by Tahir Shah
Everything had a price. Many of the items were very much more expensive than they would have been in Europe. The shop owners were consumed with a passionate greed, the type of which I have only ever seen in India. You could feel it emanate from them, almost like a physical force. They ardently believed that everything — from the greatest battered canvas to the most trivial toy car — was worth a fortune.
A foreigner, even with a humble entourage such as mine, picking his way down the narrow streets, is quoted exorbitant prices. Realising this, I decided to send Osman back another time to spend an afternoon haggling for blue crystal and tin plate.
Bicycle bells rang out and wheels of all sizes collided and crossed. Green parrots strung up by their ankles were on sale for fifty rupees. They squawked in protest and wriggled their toes like amateur escapologists. Carts laden with white collarless shirts were paraded about: the wheels slipping in the sewage, to shouts of “Panch Rupia, Panch Rupia!” (Five Rupees, Five Rupees!).
Breathing deeply in, I strode onward along a makeshift path, my eyes and nose streaming from the sulfur pollution and stench of poverty. I thought back to duty-free airport lounges with their luxurious chairs and bottles of yellow perfume; it seemed to be the most glorious contrast to Mutton Street’s secret world.
The sound of fog-horns grew louder and, I expected a monstrous junction of roads around the corner.
We turned and the golden sunlight blinded us, silhouetting men in turbans and sacred cows. This was the horn bazaar. Any device which could create a hideous noise was here sold or exchanged. Deafening instruments for overland trucks were being prized from their housings and re-fixed to mopeds. In Mumbai, it is far more important to have a sturdy horn than a sound engine.
Osman ambled off and tormented an old toothless wretch for a moment. He returned with a lump of metal wrapped in the Times of India, held out at arm’s length like a grenade about to explode. Grasping it with some apprehension, I pulled the sheets apart.
Osman looked away as I held up an antique bicycle horn. It was a touching gift which made me look with growing admiration at this man who had so soon become more than just a translator. He squeezed the rubber bulb between thumb and forefinger with the dainty movement he might use to pick up a teacup in politer society. The demonstration, his expression said, was just in case I should be unfamiliar with the device. “Now, Sahib, you too are like a bus,” he stammered, before blushing.
1 wondered what these words meant, then understood. In Mumbai, all the disintegrating red buses (modeled on those in London), have bicycle horns instead of electric instruments. Before the waist-high wheels run over you, you hear a muffled toot. I thanked Osman warmly which only made Prideep scowl harder and longer than before.
* * *
My room at the Chateau Windsor was being spring-cleaned. The commanding lady with the clipboard marched up and down the cell-like box, small though it was, as if it were an army training camp. I decided to take a shower and leave them to it. After spending the day in the Chor Bazaar there is no feeling more invigorating than a freezing Chateau Windsor shower.
The bathroom door was open. An old lady was brushing her teeth inside. She was using my toothbrush. It was yellow and had my initials carved on the shaft. Her teeth had seen better days, only a few still clung in the rubbery gums. She looked thrilled as she poked the head with inexperience around the blackened surfaces.
Then, leaning over the basin, she spat out a mouthful of blood, hooting with pain. The once-white bristles were stained red and parted at right angles down the middle: the result of gigantic pressure. I guessed immediately what had happened. What always happened. The contents of my desk were frequently swept into the garbage bin beneath and eagerly carried off. A process of selective sweeping ensured a wonderful sellable bounty. The servants had the edge because of an incident which had occurred before. I had attempted to throw away a red disposable razor. It did not seem to matter which bin I placed it in, for as if by magic it would always reappear on my bed. Lining up as many figures dressed in khaki shorts as I could find, I had told them that the contents of the garbage bin could be theirs. I thought that bringing in a factor of personal benefit might solve the problem. How wrong I was.
THREE
Too-Feee and Eunuchs
Wrathful then became the Great God,
Called his messenger Narayan,
Said he, “Bring these Gonds before me —
Outcast wretches! How their stink has
Spread o’er my Dewalgiri.”
