Edging closer, she lowered her voice and spoke confidingly. “You see, I have decided that love brings nothing but pain and disillusionment. How many married couples do you see who are still in love? That ‘happily ever after’ gambit is complete hogwash. I have decided I am going to marry for money.” She paused, drew in her breath. “There is a proposal. A diamond merchant’s son, filthy rich, with offices worldwide. I can do what I want, travel wherever, shop like crazy, start a business, close it, start another.” She looked at me inquiringly, as if expecting a reaction. “I know it’s soon, after what happened, but I have thought it through. That’s what I want. That’s what will make me happy. Mentally, I have accepted it.”
“Oh, that’s great then,” I said, trying to sound light and agreeable. I wasn’t prepared for such a cold-blooded recovery. Once again I felt let down by my sense of judgment.
“Yes, but for this to work, I will need your help. The boy’s family is conservative. They are bothered about things like reputation. They found out about Rohit, but I said he was a friend, a raakhi brother actually. I said I had never been around, never known anybody intimately that way; my upbringing wouldn’t permit that. This made them happy. They believed me. You see, they will not accept someone who they think is not pure, who is not a virgin. It could create problems later. So, could you ask your Doc friend to stitch me up? Just one or two, in the right place?” The last bit came out in a rush. Yet it was I who was winded, unable to express my shock or my surprise.
A YEAR LATER, I received the invite: one of those elaborate jobs, on handmade paper, with tassels, and a smear of vermilion for luck. I went, not knowing how I had come to be invited, considering that I had failed to do her the favor. I had failed to talk to Doc and arrange the deception.
The venue was sprawling: the Turf Club. There were people everywhere, important-looking people in fine suits and saris, in Nehru jackets, sherwanis, and designer salwar kameez. The men looked pleased, wealthy, and well fed. The women had jewelry dripping off them. The trees had lights. The men swaggered and walked around, looking for faces more successful than them. Occasionally they’d clutch each other. “Know who that is? Sureshbhai from Amsterdam” or “Saileshbhai from Antwerp!” And then, in lowered tones, “You know how much he is worth? The last I heard it was six hundred crores.”
In the distance, music blared. Indipop and bhangra had the crowd swinging. Little children showed remarkable lightness of foot, with movements imbibed from MTV. The older girls swayed lavishly, their backs open, their hips lean and fluid. They’d been told that this was the place to invite proposals, the place to get a good boy from a good, wealthy family. So the girls rolled their eyes, undulated their hips, and moved their hands like temple dancers. The DJ smiled and upped the volume. Goaded by elders, prospecting males jumped into the fray. They entered briskly with a sense of purpose. They raised their hands, wriggled their shoulders, and danced bhangra-style to the beat. The girls turned and continued to sway; a little shyness came into play.
I waited in line to congratulate the bridal couple. My gift, a recycled Sega-of-Japan vase, felt inadequate in my hands. The couple stood on a stage. Behind them was a backdrop of gold. I tried to guess whether the gold was real, whether it was as pure as it looked, but of course it wasn’t. It was just done up to look that way, to keep the crowd guessing.
Accompanied by their elders—their parents, uncles, aunts, grandaunts, and granduncles—the couple received the guests. Each time someone came up, the couple would bow and take their blessings. Shyla was the perfect bride. She smiled on cue, laughed on cue, even bent and touched some of the guests’ feet. She did this many times over, and they—the guests—would pat her head and bless her, and at the side her in-laws would glow with pride.
I looked at her. She looked truly happy. Or should I say accomplished? My mind went back to the hospital, to the girl who had entered, warm and trusting, and she who had left, cold, confronted, and broken by life. My eyes went to the groom. He appeared plain and sloppy. And yet he looked so happy.
Just then a short bald man in a gray safari suit, flanked by gunmen, rushed past where I stood. “Some politician!” the man ahead of me whispered. The groom’s father lurched forward to receive him, gesticulating frantically to the guests who were about to ascend the stage to move back. The guests understood and froze. If a custodian of the nation had made time for this, he must be given due respect. And besides, what an achievement for the host: to have persuaded the politician to break from his busy remunerative schedule and attend. “Wah, sahib, wah! You are truly connected. Truly bigger than we thought.”
