Prophetic words. Much of what Toby said was going to come true.
‘No one can change our lives the way we can ourselves,’ Jazmeen said quietly.
‘Well, no one can change my life as much as you can, meri Mukherji,’ Toby said playfully, even though he meant every word. He looked at her and smiled. There was a slight nod of acknowledgement with it. That tacit admission of her importance was all that his rigid male chauvinism was going to allow. But Jazmeen knew what he meant—and that was enough for her.
It was time for her to start laying her cards on the table.
‘And what do I get in return for changing your life, Toby?’
‘Anything you ask!’ the man said gallantly as he started the car engine. ‘In fact, come home and I will tell Rubina what you have just done for us!’
‘Yes, about that…’
‘Yes, meri Mukherji?’
‘What do we do about that rabid bitch we have sitting in our home, Toby? Isn’t it time we got rid of her?’
The steely tone of Jazmeen’s question made him pause and look at her face again. Then, as if suddenly distracted by its disturbing sound, he turned the car key and killed the engine again. He realised they had much to discuss before heading home that evening.
9
The Goodbye Girls
Toby James was angry. The reason for his ire was his own indecisiveness. ‘How did I allow a pair of bitches to run my life?’ he wondered as he sat quietly alone on a rock at Worli Seaface, observing the gigantic structure of the Bandra–Worli Sea Link.
Toby agreed that the arguments put forth by Jazmeen to get Rubina out of their lives sounded reasonable. Rubina was nothing but dead weight—‘a burden’—that they were destined to lug unless they found the courage to throw her off their backs.
‘But what do you want me to do about it?’ Toby had wailed when he was alone in the car with Jazmeen that evening. ‘I mean, we can’t just kick her out. She has been with me for so long!’
‘So you love her then?’ Jazmeen had asked without emotion.
‘No,’ Toby had said unhesitatingly.
‘Do you love me?’
‘Yes,’ he had responded just as quickly.
‘Do you need me?’
‘Yes.’ That was absolutely true.
‘So then, who do you think is more important in your life?’
Toby had not been able to give a conclusive response. But now, days later, as he sat alone watching the new super structure that had transformed the Mumbai skyline, he realised that he had been indecisive about a question with a rather simple answer.
Toby James had made his decision.
It was time to say goodbye to one of his girls.
Tobias ‘Toby’ James used to have the reputation of being a decisive man. In fact, he had been the most decisive person he knew. He had been standing on his own two feet, so to speak, since he had turned eight. The initial years had seen him run odd jobs for anyone who was willing to pay him a rupee or ten—deliveries for shopkeepers, small-time merchants, housewives and such-like. There had been some part-time schooling, enough for him to learn to read and write some Marathi, Hindi and English, but hardly enough for him to know whether Shakespeare was a Spanish fisherman or the name of an African fruit. Later, once Toby had a better understanding of the nuts and bolts of his mother Tara’s profession, he had tried his hand at pimping for her. That had been lucrative for a while. By sixteen, when his own hormones had started turning him into a young man—and when he also observed how women around him had begun to notice him a different way—Toby was more than eager to partner with his own perpetually aroused state on another profitable venture. He became a gigolo. That phase lasted four years but with only limited success for, frankly, Toby James was no Hrithik Roshan when it came to looks.
By then, his mother’s own fading ‘career’ was well and truly finished, and she decided to leave Mumbai to spend her retirement years in her ancestral town in Goa. She took everything she wanted with her—clothes, jewellery, household and kitchen stuff—leaving behind only two items she had never cared for: Toby and her second son who was born two years after Toby, a mentally-deficient boy named Petey.
‘You are old enough to look after Petey by yourself,’ she told Toby on leaving.
‘Like you’ve been Nirupa Roy to us all these years,’ Toby thought.
Petey was a strapping young man who had stopped growing mentally since he was ten.
With his useless mother gone, Toby shunned the life of prostitution and found himself another lucrative enterprise. Fraud. It was a career that he had been initiated into by the last customer of his penis—a Mrs Laliben Shah—who had an open marriage with her husband, a diamond merchant from Surat. Toby’s first operation was a con-job on Mr Shah’s ex-partner, which he executed masterfully, earning himself 10 per cent of the profits—a full Rs.25,000.
