3
She said, “Manoj, you've been so difficult about this trip. What’s bothering you? It's just for a couple hours, and then we'll go back, and you can finish all the office work you want."
"Nothing, it's nothing," he said.
Which is the real me? he thought. It was an idea that often haunted him. Who was real? The successful man who worked a high paying job at a large multi-national corporation… or the man-boy who had had to have endless counseling sessions during his school years to fix crippling anxiety issues? By the time he’d graduated from school and begun university, he'd worked out most of his mental ticks with his counsellors, and he’d learnt to get by so that on the outside he appeared to be reasonably well adjusted, even whole. But underneath the poise, who was he?
Over the years, he'd become good at blocking out these thoughts. Good at pushing them back down into the dark. And that's why coming here had been a bad idea because -
"Where's Arun?" he said, looking up sharply.
He spotted his son bounding towards the clown they’d spotted earlier. The clown was beckoning for Arun to come closer and holding out a bright pink balloon bearing the logo of the circus —GIC (Great Indian Circus).
Before he knew what he was doing, Manoj was running after the boy.
"Manoj!" Shilpa called after him, "What's wrong?" He threw a glance over his shoulder and caught her expression — bewildered, dismayed.
As he ran, the memory came back, so vivid and strong that he almost stumbled:
He is a little boy again, maybe just a little older than Arun. He is with his mother, in a circus much like this one… yet so different. The circus rides are primitive, driven by groaning, rusting machinery — there are a couple of merry-go-round with flaking animals, an aging dodgem-car set, a nameless ‘thrill-ride’ which is just a pole around which a few worn cars spin languidly.
Harsh fluorescent lights flood the grounds with stark shadows. The men who run the place look feral; they have hard eyes and fixed smiles. A stench assails his nostrils, a low animal smell.
In the animal enclosure, outside which a fading sign says ‘Zoo’, the elephants are chained to posts with iron cuffs on their forelegs; the cuffs have left chaffed raw skin. The lions, who are padding restlessly in cages, have mangy hides and protruding ribs. Two orangutans cling to each other and seem to have lost most of their hair. A lone chimpanzee stares forlornly out of its cage and occasionally thrashes about and bares its teeth in fits of rage.
In the main tent, the performers are gaunt men and women dressed in grimy, dull spandex bodysuits that look worn with age. They are assisted by underage children. Some of the performances — the gymnastics troupe — are composed entirely of kids. The children sport unwashed hair and dirty noses. It is unlikely they go to school; they must live the nomadic life of the circus.