A dwarf was walking towards me down Veer Nariman Road. Each of his legs had been amputated at the same height below the knee and the stumps moved quickly on thick leather pads. Somehow they resembled elephants’ feet. I wondered for a moment how it came about that both legs were cut off at an identical length. Then he was just another face that blended into the lines of heads which bobbed up and down as they moved away.
While waiting to cross the road behind the Regal Cinema, on the way to visit Mr. Wing Son — the Chinese shoemaker — a sign caught my eye:
Definitely no spitting of paan.
The announcement dripped in bright red saliva, which illuminated the letters. As I stood there, a figure approached me. Her hands piously raised, her gaping mouth revealing lines of ground-down molars. A saree draped across all six foot of the form. Thick black hair sprouted from her nostrils: it had to be a hijra, a eunuch. I pulled a folded calendar from my wallet. Indeed, it was Tuesday — the day Colaba is overrun by men dressed as women — who beg for money and give you luck as a reward for your charity.
Losing my cool, I began to run down Apollo Bunder, past Leopold’s and the mystic backpackers; past Wing Son, the Chinese shoemaker, and on.
The eunuchs saw my flight and chased after me: like hounds pursuing a fox. They howled and whooped and pushed back locks of twisted black hair in exultation. Some tripped in their sarees, others pulled them up most ungracefully to reveal knobbly knees. In Mereweather Road I rested on some steps for a moment, regaining my breath. Closing my eyes, I wiped the sweat from my face. There was a tugging at my sleeve. I started up, terrified that the army of castrated men were upon me... a turbulent thought indeed. A crouched figure bent over me and croaked, “Vould you like ears cleaned, Sahib? Ek rupia (One rupee).”
As he thrust a pair of tweezers — with a plug of cotton wool on the end — towards me, I ran off yelping like a wounded mongrel. To them, I realized, I must have seemed quite mad: to me, they were the insane ones. What was most unnerving was the thought, “If I stay here long enough, will I become like them?”
* * *
My aunt had airmailed me a bag of toffees from London. They were black and had already begun to melt at the American Express office. I chewed on a lump as I walked past the used clothes stalls and paan sellers, on the way to Chateau Windsor. Memories of leaking packages arriving at my boarding school came to mind. No one else had aunts who even entertained the thought of sending large quantities of pear and apple curry second class through the post. Consequently, they had not been reprimanded for essays like mine: “My Eccentric Aunt”. My work was branded as a fantasy, though it contained nothing untrue.
Back at the Chateau Windsor there was a rat-like scratching at the door of my room. Vinod, the youngest servant, came in with a soda water. He placed it next to the bag of toffees. Then he watched me read. I was used to being observed reading. Sometimes the room would fill like a railway station at rush hour and I would be expected to cure widespread boredom. Some visitors were complete strangers. This, and their sheer numbers, made me suspect at times that tickets to watch me potter about my room were touted in the corridors when my back was turned.
Vinod edged towards the door but, with one foot still inside, he pointed to the molten lumps of goo in protective plastic:
“Chocolate, Sahib?” He grinned, hoping that I would understand the question.
“They are treacle toffees, from London,” I replied.
“T
oo-feee?” Something more wonderful than chocolate perhaps.
I handed out a couple of the big black lumps, grease running through my fingers. Vinod skipped off to torment the others.
Later I went to the bathroom to try out my new toothbrush. The locally-made instrument was more suited to painting emulsion over large surfaces, than cleaning the inner reaches of one’s mouth. A row of bristles two inches long grated against my gums.
A line of blood ran across the bathroom floor. Not the kind of blood that drips from a cut finger — but lashings of it, as if from a mortal wound. Some of the servants were mopping at the red pools. They looked very worried. When asked what had happened none would say. Only when I questioned harder, one perked forward and broke the silence:
“Sahib, Vinod... his teeth pulled from mouth with too-feee.”
The others shuffled backwards as if I was the perpetrator of some atrocity, guilty of supplying a deadly device to pull teeth from the innocent. Another pushed forward and stuttered, “Vee vere not going to tell you, Sahib.”
