by Cyrus Mistry
‘Are you Mr Kavarana, the manager of this place?’
‘Who’re you? Horses are not allowed in here!’
‘You are under arrest, Mr Manager.’
‘And who may you be, sir, if I may ask?’
‘Deputy Commissioner of Police, if that’s any of your business.’
Some of the policeman’s impatience may have communicated itself to the horse, which whinnied and stood on its hind-legs for an instant. Buchia was dumbfounded, and more than a little frightened; he had no idea when he triumphantly and unilaterally undertook to evict the encroachers that he was violating a court’s instructions. He combed his fluffy sideburns nervously with his fingertips before asking:
‘On what charges?’
‘Assault, destruction of property, rioting and disturbing the peace. Come with me, please.’
Meanwhile, the constables in the police van had driven up to the adjoining disputed plot, and escorted back the watchman, who was wearing a white bandage on his crown; as well as Jameel and Ijaaz Sheikh.
Pouting grouchily, and limping every few steps, the watchman—evidently well-tutored by his employers—made a show of identifying members of the previous night’s ‘mob’ for the police; that is, he pointed out almost everyone he came across on the estate (barring the better-dressed mourners at the afternoon’s funeral), including a couple of gardeners who had been busy since early morning planting saplings for a proposed bamboo grove behind Albless cottage, and one seller of sandalwood who normally sat on a chair by the main gate retailing sticks to those attending the day’s funerals but who had left his post propelled by curiosity, alarm and an insidious feeling of excitement when the equestrian Englishman galloped past him.
The burra saheb rounded up men of different ages and professions, and had them bundled into the van—a motley group of corpse bearers in pajamas, sudrahs and prayer-topees, two gardeners in khaki shorts and mud-stained vests, the sandalwood-vendor and Buchia; all twenty-two of them were, moreover, handcuffed, and driven down to the Colaba police station where they spent a rough and sleepless night in the lock-up.
Later, I heard from those who had been present, there was a curiously contrived temper to the whole episode, as if the objective was to intimidate the culprits of yesterday’s destructive merriment, rather than apply the rule of law. Why a police officer should be so partisan in an ostensibly criminal matter was something that wasn’t speculated upon until much later, but I’m glad to say our boys, and Buchia as well, suffered these indignities without feeling cowed; in fact, they displayed a healthy and outraged resistance.
While all this was happening, myself, Jungoo and Kobaad were out. We drove back in the hearse with the corpse we had gone to fetch to a dark and desolate Towers of Silence with hardly anyone about. The sun had already set, and the whole place was immersed in an air of mourning. Luckily Edul had plucked up the courage to phone Coyaji as soon as the police van drove away and inform him of the arrests. Next morning all twenty-two prisoners were brought before a magistrate, and released on bail, for which the required amounts were put up by the Punchayet.
Three weeks later, when the case came up for hearing, the Punchayet’s lawyers had built a strong defence for its clients: land records had been dug up, certified gift deeds were produced and the verbal testimony of old-timers like Rustom and Fardoonji invoked to assure the magistrate that the land which the Sheikh brothers were claiming had never been in their, or their father’s, possession during the last twenty years. As for the relatively minor charge of assault on the watchman, some clever cross-examining of his deposition deflated the claims of ‘serious injuries inflicted by a murderous mob’.
As a final and dramatic trump in support of their contention, a handwritten receipt was produced by the plaintiffs— acknowledging payment of Rs 12,000 by a Mohammed Ghulam Sheikh to the Parsi Punchayet in 1919. But a brief examination of the paper by the court’s clerk, and then the magistrate himself, led him to observe that it was entirely deficient in details of the plot allegedly purchased; and moreover only semi-literate in its language. It was rejected by the magistrate outright as a ‘crude and unconvincing’ attempt at forgery; the case was dismissed.
The deputy commissioner of police, Strickham, too, came in for some strongly censorious comments from the English magistrate, a man called Peabury, who found the policeman’s entry into the Towers of Silence on horseback, and his handcuffing of the accused ‘overzealous beyond the farthest limits of civility’. This observation made in court was widely reported in the Indian press; and word of mouth even insinuated that Strickham was corrupt, and had probably received a large amount of money from the Sheikhs to behave in the way he did.
