Dahanu Road: A novel (9 page)

“This milk, on its own, tastes fine,” he said to Jadi Rana. “But add this sugar, and it becomes even sweeter. This is what we will do to your country. We will make it sweeter, and just as the sugar is invisible, you will not even notice our presence.”

Jadi Rana was impressed by this quick thinking, and he felt that these people, although completely demented to travel with a burning fire—one they claimed had been kept burning for over three thousand years—would make valuable contributions to their adopted home.

“That’s the story of the Parsis,” said Aspi Irani. “Did Camus know that?”

“Camus had better things to worry about,” said Keki, blowing beedi smoke through the gritted cage bars of his teeth.

“Like what—his accent?”

“You are a philistine,” said Keki.

“Ah,” said Aspi Irani. “That brings us to the Iranis. We came centuries later. We stayed on in Iran, got abused some more, a few Arab whippings here and there, we ate almonds, and that was it.”

Zairos was disappointed. He wanted to hear more about the Iranis. But he was too young to have a voice at Anna’s. He was old enough only to listen, not to speak.

Thankfully, Keki goaded Aspi Irani on.

“Come on, Aspi. Tell it for poor, ignorant Camus.”

“In that case,” said Aspi Irani, “I will oblige.”

Centuries after the first group of Zoroastrians emigrated from Iran, another group landed on the shores of India. The
Hindu king, who was the great-great-great-great-grandson of the one whose name was not Mohan, asked the Iranis the same question: “Why should I allow you to enter the country?” The Iranis did not know what to say. They were tired and hungry and horny. They started eyeing the king’s servants. “Bring me some milk!” said the Hindu king. The Iranis were even more confused. Why the hell were they being offered milk? Was this king a complete moron?

When the jar of milk was brought, the Hindu king noticed that it had no effect whatsoever on the Iranis. Perhaps they needed a prod in the right direction. So he ordered, “Bring me some sugar as well!” When the sugar came, he offered the jar and the sugar to the Iranis. All they had to do was mix it, and they were in.

Instead, the Iranis asked the Hindu king, “Boss, you got some whiskey?”

“No,” replied the king. “We do not drink here. Alcohol is prohibited in the state of Gujarat.”

All the Iranis fainted there and then.

By the time they regained consciousness, their boats and donkeys and other modes of transport had disappeared, and they entered the country dejected and full of rage.

“This is how the two kinds of Zoroastrians, the Parsis and the Iranis, came to India,” said Aspi Irani. “The Parsis went on to become successful in almost every sphere, from business to cricket. Unfortunately, the Iranis, right from the start, did not understand the concept of work.”

When the Hindu king saw them just lounging around, he said, “Why don’t you
do
something?” and the Iranis asked him again, “Boss, you got some whiskey?” That is when the king lost
it. Even though he was Hindu, saintly and well bred, he abused the hell out of the Iranis—”You motherfuckers, you sons of whores, you lazy cocksuckers!” —and the Iranis whispered into the king’s ear, “Boss, you’re Irani, aren’t you? Only Iranis speak like that.” The Hindu king, tired and lost, retreated into his palace and never again emerged.

Then came Aspi Irani’s caveat emptor, an insurance of sorts in case the story were to be repeated outside Anna’s walls, and some self-righteous Zoroastrian, the kind Bombay’s high society was full of, decided to take offence: “I would like to add that not all Iranis are foul mouthed and ill mannered,” Aspi Irani said. “Some are quite polished indeed—none live in Dahanu, of course, the majority live in Bombay—their English is impeccable, their clothing immaculate, their knowledge of the stock market insurmountable, their love of classical music obvious, and so on. These are souls who
contribute
to society.”

There. He had done his bit to satiate the purists. Now it was time to poke them in the bum again.

“But I always believe that lurking within these well-mannered souls is a true Irani beast waiting to unleash itself. We are exhibits to be put in cages, dissected and studied. We may not have discovered the wheel, and we may not have conducted stem cell research or any such activity connected to plants, but we are unique. We are pioneers because in an age when everything seems to be moving forward, we simply refuse to evolve. We are not new-and-improved versions. We are just as disturbed as our fathers. We are fish in a pond, with no obvious beauty, and our true story shall never be known.”

Then, as a final flourish, Aspi Irani picked up Camus’
The Outsider
and threw it in Keki’s face.

Zairos smiled as he remembered that day. In the eighth grade, when he was in private school in Bombay, his English teacher, Mrs. Costa, asked the class to write an essay based on their family history. Zairos wondered what would happen to Mrs. Costa if he were to write things as his father had told him. Mrs. Costa’s long black hair would freeze. But even though Aspi Irani’s tales were just that, mere tales, there was an underlying truth to them.

On the one hand, there was Zairos’ father, free to follow the twists and turns of his imagination, redrawing, retelling the history of his people, with a pinch of salt and chili sauce. But there was also Ganpat, who was not as lucky, who had been asphyxiated by his own history, and perhaps even if he had not found a rope to hang himself that day, one would have materialized from the desolate, unforgiving loops of his own life.

The tractor came to an abrupt halt.

They had arrived at Kusum’s hamlet. Damu got off first and waited near the open box for Zairos to get off. Damu always waited. There were times when Zairos would forget that Damu was near him, so artful was he at making himself invisible.

