Bombay Time (32 page)

Mehernosh had risen from his chair and was now pulling Rusi up from his. The younger man embraced Rusi in a bear hug. “Wow, Rusi Uncle. If I’d known you were so good at speechifying, Dad and I would’ve made you a law partner years ago.”

Everybody laughed. Rusi’s words had suddenly made them see Mehernosh in a different way. Whereas Mehernosh had always been part of their past, they suddenly saw him as their future, and this cheered them up.

“Rusi’s right. You must always keep our collar up, Mehernosh. I say, someday you will be attorney general of India,” Sheroo said.

Jimmy laughed. “It’s not that easy, my dear Sheroo,” he said lightly.

They turned on him like angry bees because he was interfering with their new dream of Mehernosh. Rusi’s words had anointed Mehernosh as the custodian of their future and they swarmed to that vision.

“If anybody can do it, our Mehernosh can.”

“Our Parsi boys need to rise again. It’s not like the old days, when we ran this city. Now even those
paan
-chewing Maharashtrians are better educated than we are.”

“Arre,
in a few years, even the Central Bank won’t have a single Parsi department head.”

“Yah, the Bank of America now probably has more Parsis than Central Bank.”

“Don’t talk to me of America. Remember that story of the old woman with the gunny sack filled with cockroaches, the one our parents used to frighten us with? These days, I’m thinking of America as that woman, kidnapping all our children.”

“Arre, baba,
it’s hard for anybody to resist the riches of America. Not for nothing they call it ‘the land of opportunity.’ “

“All except our Mehernosh. He came back to us.”

“Those Americans must’ve been dumbfounded. Imagine, an Indian turning down America?”

“And why not, indeed? After all, his daddy has built an empire for him here.”

“Three cheers for Mehernosh and Sharon,” Bomi said. “Hip hip …”

“Hooray.”

“Hip hip …”

“Hooray!”

They were being watched. Thirty pairs of eyes followed their every move—every flash of a jeweled hand, every rustle of an expensive embroidered sari, every turn of a gold-clad neck. Thirty pairs of ears heard their tinsel laughter, the deep baritone of the male voices, the glassy tinkle of female giggles. Thirty pairs of nostrils breathed in the lingering scent of their imported perfumes as it commingled with the glorious smell of the leftover dinners being packed for distribution.

They were being watched. The rumblings of thirty stomachs grew louder and louder, until this ragtag group of street people who stood outside the iron gates dissolved into one giant stomach, until it became hunger itself, a vacuous ache, a heavy groan. With increasing restlessness, they watched a tall man in a brown suit distributing individual boxes to the small group of old men and women sitting in a circle. They watched them pull books out of those boxes. They gritted their teeth as they noticed how the old men and women settled back into their chairs before they started flipping through the books. As if they had all the time in the world. With sinking hearts, they watched the tall man signal to someone to bring out another bottle of alcohol, watched as the man poured fresh drinks into their glasses. Old as they were, it seemed as if this band of revelers was in no hurry to go home. Silently, they watched the glassy look that many of the guests got in their eyes, cursed the fair-skinned man who suddenly started to speak and looked like he never would stop.

Still, they were patient. They had not come this far without learning patience. Like a dog who must wait for scraps from his master’s table, they had mastered the art of patience. Sooner or later, these well-dressed old men and women must rise and go home. Sooner or later, they will get bogged down from the weight of their heavy jewelry, will get drowsy from the weight of their filled stomachs, will get burdened by the weight of their guilt. Sooner or later, something will happen that will send them home. Won’t it? Won’t it? Or is it possible that they will stay so long that the caterer may get tired and irritable, may decide to call it a day without going through the nightly ritual of distributing the leftovers to them, they who had waited so patiently, so silently? They had walked several kilometers, some of them, for their daily bread. They had come, with infants on their hips and holding their other children by the hand. They had come, leaving grandmothers at home, promising them a full meal when they returned. When they returned to the strip of pavement that they called home.

“How much longer, Baba?” Bhima asked, tugging at her father’s shirtsleeve. He had just wiped his nose on that shirtsleeve a minute ago. He had woken up this morning with a sore throat and a fever that left him so tired, he had even thought about skipping dinner tonight. Only the crushed look on his seven-year-old daughter’s face had made him change his mind.

“Should be soon,” he replied. “See that? That’s the bus that’s going to take them home. Can’t be much longer.”

