The heated debate was interrupted by a sudden, loud squeal of delight. ‘Well, if it isn’t the wonderful Samar Arora!’ Editor of a fashion bible, Diya Sen, the source of the enthusiastic greeting, had long, naughty legs and a giggle as shiny as a penny in the sun. This evening she was all shimmied up in a black shift dress and a string of thick white pearls. ‘My favourite pianist!’ she burbled. ‘Darling man, how lucky I am to cross your path.’
‘I’ve been waiting here all my life only so you might come along,’ Samar assured the slightly sloshed editor.
‘I see your lovely boyfriend has graced our wicked acres…Hello there, Mr McCormick. How’s the new masterpiece coming along?’
‘One page at a time,’ Leo replied. ‘Slow, but steady. How’s your husband?’
‘Oh, super!’ Diya roped her arm around Samar, drawing a quizzical look from Leo. ‘Except, he’s no longer my husband.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry…I had no—’ Leo blushed.
‘Don’t apologize, darling! After four years of marriage I discovered that the only thing we had in common was a mutual adoration of me—but even that wasn’t enough to make me stay.’ She kissed Samar on his ear, and drawled, ‘I have a new man.’
‘Wonderful!’ Samar said. ‘What does he do?’
‘The Boyfriend is working on a biography of Bombay.’
‘How exciting. Bombay deserves a good memoirist. Have you read any of his work in progress? I enjoy reading the first draft of Leo’s writing.’
‘I gave the fellow a first line for his book; it’s bound to be an opus, although right now it’s more pus than opus.’ She made a face.
‘Well, I’m sure you’ll whip it into shape, Diya; your mind could mend any book.’
‘I doubt we’ll be together that long,’ the editor confessed.
‘Why toss out a talented writer?’ Samar said as he ruffled Leo’s hair. ‘Writing prowess often extends into the bedroom.’
‘Not in the case of the Boyfriend,’ Diya asserted. ‘But then, not every fling comes with a bling quotient, and I was raised to believe that certain kinds of charity begin in bed.’
‘You’re not giving your boyfriend enough of a chance.’
‘When you date writers, execute your own exit routes. Otherwise, before you know it, you’ll be written out of the narrative. I’ve got too much self-disrespect to be a closed chapter in someone else’s book.’
‘That’s a bit harsh,’ Leo said. ‘Writers are not calculating; they just understand early on that efficient editing can save a straggling story.’
Diya waved her hand in the air. ‘The Boyfriend is not half as much fun as what I did last week in Goa; I got my first tattoo! Want to see it?’
Priya, ever the insecure politician, not about to be outdone by a fashion journalist, raised her voice. ‘I guess the whole Mumbai vs Bombay issue boils down to one thing: the privileged class vs the working class.’
‘I’m a writer, and no one gets more “working class” than starving writers,’ said Mantra.
‘If you’re so working class, what’re you doing here at Gatsby?’ Priya asked snidely.
‘I had the sense to marry well, Priya. And to divorce better.’
‘Congratulations! With that one sentence you’ve pushed back the women’s rights movement by a whole fifty years!’
Long immune to such Bombay-brand bitchery, Mantra serenely took another sip of her whisky. ‘Some of us, Priya, might believe that your birth is one helluvan argument for the pro-contraceptive movement,’ she said. ‘But don’t you go sweating over progressive politics so early in your career.’
Diya, meanwhile, was growing impatient. ‘I want to show you my tattoo. NOW!’
‘Well then…’ Samar threw his hands up in the air. ‘What’s stopping you?’
In one quick, smart motion Diya unzipped her black dress and let it fall to her feet, where it gathered in a desultory heap. Hiking up the succulent left cheek of her butt, encased in white lacy knickers, she said, ‘It’s Capricorn, my star sign.’
‘Gosh! I thought Capricornians were supposed to be quite old school,’ Samar said. ‘But you’ve made some giant strides from there, doll.’
‘What’s insulting is how the politicians never once asked us.’ Mantra was still at it, though now she was trying hard to peel her eyes away from the booty on show. ‘How dare they take our votes and our money and play with the name of our city without consulting us? This is no democracy! This is a land of right-wing zealots. We chucked out the whites in 1947 but what sort of fiends did we elect in their place? The Hindu People’s Party, that’s what.’
