The intense humidity had turned the match heads waxy and inert, leaving candles unlit and the bungalow dark. In the back garage, Cook Kanj and Parvati lay entangled on their bed, their bodies still urgently moving as lightning lashed above their head. Tomorrow morning, he would remember his promise and put extra sugar in the puja halwa. The deluge, after all, had arrived right as he served dinner. Untouched dishes and cold rice lay scattered on the table. Cook Kanj’s watery curry had miraculously gone unnoticed.
So did another miracle of sorts.
Under the generous thundering of the rain-swept skies, a bolt remained unlocked past sunset, a forbidden door groaned open, a boundary was breeched.
The baby ghost ventured out of the bathroom for the first time— her silvery mane leaving a glistening trail of dew as fine and luminescent as moonlight.
RAIN-SWEPT TAMARIND TREE
Maji and Pinky returned to find Bombay transformed. From her perch on the front verandah, Pinky watched the rains seduce the city like a duplicitous lover, bringing shouts of joy and impromptu dancing in the streets, but also the unmistakable stink of rotting sewage. That morning, on the day schools reopened for the new school year, girls appeared in matching pink raincoats, boys in khaki-colored ones, all sporting British gum-boots. Rain fell on the scorched earth with a satisfying thud, accompanied by the joyous singing of young women in the streets, clasping hands together and turning round and round in wild circles as their long braids whipped the damp air.
Just inside the bungalow, Maji stood alone, grateful for the moment to remember her beloved husband, the times he would take her to see a film, which he stubbornly referred to as bioscopes his whole life, the two of them traveling to the theater in a covered horse carriage. They had been young then, Omanandlal in his silk shirt with its four gold buttons and she, sitting proudly by his side, head covered with her sari palloo, a diamond stud flashing in her nose. Maji and Omanandlal had been a handsome couple, arriving at the theater in the midst of the monsoons in their finest clothes.
The drumming of the rains never failed to deliver these precious memories, bringing with them a fullness for which she thirsted the rest of the year. It was as if she could fleetingly go back to that time of fullness, of Omanandlal, Yamuna, and the baby.
A parched city exhaled a collective sigh of relief even as the stormy dampness indiscriminately worked its way inside dwellings, from the chatai-mat huts in the slums to the ornate bungalows of the elite, such as the original Malabar Hill bungalows, The Beehive and The Wilderness, which were constructed in 1825 and later criticized for being most unsuited for the climate. Likewise, Maji’s bungalow, The Jungle, was no match for the tropics with its oppressive humidity, intolerable heat, verdurous vegetation, and malarial insects. Even armed with a modern AC, proper electrical lines, and a new tile roof, The Jungle succumbed to the will of nature.
Now as the monsoons gathered in fury, unending rows of slick ants forged past the thick line of turmeric around the bungalow’s interior perimeter that normally kept them at bay. Cockroaches climbed out of the toilet, seeking refuge. Ceiling fans whirled nonstop in futile attempts to dry the morning laundry that was now strung across rooms and hallways on impromptu clotheslines. Wall punkahs shorted out when water seeped into the wiring. Tufan flitted about in a constant state of undress, sneaking out into the pouring rain and jumping into the puddles until Parvati dragged him inside by his ear. Dheer prowled The Jungle as if on a hunt, attempting to locate an arid spot in which to stash his molding chocolate. Nimish strolled the hallways with a mossy copy of Thackeray’s Vanity Fair in hand, reading over the thunderous din, ‘“Was there ever a battle won like Salamanca? Hey, Dobbin? But where was it he learnt his art? In India, my boy. The jungle is the school for a general, mark me that. ’”
Savita remained bolted in her bedroom for long hours each day, naked from the waist up, staring at her lactating breasts. Jaginder spent so much time at Rosie’s adda that the long-fingered regular invited him to a game of cards and promptly cheated him out of his wallet. Cook Kanj was locked in an unsuccessful battle against an array of sickly insects that infiltrated the kitchen from every spiraling crack and crevice. Kuntal strategically placed steel bowls under ceiling drips, the number of which increased with each passing hour. Parvati strung up jute laundry lines inside the bungalow now that clothes could not be dried outside. Gulu swept away the constant influx of water into the garage with a short-handled broom. Through it all, Maji maintained her usual stoic demeanor, ordering the floors to be wiped every hour and the toilets cleaned twice a day by the bhangi, willing the bungalow to survive the onslaught of yet another rainy season.
