At the corner of the market, stood the humble establishment that was run by Rizvi. He called it Rizvi’s Signboard and Nameplate Company. But he neither had the space that would justify it being called a Company, nor did it have the space to hang a signboard that could spell out the entire name. Ironic, he would often think. Rizvi used to make nameplates and signboards for others, but he had never been able to make one for himself. A letter was better used for others than for his own name. And the same went for brushes and paints. His business was best advertised by the many signboards and nameplates that hung all around the desk where he worked, outside the canopy that shielded him from rain and sun, and across the pavement where he put out the fresh ones to dry. He had learnt long back that he didn’t need his own calling sign, but on some days, especially after crafting a particularly nice one for someone else, he would yearn to make one for himself. But he could always make his own later. Every day he was busy with one or the other that was due in a rush. Names and calling signs that businesses couldn’t start without. While his own was doing well without one.
It was on a day like any other day that he woke up early to make a sign for a sweet shop. Yogi’s Sweets & Snacks. The order had come through a friend’s friend. The shop was nowhere close to his, but his reputation as a reliable signboard maker bridged the distances, and even if he lacked a little in skill and design sense, he more than made it up for by doing things on time. No business had to start operations without its name up on time, without an effective space for garlands and ribbons. While entrepreneurs had to rush about at the last minute to look for pundits and visiting cards and to get their electricity and water supplies in place, they never had to worry about the signboards.
Yogi’s father had always been a tailor. But his son refused to follow in his footsteps and turned the shop into a sweetshop. He got hold of a cook, bought old shelves, and put old glasses on them to stop the flies from getting in, or out, and tried coming up with better names but settled on his own and told his friend to get a signboard in time. Rizvi was told to make one and it was ready a day before the shop was to open.
On the same day, a day before the shop was to open, Yogi’s father refused to let him follow through with his plans and the cook was left with his hands half smeared in dough and the carpenter’s helpers with their hammers raised to come down on half inserted nails. But Rizvi was ready with the signboard. He had made the Y in the Yogi look like a cup filled to the brim with cream. He had made sure the & stood out with the twists and curves looking like that of a jalebi, complete with sugary syrup dripping from it. The signboard was laid out to dry and for the friend to pick it up in case he was out for lunch or a game of cards with his neighbourhood friends.
But no one came to take the board. Not the day before the launch, nor on the day of the launch. Not even the following day. And Rizvi got busy with other signboards, only focussing his attention on it when he would bring it in every night under the canopy, and then back out in the open. Sometimes in the hope that the man would come and pick it up, but mostly to make room in his canopy for his work and his tools. He had long learnt from his friend that the father and son were still in talks, and it was expected that any day the freeze would thaw, and the sweet shop would be back on the shelf. The cook had found another job, but another friend was ready to cook till Yogi found a replacement. The carpenters had promised that they would be back and would resume work if the father would take out the clothes from the shelves and let them do their work. So each day Rizvi set the board outside and waited for the father-son conversation to bear fruit.
By now, the rains had set in, and he decided to take the Yogi’s Sweets & Snacks board to his friend’s shop next door to keep it away from the elements and also to save himself the bother of shunting it in and out every day. His friend’s shop next door was a hardware store. Rizvi’s own business had found a footing because of being next door to someone who anybody opening a new shop or a business would visit to buy lamps, lights, colours and more. But now Rizvi’s reputation brought business to his friend as well. Together they continued to help each other, without actively doing anything. Rizvi found a space deep behind the shop and put the board there, with its face towards the wall. And by the time the rains left, he had forgotten all about it. Only on those days when he missed having a board of his own would he remember the one that had taken time but was still grounded did he regret not having given that effort to his own calling sign. But these were momentary regrets. His day was linked to the fast-growing city and its many mushrooming business and hopes. Even if some of them, most of them, failed, the boards were the last to be taken down.
In another year, enough had happened to make the thought of the board a distant memory, and a trivial one at that. His friend’s shop was suffering badly because of many shops that peddled the same things, a direct fallout of the increase in demand that had at the beginning looked like a good thing. Misfortune in disguise, he would often tell Rizvi, even as the signboard maker bent over making signs for his competition. The one evening, the man declared that there was no future in his current business. And he shut his shop with a finality that didn’t look good to Rizvi.
The next day, Rizvi woke up at his regular hour of six, went to the mosque for his prayers and then got a haircut and had his breakfast and walked down here with a few letters forming in his head that he wanted to use today. He had spent an hour already on the signboard of a new juice shop that was opening in three days near the highway. He had tried making the J look like a tap, but his initial pencil drawings showed him that he was taking too much of a licence on a board that would be read at sixty kilometers an hour, and he doubted if people would stop to make sense of it. He didn’t think people would stop for a glass of juice either, but the shopkeeper wouldn’t be able to blame him at least. So he had gone back to a regular type, seen the pencil outlines from a distance and found he was disappointed in himself. He could always find a letter to twist for it to mean something more than just a spelling, He was known for that skill of his. And he had done juice signs before this. He decided to give it a rest and catch up with his friend from the hardware store. But there was no sign of him. Rizvi called him up, and the friend took the call at the last ring, sounding as if he had just woken up. There wasn’t much to say, so after asking if he was planning on coming to his shop later, and getting a non-committal reply, he hung up and got back to the signboard. By evening, he had regained something of his touch. He had let the letters in the words stay as they were, but instead made the entire board look like a bus stop. He then painted it, and left it out to dry. As he sat sipping his chai, he saw a few people stop to look at this sign, and he knew he had something he would like to show to the man who had ordered it. Rizvi knew he would like it.
