Haunting Bombay

by Shilpa Agarwal

  And then Lovely appeared like an angel, tiptoeing though the mud and puddles in the direction not of the tamarind tree, but unexpectedly toward a side gate, a satchel strapped across her chest. Nimish’s heart lifted, he held himself back from running to meet her.

  “Lovely!”

  Lovely stopped, frightened when she first saw the figure across the lawn.

  “It’s me, Nimish!”

  “Nimish?”

  She moved towards him, the monsoon’s ferocious aria wailing all around her as the two met under the tree. Tentatively, Nimish grasped Lovely’s forearm. His face was dark, full of longing. The rain had coated his spectacles, rendering them useless. He pulled them off, tucking them in his pocket. His dark eyes, long eyelashes thick with moisture, appeared to be weeping.

  “Is everything okay?” Lovely asked, looking into Nimish’s face.

  “Yes, yes, yes,” Nimish said, almost gasping for breath. Confess or die. A million times he had planned what he was going to say to Lovely, written it down on paper, changing words, phrases and then memorizing the whole thing, eating the paper itself so nothing remained. If he were a movie hero, the right declarations would spill out of his mouth, and then he would sweep Lovely into a song and dance before tearing away gloriously on his motor scooter, his beloved clinging breathlessly to his waist. Now, though, his carefully charted words escaped him as he held Lovely’s forearm, the end of her sleeve sewed with tiny crystalline beads lying across his wrist like a soft embrace.

  Rain pelted his face and dripped onto his kurta, glowing ghostly white in this darkest of nights. Words, actions, thoughts that were forbidden during the day, when the elders looked on with their disapproving eyes, when society’s rules were rigorously imposed, were set free under the tamarind tree. Lovely found herself tenderly wiping the rain from Nimish’s face with the end of her golden dupatta, the silken fabric that lay against her chest at last touching his cheek.

  He looked down, unable to speak.

  “Nimish? What is it?”

  He gripped Lovely’s arm, the heat from his hand penetrating her skin. “We grew up as brother and sister, but I never considered you my sister.”

  “No?”

  “No,” Nimish lifted his face to hers, determined. “Please, please don’t tell me you see me as a brother. Save those words for someone else. Not me. Not me.”

  “Oh, Nimish,” Lovely said, looking into his face with eyes that glistened. How many times had she and Nimish played when they were younger, running around in her backyard, even sitting under this very tree while the elders were napping, he fervently telling her about a book he had read while she cradled golden flowers in her palms, daydreaming of being somewhere, faraway from her family in another life, another time? But never, she realized, never away from Nimish. He was always there in her fantasies, standing with book in hand, a blush on his cheek, as he spun a story. As they grew, they spent less time together. Still, Nimish occasionally read from his books, the only way he knew to communicate with her, his absurd little quotes knitting them together. And his stories had taken her to other worlds, had given her what no one else could. Why had she never understood this before?

  “Tell me something from your books,” Lovely said. “Anything.”

  Nimish took a deep breath as one of his favorite poems came to mind. ‘“Pale hands, pink tipped, like Lotus buds that float, On those cool waters where we used to dwell,’” he recited softly from Laurence Hope’s “Pale Hands I Loved”: ‘“I would have rather felt you round my throat, Crushing out life; than waving me farewell. ’”

  Lovely looked into his handsome face, noticing it as if for the first time. “No, Nimish,” she finally said, “not a brother.”

  He swallowed his surprise as thunder swept through the sky. The fury of the rains filled his being with their desire, the pounding on the wet ground became the fervent pounding in his chest.

  “Lovely,” he began again, hoping for another promise, “please don’t accept any of the proposals that Vimla Auntie brings over to discuss with Maji.”

  “No,” she said truthfully, involuntarily glancing towards the bun-glow’s side gate as if something waited for her just beyond. “I never intended to.” The last thing she wanted was to marry someone her mother or her brother had chosen, both of whom had turned a blind eye to her father’s rages, even when he beat them. She had resolved to find love for herself, on her own terms. Maybe she would not marry at all. She had made a plan tonight, an ill-conceived one, perhaps, but deep inside, she knew that her time had run out. She touched the satchel by her hip. Her heart ached.

