Haunting Bombay

by Shilpa Agarwal

  RETURN OF THE AYAH

  Jaginder lay in bed and threw his limbs in four opposing directions until he felt his spine deliciously crack. “We must arrange for more help,” he said to Savita who sat next to him, her baby pink sari palloo falling against his cheek.

  “Yes,” Savita said. “The malishwallah will come starting tomorrow. But Maji needs round-the-clock care now.”

  “What about Kuntal?”

  “I need Kuntal for myself,” Savita said, caressing Jaginder’s cheek. “She knows exactly where everything goes, what I need. I can’t start with someone new, not with all this responsibility on my shoulders now.”

  “Of course,” Jaginder said, feeling intoxicated by Savita’s touch. Despite the recent stresses of alcohol withdrawal, confinement within the bungalow, and his mother’s stroke, he had fared quite well. In fact, he had not felt so good for a long time. His family was coming back to him, looking to him for leadership and reassurance and, what was more, Maji could never threaten his place at the helm of Mittal Shipbreaking Enterprises again. Silently, he promised himself that he would not let Savita down this time, he would run the business as his father had and make his family proud. The recent shine in his wife’s eyes had even tempered his craving for alcohol though, in the late hours of the night, haunting visions of Rosie’s adda still beckoned to him.

  “Jaggi?” Savita abruptly asked, tucking a bit of her sari into the corner of her mouth. “Do you think that our little Chakori is free now?”

  “She’s free now to be reborn, isn’t that what the tantrik said?”

  “She was with us all these years,” Savita said with a shudder.

  “You weren’t able to let her go,” Jaginder said, pulling Savita against him. “Just as I can’t let you go.”

  Smiling, Savita allowed herself to be enclosed in Jaginder’s furry arms wanting, praying, that their latest tenderness would prove itself lasting. I’ve won, Savita told herself, pushing away the dreadful thought that her formidable mother-in-law might unexpectedly recover. I’ve won!

  Her first decision, the day of Maji’s stroke, was to rehire Gulu. She had spotted him lurking behind the green gates waiting for Parvati to slip him a tiffin of food. Maji had been foolish to let him go, Savita thought, to breed resentment amongst the other servants. And finding a good driver is so difficult these days! But most importantly, in bringing Gulu back into the fold, Savita knew that she had earned the other servant’s silent appreciation, not for Gulu’s sake but for their own. What better way, she had thought, to begin the bungalow’s new regime?

  A terrible thought unexpectedly sliced through her sunny mood. She sat up, pushing Jaginder away.

  “What is it?”

  “Do you think the ayah’s really gone?”

  “The tantrik sent her away, didn’t he?”

  “But what if she comes back?”

  “She won’t,” Jaginder said, pulling Savita back to him. “There’s no reason to anymore, is there?”

  “No, no, no reason.” Savita tried to allow her husband’s words to sooth the panicky flutter in her heart. “Maybe we should have the boys sleep in our room for a while, just so, you know.”

  “Absolutely not,” Jaginder said firmly. “I want to be with you. Just you.”

  Maji arrived by ambulance the following week. Jaginder spent the better part of an hour fighting with the medical workers as to the best way to transport his mother inside the bungalow. Finally, after the promise of an extra five-rupee tip for each of them, the workers ingeniously strapped her to a chair and carried her to her bedroom, their muscles straining with the massive undertaking.

  Maji was laid upon her bed, her thick body propped up on its side by bolsters. Her right arm was drawn close to her side, elbow flexed, and the right half of her face drooped where a small pool of saliva collected at her lips. After everyone had left, Pinky closed the door and curled up beside her, their faces just inches apart.

  Maji clumsily brought her hand to rest upon her granddaughter’s face. Pinky looked away, not able to confess what was really on her mind, that Savita was sending her away to boarding school. With remarkable efficiency, Savita had made the necessary phone calls, proffered generous bribes, and secured a space even though the school year had already begun.

