Bombay Time (8 page)

One day, she opened her front door to call Zubin in for dinner and saw that he was in an animated conversation with Rusi Bilimoria, who lived one floor above them. Rusi was already a legend among the neighborhood kids because he had a part-time job and was talking about buying a motorcycle with his own money. “When I buy a big house at Worli or Marine Drive, you can come visit me,” Rusi was saying to Zubin. “Should be in a few years,
bossie.
What I say is, if you are willing to work hard, anything is possible,
na?
The sky is the limit, then.”

His words frightened Dosa. She could see Rusi’s self-confidence unravel all of her careful plans to ensure that Zubin grew into a modest, cautious man who did not aim too high. For six months now, she had worked to suppress her son’s natural curiosity and native intelligence. And now, a young neighborhood show-off was about to wreck her scheme by instigating her son to dare to dream his way out of his middle-class existence.

She flew toward Rusi like a mother lion protecting her cub.
“Be-sharam,
stop filling my son’s ears with all your
dhaaps,”
she cried. “Wadia Baug is good enough for us simple folks. You can go to your Worli and live with those Gujus and Sindhis, if that’s what you want. We are happy being with our own kind.”

“Mummy, Mummy, stop it,” Zubin whispered. “We were only talking, that’s all.”

Rusi looked stricken. “I’m sorry, Dosamai,” he said. “I didn’t mean anything by it.” He fled up the stairs.

From that day on, Dosa made it her business to know Rusi’s business. For years, she watched him because she was afraid he would contaminate her son, who, with each passing year, was becoming the dull, mild man she wanted him to be. She often told Zubin to be thankful that she had saved him from Rusi’s seductive but foolish dreams, especially in light of the fact that Rusi’s business never quite took off the way he had predicted. “Remember what I told you years ago,
beta?’
she said when Zubin became an officer at Central Bank at age twenty-nine. “Look at the hours Rusi works, dragging himself home late at night, looking as tired as a mouse chased by a cat. And look at you, coming home by six-thirty sharp, in tip-top condition. And what for Rusi works so hard? Still stuck in Wadia Baug he is, same as us plain folk.”

Dosa’s victory was complete a few years later, when Zubin came home and recounted a conversation he had had with Rusi earlier in the day. Rusi had applied for another loan from Central Bank and Zubin’s boss had just turned him down.

A teary Rusi poked his head into Zubin’s office on his way out.
“Arre, bossie,
what’s wrong?” Zubin said, rising to his feet. “What brings you here? Come in, come in.”

Rusi’s eyes were bloodshot and his usually neat hair looked disheveled, as if he had run his hand through it one too many times. “I’m sunk, Zubin,” he whispered. “My boat is sunk. I have creditors in the market from whom I’ve borrowed money for the business. Twenty-eight to thirty-one percent interest they’re charging me, boss. I came to see your branch manager for a loan at a regular interest rate, so I can get these bloodsuckers off my back. I’m expecting a big order soon from Sharma Enterprise. Big concern. With one order, I can wipe out my debts. But what to do? Your boss says he won’t loan me another paisa. I don’t even have the money to buy some inventory.”

“But Rusi, are you mad? Doing business with these loan sharks? They’ll bleed you dry. Plus, you owe
us
money. But how did you get yourself in this mess anyway?”

Rusi’s lower lip moved, but his eyes were steady. “Just years and years of problems catching up with me. Always trying to stay one step ahead of failure. I started my business with no capital, Zubin. Do you understand? Nobody to back me up, nobody to teach or guide me. Every mistake I made, I paid for it myself. All by trial and error. I was a young man and impatient. Those American books I read, like
Think and Grow Rich,
made it look so easy. It wasn’t. And trying to remain honest in business in this corrupt country … But forget it. I myself don’t know what went wrong. Whatever it is, here I am now. With a young child and a wife and mother to support. I tell you, Zubin, if I don’t get this loan, I’ll have to close the business down. Don’t know what I’ll do then—probably drive a taxi or something.”

“So what did you say?” Dosamai asked her son eagerly.

“Say? Nothing,” Zubin said with a shrug. “He went back in to see Mr. D’Souza, the branch manager.” He did not tell his mother that he had personally implored his boss to extend Rusi another loan. And that D’Souza had reluctantly agreed.

