“From the time he was in school, Nadir was fond of gambling. He would play street roulette and frequent dens like the Red Fox and the Blue Haven. He would hang out for hours, playing the slot machines, until he had exhausted his money. You might ask where he got it from, his parents being so poor. From what I have heard, he used to cheat Arab tourists at Colaba. He would sell them parrots in cages, saying that if they fed the parrots a special diet for a few months the parrots would start talking. He would sell the Arabs nuts, which he would get in wholesale quantity from Crawford Market. And he would charge a hefty amount for the nuts, too. He would also sell them a cage, saying it was made from special material to protect the parrot. You know Arabs? The fact that the boy spoke English, he seemed better mannered than the street touts, made them believe him. They parted with their money and waited for the day their parrots would talk back to them.
“Oh, he was a bad one, all the way from the start. He used to steal tires and fenders of cars and brakes and window shutters from the railway yard and has even stolen money from the donation box at the fire temple. There was no proof, but we knew it was him. He was seen by old Mr. Bharucha who had come for his early-morning prayers. Mr. Bharucha had wondered what a boy like Nadir, so defiant of authority, so devoid of spiritual inclination, was doing at the temple that early. But he was too polite to ask. Besides, Mr. Bharucha always hoped that the Lord, in his infinite mercy, might draw the misguided boy onto the right path. When the theft was discovered, the priest of the fire temple was so shocked that he held special prayers for the sinner, so that he would realize the gravity of his sin. Of course, we all knew it was Nadir. He wasn’t seen for days thereafter, and it was rumored that he and his friends had rented motorcycles and taken off to Lonavala, where they got drunk in some motel and did things best known to themselves.
“By the time he was in college, Nadir had earned a reputation as a thug, a dada of sorts. His services could be hired for a fee. A person standing for election to the college council could be persuaded to opt out; all it took was a visit from Nadir and his friends. Or a boy seeing a girl fancied by someone else could be persuaded to withdraw from the relationship, without as much as an explanation to the girl he was dating. This was not just in the college where Nadir and his friends were enrolled but across most South Bombay colleges: they all came under his sway. Virtually every week there was some street fight, some gang that Nadir and his friends messed with, messed up, and there’d be celebrations and liquor flowing. Two or three times Nadir got into a police panga, and the inspector from the Colaba police station came to see Mr. Ravankhot. The inspector had great respect for Nadir’s father, whom he had met while investigating a fraud in the bank. Mr. Ravankhot had helped the inspector to narrow in on the culprits, who were his higher-ups in the bank. This show of integrity had impressed the inspector greatly, so he let off Nadir with a warning. Later Nadir was heard bragging to his friends, ‘I refused to say I was sorry to the inspector, although Dad was expecting me to do so. For this Dad thrashed me badly. But did I care? No! Dad has no strength. He is not like my grandfather, who used to take part in Hindu–Muslim riots, siding with the community that was outnumbered. Granddad could tilt the odds with just a few punches. I take after him—thank God for that!’
“Nadir would do crazy things like incite African tourists who paced the backstreets of Colaba in search of hashish and women. He would take money from them, saying he would procure them their needs, and then he’d invite them to recover it by fighting him. Most times, the Africans would curse and walk away, not knowing the tourist laws in our country.
“Besides having great natural strength, Nadir knew karate. He would train every evening at a dojo, where full-contact sparring was encouraged. Yet after a while he was forbidden to spar with any opponent junior to him. He was also banned from partaking in karate competitions, his instructor having realized that Nadir relished the sight of blood. Invariably he would get carried away and cause grievous injury to his opponents. As with some of the larger prey he would kill later, he would be thirsting for the blood of his victims. And he would go all out for it.
“Over time, the exploits of the Four Aces became more brazen. One day, the four of them brought some poor, drunk you-know-what to the wall behind the pavilion, where they had a time with her. Then they threw her out, saying they’d report her for trespassing. The poor woman stood by the wall, shrieking her curses and sobbing. She had reason to be hysterical. The money they promised her would have fed her children that night.