  Pinky could not even appeal to Nimish to intercede. He was never around anymore, skipping classes to search for Lovely during the day, walking the broken lanes of Colaba showing passersby the black-and-white photo of her he had once discreetly hidden underneath his “An Ideal Boy” chart. By the time he reached home late in the evening, heartbroken and worn, it was not Ackerley or Arnold he reached for in his vast collection of books but the neglected copies of Rabindra nath Tagore and Mulk Raj Anand.

  He didn’t know what to do, where to go, he read from Anand’s Untouchable late into the night. He seemed to have been smothered by their misery, the anguish of the morning’s memories. He stood for a while where he had landed from the tree, his head bent, as if he were tired and broken. Then the last words of the Mahatma’s speech seemed to resound in his ears: May God give you the strength to work out your soul’s salvation to the end.

  And then gently closing the book and drifting off to sleep, Nimish could no longer deny that a single shelf of a good Indian library was worth more to him than the whole native literature of England.

  Alone together, Pinky breathed in the scent of her grandmother, so familiar, so comforting. All these years, she had needed Maji’s love, to tuck herself into her strong, magical presence, to be tended to with unconditional love.

  Pinky had striven to make herself indispensable, to carve out a rightful place, to belong. But Maji’s stroke laid bare the truth of her situation, that Pinky was expendable, inessential, removable; that the bungalow was only a temporary home and not a place that she could claim as her own. Among all the fearful scenarios that she had conjured of being married off or sent away, she had never once imagined her grandmother falling ill or dying. Maji was the bungalow’s anchor, like a banyan tree that grew and grew, dropping roots into the ground from its branches, its expansive foliage providing shade for their entire family. But Jaginder and Savita had been waiting in the banyan’s broad shadows all this time, Pinky realized, biding their time.

  Maji’s eyes fluttered open and closed, her hand weighed heavily against Pinky’s cheek.

  Pinky struggled to hold back the flood of sadness for everything that had been lost. Somehow, somehow, Pinky thought, though her memory of the abduction had been mercifully wiped away, I’m responsible for it all. She had befriended the ghost. She had ridden with Lovely on the motorbike before her friend disappeared. And she had been the one to give the ghost water the night that Maji was rushed to the hospital. “It’s all because of me,” she whispered to her grandmother.

  But Maji did not speak, did not move or even crack open an eyelid. Exhausted by the effort of being transferred from the hospital, she had already fallen asleep.

  Pinky stood and, from the enameled teak chest, pulled out the photo of her mother, which was in reality the publicity shot of the actress Madhubala. She folded it to her heart. There was only now a rectangular-shaped darkness in the teak chest. An emptiness.

  The next morning was a blur of activity. By the time Maji woke and, furious, had the bony malishwallah thrown from her room, it was almost time for Pinky to leave. Painfully pulling herself to a standing position with Nimish’s help, she limped to the parlor, her semi-paralyzed right leg remained extended, foot flexed towards the ground so that she had to rotate her leg outwards in an uneven gait in order to move forward. After finally being seated, not upon her dais as usual, but on one of the low sofas, she gripped her cane in her left hand and watched dully as Pinky’s suitcases were brought from the room and placed by the front door.

  “It’s just until you’re better,” Savita said to Maji in an overly loud voice as if she were deaf.

  “But you said she was going there forever,” Tufan chimed i
n.

  Savita shot him a withering look.

  “So, beti,” Jaginder said, searching for something appropriate to say when Pinky finally walked into the room, her hair pleated into one long braid that was elegantly coiled at the nape of her neck. “So . . .” he trailed off, feeling somewhere deep inside as if he were betraying his dead sister. He gratefully plopped down with a glass of jal jeera, a refreshing concoction of lime, mint, and rock salt.

  Gulu entered to retrieve the suitcases and froze when he saw Maji on the sofa, her unfaltering gaze upon him.

  “Don’t bloody dilly-dally,” Jaginder ordered, slurping loudly. “We might as well get this over with.”

  Gulu dropped his head and lifted the bags with his good hand, expertly shuffling back and forth out the open door.

  Kuntal appeared with a hot tumbler of chai which she lifted to Maji’s lips. Maji shook her head, pushing the tumbler away with a shove so violent that the glass slipped from Kuntal’s grasp and broke upon the floor.