And he did not tell Dosamai when D’Souza came into his office sixteen months later, all smiles. “That Bilimoria chap. Amazing fellow. Came in earlier today with the last payment on the loan. We were pretty sure he was putting some money aside, y’know, taking his cut before paying us back. So we did an audit on him, and guess what? Came back clean as a whistle. Turns out he was paying us back every penny he owed. Damn honest bugger. Guess I wouldn’t be too happy if I were his wife. But since I’m his banker, I’m delighted.”

Zubin’s heart swelled with pride. “Yah, he’s a good man, that Rusi. Known him my whole life, sir.” But part of him also thought Rusi was foolish. So he’s averted one crisis, Zubin thought. But without any money put aside, he’ll be in the same boat next time. He’s still living from one contract to another.

Dosamai did not share her son’s affection for Rusi. When, after years of tracking him, she was convinced that Rusi would never be the success he had predicted, that his star did not burn as brightly as it had once seemed, she continued to watch him out of habit. And when Rusi’s wife, Coomi, began to visit her with her litany of complaints against her husband, she became the jewel in Dosa’s crown. Now, Dosa had an inroad into the innermost chambers of Rusi’s red heart.

Dosa shuffled into the small dingy kitchen to take out an old battered frying pan in which to make her scrambled egg. She wished Zubin would call her tonight from Pune. With so many of the neighbors at the Kanga wedding tonight, the apartment building felt uncharacteristically empty and silent. Even that recluse Tehmi had decided to attend the wedding. I wonder if that drunken Adi is at home, she thought to herself. Or did Jimmy also invite him? I wish Bapsi had married him instead and left my darling Zubin alone.

Zubin’s decision to marry at thirty-five had shocked Dosa, who had been lulled by the long years of living alone with her only son. Dosa immediately told her son he was too old and too bald to marry, but for once, Zubin would not listen. He was head over heels in love with the jovial, hardworking bank teller who had just been transferred to his branch. When Dosa met the strong, vibrant, buxom woman her son brought home, she regretted the many times she had talked her son out of marrying the insipid, pale, unthreatening women he had previously expressed an interest in. Those women, Dosa would have been able to control; one look at Bapsi told Dosa that she had met her match. Bapsi charged into Dosa’s wiliness and guile with the open honesty and the head-on innocence of a young bull. All of Dosa’s surreptitious ways, her slyness and penchant for troublemaking, now lay naked under Bapsi’s unwavering gaze. Her new daughter-in-law blew Dosa’s cover with alarming regularity. “Mamma, come away from that window,” she would say in a loud voice as Dosa would discreetly part the curtains to spy on someone. “None of our business what others are doing.” For Dosa, whose business
was
other people’s business, Bapsi’s words were blasphemy. To make matters worse, her daughter-in-law also refused to nurse Dosa’s lifelong sense of injury at the cruel trick fate had played on her. “Come on,
na,
Mamma,” Bapsi would boom in her good-natured way. “Who even knows if you really would have been a doctor? Anyway, you had a good man for a husband and your Zubin is a sweetie pie, and now you have a daughter who takes care of your every need. What else are you wanting? Let bygones be bygones.”

It was like two continents clashing. And Zubin soon became the territory they each wanted to colonize, so that he was increasingly torn between the two strong women in his life. He spent years trying to build bridges between the two of them, to get them to speak a common language, but to no avail. Bapsi resented the fact that while she and Zubin were at work all day, Dosa invited a steady stream of neighborhood women into their home for hours of gossip and conversation. “An idle mind is the devil’s workshop,” she would say. “Why don’t they do some social work or something instead of spying on one another and poking their noses in other people’s business? Some people have too much time on their hands.” Dosa saw this as a challenge to her life’s work and reacted with the ferocity of a businessman whose lease has just been canceled. “You’d think she was president of the bank instead of just a common clerk,” she’d complain to her many admirers. “The Queen of Sheba, my son has married.”

The situation at home reached a point where when his branch manager offered Zubin a transfer to Pune, Zubin had to stop himself from kissing the man on both cheeks in gratitude. “Sir, I accept,” he said. “No, no, nothing to think about. As long as Bapsi gets a transfer also, I accept.”

Still, leaving Wadia Baug was not easy. On his way to the railway station, Zubin encountered Rusi Bilimoria coming up the stairs, and he thought back to a conversation from decades ago. Strange it is, he thought. For all his talk, Rusi never left Wadia Baug. And here I am, the one who is leaving. “Best of luck with the business, Rusi,” he said, surprised at the tremor in his voice. “Thank you for all your help,” Rusi replied, taking Zubin’s hand in both of his. “You’re a good man, and the building people will miss you. Good luck in your new life.”

