Haunting Bombay

by Shilpa Agarwal

  “What do you expect when I have to cook in the rain?”

  “Oh ho! no need to get upset. The ghost will be gone by end of tomorrow and everything will be back to normal.”

  “Fine, fine,” Kanj said. “The ghost will be gone, but what about the ayah?”

  Parvati shifted uncomfortably.

  “She’s come back for some reason, too.”

  “If she comes near my family, I’ll kill her.”

  “What is it? Has she reason to harm us?”

  “No,” Parvati said, turning away. “Go, it’s almost time for morning chai, you better go.”

  Kanj’s joints creaked as he swung them over the bed and stood up. She’s not telling me something, Kanj thought as he adjusted the dhoti over his bone-thin legs, realizing once again that there was a part of his wife that he would never be able to access. She had other secrets too, he knew, dark secrets from her childhood in Bengal. He had accepted those mysteries when he married her. Yet, this more recent concealment was more difficult to overlook, souring his affections.

  During the three years that Avni had been part of their household, Parvati had complained endlessly about her, growing combative, hostile, almost paranoid to the point that Kanj spent his free time in the storage room sorting canisters of lentils just to escape his wife’s tirades. Parvati’s bond with Kuntal also suffered, their sisterly affection strained almost beyond repair. When the baby drowned and Avni was thrown out, Kanj had not felt grief or sadness but relief.

  He absentmindedly threw tea leaves into the pot of milk, crushing five cardamom pods to toss in afterwards while standing under an improvised canopy that did little in the way of shielding him or his cooking from the rain. A disturbing thought came to his head: Does Avni know about Parvati’s pregnancy? With the comings and goings of all the vendors, relatives, and friends, it was not difficult to conceive that a vengeful Avni had been watching them all these years, paying someone for news about the household. Everyone has a price, Kanj thought, casting his net of suspicion onto each and every person who had been by the bungalow since Parvati’s morning sickness began.

  Vimla Auntie’s son Harshal, Kanj knew, was just the type of bastard who took pleasure in bringing misery to others. And Gulu, the jackass, he silently cursed, would have driven the Ambassador over his foot for Avni. And what about that pimply-faced U. P. dairyman who drove over in a corporation van every third day with sealed bottles from the Aarey Milk Colony? Before the establishment of the government-run Colony several years back, the very same man would teeter over on his bike with two aluminum vats of diluted milk swaying from his rusted handlebars. Sister fucker, Kanj remembered resentfully. And he’d still charge full price! I’ll fry him up like onion bajji the next time he shows his face!

  As the chai began to heat, forming a thick skin of fat across the top, Kanj felt certain that Avni knew about their pregnancy. Why else would she have returned at this time? He had no idea what had transpired between Parvati and Avni just before she was fired, but he was sure something had happened, something so terrible that even after all these years, Avni burned to retaliate. And, Kanj decided with a grunt, his wife knew all this. That was the only explanation for her behavior this morning.

  “Bas! ” Kanj said out loud as the boiling milk frothed over the top of the pot in a violent surge. He was tired of Parvati’s secrets. He might only be an illiterate cook but he was no fool. Before the end of the day he wanted to know everything about his wife’s past. A line had already formed for morning tea. Kanj deferentially handed Jaginder the first tall tumbler but his eyes were on the person standing unassumingly in the back of the line. With just the right combination of sweet and salty, Cook Kanj decided, he would coax Kuntal into telling him the truth.

  The only member of the household who seemed untouched by the increasing chaos was fourteen-year-old Dheer. Left on his own, he wandered around the bungalow like an inflatable life raft, rescuing chocolate bars from long forgotten locations. “Here,” he said, venturing into the abandoned hallway bathroom and placing a slim package of Danish chocolates in the bucket, “for you.”