“Another day, Mr. Kavarana from T block happened to be with the Four Aces on a crowded bus. He saw them standing in the aisle, rubbing themselves against a young girl, whom they had surrounded. They pretended it was the motion of the bus that thrust them against her. The girl was too embarrassed to complain, too scared to protest. Finally, she got off in disgust.
“Late one night, they were parked in a car at Apollo Bunder, smoking hashish, when a police van cruised up for inspection. Nadir bragged to the colony boys how the sight of the cops had done nothing to faze him; instead he had stepped out, gone to the back of the van, and hidden his chillum, his full-to-the-brim hash pipe, there. He stood there, flanked by the other Aces, who knew instinctively what they had to conceal, while the cops searched their car for the familiar drug. Before the cops left, Nadir had reached out and recovered his chillum, hiding it in the brawny folds of his palm. ‘So much for smart-assed cops,’ he said, wearing his characteristic sneer.
“I don’t know if you girls remember, but there was a time in the seventies when a psychopath ran loose on the streets of Bombay. They used to call him the stone-head killer, for the fact that he would go around nude, braining sleeping pavement dwellers with a stone. The man was never caught, but so great was the fear he instilled that all citizens were ordered off the streets and there was a strict police vigil every night. You will never believe what the Four Aces did then. In a car borrowed from one of their mechanic friends, they went hunting for the stone-head killer, or so they said. On one of these expeditions, Nadir spotted a cop, who was alone, sleeping on a chair on a pavement. Nadir told Bailey, who was at the wheel, to stop the car. As the vehicle slowed, Nadir started disrobing. He whipped off his clothes one by one, right down to his socks; then, stepping out of the car, he walked up to the cop, shook him roughly, and asked, ‘Bhai sahib, yahan koi patthar milega? Brother, can you find me a stone at hand?’ He did this with a straight face, a gleaming muscle of rock in the moonlight. You can imagine the poor cop’s horror. He shrieked himself hoarse with terror, and even the sight of a car cruising up, stopping, the nude giant climbing in roaring with laughter, did nothing to assuage his nerves. This story became the talk of the colony. After this, it was established that there was nothing the boy Nadir feared. Not the stone-head killer, nor the cops, nor his own father or the one above in heaven.”
“Good Lord, Hilda! I never knew all this. When I moved into the colony, all I was told was that Nadir Ravankhot was a wild one. He had a wild past, which was now behind him,” said Gul, her gray eyes brimming with excitement.
“Wait; don’t interrupt,” said Hilda. She gulped twice and cleared her throat before speaking. “We had a girl called Franny Faraka who used to stay in C block. She was a bit of a mouse: shy, studious, prone to spending more time in the library, not into boys or into dating as we were. Each time they saw her the Four Aces would go, ‘Frigid Franny, Frigid Franny, is there something we can do to warm your fanny?’ On hearing this, the poor girl would turn red and step up her pace of walking. Once, in her haste to get away, she dropped her journal and ran, forgetting, in her terror, to recover it. Nadir went home with it and waited for Franny to approach him. But no—she preferred to copy out a whole year of notes, four hundred pages of text and sixty diagrams, if it meant avoiding contact with Nadir Ravankhot.”
“But wasn’t there someone who could speak up for her, a friend with the guts to approach Nadir, tell him off?” asked Roxanne, frowning.
She could see herself in that role.
Hilda shook her head. “Franny had no friends, not because she was unfriendly but because there was no one on the same wavelength as her. Besides, she came from an orthodox family, who did not like her mixing with girls like us lest she pick up our modern habits. Also, her parents were poor. She was on a charitable grant, which came to her as long as she managed to secure a first place in college. With that kind of pressure, Franny had no time to mix around. All she did was spend time in the library or pray in the fire temple. She prayed that she would continue to stand first, continue to receive the grant, so that she could study and become a doctor.