(ii)
Several months after this rumpus died down, we were already on the cusp of 1947—the year in which India got her independence—when, late one evening, I had a visitor at my quarters whom I didn’t immediately recognize.
It was already dark when he knocked at my door, and though we now had electric lights at Doongerwaadi, the one on my veranda hadn’t been turned on.
‘Phiroze. . .?’
It was a husky, soft voice, which sounded familiar, but I couldn’t place it. Only when the stranger drew closer as though wishing to embrace me, I recognized him at once: it was my old school buddy.
‘Rohinton?’
His face was round, his shoulders broad and fleshy: expansively at ease with himself in a colourful bush shirt, he still retained much of his baby fat but his features seemed wrinkled and pitted: Rohinton Kanga all right, but no longer the carefree and cheerful friend I remembered. Before I could stop him, he enveloped me in his arms and hugged me tightly. I was seeing him again after the passage of a very long time.
I observed only one unexpected change in his appearance. Like myself, he too had lost most of his hair; but, in his case, two outgrowths at the rear extreme of his crown—grey, hopelessly entangled bushes, straggling sideways—gave him the mien of a winged creature caught in a moment of fluttery indecision before taking flight.
‘Better have a thorough bath, once you get home,’ I said, apologetically. ‘I’ve just got back from washing a very old dead man. . .’
He grimaced, opening his mouth wide and cried dismissively:
‘Aaargh. . .! Bullshit, all bullshit. Baloney. Makes no sense at all. . . Anyway, I’m so happy to see you again, Phiroze,’ and he gave me another bear hug.
‘It’s what—fifteen years—since you left for England?’
‘Fourteen, actually. Oh, I’ve been back, I’ve been back before. . .’ said Rohinton apologetically, ‘several times as a matter of fact, but never thought to look you up. . .until this time, when I need your help.’
‘That’s fine, no problem. I’m a nussesalar, you know, a “Custodian of the Unclean”,’ I reminded him. ‘You could hardly have invited me to a social gathering of your family and friends, and expected them to welcome me warmly.’
‘Why not? Why not!’ asked Rohinton angrily, emphatically. ‘I just don’t believe in all that bullshit.’
‘You’d be surprised how deeply ingrained these beliefs are. . .I don’t believe myself as a rule that exposure to corpses contaminates the living, yet right now I feel an urgent need to bathe. I’ll feel uneasy and restless until I do. But tell me what—’
‘Don’t let me stop you, don’t let me stop you. . . Please, go ahead. I’ll wait.’
‘You said you needed some help?’
‘Well, yes, we’ll talk about that when you’re feeling more relaxed. It was my dad who suggested to me, reminded me in a sense, that you might be able to help us.
‘In what way?’
‘In this whole matter of Joseph’s last rites. . . Maybe you should have your bath first? Then we’ll talk at length. . . And besides, I’m sure there’s so much else we have to catch up on as well. . .’
It was then the penny dropped. So Joseph Maloney was Nariman’s first son by his Irish wife. And the entire hullabaloo that had
been going on for the last two weeks or so—I was only vaguely aware of its shrill repercussions—about a Christian foreigner who had renounced his faith, and was seeking permission from his deathbed to be allowed a Zoroastrian funeral—was Rohinton’s half-brother! During all the hours I had spent in my youth at Mon Repos, Rohinton’s sprawling Mazagaon bungalow, never once had I set eyes on this ruddy half-Irish half-Parsi whose moribund spiritual aspirations were exercising Zoroastrian passions in the city of Bombay to a never-before-scaled pitch of rabidity.
‘Please do sit, Rohinton. Make yourself comfortable. I won’t be long.’
When I came out of the bathroom, I saw that Farida had made some tea for us. Rohinton was sipping his appreciatively, while another cup, covered with an upturned saucer, waited for me.
‘When Margaret went back to Ireland, Joseph went with her. My father couldn’t make that first marriage work. . .but soon after—the poor boy was only six then—she fell ill and, in a few months, died. He was brought up in Ireland, and later England, by her relatives.
