Bombay Time (33 page)

Then Rusi’s basic sense of fair play took over. And who understands this time bomb of a city? You certainly don’t, he scolded himself. “I don’t know,” he replied. “I really don’t know. It all happened so fast. … But we’d better make a move,
bossie.
There will be time to talk later.” He felt embarrassed as he climbed onto the bus.

There was an awful moment when they were all aboard and Sheroo remembered that she had left behind her photo album. Bomi hesitated for a split second before volunteering to go get it, but it was long enough for the others to realize they were afraid to linger. They felt a burning shame at their fearful retreat and hurried departure. How relaxed, how expansive they had felt only an hour ago. And now they were fleeing like common criminals, fleeing from the imaginary and nonimaginary demons of the night. Rusi suddenly remembered those photographs of helicopters hovering nervously over the American embassy in Saigon in 1975 and the tight, shameful expressions on the faces of the evacuees. The fall of Saigon. Now he felt as if he had traded places with those evacuees. At least the Americans had been at war with another country. But he and his friends were fleeing their own people. There was no safety even in the city they had all been born in. This city, which their forefathers had helped build with their industry and their capital, was being stolen from them, large parts of it cut out from under them by knives that gleamed and flashed in the still of the night. He remembered the story about Kashmira that Bomi had told earlier in the evening and felt as though that ominous story had foreshadowed what had happened later. A strange feeling had gripped him earlier and he wondered now whether it had been a premonition. All evening long, he had been achingly aware of his own mortality, had felt a fraternity with his Wadia Baug neighbors that he rarely felt. He wondered about the compulsion he had felt to share his life lessons with Mehernosh, to pass on to the younger generation all that he knew. Had that been a premonition of the violence to follow? Had the rock been meant for him and had he somehow twisted out of fate’s grasp one more time? If so, what did that mean? Should he feel relief or guilt at the thought?

He glanced at Mehernosh, who was sitting a few seats ahead of them, saw the back of the boy’s big proud head, and for a second, he questioned Mehernosh’s wisdom in returning to Bombay. Binny made the better choice, he told himself, even though she made it for the wrong reasons. Binny, he knew, had not fled Bombay because of the menace lurking in its streets, but because of the grief that dripped like candle wax from the walls of Wadia Baug. Binny’s demons lived in the Bilimoria flat and not the streets around it. But whatever the reason, Binny had fled this graveyard of a city, where women got struck with rocks and young men lay writhing in their own blood. And he was glad for her escape.

Rusi turned to where Sheroo was sitting behind him. Even in the dark of the bus, he could see Sheroo’s face, which looked tired and unimaginably old. She was looking out the window, watching the deserted city streets flit by. “How is the arm?” he whispered, but she only nodded noncommittally. Now he could see that Sheroo was crying softly to herself, and he felt a sharp stab of anger on her behalf. Sheroo was legendary for her generosity, for buying ice candy for the street children who played outside Wadia Baug, for donating her used bedsheets to their parents each winter. The bastard who had hurled the rock had no idea whom he was hurting. It was the random savagery of the attack that angered Rusi. Just earlier that evening, he had thought about how all of them were sitting precariously on top of a bomb that could go off at any moment. And it had. Not as explosively as it was capable of, but enough to tell him that he was right. The purple bruise on Sheroo’s ample upper arm was proof, an apocalyptic warning, the writing on the wall written by an anonymous graffiti artist.

But then he remembered the bloated head of the youth as he lay tossing on the dirt. He, too, had been a victim of random violence. Despite the
chowkidar’s
protestations, Rusi was sure the man had no way of telling whether the youth had hurled the stone or not. And they had all stood quietly watching as the
chowkidar
had yanked the youth in, pulled the baton from his holster, and yelled at the crowd to disperse. It was true that none of them had foreseen the savagery of his attack. It was true that the brutality of his attack had paralyzed them, so that Rusi had not intervened until it was much too late. But was it also not true that they had expected the
chowkidar
to rough up the youth a bit, to slap him a few times, to make an example of him? Had they not felt better at the fact that the
chowkidar
was acting as their emissary, that he was evening the score on their behalf? And if that was true, did they not all have blood on their hands? At least the man who had thrown the stone had done the foul deed himself, had risked getting caught and punished. What had they risked? They had simply hired somebody else to do their dirty work for them.

