by Saumya Roy
TWENTY-FIVE
THROUGH THE SUMMER OF 2018, Farzana’s stomach had swollen. Perched atop her ballooning throat, her face grew too. Fevers came and went. Most mornings, after Nadeem left for work, she spread a bedcover in front of the television and watched until sleep drifted over and shut her eyelids. Music from eighties Hindi action movies filled the room. Sidekicks died, lovers reunited, and credits rolled. Farzana woke up, switched channels, and stayed in place.
Shaheen had asked Nadeem to show Farzana’s neck to the doctors whenever they went to Shatabdi Hospital. But somehow, Farzana was always too exhausted when she arrived in the room packed with pregnant women, and Nadeem had to turn back soon for his shifts. Twice, they were halfway home when they remembered her distended neck, carefully covered under her dupatta and billowing black burqa.
At home, Farzana’s movements shrank as her belly and the growth on her neck swelled. Her neck had stiffened, making her face look stuffy and sour. Her arms itched, filled with long, pink scars from the stitches that covered her carefully held together bones. The next time she sat across from the doctor, Farzana unwrapped her burqa and dupatta to show her swollen neck. Then she pulled up her sleeve to show the doctor her arm, still filled with marks for stitches. “Bulldozer chad gaya tha,” Farzana explained softly. A bulldozer ran over me.
The doctor looked up, surprised. She asked Farzana to get her case papers from the treatment at Sion Hospital. At the next visit, she rifled through the thick file that Nadeem had asked Hyder Ali to send over. A heavily pregnant woman stood behind Farzana, waiting for her to vacate the shiny examination stool. Others in the queue outside poked their heads into the room. The doctor shut the file, and told Farzana to go back to Sion Hospital for a follow-up. Farzana was relieved to have avoided the inspection of old wounds. She returned to her spot in front of the television, absentmindedly scratching her arms.
* * *
HYDER ALI WOULD have to take gifts for Nadeem’s family, to bring Farzana back to her parents’ home, for child birth, as was the custom. He tried working on the mountains in order to save up for the gifts. But, running into Yasmin in their lane one afternoon, he told her how life on the mountains was not as it had been. Security guards crushed his trash bags under their vehicles, or asked for so much money in bribes to let them work and take away trash that there was nothing left after a morning’s work. Yasmin had heard, Farha had found a gold chain while scouring for trash a few weeks before, but Hyder Ali didn’t say anything about it. Farha had discovered it was fake anyway. It’s all that comes to the mountains these days, she shrugged.
As mountain treasures shrank, Moharram Ali had traveled farther out in search of jobs, returning home empty-handed, to an empty house. His new wife had left him, tired of waiting for his get-rich-quick plans to work. He called Yasmin and asked her and the children if he could move back in. “Phir chala gaya to,” she asked Hyder Ali. What if he leaves again? “Meri usse koi ummeed nahi rahi,” she said softly, almost to herself. I have no hope left in him.
The summer of 2018 wore on and Nadeem stayed busy, traveling in garbage caravans through the nights and in the day. Farha began accompanying Farzana to hospital visits. Along the way, they walked beside the outer edge of the mountains’ long, carious wall. They watched people climb through cracks onto the slopes where they had spent so much of their lives together, watching cricket games, evading the buffaloes wandering up the parched hills, and chasing garbage trucks. Farha now worked alone on the mountains.
They passed by the parking strip that Jehangir had relinquished. He seemed consumed by a new business, Farha told Farzana. All she knew was, this time, it was not in trash. He had told them he was going to do something different, something that would take him away from the mountains. He spoke constantly to his business partner, who sounded like a woman, or to his lackeys. Around the mountains, Jehangir and others nipped at the edges of the gang bosses’ sprawling fiefdom of illegalities.
* * *
AS FARZANA’S TIME to give birth drew close, Hyder Ali worked desultorily and waited for Nadeem to bring her over. On July 8, Shaheen called to say the baby was on its way, and late that night Farzana gave birth to a baby girl. Waking up in the hospital in a haze of sleep and pain, she saw her sisters huddled over the baby, exclaiming over how she looked just like Nadeem. Shaheen draped a quilt she had made from patched-together cloth scraps collected from the mountains over the baby and relented, letting her go to Hyder Ali’s house from the hospital.
