Family Matters (39 page)

“Yes,” admitted Jehangir cautiously.

“There you are. Santa comes till ten. Your last chance.”

“I’m not a small child, okay, Uncle? You can’t fool me so easily.”

Jal laughed, hugging him and shaking hands at the door with the others. He promised to bring news as soon as there was any. They shut the door and went to the balcony for the wave.

Roxana snuggled against her husband, enjoying the fragrance that sandalwood smoke had left in his clothes. “I think Jal really likes Daisy. Wouldn’t it be nice if they —”

“Please,” said Yezad. “Your family doesn’t have a very good record in matchmaking.”

Toying with his teacup, he sat at the dining table. She went to make dinner out of the odds and ends saved from the day before. He glanced at his father-in-law, hands and feet tossing helplessly beneath the sheet.

Like trapped animals struggling to break free. What a curse was sickness in old age. This damned Parkinson’s, cruel as torture. If the new research in America would hurry up, something with foetal tissue, embryos … But there were groups protesting against it – they probably weren’t living with Parkinson’s or watching an old man’s torment day after day. How nice the luxury, to argue about rights of the unborn, beginning of life, moment of death, all those sophisticated discussions. Empty talkers. Like Mr. Kapur … But no such luxury here. Should be a rule: Walk, first, through the fire, then philosophize …

Nariman groaned in his sleep, and Yezad broke off his rumination to go to the settee. “It’s okay, chief,” he touched his shoulder. “I’m sitting right here.”

He returned to his teacup, not sure if Nariman had heard him. Strange trip, this journey towards death. No way of knowing how much longer for the chief … a year, two years? But Roxana was right, helping your elders through it – that was the only way to learn about it. And the trick was to remember it when your own time came …

Would he, he wondered? What folly made young people, even those in middle age, think they were immortal? How much better, their lives, if they could remember the end. Carrying your death with you every day would make it hard to waste time on unkindness and anger and bitterness, on anything petty. That was the secret: remembering your dying time, in order to keep the stupid and the ugly out of your living time.

He pushed back his chair quietly and took his cup and saucer to the kitchen. He rinsed them, wiped his hands, and returned to watch Nariman. Curious, he thought, how, if you knew a person long enough, he could elicit every kind of emotion from you, every possible reaction, envy, admiration, pity, irritation, fury, fondness, jealousy, love, disgust. But in the end all human beings became candidates for compassion, all of us, without exception … and if we could recognize this from the beginning, what a saving in pain and grief and misery …

The groans from the settee grew louder. He rose again, touched Nariman’s shoulder again. Must be some way to help the chief.

The answer was easy: provide money for his medicines – and he didn’t have any. Always came down to money, everything did.

There was that envelope in his desk at work, sitting uselessly for over a week now, waiting to be collected by imaginary Shiv Sena emissaries, while Mr. Kapur made his Santa Claus preparations. Would be Christmas in another week. If only he had the guts to spend from that envelope … instead of waiting – for what?

He had waited for Villie’s Matka dream, and for Mr. Kapur’s promised promotion. He had waited for Nariman’s ankle to heal, and for the ceiling to be fixed, and for the actors to deliver an epiphany.

He had waited enough, he decided. In the end, he could only depend on himself. And the fire-temple – his sanctuary, in this meaningless world.

T
he Santa suit was delivered before noon on the twenty-third, and Mr. Kapur modelled it for Yezad and Husain.

“Very beautiful, sahab,” said the peon, clapping his hands with unvarnished delight. “Lal colour looks so nice on you.”

Mr. Kapur posed for the silent Yezad, who glanced at the cheap belt of black plastic, and gumboots of the type that smelled, which Murad and Jehangir used to wear in the monsoon till they rebelled.

“On the whole, quite good,” was his verdict. “But your stomach needs fattening.”

They looked around the shop and made a paunch by combining a pair of junior-size batting pads and boxing gloves. Then Mr. Kapur decided to don the rest of the ensemble, but the fluffy white beard and moustache made Husain flinch. He said to Yezad that sahab looked too fierce for his liking.

“Ho-ho-ho!” started Mr. Kapur. “Ho-ho-ho!” waving his arms frantically to make the wrist bells chime.

The peon whispered in Yezad’s ear, “Why does sahab sound like something is paining?”