Victim upon victim. Hadn’t the
chowkidar
himself been a victim of Jimmy’s unreasonable wrath? How had they expected that one poor man to protect them from the jealousy and hatred their sheer presence aroused among those waiting outside the gates? Why had he, Rusi, not intervened when he heard Jimmy threatening to fire the sentry? Why had he not pulled Jimmy aside and appealed to his sense of fair play? Admit it, Rusi said to himself. As far as we’re concerned, these people are interchangeable and replaceable. So we hire and fire them at our will. Already, he could not remember what the
chowkidar
looked like. The next time he and Coomi attended a function at the same reception hall, there would be another man at the gate, perhaps wearing the same frayed khaki uniform. And once again, he would look through him, barely glancing in his direction as they walked in.

Beside him, Coomi stirred. “I keep thinking, What will happen to that
chowkidar?”
she said to him in a low voice. “We got on the bus and left, but he’s got to stay behind to face the music.”

She had done it again. She had read his mind, tapped into his thoughts, and said something that made him realize how well she understood him. She was reading him like an X ray. Was this some new trick she had developed? And if so, when? He had never noticed this uncanny ability before. Had she always been like this? Or was this sudden compatibility part of the strangeness of this entire evening? After all, he had felt his usual distance from her when they had walked into the reception hours earlier. He tried now to call up that protective distance, but the memory of her sticking up for him earlier in the evening made that difficult. What had Coomi said? “I know what you mean, exactly.
Exactly.”
How warm, how safe he had felt in the glow of those words. And now she was doing it again. Rusi knew without a shadow of a doubt that none of their fellow passengers were worried about their culpability in what had happened. Jimmy would most likely make good on his threat to have the security guard fired. Mehernosh and Sharon would busy themselves with preparations for their honeymoon. Sheroo and Bomi would occupy themselves with Sheroo’s injured arm. Tehmi and Adi would crawl back into the cocoon of solitude they each occupied. And Soli, poor Soli would spend the next few days agonizing over Mariam’s letter. Coomi, he knew, would probably stay up half the night worrying about the
chotckidar’s
fate.

He touched her arm ever so lightly. “I’ll talk to Jimmy tomorrow morning,” he said to her. “I’ll see if I can calm him down. No sense in you worrying about this. Try to forget it.”

When she spoke again, her voice was so low, he barely heard it over the rattle of the bus. “Tonight, for the first time in my life, I’m glad Binny’s away. This city is getting too unpredictable. Maybe you were right after all to send her away.” Then Coomi turned her face to look out the window, and he knew for sure that she was blinking her tears away. He knew what it had cost her to say those words, and his heart ached for her so badly that it frightened him. He did not want to resurrect his feelings for Coomi. It was much too dangerous. Sympathy, pity, any of these feelings could pierce the glass shield that he had built around his heart. And yet … And yet, who could understand better than he how much Coomi missed her daughter? He had thought that the longer Binny stayed away, the easier the heartache would get. But exactly the opposite was true. As he got older, the thought of spending old age without Binny, of someday dying alone, without his daughter by his side, haunted him. He wondered whether Coomi battled the same thoughts.

Despite his better judgment, he felt compelled to respond to Coomi’s half apology. “Thank you for saying that,” he said, and heard the tremor in his own voice. “I know how much you miss her. I miss her a lot, too. I console myself by thinking we sacrificed our happiness for our daughter’s sake.”

Coomi was silent for a moment. Then Rusi heard her say, “Whatever happened between us, we’ll at least always have Binny in common. Nothing can change that.” Rusi’s eyes welled up with tears and he did not trust himself to speak. Before he could respond, he felt Coomi’s hand reaching for his. He stiffened from force of habit, but she did not draw her hand away. Instead, she shyly pulled his hand on her lap as words poured incoherently from her, fast as water from a tap. “What you said to Mehernosh tonight—it reminded me so much of the people we used to be. Nobody there understood what you were saying— not at first anyway—but me. But
me.
And it made me proud that I understood you, like in the old days. And Jimmy’s thoughtful gift. Watching ourselves in that photo album. Unleashing memories, like a monster that had been tied to a tree. So young we were, so happy. I’m tired of this loneliness, Rusi. I have been much too lonely. And you have, too. Something has to be done about this. Something must be done.”