With such a great beginning, young Toby was destined for a great future as a Cheat and a Liar.
‘I am trying to organise a meeting between Arty Sir and us soon,’ Toby said to Jazmeen as she cleared the dinner table at home. Rubina was perched in front of the TV, watching a mythological serial with loud noises and louder costumes. Her eyes were glued to the screen, while her left hand toiled away with a nail file. Momentarily, she burped the delicious kofta curry that Jazmeen had cooked that evening. She paid no attention to the conversation her lover was having with their housemaid.
‘I see,’ Jazmeen said as she wiped the plastic table cover vigorously, the motion causing her breasts inside the T-shirt to sway like pendulums.
‘He has agreed to meet us next Saturday. He had to rush to Gorakhpur for some work with his brother, but he promised to be back in a week. Arty Sir’s brother is a big shot in politics there.’
‘OK.’
There was a pause, surmounted only by the crescendo-like background music from the television.
The two at the dining table took no notice.
‘Are you not excited to meet Arty Sir?’ Toby asked, slightly surprised at Jazmeen’s muted enthusiasm.
‘Yes, sure, very excited,’ Jazmeen said. She finished her cleaning ritual and turned to make her way to the kitchen. Just then, Toby reached forward and pulled her towards him. She stared at him and then seated herself on the chair next to him.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked his expressionless lover.
‘Nothing, Toby. Just wondering why your Arty Sir will want to meet me at all. What is his interest in me?’
‘Oh, with the paeans I sing about you in front of him, did he even have a choice?’
‘So you told him that I helped you with the Brijesh Jha business?’
‘Helped?’ the man mocked. ‘My dear, I have told him everything that you did!’
‘You couldn’t have told him everything…’ Jazmeen was genuinely surprised.
‘Do you have any idea how bloody useful you can be in our line of work?’
‘Of course I know that!’ she repeated in her mind. All the while that Jazmeen was executing Master Brandy’s assassination, her plan had been to hitch her cart to Toby’s business. She wanted to be seen by him as an asset. His Henchwoman. Partner. Master Brandy was her first ‘project’ for Toby. A sample, really. Just the way a cat squashes a mouse and lays it out in front of her Master. To show what she is capable of.
That Toby was willing to elevate her status in front of an important man like Arty was beyond Jazmeen’s expectations. The revelation was surprising—and wildly tempting.
‘If I could work for Arty too, imagine the doors it would open for Toby and me!’ Her heart was starting to skip a beat—or three—at the prospect. However, her poker face still displayed no emotion.
‘How could I be useful to a man like him?’ she asked, wanting Toby to explain what he had in mind.
‘Do you not know the importance of a good—how do they say it in English—assassinator? A Fixer... in this line of work? A person like you could be priceless to a person like
Arty Sir!’
Her lover’s absurd English made her smile, but she stifled it. This was a serious discussion.
‘But why me? There are dime a dozen hired killers walking the streets of Mumbai. Your Arty Sir can have his pick of them. What’s so special about me?’
‘Because YOU, pagli,’ he said, ‘are the entire package! You can get to places where those dime a dozen killers can’t. Just see how easily you got close to Master Brandy.’ Then, in hushed tones so they could be easily swallowed by the loud TV, he added, ‘Those two can open doors like…’ he said, as he stared at her breasts and snapped his fingers.
Jazmeen twittered in laughter.
‘If Arty Sir doesn’t fall for you in one quick swoop, he was born without a brain.’
Jazmeen got up and walked to the kitchen, shaking her head.
‘I meant, born without a dick!’ Toby concluded loudly behind her. It was loud enough to be heard by the woman on the sofa, who still didn’t look away from the television.
Back in the kitchen, Jazmeen’s smile instantly turned into a frown. Her mix of surprise and intrigue was starting to get clouded by another emotion—nagging suspicion. It felt strange that a person like Toby would share credit of his success with anyone, let alone attribute all of it to someone his benefactor didn’t even know. Something didn’t ring right.
