Bombay Time (11 page)

But if Jimmy was unsure of his reasons for disliking Cuffe Parade, he was certain of his reasons for loving Wadia Baug. Their return to Wadia Baug was the mirror image of their departure a year earlier. Then, the neighbors had been awkward and tentative when it was time to say good-bye. Their departure had bruised their neighbors’ pride, but they were not about to show the Kangas that. The farewells had veered from the hearty to the plaintive.

“Heck, we lived with you being gone to England; we can live with this,” Soli said. “Just across town you are now. Be forewarned—the entire gang will be descending on your flat if our mouths water at the thought of Zarin’s cheese
pakodas.
”

“Don’t forget us,” Coomi cried. “Oh, what are we going to do without our little Mehernosh here? My poor Binny is going to miss him so. Promise you’ll keep bringing him back for visits.”

“Make new friends, but keep the old. One is silver and the other gold,” recited Dosamai in that righteous voice that made Jimmy bristle.

Their arrival was a different story. Their return was universally hailed as a triumph, as if Wadia Baug had won a secret war with its Cuffe Parade rival. “The Russians are coming. The Russians are coming,” Binny cried, mocking the adults’ fawning over the prodigal son’s return, but her sarcasm could not mask her pleasure at being reunited with Mehernosh. “Hi, Georgie Porgie,” she said softly, reprising their childhood association. Mehernosh beamed with joy.

Pooh-poohing Jimmy’s decision to hire professional movers, Soli insisted that he and the other neighborhood men would move the Kangas back into their flat. Neither Jimmy nor Zarin had the heart to interfere with Soli’s obvious pleasure, although Zarin had to look away when Soli handled her china. Three days after they’d moved in, Zarin looked around her flat and said what Jimmy had been thinking earlier that day: “Gosh, it looks like we never left.”

Jimmy often thanked his lucky stars for his wife’s minibreakdown. It had taken that, to bring him to his senses. Bombay’s social fabric had frayed so badly in the years since their return to Wadia Baug. Every few days now, Jimmy heard of some millionaire or businessman being kidnapped at gunpoint, read about some retired executive found murdered by a house servant. So many of these incidents occurred in the rich parts of town, it seemed. Despite his wealth and prominence, Jimmy Kanga felt anonymous and safe in his old neighborhood. It was too middle-class a neighborhood to attract the attention of the gangsters who were constantly on the lookout for prospective targets. In the last ten years, Jimmy had stopped doing newspaper interviews for this very reason. He did not want to be trapped in the net of a gangster’s attention. He had even given up his old habit of buying a new car every three years. New cars attracted too much attention. And truth to tell, driving in Bombay was no longer a pleasure. Each trip felt like a survival test. Mehernosh still had the driving bug, but Jimmy constantly lectured his son about the virtues of nonostentatious living. “Times are different, sonny,” he told Mehernosh. “Better to fly under the radar these days. Too many Mafia types around now.”

Looking at Mehernosh sitting comfortably between his elders, watching as they adored his son with their eyes, Jimmy Kanga knew that he had made the right decision. Mehernosh had grown up knowing the difference between how much something cost and what it was worth. Despite his American education, despite the sophisticated circles that Mehernosh moved in, his son had learned to value his heritage, Jimmy realized. He might spend his day among combative lawyers and tight-lipped, tightfisted businessmen, but at the end of the day, he came home to the down-to-earth reality of Wadia Baug. Of course, that was about to change. Jimmy had given Mehernosh and Sharon the Cuffe Parade flat as a wedding gift. Jimmy knew there was some dissent among the neighbors about whether Meher-nosh should move out of the building. Dosamai, he knew, was spreading a rumor that Zarin was behind the move because she and Sharon had had a falling-out. Jimmy took such speculation in stride. After his return to Wadia Baug, he had decided that the occasional spurts of pettiness and jealousy were the price he would pay for the security and community the building provided his family. No, Jimmy was more concerned about Mehernosh’s safety away from Wadia Baug. Still, Jimmy was a reasonable man. His son had argued with him that, statistically speaking, Bombay was a pretty safe city and that one could not stop living because of fear. After all, it wasn’t as if nobody ever got killed near Wadia Baug. It was just that those stories attracted less attention. Mehernosh had assured his father that he and Sharon had no interest in an ostentatious, flashy lifestyle. And that they would take all reasonable precautions to be safe. Looking at his responsible, thoughtful son, Jimmy knew he had made the right call. Living in Cuffe Parade would make it so much easier for Sharon to commute to her job. Also, the newlyweds needed their privacy. Hopefully, they could make a go of it in their new home. If not, they could always sell the flat in a few years and buy something closer to Wadia Baug. The Cuffe Parade flat that he’d bought for a song years ago was now worth over Rs. 1 crore.