The bodyguards lowered their guns and eyed the women slyly. They let their eyes roll over the delicate waistlines curling into soft silken saris. Unknown to them, the women eyed them, too—for their bodies were rock-solid, not misshapen like their husbands’.
I took this in eagerly, this game of sanctimonious survival, and that’s when I saw him: Rohit! He stood ahead in the line, tall and bemused. He was casually dressed, in a checked shirt, black trousers, and a jet-black blazer. No tie, and that stood out, made him appear cool and self-assured.
So, she had called him, her raakhi brother, sanctified by the laws of a festival that allowed a woman to take any man as her brother by simply tying a symbolic flower around his wrist. Seeing this, I remembered the legends of old: the noble Queen of Chittor, who’d sent Emperor Humayun a raakhi, requesting him to rescue her kingdom from the King of Gujarat, and long before that Alexander’s wife, tying a raakhi to the wrist of King Porus—so that, if victorious, he’d spare her husband’s life. Both times the raakhi had served its purpose, as it had done for centuries, later, uniting siblings, strengthening ties, transforming them into something sacred and unbreakable. But now the times had changed. Traditions were being twisted. They were being misused to serve different ends, different motives.
The cameras went flash, flash, flash, and the politician stood onstage, hugging the bride, hugging the groom. He was much shorter than them, and this allowed him the leeway to grip the bride by the waist, which he did firmly with his short, stubby fingers, looking very pleased and very photogenic. Through the photo session, the boy’s family gave the broadest of smiles. Shyla stood erect and composed. The boy beamed oafishly. The women at his side touched their jewelry, drew up their backs, and looked into the camera demurely. The father barked at the photographer, “Come on; come on. Take some tight close-ups, some different angles. Make sure you get Sharma sahib in each and every frame, huh.”
I looked at all this and wondered then who the real culprit was, who the real haraami in focus.
Was it the politician, the obvious one? Or the groom’s father, who had insisted on a piece of hymen and paid this fabulous price? Or the groom, who had allowed himself to be the heir to such parochial thinking? Or the girl herself, looking so radiant and virginal, pleased that her past was buried and her future so well secured? Or, stepping out of frame but not out of line, was it Rohit, the raakhi brother, the man loosely dressed and at ease, inadvertently the architect of this sham?
By the time I stepped onto the stage, onto its red welcoming carpet, and into its embrace of warm, hearty camaraderie, I had figured out that haraami was a nice word to describe the world. It was a canopy for the human race, a comfort zone unto itself, an explanation for all of life’s inexorable irrationalities. Maybe someday, after adequate observation, some lexicographer would realize this and invite its universality into the English language. Or some analyst would construct a theory around it. Or some evangelist would compose a song: “Haraami! That’s you and me! No one escapes, don’t you see?” Or, out of humble and retrograde acquiescence, I could end up meeting Shyla, for surely in her well-laid-out, functional marriage she’d need some diversion.
A DIFFERENT BHEL
♦ ♦ ♦
IT WAS A WARM SUNDAY EVENING, presided over by a slow-moving sky, when Nadir Ravankhot and his friends returned from their shikaar in the dark, di
stant Bhir Forest. As the dusky convoy of two Mahindra jeeps rolled in at the gates, the colony—a sedentary world of small residential blocks in a quiet part of South Bombay—started coming alive. Couples on their evening walk nudged each other and stepped onto the pavement. The volleyball game in the maidan was disbanded. The players—teenage boys in shorts and T-shirts—rushed to where they knew the convoy would stop: outside Nadir’s house, M block, M-51 to be precise. The boys called to one another excitedly. They shouldn’t miss out on the quarry the hunters had brought home, the spoils that would be transformed later into a mouthwatering feast. Seeing the jeeps, a twelve-year-old boy, his bicycle raised on one wheel, swayed and lost his balance; his feet shot out to collect himself in time. A teenage girl flirting with a boy her age lost interest in him; they both turned their heads in the direction of the approaching convoy. Boys playing cricket, girls playing hopscotch, middle-aged men discussing work, politics, or tax shelters under the new budget—all left their pursuits and looked at the jeeps. Men relegated to their balconies because of old age or arthritis called to their wives. “Look, he is back,” they said gruffly, enviously. For all the killing Nadir had done, for all the times he had shot a deer, a rabbit, a wild boar, and twice even a panther—he had done so when shikaar was permitted, and later, when it was banned—still life had been kinder to him than to them. They didn’t like that. Yet they felt the excitement.