But he was wrong. A minute later, the tall man in the brown suit rose to his feet and signaled his driver. Now there were new glasses. And a different kind of bottle. The driver poured small quantities of a creamy light brown liquid into each glass. “Thank you all for being here for the happiest day of my life,” the tall man said. “Cheers.”

“Cheers, cheers,” the rest of them replied.

He hated them then. Hated their stupidity and their silly indulgences. Hated their indifference to him, their oblivion. His body ached with fever and hatred. He wanted to smash their glasses over each of their heads, wanted to tear their happy smiles from their fat, light-skinned faces. Without thinking, he ran his fingers over his own face, a canvas of taut skin under a foundation of bone. He thought of Bhima’s thin, weary face, caked with dirt and sadness, and the thought of her lighted a fire under his simmering anger. Since Bhima’s mother died of pneumonia two years ago, she was all he had. The village that he had left as a teenager now seemed as remote as a dream. Fueled by the rags-to-riches fantasies of Hindi movies, he had come to Bombay with great hopes. “City of dreams,” they called Bombay in his village, and indeed, some of the men who had left had returned with enough money to buy their own land and build their own homes. But somehow, things had not worked out for him that way. In the beginning, he used to return to the village at least once a year, regardless of whether he had money for a train ticket. But once, they caught him. Unable to pay the fine, he served three months in jail. The experience broke his confidence and the visits home became less frequent. Also, he could not face the bewildered disillusionment in his old mother’s face. It was impossible to convince the old woman that money did not grow on trees in Bombay. After Bhima was born, he stopped going home altogether. Now he was one of the millions of ghosts who walked Bombay, a man without a past or a future. He lived everywhere and nowhere, just like air.

But he was a father, nevertheless. He reached over to pat his daughter’s head and draw her closer to his side, but his hand touched space where she had been a second ago. He turned around to look for her. But she was gone.

When he saw her again, he recognized her by her small hand. Unable to wait any longer, losing faith in his empty promises of deliverance, Bhima had crossed the street to where a large city Dumpster lay. Yesterday, her
baba
had come home and told her that they would eat well tonight, had made her mouth water with descriptions of fish baked in green chutney and yellowed rice with big pieces of chicken in it. But pangs of hunger had driven that vision out of Bhima’s head. She could not wait any longer. She climbed the tall Dumpster with practiced ease and then foraged around. The Dumpster didn’t look too picked over. Maybe if she was lucky she would find a half-eaten banana or a piece of chicken with some meat still left on the bone.

It was her lucky day. She emerged from the Dumpster triumphant, with half of an overripe orange in her hand. Her father saw her little hand as she gripped the inside of the Dumpster and lifted herself over to the other side of it. “Baba, look,” she said excitedly. But he could not look, blinded as he was by guilt, shame, and rage. He knew she would eat the orange slowly, savoring the sharp trickle of the juice down the back of her throat. He knew she would then chew on the peel, unable to throw any part of her precious treasure away. Most days, he shared her excitement at the discovery of edible food. But tonight, it made him sick. Tonight was to have been different. He had found out yesterday that there was a big Parsi wedding on the next day. He had promised Bhima that they would dine well, eat the same food that the
bara sahibs
did. He had ignored the whimpers of his aching, fevered body to keep his promise to his girl. And now a bunch of bastards who did not know when it was time to exit had wrecked his plans. And the worst part of it was, they did so thoughtlessly, oblivious to his and Bhima’s existence. As if all of them who stood hunched and crowded outside these tall iron gates were simply an extension of the black night. Invisible. As if his daughter, his beautiful, serious, hungry daughter did not exist.

Well, he would show them she existed. That he existed. If they refused to acknowledge his presence, he would acknowledge theirs. He would send them a present, a gift from the shadows. After all, it was a wedding. He was sure that the van that waited to take them away from here was already loaded down with fancy gifts. He would give them one more gift, unlike any that they already had. A slow grin formed on his lips. He shivered with fever and excitement.

“Go to the number five bus stop and wait for me,” he said to Bhima.

She looked at him uncomprehendingly. “But, Baba, the food. I’m still hungry.”

“Forget the food,” he hissed. “Do what I say. Go now.” “But you promised,” she said. But already she was obeying him, whimpering as she walked away from the crowd. He waited until she turned the corner and then crossed the one-way street. Close to the Dumpster, there lay a pile of cut bricks and rocks. He ran his hand through the debris until his fingers closed around a rock that felt heavy and substantial in his hand. He looked quickly to his left and right. A man rode by on his bicycle, and he waited until he was gone. He looked again. Nobody was paying him any attention. Weak with hunger and anticipation, the huddled crowd at the entrance was transfixed by the antics on the other side of the gate. They did not wish to look away for a minute, for fear that they might miss some vital signal. For an instant, he felt contempt for them, for their naked hunger and their willingness to go to any lengths to appease that hunger. He felt free, as if he had severed the ties that bound him to their cowering servility.

