Breathless in Bombay

by Murzban Shroff

  “Yes, but still . . . ,” I said. My mind was racing. I’d heard about these local women, heard that they were the best, for they expected not words, nor wooing, nor gestures of tenderness. Without that—the niceties of courtship—they had so much more to give.

  My ears burned. The fire crept to my mouth. Perhaps it showed in my eyes, showed abruptly, because she looked at me and said, “I have come prepared, sir. I have brought my helpers.”

  Slowly, her two children came into sight. The fire went out of me, leaving my cheeks aflame, my heart pounding, my mind confused, and to tell you the truth, there was some relief, like I’d been spared madness.

  Not liking the thought of little children being put to work, I was tempted to send them away, to insist on Raju coming, but then I thought of the next downpour: the water down my walls, the puddles, the constant carrying and emptying of buckets. There were months to go before the monsoon ended and there was no telling what damage it would do, how it would weaken the walls and the ceiling.

  “Okay, but be careful,” I said, unlocking the terrace doors for her.

  The way up was dark and narrow. She had to grope before she found the switch. The children followed her. Every once in a while they’d turn to look at me.

  Soon I heard a dragging sound, then some banging, and I knew the damar was being chopped. Soon there’d be a fire, too, and smoke curling over the rooftops.

  I poured myself a mug of beer and settled down with the morning papers. The sun poured in through the windows and cast a glow in the living room. I could smell the damar burning on the terrace.

  I went through the news:an exposé on builders who were trying to capture a dhobi ghat and one on politicians who’d given away tracts of public land to private companies. I read about a film on the Bombay bomb blasts being banned, because the accused felt it would interfere with the court judgment, expected now, twelve years after the tragedy. I read about two actors who were being sued for staging a foreign play without copyright permission. I read about their indignation and the producer’s hot face-saving denial. I read about a girl being raped by a cop on Marine Drive and tribal girls being raped in Bihar as some form of caste-war vengeance. I decided to skip the international news page, which appeared to focus mostly on the new Pope, whether he was a Nazi sympathizer or not. I turned to the lighter pages and chuckled over Archie and Hagar, and I amused myself with the matrimonial ads, wondering what would happen if I were to write in to some of the “innocently divorced women from respectable families.” I stopped at the color sections and felt a mild sense of depression. There was nothing to read, except about people propped up by the media, people promoted for a price. In between, I had refilled my mug, and now both the mug and the bottle were empty.

  I rose to get more beer and realized I was tipsy. My mind was in a daze. I hadn’t realized how fast I had been drinking. I thought of the woman who worked upstairs—she who had started a fire over my head, a fire that licked and teased—and I wondered what it would take to get to know her. Just then I heard a murmur, a collective sound from below. Like a rumble, it reached my ears—from the marketplace all the way up to my third-floor residence.

  I went to the window and saw a crowd of people looking up, pointing over my head. I twisted my body and looked upward. I saw the damarwalla’s wife peering over the terrace wall, her breasts pressed erumpent against her blouse. She was flailing her arms, trying to explain something to the people downstairs, but they seemed reluctant to listen.

  Soon there were thuds on the staircase . . . the sound of footsteps in a rush . . . and the doorbell rang frantically. It was one of those chirruping ones that thundered through your soul.

  I opened the door and came face-to-face with angry people: lean, wiry youths in skin-tight jeans, vegetable vendors in white vests and striped pajamas, and some women in saris, who’d trudged up, their shopping bags full. There were about forty of them, and they crowded my staircase and my doorway, and all of them spoke at the same time. From their barrage I could gather some damar had fallen during application; it had scalded the neck and back of some poor woman shopping below. The woman had been rushed to Bhatia Hospital to get her burns treated, but the people who witnessed this were upset. They demanded an apology. They demanded justice. They wanted to meet the damarwalla who was responsible. “Call him,” they said. “Just call him. We will show him to be careless. We will teach him a lesson he won’t forget.”

  They were surprised when the woman appeared, she and her children, small, white, and terrified. The children cowered behind their mother, hiding their faces in the folds of her sari. From there they looked at the crowd fearfully.