“Nadir waited for a month before approaching her with the journal. Holding it out and staring at her cleavage, he asked whether it was true she preferred sex between the covers of a book to sex between the sheets. He also asked her whether she had cobwebs down there that were touching her knees. Then he turned and walked away to where the other Aces stood watching. They backslapped him and said, ‘We’ve got to hand it to you, Nadir. In matters of daring, no one comes close.’ This further emboldened him. He told his friends he would be the first to leak into Franny. They sneered at him, saying he was now shooting his mouth off. Extending his hand, he simply said, ‘Your haft a commission against mine? I will prove to you it can be done.’ ”
“Oh, dear, don’t tell me he did what he threatened,” said Roxanne. Her brown eyes swam with worry. Her eyebrows furrowed in a deep, engulfing frown.
“What did you expect?” said Hilda. “I told you, didn’t I, the man is a brute? He shouldn’t be allowed in decent society.”
“Go on, sweetie,” said Gul Sinor. “Don’t jump the gun. We want to hear every bit of it.”
“Okay, but don’t tell me to stop halfway. Unless, of course, the bhelwalla comes.”
“Forget the bhel. I will buy you dinner at the Golden Dragon, if you go the whole hog. Tell us the full revolting details,” said Gul. “I want to know what it is that makes this man such a fright.”
“I think he looks a fright,” said Roxanne. “What with those small, beady eyes and that bloated face. I can never get myself to speak to him, nothing more than a ‘good morning’ or a ‘good day.’ ”
“Why, Rox, you are getting critical?” said Gul Sinor teasingly. “There is hope for you, after all. You might just make a super bitch, like the rest of us.”
“Oh, dear, did I sound bitchy?” asked Roxanne, horrified.
“Hmmm . . . sort of, getting there. A start, you know?” said Gul Sinor, laughing. Then seeing her friend’s distress, she quickly added, “Just kidding.”
“Should I proceed?” asked Hilda stiffly.
“All yours, honey,” said Gul, smiling. “Sorry for the diversion.”
“Poor Franny: what she went through, really,” said Hilda. “One day, an industrialist had come to the colony to address the youths on entrepreneurship. He was a real achiever, the head of a large industrial group, and a nation builder. A big crowd had gathered at the pavilion, and naturally, Franny was there to hear him. The crowd swelled to such an extent that there was barely a place to stand. People were craning over one another’s shoulders, jostling to get a glimpse of the great man. Strangely, in that crowd were Nadir and his friends—complete misfits, you would think. Inching forward, Nadir drew close to Franny, who was standing with her hands cupped behind her back. You won’t believe what he did next! He pulled out his pecker and, with his friends covering him, worked himself up to leak into Franny’s cupped hands. In all the jostling and pushing, and with all eyes on the speaker, Franny didn’t realize what had happened until it was too late. She felt something wet and sticky, turned, and saw Nadir and his friends slink away. She looked at her hands and fainted. People thought it was because of the crowd and suffocation. They took her home, where she ran a fever, became delirious. She stayed in bed for days, thinking she had been defiled, violated. She refused to leave her bed, refused to leave her house, and when she finally did, it was to visit the fire temple, where she clutched at the grills and broke down before the holy fire. There, with the flames as her witness, she asked for forgiveness, deliverance, her purity back. There must be something wrong with her, she felt, if she had been singled out for such humiliation. She stopped going to college. She lost interest in her studies. Her parents couldn’t understand what was wrong. They pleaded with her to tell them what it was that had frightened her so. They even threatened her, saying she would lose the grant; she would no longer be able to go to college, complete her Inter-Science, and qualify for medical school, as was her plan. She didn’t seem to mind that. It was as if she had lost her will to study, to listen, and to understand. Her professors came to see their model student. She refused to talk to them. She said it simply did not matter what she learned; life had taught her there were things beyond her control that didn’t want her to study anymore. She didn’t tell her professors there were voices that spoke to her at different times of the day, reminding her that she was merely an instrument in the hands of life. At night, she saw the faces behind the voices, one of them more clearly than the others. It was the leering face of Nadir Ravankhot, and it drove her farther under her blanket, into a shell she refused to emerge from. When she would venture out, she would feel the eyes of the colony boys on her. They knew. She knew that. They knew what had happened and they were discussing her. Her hands would burn; the heat would rise to her cheeks, to the spots behind her ears, and she felt all her dreams, hopes, and ambition were destroyed. The priest tried to speak to her, but she said that she was not worthy of his time. She had been corrupted: that was the word she used. He shook his head sadly and told her parents it seemed like a case of deadly possession; he would start on some powerful prayers that would dispel the spirit. After a month of prayers, her parents decided to call in a psychiatrist. Dr. Jal Unwalla spoke to Franny for an hour and then said to her parents he had no doubt she needed treatment and isolation. There was something in the environment that was worsening her condition. There was something that had soured her youth. The cause—whatever it was—had to be isolated from the effect; then maybe the effect would wear out. It could take days, months, or years. But that was her only hope, that and the treatment.”