Yezad’s chortles made Mr. Kapur ask what was so funny. The answer had him laughing too, increasing Husain’s puzzlement.

“Aray, Husain miyan, that’s not a noise of pain! It’s the jolly laughter of Santa Claus!”

Husain seemed unconvinced but withheld further comment. In the afternoon he went to collect the sweets that had been ordered the previous day.

Mr. Kapur, still in the Santa suit, came up to Yezad and, peering into his face, asked why there were dark circles under his eyes. “Looks like you’re not sleeping well.”

“It’s my father-in-law – he’s staying with us for the time being. He talks and shouts in his sleep.”

Yezad paused, then decided to keep going, to use this opportunity for prompting Mr. Kapur, as Vilas had called it. “Worrying about Shiv Sena also keeps me awake.”

“Relax, Yezad, worrying won’t help. Last night I had a brainwave. I’ve reconsidered the situation.”

Yezad’s heart leapt. Might the actors’ effort still bear fruit?

“I have come to an important conclusion,” began Mr. Kapur. “That Bombay is much more than a city. Bombay is a religion.”

“Is this a promotion for the city? You used to say it was a beautiful woman.”

Mr. Kapur laughed and cleared a corner on Yezad’s desk to sit. “She is, Yezad. But now she has aged. And if she can accept her wrinkles with poise and dignity, so must I. For there is beauty too in such acceptance. This is going to be my holistic approach.”

More like a hole-in-the-head approach, thought Yezad. “You won’t do anything about the problems?”

“No. All her blemishes, her slums, her broken sewers, her corrupt and criminal politicians, her —”

“Hang on, Mr. Kapur. I don’t think crime or corruption can be called a blemish. More a cancerous tumour. When a person has cancer in their body, they should bloody well fight it.”

“Not in the holistic approach. Hating the cancer, attacking it with aggressive methods is futile. Holistically, you have to convince your tumour, with love and kindness, to change its malign nature to a benign one.”

“And if the cancer won’t listen?” said Yezad somewhat viciously. “She will die, won’t she?”

“Now you mustn’t be too literal with my beautiful-woman metaphor,” chided Mr. Kapur.

“Am I? I was just applying it consistently. The young Bombay in your photographs, then the aging, the cancer —”

“Okay, forget the beautiful woman,” said Mr. Kapur with a trace of irritation. “Remember I said Bombay is like a religion? Well, it’s like Hinduism. I think.”

“And how did you manage to work that out?”

“Hinduism has an all-accepting nature, agreed? I’m not talking about the fundamentalist, mosque-destroying fanatics, but the real Hinduism that has nurtured this country for thousands of years, welcoming all creeds and beliefs and dogmas and theologies, making them feel at home. Sometimes, when they are not looking, it absorbs them within itself. Even false gods are accommodated, and turned into true ones, adding a few more deities to its existing millions.

“The same way, Bombay makes room for everybody. Migrants, businessmen, perverts, politicians, holy men, gamblers, beggars, wherever they come from, whatever caste or class, the city welcomes them and turns them into Bombayites. So who am I to say these people belong here and those don’t? Janata Party okay, Shiv Sena not okay, secular good, communal bad,
BJP
unacceptable, Congress lesser of evils?

“No, it’s not up to us. Bombay opens her arms to everyone. What we think of as decay is really her maturity, and her constancy to her essential complex nature. How dare I dispute her Zeitgeist? If this is Bombay’s Age of Chaos, how can I demand a Golden Age of Harmony? How can there be rule of law and democracy if this is the hour of a million mutinies?”

Yezad nodded, feeling his head would burst into a million pieces under Mr. Kapur’s wild and unwieldy analogies.

Just then, Husain returned with the sweets, which made Mr. Kapur abandon the subject. He began examining the six large packages to make sure that everything he had ordered was there. Yezad remarked that judging by the quantity, the sweets must have cost a lot.

“I don’t mind,” said Mr. Kapur. “It’s for a good occasion. If the Shiv Sena crooks can get thousands from us, why not some gifts for the children in our neighbourhood? Besides, they will learn about other communities and religions, about tolerance, no? They hear enough from Shiv Sena about intolerance.”

And what about gifts for my children, thought Yezad bitterly, as they carried the packets into Mr. Kapur’s office. Never mind gifts, what about necessities for my family?

