The Complete Collection of Travel Literature

by Tahir Shah

  A quick glance at his feet proved he was indeed the hero, but for another reason – sabotage. While his back was turned, the godwoman had stealthily sprinkled sugar on to the coals. The sugar melts and sticks to the feet, burning them.

  Determined not to be beaten by subversion of any kind, Sri Kasbekar took the pain. After all, he was passing himself off as a living god. As more and more godmen earn a living from healing and performing miracles, an increasing number are falling victim not to Rationalists, but to sabotage from their own kind.

  When the time came for her last miracle, Srimati Kulkami crawled beneath a heavy blanket positioned at the center of the arena. I could sense the spectators wishing her to fail. Very slowly, her head, and then her body, began to leave the ground. An inch at a time, it rose above the grass. The seer paused at about three feet, her body quivering slightly under the blanket. This was the first time I had seen a full levitation performed.

  Just as I was going to ask Bhalu how he thought the illusion was done, something rather embarrassing happened. Embarrassing, that is, for the godwoman. The thick wool blanket which had covered her slipped away. In an instant the secret of full body levitation was revealed. The secret was that there was no levitation. Srimati Kulkami had been standing under the blanket, her arms outstretched; holding two chipped hockey sticks by the handles. The sticks’ blades had been pointing upwards, giving the impression of feet.

  Her face red as a beetroot, she proclaimed that Sri Kasbekar – the Devil – had bewitched her with a curse. But no one listened. The villagers were far too preoccupied with something else to pay attention to a fraudulent goddess. Besotted with Polydactyl Man’s miracles, they yearned for more revelations from his miracle of miracles … the sacred oracle pen.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Jimmy, the Part-Time God

  The glass-fronted cabinets were filled with neat rows of disintegrating volumes. Labeled with yellowed tags, and stained with damp, most of the books had not been opened for decades. The tables, chairs, wainscot, floor, and even the reading lecterns had been anointed with liberal coats of furniture oil generations before. Dusty marble busts loomed down from their plinths like those of Roman emperors; a freestanding brass fan churned the dank monsoon air; and, mounted on the far wall, an antique regulator clock, its burr walnut inlay severely warped, recorded the passing of time. Nothing had altered for years in this, the reading-room of Mumbai’s Native General Library.

  Favored by the city’s dwindling Parsi community, the library is a mysterious sanctuary where Parsi elders lounge away the afternoons as if reclining at a gentlemen’s club. They talk of the good old days, when their existence was not under threat. They speak of their formidable heritage; their belief in Zarathustra, and how they came from Persia long ago.

  When the duel of the godmen had come to an end, Bhalu had scooped up his sizable takings and accompanied me on the Netravati Express to Mumbai. He spent most of the journey counting his new fortune, all of which was in small change.

  Returning to a city that one has known and loved fills you with a delicious sense of warmth. Unbridled greed had brought me to Mumbai some time before. Like the Trickster, I had hoped to make a fortune from others’ naivety. Unlike him, I had a distinct handicap. I had not grown up on the streets of Calcutta. My conniving idea – to buy up European antiques in Mumbai’s infamous Chor Bazaar, the Thieves’ Market, and sell them back in England – had come to nothing. Now, returned to the city which I had hoped once to take by storm, I castigated myself. How could I have been so foolish? How had I expected to bamboozle Mumbai’s hard-bitten antique dealers into selling their artifacts cheaply?

  As Bhalu went in search of an old pal from Calcutta, I waited in the Parsi reading-room for D. Blake to turn up.

  Friend, confidant, and mentor, Blake was an American musician who had made his home in Mumbai. He had first come to the city in search of a teacher of Indian music. Years spent in Mumbai had shown Blake many things, and he was now a mine of the city’s most arcane information. I felt certain that he could direct me towards the unusual.

  Unfortunately, Blake had become detribalized beyond recovery. Tell-tale signs of his degeneration popped up in many forms – the most notable being that he was always extremely late for an appointment.

  As the regulator clock chimed three, a white-haired Parsi gentleman sat down in the tattered armchair beside mine. He must have been in his nineties. I wished him a pleasant afternoon, and said I thought it would rain. The man drew a long, deep breath into his lungs, and let out a sharp cough. Whatever his condition was, it was obviously very advanced.