At home, Shakimun ripped white cloth, filled it with cumin and turmeric, and tied it into two small bundles, tying one to the baby’s wrist and the other to Farzana’s. These would trap spirits within them, forming a shield around Farzana and the baby in these early months when they could fall prey to illnesses, sadnesses, or spirit possessions that could hold them in their grip forever.
They stayed wrapped together, mother and daughter. Farzana babbled to her baby all day and late into the night. She spoke endlessly until Guddi, meaning little doll, became Buddhi, meaning old woman. “Tune suna Guddi? Tera kuch bhi nahi hai. Kuch bhi? Sab tere Abba se aaya,” she whispered, wiggling the baby’s nose or cheeks until she cried. Did you hear Guddi? Nothing you have belongs to you. Nothing at all. It all came from your father. Farzana picked up and swung the baby in her arms to calm her.
Weeks later, when Farzana went home, Shaheen had stitched more quilts from mountain scrap to wrap the baby in. She laid out the largest cloth she had and covered it with scraps in a deep shade that was called chocolatey in Marathi and Mumbai Hindi, and that could be maroon, brown, plum, or dark purple; emerald green, like the grass that grew on the mountains after the rains; and a pink so intense it could be purple. She edged the quilt with a slim border of baby pink. But Shaheen was alarmed to see Farzana upon her return. Her neck was so swollen that her face was frozen in place, and she had to look from the corner of her eye to see sideways.
* * *
DAYS LATER, FARHA called Farzana and asked her to switch on the news. “Bhai hai.” Brother’s on. Jehangir’s face, covered with a scarf, the voiceover giving his name, age, and address, flashed on television news. Police had busted a kidnapping ring of five, including him, and released a child they had held for ransom.
With a succession of businesses floundering, Jehangir had made one last ambitious plan to break away from the mountains. A friend from their lane had introduced him to a woman whose brother-in-law was a wealthy businessman in the city. Police would later allege, she wanted to kidnap his son for ransom, giving them a portion of the money.
On the evening, in question, it was claimed that she led the boy to Jehangir and his friend who covered his face with a scarf and bundled him into a rickshaw. The boy had cried the whole way to the garage in a mountain lane, where they planned to keep him until they got the money. They gave him cough syrup mixed into a cold drink so he would feel drowsy and sleep. When they unwrapped the scarf from his face, they discovered it was actually their target’s thirteen-year-old, older brother.
This could get them more money, Jehangir thought. He rehearsed for the ransom call. But before they could make it, police stormed the garage, released the boy, and arrested Jehangir and his gang of conspirators.
Sanjay Nagar’s lanes were abuzz with news of Jehangir’s arrest. Pickers saw his covered face in the newspapers, on television, and in messages traveling through phones in their lanes. Hyder Ali did not have money to hire a lawyer or post bail. “Hamein kuch pata nahi tha,” he said, his voice turning hoarse with shame. I didn’t know anything.
Days later, Shakimun and Hyder Ali arrived at Shaheen’s house holding a cradle, with colored ribbons wrapped all around the metal frame. He had saved up to buy the gift and placed it against the wall where Farzana had spent her days slumped during her pregnancy. She had vacated the spot now, walking around, ferrying things for the baby, piling soiled clothes for her sister-in-law to wash, folding washed clothes, cradling the baby to sleep while talking
to her the whole time. “Guddi tu samjhi na? Teri naak kiske jaisi hai? Teri aankh kiske jaisi hai?” Doll, you understand, right? Who does your nose look like? Whose are your eyes like?
* * *
A FEW WEEKS after Jehangir’s arrest, Farzana, her throat spilling into her face, went to see Dr. Satish Dharap, who had headed the team of surgeons that had operated on her two years before. Now at BYL Nair Hospital, deeper into the city, he looked at her yellowing case papers, went over her treatment and asked if she had done okay since then.
She nodded, unwrapping her burqa to show her neck, while holding on to the baby. As he gently pressed and prodded the bumps around it, Farzana winced in pain. She did get fevers, it was painful, she said, in reply to his questions. They would have to extract the fluid within and test it, he said. It could be cancer or perhaps tuberculosis.