  The ghost shifted from her position atop the pipes and eyed the chocolates with suspicion. Despite the monsoon’s increasing wrath the last several days, she had grown weaker. Maji’s power was too pervasive, too deadly. The baby ghost cast a forlorn look at Dheer, who sat against the wall pushing a half-melted chocolate into his mouth, swallowing the barely chewed pieces in large gulps. She was too weak to make herself visible to him now; her body was already losing its form as if reversing the process by which she had originally appeared. Strands of silvery hair molted from her head and floated in the air, sticking to the bungalow walls like curling filaments of moonlight. One fell onto Dheer’s lap. Wiping his chocolatey hands on his trousers, he ventured to touch it and was immediately struck by a deep sadness.

  “When Pinky first told me about you”—he began to weep at the mention of her name—“I didn’t believe her.” He squinted up at the ceiling, seeing nothing but a bit of peeling plaster. “I don’t remember you,” he continued. “I was only one when you died. And now you’re back, but I can’t see you.” He sighed. He too had felt invisible these past few days as the household was too caught up in its own misery to notice him anymore.

  Yesterday Dheer found Nimish slumped in tears against the side door and just earlier today he heard Cook Kanj talking with Kuntal in loud, angry whispers in the closed-off living room. No one cared to make sure Dheer ate or was dressed; it was as if he was were on his own. The only bit of attention he received was when his mother momentarily emerged from her room to order them all to take baths. Maji may have forced us to live like street urchins, Savita had yelled at them when she knew that her mother-in-law was safely ensconced in the puja room, but I won’t tolerate you smelling like one!

  In the next moment, they were duly stripped down to their underwear and shoved behind a strung-up tarp attached to the side of Gulu’s garage, giving it the appearance of one of the ubiquitous shanties that lined the streets of Bombay. They were each given one bucket of cold water and told to wash from head to toe. The only concession Savita had made was to personally attend to Jaginder’s bath, waiting under an umbrella with his fresh kurta pajama, and ensuring that his water was heated.

  Dheer shuddered at the memory of the cold water on his back. After their baths, they were forced to stand outside until their toweled-off hair completely dried. Even Dheer’s extra layers of fat hadn’t protected him from the chill he felt then. Yet no one took pity on him as each of them were lost in their own miseries.

  Tufan had stood by the latrine, shivering under an umbrella.

  Nimish, too, had been in his own world, his eyes glazed over behind his spectacles, reading A Sketch of A Bombay High Caste Hindu Young Wife, not even shrugging Dheer away when he read over his shoulder, trying to catch his mother’s attention. Whose happy rule in my dear native land, Dheer had quoted in his loudest voice from the dedication to Queen Victoria, is brightening and enlightening the lives and homes of many Hindu women.

  Savita snorted. What nonsense are you reading today Nimi? As if that meat-eating ferengi knew anything about us Hindu women. Nimish closed the book with a snap and stared out at the Lawate’s tree with unfocusing eyes.

  What about me? Dheer had silently pleaded to his mother, but she had not even seen him.

  Fat tears began to roll down his cheeks at the memory. Even a slap across his head would have been better than this total inattention. Sitting against the bathroom wall, he tried to wrap the strand of ghostly hair around his finger but it dissolved into nothingness. Things were supposed to be better by now, the third night. Yes, he thought, some things were better. His mother no longer tied a dupatta tightly across her chest, his father was not as prone to unsolicited slapping, and Cook Kanj’s cooking had even thickened. But Pinky had not been found. And as each day went by, the chances of her being so grew slimmer.

  “Please,” he began to
beg the ghost, “you’re the only one who can save Pinky. You have powers.” Dheer had never disobeyed an elder in his entire life; it simply was not in his nature to do so. But his cousin’s life was at stake.

  “Promise me that you’ll save Pinky,” he said. “Promise me this. Kemosabe, and I won’t let you die.” And then as if to make good on his word, he reached into the bucket and opened the Danish chocolate box that he had stolen from his parents’ locked cabinet. A row of chocolates, each filled with watery liquor, glinted back at them.

  Maji emerged from her puja room visibly strained, and immediately phoned the priest. She let out a great sigh and stumbled into another prayer, knowing that the wheels of karma had not yet finished churning. Despite her life-long piety, the Gods jealously continued to guard the bungalow’s destiny within the multitude of their arms, balancing a brilliant pearl conch shell in one hand, a diskette of golden fire in another, the fate of the ghost in a third, and that of Pinky in a fourth.