What game is this guy playing now?
The hard life of the mean streets of Mumbai teaches a man to—first, and last—think about his own welfare. If there is benefit to be claimed, be the first in line. If there is blame to be apportioned, scoot. If there is a battle, win it. Think only about yourself. See how you can get ahead. Even if you have to sell your mother to do so, do it. Never forget that everyone around you is an adversary, and if you can gain even a penny from their obliteration, do not hesitate in doing so. In fact, obliterate them even if not a penny is to be gained—use them as target practice.
One such delectable opportunity, of making many, many pennies through someone’s metaphorical obliteration, had presented itself to Toby five years before he had met Jazmeen. It had begun one night with an excited phone call from Tara who was in Goa.
‘Guess who I saw in the newspaper today!’ she began without much motherly preamble.
Toby was a few drinks down already and was not prepared to play any guessing games with his mother.
‘I saw your father, haraami!’ the woman exclaimed after five seconds of telephonic silence.
‘What are you talking about? Are you drunk?’ Toby said, prepared to slam the phone down.
‘No, no, my dear boy, it was your father. Technically, you’re still a bastard but, it looks like your father is a very important man!’
‘And you remember his face after twenty five years—how?’
‘How am I going to forget the man who gave me a pearl like you?’ Tara said with as much sarcasm as she could muster. ‘But, if you have to know, didn’t I tell you that the man had a scar above his lip?’
Toby was instantly attentive. ‘A scrawny boy with an endowment smaller than his two-inch scar’ was how Tara had often described the man who had impregnated her with her first-born. Frankly, that was all she remembered of that night, and Toby had never bothered about the details.
Not until now.
‘My father. In a newspaper! Only rich people are featured in newspapers…’
‘…opening a new hospital in Panjim. He owns a chain of hospitals in Bhopal, Gwalior, Jaipur, Nagpur and a few other cities…’ the woman was saying, apparently reading from the newspaper.
‘What’s the man’s name?’ Toby asked finally.
‘Mohammad Yunus Abadi,’ Tara responded with a voice impersonating the flourish of a radio announcer—and then adding, a few seconds later, ‘Fuck! I should have got you circumcised, Toby! I hope your father is not religious!’
A few months later, Tobias ‘Toby’ James was seated across the table from a tall and youthful-looking man in his early forties. The man was very fair, with an intellectual demeanour. His short hair was greying at the sides. He wore expensive frameless glasses. His dark grey suit was well-cut, perhaps too nice and—therefore—slightly out of place in the dilapidated office where they were sitting. The only imperfection in the man’s otherwise perfect look was a two-inch scar just above his lip towards the right. The scar went straight up from the lip about half an inch, and then an inch and a half towards the cheek. The only remnant of a bad childhood accident on a swing.
Dr Mohammad Yunus Abadi was a busy and successful surgeon. That meant that he could afford the best legal recourse in the country to fight any legal headache anyone chose to fling at him, even the kind brought about by the petty hoodlum sitting in front of him right now. But Dr Abadi was also a man of eminence and repute, which meant that he could not afford to allow the legal suit filed by the petty hoodlum sitting in front of him to go public.
‘This foolish man claims he is my son? I can’t even see the resemblance!’ he had hissed at his legal counsel when he first laid eyes on the petty hoodlum several weeks ago. Well, the ‘lack of resemblance’ part was true—except for his father’s beaked nose which went flat at the tip, Toby was a mirror image of his maternal grandfather.
Toby may not have been educated like his sperm-provider dad, but he was sensible and shrewd. He knew that the only way his money-fleecing scheme was going to work was if he didn’t scrimp on getting himself the best lawyer he could afford. And so, next to him in this dilapidated room in the District Court of Bhopal sat Banarsi Das Sahay, an acerbic man of sixty, specialising in family matters such as divorce and dowry. And also, matters involving bastard sons rising from the past and staking claims to their millionaire fathers’ fortunes.