“Which reminds me, Yezad. Have those crooks got their filthy hands on our money?”

“Not yet.” He cursed the reminder – hardly an hour passed without his thinking about that wretched envelope. How long would it plague him in his desk? Till Mr. Kapur decided Shiv Sena weren’t coming for it, and returned it to the suitcase. The end of a useless drama. Unless …

“Take a look at this, Yezad,” said Mr. Kapur. It was a handwritten cardboard sign he’d made to hang outside. The letters were six inches high, green and red:
COME, CHILDREN, MEET SANTA CLAUS!
and below it, a Hindi version:
AO, BACHCHAY, SANTA CLAUS KO MILO!
Santa’s hours were listed: 2
P.M.
to 7
P.M.
on December 24, and 10
A.M.
to 1
P.M.
on December 25.

“You’re staying open on Christmas Day as well?”

“Not for business – for peace and goodwill. But you don’t have to come, just enjoy the holiday. You too, Husain.”

“Sahab, I want to come. Humko bhi mazaa ayega.”

“Sure. Chalo, sign ko string lagaake fix karo.”

Husain got the stepladder from the storeroom and tied the cardboard square to the bracket under the Bombay Sporting neon display. “Okay, sahab?”

“First class, we’re all set.”

Mr. Kapur played around for the rest of the afternoon, too excited to do any work, keeping on his costume while complaining that it was hot inside it. When he took it off at closing time, it was soaked with sweat.

“Hard work, being Santa,” he joked, spreading the red jacket and trousers to dry on the counter. “I need a good rest tonight.”

They locked up, and Husain escorted Mr. Kapur to the kerb, waiting with him till he got into a taxi. He seemed happy that his kind sahab had emerged unchanged from inside the hairy-faced red monster.

Yezad said good night and walked down the footpath, jostled by the crowds of workers hurrying home. He yearned for the peace of the fire-temple. How fortunate that in the harsh desert this city had become, his oasis was so close by.

And today, he had brought his own prayer cap. He put his hand in his pocket and felt its reassuring velvet presence. Long unused, it was still soft against his fingers.

Eyes closed, Yezad sat by the sanctum, a prayer book open in his lap. The boi had been rung, the bell hung still, and the exuberant fire in the afargaan was starting to subside. The room returned to its comforting half-gloom.

He shut the prayer book and replaced it on the shelf. At the sanctum’s marble threshold he bowed. His fingers took a generous pinch of ash to smear on his forehead and throat. Walking in reverse, he moved slowly away from the fire, out of the room.

On the veranda the white-bearded dustoorji was deep in conversation with another priest. Yezad imagined they were debating some profound matter – perhaps a problem of Gathic interpretation? How he would love to acquire that kind of knowledge. Would it be of help in making sense of this world, his world? Until he tried, he wouldn’t know.

At the gate he slipped off his prayer cap and returned it to his pocket, then wiped off the ash. He made his way to Marine Lines station.

A few steps later he stopped, turned around, and strode briskly towards Bombay Sporting, taking a detour to avoid Vilas in case he was still writing letters outside the Book Mart. The keys were ready in his hand as he approached the shop. The door was opened swiftly – it was a smooth latch – and shut behind him.

He went inside without turning on the lights, able to see all that he needed to see. He passed the Santa costume draped over the counter, waiting for tomorrow. Selecting the right key by touch, he unlocked his desk, pulled out the drawer, removed the manila envelope, put it in his briefcase. He locked his desk, locked the door, and went home.

He said not a word to Roxana. He couldn’t, not till his confusion cleared. The carefully considered act had only created more turmoil. And there was a tightness round his heart.

All evening, while Yezad grappled with the disarray in his mind, Murad and Jehangir eyed him with concern, keeping their distance. And Roxana, fearing a quarrel, wondered what was wrong again, after the calm she hoped had returned to bless their house.

W
ell before two o’clock the following afternoon, Mr. Kapur, reincarnated as Santa Claus, paced restlessly between the counters of Bombay Sporting. Now and again he startled Husain with an ebullient ho-ho-ho, or practised his wave, trying different styles to see which produced the most chimes. Just inside the door, where he would receive his visitors, the flashing bulb gave his chair an eerie red wash.

At last it was the appointed hour, and he sat with the sack full of sweets by his side. “Don’t look so worried, Yezad, people will come.”