The Lost Flamingoes of Bombay

by Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi

  Luckily, Adi did not notice her expression oscillate from calm to trepidation. ‘You really should exhibit your work. I’ve been telling you for so long.’

  ‘No one will come, Adi.’

  ‘What bull!’ he scolded. ‘It would be a sell-out show. Remember the time when all the gallerists were stalking you?’

  ‘A “show” sounds so presumptuous,’ she said. ‘And gallerists weren’t stalking me; two of them expressed an interest in acquiring my graduation project, which was probably a charity gesture.’

  He slanted his head. ‘Do you ever miss not pursuing the public life of an artist?’

  ‘Artist-shmartist,’ she said dismissively. ‘It’s all bullshit.’

  ‘You know you could still have a show. You could still contact the gallerists who admired your work in college.’

  ‘I’ve lost the nerve to exhibit. And it really doesn’t matter. I have a lovely studio, and I do what I like in my own time, on my own terms.’

  ‘If it makes you happy…’

  ‘What time do you get home?’ she asked, accompanying him to the door.

  In the passageway, he pressed the elevator switch. ‘Around seven-thirty in the evening.’

  ‘You remember what we have on tonight?’

  ‘How could I ever forget!’ The Ban Ganga Music Festival, an event they attended each year, was a simple but unforgettable affair: a wooden stage was floated over the sprawling pond and renowned musicians were invited to perform. Their past experience of the concert had been sublime, lyrical, intimate, like reading a love letter from seasons past. On this particular day, Fateh Khan, the famed Sufi singer from Karachi, anticipated by all of Bombay, was scheduled to perform. ‘I’ve been wanting to hear Fateh Khan in concert for years,’ Adi said. ‘His voice is sheer magic.’

  It pleased her to see him so excited, like a child. She hesitated, then asked, ‘Do I make you happy, Adi?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  She fell silent and he knew immediately what she was not able to say. ‘You make me…ridiculously happy.’ He nuzzled her cheek with his own. ‘You’re all I need, Rhea.’

  ‘Sometimes I wonder if we would have got married if I had taken the scholarship and gone to Berlin.’

  ‘Yes, we would have! I’d have waited for you.’

  ‘I don’t think so. Our lives would have gone on different paths.’

  ‘Do you regret forsaking the scholarship?’

  She threw her hands up in the air. ‘Who’s to say? Why assume that my life as an artist would have gone some place. Why assume that Berlin would have been a transformative experience? For all you know, I could have gone there and failed.’ She shrugged. ‘Questions, questions…I could ask you if you regret marrying me, and not being able to have a child.’

  ‘I have never regretted marrying you. You are the best thing that’s ever happened to me.’

  ‘But you regret that we don’t have a family.’

  ‘I love you.’ His voice trembled with emotion, and she refrained from saying anything more.

  As they waited for the elevator to come up, she thought: so this is what we talk about after breakfast, in the passageway, the fork in the road of a spent, irremediable past. This is what we say. And this is what we don’t. ‘But I chose this life, didn’t I?’ she said quietly.

  ‘The elevator halted behind him, and Adi stepped into it somewhat relieved. ‘Work hard, you.’

  ‘I will. See you later.’

  Rhea watched the lift disappear leaving behind a dank, smoky hollow, then she took a few steps back and leaned against the wall of the foyer.

  Over the years she had been with Adi, Rhea had, on innumerable times, caught him watching children—playing in a park, goofing around on the swings and the slide, trekking to school laden with bags bigger than them, clinging on to a parent’s hand as they crossed the road. Each time she had felt she was trespassing on an intensely private act; his gaze had been so desperate, so hungry. As these images returned to her mind, she wondered what their marriage would have been like if they had had children. Perhaps the taut membrane of melancholy that now existed between them would have been absent, perhaps she would never have gone to Chor Bazaar looking for talismans, never met a young photographer with his awkward questions and stunning talent. Perhaps Adi and she would have spent more time together because of the kids, perhaps they would not have gone to the concert later that day because one of their kids would have had a cold and they would have been forced to cancel at the last moment…She sighed, returning to the present, withdrawing from the gossamer dream of the life she had been denied—or merely not lived so far.