“Did you have a good trip?” Dheer asked Pinky as he fortified his school satchel with Gluco biscuits. It was the first week of school and he was still figuring out what provisions he required to make it through the day.
Pinky nodded, handing him packets of sugar-coated sesame chikki that she had brought from the hill station.
Dheer hesitated for a moment, then accepted the gift appreciatively. His mouth opened and closed as if he had something more to say but thought better of it. Swinging his satchel over his head, he waddled away. Pinky remained at home due to Maji’s insistence and spent the glorious morning watching the rains whip at the windows and indulging in fried flour muttees dipped generously in mango pickle.
Later that afternoon, still putting off a bath, she retreated to Maji’s room. Rows and rows of damp clothes hung overhead, fighting to shed their moisture. As she stared up at them lost in thought, she heard a rustling. Though her ceiling fan was off and the windows sealed, the clothes directly above her wavered. She sat up, remembering that strange feeling of love in her chest, that unexpected love for her ghostly cousin-sister.
A saffron sari shivered on the clothesline.
Could it be? The ghost had never left the bathroom before, needing water of some sort to survive. She had traveled through the pipes and occupied the bucket but never ventured into the rest of the bungalow. But now, now Pinky realized with sudden horror, jute lines were strung in every room, each hung with damp clothing, each a watery path of transit.
A cold draft whipped her face.
Pinky stood up on the bed and shook the sari with her free hand. It came away with a snap. Savita Auntie’s blue salvar began to jiggle, the stiff cuff bottoms glittering with a scattering of sequins. Pinky swung her legs over the side of the bed and assessed the open door.
She began to run.
The clothes whipped at her, blinding her vision, impeding her progress. A towel wrapped around her face, sticking against it, suffocating her. Pinky grabbed at it, trying to pull it off. She fell to the ground. Behind her, the salvar jiggled again. The room filled with a rattling, a pulsing, a shining.
Just ahead, a pair of pants began to dance, the legs curling, reaching towards her with malevolence.
Pinky slapped them away but they coiled around her like a snake, tightening, tightening.
And then, just as hastily, they released her.
A mane of silvery hair abruptly fell out from the underside.
The pants continued to sway. Slowly, two tiny fists curled around the hem and two stormy eyes appeared upside down in one of the legs. Fury filled the room like a fog.
“You!” Pinky gasped.
The ghost stared at Pinky unmoving. It was as if she had come to take her in, to gauge her return, to restrategize.
“I know everything now,” Pinky said, steadying her breathing. “The girl was your ayah, wasn’t she?”
The ghost cocked her head, her hair coiling around it like a rain cloud.
“But it was an accident, right? There was no reason for her to drown you. That hand, the faceless hand you showed me, that’s a mistake. It can’t be anything else. I can’t believe you.”
The ghost’s eyes churned. The jute lines began to shake, the clothes whipping back and forth, sending a spray of moisture into the air with each snap. The ghost held her hand o
ut, palm up, and touched Pinky’s cheek.
It was not a gesture of love but an icy, gelid touch, a burning freeze.
And then with a defiant flick of her flowing hair, she scurried back up the pants and vanished.
Pinky’s cheek turned blue and swollen like a bruise, its shape roughly resembling a handprint. She began to shiver uncontrollably, taking to her bed with a cough. The jute lines were removed from Maji’s room and a floor heater installed to dry out the damp air. Despite this, the room remained steadfastly chilly.
Dr. M. M. Iyer was called in. “Could be a cold, could be the onset of pneumonia,” he announced in his usual grave manner. “Only solution is rest.” Nevertheless, in order to properly bill for his visit, he left a prescription in Maji’s waiting hands.
“Take down the jute lines in the rest of the bungalow,” Pinky pleaded with her grandmother, her voice weak.