  Pinky staggered down the abandoned coastline and onto the jetty. The dilapidated trawler was tossing in the howling gale. The glowing light she had seen earlier vanished as she stepped onto the boat, her toes curling as they touched the molded, rotted floorboard. Darkness surrounded her. The boat lurched and Pinky threw her hands out to steady herself. She took another step. A gust of wind whipped through the trawler. The decayed frame moaned as the boat tossed back and forth, back and forth, in a mournful rhythm. Somewhere beyond, Pinky heard a distinctive splash-splash over the ocean’s crash. She took another step.

  Then the smell hit her, the ghastly stench of rotting fish.

  Pinky doubled over, gagging.

  A voice said to her from the darkness, My father survived it by drinking fermented jambul fruit. So strong it was, it could flatten an elephant.

  The clouds parted. In a sliver of moonlight, Pinky spotted a sari-clad figure hovering at the stern of the boat dropping coconuts one by one into the water as if to dispose of them. One of the coconuts rolled to Pinky. She bent to pick it up and found herself enveloped once again by a strange heat.

  Another memory.

  A train approached, its front headlight illuminating the tracks. Passengers surged forward, holding themselves inches away from the platform’s edge.

  A unfamiliar voice rang out: There is one way, but it involves an exceptional sacrifice. You must be strong, unwavering.

  And then a jump. The tracks seemed to lift up to meet Avni’s falling body.

  Hard, metallic, fast, the train approached like a bullet, a harbinger of death.

  Instantly there was a rush of blood, the beginnings of a scream, then nothing, nothing at all—the remnants of a body reduced to its elemental parts.

  Hair, flesh, blood, bone.

  Pinky dropped the coconut. It fell to the ground with a sickening crack.

  That was my sacrifice. The voice was close, far too close.

  Pinky opened her eyes.

  Avni stood right in front of her, sari consuming her like a fire, eerily obscuring her face. Her feet were bare, powdered with dust and dirt, a single silver toe-ring her only adornment. Her arms were muscular, with a tattoo etched into her skin—a holy mark that ensured entrance into God’s abode. Godhun aali ki choruni? she will be asked at heaven’s gate. Do you bear the mark of God or are you sneaking in? A sharpened sickle-shaped koyta swung at her waist.

  I had to give my life to obtain certain powers. And then I waited thirteen years, chained to the platform where I died, her gritty voice hissed, but I wasn’t alone. There were other transitory souls, a parallel otherworld.

  The boat rocked violently. Pinky backed away.

  I became part of them, the boundaries of flesh no longer a barrier to our unions, Avni continued, but I had only one true desire.

  Her gaze fell upon the cracked coconut upon the floor. I’m drowning them, she confessed, pointing to the other coconuts rolling about the stern like marbles. Drowning them so I won’t remember anymore.

  And then, hurling the cracked one off the boat, she turned back to Pinky.

  There was one boy, a tea-boy known as Crazy-One. I ventured into him the very day I died. And then it became easier: the drug-addicted, the mentally ill, the poor, anyone with weakened defenses.

  “But why?”

  Avni cackled, a sound like merciless winds upon a desolate ocean.

  To practice so I could find a way back into the bungalow when the time came. I needed a body to inhabit, a body already inside the bungalow so my spirit would be allowed passage.

  Pinky took a step back, her heart pounding in her chest. “So it was you in the boat! It was you inside Lovely!”

  I draw power from impure blood, vaginal blood. I waited, waited in the tamarind tree. Your Maji is old and no longer bleeds. And Parvati is pregnant. And you are still a girl. And Kuntal . . . I could never violate her. That left only Savita. So I waited, waited for her cycles, waited for her to come out of the bungalow. Then Lovely came to the tree. And she was so beautiful, so pure, her heart so very open. I wanted her, even if just for a moment. It was not the time of her cycles so I had to find another way.

  Pinky cried out, hand over her mouth. “You took her but it’s me you wanted!”

  You were the one who came outside, who came to me in the street. But you are strong. I could not get into you, even in the canoe when I tried to weaken you. I had to wait, to bring you here.