As he stepped out of the building, Zubin had felt a pang of fear and guilt at leaving behind the woman he loved and hated more than any other. But then he glanced at his wife, saw the gray streaming through her hair and how her mouth now curved downward, and he knew he had to give her a chance. Bapsi had put up with so much for his sake. Now it was his turn to make her happy. His mother would be safe, buffeted by the friends, neighbors, and even the foes that she had cultivated over the years. Out of fear, gratitude, admiration, boredom, and even love, they would flock to Dosa’s home, seeking her advice on things, picking up the herbal tinctures that she brewed, dropping off an occasional box of sweets or a plate of mutton chops or
biryani
for her.

But tonight, there was only a scrambled egg and a slice of Modern bread for dinner. Dosa chewed slowly as she ate directly from the pan she had fried the
egg
in. Then she hobbled into the living room and turned on the TV, not bothering to flip channels. It would help kill the evening, pass the time. She intended to stay up until all the neighbors returned home from the wedding, intended to mark what time each couple or family got in.

But within moments, there was an odd whistling sound in Dosa’s living room. She was in her shabby armchair, her feet curled up under her thin thighs, her head tilted back, her mouth open, a thin ribbon of drool curling on her chin. She was fast asleep.

The wedding reception was going swimmingly well. Jimmy Kanga surveyed the bejeweled crowd before him, his chest sticking out with involuntary pride. Like a
jadoogar,
he, Jimmy, had turned the squalor of Bombay into something beautiful and refined. A shimmering refuge from the outside world. What were the lines from that song
Camelot?
Something about a brief shining moment? That is what he had created at his son’s wedding—Camelot. Unconsciously, he hummed the tune to himself. From the elegantly dressed women in their jewels and silk saris, to the twinkling lights on a stage decked in rose petals, to the food and drink that were flowing as freely as the Ganges, everything was perfect. Perfect. No hint of the menacing, shadowy city that lay outside the tall iron gates. Jimmy Kanga had, with one wave of his magic wand, made that world disappear.

Jimmy felt the eyes of his guests follow his every move. Some of those eyes were wide with admiration, some narrow with envy, others wet with affection. Usually, the envy that he sensed in his friends and neighbors at Wadia Baug made him adopt a humble, quiet posture in their company. Not a trace of the roaring, competitive corporate lawyer who paced the corridors of the high court like a lion. Jimmy knew that many of his less fortunate neighbors masked the sourness of their own puny lives by ridiculing the successful and the powerful. It was their way of coping with the disappointments of their lives, and Jimmy respected that. He had learned the lesson of humility the hard way. But tonight was different. His only son had gotten married, and Jimmy relished the multiple roles he had to play—the proud, adoring father; the gracious, attentive host; the affectionate, doting husband; the sharp, charming business associate; the teasing, cussing good old Wadia Baug boy.

Surrounded by his immediate family, Jimmy felt blessed. Looking at them now, he felt the same appreciation and joy that he felt when he looked at a work of art at the Prince of Wales Museum. He reveled in the sight of them—his wife Zarin’s trim, well-maintained figure; Mehernosh’s handsome profile, which was fit to adorn the side of a coin; his new daughter-in-law Sharon’s young, radiant face with its stubborn, pointed chin. Jimmy Kanga himself felt extraordinarily fit and youthful. Each morning before going to the office, he walked for an hour at a park in Breach Candy. The result was a body that did not squeak and creak with middle age the way so many of his contemporaries’ did. He knew he looked good tonight. He had forgone the traditional Parsi
dagli
in favor of an elegantly cut dark brown suit that Zarin had picked up for him during her last trip to the States.
“Saala boodha,”
Soli Contractor had said, complimenting him earlier in the evening. “You are looking more like Mehernosh’s older brother, rather than his father. What, is the law business not doing well these days? You looking for a second career in Hindi films? I heard Dev Anand is finally retiring.” Dev Anand was the perennially youthful movie star, who, thanks to the twin blessings of genetics and face-lifts, had defied time and gravity.

Jimmy laughed.
“Saala,
Soli,” he said in a mock whisper. “Don’t let my son hear you say that. Especially in front of his young bride.”

