Swimming Lessons

by Rohinton Mistry

  Two years passed since Jehangir’s visits to Dr Mody had ceased.

  It was getting close to the time for another transfer for Dr Mody. When the inevitable orders were received, he went to Ahmedabad to make arrangements. Mrs Mody was to join her husband after a few days. Pesi was still in boarding-school, and would stay there.

  So when news arrived from Ahmedabad of Dr Mody’s death of heart failure, Mrs Mody was alone in the flat. She went next door with the telegram and broke down.

  The Bulsaras helped with all the arrangements. The body was brought to Bombay by car for a proper Parsi funeral. Pesi came from Poona for the funeral, then went back to boarding-school.

  The events were talked about for days afterwards, the stories spreading first in C Block, then through A and B. Commiseration for Mrs Mody was general. The ordeal of the body during the two-day car journey from Ahmedabad was particularly horrifying, and was discussed endlessly. Embalming was not allowed according to Parsi rituals, and the body in the trunk, although packed with ice, had started to smell horribly in the heat of the Deccan Plateau which the car had had to traverse. Some hinted that this torment suffered by Dr Mody’s earthly remains was the Almighty’s punishment for neglecting his duties as a father and making Mrs Mody so unhappy. Poor Dr Mody, they said, who never went a day without a bath and talcum powder in life, to undergo this in death. Someone even had, on good authority, a count of the number of eau de cologne bottles used by Mrs Mody and the three occupants of the car over the course of the journey — it was the only way they could draw breath, through cologne-watered handkerchiefs. And it was also said that ever after, these four could never tolerate eau de cologne — opening a bottle was like opening the car trunk with Dr Mody’s decomposing corpse.

  A year after the funeral, Mrs Mody was still living in Firozsha Baag. Time and grief had softened her looks, and she was no longer the harsh and dour-faced woman Jehangir had seen during his first Sunday visit. She had decided to make the flat her permanent home now, and the trustees of the Baag granted her request “in view of the unfortunate circumstances.”

  There were some protests about this, particularly from those whose sons or daughters had been postponing marriages and families till flats became available. But the majority, out of respect for Dr Mody’s memory, agreed with the trustees’ decision. Pesi continued to attend boarding-school.

  One day, shortly after her application had been approved by the trustees, Mrs Mody visited Mrs Bulsara. They sat and talked of old times, when they had first moved in, and about how pleased Dr Mody had been to live in a Parsi colony like Firozsha Baag after years of travelling, and then the disagreements she had had with her husband over Pesi and Pesi’s future; tears came to her eyes, and also to Mrs Bulsara’s, who tugged at a corner of her mathoobanoo to reach it to her eyes and dry them. Mrs Mody confessed how she had hated Jehangir’s Sunday visits although he was such a fine boy, because she was worried about the way poor Burjorji was neglecting Pesi: “But he could not help it. That was the way he was. Sometimes he would wish Khoedai had given him a daughter instead of a son. Pesi disappointed him in everything, in all his plans, and…” and here she burst into uncontrollable sobs.

  Finally, after her tears subsided she asked, “Is Jehangir home?” He wasn’t. “Would you ask him to come and see me this Sunday? At ten? Tell him I won’t keep him long.”

  Jehangir was a bit apprehensive when his mother gave him the message. He couldn’t imagine why Mrs Mody would want to see him.

  On Sunday, as he prepared to go next door, he was reminded of the Sundays with Dr Mody, the kindly man who had befriended him, opened up a new world for him, and then repudiated him for something he had not done. He remembered the way he would scratch the greyish-red patches of psoriasis on his elbows. He could still picture the sorrow on his face as, with the utmost reluctance, he had made his decision to end the friendship. Jehangir had not blamed Dr Mody then, and he still did not; he knew how overwhelmingly the evidence had been against him, and how much that stamp had meant to Dr Mody.

