a junkyard

Fakir with a junkyard in his guts

From Vijendra Kumar

in Lautoka SURUJ Pal (70) is an Indian Fakir with a difference. He does not sit in a Yogic pose on a bed of nails. He does stranger things—like eating steel nails and crushed bottle pieces. Despite his advanced age, and his uncon ventional viands, Suruj Pal enjoys good health. He is a manic walker and can be seen trudging along Fiji’s highways and the country roads with a jute sack flung over his shoulder.

His lean body is crudely covered with a tattered bula shirt and dirty shorts held around his waist with a length of rope.

Around his neck, he carries a dirty woollen pullover—a gift from one of his numerous friends.

In his sack are the tools of his trade—a rusting tobacco tin con taining bottle pieces, razor blades and nails, a scout whistle tied by a string which has a George VI penny at its other end. He uses the whistle and the string to tell fortunes.

On his leathery and gnarled left forearm Tui Beqa (Chief of Beqa Island) is inscribed. Tooth less, a patch of spindly hair on his head, and a flush of silvery grey beard, Suruj Pal presents the picture of a mystic.

I have known him for the past 10 years. On occasions, he would come and ask for a few cents to buy a cup of tea and a few slices of bread. I would always joke about his getting tired of eating nails and glass pieces. Just to prove me wrong, he would casually swallow a nail or start munching on a handful of pieces of glass as if they were peanuts.

A surgeon at Lautoka Hospital, amazed at the man’s feat, lured him in for a thorough examination.

He ran an X-ray test and his finding surprised him a great deal.

All the indigestible matter Suruj

Pal had been eating, he told me, was still in his guts.

“It’s a small junkyard”, he whistled.

Suruj Pal originally came from India at the age of 12. He grew up like any other ordinary boy.

He worked at Nausori and had no schooling. In his middle age, he made a journey to Beqa Island, south of Suva, which is the home of Fiji’s mysterious firewalkers.

That is where this Fiji version of the fakir was born.

He had become friendly with a Fijian witchdoctor, he said, at whose urging he stayed at the island for a year and learnt from him the secret arts. He worships Dakuwaqa (a powerful Fijian God) and attributes his powers to him.

Whenever he tells someone’s fortune, Suruj Pal turns and twists the string and blows on the whistle occasionally. He con stantly looks over his left shoulder, apparently at an in visible presence who makes oracular pronouncements through Suruj Pal’s lips.

Reading my palm recently, he accurately noted: “You can’t manage money”. As for the rest of his predictions, I think they were mainly shots in the dark — some were hits, some near misses and some wide of the mark.

Suruj Pal . . . the fakir with a difference.