  “Got asthma, have you?” I chirped. “If you do, I can recommend a wonderful cure in Hyderabad. The treatment was a little distressing, but it’s cured me.”

  The old gentleman thumped a fist on his chest.

  “It’s not asthma,” he grunted. “I don’t have asthma.”

  “I’m glad to hear it. Then you’re probably in fine shape.”

  Coughing phlegm into a handkerchief, the old Parsi continued the inane conversation.

  He introduced himself as Mr. Sodawaterwala. It was an unlikely name, but the Parsi community used to take their job titles as a surname during the British Raj, and some of the stranger surnames have endured.

  “Do you want to hear something?” he asked.

  “Of course, what?”

  “Well, “ said the wrinkled mouth, “when I was a baby, my parents took me to have my horoscope read. The astrologer foretold my future in great detail. He said that I would become an industrialist, which I am. And he said I would have three sons, which I have. But he prophesied that I would die by drowning.”

  “Oh, dear, I hope you can swim.”

  “I can’t,” replied Mr. Sodawaterwala. “My parents were so fearful of the Prediction, they made sure that I never learned. They thought that if I could swim, I might be tempted to go near water … and the astrologer’s horoscope would come true. So,” the old gentleman continued, “I have spent my entire life avoiding water. I have never paddled in a river, bathed in the ocean, splashed about in a swimming pool. I’ve never even taken a bath. Imagine what a curse the astrologer’s horoscope has been all these years!”

  “But avoiding water so cautiously sounds very sensible to me.”

  Mr. Sodawaterwala regarded me for an instant.

  “Maybe not so sensible,” he said. “You see, I’ve just come back from my doctor. I have a heart condition. This means my heart doesn’t work as well as it should. It should be pumping hard enough to drain the fluid from my lungs. But it isn’t. The result is my lungs are filling with water. In short – I’m drowning.”

  When D. Blake finally turned up more than three hours late, I told him about Mr. Sodawaterwala, who had gone home.

  “Don’t you just love this place?” he said. “It’s the greatest hang-out in town. There’s never a dull moment when there are Parsis around.”

  Blake had altered little in appearance since my previous visit to Mumbai. He was still dressed like a Cuban revolutionary: black beret, dark glasses, and scraggly beard. His conversation was the same florid blend of sardonic remarks and witticisms.

  “So, what’s all this about studying illusion?” he sniffed, when we had done with pleasantries.

  “You know, I’ve always been fascinated with illusion and conjuring. Always – since the guardian of Jan Fishan’s tomb got me interested as a kid.”

  Blake removed his dark glasses and waved them around as he spoke. His emerald eyes flashed subversively.

  “Oh yeah?” he cracked. “So pull a rabbit out of my beret then!”

  “I’m not here to practice illusions,” I said, “I’m here to observe. You see, I'm on a journey of observation.”

  Straightening his beret, Blake thought for a moment.

  “Who told you to go on this journey then, man?”

  “Feroze did, of course.”

  “Feroze?”

  “Yes, Feroze, he’s my te
acher.”

  D. Blake’s face dropped. He was obviously taken aback. For he had himself been my mentor.

  “Feroze is an illusionist,” I said. “He’s instructing me in the illusory Sciences.”

  “I know when I'm not wanted,” Blake whimpered. “I’ll just go back to my rooftop.”

  “Listen to me, Blake! I need help. What’s going on in town? You know … unusual stuff.”

  Blake perked up a bit. Like me, he had a penchant for the bizarre.

  “You know there’s no shortage of oddballs here,” he said. “What about the guy who’s spinning spider’s webs into silk for bullet-proof jackets? Or there are the street kids who’re being kidnapped and shipped to the Persian Gulf to work as under-age camel jockeys. Or what about the dude who’s making dolphin-milk cheese? Or,” cried Blake, flailing his arms about briskly, “what about Jimmy, the part-time god?”

  D. Blake told me that as far as he knew Jimmy held a darshan, a session of worship, every second Tuesday. Thousands of devotees from across town flocked to the meetings held in north Mumbai. When I had asked Blake what motivated the part-time god, he had replied that such matters were for me to find out.