‘Though he retained his mother’s name, Maloney,’ said Rohinton, not wasting much time on preliminaries, ‘Joseph claims he’s always felt a deep connection with my dad, which he was able to renew only after so many years. In the meanwhile, at Oxford, he had studied World Religion, and even done a doctorate in Zoroastrianism. . .but then it was not so much his intellectual appreciation of our religion, as his visits to Bombay and his meetings with my dad that deepened his desire to convert to Zoroastrianism.’
‘But your dad himself was never very much into—’ I interrupted him.
‘Traditional religious ideas?’ he completed for me. ‘No, never. He was a liberal, a freethinker. . . But now, in his old age, he’s changed completely. You should see him: he’s turned completely revivalist. Does his Kashti prayers devoutly three times a day, coughing away in front of an afarghan; his greatest wish—which I suppose he’s praying for—is to see the religion prosper again, the faithful acquire a proper understanding of its basic tenets and the ultra-orthodox shed their hidebound prejudices. . .
‘And secretly, he’s confided in me, he also believes in the imminent advent of Bahram Varjawan, the legendary preacher and messiah, who, it is believed, has already been born somewhere in the Middle East—whose dynamic reinterpretations of Zarathustra’s teachings will lead to a great resurgence of Zoroastrianism, perhaps even, or so Dad hopes, a new, independent nation of Zoroastrians, which will be among the foremost in the world.’
‘A tall order,’ I responded, somewhat sceptically.
‘Well, I confess there are times when I wonder myself if in his old age he hasn’t lost his marbles. . . But he’s quite sanguine about it all,’ protested Rohinton, ‘and willing to put his money where his mouth is. In fact, two years ago, the last time Joseph was in India, they had planned for him a series of twenty lectures aimed at the average Parsi, on everyday as well as abstruse matters of faith. . . But it was indefinitely postponed when, during that very trip to India, a variant of the Hodgkin’s disease that had killed his mother some forty-odd years ago was detected in Joseph. He went back to England, and doctors there confirmed it as well.’
‘Hodgkin’s disease?’ I asked, and he nodded.
‘Nowadays it’s more often called Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Basically, a form of cancer that attacks the immune system and white blood corpuscles. . . You see, the problem is that Joseph’s navjote was never performed. His mother, and after her, her relations, brought him up as a Roman Catholic. Otherwise, technically, with a Parsi father, he should be perfectly eligible for a Parsi funeral. And now that he’s on his deathbed, no Parsi priest will agree to perform his navjote.’
‘If you’re hoping I can persuade Father to do it. . .’ I said, and before he could express in words the exasperation that showed on his face, I hurriedly completed what I wanted to say: ‘No chance! My father’s the most diehard fundamentalist you could hope to meet!’
‘But haven’t you been following what’s going on in your city?’ said Rohinton, who had been waiting patiently for me to finish. ‘Why, it’s all over the papers!’
Actually, after Seppy’s passing it was true—it had happened so gradually I hardly noticed it myself—I had lost touch, as well as interest, in the outside world. Temoo’s radio had been silent for some years, and gathering dust. Now, of course, we had electricity. Aspi and Sola, a couple of others had bought radios too, but I hardly ever listened to it. Whatever little I came to know about the world was gleaned from the tittle-tattle of my better informed, more loquacious colleagues.
‘You see, after Dad offered them a donation of Rs 25 lakh, which the Punchayet gratefully accepted, it has softened its position on the issue. But the trustees are now saying that since there’s never been a precedent of a terminally-ill person adopting the Zoroastrian religion in the concluding hours of his life, they will have to first refer the matter to the high priests and religious scholars.
‘Dad is completely moved and saddened by the “homecoming” of his firstborn, whose untimely and tragic drift towards death is too painful for him to watch. My father is very, very keen to make it possible to comply with Joseph’s final, most heartfelt wishes. Of course, the hardcore element in the Parsi public is even more incensed. They’re saying that the Parsi Punchayet has been bribed by Nariman Kanga, that it’s willing to put the religion’s core values on sale, if the price is high enough.’
Now sixty-seven, my father, Framroze, had over time acquired an inviolable reputation for righteousness and integrity, apart from the one of being a bad-tempered priest who never tolerated any hanky-panky from his subordinates. Among the Council of High Priests (whose meetings he hardly ever attended) as well as informally, he had grown extraordinarily in stature.