Vinod appeared, looking as if he had just axed three men to death. He unclenched a fist to reveal one canine and one incisor. Then he smiled weakly with chess-board gums, and whispered, “Too-feee.”
Noises of the night mingled in the darkness. Hindu chants ran down Apollo Bunder with slow melody. A taxi with no lights swerved to miss another. It all seemed like just another Mumbai night.
At eight P.M. my Sikh taxi driver lunged at high speed past Chowpatty Beach, accelerating with the intrepidity of a kamikaze pilot. The black cab missed meshing with a Mercedes by an inch, as the driver’s turbaned head rocked with laughter.
My parents’ friends had invited me as their guest to a neighbor’s party. The Mumbai socialite crowd would all be there. Since my arrival in India, I had not been accustomed to mixing with the well-to-do.
The party was in a studio flat. The ceiling had been adorned with a sprawling mural by one of the daughters who was artistically inclined. I was taken into the crowded room and introduced to ministers and dancers, producers and businessmen. They looked me up and down and stared with evident and intense distaste at my pleated coat. It had been pressed by V.V. Gupta, and now resembled a white tennis skirt. I chatted to an English lady who was interested in Afghanistan. Before I was led off to meet some people of importance, she pressed a piece of paper into my palm. Later I read it. The name of a laundry screamed out at me, in block letters.
My gaze strayed to the balcony. There in the moonlight was the most perfect form I had ever seen. She stood tall above most of the guests with the grace of a Nubian warrior, and the poise of a goddess. A solid silver clasp encircled her upper arm. I had to meet her.
Across the room sat a man in Tai Chi shoes and a beret. Feet dodged his crossed legs, which extended into the middle of the floor, but he paid no attention to them. A gaggle of admiring girls clustered around him; he lectured softly, thrilled to have such a glamorous audience. I wandered over and we began to talk.
“Hey man, let me tell you about this place,” he said.
“Please do, I’m new around here.”
He was the first one to avoid questions about my origin, quest, and my coat’s crumpled state. His name was Blake... “D” Blake. A musician of classical persuasion, he had left his native California to travel the world in search of a guru. It was here, after many years, that he had found that man.
The more we talked, the more questions I felt pressed to ask. I was intrigued that a man should leave his native land, then come to live in India, marry an Indian lady, which he had done: and study under a respected master in the suburbs of north Mumbai.
A Fulbright scholarship supplied the means to fund Blake’s vital research. Such financing fueled the relationship between pupil and teacher. Blake was devoted to completing a thesis of great magnitude. A topic whose title he imparted in whisper: The Application of the Electric Guitar in Hindustani Music.
Blake was detribalized — no longer completely American and not quite Indian. An upbringing in the 1960s had shown him many things and given him the basis for a roaming life. He kept repeating: “Yeah man, as long as you’re happy that’s all that counts.” Then he began to ramble on about my family, of which I had not spoken.
Riveted, I was eager for him to shed some light on the madness that was Mumbai. And, secretly I hoped he could advise about the young lady who had so captured my attention.
* * *
Time began to slip away increasingly quickly as I filled my days with routine matters. Coffee at Gaylord’s, tea at Leopold’s, checking mail and arranging my laundry, left little time for anything else. One afternoon, as a new batch of crumpled clientele slumped in Leopold’s, I was forced to share a table.
The man in the tasselled shoes flicked cigarette ash with a nervous — almost reflex — movement into the top of an empty bottle. His left hand was folded around a copy of E. M. Forster’s A Passage to India. Ah, I thought, the kind of traveler who likes to be immersed in the place. We crossed glances and both frowned at the Australians at the next table. They skulked behind a couple of torn sci-fi paperbacks. The young man at whose table I sat re-contorted his face as his eyes focused on Forster’s words once again.