  Mrs Mody led him in by his arm: “Will you drink something?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “Not feeling shy, are you? You always were shy.” She asked him about his studies and what subjects he was taking in high school. She told him a little about Pesi, who was still in boarding-school and had twice repeated the same standard. She sighed. “I asked you to come today because there is something I wanted to give you. Something of Burjor Uncle’s. I thought about it for many days. Pesi is not interested, and I don’t know anything about it. Will you take his collection?”

  “The album in his drawer?” asked Jehangir, a little surprised.

  “Everything. The album, all the boxes, everything in the cupboard. I know you will use it well. Burjor would have done the same.”

  Jehangir was speechless. He had stopped collecting stamps, and they no longer held the fascination they once did. Nonetheless, he was familiar with the size of the collection, and the sheer magnitude of what he was now being offered had its effect. He remembered the awe with which he had looked inside the cupboard the first time its doors had been opened before him. So many sweet tins, cardboard boxes, biscuit tins…

  “You will take it? As a favour to me, yes?” she asked a second time, and Jehangir nodded. “You have some time today? Whenever you like, just take it.” He said he would ask his mother and come back.

  There was a huge, old iron trunk which lay under Jehangir’s bed. It was dented in several places and the lid would not shut properly. Undisturbed for years, it had rusted peacefully beneath the bed. His mother agreed that the rags it held could be thrown away and the stamps temporarily stored in it till Jehangir organized them into albums. He emptied the trunk, wiped it out, lined it with brown paper and went next door to bring back the stamps.

  Several trips later, Dr Mody’s cupboard stood empty. Jehangir looked around the room in which he had once spent so many happy hours. The desk was in exactly the same position, and the two chairs. He turned to go, almost forgetting, and went back to the desk. Yes, there it was in the drawer, Dr Mody’s first album, given him by his Nusserwanji Uncle.

  He started to turn the heavily laden pages. They rustled in a peculiar way — what was it about that sound? Then he remembered: that first Sunday, and he could almost hear Dr Mody again, the soft inspired tones speaking of promises and dreams, quite different from his usual booming, jovial voice, and that faraway look in his eyes which had once glinted with rage when Pesi had tried to bully him…

  Mrs Mody came into the room. He shut the album, startled: “This is the last lot.” He stopped to thank her but she interrupted: “No, no. What is the thank-you for? You are doing a favour to me by taking it, you are helping me to do what Burjor would like.” She took his arm. “I wanted to tell you. From the collection one stamp is missing. With the picture of the dancing-lady.”

  “I know!” said Jehangir. “That’s the one Burjor Uncle lost and thought that I…”

  Mrs Mody squeezed his arm which she was still holding and he fell silent. She spoke softly, but without guilt: “He did not lose it. I destroyed it.” Then her eyes went moist as she watched the disbelief on his face. She wanted to say more, to explain, but could not, and clung to his arm. Finally, her voice quavering pitiably, she managed to say, “Forgive an old lady,” and patted his cheek. Jehangir left in silence, suddenly feeling very ashamed.

  Over the next few days, he tried to impose some order on that greatly chaotic mass of stamps. He was hoping that sooner or later his interest in philately would be rekindled. But that did not happen; the task remained futile and dry and boring. The meaningless squares of paper refused to come to life as they used to for Dr Mody in his room every Sunday at ten o’clock. Jehangir shut the trunk and pushed it back under his bed where it had lain untroubled for so many years.

  From time to time his mother reminded him about th
e stamps: “Do something Jehangoo, do something with them.” He said he would when he felt like it and had the time; he wasn’t interested for now.

  Then, after several months, he pulled out the trunk again from under his bed. Mrs Bulsara watched eagerly from a distance, not daring to interrupt with any kind of advice or encouragement: her Jehangoo was at that difficult age, she knew, when boys automatically did the exact reverse of what their parents said.

  But the night before, Jehangir’s sleep had been disturbed by a faint and peculiar rustling sound seeming to come from inside the trunk. His reasons for dragging it out into daylight soon became apparent to Mrs Bulsara.

  The lid was thrown back to reveal clusters of cockroaches. They tried to scuttle to safety, and he killed a few with his slipper. His mother ran up now, adding a few blows of her own chappal, as the creatures began quickly to disperse Some ran under the bed into hard-to-reach corners; others sought out the trunk’s deeper recesses.

