Haunting Bombay

by Shilpa Agarwal

  “This is strange, nah?” Juhi held the cloth out towards Nimish, who was reading a text of Jawaharlal Nehru’s Tryst with Destiny.

  “‘A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history,’” Nimish read from the historic speech, “‘when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance. ’”

  Juhi searched her husband’s face in the mirror of her dowry vanity, a heavy imported teakwood set with matching dressers and bed frame. “It was folded between Maji’s old saris,” she tried again, determinedly shaking the dupatta at him. “Was it hers?”

  Nimish caught the metallic flash in the small oval mirror in front of him, the million gemlike petals floating in a sea of gold, a tiny bird drowning within its depths. A terrible ache clutched his chest, pressing into his heart like a blade as a memory descended upon him: Lovely standing underneath the rain-swept tamarind tree, the very same dupatta cascading over her bronzed skin, her plump breasts, her satiny forehead which she had touched to his own.

  “I don’t know,” he said. The book slipped from his hands onto the fl oor. “Must have been Maji’s.”

  But even as he said this, Juhi noticed the boyish blush on his cheeks, the same awkward redness that had overpowered him during their very first nights together as husband and wife. Flashing her emerald green eyes at him, she hurriedly pushed the dupatta onto a heap of Maji’s old saris, feeling a pang of uncertainty grip her. “I’ve asked Kuntal to take these away since Maji has outgrown them,” she said, tying up the bundle and crisply leaving the room.

  Nimish sat on the bed and stared at the sack of clothes, fighting the urge to pull out the remains of a lost past and, just for a moment, hold it to his cheek. After so many desperate months had passed without any sign of Lovely, his mother had secretly set up a meeting with Juhi and her family. As he sat across from her at the restaurant, his cheeks aflame with anger, he knew that he had been trapped, for once a boy meets a girl face to face, they are as good as engaged. As the potential groom, he had the right to say no, but to reject the girl would ruin her reputation, and Nimish simply could not bring himself to cause such humiliation. Savita had known that her eldest would put the girl’s honor above his own desires, and had used it against him. And so the marriage took place. Deep inside, Nimish struggled to let go of the past for the sake of the future, for the sake of his new wife whom he genuinely adored. Still, in the thick of the night as they made love, it was Lovely’s face he saw. Always hers.

  He fought the overwhelming urge to undo the bundle’s knot to let go of the moment under the tamarind tree, a remembrance so precious, so breathlessly divine, that he sometimes wondered if it had happened at all. “Juhi,” he finally called to his wife in a strained voice, standing up as he hastily wiped tears from his eyes. “Juhi, I must be off to the university.”

  And then tenderly touching the bundle of saris as if it were Lovely’s silken cheek, he turned and left the room.

  “Nimi,” Savita called after him, sitting regally at the dining table, a plate of golden pastries at her side. “Come have your breakfast.”

  “I’ve made your tea the way you like best,” Juhi added faintly, holding out a cup.

  Nimish shook his head at them and walked out of the bungalow, asking Gulu to drive him to the tram stop at Dhobi Talao, where if he rode all the way to King’s Circle and back, he had more than two full hours of uninterrupted reading time.

  Savita glared at Juhi to hide the sinking feeling in her own chest. In the months since his marriage, Nimish had closed himself off from his mother, his affections towards her visibly diminished though his dutifulness never once wavered. His turning away was a daily reminder that, although she had won the bungalow, she had lost something even more precious.

  Jaginder finally accepted his part in the baby’s death. Maji had come to him the day his daughter had been born, showing him the truth of her being. But he had refused to look, refused to believe that such a deformity could be born of him.

  What can be done? he asked, his dreams for his daughter dying. There would be no marriage, no dowry, no grandchildren, no legitimate life.

  The hijras will take her, Maji said, we can only hide it for so long. And the law does not prevent them.

  No! he gagged. It’s better that she doesn’t live.

  Their eyes met then, filling the space between them with infinite sadness, helplessness. Maji pressed the baby to her bosom, inhaling the sweet, milky scent of her skin. She could not see a way into light, into possibility.

  She thought of her childhood friend who had been widowed.

  This child should not know that suffering, the world’s unforgiving cruelty, she said, waiting for his consent.

  Anguish bore down upon him.

  He had to save his child from a fate worse than death.

  He nodded.

  The golden dupatta traveled along with Maji’s old petticoats, out of the bungalow, out of their lives. The silken utterance of Lovely’s story, the sweeping rectangle of cloth that held the tainted memories of a beloved girl, was too much of a threat to Juhi’s fragile heart and too painful for Nimish’s broken one.