  At three-thirty that afternoon Rhea left her house. By four o’clock she was at Crawford Market.

  Karan was waiting for her next to a stall selling water chestnuts. ‘Hey.’

  ‘Did I make you wait long?’

  ‘Oh, twenty minutes or so.’ He wiped the sweat on his forehead.

  ‘You must’ve reached early.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, grinning, gamely taking on the blame. ‘That must have been it.’

  They walked ahead, passing dusk-orange mangoes stored in bales of strewn straw and speckled quails screeching from their wire-mesh cages. Lean, cocoa-skinned hawkers volleyed obscenities. Corpulent housewives, sweating like horses, haggled for carrots and peas. A pomegranate seller was having his ears cleaned by a professional ear cleaner. Two stray dogs were mating ecstatically in a corner, right next to a makeshift garbage dump.

  ‘How’s Samar?’ Rhea asked.

  Karan tried to banish the image that reappeared in his head at the mention of Samar’s name. Two days ago, while walking from the pool to the cottage, Samar had suddenly fallen to his knees on the terrazzo, his hands bunched around his navel. Leo had hurried to lift him up but he continued to lie flat on the floor. Karan shook his head as he tried to describe the scene to Rhea.

  ‘He must miss her…terribly,’ she said.

  ‘I guess he’s figuring out how much only now.’

  ‘How’s Leo taking it?’ They walked by a man selling white doves roosting along the length of his arms; she wished Karan would stop and photograph the walking dovecote, but he seemed too preoccupied with Leo and Samar.

  ‘Hard to say, Rhea. I don’t know Leo well, and these days I don’t want to.’

  ‘You sound like you don’t like him much.’

  ‘Leo is not exactly Mr Likeable.’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘He says he needs to move back to San Francisco; he fears that Samar and he might be attacked by a mobster from Minister Prasad’s mafia.’

  ‘But Samar has to be here. His presence at the trial is key.’

  ‘Exactly!’

  ‘Do you suspect a rift between them?’

  He rolled his eyes; she was asking him the obvious. ‘Everyone has acted shamefully,’ he said after a moment. He mentioned the fashion designer who insisted he was out of town even though he had been chatting with Zaira at the time Malik and his buddy from San Jose had entered the bar; this same designer had risen to fame only a few years earlier for putting together Zaira’s wardrobe for her appearance at Cannes.

  ‘So how many witnesses does the prosecution have? I mean, outside of Samar.’

  ‘Maybe two,’ he said. ‘Nalini Chopra and Bunty Oberoi.’

  She looked shocked. ‘Only two? From a crowd of two hundred?’

  ‘Yes. The world is full of haramis. On the upside, we’re lucky D.K. Mishra is with us.’

  ‘Mishra, the investigating officer?’ She had read Mishra’s name earlier that day in the Times of India article; he had pulled up the police about Zaira’s dress, missing from the evidence they were supposed to have gathered.

  ‘That’s right.’ D.K. Mishra had assured Samar that not only would he pin down more witnesses but also locate the gun registered in Malik’s name. The .22 calibre bullets recovered from the crime scene tallied perfectly with the gun Malik owned.

  ‘Does D.K. Mishra know why no one
is prepared to testify?’

  ‘Most of the witnesses are scared shitless. And, as I’ve learned recently myself, there’s no witness protection programme in place either.’

  ‘Have you been threatened, Karan?’

  ‘Well, I’m not the only one.’

  Her voice rippled with anxiety. ‘Has someone called you and said they would attack you?’ she asked directly.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh my God.’ She cupped her mouth.

  ‘It’s okay.’

  ‘Do you have protection?’

  ‘No. But I’m too insignificant to matter to the case. The police said they can’t give me protection.’

  ‘Aren’t you afraid for your life?’

  ‘I find myself looking over my shoulder a lot.’

  She paused, allowing the seriousness of the situation to sink in. The idea that Karan might be the subject of the minister’s ire smote her heart. ‘What about the famous guests?’ she asked. ‘The guys who are too powerful for the minister to bully around?’