  “Oh pho!” Savita reprimanded Kuntal. “You must be more careful with her now. She’s not able to control her muscles.”

  Kuntal nodded as she kneeled and swept up the shards. The scent of cardamom rose into the air.

  “Well,” Jaginder grunted at his boys, “say your good-byes now.”

  Pinky looked around the room as her cousins approached awkwardly. Tufan reluctantly handed her one of his Lone Ranger comics, a double of one he already had in his collection. Dheer began to blubber, pressing his favorite Cadbury chocolate into her hand.

  Nimish peered at Pinky with a thousand unspoken questions about the night Lovely had vanished, knowing somehow that she was the only one who could shed light on what had really happened, if only he had some way of jogging her memory. He had questioned Pinky earlier in the week but she had simply shaken her head. I don’t remember anything Nimish bhaiya, only that she had taken me on a motorbike. After that, everything’s blank. “If you remember anything,” he said quietly, his arms strangely bereft of a book.

  Pinky nodded. “I’ll write and let you know.” She fleetingly gazed upon his soft lips, feeling strangely that she knew how they might taste.

  Savita pushed forward. “You can always visit during holidays,” she offered magnanimously.

  Pinky fell at Maji’s feet, her face pressed against her sari, now smelling of the spilt tea. “Maji,” she whispered, her voice choking with emotion as an overlooked piece of broken glass cut into her knee. “I want to stay. Just tell them. They have to listen to you.”

  Maji looked at Pinky, her eyes dull and flat, her hands motionless. With supreme effort, she turned her body from Pinky, refusing to give her blessings.

  “Jao,” she slurred almost inaudibly, almost indecipherably. “Go.”

  Gulu peered in the rearview mirror, watching with a pained expression as Pinky turned away, her face stony. Unwittingly, he remembered when she had first arrived at Maji’s home, a sickly infant.

  As she grew up, he had fallen into a routine, taking her to school in the mornings and returning in the afternoon with a steaming tiffin of lunch. His favorite time of day had been picking her up from school when she jumped on the springy seat pleading, Gulu tell me about the time you stole an entire fl ock of birds from Crawford Market to feed your family. And, thus invited, he had spun tales of heroics that held Pinky entranced and made him feel a little like a movie star. On these drives home, he was no longer Gulu-the-Compliant-Driver but Gulu-the-Fearless-Hero who braved physical injury and death to provide for his destitute family.

  In the past months, when Pinky no longer had time for his tales and was content to give him her school satchel instead of her ear, the stories that had come so vividly to Gulu’s lips wasted away in his head. And with them, the daily escapes into a world of possibility. “Pinky didi,” Gulu said tentatively, “did I ever tell you the story of when I scavenged through a garbage heap to find bits of metal to sell as scraps in Dharavi? It was the time of the monsoon flooding when cholera spread through the slums like a bullet. Hai Ram, my youngest sister was so sick, almost dead. My mother went to the temple with my sister a limp bundle in her arms, and gave our last five rupees to the pujari. But his prayers were in vain. Goddess Lakshmi did not take pity on us and my sister grew worse, loose motions and vomiting all the time. I was desperate for money to pay for rehydration salts. Did I tell you—” He halted, embarrassed at his attempt to somehow right the present, to push away the pain with a rusty story.

  Pinky did not respond.

  Gulu’s heart sank. “Is Maji okay? They said she can no longer speak.”

  She can speak, Pinky thought, remembering Maji’s cruel word to her—Jao, go—as she rubbed the cut on her knee where a circle of blood now stained the salvar.

  Gulu was trying his best to appear concerned. Maji’s tragedy had been his salvation, his opportunity to remain with the Mittal family, to keep his job, to go on as before without having to resort to Chinni’s threats or to reveal his shameful secret. Who knows what Jaginder would have done if he had told him? He could have sent Gulu to jail or had him beaten, disfigured even, left on the streets to die.

  Gulu recalled seeing his friend Hari’s father who had once been detained for several months in Arthur Road Prison. Upon his release, the father had stopped by VT to see Hari, ribs jutting from an emaciated frame blanketed in sickening bruises and pussing wounds. Don’t let the bhenchod police ever get you, he had warned Hari, his eyes lifeless, spirit broken. Kill yourself first.