As if he had conjured her up, Jimmy’s sprightly daughter-in-law came up behind him and started rubbing his shoulders. His heart swelling with love for her, Jimmy took her hand and kissed it. “Come sit with me, my dear,” he said. As Sharon took her seat in the circle, Jimmy thought about the years that Mehernosh had been at Harvard. How worried Zarin and he had been that Mehernosh would find an American girl and break off his engagement with Sharon. There were so many such cases. Surprisingly, they did not worry about Sharon getting tired of waiting for Mehernosh. As if it were unthinkable that anyone could dump Mehernosh, he now thought guiltily. But both children rose to the occasion. They stayed in touch by phone and letters and Sharon and her sister visited Mehernosh in Cambridge at the end of his first year. They loved Cambridge—the street musicians and the eclectic shops in Harvard Square, the long row of exotic restaurants in Inman Square, the quaint bridges that linked the banks of the Charles River—but Mehernosh scared them with stories about Boston in the winter—how the bony trees lost their green flesh and stood naked and shivering; how the frozen ground beneath his feet was as hard and uncompromising as some of his professors at the law school. Before she left, Sharon made Mehernosh promise not to sleep with the many women she saw lusting after him. He readily promised. And as far as Jimmy knew, Mehernosh had stayed faithful. From his own experiences, Jimmy knew how tempting it was for Indian men to go crazy when they left India for the sexually permissive West. He had seen some unbelievable things at Oxford. Men who returned to India with Ph.D.s in fucking. And that was during the ice age, as far as sex went. He could scarcely imagine the opportunities available to a hand-some fellow like Mehernosh in America in the 1990s. He hoped for his son’s sake that Mehernosh had had some experiences with American women. Jimmy was a great believer in broadening one’s horizons. But he also knew that he would admire his son more if Mehernosh had resisted temptation.

As if he knew his father was thinking of him, Mehernosh got upfrom the circle of friends and strolled over. “Hey, Dad, just wanted to remind you. You better let people know about the surprise before they start to take off. The third
paath
will be sitting for dinner pretty soon.”

Jimmy nodded. “Yah. I’ve already said something to a few of them. I need to tell the rest.” He dug into his suit pocket and pulled out a short list of names.

Sitting back in his chair, Jimmy smiled to himself. He was glad that he had planned this little surprise for a few select friends. Nothing fancy, just a little something to top things off. Just a way to make the evening last a little longer. Jimmy sighed. This was the happiest day of his life. He wished it would never end.

Coomi Bilimoria surveyed the scene before her eyes and blinked.
Click. Whirl.
She turned her head ever so slightly and blinked again.
Click.
Another photograph of another scene, this one of Mehernosh Kanga holding up a glass of whiskey to his new bride’s face as she screwed up her nose in disgust. It was a game Coomi played with herself every time she wanted to memorize something, this blinking of the eyes, as if for a moment she was not Coomi Bilimoria, wife of Rusi, mother of Binny, but, instead, an inanimate object, a camera. Someone who stood slightly outside the circle, watching, observing everything, in the hopes of repeating it all faithfully the next day when she sat on Dosamai’s old stained sofa. Fodder for the gossip mill. Fuel for the fire. I am a camera. Watch me explode in a whiff of smoke and light.