  She pulled his hands to her face, and then—eyes closed—touched her forehead to his. Together they stood like that under the tamarind tree, the tree full of spirits, watching as their young hearts unfurled like blossoms in the dawn. If not now, then someday, someday, she silently prayed.

  Nimish tilted Lovely’s head back and pressed his lips to hers.

  And then a branch whipped across Lovely’s face, leaving a cut so fine that it appeared like a strand of misplaced hair.

  “I must go,” she said, recoiling as if having been stung. She pulled her dupatta across her shoulders, touching the blossoming line of red at her cheek, her fingertip wet with blood as her body tensed with an implacable darkness.

  “Please don’t,” Nimish pleaded. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

  But Lovely turned away from him and, in her uncertainty, ran not to the side gate but back into the bungalow. Nimish tried to catch the end of her dupatta in his hand, but the pattern of emerald leaves swam against his palm as the silken fabric slipped from his grasp.

  That night other members of the Mittal household found themselves unexpectedly awake, too. Gulu, of course, had just coaxed the Ambassador out of the garage for Jaginder’s nightly flight and was now drowsily changing into a dry dhoti. Cook Kanj and Parvati, stirred by the sound of the car’s engine, languidly repossessed each other’s bodies under the tinny drumming of water on their converted garage roof.

  The ghost, meanwhile, noiselessly drifted from clothesline to clothesline, checking in on a sleeping Pinky and Kuntal first, and then making her way to the boys’ room. Dheer snored in staccato bursts, and Tufan thrashed on his bed as if having a seizure. Nimish returned to the room, cheeks red, and changed into dry pajamas before lying down in bed, eyes turned upward as if in prayer. The ghost looked almost longingly down upon her three almost brothers, taking them in with hungry curiosity. Smiling now, she crept into the stiffness of a hanging shirt. The room grew chilled. Nimish reached for his cotton sheet.

  Across the room, Dheer snored voraciously. And then suddenly, his mouth snapped shut, his nose ballooned out, and his eyes popped open. He pulled his knees into his chest and began to sniff the sheets. There was a nutty smell coming from them. Almonds and hot milk, Dheer thought, instantly feeling hungry. And sugar cane. He groaned with anticipation. But then another smell drifted into the mix. He glaumed at it with his fingers, vaguely remembering smelling this sweet-bitter combination once before. Rooting around under his pillow, he sniffed at the sheets with such intensity that he began to hyperventilate. His pajama top flapped up while his chunky buttocks glistened with sweat. The smell began to grow stronger. Dheer’s nostrils flared, his mouth worked, his hands grasped, his mind whirred. Fenugreek.

  Tufan woke with a start and found himself lying on his back, out of breath. Peering into the darkness, he could hear his brother’s unusual panting and the sounds of sheets being pawed. Tufan smelled something too but not the same scent that his brother was searching out. His came from his own body. His eyes grew wide as he began to feel at his sheets, though with much more deliberation than his brother, his hand finally coming to rest at the wetness between his thighs. Feeling oddly satisfied, he quickly checked his penis which had shrunk to the size of a sickly caterpillar in the sudden chill of the pajama bottoms.

  As the latter-born of the twins and hence the youngest of the brother
s, Tufan had desperately wanted to grow up. To become a man and be taken seriously, like Nimish. Now, he felt with a rush of vigor, his time had come. He no longer had to wake up and coax his organ to fruition, it now did it on its own. Feeling smug, he brought his hand to his nose. But as he took in a deep inhalation of himself, he realized with horror that the smell emanating from it was not an indicator of his newfound manliness but a vestige of his childhood, a nightmare of micturition. Unbelievably, he had wet his bed.

  Dheer began to gasp softly as the smell of bitter fenugreek clung to his nose, suffocating him with a wave of nausea. He knew this mix of bitter-sweet aromas from a long-repressed incident in the bathroom when he had not been able to avoid noticing Pinky’s soft breasts pushing through her shirt, the powdery scent of her skin. Back then he had felt ashamed, angry, even aroused, and compensated by cutting off all communication with her. Now, as he struggled for breath and furiously rubbed his nose, he realized that he had been wrong. Oh my god, it was something else!