As night fell, he dragged the board in, laid it over the trunk that held his tools besides some random letters carved out in metal and wood, put a sheet to over the board, then dropped the canopy over it all and strapped it down with chain after passing it twice under the trunk. The ends of the same chain were extended to meet beyond the electric pole, where a lock secured the whole establishment. On his way out, he stopped to chat with the caretaker of the guesthouse across the road whom he paid a few rupees every week to keep an eye on his business. Not having had any company during the day, Rizvi sat down and called for a tea for both from the kiosk near the barber’s shop.
The caretaker would sleep all day and stay awake the night. Years of living like that had turned him into many things, but most of all, it had turned him into a man who couldn’t stop talking if he could see an ear nearby. Now he had two, and willing ones at that. With tea in their hands, the man started talking about the things he saw last night. To Rizvi, talks of girls coming late and staying with boys in his guest house, or of that house across the building with its light that would never turn off unless there was a power cut, and of the dogs chasing a cat, were just chatter from a man who lived a life without company. And for that reason he had always stayed away from him, limiting his interaction to exchange of money and a word or two of encouragement. But today he understood him. It wasn’t that his friend had never shut his shop for a day ever before. He would do that often, at times for more than a day or two. But today Rizvi had lived with the resigned voice he had heard over the phone. He took his time with his tea, and let the man carry on for some time, till someone from inside the guest house shouted at him to switch on the motor for the overhead water tank, and Rizvi finally walked away.
The next day it was cloudy, and he decided to walk to his shop. On his way there he thought he would count the number of hardware shops that had forced his friend to shut his. By the time he got to his own shop, he could see that there was little hope for his neighbour. It wasn’t that the others were doing anything differently, or better, or selling at a discount. They just happened to be closer to the newer construction sites. They were easier to reach and Rizvi wondered if he too would have to leave some day the way his friend had. He opened the lock at the base of the pole and decided to never let that happen. He was doing something right, something different. After all, most of the new shops he had counted on his way had boards made by him. He resolved to be on his toes, to do things the way he had always done, and do them even better. He had laid out his shop by now, and when he saw the signboard he had made for the juice shop only yesterday, he \grew even more confident. Picking it up again, he started adding little touches to it. Little yellow lines like you see in the middle of a highway, small bright coloured bulbs painted to the four corners. He was still busy adding these touches when the owner of the board rode in on his motorcycle, and seeing the board, broke into a big smile. He paid Rozvi a little extra for the extra efforts and rode away, the man he brought with him sitting with his face towards the road, holding the board in front of him, and visible to the traffic behind them. Rizvi could see them till they rounded a bend and he saw the money and he smiled. Yes, he would work hard to never let that happen to him. But as the day wore on, he got busy with the next calling sign that would go on a lawyer’s chamber. The board needed to be made strictly as instructed. The name of the lawyer in white, written on a black background. Under it his qualifications. And below that the hours when he would welcome visitors. Either the black board that left no room for his creativity, or the dark clouds above got to him, but when it was time to shut shop, he was back to worrying about losing business to those who would come after him. It was in this mood that he thought of visiting his friend.
The hardware-shop friend lived in another part of the city, and Rizvi walked through its narrow lanes that he had seldom visited. It was nearly night by the time he could locate his house. The lights were on, and his friend was playing cricket in the cramped corridor outside his house, his scooter parked the far end was doubling up as the wicket. Seeing Rizvi, the friend dropped the bat and walked up to him. The man was in sharp contrast to how Rizvi felt about him, and about himself. Before Rizvi could ask him anything, the friend brought out a chair, hollered to someone inside for tea, and started speaking of his good fortune.
Everything happens for the better, he said. The shop was not doing much for him, and he was bored of the business anyway. So he had found a seller and was getting a price for it that would allow him to buy a car and use it as a cab. The work would allow him to travel a bit, and also meet new people, instead of being stuck in that lane. Of course, he would miss seeing him, but he would always have a car to drive over for a tea and game of cards every now and then.
Later, as Rizvi walked back home, he wasn’t really sure if he would be happy being in his friend’s position. Maybe it all had to do with you liking your work, or not. He couldn’t imagine doing anything else. So the next day, when his friend came to vacate the shop, he was there to help him. A cycle rickshaw with a trailer was soon piled up with things that his friend said was already bought and paid for by one of the very people who had made him shut shop. They laughed at the irony of it all as they stood looking deep into the shop that was suddenly looking too small to have held all that. That’s how Rizvi’s eyes fell at the forgotten signboard of the sweetshop.
He walked in and brought it out, wondering what to do with it.
“Oh, leave it right here,” his friend said, “Yogi is the man who bought this shop. For the sweetshop that his father wouldn’t let him open.”
And Rizvi looked at the board, and then at this friend, and then at the many corners and spaces and letters on the board and where he could add his touches to.
Everything did happen for the better, every signboard did find its place, he thought, as he dragged the board back to his workplace to add the final touches and give it a fresh coat of paint.