It had started innocently enough, this habit, this obsession with mental photographs. After Binny left for England, Coomi waited for those weekly phone calls from her daughter. For the first few months, she wrote daily letters to her daughter in her head, letters that she somehow forgot to set on paper and mail to Binny. Soon, she added pictures to those letters. Oh, I must remember to tell this story to Binny when she calls, she said to herself. And to help herself remember, she took a picture of the scene.
Click.
Happy pictures. Sad pictures. A picture of Nillo Vakil’s kidney stone floating in a glass of water by her hospital bed. A picture of Dosamai the first time Coomi saw her without her dentures on. A picture of Sheroo Mistry showing off the new gold necklace her husband had bought for her. A picture of Rusi praying out loud along with the
dastoors
at his mother’s funeral, his melodious singsong voice overshadowing their professional, nasal chanting.

But Binny seemed strangely disinterested in her mother’s pictures. Coomi could hear the impatience in her voice as she told her daughtet about someone’s appendectomy, somebody’s Navjote ceremony, someone’s broken hip. Binny only wanted to talk about Rusi and Coomi and about Khorshed, when her grandmother was alive. “Mummy,” she said through gritted teeth, “enough of how the neighbors are doing. I want to know how
you
are.” Binny was simply not intetested in hearing about everyone else’s life. That fact never ceased to amaze Coomi. She had an insatiable curiosity about the people around her and could not understand how her daughter could survive without such vital air. “I’m fine, fine.
Chalta hai.
But enough about me. Did you heat about …”

There were other things that made Coomi blink. She clicked on the fact that no mattet how rushed and annoyed Binny seemed with her, she always had the time and money to talk to her father. Binny bristled when Coomi talked to her about trivial things, but she hung on to Rusi’s every word as if he were King Solomon. When Coomi complained about Binny’s favoritism to Dosamai, the old woman sighed deeply. “What to do,
deekra?
Such is the way of the world. Us womenfolk hold our children to our breasts, go through a lifetime of ‘Drink your milk’ and ‘Do your homework’ and ‘Go do
soo-soo’
and whatnot and then these menfolk come around and, b
as,
the children flock to their daddies like the Pied Piper. Girls always love their daddies more. Fact of nature.” As the silence grew between her only daughter and herself, Coomi stopped taking pictures for Binny and instead started collecting them for Dosamai. Over the years, she built a photo album of angry, bitter pictures. Of Binny’s husband, Jack, looking at Rusi with raised eyebrows after Coomi snapped at Rusi at a restaurant during their trip to England. Of Rusi glaring at her while his mother complained about something Coomi had done earlier that day. Of Soli Contractor’s shocked expression when he realized Coomi had overheard him commiserating with Rusi about his marriage. Every morning, after Rusi left for work, she took the album over to Dosamai’s flat, where the two women pored over the pictures, revisiting the old ones, looking at the new ones with a fresh sense of injury and insult.

When Binny was younger, Coomi had laughed off her daughter’s devotion to her father. Binny’s fierce love for Rusi reminded her of how she had adored her own father, and she was proud of the fact that Rusi delighted in his daughter so much. She and Rusi had laughed uproariously the day their six-year-old daughter looked solemnly at her father and declared that she would marry him as soon as she was old enough.

“But
I’m
married to your daddy.” Coomi laughed.

Binny looked at her with those big hurt eyes. “Oh no,” she said, as if the thought had never occurred to her. “Oh no.” And then, fiercely she added, “But Daddy loves me best of all. I’m correct,
na,
Daddy?”

As Rusi nodded, Coomi felt nothing but joy and gratitude. Not a bit of the jealousy that she now felt.

Those were the good years. In the early years of their marriage, she and Rusi had fought, but somehow there was enough elasticity in their marriage that it could snap back together. Sexual attraction, the optimism of youth, their hopes and ambitions, the desire for companionship—all covered up the basic differences between them. Like boxers, they withdrew from each other as far as they could to nurse their wounds, but they always made their way back into the ring. Yes, those were the good old days. Despite the fact that by then both she and Rusi realized how different they were from each other. Despite the fact that Coomi believed that Khorshed Bilimoria was waiting for their marriage to fail, that her earlier doubts about the suitability of her daughter-in-law had now crystallized into open contempt and hostility.