  A cursory examination showed that besides cockroaches, the trunk was also infested with white ants. All the albums had been ravaged. Most of the stamps which had not been destroyed outright were damaged in one way or another. They bore haphazard perforations and brown stains of the type associated with insects and household pests.

  Jehangir picked up an album at random and opened it. Almost immediately, the pages started to fall to pieces in his hands. He remembered what Dr Mody used to say: “This is my retirement hobby. I will spend my retirement with my stamps.” He allowed the tattered remains of Burjor Uncle’s beloved pastime to drop back slowly into the trunk.

  He crouched beside the dented, rusted metal, curious that he felt no loss or pain. Why, he wondered. If anything, there was a slight sense of relief. He let his hands stray through the contents, through worthless paper scraps, through shreds of the work of so many Sunday mornings, stopping now and then to regard with detachment the bizarre patterns created by the mandibles of the insects who had feasted night after night under his bed, while he slept.

  With an almost imperceptible shrug, he arose and closed the lid. It was doubtful if anything of value remained in the trunk.

  Of White Hairs and Cricket

  The white hair was trapped in the tweezers. I pulled it taut to see if it was gripped tightly, then plucked it.

  “Aaah!” grimaced Daddy. “Careful, only one at a time.” He continued to read the Times Of India, spreading it on the table.

  “It is only one,” I said, holding out the tweezers, but my annoyance did not register. Engrossed in the classifieds, he barely looked my way. The naked bulb overhead glanced off the stainless steel tweezers, making a splotch of light dart across the Murphy Radio calendar. It danced over the cherubic features of the Murphy Baby, in step with the tweezers’ progress on Daddy’s scalp. He sighed, turned a page, and went on scrutinizing the columns.

  Each Sunday, the elimination of white hairs took longer than the last time. I’m sure Daddy noticed it too, but joked bravely that laziness was slowing me down. Percy was always excused from this task. And if I pointed it out, the answer was: your brother’s college studies are more important.

  Daddy relied on my nimble fourteen-year-old fingers to uproot the signposts of mortality sprouting week after week. It was unappetizing work, combing through his hair greasy with day-old pomade, isolating the white ones, or the ones just beginning to turn — half black and half white, and somehow more repulsive. It was always difficult to decide whether to remove those or let them go till next Sunday, when the whiteness would have spread upward to their tips.

  The Sunday edition of the Times Of India came with a tabloid of comics: Mandrake the Magician, The Phantom, and Maggie and Jiggs in “Bringing Up Father.” The drab yellow tablecloth looked festive with the vivid colours of the comics, as though specially decorated for Sunday. The plastic cloth smelled stale and musty. It was impossible to clean perfectly because of the floral design embossed upon its surface. The swirly grooves were ideal for trapping all kinds of dirt.

  Daddy reached up to scratch a spot on his scalp. His aaah surprised me. He had taught me to be tough, always. One morning when we had come home after cricket, he told Mummy and Mamaiji, “Today my son did a brave thing, as I would have done. A powerful shot was going to the boundary, like a cannonball, and he blocked it with his bare shin.” Those were his exact words. The ball’s shiny red fury, and the audible crack — at least, I think it was audible — had sent pain racing through me that nearly made my eyes overflow. Daddy had clapped and said, “Well-fielded, sir, well-fielded.” So I waited to rub the agonized bone until attention was no longer upon me I wish Percy had not lost interest in cricket, and had been there My best friend, Viraf from A Block, was immensely impressed. But that was all a long time ago, many months ago, now Daddy did not take us for cricket on Sunday mornings.