“How awful,” said Roxanne. “A whole life gone to seed because of one man. But wasn’t he punished? Didn’t anybody get to know what he had done?”
“Someone obviously did,” said Gul Sinor curtly. “Otherwise how would Hilda know?” She had abandoned her pose, brought her knees together, inward, locked her arms around them, and rested her chin on her kneecaps. From there, she looked at Hilda expectantly.
“Now you are asking me to reveal my sources, and that’s asking too much,” said Hilda. “Be a pet, dear Gul. Run to the entrance and see if you can spot the bhelwalla. I don’t know why he is so late today. I have been dreaming about his khatta bhel all day. I just love the sour chutney. Sometimes I close my eyes and imagine the taste and I can actually experience it.”
“Oh no, I don’t like that chutney at all,” said Roxanne. “I don’t know how you can eat it. For me, it spoils a perfectly good bhel. I prefer the sweet date chutney. It is nice and thick and goes well with the crushed puris, the potatoes, and the dry vermicelli mixed in.”
“Neither would work for me,” said Gul. “‘Make mine spicy,’ I always say. What’s life without a bit of spice anyway?”
Gul strode to the edge of the garden, from where she peered over the hedge and called to a boy who was cycling, “Hey, fella! How would you like to earn yourself an ice cream? Just take a quick ride round the colony and see if you can spot the bhelwalla. Bring him here and get yourself a scoop from Kwality’s. How does that sound?”
“Sure thing, Mrs. Sinor,” said the boy, and pedaled away. “Just keep the money handy.”
“These boys of today,” said Gul, under her breath. “They won’t do a thing without payment.”
She walked back to where her friends sat lost in thought. The s
un had set. The trees appeared dark and drooping. The chalk-yellow buildings looked bright and monotonous, barracklike, against a purple, inflamed sky. Lights had come on in the apartments. Television sets poured forth their soaps, and in the midst of that came a soft pounding sound from some speakers.
“You were saying, Hilda, how you got to know what happened to Franny,” said Gul brightly.
“I don’t remember saying any such thing,” said Hilda. “I am allowed to keep a few secrets, am I not?” She pursed her lips stubbornly.
“Not if you consider us your good friends,” said Gul solemnly.
“It doesn’t matter,” said Roxanne hurriedly. “As it is, I am finding all this rather upsetting. Just imagine what a harsh turn life took for this girl Franny. Did she ever recover? Did she get her confidence back, I wonder? She must have been so vulnerable to let things hurt her so.”
“Yes, she was,” said Hilda. “Franny was reserved but tender-hearted. She used to walk to college daily just so that she could save money and feed stray dogs milk and bread along the way. And what a mind! Topped our batch in ISC and would have become a doctor or a scientist—so bright she was. And helpful, too, always giving her notes and her time to weaker students, never expecting a rupee in return, although she needed the money desperately.” Hilda’s lips quivered. She wrapped her arms tightly around herself.
It couldn’t be the breeze; there wasn’t any, thought Gul Sinor.
Rising, she went and sat beside Hilda and placed an arm around her friend. “If this is upsetting you, we could talk about other things,” she said. “We could talk about the bold and the beautiful.”
“Yes, what’s the latest on them?” asked Roxanne, taking the cue from her friend.
Breathless in Bombay Page 19