“Khorshed Mamma can’t wait for me to walk out, so she can get you married to that Mani who lives in Paradise Building,” she once cried to Rusi as they were driving to a work party. They had been married about three years by then. “Don’t think I don’t understand all her
tingal-tangal.
”

Rusi looked bewildered. “Mani? Who—what are you talking about? You think my mamma wants her only son to be a divorce? What has gotten into your head to make you think like this, Coomi?”

“Yah, take your mother’s side blindly. What else did I expect? God forbid that my husband would ever side with me. What do you know about what goes on in that house while you are at work all day long? Perhaps I should put on pants and go to work, while you stay at home with your sneaky mother.”

“How dare you talk of my mamma in that tone. I want you to apologize to her, Coomi, when we go home tonight. Don’t you think my poor widowed mother has suffered enough in her life already?”

But Coomi was not one to apologize. On rare occasions, she felt a twinge of regret and cursed herself for her careless words, for her awful ability to sting both Khorshed and Rusi with the lash of her tongue. But that night was not one of those occasions. “Over my dead body, I’ll apologize to that woman,” she said. “It would just give her more ammo against me.”

“ ‘That woman’? This is the woman who never raised her voice at me, who raised me with love and respect, and my wife refers to her as
that woman?
Like she’s a commonplace
ganga
or street sweeper?” Without warning, Rusi’s body began to heave with sobs. “I married you with such hopes, to bring joy and good fortune into our house. Instead, I have a wife who acts as if my mother is her bitter enemy.”

His tears shattered her anger and she reached for his hand. “Oh, come on now, Rusi, you know me and my temper. You know I didn’t mean anything against your mamma. She’s a good person. I know that. How many times must I tell you I don’t mean anything by my words. Dangerous to drive a car this way, crying and all. Stop,
na.”
After he dabbed his eyes dry with his starched handkerchief, she put her arm around his neck and massaged it. “Sometimes I feel I’ve married a woman, I swear,” she murmured. “Whoever heard of a man being so sensitive? Delicate as bone china, you are. One stern look and you can crack. But I didn’t mean anything, honest.”

More than once, she found herself longing for the brusqueness and bravado of her three brothers. The very things she had once loved about Rusi—that ridiculously long, vulnerable neck, the softness of his tone, his loving, thoughtful words—all irritated her now. Or rather, Coomi took it all personally, as if Rusi’s quiet dignity, his softspoken words, his sensitive nature were all ways of showing her up, an affront to her loud and boisterous family.

Like the time before her marriage when she and Rusi were having dinner at her mother’s home. Rusi was in the middle of a sentence when Sorab, her youngest brother, let out a loud fart. “What was that?” Fali asked, while the others burst into laughter. “Sounded like an earthquake in here.”

Coomi noticed the look of shock and disgust on Rusi’s face. At that moment, she was ashamed of her brothers, hated them for their rude manners and juvenile ways. “My God, Sorab,” she chided. “That was so rude, even for you.”

Before Sorab could respond, Fali turned to his sister, his face gleaming with malice. “Not even married yet and already acting like a madam?” he said softly.
“Arre,
Coomi, for your wedding, we’re not going to hire a band. Sorab will play the trumpet with his bum only.” Only Coomi and Rusi did not join in the laughter that followed.

Now, the memory of that dinner made Coomi feel defensive and protective of her brothers. Who did Rusi think he was? she fumed. Acting like a
bara sabib,
like he was royalty or something. Sorab and the others were just being boys, having fun, that’s all.