Waiter number sixteen weaved back and forth, bringing endless cups of coffee to the man: who drank them black and in one gulp. After every second earthenware cup had been drained he would stride off to relieve himself. Two hours passed and we sat in silence throughout. Then I was caught reading at right angles the blurb on Forster’s genius: and the ice was broken.
Another Rothman cigarette began to smoke as a dulled Zippo clicked shut and was slid into the man’s shirt pocket. He introduced himself as Hugh Randolph Hamilton-Waite.
Hamilton-Waite had traveled widely. His father’s diplomatic rank had necessitated such upheaval. He lived in Paris; and moved about on his wicker-based chair with a definite delicacy. I drew backwards towards the window, keeping my distance, but at the same time was intrigued. I asked what he did.
“Nothing,” was the brief and disconcerting reply. Which left me grappling with a chap of perhaps thirty who had seen the world but seemed uncomfortable within it. He repeated many times: “I have been so terribly, terribly ill,” the voice deepening with dramatic emphasis.
I felt sorry for him, quite out of place in Mumbai, yet he somehow fitted into Leopold’s as everyone does. Making polite conversation, I declared that Gaylord’s was the only sensible place to dine in Mumbai, and across from it, the infamous Chateau Windsor.
Stretching out a hand for him to shake, he gripped it as an elderly aunt might do — clasping the fingers just short of the knuckles and holding on for a moment weakly. I left Hamilton-Waite to his coffee and duty-free Rothmans and wondered what his future might be.
Nights spent worrying over my two assistants, and their lack of success in finding treasure, had put my sleep-pattern off its usual orderly track. I had decided to go to a chemist to buy some sleeping tablets. The pharmacist held up a shimmering pack of Diazepam, explaining that a prescription was necessary from a doctor.
A moment later I was round the corner at the rubber stamp bazaar. There I commissioned a stamp to be designed and constructed. It was to read:
DR. TAHIR SHAH
PHYSICIAN & SURGEON TO THE KING.
An apprentice took my order and set to work immediately.
Flowers were cut out and placed around the words, somehow emphasising their authority. I left a twenty-rupee note and returned to the chemist, stamp in hand. He produced a sheet of paper and an inkpad at my request. Pressing the block down — it was certainly ornate — I wrote out a prescription for ten Diazepam.
“I am now a doctor,” I said audaciously.
There was no dispute. The stamp was my passport into the world of medicine.
As the chemist admired the fine workmanship that had created such a superior credential, he passed me a sheet of chalky-white pills. There had been no discussion how a l
ayman could in twenty minutes not only become a doctor, but a surgeon too, and to The King. I was learning how to behave.
As I strolled back to Chateau Windsor, I remember my head spinning at the advantages of the system. Great things could be achieved, nothing could stop me now.
At ten forty-five P.M. there was a knock at my door. Vinod pulled me to the telephone in the hall. A voice crackled in the distance. It was the manager of Gaylord’s, who said that a gentleman was requesting my company and inviting me to dine. I went down to Gaylord’s.
Great activity surrounded one table on the veranda. Waiters were bobbing and weaving about. Some loitered, expecting instructions, and the manager poured from a bottle of Omar Khayyam, Indian-made champagne, wrapped in a towel. The table top had been covered with a gingham cloth, and beside it was stood the champagne bottle in a cooler.
Hamilton-Waite sat resplendent in a cravat and double-breasted coat. He sipped from a fluted glass with a degree of grace and, in his theatrical manner, he spoke of his travels. The manager circled the table like a shark awaiting its prey. He wanted to be introduced. I was worried that my reputation would be ruined and I would never be able to eat there again.
Hamilton-Waite spoke at length about his life as an ambassador’s son, and how his friends knew him as H.R.H. He removed his coat and I automatically drew my feet under my chair.
As before, he drank many cups of black coffee, this time diluted with imported brandy. Again he spoke of his mysterious illness. I plucked up courage and politely asked what exactly the condition had been. “It’s mental,” was the reply. He hated life and was useless for it, showing no understanding of my exhilaration for living. He was despondent. A man rich enough not to work, and poor enough in spirit to do nothing.