  So it vanished.

  Along with a million other stories that haunt Bombay in its darkest, deepest, most naked core.

  In March, the month in which Bombay’s balmy winter fully surrendered to summer’s pushy heat, Parvati gave birth. From her body, marked by the ravages of history—colonialism, famine, orphanhood, rape, servitude—a baby emerged, an infant girl with thick hair and coffee-dark skin just like her own. Parvati named her Asha, meaning “hope.”

  In her first days of life, the baby cried relentlessly while she slept, her tiny face contracting with pain, eyes still not ready to produce tears.

  Savita sent Gulu to procure some imported Woodward’s Celebrated Gripe Water.

  “She’s reliving her past,” Parvati comforted an ashen-faced Kanj who stood guard with a pot of freshly boiled fennel water for signs of a gassy tummy. “Let her say her good-byes, let her come to us unburdened.”

  And with that, she tucked an iron key under the mattress where the baby lay to help her make the final steps into her current life, locking away—finally—the sufferings of her past life.

  After four days, the baby miraculously settled, happily suckling at Parvati’s breasts and sleeping a deep, untroubled sleep. Sometimes, Kuntal brought her inside the parlor on a blanket while she cleaned. Asha gazed at the room as if it was strangely familiar.

  The baby refused to go to Maji, however, screaming if she was even taken near her.

  “Frightened by the smell of old person,” Kuntal reasoned.

  “Of sickness,” Cook Kanj corrected.

  “Of death,” Parvati concluded.

  The baby ghost never returned to the bungalow. Once in a while, Pinky called to her in the hallway bathroom, praying that her troubled soul had finally found peace.

  That first monsoon, however, as the ambrosial summer purred into slumber, Parvati saw it.

  And Pinky did too.

  For a fleeting, almost imperceptible moment, when the weighty clouds relinquished their heavenly abode to the moon’s graceful light,

  And the sky spread with the bluish hue of new beginnings,

  Little Asha’s hair shone silver.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I would like to thank all those who came into my life during this journey to lend their expertise, provide me with a precise detail, or assist me along the way. I would especially like to thank the following:

  Satti Khanna and Miriam Cooke at Duke University, for unveiling the beauty of literature.

  The presenters and judges of the 2003 First Words Literary Prize for South Asian Writers, for recognizing the potential of my manuscript in its early stages.

  Sai-ling Michael, Heather Onori, Rajshree Patel, Kim Pentecost, and Lawrence Taw, for sharing their wisdom and helping me navigate the formidable voyage to health.

  Ghalib Dhalla—my writing comrade of many years, Aimee
Liu— mentor and friend, and Tonia Wallander.

  My girlfriends, for supporting me in innumerous ways and celebrating the milestones with me.

  My family in India for sharing their stories, especially of Partition, and their generous affection.

  Kim Witherspoon and all those at Inkwell for helping bring my book to fruition, most especially Alexis Hurley for her dedication and determination.

  Laura Hruska for her warmth and guidance, and my community at Soho Press, including Sarah Reidy, for their enthusiasm in launching my book.

  My siblings Ajay and Sonal, and their families, for their wholehearted support.

  Vinod Agarwal, my fellow writer and uncle, for his insightful letters that came to me as if on angel’s wings, bringing an insider’s eye to Bombay in the 60’s.

  Mom and Dad, for guiding me always with love, entrusting me with their memories, and giving me their blessings to follow my heart.

  James and our daughters, for illumintating my life with their love, and for believing in me through these long, long years of writing.

  Over the course of writing this book, I have consulted many theoretical, historical, and reference texts along with interviews, old colonial guidebooks, and letters. In lieu of listing an extensive bibliography, I would like to acknowledge the following people and their works which have been especially invaluable resources: Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities, K. Asif ’s film Mughal-E-Azam, Julian Crandall Hollick’s Apna Street, Sir Richard Francis Burton’s Vikram and the Vampire, Partha Chatterjee’s The Nation and its Fragments, Graham Dwyer’s The Divine and The Demonic, Eicher’s City Map of Mumbai, Zia Jaffrey’s The Invisibles, Sashi Prabu Joshi’s knowledge of the Vedas, Mary Ellen Mark’s Falkland Road, Ashis Nandy’s The Intimate Enemy, Julio Ribeiro’s Bullet For Bullet, Kalpana Sharma’s Rediscovering Dharavi, Gillian Tindall’s City Of Gold, and The Traveller’s Literary Companion to the Indian Sub-continent.