Still, it was hard to know whom she should blame for the fizzling out of her marriage. They had started out with such promise, after all. She had liked Rusi months before he ever took notice of her, before their eyes met in the rearview mirror of his car. He was in love with whatshername—that plump woman—when Coomi first met him. Tina, that was her name. A girl with caterpillars for eyebrows. Still, Rusi’d had eyes for no one else at the time. But once he noticed Coomi, once their eyes met in the rearview mirror of his car and she smiled at him before looking away, he pursued her vigorously. Not that she had fought him too hard. In those days, Rusi had been like lightning in a bottle, dazzling. Aflame with ambition and guts and fire. None of this weakling stuff, this obsession with failure that dominated his life now. Once it was known that they were a couple, they were the envy of all their friends. How strange, how wrong it was that it was the others who had ended up with the good marriages, Coomi thought. After all, who would’ve bet on Bomi and Sheroo? Two nice but inconsequential people. Lightweights. She and Rusi had been different—smart, dynamic, ambitious. That was the big secret: She had been ambitious, too. Nobody saw it because she wasn’t loud about her ambition the way Rusi was. He would talk about his dreams to a stranger at a bus stop, Coomi often thought, affectionately at first, then contemptuously. Anybody who knew Rusi for five minutes knew he wanted to be successful in business, own a factory with a huge, well-manicured front lawn like the one he’d seen in a German magazine, have lots of children, and, someday, have his sons take over the family business.

But Coomi’s dreams remained unsaid, even to her closest friends. When she was a young girl, she had wanted to be a hero. As a small child, she believed that being a hero was a profession, so that one could choose to be a hero in the same way one could choose to be a doctor or a tonga driver or a banker. She spent hours daydreaming in the bathroom, ignoring her mother’s incessant beatings on the door. “You selfish girl, I want you out, in one, two, three,” her mother would scream. “Who you think you are, the Maharani of Jaipur? Using up all the hot water, you shameless thing.” But Coomi barely heard her, dreaming as she was of rescuing infants from burning buildings, of stopping old people from getting evicted, of leading the Indian Army into glorious battle. She was a naturally curious child, and all her dreams were about exploration and adventure. She wanted to discover everything—from lost tribes in dark continents to what lay inside people’s heads. Her father came home one evening, to find his six-year-old daughter sitting on the floor with the two dolls that she owned. Coomi had smashed their wooden scalps and was pulling out the stuffing with a pair of scissors. “Oh my God,” he muttered. “Daughter, are you mad? What are you doing?”

“Oh, nothing, Daddy,” she answered. “I am just wanting to see what their brains look like.”

Surrounded by her teasing, boisterous brothers, Coomi grew up knowing that dreams had to be zealously guarded and kept secret. One day, when she was eight and Sorab six, she asked her younger brother to reverse the usual order of their play. Today, she would be the policeman and Sorab would be the thief, Coomi declared.

Sorab stared at his sister uncomprehendingly. “We cannot do that,” he said.

“Why not? Why do I always have to be the poor thief? I’m older than you, even.”

“Because you are a
girl.
Everybody knows a girl can’t be a policeman.” Sorab giggled at the silliness of the idea. “It is my job to catch you.”

As she grew older and her dreams became more subversive, she hid them even more carefully. By the time she reached college, Coomi already understood how little value she had as a woman. She noticed how her mother unconsciously served the largest portions to her brothers, gave them the pieces of meat with the fewest bones. She observed how all her professors assumed that she was in college to find a suitable husband. “Miss Katpitia,” her beloved professor Krishnamurti said when she went to his office in tears over an average grade. “What would I give to have my male students be as diligent as you are. It’s so nice to see a student work so hard. Such a shame you will settle down any day now with your own family. Such a waste for a woman to be as smart as you are.” She left his office, shaking with frustration. But Krishnamurti had done her a favor. She saw her earlier dreams of heroism and adventure for what they were—a child’s fantasy. After that, she aspired to something even more fantastic—marriage to a man with prospects and with the good manners and culture that her family so badly lacked. Plainly said, Coomi was determined to marry above herself. It was painfully clear that she could not pull herself out of her lower-middle-class origins by the sweat of her own brow; no, she would need to perch a ride on the shoulders of a man who was unafraid to work hard himself. This was not the path Coomi would have preferred—she was too intelligent and proud for that—but it was the only path that would lead from her small, noisy, sweaty house to the outside world.