‘That’s because the city’s elite have different things on their minds,’ Priya said. ‘Real Bombay is not here.’ She wondered if the young girl standing there like a besharam chaddi-baby was going to snap her dress back on. ‘And it’s really very reductive of you to write off the Hindu People’s Party as right-wing zealots. You may have forgotten, I am one of their representatives.’
‘Oh, puhleez! Save that Real Bombay–Fake Bombay crap. There may be six hundred and fifty million of us who live below the poverty line but there are also three hundred and fifty million of us who’re not doing too badly, thank you very much. Some of us, in fact, even find the time to grab a drink at Gatsby.’ She looked pointedly at the politician. ‘And really, Priya, it’s a bit cheeky to make poverty your party line when you’re at the party.’
While Priya struggled to make a comeback, Diya Sen jubilantly held court in her lingerie, like some sort of an ancient goddess of lust. ‘So, my darling,’ she said to Samar, ‘I heard you tap dance like a dream, and when you do, sirens go off and the lights come on.’
‘Don’t flatter Samar in that department.’ Leo tightened his grip on Samar’s arm. ‘You don’t want to get him going after he’s had a few drinks and, trust me, he’s been careless with the Bellinis tonight.’
‘Show me!’ Diya cried. ‘Let me be the judge.’
‘Here?’ Samar’s brow creased. ‘It’s so damn crowded, babe; my feet would hardly hear me if I heckled them to kick up a step or two!’
‘The bar top looks kinda free to me.’ Diya giggled.
Samar surveyed the bar top. The gorgeous editor had a point. Besides, if she could stand around in her knockout knickers and pretty pearls, the least he could do was throw on a stomp fest at her plea.
Pulling free of Leo’s grasp, Samar hoisted himself on to the narrow gleaming counter. As the pianist shuffled by to an internal accelerando, the guests hastily lifted their drinks to let him pass—and pass he did, in smart chuff and glide. A few gasps, some scowls, two whistles and a lot of hmmm went up around the bar.
Karan felt he was witness to a scene that was as much theatre as circus; he half expected shrieking yellow canaries to burst out of someone’s elaborate coiffure and fireworks to go off in one corner of the room. Not only was Samar’s performance spectacular, but his audience comprising the film-maker in the orange sarong, the socialite with calf-length silver hair, the editor in her hot white knickers made for accidental, incredible props.
When Samar finally hit his head against one of the overhead lamps, Leo extended his hand, which the pianist accepted to execute a neat landing on the floor.
Leo smiled; his lover had one thing down pat: the perfect exit.
On his way out, past a swarm of bedazzled admirers, Diya pulled Samar to her side. ‘At least now you know that inner beauty is nothing more than smart knickers.’
‘I love you because you’re deep enough to be shallow.’ He gave her a farewell peck. ‘And smart enough to know the difference between the two.’
With ample evidence of Samar’s escapades in hand, Karan hurried home and slept restfully after nights of anxiety. The next morning he dashed off to the magazine’s photo lab to print the shots. Although the pictures were expectedly impressive—particularly the one of Samar gliding on the bar top as the sarong-clad film-maker with his green umbrella blew an adulatory kiss in his direction—th
e lighting was awful.
‘You mean we can’t use any of them?’ He paced the office.
Iqbal swivelled on his chair. ‘The restaurant was so dimly lit, there’s no way the resolution of the images would hold if we printed them; they’ll be too grainy.’
‘They were bound to be grainy; I was shooting on my fastest film.’ Karan was quickly coming down with the glums. ‘How the hell am I going to get printable pictures of Samar? Gatsby had been my best shot.’
‘Why don’t you give these pictures to Samar?’ Iqbal advised. ‘Write him a note saying that if he doesn’t sit for you then the magazine will be forced to use these pictures and, wonderful as they might be, their quality is not up to scratch. He’ll know it too. See if that works.’
‘Basically, you want me to blackmail him.’
‘Basically,’ Iqbal said, leaning forward, ‘I’m trying to save your ass.’
By noon that day, Karan had left a selection of the pictures, accompanied by a handwritten letter, with Samar Arora’s maid, in the hope that the pianist would be amused enough to indulge him with a private, one-on-one sitting.