  ‘For that lot the case is just not worth the time of day,’ he said bluntly. A court case could stretch for any number of years, and it was bound to hamper the lives of those who got involved. ‘That leaves us with three people still willing to take the stand. And, of the three, Bunty’s evidence is crucial: not only is he the key witness, but he also registered the police complaint. So if Bunty chickens out, the boat,’ he said, gesturing with his thumb pointing groundward, ‘goes down.’

  ‘Has Bunty done anything to suggest he’s not to be trusted?’

  ‘Samar told me Zaira despised him; Bunty was a publicity whore. Maybe he’s doing this whole Mr Key Witness number for press points.’

  ‘Aren’t you being a little pessimistic?’

  ‘This case doesn’t give any of us too much to be optimistic about.’

  Perhaps he is confusing cynicism for maturity, she thought to herself; in any event, it took away from his inherent charm. She ran her fingers through her hair, freeing a knot or two; she was uncertain what had changed in Karan but he seemed so removed from the enthusiastic novice shutterbug she had first met in Chor Bazaar. ‘Well, at least there’s still Nalini Chopra,’ she said to raise his spirits.

  Karan was about to write off Nalini Chopra as a ‘fly-by-night society bimbo’ but refrained from doing so because he did not want Rhea to deem his comment another indicator of his deepening pessimism. ‘God knows how long she’s going to hang in there; at least she has a reason to backtrack.’

  ‘Are you referring to the alcohol licence issue?’

  ‘I am.’

  In a desperate rush to usher the crowds from the Bombay Fashion Week to her new bar, Tara Chopra had bypassed the technicality of acquiring a licence to serve alcohol. This rendered both the Chopras, as the owners of Maya Bar, liable for selling booze without a permit; if found guilty, they could land in the lock-up. Although this breach was irrelevant to the trial, everyone was aware that Minister Prasad could manipulate it to his advantage.

  ‘But maybe Nalini will surprise everyone and stick to what she told the police.’

  He laughed bitterly. ‘Now let’s not get carried away, Rhea.’

  ‘You sound like you’re really out of it.’ She found his cynicism jarring but decided not to react.

  Karan rubbed his bleary eyes. ‘I’ve not been sleeping very well.’

  ‘Are you sleepless because of the threats from Minister Prasad’s camp?’

  ‘Perhaps.’ He shook his head. ‘I still have the pictures I had taken of Zaira when I had gone to Samar’s for the shoot. They seemed so happy. Safe. And invincible.’

  ‘How’s work?’

  ‘Boring; I don’t feel like touching my camera.’

  ‘Maybe its exhaustion…’

  A swarthy hawker knocked against Karan, briefly making him lose his step. He stumbled back, bumping into Rhea, and she propped him up; he felt surprisingly heavy. When he had regained his balance he said, looking at the straw on the ground, ‘I’ve figured out one thing in the last few days.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’m going to give up photography.’

  ‘What?’ She stopped him, her hand on his waist.

  ‘I don’t want to continue my work on Bombay.’

  ‘But photographing the city is the reason you’re here!’

  ‘I’m just not cut out to be a photographer.’

  She scowled. ‘I hope this is only a passing phase…’

  ‘I’m not so sure.’ He started to walk again. ‘In any case, why are you so put off by my decision to quit?’

  She gritted her teeth. How easily he had forgotten the hours they had spent discussing his photographs! How easily he had forgotten their trips around the city in search of versions of Bombay! ‘Does it have to do with Zaira?’

  ‘It might…’

  ‘Is it the trial?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Well, in either case, you can’t throw away all your hard work.’

  ‘I’ve tried, I really have…’

  ‘Try harder then.’

  ‘Try for a kinder response, Rhea; I just told you my life’s busted up.’

  ‘I would have loved to give you a kind response,’ she said, ‘but I’m just not that kind of person.’

  He covered his face with his hands.

  They stood together in a square of noisy, hot light filtering through the stained glass pattern in the dome on the airy ceiling.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Her voice softened; she stroked his neck. ‘I know Zaira meant a great deal to you. She was a friend, true and solid and kind. So it’s important for you to fight through the trial. I also know you’re going to have to stand by Samar in a way you had never anticipated. But,’ she said, whispering into his ear, ‘no matter what happens, you cannot allow the trial to disrupt your work and take over your life. How would Zaira feel if she knew you were giving up on account of her?’

