Bookie Gambler Fixer Spy by Ed Hawkins

Author:Ed Hawkins
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2012-02-26T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 14

‘Wicket gaya!’

Just before I left Sumer in the crumbling, concrete-manufacturing town of Nimbahera, his stony face cracked. With Vinay translating, he asked if I would speak with his wife and daughter on his mobile phone. ‘They speak good English,’ Vinay said. He was right. They spoke cut-glass, flawless English, asking me how long I had been in India, whether I liked it, if I was married and what I did for a living. ‘Better than most English people,’ I told Sumer. He was overjoyed at this report, showing off a set of brilliant white teeth, shaking my hand enthusiastically.

Having been preoccupied by the car journey back to Bhopal, it is not until the morning that I wonder about Sumer’s reaction. Woken by the sun rising above Bhopal’s staccato skyline, I lie in bed and think whether there is a greater significance to it than just pride in his family’s education. My thought process is interrupted by Vinay’s son. He does not burst into the room like most two-and-a-half-year-olds. That is not mischievous enough. Instead he opens the door silently, creating a gap wide enough to poke his head through and then grins wickedly. Once he has your attention, he swings back and forth on the door handle, shouting instructions. He has woken me like this on each morning of my three-day stay. Today he is telling me: ‘Breakfast is ready but I’m going to eat yours.’ On most days his command has been: ‘Give me your mobile phone, I’ll beat you up.’

This is all in Hindi. He will not start learning English for another two years, Vinay tells me as we tuck into toasted vegetable sandwiches, followed by biscuits and chai. ‘Sumer’s wife and daughter spoke very well,’ I tell him. ‘Why was he so pleased about my comments on their English?’

‘Ah yes, he is a proud man and he wants very much his family to be successful. Learning English is the way for us, you know? My son will learn English, and my daughter. I don’t want them growing up in India, a part of all this corruption. I want to educate them in foreign universities. It’s only going to get worse here. That’s why he was so happy.’

Vinay spots the puzzled look on my face. He heads my next question off, that as an illegal bookmaker who pays off the police and greases the palms of planning councillors, he is part of the problem he describes. So too are his friends: Sumer the bookie, not to mention the forger and the money-lender we dined with on my first night in town. As we walked into a restaurant it felt like India’s version of The Sopranos.

‘I know you are thinking “what about Vinay, he is a bookie, he is illegal” and you are right. But I have to provide for my family. I want a better life for them so they don’t have to do what I do. This is not good. I have already told you about the difficulty I had with my father when he found out.

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