  How stupid I almost was, Gulu silently chided himself. I would rather die before telling my secret.

  His deformed hand began to throb, blood pushing against the delicate stitches. He winced as he pressed it into his armpit. But the pressure continued to build, the pain traveling up the length of his arm, into his chest. He proceeded to weave in and out of the traffic when suddenly, in a flash so fleeting that he might have missed it, he saw a young woman lit by a blinding aura, her fiery red sari flaming as she ran in front of his car. The Ambassador veered into the next lane of traffic, almost crashing into an oncoming bus.

  “Oh no!” Pinky gasped.

  “A woman just ran in front of the car!” Gulu cried out, his heart thudding in his chest as he realized that he had just seen Avni. The phantom pain in his missing finger was so intense now that he felt as if he might pass out.

  Pinky pressed her face up against the glass, watching the sari-clad figure flash in the sun as she came toward them again, like a storm. The apparition lifted her face, allowing the palloo to slip from her head. Pinky’s nose skidded across the window. She will never leave us. And suddenly, seeing her face, she remembered how she had drank the coconut elixir and how Avni had seethed within her.

  “Oh God! Oh God!” Gulu shouted, grinding the gears as he tried to get the car moving again while frantically steering it with his good hand. She’s trying to kill us! Sweat poured from his face, dripping into his eyes, obscuring his vision. “Oh God! Oh God!”

  “You can’t outrun her!” Pinky yelled, climbing into the front seat. “She’ll never leave us, never. Unless . . .”

  Gulu gunned the engine, driving as if on a race to hell.

  “Say it, Gulu, you must say it to save yourself!” Pinky knew what he struggled to contain, she had drank it inside her that fearful night.

  It was still there, she realized, if she just listened hard enough.

  THE VAMPIRE CURSE

  They had been together, Avni and Gulu, one final time after he had left her at the train station that fateful day of the baby’s death. He had gone back, searching the platforms, calling her name. And then, rushing towards him was the tea-boy, the Crazy-One, his legs infected with scabies, the sores pussing despite white benzyl benzoate that powdered his skin. “You, you there,” he called to Gulu, “she sent me to fetch you.”

  “I’m not meeting anyone.”

  “Oh yes,” the tea-boy insisted. “She knew you’d be coming back. She’s waiting for y
ou.”

  Apprehensively, Gulu followed the boy, past the station and into the deserted backyard where cargo cars rusted upon abandoned rails. Climbing into one of the empty compartments, he hesitated, fearfully scanning the desolate landscape. When he was a shoe-shine boy, his friend Bambarkar had been brutally sodomized in one of the empty cargo trains. “Where is she?”

  “She’s in here,” the tea-boy said, one hand on his hip, the other neatly placing the tea carrier upon the ground before he climbed aboard. The dark, empty hold echoed with shrouded susurrations.

  “Where?” Gulu called out. “Where? I can’t see her!”

  Over here, came her sweet-gritty phantom voice in the hollow darkness.

  Gulu stretched his hand out, walking towards the voice in anticipation. She met him, slender arms enclosing him, soft cardamom-scented lips pressing against his. Leave them, she whispered, her hand running down his chest, hovering at his waist. His trousers fell away.Leave them for me. A mouth tightened around his tumescence.

  He writhed and moaned, body tensing with acute urgency. “Please,” he begged, “I can’t just leave. Where would we go, how’d we survive? Please—”

  All at once she was gone, leaving him clawing at the dark, his fin-gers scraping at the fetid air. Go to the cemetery by the sea, she commanded, her voice now cold and far away. See the baby. Only then will you understand.

  Gulu fell to the ground, panting.

  She did not die because of me.

  He grasped at the voice, falling against the metal siding.

  It was not an accident. Find the amulet tied around the baby’s neck at her birth. It was meant to protect her from evil spirits. But it failed to protect her from something more powerful. It fell off before she was buried.Find it. Find her. Her whispered commands issued forth until they overlapped like waves, echoing against the sides of the hold, distorted. Gulu senselessly flung himself at the voice.