  The crowd turned to her and said, “Where is your man? Where is he hiding? What is he doing sending you down? Ask him to come down at once! Otherwise we will go up and get him. Then it won’t be so good.”

  Speaking to them in Marathi, she said that he wasn’t there, he was at work, and it was I who had insisted on the extra damar being done that day, so she had to come with her tots, who had homework actually, tests in school to prepare for. She told the crowd in a low, bitter voice about my visits, about my bringing the police, and slowly the crowd turned to face me.

  An angry youth broke through the crowd. He came and stood close to me. I could smell his breath, the hot, incensed breath of youth. “Kya, sahib!” he said. “What sort of a man are you, making a woman work, making children do this kind of work? Now who will pay for this accident? You should have some sense, being educated.”

  Then an angrier voice from the back: “Arrey, what are we waiting for? Let’s call the police; let’s make a complaint about him exploiting little children, making them do dangerous work.”

  Then still more anger, and still more faces coming up in front, with their suggestions, with their breath and their sweat, which made me suffocate, made me dizzy, and at some point someone took my hand and, tugging gently, said I needed to see Varun Paoli, the local dada. It was unforgivable what had happened, and only he could settle the matter. My head spun. My mouth felt dry. The name brought fear to my heart, a clawing emptiness to my stomach.

  I backed toward the door, trying to get a foothold in, but the grip tightened around my wrist. Sharp nails dug into my flesh, in the parts between the veins. A big pudgy face—rough, green, unshaven, with a handlebar mustache—came into sight and said not to worry: Varun Paoli would get it under control. No one was to say a word to me. No one was to decide what should happen. Varun Paoli knew what to do. He was the boss man of the area.

  Some of the youths were not quite convinced. They felt that justice could be best dispensed by their hands. So they took their chances incurring Varun Paoli’s wrath—they delivered a blow or two to my face, at the side, which got me squarely on the ear and made me blink in disbelief. In the midst of this, I saw the woman push through the crowd and drag her children away and the crowd give way respectfully.

  I was led down the stairs, and on the way down someone delivered a punch to my ribs and someone a blow to my ear. It was a woman with her purse.

  On the landings, I saw my neighbors look curiously. The men opened their doors partly and tried to peek. The women whispered to them, saying they shouldn’t get involved. The children squealed and tried to push forward, but their mothers gripped them firmly and held them back.

  When I reached the ground floor, I could smell the damar burn. I could smell the fumes thicken and spread as the tar boiled furiously in the vessel, which was abandoned like me. The level of the tar would sink lower and lower, I thought, and, approaching the bottom, it would boil, froth, and curl inward before evaporating, before disappearing once and for all, in a way faster than this incident would from my mind. I wondered how long that would be. I guessed it would depend on Varun Paoli. On the price he would set, the penalty he would decide, the punishment he would impose, as boss man of the area.

  Held by my collar and wrist by the man with the mustache, I was led down the lane, through the bazaar
where I had lived for forty years. The vendors clicked their tongues disapprovingly. The shoppers craned to see. The urchin boys twittered and ran behind the crowd. They had lost interest in carrying and fetching. This was Sunday entertainment at its best.

  We turned into a side lane, to approach the place I knew as Varun Paoli’s adda, his den where people drank hooch, played matka, and got their problems sorted out. There was a crowd of people standing outside the den; they were staring at a slate on the wall, on which the matka results would be scribbled in chalk.

  Some people also waited at the entrance to the den. They sat tense and nervous on wooden benches in the portico. They were waiting for Varun Paoli’s adalat, his court of instant judgment, a law unto itself.

  Leaving me in the custody of two youths, the man with the mustache went inside the adda. The youths gripped me firmly, like I was quarry whom they’d trapped after days of pursuit.

  After ten minutes—which seemed like a lifetime considering my embarrassment—the curtain parted and Varun Paoli emerged. He was a dark man of average height, with hair in a fringe across his forehead and falling over his ears. He reminded me of one of those villains from the Hindi movies of the seventies, the kind with sideburns and a sneer. I namasted him to show that I meant well, that I meant no offense. He nodded in a way I thought was extra friendly, extra respectful.