  Pinky felt the unfamiliar cramping again, the ache in her back. A soreness in her breasts. And then, the faintest trickle of something between her legs.

  She had to get away, get away before it was too late, before Avni sensed it.

  She took another step back, then another.

  “Where’s Lovely?” she cried out. “Tell me! Is she here? Is she alive?” Her eyes frantically searched the trawler, the jetty, the coastline curling into eternity.

  Avni smiled. She found her freedom. I could not take that from her.

  She then plucked a coconut from her sari, not a dried one like the others but raw, smooth, green. You’ve not come for her but for this.

  “A coconut?”

  The truth.

  “No!” Pinky cried out. Another step back. And another.

  You must drink it in you.

  “No! Just leave me alone, leave my family alone!”

  I’ll not go away. I’ll never go away. If not you, then Savita, then Parvati after she gives birth.

  Pinky hesitated. She had turned away from the truth once before, in the bathroom with the ghost. Her decision resulted in devastation. If only I had stayed, listened, believed, the ghost would be okay. Lovely would be okay.

  Despite every desire to do so, she could not turn away again.

  Since ancient times, she knew, coconuts were offered to the gods, the hard-shelled nut representing the human skull, the home of the ego. To crack it open at the feet of a deity, to consume its milk or meat, meant to surrender this ego-self, to become a willing vessel for the divine, the all-encompassing Truth.

  She seized the coconut from Avni’s hands, closed her eyes as Avni brought the koyta down upon it with a thwack, and lifted it to her lips.

  The milky liquid slid into her throat.

  Pinky fell to her knees, her mouth foaming, a scream bubbling upon her lips.

  Avni had done it.

  She had finally claimed Pinky.

  SILVER PUJA VESSEL

  A thin, flushed figure approached Maji’s green gates, hidden behind vines of bougainvillea. The figure held out a hand to the gate, then hesitated, looking upwards to the sky. Rain fell lightly this morning.

  Sitting inside the bungalow, the lethargic inhabitants heard the dull slap-slap of a flattened palm against the gate. They waited for the sound to stop, to disappear into the background of other noises that filled their morning. But the slapping grew more insistent. A voice called out. Parvati went to investigate.

  “Kaun hai? ” Maji asked wearily, waking from a doze upon her dais.


  “Gulu.”

  “Tell him to go.”

  “He insists on talking with you.”

  “I have nothing to say.”

  “He has something to say about the day the baby drowned.”

  Maji froze, the flesh around her jaw the only part of her body that continued to sway. Then she slowly pulled herself erect and, taking her cane, walked to the gate, firmly closing the door behind her.

  “I did not come a few nights back,” Gulu started, eyes peeking from between the iron arrowhead caps jutting from the top of the gate, “because I had to find Avni. I had to know if she had really come back after all these years.”

  Maji’s jaw tightened, “She’s of no concern to you!”

  “I went to her mother’s home,” Gulu continued, shoulders heaving with emotion. “She told me everything.”

  “She’s of no concern!”

  “She died!” Gulu’s mouth opened wide with the terrible words. “Thirteen years ago, she threw herself in front of the train the very same day you sent her away.”

  Maji heard Parvati gasp behind her.

  “If she died, I had nothing to do with it!”

  “You sent her away!”

  Maji furiously undid the lock and, throwing the chain onto the driveway, yelled at him to step inside the gate. She stood just an inch away from him, the fury contained in her enormous body causing his own scrawny one to shake. Instinctively, he tucked his wounded hand under his armpit.

  “What should I have done?” Maji spat, aware that her entire family stood on the verandah intently listening in to their conversation. “Kept her here after what happened? I could have sent her to jail or had her beaten but instead I had you take her to VT, even gave her money to start a new life. My only instruction was that she leave Bombay and never come back.”

  “She was not to blame for what happened!” Unabashedly weeping, Gulu opened his mouth as if to allow the words, trapped deep within his body, to come pouring forth, fueled by Chinni’s threat. What would happen if he were to tell his terrible secret, about what he had done after the baby and Avni had both died?