“Nonsense,” Maji said. “How will the laundry dry otherwise? Don’t you worry about the damp air in here, I’ll turn on the heater.”
Pinky began to believe with a sick sort of feeling that she had been somehow duped. Her story of Ratnavali, she felt, had served as sustenance, bringing shape and features to the ghost’s undefined body. But now it was strong enough to seek out its own sources of nourishment, traveling along the clotheslines and taking in the Mittal family’s daily activities with the intensity of a starving child. Her world was bigger than the bathroom, bigger than Pinky. Bigger, Pinky thought with rising horror, than anything she had ever imagined.
Whenever the rains outside let up fleetingly, the inside of the bungalow remained under siege as if swallowed by a perpetual cloud. Underneath the orderliness that Maji so stringently enforced, an element of growing unease clung to dank walls and dampened spirits. The ghost moved fast, meticulously spreading her humid grip over the whole household and enveloping each member within a spreading tide of guilt as if each had had a role to play in the baby’s death. Now, the initial joyful distractions that the downpour had brought were distorted, amplified, mutated by the ghost’s increasing power.
Savita Auntie had been the first to experience the repercussions, exactly four days after the initial shock of discovering her breasts filled with milk. At first she took secret pleasure in their abundance. The feelings of emptiness and unworthiness that she had felt acutely for months after her daughter’s death and in the long years since were instantly washed away by a forgotten fullness, a recaptured youth, an affirmation of her motherlinesss. She fussed over her boys with an eagerness that they had long since forgotten, tussling their hair affectionately and even sitting down to hear Nimish read an entire section from Lady Falkland’s Chow-chow: A Journal kept in India, Egypt, and Syria. ‘“For after the heavy rains are over,’” Nimish began, ‘“the sky looks like a naughty child that has not quite recovered its good humor, when the least thing would bring back a flood of tears; and so the large gray clouds, tipped with white, seemed half inclined to weep. ’”
“Maybe naughty gora children,” Savita huffed at the comparison. “But you boys are much more resilient.” When alone, she remembered the glorious swelling of her belly, the sheer awe of holding another life within oneself, and wanted nothing more than to become pregnant again. Although she and Jaginder had not been intimate in years, Savita downed a glass of aphrodisiacal saffron milk and seduced him the next night when he stumbled in from Rosie’s adda. On the third day of the monsoons, Jaginder’s mood had improved to such a degree that he took the entire family out for dinner at the Rendezvous Restaurant at the Taj Hotel and bought Savita an emerald drop necklace from their family jeweler. Savita was elated.
And then dusk fell into darkness on the fourth night. That evening Jaginder forsook the lure of Rosie’s concoctions for his wife’s even more bewitching brew. In their first years together as husband and wife, Jaginder—who had never set foot outside India—liked to think of himself as an explorer as was the fashion of the times, in the hallowed tradition of the East India Company chaps who ferreted their way into India and paved the way for Empire. He did not conquer land, per se, there was nothing left to conquer by the time he got around to it, not even a remote princedom. But, just as civilizable, just as exotic, lay his wife’s virginal, luscious, mysterious landscape, draped in siren reds. Oh, how he felt when the naked shores of her body appeared in the horizon and when he first crashed upon them gun drawn, shedding blood, marking the territory as his own. A gateway was eventually erected in the harbor ensuring a smooth passage, but along with that came a resigned, bittered acceptance of his presence.
Simply put, the thrill was gone. And so following in the footsteps of the red-faced Brits, Jaginder had taken to drink. His daughter’s death, of course, was a catalyst but sometimes he wondered if he had not been heading in that direction already, charging full tilt towards his own demise. There was nothing else to do in those unbearable times but to drown one’s sorrows in a vodka gimlet and recall stories of the glory days when the sun never set. But now, now that many suns had set and Jaginder was lost in a cold, bleak, Londonish fog with Johnnie Walker as his only companion, he felt nostalgic for the inescapable heat of his wife’s body, its heady sun-baked chaos, its crowds of colors and flavors, its untamed mangroves. How foolish he had been, he realized, to think he could live without her, for he was nothing without his jewel. His Savita.