About twenty Warlis, men and women, surrounded the funeral pyre.

Unlike at the farm, Kusum and Rami seemed more powerful here, amid their own kind. The dry stream with burning grey stones, the date palm trees, the thorny twigs that lay on the ground, the brown soil, made Zairos realize that these women were of this place. Their feet had roots that went deep
into the earth, and if distance could be measured in years, their roots were thousands of years deep.

Zairos was face to face with Ganpat again.

Ganpat had been wrapped in a new white cloth. His face was smeared in ghee, and there was a red mark on his forehead, a short streak that had been made with someone’s thumb. The village elders, men with white stubble and only a few wisps of white hair, stood close to the wooden pyre.

Old Rami was hunched near a small cactus bush with a vessel of milk in her hand. One of the elders, in dusty brown shorts, went near the pyre, opened Ganpat’s palms, and put one-rupee coins in them.

Zairos knew he was being stared at. Especially by Kusum.

Twice she looked at him, then away, as though he were some apparition created by the heat and dust and the imminent burning of her father’s body.

Slowly she walked towards him, her head down, glancing sideways at the elders, then at the hot ground again. As she came closer, Zairos was once again struck by her beauty. She was shorter than most Warlis, but also rounder, fuller. For a woman who was meant to be in mourning, she had a surprising amount of colour on her—a pink blouse, a red ribbon tied in her hair, which was combed back into a bun.

Zairos realized he needed to say something to her. She had been standing in front of him with her head down for quite a while.

“Look at me,” he said.

He had no idea what possessed him to say that. That was how the Warlis always stood. Subjugation was as natural as a sunset.

She looked up at him and quickly lowered her eyes again.

In that one short glance, Zairos caught her brown pupils moving, floating in a white lake. His gaze then went to her waist. How narrow it was, how her hips curved.

The sun was making his white T-shirt stick to his chest with the possessiveness of a lover. The sudden movement of orange bangles on her wrist sent out a tinkling sound in the air.

It was a mistake to come here.

The blood of a landlord was swirling inside him, questioning him.

Still, he had to say something. Not an apology, not even an explanation, just a pure statement. By keeping Ganpat’s body at the farm until sundown, he had denied her the last few hours to be with her father. By the time the body was brought to her, Ganpat was a stinking corpse fit for a morgue, not for the crying arms of a daughter.

But instead of words, he gave her paper.

A thousand rupees in all, removed from the back pocket of his blue jeans with sleight of hand only a landlord possessed. More than an explanation, she needed money.

She took the money, held it in her hand.

He wanted her to go back to the body. There was nothing he could do for her. It was vain of him to think so.

“Seth,” she said. “I want to ask you something.”

He was surprised by the low timbre of her voice, the gentle strength in it. There was no tremble, neither anger nor sorrow, even though her father’s flesh would soon melt away before her eyes.

“Did Shapur seth say anything about my father?” she asked.

“He wanted money,” said Zairos. “My grandfather refused.”

She opened her palm, looked at the hundred-rupee notes now dampened by her sweat.

“If Shapur seth had given the money,” she said, “my father would still be alive.”

Years of observation had made Zairos think that these people were taught not to feel. They were numbed by history, their hearts trained not to ask questions.

Zairos’ face hardened, a sign of his masculinity and power. He needed Bumble’s black aviators, whose metallic sheen would create enough distance between him and Kusum.

His eyes had failed him. They were brown, just like hers.

He would not stay and watch the funeral. By coming here, he had upset the order of things.

He did not remember her. But Kusum knew there was no reason he would.

He was a landlord’s son, and the broad shoulders and muscular legs of his forefathers would not allow him to remember.

At one time, though, he did possess gentleness.

That was years ago, when white lilies grew on the farm, row upon row in between the chickoo trees, lilies wet with morning dew, so soft she hated plucking them. While her father plucked chickoos, she plucked lilies. That was all they did. They took things that were living and snapped the life out of them.

Then, at night, her mother would give her raw mahua flowers to eat.

Kamla would show her daughter how to extract oil from the mahua, which could be used for cooking. Sometimes there
was dry fish and chana as well, and on days when Ganpat had not spent all his wages on liquor, he would bring her sweets, round white balls with black stripes on them.

Even though she did not like the taste of raw mahua, Kusum loved eating flowers. If she ate a flower, something would change in her, something of the flower would become hers.

But the mahua was not as pretty as the lily. Not even close.

So one day at the farm, as thousands of white lilies sparkled in the sun, she stopped plucking and stood up.

“I am going to eat you all,” she said to them.

She crouched back down, tore one lily away from its stem, and was about to put it in her mouth when a boy appeared on his blue cycle. She had never seen that kind of blue before, shining like teeth in the night. She quickly threw the lily away. The boy was not a Warli; he was one of
them,
the other, the strange one. Older than her, but not by too much, he towered over her.

Then the strange one spoke: “That’s not for eating,” he said.

He spoke her language, but he spoke it like an idiot, a complete buffoon, a boy whose brain had some disease, a lizard brain or, even worse, a combination of a donkey and a reptile. She tried not to laugh and she was glad she didn’t. “Why are you laughing?” asked the boy. She looked down, worried that he might hit her or scream at her because the blue of his cycle was so unusual only witch doctors could make a colour go that crazy.