  A brawny male masseur at the secret Iraqi hammaam off Mohammed Ali Road revealed that Jimmy’s sign was a cobra, and that he had at least one lakh, a hundred thousand, followers. The masseur sent me to a laborer in the nearby Fighting-Kite Bazaar. As he blended a paste of powdered light-bulbs and glue, to cover the strings of fighting-kites, he disclosed that Jimmy was always accompanied by his adoptive mother: an elderly goddess named Gururani. He disclosed, too, that Jimmy had worked as a clerk in a bank, until his position became untenable. The bank manager, who himself was a follower of Jimmy’s, felt obliged to crawl past the clerk on his hands and knees. Since leaving the bank, Jimmy had started his own business making “Jimmy Brand” incenses. The information seemed to have the hallmarks of fabrication. Only a face-to-face encounter with the deity would, I was sure, shed light on the truth.

  From the Fighting-Kite Bazaar, I made my way to the Chor Bazaar, to meet an old associate. He was a shop-keeper with a cavern of European artifacts. His name was Anwar Sadat.

  Anyone in Mumbai in need of a rusty World War I dental drill, an HMV gramophone, an old set of golf clubs or a tuba from Berlin knows to drop in on Anwar. For two hundred years his family have been purveyors of European antiques. Now almost lost in time, his wares lie like an attic of souvenirs from Mumbai’s past. I adored glancing around the cluttered shelves, imagining the private histories of Anwar’s paraphernalia. Each object, encased in oil and dust, hides a tale. Stethoscopes and tinplate toys, sextants and barometers, chandeliers of Belgian crystal, plate cameras and warped violas, a scale model of a four-masted barque, a set of silver fish knives, a Meissen figurine, and a doll’s house with a damaged roof.

  Years had passed since I last sat and chatted to Anwar Sadat. He was a soft-spoken man, a jewel in a trade which tends to attract the more mendacious members of Mumbai society. But then again, as I always reminded myself, this was the Thieves’ Bazaar.

  With two pots of hot sweet tea inside us, Anwar called for his young son to come down from the attic room above the shop. The sound of infant footsteps on the precipitous staircase followed. A moment later, the boy’s hand squeezed mine in a strong greeting, and I wondered how I could have forgotten about him. For his name was Saddam Hussein.

  Anwar listened to my inquiry. When I had finished, he stared at the floor tiles of his shop and thought hard. If anyone knew where Jimmy held his meetings, I felt sure it would be Anwar Sadat.

  A third pot of tea came and went. The pet goat, Rustam, gamboled over in search of food. Anwar rubbed the sides of his bristly face, furrowed his brow, and pondered the riddle of Jimmy, the part-time god. As a pious Muslim, the shop-keeper might have derided the notion of a less than full-time supreme being. He might too have scorned the thought of a god in human form. Although not condoning the godman, he was willing to help me seek him out.

  “I don’t know what life’s coming to,” he lisped. “All sorts of unlikely things are going on. Look at this …”

  Anwar held up the morning’s newspaper. He pointed to a report about a Western doctor’s work on implanting pigs’ hearts into humans. It might be a life-saving operation, but for Muslims the very idea is monstrous.

  “First pigs' hearts and now a god called Jimmy,” moaned Anwar Sadat. “I don’t know where the world is going. But then,” he said, squeezing his son’s cheek, as Hafiz Jan had once done to me, “we are just observers, aren’t we?”

  Anwar shooed Rustam away from nibbling volume nine of a rotting Encyclopedia Britannica. He scribbled something on a corner of his newspaper. Tearing it off, he handed the scrap to me.

  “Go and see this man,” he said. “He deals in freight, but I have a feeling that he will know your god.”

  * * * *

  The directions took me to a building in north Mumbai, near the city’s domestic airport at Santacruz. At first, I felt sure I had misread the address. The business was not a freight or haulage company. It was an undertaker’s. Coffins were stacked up either side of the doorway like crates at the dockside. A number of seasoned carpenters were squatting at the back of the room, smoking biris. I handed the fragment of newspaper to a rather dapper character inside the office. There were seven telephones on his desk, each a different color. He shook my hand.