  “What have you done, you fools?” Varun Paoli said, turning to the man who had brought me. “Who have you got here? I know this sahib well. He is from our gully. He has grown up here. How can you treat him like this?”

  Taking me by the arm, Varun Paoli led me inside, saying he was sorry these louts had caused me so much inconvenience, but they didn’t know a gentleman from a culprit. He said they were illiterate fools and that he was apologizing on their behalf, and then he asked whether I’d like a cup of tea. Without waiting for a reply, he snapped his fingers to a short, scruffy ruffian in baggy shorts: “Do special chai. Jaldi!”

  The room was large and profusely lit. The walls were lemon yellow; the ceiling was a pasty white. There were thick white beams running across the ceiling. There were no windows, only fans whirring at high speeds and bulbs with green lampshades. We sat on a mattress on the floor, leaning against soft, round cushions with sparkling mirror work. On the far side of the room, some men sat at narrow tables, huddled over notebooks and pads of matka tickets. They were tallying some calculations and pretended not to notice us.

  The tea came. It was served piping hot, in small white cups. Pouring it into saucers, we drank. Then, employing my most pleading voice, I told Varun Paoli about Raju Gondva, about his wife and his sister, who yelled at me like I was some common laborer. I told him about the many times I had requested them to send Raju Gondva to finish the job and how my trust was trifled with. Varun Paoli shook his head and said, “Sala Gondva, the bloody shirker. I will see why he didn’t come. Working? Hah! He must be lying drunk in some gutter. Or in some whore’s arms. Don’t worry, sir; your job will be done. You will have no more complaints. But why you went to the police in the first place I don’t understand. Next time, for anything like this, you come to me.” He smiled, and I saw that his teeth were enormous, like piano keys with dark gaps in between.

  Then he said, “You know, sir, I am thinking, there is so much good to be done in this world, so much work for people like you and all those waiting outside, that sometimes I think I should leave all this kala dhanda, this matka-phatka, and go into politics. Then I can be a public servant. I can truly serve the janta.” He paused. “You think I will win, sir, if I stand for election? You think I stand a chance?”

  I looked at him. His face was solemn. Others in the room stopped their work. They looked at me in a peculiar sort of a way, as if my answer would decide something. It would decide either Varun Paoli’s fate or mine. I gulped, nodded, and said, “Yes, most certainly.” He had my vote for sure, and he’d get plenty more from the neighborhood.

  “You are a good man, sahib,” Varun Paoli said. “I wish I could be like you, but then my circumstances were different. No mother, no father, and four sisters to look after . . . and so many difficulties and no job. No money to go to school or to get a degree. Sometimes no money to eat.” His voice tapered off and he looked sad. When he continued, he spoke slowly, as though he was sharing a long-borne burden. “So I fell into this line and met all sorts of people who changed my life, making me what I am. Otherwise, I would have been like you: educated, and a sahib.” I clicked my tongue and looked pained, wondering what I had done to deserve his confidence.

  “But now, sir, I am thinking: I will go straight. I will do some good, so people know that Varun Paoli is not all that bad. He, too, is decent.”

  He straightened from his reclining position. Drawing in his legs, he sat up cross-legged. “I will tell you one secret, sir, what I am planning.” His eyes gleamed and his speech came in sharp, short breaths. “You see this adda, where people come to drink and gamble? I am going to knock it down. Not the full structure, but most of it. I am converting it into a temple—with a nice marble finish and bells that tinkle morning and evening, and a big murti with a crown of solid gold.” He looked shyly at me and said, “You may not believe, no sir, that a man like me can be religious, but I am. I believe in him—totally.” He raised a finger to the sky.

  His voice dropped. He looked around furtively, as if he did not wish the others to hear him.