In fact, when news of his wife’s premature death overlapped with long-forgotten tales of a dissolute and lascivious son who preferred to marry a khandhia’s daughter rather than follow in his father’s noble footsteps, Framroze acquired, among common people, the aura of a long-suffering, tragic and saintly figure, whose opinion on religious matters carried tremendous authority. Nariman Kanga would have known that, which is why he wanted his support. It would definitely strengthen the Punchayet’s case, too. But whether my father would agree to go against the fierce gale of public disapproval, and favour sanctioning Joseph’s last rites, was an open question. Personally, I doubted it very much.
‘I could certainly speak to him. Ask him what he feels. . . The difficulty is that he doesn’t like to even meet me. . .’
‘Ah,’ said Rohinton, ‘maybe we’re being a little unfair here. How do you know what his feelings for you are now? So many years have passed since you married against his wishes. . . And even that poor girl you wed, it’s a long time since she passed away. . .people change with the passage of time. . . Your father may be secretly longing for a rapprochement, how do you know?’
‘Er, yes. . .it’s possible,’ I replied. ‘Though I do keep up with news from home whenever I meet Vispy. . . He drops in, every now and then. And I’ve had no inkling of such a mellowing.’
‘Hey, what’s Vispy up to?!’ asked Rohinton.
‘Nothing. . . Just another job as accountant, like the one he had before. . . This one’s slightly better paid, I think, with a firm that manufactures nuts and bolts. . .’
‘Is he still single, then?’ asked Rohinton. ‘Ran into him once at Gowalia Tank, during a previous visit.’
‘He’s single. Goes out walking by himself in the evening. Sometimes he walks here, at the Towers. Anyway, I’ll definitely go and meet my dad. Tomorrow, perhaps? I’ll do what I can for Joseph.’
‘Let’s make it a date, then. Tomorrow evening? I could pick you up in my car.’
‘I don’t think he’d like that. I’ll have to talk to him alone.’
‘No, of course,’ said Rohinton. ‘I meant I’ll drive you there, and wait outside in the car. And after you finish your meeting with him, we could go some place,
have a drink and dinner at a restaurant, catch up with all the news?’
‘But I have no idea how long it’ll take me to persuade Father. Or if I’ll have any success at all.’
‘You can take as long as you like. I’ll be waiting outside. Two hours, three hours, doesn’t matter. . . And please do mention to him that my dad has offered to send a car and chauffeur to pick up Framrozeji and bring him to Dr Billimoria’s Nursing home at Queen’s Road, where Joseph has a private suite on the top floor. . . His systems are rapidly failing one by one; there are needles and tubes kept permanently sticking into him, and nurses attend him day and night; but he’s still conscious most of the time. Framrozeji could talk to Joseph himself, and see how much this means to him. . .’
‘Let me speak with Father first. I’m not terribly hopeful, but I’ll try. The best time to meet my father would be, I suppose, around six-thirty in the evening when he’s finished with the day’s work and eaten his dinner. . . Tomorrow. . .?’ I hesitated, doubtful for a moment; then remembered: ‘Oh yes, from tomorrow, luckily, for the rest of this week I’m on morning shift, my duty ends at four-thirty. Could you come here then, Rohinton, a little after six?’
‘Of course, Phiroze. Definitely. I’ll be there. Thank you. Thank you so much. . .’
‘Don’t thank me yet, Rohinton,’ I cautioned my school friend, as he got up to leave. ‘And have a good night’s sleep. . .’
(iii)
When Rohinton rolled by next evening in his red Buick convertible and honked obstreperously outside the khandhias’ quarters, I was ready.
He held the car door open for me, and as I slid into the seat beside him, I saw that a couple of my neighbours had appeared on their balconies to see who it was; among them, Temoo. Very old now and suffering a great deal on account of the growth in his belly, I wondered if seeing me drive away like this at night, in a fancy car, brought back memories for him of similar nights when his wife Rudabeh was driven away in equally swanky cars; and of that one fateful night, when she never returned. I suppose it did. But why am I thinking of that now?