To his delight, the ploy worked. A note arrived for Karan at the India Chronicle office on Tuesday, the following week, inviting him over for ‘a cup of chai or a Bellini or whatever’.
In the intervening days Karan caught up on assignments he had neglected while he had been preoccupied with pursuing Samar. He also took an evening off from work to shoot the dusty, sublime balustrades of falling-down mansions in Kala Ghoda. After he had printed the shots, he showed them to Iqbal.
‘Are they for your project on Bombay?’ Iqbal’s eyelids blinked rapidly as he scrutinized the bunch of black-and-white prints.
‘Yes,’ Karan said. ‘In a few years these old houses won’t be around.’ They were the only two from the photo department still in office; it was past midnight. ‘The beauty we will have lost…’ he added somewhat wistfully.
‘What amazes me most is your skill. But I won’t say more; I don’t want your head to grow too big for your hat.’ The detailing in Karan’s photographs, the turbulent poetry of their gloom, took Iqbal’s breath away. ‘But the sheer grit! By now, you must have shot thousands of pictures of Bombay?’
‘Seven thousand six hundred and forty-one shots, but I’m not counting. I told you, Iqbal: I joined India Chronicle for roti, kapda aur makaan but my heart is set on creating a record of this city.’
‘Atget is your guru,’ Iqbal said, referring to the legendary documenter of Paris. ‘So, good luck to you, boy; I sure hope you worry Bombay with your Leica. Now,’ he said, ‘when do I see Samar Arora’s pictures?’
‘I am shooting him at his house in Worli on Tuesday,’ he said, beaming.
‘What did you make of Samar when you saw him at Gatsby?’
‘A real performer, and quite a poser. But a superb subject; the camera loves him, and he loves it right back.’
On Tuesday morning a big fat sun careened through thick layers of cloud, revealing a sky the colour of joy. The same evening, on the bus to Samar’s house, Karan saw the prairie-blue sky darken, opalescent grey turning to leaden silver. Traffic, which had slowed to a crawl around Cadbury House, came to a grinding halt outside Haji Ali dargah only a few pious footfalls away. Karan’s bus too came to a standstill and he disembarked along with the other commuters.
Staring skywards, at the thundering shadow that was approaching, Karan felt it could herald the apocalypse. Flamingoes, thousands of them, were flying by in a giant skein: the birds had tight, spindled legs and large, serrated wings, and their graceful necks were so firmly held they looked like freshly serviced strings on a sitar. The birds were white—save for splashes of dirty pink—and the span of their wings in motion produced a sound not unlike huge, heaving bellows.
Children wept. Dogs howled.
Schoolgirls cried. Men stood open-mouthed.
Karan took out his camera from its case and furiously clicked the scene around him. He zoomed in on the bald, blind beggar in a ragged black suit. Turning around, he strode closer to the Medusa-maned monkey pedlar parked beside a trio of scruffy singing vagrants. The three scrawny roadside tenors stared at the sky, their hands reaching up to the flock in flight, and sang, in a thick, ironic nasal castrato, a forgotten bakwaas Hindi love song.
As Karan tried to tear himself free of earthbound particulars and look again at the spectacle in the sky, his frame pulled into focus hundreds of red petals fluttering about gaily. A flower seller had dropped piles of ruby-red graveyard roses on the pavement, now quickly being crushed under the feet of the crowd. Within minutes a fierce sea wind had whipped the petals into the air, where they now whirled wildly. Standing amidst the storm of rose petals, with the flamingoes above him, Karan thought: So this is Bombay, monster muse, part witch, part clown, always absurd, often charming—my rogue ballad; this is Bombay, meri jaan.
Pausing to catch his breath, he brought his camera to his side. He looked around, surprised. Within seconds the scene had changed dramatically. The flamingoes were all but gone, the sky was flooded with light, and the passengers had hopped back on to the bus. Traffic began to move again, with a great revving of engines and slow shuffle of wheels. The singing trio on the pavement abandoned their tamasha recital. The bald, blind beggar knocked against a lamp post and landed flat on his back in a scattered pool of lush red petals. In the chaos, the monkey escaped his leash and scurried down the road, its pedlar chasing breathlessly after it.