  “I tell you what, sir. I have an idea. This is going to be a very holy temple. I will get learned priests to come and do puja, and for the opening I will get a film star or a politician to inaugurate it. But that is not the point, sir. What I want to say is I like you. You are a good man, a very decent man. So I want to give you a chance to contribute to this temple. Not much, whatever you desire, whatever is fine for your pocket. I know ten or fifteen thousand rupees is not going to make much difference to you. I know you will think of the blessings you will get and will contribute from your heart.”

  Here it was, I thought—the hit, the squeeze, the pretext under which I was being sacrificed, cut and bled like a goat on Bakri Id. Yet I found myself nodding, agreeing, saying yes, a splendid cause like this deserved support, I would be the happiest man alive to see a temple in the lane, a temple that would become famous. Despite the one we already had.

  Varun Paoli rose. He gripped me by the shoulders and said he knew it; he just knew from the moment he saw me that I had been sent to help. Didn’t he tell his men that? Didn’t he predict that I was indeed a messenger of God? The others in the room raised their hands and agreed, saying they, too, had felt something as I walked in. Something like an aura, a presence, an inexplicable calm, soft, sweeping, and reassuring. And since I didn’t know how to deal with my new Sunday status, my divine presence that shone and shimmered off me, and which brought me friends whom I had never expected, I looked down and delivered what I felt was my most absent and demure smile.

  At that moment, I found myself thinking not of myself but of the African. How he’d have felt the first time people barged into his flat and emptied it out. Would he have been with his kids, telling them stories of heroic pursuit? Or would he have been with his wife—the kids away at their grandparents’—rubbing his warm snub nose against her smooth, tight night skin? Or would he have felt like me, reduced and violated, helpless in his own home, his own environment? I wondered how long he would have waited after the thieves left to laugh that hearty laugh of his. I wondered if he’d laughed at all, or had he simply saved it for another time, another country.

  THE GREAT DIVIDE

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  MRS. MULLAFIROZE’S HAND SHIVERED. She felt worried about it. Usually she wouldn’t have given it a thought, for she was at an age where her limbs were honest enough to admit their deterioration; they gave gentle signs that told her she was dependent on the courtesies and kindnesses of the world. But this time the shivering sprang from an unsparing source: it was clearly fear that overtook her, made her bony hand con
vulse, as she clutched the morning paper disbelievingly. Her eyes fastened on the article in the center, on the headline that screamed: “70-Year-Old Parsi Woman Murdered. Manservant Absconds.”

  With the eyes of a hawk, which still mercifully allowed her to thread a needle in two attempts, she devoured the article:

  Jeanie Mariwalla, a resident of Jamas Baug and a retired school teacher, was found murdered in her one-bedroom apartment at Byculla. The body was discovered on Saturday, 17 November, by her nephew, Sohrab, and his wife, Angelina, who had dropped in to see her. At the time of her death Mrs. Mariwalla was living alone, her husband having passed away last December. The old teacher, a favorite with all the children in the Baug, is reported to have no immediate survivors. Inspector Pathare, who is heading the investigation, said, “While robbery appears to be the main motive, the eighteen stab wounds inflicted on the victim’s body are a serious indication of the killer’s mind. He appears dangerous, possibly psychopathic.”

  The suspicion has fallen on a manservant employed two months ago. The suspect, a native of Bihar, used to be seen wheeling Mrs. Mariwalla through the Baug during the evening hours. He has been missing since Friday, the day of the murder. Led by Inspector Pathare, a high-level police team left this morning for Madhopur in Bihar, the suspect’s place of origin. The murder comes on the heels of a spate of killings the city has witnessed in the last two years. The suspects—unemployed youths from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh—arrive in Bombay and take up employment with senior citizens who reside alone. Soon the youths take to demanding additional amounts of money from their employers and, if refused, don’t hesitate to turn violent. Police commissioner Ravi Kulkarni has appealed to senior citizens to get their servants registered at the nearest police station. Dignity Foundation, a non-profit organization working for the welfare of senior citizens, has agreed to set up patrols to monitor and check on its members. All senior citizens are hereby requested to verify the credentials of their servants and to take necessary steps to . . .