He stood on his toes and his right hand formed a perfect arc against the black Bombay sky. As the stone left his arm and sailed over the iron gates, he felt a minute’s pride, as if he had created a work of art. He heard the stone land with a satisfying thud, followed by a woman’s scream. The satisfaction that he got from hearing those two sounds, close enough together so as to be in unison, made him forget his hunger and the disappointment in his daughter’s eyes. Laughing out loud, he ran into the waiting arms of the warm Bombay night. For a moment, he felt strong and beautiful.

Jimmy Kanga saw it first, the black danger sailing toward them from the other side of the gate. He opened his mouth to warn his friends, but no words emerged. But Sharon saw the look of horror on Jimmy’s face, followed the line of his pointed finger, and deftly stepped out of the path of the descending object. She tried to pull Sheroo out of its way, but Sheroo was a large woman and moved slowly. There was a thud as the rock hit Sheroo on her upper arm and then fell to the ground.

Sheroo screamed in fright and in pain. An ugly purple stain formed against her lemony skin almost immediately. Bomi, who was standing a couple of feet away from his wife, ran up to her. “Sheroo, my God. What happened? Oh God, look at her arm. Ice, somebody get some ice quickly.”

They all spoke at once:

“Here, Sheroo, sit down. Anybody have some eau de cologne? Sprinkle some on her forehead. She looks ready to faint. …”

“Thank God it missed her shoulder by a few inches. Would’ve shattered the bone like glass. …”

“Here, Sheroo, swallow this. Just some homeopathy pills I’m always carrying. Just Arnica. Good for shock and bruises. …”

“Try moving your arm. …”

“No, better not to move it yet. …”

“I’m okay, really. Just the shock of it is worse than anything. …”

“Baap re,
look at the size of this rock. It’s a miracle she’s not dead. …”

“Outside. It came from the outside. …”

“Unbelievable. Someone threw a rock in here. …”

“Barbarians. Uncivilized barbarians. What did we ever do to them? …”

“Here we are, minding our own business. …”

“Bombay has become unlivable, I tell you. We’ve been run over by slums and violence. Where will it all end? …”

“It was probably one of these people at the gate. Have been staring at us like vultures all evening long. …”

“A few more minutes and we would’ve been gone. But they couldn’t wait. …”

“Look at them, even now. Staring at us like we’re bleddy animals in a zoo. …”

“Where the hell was the
chowkidar?”
Jimmy roared. “Why the hell did I spend money getting a security guard if he can’t offer us basic protection?” He strode purposefully toward where the sentry stood at the gate. A thin, dark-skinned man of medium build, the
chowkidar
seemed transfixed by the events of the last few minutes. A resident of a nearby slum, he had landed this job five months back. At that time, the job had seemed like a gift from the gods. Now it seemed as if the gods were ready to snatch their gift back. Jimmy was signaling for him to leave his post by the gate and come to where Jimmy stood, but the
chowkidar
seemed paralyzed with fright. “Come here, you
ma-daarchot,”
Jimmy screamed, and finally the sentry managed to walk a few feet on his shaky legs.

“I’m sorry, sir, so sorry. Hope madam is not badly hurt. What to do, hard to know what mischief someone is doing from the outside. …”

“You bastard, you’re not nearly as sorry as you’re going to be tomorrow. You better not show your face here again. First thing in the morning, I’m going to call the hall people and make sure they fire you. Your incompetence has caused one of my guests to be seriously injured and has ruined our evening. I know your type—probably were drinking on the job. Now, go make yourself useful and see that everything is under control while we board the minibus.”

“Oh
seth, maaf karo.
Please to forgive,
sahib.
Just one more chance, sir. I’m a poor man, with wife and children to support. Nothing I could’ve done to prevent this, sir.”

Jimmy spoke as if addressing a courtroom. “That’s the trouble with this country. Nobody wants to accept responsibility for their actions.” And ignoring the
chowkidar’s
pleas, he strode away.