There were two men in each jeep, each of them in their fifties. Nadir stood tall, towering, and red faced in the jeep his friend drove. His face was sunburnt. His eyes were small, hard, and alert. The hair on his head was light brown and receding, brushed back in waves to reveal a large, glistening forehead. His left leg was perched on the half door of the jeep. His rifle was in his hand. When the children of the colony came running up, he’d turn and train his rifle on them. He would pretend to take aim and shoot, and they would squeal and freeze, and he would roar with laughter. They’d know then he didn’t mean to shoot. He was only playing with them.
“Can’t say, though. Never can say with Nadir Ravankhot what might snap,” said Hilda Pestonji. “He is not the terror he used to be, but still, when a man kills dumb animals for pleasure, knowing full well it is a crime, you know something is wrong. Something has never been right.”
Hilda and her friends Gul Sinor and Roxanne Banaji were seated on a circular stone bench in the garden adjoining the maidan. The garden was secluded from the maidan, so that the elders of the colony could come here and sojourn in peace. The ladies met here every evening for a break from the routine of their lives: loud, noisy children; whimsical in-laws; husbands who liked their meals hot, on time; not to forget servants full of excuses, who needed constant supervision. The ladies believed this interaction kept them young. It also kept them abreast of what was going on in the colony: who was dating whom, who was leaving whom, who was trying to muscle into whose parking spot. Looking at the faces of the ladies, their well-preserved bodies, their youthful clothes—tight slacks, T-shirts, naughty boy shoes—you would believe they had succeeded in beating age at its own game. They scarcely looked their years, which were around mid-forties, except for Hilda, who was fifty-two, glum faced, and slightly stooped in her posture.
“Oh, Hilda, give the man a chance,” said Roxanne Banaji. “He has paid for his sins long ago. Let us forgive now and forget.” She smiled at Hilda, who gazed after the convoy reproachfully.
“The man was a brute and will always stay one,” said Hilda. “After what he has done, how can we forgive him? If you knew him the way I do, you wouldn’t hold such a charitable opinion.”
“Then tell us, dear Hilda. Acquaint us with the sordid past of Nadir Ravankhot. Unlike you, we are latecomers in the colony. We don’t know what he has done to earn this reputation. Tell us about his mysterious past: why it has everyone tight-lipped. What is so dreadful about him?” Gul Sinor’s eyes fixed searchingly on her friend.
Hilda fell silent. Her lower lip dropped and her cheeks puffed outward. Her friends knew this to be a sign of contemplation. It was also a test of friendship, for there seemed to be a hidden pact among the older residents of the colony that the shenanigans of Nadir Ravankhot would never be discussed. Would Hilda break this pact? Would she deliver them the truth? It would be interesting to know.
Hilda sighed. “Very well,” she said. “I will, with pain, recollect the times we lived in fear of Nadir Ravankhot. Listen quietly and don’t interrupt until you see the bhelwalla.” Her friends nodded.
Hilda rose, stretched, and went and sat on the curve of the bench so that she faced her friends. Before sitting, she looked to see if the bench was clean and out of habit brushed the leaves and twigs off it. Gul Sinor brought her long legs up on the bench, crossed them, and sat in an erect yogic pose. With gray twinkling eyes she gazed at Hilda expectantly. Roxanne Banaji draped one leg over the other and placed her hands daintily over her knee. Fair, with liquid brown eyes, she was a picture of grace. The convoy rolled out of sight, taking its fans with it.