He searched desperately for the plaster cast that he normally sealed his heart in, but he couldn’t find it. He told himself not to fall for Coomi’s theatrics, that she would hurt him again as soon as he let his guard down. But Coomi had never before spoken to him with such desperation and sincerity. Or maybe he had just forgotten. In any case, he let his hand relax on her warm lap. As soon as he did that, he was aware of how tense his muscles had been and how god-awfully tired he was. He closed his eyes, trying to keep at bay the thoughts that were trying to flood his brain. There would be plenty of time to deal with them later.

Suddenly, all he wanted was to be at home. Rusi wanted the bus to speed past these unfriendly streets and deliver him to the relative safety and security of Wadia Baug. His heart lifted at the thought of the old apartment building’s solid presence. For 120 years, it had stood on the same spot, indifferent to the vagaries of life. Rusi wished he could feel that rooted, instead of this wretched, teary feeling he was experiencing. He tried to call up that large and lazy feeling the scotch had conferred upon him earlier in the evening, but the rock that hit Sheroo had shattered his glassy drunkenness. He felt tired and irritable. He wished he was already in his pajamas and asleep in his own bed. He wanted to cover his face with his sheets and shut his eyes, to block out this confusing city, this bewildering life. The more he thought about either one, the less he understood. He was tired of thinking.

Soli Contractor was saying something in the back of the bus, and his voice shook Rusi out of his reverie. Now, as he looked, Soli was walking to the front of the bus. In his right arm, he was holding the photo album. As Soli walked by Sheroo and Bomi, he nudged Bomi. “How is she?” he asked quietly, and Bomi replied with a halfhearted thumbs-up.

Soli stood facing them and rocked to the motion of the lurching bus. “Ladies and laddas, there’s something I’m wanting to say before we get home. In the midst of all the commotion, I have forgotten my manners. We all have, I think. Because none of us remembered to thank Jimmy and Zarin for their thoughtful gift.” Soli held up the photo album.

“No mention, no mention,” Jimmy said from his place across the aisle from Rusi. He could tell that Jimmy was trying hard to capture the lightheartedness he had felt earlier in the evening.

“But no, something else that I want to say,” Soli continued. “Jimmy, what you have given us is more than a few pictures. You have reminded us of who we are and what we are to one another. You’ve given us ourselves back, our youth and our promise. Our real selves back, minus a few double chins and bald heads, you could say.” From behind the bus, they could hear Adi giggling. Soli smiled, a sudden guileless smile that dislodged some of the sadness from the bus. “You know, wounds heal—and I hope our Sheroo’s injury heals
fatta-faat.
Yes, wounds heal and scars fade. But memories live forever. And tonight, we carry many happy memories in our hearts, despite what happened. After all, it’s not every day that one of our own gets married. And Zarin and Jimmy, with their magnanimous gesture, have bound us all together even closer. This is what we will remember—this happy, close feeling—when the other, bad memory fades.”

God bless Soli, Rusi thought. Always trying to make others feel better. Perhaps it took a broken heart to prevent other hearts from breaking. As Soli walked shakily back to his seat, Rusi grabbed his arm. “Well said,
bossie,”
he murmured. “Let’s talk about the other
marnala
soon, okay?”

Bomi, who could not bear to be overshadowed by Soli, cleared his throat. “You know, in some African cultures, it is said that if a female guest is hit by a stone at a wedding, it is a sign of fertility—for the young couple who just got married, of course,” he added. “So at this rate, the stork should be visiting the Kanga residence within nine months.”

Rusi listened in amazement as Sheroo’s familiar voice penetrated the dark. “God, what a
dbaap-master
my husband is. Mehernosh, can’t you arrange for Harvard to give him a bachelor’s in bullshit? He’d stand first in his class, my Bomi would.”

What a people we are, Rusi thought with bemusement. Nothing keeps us down for too long. No wonder our ancestors survived the perilous journey from Persia, no wonder we thrived and prospered in a land to which we came as refugees. The rush of affection that he felt for his fellow passengers temporarily banished the chill he had experienced since boarding the bus. And yet, he knew that something important had happened today and that it was vital to hold on to its memory. And that it would be up to him to be the custodian of that memory, because, left to themselves, the others would be only too happy to forget. But I must not forget, Rusi thought. Somehow, he had to learn to navigate between contentment and complacency, between caution and fear, between the known safety of Wadia Baug and the unknowable world outside its walls. Just as his ancestors had occupied the safe small strip of space between Hindu and Muslim, between Indian and English, between East and West, he had to live in the no-man’s-land between the rage of the stone thrower and the terror of the stoned. But where to begin, he didn’t have a clue.