Now, as they lay side by side on their bed, Jaginder felt an unfamiliar and extraordinary tenderness towards her, taking unusual care to caress the curve in her hips, to touch the softness of her lips, to take in the shine of her eyes before slowly, almost painfully so, fulfilling his pleasure. “This is all I ever wanted,” he purred softly as he pressed his face into the sweet nutty smell emanating from her scalp.
“Jaggi,” Savita whispered, her body glowing with an eagerness long since abandoned in the tediousness of their days together, “please don’t let anything change this.”
“I won’t,” he promised. And he meant it. Nothing, he vowed to himself, would take Savita away from him again, not his fears, not their past. Completely lost in their unexpected intimacy, he couldn’t imagine anything different.
“Jaggi,” Savita continued in an even more softer voice, “please, please stop this drinking. For my sake.”
“I will,” he promised. Savita’s affection was a heady potion, one that gave him strength and vigor. And, most powerfully—hope.
Now, as their legs intertwined, Jaginder’s hands took in Savita’s slender neck, the sharp peak of her collarbone, the subtle rise in her chest. As his hands moved downwards, they grasped her breasts, caressing their lovely fullness. His tongue tasted the sweat pooled in between, moving outward until his mouth encircled her nipple. And then, as he began to gently suck, the baby ghost—hovering in a moist petticoat above—unleashed her vengeance.
Savita’s breasts burst with milk.
Jaginder fell back, choking. Sweet, thick, raw milk stuck in his throat and began to freeze, to solidify. He could not get it out. He could not breathe.
Savita shot up, crossing her arms across her chest, reeling with confusion. Her breasts felt cold, like ice.
Swaying on his hands and knees, Jaginder had turned blue.
“Jaggi!” Savita screamed, thumping him on the back.
All at once, milk poured from his nose and mouth. He fell to the fl oor and sputtered. “What’s wrong with you!”
Savita’s eyes dropped. Her face closed. Her soul shut down. In the brief second it took to register Jaginder’s implicit accusation, she realized that their recent gentleness towards each other had been too fragile to sustain.
“You!” she threw back before pulling the covers over her body. “You did this to me!”
“Me?” Jaginder struggled to his feet like a lion sniffing fresh prey. “They’re your breasts.”
“It won’t stop!” Savita cried out in horror. Milk shot from her breasts as if in accusation that thirteen years earlier, it hadn’t. She felt cold, alone, terrifie
d.
Jaginder stared at her with increasing panic.
“I’ll wake Maji,” he said while wiping away the vestiges of milk that had spurted through his nostrils.
Even in the middle of the night, Maji had the presence of mind to know that something out of the ordinary was happening. “Don’t call the doctor,” she ordered. “No one outside this household shall know.”
“What should we do?”
“Stay out of my room!” Savita wailed.
“Pray,” Maji answered.
Visions of Jesus and Mary at Rosie’s adda floated into Jaginder’s head. “I’ll do that,” he said, relief drenching his concern. His mother would take care of things as she always did. Jaginder could escape.
Maji raised a disbelieving eyebrow at her son before turning her attention to her daughter-in-law.
Curled up in a ball, Savita refused all help and wept until exhaustion lulled her to sleep.
While his parents had been in the throes of lovemaking, Nimish crept from his room and out the side door. For the past three nights, Lovely had not ventured through the rains to the tamarind tree. Undeterred, Nimish vowed to try again. An unexplainable urgency had gripped him, prodding him to finally approach Lovely and confess his love. “Confess or die,” he whispered to himself as if someone had just uttered these words to his sleeping ear. Outside, the rains were harsh, unforgiving. They accompanied him now, a steady drum beat marking his resolute footsteps.
Lovely’s window glowed dimly, the tamarind tree lashed and swayed in the deluge as if in warning. A longing like no other gripped Nimish, a wailing in his heart. Before he realized what he was doing, he raced to the outlying end of the garden and crawled through the small corridor in the wall, jasmine creepers brushing against his face, perfuming the air with an intense sweetness. Lovely’s backyard opened before him, a tapestry of dark yearning hidden in the lush greenery.
Haunting Bombay Page 16