“I remember Nadir Ravankhot from the time he was fifteen and I was two years his junior,” said Hilda. “His father was an accountant in Central Bank; his mother used to stitch vestments. They weren’t well off; their house had a bleak, decrepit look about it. Passing by, you heard shouts and abuses. You heard terrible fights, for they were on the ground floor, where everything was audible. It was either Nadir yelling at his father or the old man telling the boy that what he was doing was no good; cutting classes and going to movies was not going to get him anywhere; it was going to land him in serious trouble. Not that the boy listened. He would play matka. He would drink at local bars. He would hang out with the mawalis outside the Strand Cinema, smoking charas, playing the flipper machines, and teasing coeds who came to see the morning shows. He would get bad reports from school; his parents would be summoned. It had no effect on him. He had flunked a couple of times and was already old for his grade. Once, during exams, he was caught cheating. He had sewn little chits of paper to elastic bands that, in turn, were sewn onto his underpants, and he would pull and refer to these through his half pants. A master noticed this and requested him to stop what he was doing. He smiled and told the master to mind his own business. He suggested the master look the other way if he knew what was good for him. The master—a short, overweight man—looked around nervously and saw what he stood to lose—the respect of other students who had stopped writing. He dragged Nadir off to the principal, who suspended him. The boy was not to come back to school for three weeks of the new term, which would begin after the holidays. After the bell had rung and the students had dispersed, Nadir gathered his schoolbag and approached the master. ‘Sir,’ he said. ‘You have to walk to Churchgate Station for your train, right? You do that to stay healthy. But I don’t think it will be healthy for you in the future. Anything can happen on the way.’ He smiled and with a flourish whipped out a pocket comb, which made the poor master yelp in terror. The master knew Nadir’s street connections. He suspected the boy carried a knife he wouldn’t hesitate to use. After school reopened and Nadir returned from his suspension, the master would call a cab to the school gate and he would get a peon to accompany him all the way to the station. Along the way, he would keep turning and looking back to see if he was being followed. Finally, it got to him so much that he gave Nadir additional points on his exams, which the boy didn’t deserve but which helped him pass that year. I got to know this from other colony boys who studied at the same school as Nadir.
“I think Nadir had a complex. It began in school, in the early days, when he saw other boys better off than him in status. He couldn’t speak the way they did: fluently, in English. He couldn’t dress like them or talk like them about clothes, cars, vacations, and birthday parties. It never occurred to Nadir’s parents that a boy would need that as part of his acceptance quotient, his image. So Nadir decided to do things on his own, and he decided to throw his full weight behind it. With his height, size, and brute strength, he
became a terror. He wouldn’t hesitate to challenge boys older than him. He would provoke them to fight and take pleasure in beating them up. He and his friends, those guys he goes hunting with—Dara, Bailey, and Sheriar—they formed a nexus of terror. They called themselves the Four Aces gang and even got an ace with a serpent tattooed on their arms. Inspired by their friends from the Strand Cinema who would collect protection money from shopkeepers, the Four Aces began collecting hafta from boys in the colony who received their pocket money at the start of every month. Pointing to their tattoos, the Four Aces told the boys the serpent could protect them or crush them, depending on whether they cooperated or not. Depending on whether they paid up on time or not.
“One of the boys made the mistake of complaining to his father about Nadir’s extortion racket. His father promptly whisked him before old Mr. Ravankhot, who, cringing with shame, heard the story. That night when Nadir came home, Mr. Ravankhot was waiting with his belt in his hand. Without a word, he lashed Nadir across his shoulders, his chest, his legs, until his arm hurt; he was unable to raise it any more. Through the flogging, Nadir stood still, smiling. He did not flinch or look down even when his trousers ripped and the blood seeped through. He wanted to show his father he was unmoved: the old man had no power to change or to control him. Some people who stayed near the fire temple swore they saw Mr. Ravankhot crying on the steps of the fire temple that night. He was that kind of a man, religious and emotional, softhearted to the core. The lashing had hurt him more than it hurt Nadir.
“Four days later, Nadir and his friends caught the boy who’d told on them and, seizing his schoolbag, they fled with it. They lured him into one of those quiet lanes opposite the bazaar. There they slapped him and kicked him, and when they were sure he could not put up any more resistance they took his schoolbag and emptied it out. They pulled out their peckers and pissed into it, saying he should think of this each time he opened his bag. They warned him from now on he would have to pay twice the hafta. Failing to do so, he would face some real shit.
Breathless in Bombay Page 18