2
‘How lovely of you to stop by!’ Samar emerged from the pool, water glistening on his skin. He walked toward Karan, who was sitting on a deck chair on the lawn.
Karan stood up and extended his hand. ‘I hope I’m not interrupting your swim?’
‘I was just winding up the last of my evening laps.’ Samar wrapped a white towel around himself, concealing his tight blue swimming briefs.
‘You have a fine home.’ Karan turned and faced the house, a neat, square, brick structure with white-panelled windows and a narrow widow’s porch on the first level; on the ground level was a green rectangle of lawn, a pool, a few scattered almond trees. ‘There are hardly any homes like this left in Bombay.’
‘Yes, the pool is a luxury but perhaps it’ll come in handy when we fill it with champagne and drown ourselves drinking it up. Did you wait long, Mr Seth?’
‘Please call me Karan. I’ve been here only fifteen minutes or so. Your maid left me here with a cup of chai.’ Although Karan found Samar’s warmth appealing, he questioned its authenticity.
‘I’m glad Saku-bai was good to you. You’re blessed; she’s been trying forever to kill me.’ Samar widened his eyes to feign a look of shock.
‘I find that hard to believe.’ Karan thought momentarily of the maid, dour and unfriendly; could she really be plotting Samar’s death?
‘Oh, Saku-bai’s left soapsuds in the bath,’ Samar complained, ‘and stirred something spooky in the dal. For years she fed me raw papayas.’
‘Raw papayas are poisonous?’
Clasping the sides of his face with his hands, Samar raised his brows in horror. ‘They can cause spontaneous abortions.’
‘That shouldn’t worry you; you’re a man.’
‘And thank God for that! Otherwise, can you imagine all the babies I’d have lost by now?’
As Karan nodded uncertainly, Samar realized that his brand of absurd humour had whizzed over the young man’s head; perhaps he was new to Bombay or perhaps he was just stupid.
When Karan appeared to wither a little, Samar reached out and squeezed his elbow. ‘I invited you over to tell you, you have no bloody business being such a talented swine.’
‘I’m honoured.’ Karan blushed. The sight of Samar tap dancing on the bar top refused to leave his memory, and it confirmed Natasha’s nasty edict on Samar: ‘a pretentious prick’.
‘The pictures you took at Gatsby make me look like a human being for a change.’
‘Is that a complimen
t?’
‘I don’t think very much of human beings,’ Samar confessed. ‘I much prefer foxes and dahlias and whippets; they’re beautiful, and scarce.’
Again, Karan looked on without a word.
Samar felt himself growing impatient with the fetching young man and his gauche pauses. Fortunately, the silence between them was shattered by a slender white whippet bounding toward them from the living room and hurling itself on Samar.
‘And how is Mr Ward-Davies this evening?’ Samar tried to hold the wriggling dog and avoid an avalanche of licks at the same time. ‘Would you care to join Karan and me for a walk?’
Karan had never heard a man talk to a dog as if he were a human being; it was not the overwhelming affection in Samar’s voice but the lambent dignity of the address that got him.
The whippet responded to Samar by gazing at him like a moonstruck teenager, as though in Samar’s presence the world, its rancour and delusions, had ceased to exist.
‘He’s lovely but he looks so delicate.’
‘Well, as a photographer you probably know that looks are deceptive; trust me, there’s steel underneath that slim body.’ Samar squatted to pet Mr Ward-Davies whose limber little body writhed with the sweet havoc of unbearable joy. ‘He was only four months old when he swallowed a big rusty nail. It got jammed in his gut. His stomach bloated up. He retched all night. I rushed him to the vet, who had to perform an emergency operation. He warned me not to get my hopes high. I got Mr Ward-Davies home with nine long stitches along the side of his belly. I had to nurse him day and night. He wouldn’t eat, and I’d force-feed him baby food with a dropper. I slept beside him for three weeks. And, after all that’—Samar snapped his fingers—‘Mr Ward-Davies made it! My grandma once told me: what you love, you can save. I’m not sure if there’s any truth to that but it’s kept me going during a flurry of bad hair days,’ he said, running his fingers through a mop of wet hair.
The Lost Flamingoes of Bombay Page 2