"A few weeks ago. I hugged that bear first."
The watchman wrinkled his lips in a pitying and contemptuous sneer.
"Of course you did," he mocked. "Absolutely, you did."
"Prabaker!" I called out. "Can we get on with this?"
He pulled himself away from the bear and approached me, wiping tears from his eyes with the backs of his hands as he walked. His wretchedness was so complete that I was moved to put my arm around him to comfort him.
"I hope you are not minding, Lin," he cautioned. "I smell quite much like bears."
"It's okay," I answered him softly. "It's okay. Let's see what we can do."
Ten more minutes of discussion with the watchmen and the other guards resolved that it was impossible for us to bail out the handlers or their bear. There was nothing to be done. We returned to the metal gate and informed the bear-handlers that we were unable to help them. They broke into another animated dialogue with Prabaker.
"They know all that we cannot be helping," Prabaker clarified for me, after a few minutes. "What they want is to be in that lock-up cell with Kano. They are worried for Kano because he is lonely.
Since a baby, he has never been sleeping alone, even one night.
For that only, they are a big worried. They say that Kano, he will be frightened. He will have a bad sleep, and have too many bad dreams. He will be crying, for his loneliness. And he will be ashamed, to be in the jail, because he is normally a very fine citizen, that bear. They want only to go down to that lock-up cell with Kano, and keep him some good companies."
One of the bear-handlers stared into my eyes when Prabaker finished his explanation. The man was distraught. His face was creased with worry. Anguish drew his lips back into something that resembled a snarl. He repeated one phrase again and again, hoping that with repetition and the force of his emotion he might make me understand. Suddenly, Prabaker burst into tears once more, sobbing like a child as he grasped the metal bars of the gate.
"What's he saying, Prabu?"
"He says a man must love his bear, Lin," Prabaker translated for me. "He says like that. A man must love his bear."
Negotiations with the watchmen and the other guards were spirited once we presented them with a request that they could grant without bending the rules to their breaking point. Prabaker thrived in the theatrically energetic barter, protesting and pleading with equal vigour. At last he arrived at an agreed sum- two hundred rupees, about twelve American dollars-and the moustachioed watchman unlocked the gate for the bear-handlers while I handed over the bundle of notes. In a strange procession of people and purposes, we filed down the steel stairs, and the ground-floor watchman unlocked the cell that housed Kano. At the sound of their voices, the great bear rose from his seated position, and then fell forward on all fours, dragged downward by the chains. The bear swayed its head from side to side in a joyful dance, and pawed at the ground. When the bear-handlers rushed to greet him, Kano drove his snout into their armpits, and nuzzled in their long, dread-locked hair, snuffling and sniffing at their scent. For their part, the blue men smothered him in affectionate caresses, and sought to ease the stress of the heavy chains. We left them in the enclosure of that embrace. When the steel cell door slammed shut on Kano and his handlers the sound rattled through the empty parade ground, gouging echoes from the stone. I felt that sound as a shiver in my spine as Prabaker and I walked out of the police compound.
"It is a very fine thing that you have done tonight, Linbaba,"
Prabaker gushed. "A man must love his bear. That is what they said, those bear-handling fellows, and you have made it come true. It is a very, very, very fine thing that you have done."
We woke a sleeping cab driver outside the police station, on Colaba Causeway. Prabaker joined me in the back seat, enjoying the chance to play tourist in one of the cabs he frequently drove. As the taxi pulled out from the kerb, I turned to see that he was staring at me. I looked away. A moment later, I turned my head and found that he was still staring. I frowned at him, and he wagged his head. He smiled his world-embracing smile for me, and placed his hand over his heart.
"What?" I asked irritably, although his smile was irresistible, and he knew it, and I was already smiling with him in my heart.
"A man..." he began, intoning the words with sacramental solemnity.
"Not again, Prabu." "... must love his bear," he concluded, patting at his chest and wagging his head frantically.
"Oh, God help me," I moaned, turning again to look at the awkward stir and stretch of the waking street.