Clearly, both parties knew that this was a case of extortion, not some sudden emotional connection that the son sought from his dad. Toby wanted money, and his only bargaining chip was the threat to expose his father’s unholy past to the media. So far, the matter had remained hush-hush because neither party wanted the matter to come into the public domain for their own reasons. The only intervention that the court had made so far was in establishing proof of the father–son genetic linkage. The court had already looked at the findings that had taken a few weeks to come about. It had now directed both parties to try mediation and resolve the matter.
That was the reason why they were assembled in the ramshackle courthouse room. On the one side of the wobbly wooden table sat Toby with Sahay. On the other, Dr Abadi, flanked by two gentlemanly men. Also in the room was a mediation expert appointed by the judge to facilitate the discussions.
‘The results from the Central Forensics Lab are clear,’ began Sahay. ‘The DNA evidence is irrefutable,’ he said, as he bent forward to hand over a copy of the report to Digvinay Dwivedi, the chief counsel for Dr Abadi. Dwivedi waved it away, they already had a copy. Moreover, none on the Abadi side of the table wanted to see the black and white conclusion of a sordid night of street fornication that the eminent doctor had indulged in as a young man a lifetime ago.
Sahay settled back in his chair. There was silence between both parties. The mediation expert tossed his glance between the two silently belligerent lawyers like a tennis ball in play. Momentarily, Dwivedi cleared his throat.
‘Dr Abadi runs a very successful medical practice in many cities across the country. His hospitals, as well as he, personally, have helped millions of sick people get better, mothers deliver healthy babies, blind folk get their vision back, and the disabled reclaim independence in their lives. A lot of the work done by Dr Abadi’s organisation is done pro bono. His name is respected far and wide, both in this country and abroad. In fact, Dr Abadi is expected to be awarded the Padma Shree by the government soon.’ Dwivedi stopped momentarily for dramatic effect. His audience across the table merely looked on expressionlessly, though the mediation expert looked impressed.
‘Along with his phenomenal contributions to society,’ the counsel resumed, ‘Dr Abadi remains a famil
y man at heart. He is a son, a brother, a husband and a father. His wife, Dr Andaleeb Kidwai, is one of the premier brain surgeons of India. Their twin daughters, Sasha and Ayesha, are brilliant young girls. The Abadis are a family that people aspire to be, take inspiration from. They are respected and admired by all who have known them or have been touched by their kindness.’
Digvinay Dwivedi stopped his oratory and shrunk back into his chair a couple of inches. There was silence once again. Banarsi Das Sahay was a bit puzzled as to where all this was leading. The moderator started to shuttle his eyes back and forth again.
Eventually, after he had heard the room’s ceiling fan twist on its noisy swivel for several minutes, Sahay spoke up—‘Given the undoubted greatness of your client, as you have just enumerated in such poetic prose, I am sure that he would find it in his heart to accept my humble client’s modest place in his life then?’
Dwivedi was expecting a similar response, so he smiled ever so slightly. ‘But, you see, my learned friend, the reason why I enumerated such “poetic prose”, as you so eloquently called it, was to advise you of just the opposite. That, my client is unable to find it in his heart to make room in his life for your client. In fact, my client’s life is already so full that there is absolutely no more room in it at all. And certainly not for a bright and strapping young man as your client appears to be, who seems willing to grab any opportunity that he gets to advance his own agenda.’
Toby had been sitting silently, observing the English sparring between the two men in black and white. He obviously understood little, but seeing the confidence on the opposite side’s faces, he knew things were not going well for him.
‘In that case,’ he stared at Sahay as his lawyer spoke up, ‘my client will have no option but to demand for justice to prevail.’ Then, enunciating his threat in the most innocuous words, he added, ‘And he will do so in the loudest and shrillest voice possible. Why must this young man suffer due to the wrong choices that were made by his parents, who did not care for anything other than satisfying their carnal desires? Is there any difference of worth between him,’ Sahay said, pointing to Toby with a flourish, ‘and his step-sisters who get to enjoy all the opportunities that life has to offer, only because their birth was not shrouded under the cloak of illegitimacy?’
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