The
chowkidar
pulled nervously at his mustache as he walked back to the gate. He could scarcely believe what had just happened. For the past five months, he had been able to feed his family on a regular basis. His salary was meager, but often he carried a couple of leftover dinners home to his eager children. He had worked so hard to land this job, ingratiating himself with the Parsi gentlemen who ran the reception hall. He had run last-minute errands for them, helped them decorate the hall before the guests arrived, helped the band unload its instruments. And all this for naught. A rock thrown by an anonymous hand had landed in the middle of the reception and destroyed his life. Just like that. He thought of his two years of unemployment before he got this job and his heart froze at the thought of returning to the desultory laziness of those years. He had spent his days looking for odd jobs or sitting at home playing cards with the other unemployed slum dwellers. Day had followed day. He had felt his limbs get weak and lazy with lack of exercise. He took to beating his wife for entertainment, to break the monotony of his days. His children began to avoid him. But all that had changed in the last few months. Every evening, he dressed in his khaki security guard’s uniform, slipped his baton into his leather holster, and left the slum with a swagger in his step. Some nights, he returned home with enough leftovers to feed not only his own family but also some of the neighborhood children. How good that made him feel! But now, those days were over. The Parsi
seth
did not look as if he would change his mind. He wondered if they would ask him to return his uniform when they told him he was fired.

He had been back at his post for a second, when he heard it. A giggle. Someone was giggling at what had transpired between the
chowkidar
and the Parsi
seth.
Someone was laughing at his misfortune. He looked at the ragged crowd standing behind the iron gates, but their faces were impassive and serious. Still, he had heard it, distinctly. One of these bastards had taunted him with his heartless laughter. Probably the same bastard who had thrown the rock. He was in this crowd, then, the culprit. If he could just nab him and teach him a lesson, perhaps he could redeem himself in the eyes of the Parsi
sahib.
Perhaps they would even allow him to keep his job if he caught the stone thrower.

But who? He ran his eyes over the crowd and they stared back at him. His eyes narrowed as they focused on the face of a youth of about nineteen. The youth was holding on to the bar of the iron gate and staring at him. He imagined that he saw a look of insolence on the youth’s face, a certain smirk on his lips. Look at you, the youth’s expression seemed to say. You’re no better than any of us suckers waiting out here. Even your khaki uniform couldn’t save you from being stripped naked by the Parsi
bawa’s
tongue-lashing. We all heard his threats and we all saw you, even our women and children, standing naked, with your dingdong hanging helplessly in front of you.

He let out a low, guttural sound and rushed to his feet. Swinging open the iron gate, he thrust his hand into the surprised crowd and plucked the smirking youth from it. He pulled the youth inside, slammed the gate shut, and slapped his stunned face, all in the same swift motion.
“Chalo jao,”
he screamed at the crowd, wielding his baton in a menacing way.
“Sahib
has already called the police. Disperse immediately or there will be hell to pay. Each one of you will pay for that hurled rock, ten times over. Now, get lost.” He made a movement toward opening the gates again, and that was all it took. The authority in his voice, the crazed look in his eyes told them that he meant business. The crowd melted into the night that it had earlier sprung from.

The youth was still cradling his face, a bewildered look in his eyes. This only infuriated the
chowkidar
more.
“Madaarchot,
let’s hear you giggle now,” he said softly. The youth opened his mouth to protest, but before a word could escape his lips, the
chowkidar
had brought his knee into the youth’s stomach. As the boy fell, the sentry brought the savage baton down on him over and over again. “Come on, let’s see your balls now. Come on, you coward, no words left in you now, eh?” The youth was down, trying to protect his head with his hands. The
chowkidar’s,
heart sang with each satisfying thud of the baton. He had found his rhythm. The first sight of drawn blood only excited him more. As the youth writhed on the dusty ground, the
chowkidar
felt as if he were stomping on a snake, like he used to do in the village of his youth. “I’ll kill you,” he said in a low voice, as if speaking to himself. “Giggling like that. Think my children starving is funny, do you? Well, here’s something to laugh about. And this. And this.” His hands and feet flew, happy each time they found their target.

“Put that baton away! Stop it right this minute. My God, man, have you gone mad?” Rusi came as close to the
chowkidar
as he could without getting caught in the centrifugal force caused by the baton. Jimmy stood a few paces behind him. At a distance, Soli sat down heavily on a chair next to the injured Sheroo, his face covered with perspiration.

The
chowkidar
flew out of the nest of his fury as suddenly as he had entered it. The baton hung limply by his side as the madness slowly drained out of his body. He stared at the torn, broken body at his feet as if he had just come upon it. The servile look came back on his face. “That’s the culprit,
sahibs”
he said as he gasped for breath. “I found him myself and gave him such a pasting, he’ll never pick up another rock again. So sorry about all this,
sahibs.”