  “Dheer?” Nimish pulled himself from his reverie. He was used to his brothers making all sorts of unnatural noises while they slept, Dheer even sometimes sleepwalked, but his gasping was starting to concern him. “Are you okay?”

  Tufan lay absolutely still, terrified that his brothers might discover his accident. The urine began to work its pungent way up his spine.

  “No, no, no.” Dheer moaned, beginning to cry.

  Nimish jumped out of bed and turned on the light. Water dripped from the clotheslines onto the floor, a diagonal of heavy rain, even though the laundry had been squeezed thoroughly and hung that morning.

  “What’s wrong!”

  “I can’t—breathe.”

  “Tufan! Utho! Go get Mummy and Papa!”

  But neither the urgency in Nimish’s voice nor the thought that Dheer might die propelled Tufan from his bed. He kept his eyes firmly shut, hoping against hope that Nimish would leave him alone.

  “Tufan, you lazy idiot—wake up!” Nimish launched a book which hit him with a thud.

  “You bloody—” Tufan jerked to sitting position.

  “So—cold,” Dheer moaned.

  “It’s the A. C., it must be stuck on high!” Nimish shouted, his breath frosting as he shut off the unit and wrapped a comforter around Dheer. “Calm down! Take in a slow breath.”

  Dheer moaned again. The smell was overpowering, thick, milky, bitter. His eyes rolled back in his head.

  “GO!” Nimish yelled at his youngest brother.

  Feeling as if Nimish was sufficiently distracted, Tufan jumped out of bed and raced to his wardrobe on his way out, pulling on a fresh kurta.

  Running at full speed to his mother’s room, he thudded across the dining hall, his footsteps echoing all the way down the east hallway to the puja room where Maji had retired after Savita refused her help.

  “Oi,” Maji called out, pulled from a trancelike prayer in shock. “Who’s there?”

  “Mummy! Mummy! Mummy!” Tufan raced into her room and called through the doorway. “Something’s wrong with Dheer!”

  Savita opened her eyes, hoping that the events earlier that evening had only been a nightmare. Then she realized that the front of her blouse was soaking, the milk no longer spurting but nonetheless leaking out. Her eyes dimmed.

  “Mummy!”

  With supreme effort, Savita focused on her son. “What now?” she called out, not wanting to open the door.

  “Mummy, come! Dheer can’t breathe!”

  Savita snapped alert as if having been doused with cold water. It’s come for the rest of us at last, she thought, the evil spirit in the bathroom. Holding one arm tightly against her chest, she flung open the door and ran to the boy’s room, passing Maji and a freshly woken Kuntal on her way there.

  Dheer had turned purple. Nimish was pounding him on his back as if to dislodge something from his throat.

  “Dheer!” Savita shouted. Momentarily forgetting her own leaking breasts, she grabbed her son and began shaking him.

  Tufan stood stiffl y in the corner, eyeing his bed with fear. Awakened by Kuntal, Cook Kanj and Parvati raced into the room.

  “Do something!” Savita wailed.

  “Turn him upside down!” Maji ordered when she finally hobbled in.

  It took three of them to hold Dheer up by his legs. Nimish continued to pound on his back.

  The overpowering odor of boiled fenugreek, which only Dheer could smell, had worked its way under his cheekbones, grinding into his temples, making his head throb with such intensity that he finally threw up. Vomit, litres of it, poured from his mouth smelling of bitter fenugreek and curdled milk. The rest of the family gagged and covered their noses.

  The ghost slinked up to the ceiling fan and draped herself against a slowly whirring blade. Her silvery hair glittered in the air behind her like sunlight through dissipating fog.

  A few minutes later Dheer, changed into fresh pajamas, flopped back into bed, and promptly began snoring. Kuntal cleaned up the mess. Cook Kanj was already in the kitchen brewing up a pot of chai. Maji abruptly plopped down on Tufan’s bed.

  There in the yellowed light of the boys’ room, a trinity of tightly held secrets was revealed.

  Regaining her composure, Savita looked down to discover wide rings of wetness encircling her breasts. In the few seconds it took for her to clasp her arms across her chest and run out of the room, the other members of the household had noticed, too.