Farzana returned a few days later for the procedure, Farha holding the baby while doctors took her into an operating room. A little later, the nurse called Farha in: neck wrapped in blood and gauze stained with yellow ointment, Farzana sobbed softly, helplessly, drooling onto her cheek and the rubber sheet that covered her metal cot. With her burqa gone, Farzana’s legs and hands coiled tightly into spindly V shapes. Her pink lace kurta, lined with satin, puffed around her, glinting in the late afternoon light.
Farha watched and then slid the baby into her arms. Farzana’s tears rolled onto her daughter’s soft, nearly bald head. “Budhi, teri aankh kiske jaisi hai?” she whispered, breaking into a weak smile even as tears rolled down her cheeks. Old woman, you know who your eyes belong to? She babbled softly, holding the baby close, feeding her even as she cried.
Slowly, Farzana spread her palm to grip the bed and lifted herself up. She put on her burqa, lifted the baby, and set off for home with Farha. They waited at the bus stop across the street from the hospital, watching the late afternoon light turn dusky and then dark. It was an immersion day during the Ganpati festival. Outsized idols of the elephant-headed God came into the city for ten days every year and were then given over to the sea, as a lesson in material detachment. That evening, potbellied idols, in giddily happy colors, moved slowly through cars, buses, and drilling machines that dug into Mumbai’s slim roads, turning them to dust in preparation for Mumbai’s metro transit lines. The baby howled. Thumping from the outsized drums rose over the buzz of drills and horns, and was intermittently drowned out by them. Traffic stopped for construction, then construction stopped for traffic, both moving fitfully in a jagged dance to Mumbai’s accidental symphony. Farzana stepped onto the street, baby in her arms, to look out for buses that would take her home. She saw them waiting in the distance, then move slowly toward her before turning away.
Nadeem called. Why had she not come home yet? She was still near the hospital? How could the bus take so long to arrive? Had she really gone to the hospital? It was nearly midnight by the time Farzana got home. The following day, Nadeem, sulking from the previous night, dropped her at Hyder Ali’s house, with instructions to stay away from the mountains, their men, and their hazards. Farzana slept for days, the baby enclosed within her arms. She had tried allaying Nadeem’s fears and stayed away from the mountains that loomed above, for the most part.
One afternoon, Shakimun sat at the mountains’ edge and watched Farzana walk by with the baby. “Kaam kaise karein?”—How do I work?—she asked. Her son was in jail, her daughter sick. “Fikar khaye jaa rahi hai,” she said, inhaling deeply from her bidi. Worry is eating away at me. She thought of sending Hyder Ali back to the healer across 90 Feet Road as she watched the sun turn peach and inch into the hills.
* * *
WHEN FARZANA RETURNED to the hospital, alone with the baby, to hear her test results, the doctor told her she had tuberculosis. He told her he would prescribe medication: stopping it might mean the disease could turn deadly. It wouldn’t respond to the same medicines even if she restarted them. Farzana interrupted him impatiently to say that she would go to a doctor near her house and begin treatment there.
Farzana knew tuberculosis haunted pickers. She had watched it whittle down Badre Alam, Hyder Ali’s cousin who lived in their loft, until he left for his village, dangerously gaunt. They had not heard from him for more than two months, and Hyder Ali feared he had died until he reappeared, a week or so before, his cheeks full, his face shining. A healer’s rituals and his wife’s care had cured him, he said. But Farzana knew, not everyone returned as Badre Alam had. Some of her childhood friends had come to work on the mountains after tuberculosis had wasted their parents away, only to be consumed in their turn by the insatiable appetite of the peaks.
* * *
A FEW DAYS later, Farzana bundled up the baby, collected a bag filled with clothes and towels, and went with Alamgir to Arthur Road Prison to meet Jehangir. At every previous visit, Jehangir had instructed his brother, “Farzana ka khayal rakhna.” Look after Farzana. Alamgir teased him, asking if he had any other brothers and sisters? “Hain …” Jehangir trailed off. I do. When Alamgir broke in, “Par tu usko hi sabse zyada chahta hai?” But you love her the most? Jehangir would only say, “Bhejna usko.” Send her to see me.