Rusi turned to look at Jimmy for direction and thought he was staring at a ghost. All color had drained from Jimmy’s face and, for a second, Jimmy looked as lost as the nine-year-old orphan who had attended Rusi’s birthday party decades ago. Jimmy was transfixed, unable to take his eyes off the youth’s bloody body. “The bastard has bashed his head in,” Jimmy murmured to no one in particular. “Blood spilled, and on such an auspicious occasion. A bad omen. My poor Mehernosh. What on earth happened here? And what do we do now?”

The youth was fluttering on the ground, like a dying fish washed to the shore. Rusi saw his bloody face, his bruised, blackened fingers, his hideously swollen feet and he felt sick to his stomach. The savagery of the attack took his breath away. What the
chowkidar
had done was ten times worse than what had been inflicted on poor Sheroo. The youth was saying something, and Rusi rested on his haunches to hear him. He was amazed the boy could still speak.
“Janne do, sahib, janne do.
Let me go. Please,
maaf karo,”
the youth said. Rusi stood up in disbelief. The fellow actually thought Rusi and Jimmy were going to beat him some more. Pity welled up in Rusi. “Nobody’s going to hurt you anymore,” he said. “Understand?”

He turned to confer with Jimmy about whether to call the police, but one look at Jimmy’s horrified face told him it was useless. Jimmy seemed broken, a look on his face that tore at Rusi’s heart. Glancing back, Rusi saw Mehernosh standing at a distance, holding Sharon’s sobbing face to his chest. The rest of the group looked like sleep-walkers, dazed and confused. He searched for Coomi and found her sitting next to Sheroo, holding a bag of ice on Sheroo’s arm. She looked at him inquiringly and he shrugged his shoulders. He was glad that Coomi had not come here, had not seen the youth’s beaten, swollen face or heard his low moans.

A slight movement outside the gates caught his eye. Something moved out there, he thought. The hair on the nape of his neck stood up in anticipation. Suddenly, he had a vision of the invisible outsiders tearing open the iron gates and pouring into the reception hall, seeking to avenge what had been wrought upon the man on the ground. We would be mincemeat in half a minute, he thought. They could destroy us in the blink of an eye. The precariousness of their situation dawned on him then and this helped focus his mind on the problem at hand. They had to leave the reception hall immediately. There was no time to call the police. No point even. What the
chowkidar
had done, however despicable, was justice, Bombay-style. Involving the police would just muddy the waters. What was done was done.

He turned his back on the
chowkidar
and hoped that the man did not see him pull out a hundred-rupee note from his wallet. Bending down, he pushed the note into the front pocket of the youth’s torn shirt. He knew that the note would be stained red within moments, but he couldn’t help that. “We’re letting you go,” he whispered to the youth. “We don’t want to make this a police
ka mamala.
As soon as I say the word, just try to get up and go. Understand?” Straightening up, he yelled at the
chowkidar.
“Open these gates. Now. Come on, move.” And to the youth, he said,
“Cbalo,
try to pull yourself out of here. Walk, crawl, fly—do whatever you need to do, but leave. No telling what will happen if you don’t leave.”

Fear attached itself like wings to the youth. Half-crawling, half-sliding, one foot hanging limply behind him, he pulled himself out of the iron gates and into the anonymous night, Rusi could hear him as he moved his body painfully across the street. He waited until the youth melted into the night, until he could no longer hear the hissing and heaving of his broken body. Then, with a heavy heart, Rusi walked back into the hall.

The dusty ground near the entrance of the hall still bote the imprint of the youth’s body. There was blood smeared into the dust where he had lain broken and from where he had crawled away into the waiting night.

They were mostly quiet during the bus ride home. They had boarded the bus tired and subdued as schoolchildren after a field trip. Rusi had hurried them onto the bus. “There may be more trouble tonight,” he mumbled as he gathered them in. “Best if we get out of here,
jaldi-Jaldi.”
While the others were boarding the bus, Jimmy Kanga turned to Rusi. Jimmy’s usually dignified, wise face had been rearranged, so that now he looked confused and lost. “Rusi,” he said, his eyes flickering uncertainly. “What just happened here?”

Rusi gazed at the frightened face in front of him and wondeted why he had ever been jealous of Jimmy. Why, he is nothing but a little boy, he thought. For all his wisdom and all his degrees, he is scared. Years of wealth and comfort have softened Jimmy. He may argue cases before the Supreme Court, but he knows nothing about the city he lives in. He just sees it from the inside of his car window.