  “Kuntal, go to her,” Maji ordered with forced calmness. “See what can be done.”

  “I need to go back to sleep,” Tufan squeaked in a futile attempt to dislodge Maji from his bed.

  “Maji, what’s wrong with Mummy?” Nimish rummaged on his desk table until he located his spectacles. Looping the wires around his ears, he surveyed the scene. A pile of sheets lay in the corner. Soaking wet clothes hung limply from the clothesline, strung diagonally across the room. The odor of vomit and sweat clung to the room.

  “How did this happen?” Maji countered, pointing at Dheer whose chest now heaved thunderously with sleep.

  “I don’t know,” Nimish guiltily pressed at the center of his spectacles. “I think he was choking on something.”

  Cook Kanj entered with the tea tray. As Maji reached for a cup, she suddenly became aware of a dampness spreading along her bottom. She shifted. “Eh?—yeh, kya hai? ”

  Tufan darted from the room and raced into the hallway before the second secret was revealed.

  Parvati stuck her hand under Maji’s enormous buttocks, feeling the bed. “It’s wet.”

  Everyone looked up at the hanging clothes. Nimish glanced at his pile of rain-soaked clothes in the corner of the room and felt his heart clutch.

  Parvati brought her hand away and curled her lips. “Chee! Not rain, soo-soo!”

  “Tufan wet his bed?” Maji said, taking a deep inhalation. “Oi, get me off this bed and into a fresh sari.”

  Cook Kanj began collecting the chai cups while Parvati heaved Maji off the bed. No one spoke but every mind was churning with the unusual events of that evening, attempting to put it all together as if a puzzle: Dheer’s vomit, Savita’s soaked blouse, Tufan’s wet bed—a trio of unrestrained bodily fluids.

  “Everyone go to sleep now,” Maji commanded as if everything could be ordered back to normalcy. She leaned heavily on Parvati’s shoulders.

  And then, so quietly that no one at first noticed, Pinky padded into the room. Having just arrived at the scene, she saw what the rest of the family had not: the baby ghost gleaming in the clothesline like a butterfly.

  “Pinky baby, go to sleep now,” Maji’s voice became gentle.

  But Pinky remained where she was, swaying with the effort to stand.

  “Can’t you all see?” she whispered, pointing to the ceiling fan.

  The baby ghost lifted herself off the blade as if surprised. Pinky met her gaze. For a fugitive moment, each drowned in the eyes of the other.

  “Kya? ” Parvati asked lookin
g up. “Another leak?”

  “Pinky, baby, go to sleep now,” Maji was firm. But even Nimish, now pushing back damp clothes to get a better look at the fan, noticed how his grandmother’s voice faltered for the briefest instant. Cook Kanj set the tea tray down with an abrupt clang and crooked his lanky neck upwards.

  “Can’t you all see?” Pinky tried again. Though her face was pale and drawn, her eyes blazed with determination.

  “I don’t see anything,” Nimish said.

  “Pinky—go to bed!” Maji’s voice was urgent.

  “She’s there right in the punkah.”

  “Who?” Parvati asked, shoulders straining from Maji’s weight.

  “The dead baby,” Pinky said slowly, revealing the third and final secret of that night. “She’s come back.”

  LIGHTNING AT THE GREEN GATES

  For an instant, Maji, Parvati, Kanj, and Nimish strained their eyes. And then Maji erupted into such a fury that the entire bungalow shook with her wrath. “This nonsense about ghosts again!” she boomed, gigantic jowls quivering while her hair lashed out behind her.

  “A ghost?” Nimish threw up his hands. What his eyes couldn’t see, his mind couldn’t possibly fathom, even considering the unusual events of the evening.

  Cook Kanj shook his head. “A good night disturbed for this?” he muttered, one hand cutting the air like a knife while the other deftly retrieved the tea tray.

  “She’s there! She’s there!” Pinky yelled. She was not going to retreat, not now, not when the family’s safety was at stake.

  “See what happens when you indulge a child too much,” Kanj muttered to his wife.

  “Nimish, bring Pinky back to my room. NOW !” Maji commanded. “Come Parvati.”