  I paused in my search. Daddy had found something in the classifieds and did not notice. By angling the tweezers I could aim the bulb’s light upon various spots on the Murphy Radio calendar: the edges of the picture, worn and turned inward; the threadbare loop of braid sharing the colour of rust with the rusty nail it hung by; a corroded staple clutching twelve thin strips — the perforated residue of months ripped summarily over a decade ago when their days and weeks were played out. The baby’s smile, posed with finger to chin, was all that had fully endured the years. Mummy and Daddy called it so innocent and joyous. That baby would now be the same age as me. The ragged perimeter of the patch of crumbled wall it tried to hide strayed outward from behind, forming a kind of dark and jagged halo around the baby. The picture grew less adequate, daily, as the wall kept losing plaster and the edges continued to curl and tatter.

  Other calendars in the room performed similar enshroudings: the Cement Corporation skyscraper; the Lifebuoy Soap towel-wrapped woman with long black hair; the Parsi calendar, pictureless but showing the English and Parsi names for the months, and the roje in Gujarati beside each date, which Mummy and Mamaiji consulted when reciting their prayers. All these hung well past their designated time span in the world of months and years, covering up the broken promises of the Firozsha Baag building management.

  “Yes, this is it,” said Daddy, tapping the paper, “get me the scissors.”

  Mamaiji came out and settled in her chair on the veranda. Seated, there was no trace of the infirmity that caused her to walk doubled over. Doctors said it was due to a weak spine that could not erect against the now inordinate weight of her stomach. From photographs of Mummy’s childhood, I knew Mamaiji had been a big handsome woman, with a majestic countenance. She opened her bag of spinning things, although she had been told to rest her eyes after the recent cataract operation. Then she spied me with the tweezers.

  “Sunday dawns and he makes the child do that duleendar thing again. It will only bring bad luck.” She spoke under her breath, arranging her spindle and wool; she was not looking for a direct confrontation. “Plucking out hair as if it was a slaughtered chicken. An ill-omened thing, I’m warning you, Sunday after Sunday. But no one listens. Is this anything to make a child do, he should be out playing, or learning how to do bajaar, how to bargain with butcher and bunya.” She mumbled softly, to allow Daddy to pretend he hadn’t heard a thing.

  I resented her speaking against Daddy and calling me a child. She twirled the spindle, drawing fibres into thread from the scrap of wool in her left hand as the spindle descended. I watched, expecting — even wishing — the thread to break. Sometimes it did, and then it seemed to me that Mamaiji was overcome with disbelief, shocked and pained that it could have happened, and I would feel sorry and rush to pick it up for her. The spindle spun to the floor this time without mishap, hanging by a fine, brand new thread. She hauled it up, winding the thread around the extended thumb and little finger of her left hand by waggling the wrist in little clockwise and counter-clockwise half-turns, while the index and middle fingers clamped tight the source: the shred of w
ool resembling a lock of her own hair, snow white and slightly tangled.

  Mamaiji spun enough thread to keep us all in kustis. Since Grandpa’s death, she spent more and more time spinning, so that now we each had a spare kusti as well. The kustis were woven by a professional, who always praised the fine quality of the thread; and even at the fire-temple, where we untied and tied them during prayers, they earned the covetous glances of other Parsis.

  I beheld the spindle and Mamaiji’s co-ordinated feats of dexterity with admiration. All spinning things entranced me. The descending spindle was like the bucket spinning down into the sacred Bhikha Behram Well to draw water for the ones like us who went there to pray on certain holy days after visiting the fire-temple I imagined myself clinging to the base of the spindle, sinking into the dark well, confident that Mamaiji would pull me up with her waggling hand before I drowned, and praying that the thread would not break. I also liked to stare at records spinning on the old 78-rpm gramophone. There was one I was particularly fond of: its round label was the most ethereal blue I ever saw. The lettering was gold. I played this record over and over, just to watch its wonderfully soothing blue and gold rotation, and the concentric rings of the shiny black shellac, whose grooves created a spiral effect if the light was right. The gramophone cabinet’s warm smell of wood and leather seemed to fly right out of this shellacked spiral, while I sat close, my cheek against it, to feel the hum and vibration of the turntable It was so cosy and comforting. Like missing school because of a slight cold, staying in bed all day with a book, fussed over by Mummy, eating white rice and soup made specially for me.