  The man with the doves on his arms advanced towards them and Rhea stepped back to let him pass. A dove shot into the air, taking off from his arms; its white wings cut the air in sharp, deft strokes.

  ‘There’s no point to my work. Nothing I do can or will make any difference.’

  ‘Don’t be so downbeat.’

  ‘Thing is, Rhea, every time I look through the aperture…’ He was going to say, I see Zaira. I see her as I did the first time we met, at Samar’s house, as she came running down the lawn and embraced him. I see the Zaira who became my first real friend in Bombay. But he did not complete the sentence, for Rhea was no longer listening to him. She was, in fact, examining mangoes in a wooden crate. ‘I see…nothing,’ he murmured.

  ‘It’s an illusion, Karan,’ she said when he touched her elbow. ‘Enjoy it, fight it, know it, work around the bits that don’t cut the ice for you.’

  ‘Please don’t go all philosophical on me.’

  She looked at him helplessly. His decision to abandon photography had affected her profoundly, and she had retreated into herself. ‘What do you think of these mangoes? Should I get a dozen?’

  ‘Huh?’ Karan stepped away from her.

  The mango vendor was looking at Rhea in earnest.

  ‘I could make a mango and cream cake.’ She was thinking of Adi’s love for mangoes. She turned to the mango vendor. ‘How much for six?’

  ‘Madam, three hundred rupees.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous! A hundred and fifty.’

  ‘Madam, my purchase price is two hundred and seventy-five,’ the vendor pleaded.

  ‘My last offer is two hundred.’ She looked at the man with narrowed eyes. He surrendered. She picked six mangoes and he gave them to her in a brown paper bag in exchange for two hundred-rupee notes.

  Karan looked baffled. ‘You’re thinking of baking a cake when I’m telling you that Malik Prasad could walk free?’

  ‘Yes, it’s a terrible pity.’ But Karan heard no pity in her voice.

  ‘Everything is not an illusion. For all
the illusions in this world, there are also facts.’

  She folded the mouth of the paper bag. ‘Oh,’ she said, her tone strikingly mordant. ‘Wow!’

  ‘Because a truth is a private experience and a fact is public knowledge. Malik shot Zaira, that’s a fact. Samar loved Zaira, that’s the truth. You can take apart the truth but you can’t argue with a fact.’ He paused, wiped the sweat over his lip. ‘Did you hear a word of what I just said?’

  ‘You’re very wise, Karan. And…honourable and…’ She felt short of breath just being around him; she was not going to mother him. ‘And?’

  ‘And now,’ she said, ‘I have to go.’

  ‘Already?’

  ‘I have to be some place else.’

  ‘Can’t you stay for a bit?’

  ‘I’m afraid not.’

  ‘I’m going through hell, Rhea.’

  ‘Well, I have an appointment with a clay seller in Kumbharwada at five.’

  She did not flinch at her second fabrication of the day, for if she did go to Kumbharwada she would be absolved of the lie she had told Adi.

  He could tell from her steely expression that she had made up her mind to leave. ‘I’ll walk you to your car.’

  ‘Don’t you have to be at work?’

  ‘I’ll head to the office in a while.’

  Negotiating oily wheelbarrows of mud-splattered carrots and huge mounds of succulent watermelon, they returned to the parking lot without exchanging another word. As they neared her car, she turned to him, shielding her eyes with her hand over her brows, ‘Well, it was good to see you.’

  He was taken aback; she was talking to him as if he were just another friend. He half expected her to add something on the lines of ‘Well, keep in touch’ or ‘Let’s catch up over lunch some time’.

  ‘I’m sorry if I bored you back there,’ he said awkwardly.

  ‘You never photographed Crawford Market, did you?’ Her face was curious, but only inches beneath her curiosity scurried a tremendous regret; she could already hear his answer.

  ‘I never did—and now, I suppose, I never will.’ Karan got a sinking feeling in his stomach and he leaned against her car.

  She got in.

  He was consumed with the fear that they would never meet again: once he had forsaken photography what excuse would they have to meet? She would have no reason to take him to Sewri, none to visit the chapels in Bandra or the caves of Kanheri.