  “Are you a friend of Anwar Sadat?” I inquired.

  “Ah, Anwar,” he said warmly, “I haven’t visited him for a long time. And how’s little Saddam Hussein?”

  “He’s very well. Anwar told me you were in the freight business. So I am a little puzzled to see so many coffins.”

  “But I am in shipping,” said the man, scanning his telephones. “I’m a corpse shipper. Ship them all over India, and abroad, too.”

  When pleasantries were at an end, I asked the undertaker what he knew about Jimmy.

  “Sri Jimmy Nagputhra and Gururani Nagkanya,” he proclaimed. “Of course I know them. A couple of my employees follow them.”

  A pair of elderly carpenters were called from the workshop. Both wore a badge depicting a multi-headed cobra. The older of the two artisans invited me to the Tuesday-evening darshan, in two days’ time. All were welcome to hear Sri Jimmy speak. The meeting would commence at eight p.m., and would continue well into the night.

  The corpse shipper snapped his fingers, and his employees slipped back to the workshop. Unable to contain my enthusiasm, I reflected aloud.

  “This sounds wonderful,” I said. “Imagine a part-time god called Jimmy, whose symbol is the cobra, and whose devotees number over one hundred thousand!”

  The corpse shipper straightened the telephones on his desk. Then, very slowly, he shook his head from right to left.

  “Why?” he asked acerbically. “Why do you waste your time with these fly-by-night gods?”

  * * * *

  Tuesday night eventually came. By the time darkness fell, I could hardly contain my enthusiasm. After an excellent meal at Gaylord’s – most of which was spent press-ganging Bhalu into joining me – we took a taxi to Lalbag in north Mumbai. I never thought I would be imploring the Trickster to follow me.

  As the vehicle stop-started its way through the ever-denser traffic, I stared out at the apocalyptic clouds. The monsoon was well under way. Its storms had been pounding the city’s streets nightly. All the elements were there: a tip-off from Blake, a secret location, a considerable following and, best of all, a part-time god.

  We arrived at the Samaj Mandir Hall some time after nine p.m. There was no doubt that this was where the darshan would be held. About four thousand people – representing a cross-section of society – were milling about. All the women were wearing headscarves; all the men had plain white handkerchiefs tied over their heads. Bhalu and I copied them, for fear of standing out. The deities had obviously not yet arrived, for an electric wave of apprehension seemed to bind all the de
votees. Some chatted together; others flicked through pamphlets bearing a cobra’s image. Still more stood in silent meditation.

  Soon after ten p.m. the followers flew into a panic.

  An Indian-made Pal car was approaching. The vehicle – bedecked in marigold flowers – had taken on the aura of an emblazoned chariot. Some of the devotees shielded their eyes; others prostrated themselves as the motorcar drew up to the red carpet. Very slowly, the car’s doors opened, and the gods descended.

  Gururani got out first. She looked rather ordinary. Aged somewhere between sixty and seventy-five, her face bore an apathetic expression, like a rock star tired of the road. Numerous garlands weighed down her fragile neck; a sensible handbag dangled from her wrist. She was cloaked in a shimmering raspberry-colored mantle.

  Jimmy followed her from the vehicle on to the crimson carpet. Bhalu pulled me to the front of the crowd to get a good view. Tall, robust, and no more than about forty, he had a great square-shaped face, most of which was obscured by beard. Like Gururani, Jimmy was resplendent in a garish silvery-blue robe; and, as with his adoptive mother, he wore a golden filigree crown.

  The deities swaggered on platform shoes into the hall. I took a deep breath. It was a moment to savor. Rose petals were scattered from baskets clasped by a row of onlookers. Adoring devotees fell to the floor as the gods made their way past. When the deities had entered the capacious hall, the followers scurried barefoot behind.

  Once inside, the supreme beings ascended a dais; their followers taking their places on the main floor beneath. On the left side of the room sat the men; on the right, the women. No more than five hundred of the most respectable acolytes were permitted inside. The rest, who by this time must have numbered more than eight thousand, occupied a sizable football field outside.