He had spent Rs. 3 lakhs on the wedding. At one point, Zarin had tried to curb his extravagance, but the pleading look on his face had stopped her. And now, Jimmy was glad he had not listened to his wife. Mehernosh is worthy of this party, he thought. After all, his Harvard-educated son had turned down several job offers in America to join his father’s law firm. Not too many Parsi children disregarded the siren call of America these days. Just as he, Jimmy, had returned from Oxford to set up his law practice in Bombay, so had Mehernosh returned, all these years later. Both father and son had bucked the trend.

Though truth to tell, he could have happily stayed on in England, if it had not been for its awful racism. He had loved Oxford, its tree-lined streets, its quaint buildings, its ridiculously stuffy traditions. In the few years he had been there, he’d felt a loyalty—no, a
patriotism
toward the university that he had never felt toward any country. Some days, as he walked down the cobbled streets, breathing in the crystal-clear air, he felt as though he could go to war for Oxford, lay down his life for it. Oxford, after all, had given him a full scholarship, and the deans and professors had never made him feel anything less than welcome, had treated him no differently from the sons of lords and barons.

The problem was on the streets. There, he could not escape the color of his skin. In Bombay, Jimmy’s light skin had been a sign of privilege, a status symbol. But in England in the late 1960s, his skin was not good enough. Not light enough. Although most people did not guess he was Indian, being mistaken for a Middle Easterner was not much of an improvement. Nothing overt ever happened—he was never verbally insulted or physically attacked. Just a slight chill in the air whenever he was around and that hard, appraising glance that lasted a second longer than it should have. Still, it was enough to make Jimmy bristle. He was simply not used to being looked down upon. That was the reason he called it off with Karen, the ruddy-cheeked, boisterous woman whom he had spotted in the library during his second term at Oxford. They had liked each other immediately, and Karen was miraculously free of the subconscious superiority he detected among almost every white person he encountered. But even Karen’s devotion was not enough. He was painfully aware of how he and Karen were watched every time they entered a pub or walked down a street together. Although Karen never said a word, he knew that she was aware of it, too, and the thought made him feel small and weak. And Jimmy never wanted to feel small and weak again. He had spent too many years getting away from that feeling. All the time he was in England, he lived with the fear that if anybody ever said anything snide to him, the street punk that he had once been would come to the forefront and let his fists do the talking.

Also, there were whispered horror stories about the work experiences of other Indian students, once they left the cocoon of the ivory tower for the bullring of the corporate world. About inequities in pay, skipped promotions, discrimination, and harassment.

Jimmy decided early on that he would rather be a big fish in a small pond than a small fish in a big pond. He returned to Bombay soon after he graduated. His old college friends were incredulous at his return.
“Arre, yaar,
every day we are hearing stories about how the British government needs workers, how they’re welcoming educated people with open arms,” said Nasir Hussein. “People here are selling their houses, furniture, cats, dogs, parents—everything—and migrating. And you came back? Didn’t they teach you basic geography, your East from West, at Oxford? Why are you going in the opposite direction?”

But Jimmy knew something they didn’t. In England, he would be a dime a dozen, one of hundreds of brilliant Oxford graduates. In Bombay, his uncle’s contacts, his Parsi heritage, his light skin, his fluent English, his Oxford education—all these would make him a star. Unique. A big fish.

Then there was the other reason, one that he was even more reluctant to talk about. Quite simply, Jimmy missed Wadia Baug the longer he was away from it. Walking past the gorgeous ivy-covered buildings, eating in Oxford’s ornate dining halls, stepping into an icy night after a theater performance, he would suddenly be hopelessly homesick. At such times, Oxford seemed too dignified, too stuffy, too bloodless a place. He missed the Wadia Baug gang, their brashness, their nonchalance, their practical jokes and general irrelevance. It dawned on Jimmy that he would always be looking for a way to get back home. That was the side effect of being an orphan. More than most of his friends, Jimmy needed to have a place to call home. He had never forgotten those three months spent going from one relative to another, after his parents had died in a train accident when he was nine years old. His need for security, for permanence, for stability was infinite. He also felt he owed his uncle Hormazd his return. After all, it was his bachelor uncle who had stepped forward and proclaimed that he would care for his dead bother’s son. It was Hormazd who had taken the train to Hyderabad and brought back to Wadia Baug an angry, bitter, confused boy of nine.