Weeks later, Farzana was ushered into a room with a glass screen. Jehangir walked in and sat on the other side. “Kaisa hai Bhai?” Farzana asked, softly into the phone on her side. How are you, brother? Jehangir nodded, looking at the baby. Farzana picked her up and held her up against the glass screen. “Teri beti hai?” Your daughter? Farzana nodded to say yes. “Achhi hai,” he replied. She’s lovely. The siblings looked at each other. They had both so nearly left the mountains and their shadow, but the slopes had lingered within them both, holding them in their grip, holding them back. The guards came in to tell Farzana it was time to leave. “Tu theek hai na?” Jehangir asked. You are okay, right? She nodded.
A few days later, someone from Nair Hospital called asking if Farzana had her medicine regularly and for her bank account details, so they could transfer the government subsidy for TB patients. She had stopped medication a while ago. It made her dizzy, Farzana said. It brought a darkness in front of her eyes. Instead she spent her days playing with the baby, whom they had named Ayesha, the wise one. Sahani later said that Nadeem had not bought any more medicine.
Farzana’s fevers raged and abated, her neck swelled and seemed to shrink. But she stayed immersed in the baby, who was getting taller, plumper, and gave gummy smiles. “Guddi, Guddi, tujhe pata hai na, teri hasee teri nahi hai?” Doll, you know that smile is not yours, right? Farzana tickled her nose, making Ayesha break into peals of laughter. In Farzana’s babbling, Ayesha grew from a baby to an old woman but nothing would ever belong to her. It would all come from her father, from the mountains that rose behind them and endlessly, in caravans, from the city.
“Tujhe pata hai na, teri naak bhi teri nahi hai?” You know, right, even your nose is not yours?
“Budhi, Budhi, tera kuch bhi tera nahi hai, theek hai?” Old woman, old woman, nothing you have belongs to you, alright?
POSTSCRIPT
IN THE FIRST WEEK of 2019, I walked up the court’s grand, stone staircase to the second floor. Justice Oka’s cases and room had been reassigned. The Deonar case had moved with him.
As I arrived at the dark landing, I saw a marble plaque engraved with the words of Bal Gangadhar Tilak, a freedom fighter who had been convicted of sedition against the British state in 1908, in the courtroom that lay behind the plaque. “There are higher powers that rule the destiny of men and nations and it may be the will of providence that the cause which I represent may prosper more by my suffering than by my remaining free,” he had said after the judge Justice Dinshaw Davar had ruled against him.
By a quirk of fate, in 1897, Justice Davar, then a lawyer, defended Tilak against sedition charges while the plague raged through Mumbai and neighboring Pune, where Tilak lived. As the anger over the invasion of British troops into homes, lives, and bodies grew, Tilak had written a veiled attack on the British plague campaign in
his newspaper Kesari. Government lawyers had accused him of bringing tensions to a boil and inciting the murder of W. C. Rand, the chairperson of Pune’s plague committee, and Tilak was sentenced to eighteen months in jail, which only inflamed the anger in both cities. A few weeks later, cuchra trains had begun ferrying Bombay’s trash to the swampy dumping grounds at Deonar. The plague abated, prosperity returned, and its bounty was consumed, discarded, ferried, and eventually dumped into the distant marsh that began rising, unseen in the city.
In its 120th year, the attempts to deal with Mumbai’s waste township, to shrink the toxic halo that spread over the city and the illnesses it created, continued in a courtroom farther down the corridor. I turned the corner into Oka’s new courtroom, so outsized and empty, his voice came like a distant, echoing muffle, discussing a criminal case: “Where did they find the body?”
Then the familiar thud of the Deonar files fell on his desk. Had the officials who had avoided telling him of all the court cases around the new Mulund dumping grounds been punished yet, he asked? When would the land to make a scientific landfill get handed over? Most importantly, how soon could Deonar’s township of trash close? It nearly had, the municipality’s lawyers told him, sensing his now familiar indignation. The garbage caravans now mostly went to the modern trash hills at Kanjurmarg. I had seen them rising across the creek when I stood on the trash peaks at the outer edge of the Deonar township. Trash hills had been rising there for five years and would be taken apart next year, as compost.