canada as China in Geography. The younger students sniggered as they corrected him, while the older ones- mostly adults who wanted to better themselves and also keep an eye on the blackie teaching the kids- shook their heads in disapproval. They seemed to whisper among themselves, probably assuming he had consumed something before class. They always wondered aloud what the owner saw in this habshi to give him the teaching job when there were possibly better teachers from their community. Akeem knew they thought him to be a danger. They had maintained it since the first day when they came armed with bats and sticks in case the African did something. After a few days, the sticks went away, they stayed for the classes but so did their notions. A few good classes cannot change what has been held for generations. A black man is a black man– drug addict, pimp, and murderous.

At lunchtime, Akeem was confronted by Mohan Singh at the miniscule assembly ground. He wore a frown and twisted his hand as if unscrewing an imaginary bulb, “What’s the matter, Montiram? Where have you been lost? I get complaint from all those free attendance fuckers that you’re not teaching properly. What?” he thrust his chin upward to demand an answer.

Akeem straightened up, “Nothing, Mohan ji. I did not sleep well, there are problems at home. My-”

“-I don’t want to listen to your sad story. Go home if you have so much problem…nobody forcing you to stay here. Remember that you begged me to let you teach.” Mohan Singh grew agitated, “Students will stop enrolling, yaar! Already I have to compete with that government school down the road, and you’re giving them reason to leave! My job is to make this school function…not to explain to the chutiyas that you’re not African! Do your job, let me do mine.”

Akeem looked down, “Yes, Mohan ji. I’m sorry.”

But he was ‘African’. The only reason why Mohan Singh thought otherwise was because Akeem and Chandu had told him so when the former came looking for work. He was almost kicked out of the school compound had it not been for his pitch-perfect rendition of the national anthem which convinced Mohan Singh and a few other bystanders that he was a south Indian named Montiram Kumar (‘I didn’t know Madrasis could be so black!’ Mohan Singh had remarked after saluting his audition.).

The name had been Chandu’s idea, “Look, brother. There are two kinds of people who are not given jobs and rooms: blackies and mullahs. Your bad luck is that you are both. Be Christian or go local, bhai. It’s the only way to live here.”

However, some people still weren’t convinced and claimed the druggie waiter addressed him as ‘my nigga’, the English equivalent of habshi. Akeem managed by staying silent and keeping a low profile, getting high only when it was either dark or the weekend or preferably both. Sometimes people will find something to blame on you irrespective of what you do; the best you can go for is to do nothing, Akeem believed. More often than not he was lucky since the neighbourhood was as passive as the monks that populated it.

***

Akeem messaged and phoned Chandu every chance he got since the day broke, but his friend did not answer any of his calls. After school, Akeem stopped at the Shangri-La Restaurant. The waiters, always wary of the tall, peat-skinned man, muttered that he had just missed him as Chandu left an hour ago.

He tried calling his friend an hour later, but the phone went unanswered again. Roaming through the gullies and alleyways of his neighbourhood in a delirium brought on by the void inside his stomach and his mind, Akeem reached the park at the very end of the locality where it met the highway. Thronging with ear-cleaners and shoe-polishers searching for a dirty ear or a dull piece of footwear, Akeem spotted something that made his heart leap.

Towards the corner of the park, he saw Chandu sitting on a bench with a few friends, and standing opposite and talking to him, Akeem was sure, was one of the Gujjar boys. He saw his jacket on those shoulders and he almost laughed. The ghosts of the mother and the son, the ghost of his father, and the ghost of his homeland left as he set off towards them. Chandu had done it; he brought back his jacket from certain death. Akeem had always been sure of his friend. He felt like he could go hungry for another month. His thirst and need were quenched. He waved enthusiastically as he walked towards them.

Somewhere in between where he saw them and where they sat, the people changed. Chandu was no longer Chandu; he was replaced by a short and heavy-set youngster. The boy wearing the jacket was someone Akeem had never seen in his life. Sitting with them were a couple of young women. Akeem’s smile faltered, but the initial happiness of his legs carried him towards them as the group stared at the approach of a total stranger.

“Oh…oh, man. I’m so so…sorry. I thought you were someone else…my jacket…” Akeem felt around his shirt for a jacket he was not wearing. He smiled awkwardly, hoping he would not be taken for someone insane.

His smile was returned by the boy wearing the jacket, who introduced himself and his friends as students from a university nearby. Akeem sighed in relief; somehow college students never had a problem with him. Perhaps it was something to do with them being aware of their surroundings. He gave his own introduction and for the first time in a while, told someone his real name and place of origin. He looked at the jacket he thought to be his. It faintly looked like the one he owned but was very different in several other ways. It was brown, but it didn’t bear the signature seams he knew so well.

***

An hour later, they were engaged in heavy political discussion, the kind that is brought on when two joints are passed around. Akeem was lively as he described the pitfalls of an authoritarian regime even if it arrived with the promise of zero corruption. He had never taken a liking to politics when he was young, but since he cut off ties from his family, he became more and more drawn towards it. The students nodded in agreement and the one with the jacket exclaimed, “You’re so knowledgeable, bro! And you’re a lawyer! What is a chap like you doing in these parts? Why don’t you go back home?”

Akeem’s face was drained of colour as he looked away. He mumbled, “No…no…I can’t…I can’t go home…no…” The students left it at that but Akeem could not get back into the conversation. Who was he fooling with all these opinions and knowledge? It never really mattered when it was supposed to; he was too blind to see it then.

Akeem’s response to his father’s call to duty had been to grab a jacket and run away to India. So why this pretence now? His father was gone, the movement was gone. He was not at home. What was such talk achieving but a deferral of the things he was trying to forget? His grin went awry and he found it difficult to talk. Blaming it on the weed, “It’s fuckin’ strong, man…” Akeem turned around to leave after handing back the joint. His parting words were corny but he meant them with all his heart, for he did not want these young idealist souls to wither away like he did, “Keep awake, my friends. You can be the change in the world.” Raising his fist in a short salute, he walked away.

A few steps towards the alleyway from where he came, Akeem saw hope. He saw Chandu jumping up and waving to him with a frantic energy that belied his frame. The people trying to make their way around his friend looked at him in disgust but to Akeem, it was the prettiest sight in the world. In Chandu’s hand, Akeem rubbed his eyes, was a brown leather jacket. It was his jacket. He broke into a run, leaving the park and its inhabitants in a world of their own.

“Monti bhai, I got it! It took me really long, but it’s here. It’s good, na?” Chandu remarked as he proudly presented the jacket to Akeem.

Akeem struggled to string words together, “I can’t believe it. Thank you, Chandu! Thank you…this is great. I am in your debt…you don’t…” he grabbed the jacket and felt the material that looked leather but wasn’t leather. He checked the label which did not have his family name. He smelled the unfamiliar rexine. Turning it around, he saw the faint smudge of a marker that said ‘400’.

“…I know, bhai. It took me two hours in Gandhi Market to find this. But what are friends for? I couldn’t see you sad. Now everything is good? Let’s go and smoke some of that charas you bought the other day. Celebrate!” Chandu slapped Montiram on the back.

“Yes. Let’s celebrate.” Montiram smiled weakly as he turned towards the way to his room. Chandu looked assured, but what he didn’t see was the solitary tear that dried before it reached Montiram’s chin.

END