Looking at the hundreds of people gathered for his son’s wedding, Jimmy Kanga repeated to himself the old, familiar words: Not bad for an orphan. The words were his rosary, the beads on which he measured his successes. He had said those words as he stood looking at the festive, cheerful crowd at his graduation from Oxford. After he had argued his first case before the Indian Supreme Court. After Peter Silk, his old roommate, phoned him from London asking for advice on a particularly difficult case. Not bad for an orphan, he thought, sitting in his big air-conditioned office at Breach Candy.

And after he married Zarin. Jimmy told all his friends that his luck changed after he married Zarin, that his wife was his reward for returning from England.

To Jimmy’s chagrin, his law practice did not take off like a rocket after his return. He discovered that a degree from Oxford had not prepared him for the sluggish, bureaucratic Indian legal system. His clients were intimidated by his crisp, brisk manner; the judges were offended by what they considered to be his arrogant
phoren
ways. To his astonishment, Jimmy found himself losing a fair number of his cases. Despite Hormazd’s best efforts, Jimmy’s practice shriveled up as word spread about the young barrister’s short temper and impatience with ill-prepared clients. Jimmy had been a young man in a hurry, but now he had nowhere to go.

The only bright spot in Jimmy’s life during his first year back was Zarin, the daughter of Hormazd’s family doctor. Jimmy had been interested in Zarin even before he had left for England, but had never had the nerve to ask her out. Although they were part of the same gang of Parsi boys and girls, Zarin Chadiwala was unapproachable, a member of a family of doctors who were legendary in the Parsi community. Although she lived only two streets down from Jimmy, she might as well have lived on the moon.

It was Rusi Bilimoria who had encouraged Jimmy to ask Zarin out. For weeks, Rusi had noticed the surreptitious glances that Jimmy threw Zarin’s way, noticed the bead of sweat that trickled down Jimmy’s face when Zarin stood close to him. He finally cornered Jimmy at Soli’s birthday party.
“Saala,
here you are, a foreign-returned lawyer and you’re frightened as a baby around a woman?” Rusi chided him. “If you don’t talk to Zarin today, I’ll march up to her and tell her how she makes your heart melt like ice cream.”

“Don’t you dare. I’ll talk to her in my own sweet time. Approaching a woman is like approaching a judge—you have to lay the foundation down properly.”

“Two hours,” Rusi said, grinning as he walked away. “If you haven’t laid the foundation in two hours, Mr. Big Shot, I’ll speak to Zarin myself.”

When Jimmy finally screwed up his nerve and approached Zarin, her reaction stunned him. “Gosh, Jimmy,” Zarin replied. “Sure took you long enough. I’ve only waited for three, four years for you to ask.”

By their fifth date, Jimmy knew that Zarin was the woman for him. On that date, he shared with her the perplexing dilemma of why his law practice was not soaring, why he seemed to be chasing his clients away. By this time, Jimmy had already told Zarin about the circumstances that had brought him to Wadia Baug, about the unhappy, terrified kid he had been. Zarin listened to his complaints wordlessly. When he was done, she spoke. “Remember what you told me about how hurt and lost and bewildered you were when you first came to Bombay?” she said. “Well, the next time you have a new client, try and remember how you felt as a boy. Your client probably feels the same way about the court system, I’m guessing. Like he’s drowning in unknown waters. Your job is to be the guide, the strong anchor that Hormazd Uncle was for you.”

He stared at her, knowing instinctively that it was perfect advice. After that day, he never lost a client because of his temperament.

Now, Zarin was walking up to him. “Hello, darling,” she said, a smile drawn over her dimpled face. “This is quite a party, no?”

He put his arm around her and held her to his chest for a quick moment. “Yes. Looks like everybody’s having a good time. Even Tehmi seems to be enjoying herself.”

“Speaking of guests, why are you standing all by yourself, looking like the lord of the manor, master of all you survey? Come mingle with your friends,
janu.”

“Oh sure, sure. I was lost in my thoughts, is all.”

Arm in arm, they strolled toward where their son was sitting, surrounded by his father’s old friends. Rusi Bilimoria looked up at Jimmy. “Hey, Jimmy.” Rusi grinned. “We were just telling your son stories about your wild youth.”

Jimmy made a face. “Okay, Mehernosh. As your legal adviser, I ask you to leave this group of crackpots this very minute.”

“Oh, Mehernosh,” Sheroo Mistry broke in. “You should’ve seen how
lattoo-fattoo
your daddy was over your mummy before their marriage.”