by HM Naqvi
Slipping into Mummy’s jungle-print robe de chambre after, I take tea and insulin on the balcony. The sky is cloudless and blue, the air smoky and trilling with crickets; an old crow perches on the ledge above, cawing hoarsely, damnably, like the Angel Israfil. I know I won’t get any work done today—I have the feeling that it will be a very long day, or a very short one. Draining the acrid lees, I hoist myself from the cane armchair, dentures rattling in my pocket, and teeter purposefully towards the wrought-iron railing. As I consider the diagonally inclined potted cacti, the pansy bed below, I notice a pair of eyes peering at me over the horizon of the boundary wall as if I am on display, a primate shelling nuts. “Stop, Kookaburra, stop,” I chunter, returning the gaze through the interstices of the evergreens, “That’s not a monkey, it’s me.” Then I apprehend the manifest drama: I am brandishing my member, flush and bulbous and overrun with wild reddish hair, and as usual, have nothing to show for myself.
Uncannily, the eyes, fantastic obsidian eyes, follow me as I collect my genitalia in the teacup & nearly trip down the stairs. It’s not just my biscuit-box feet; no, I am curious, titillated, mortified—imagine a seraph, siren, a sphinx! But God knows mythology has long ceded to the mundane: I suspect a tarrying transvestite, or the maid’s good-for-nothing locksmith husband, or that swine Chambu,11 the manager of my piddling garment-dyeing operation who fleeces me every quarter and demands Other Sundry Expenses. Sundry, my foot!
By the time I fasten my robe and cross the lawn, the eyes vanish like fireflies taking flight. There is the wonted activity outside: lurching busses, rattling rickshaws, the odd donkey cart laden with galvanized steel pipes, and down the road, the street-side dentist sits on his haunches, administering what might be a root canal. Barefoot & breathless, I stand unsteadily on the toasty asphalt, considering the gaze that bored into my soul—Who did it belong to? Why was I being watched? Why today?—but then I hear the distinct voices of the Childoos over the clamour of traffic.
“Chachajaan!” they cry, “Cha! Cha! Jaan!” they chant. They are single-pasli, suffer from unfortunate bowl cuts & wear white button-down half sleeves, navy blue knickers, white socks pulled up to their scratched knees. They waddle as they run, run as they waddle, backpacks flapping, maid straggling behind. I pick them up, peck them on the cheek, and break into song: “There lived a certain man in Russia long ago!”
“He was bigs and strong,” they chime, “and eyes flaming gold!”
And together we bellow: “RA-RA-RASPUTIN / Lover of the Russian queen / There was a cat that really was gone / RA-RA-RASPUTIN / Russia’s greatest love machine / It was a shame how he carried on!”
We make a spectacle of ourselves—several passersby gather and gape—and why shouldn’t we? We are loud and gay—the von Trapps of Currachee! We might have broken into “Do-Re-Mi” next (an admittedly more apropos number) if it were not for the jaundiced attention of the authorities: I feel the quick teardrop eyes of my dear sister-in-law on my back. Not one for song and spectacle, Nargis the Opossum is undoubtedly leaning against the gate, wrist on hip, shaking her draped head from side to side like a broken doll. “Chalo, chalain, bachon,” she bids. “Lunchtime!”
Setting the children down, I surreptitiously fit my dentures into my mouth, then turn to greet Nargis, but she has already marched in, trailed by the Childoos. As they wave shyly, I wonder when I will see them again, wonder if they know it is my platinum jubilee. Not even my pal Tony has called. But then who remembers sad old men? We die, rot, without acknowledgement, without ceremony.
I swear I could stand curbside all day, watching the world go by, waiting for those haunting eyes to gaze upon my hairless, roly-poly, chicken-flesh chest—what else is there to do?—but the day has become hot and brackish like a belch. Shutting the gate behind me, I return unceremoniously to my perch, and certain ontological panic. But as I consider launching myself over the balcony for the second time, my man mercifully shambles in with my daily jug of bitter gourd juice, sporting a red-and-white baseball cap and matching joggers.
Barbarossa, former majordomo, has been yanked from de facto retirement since the couple who cooked & cleaned for us failed to return from annual leave (because Nargis is a difficult customer), despite the fact that the old hand hears voices12 & spends most of his time in the backyard rearing cockerels for the cockpits. Whilst he has become as weathered as a banyan, it was once said he possessed “the jib of Clark Gable.”
“I will not abide this poison!” I protest. I have been protesting for a quarter century—bitter gourd tastes like vegetal diesel—but Barbarossa insists it mitigates blood sugar, and I am beholden to him; he oft saves me from myself.
“Juice especial,” he says in English. He is known to speak English on occasion—he picked it up buttling at the Olympus—but in recent history, he is only wont to mutter gibberish such as Yessur, nossur, cocklediddledosur.
“You garnished it with hemlock?”
Stroking his freshly hennaed beard, Barbarossa announces, “Is the haypy-baday-juice!”
Kissing him on the head, I slip my man a note folded in the pocket of my robe, a tip for the wishes, the welcome watery wine, but since the old fox is not always compos mentis, I ask him how he remembered. “You friend calling,” he replies.
“I have no friends!” I cry.
“Pinto phone.”
By Jove! Pinto, good old Felix Pinto, the Last Trumpeter of Currachee! When Barbarossa informs me that I have been summoned to the Goan Association, I doff my robe and proclaim, “Prepare my bath! Dust off my smoking jacket! Iron my kerchief!”
In all the excitement, I forget the obsidian eyes, and nearly tumble over the balcony yet again, not unlike Adam before the fall.
10. A cursory survey of my lavatory library would reveal back issues of She, Mag, the Civil & Military Gazette, as well as The Ornithologist’s Field Guide, Justine, Not Without My Daughter, Freedom at Midnight. The most entertaining of the lot, the lot that belongs in the loo, is Maulana Thanvi’s Heavenly Ornaments. Did he not expire on the pot?
11. I should note that the portmanteau was originally coined by Tony: Chutiya + Lambu = Chambu. I might add that he also coined the underexploited “Khotiya” but will leave the import to other armchair philologists.
12. The story goes that Nargis’ preacher instructed her to say salam before entering a room. When she entered the garret one afternoon, a voice replied & she yelled bloody murder & Barbarossa came to the rescue. He reported that the djinn bore no ill intent; he was just being polite. I don’t mind; decorum is a lost virtue.
ON THE JAZZ AGE OF CURRACHEE—AN ANECDOTAL HISTORY
According to my friend and former colleague, B. Avari, proprietor of the world-famous Beach Luxury, jazz came to Currachee in ’53. He told me that when his parents were away in Beirut or Mauritius or someplace like that, he “booked this Dutch quartet, called several hundred people, many of them friends. They played all night. There was a traffic jam in the parking lot.” When jazz came to the city, it caused traffic jams.
Old Goan rockers, however, will tell you that they were grooving to jazz even earlier. They will tell you that their forefathers had started trickling into Bombay, Calcutta, and Currachee by the middle of the nineteenth century to escape the Portuguese, a dashed scourge in the Annals of the Colonial Enterprise. They were D’Souzas, Fernandeses, Rodrigueses, Lobos, Nazareths, erecting St. Patrick’s Cathedral13 with the Irish Fusiliers and the Currachee Goan Association not long after, organising choirs at the former, staging Gilbert and Sullivan operettas at the latter. Music, they will say, is in their blood.
Whilst the Anglos congregated at the Burt Institute and the gentry waltzed across the floors of the Gymkhana and Scinde Clubs, the Goans were doing the Lindy Hop or Cha-cha-cha to numbers strummed by the Carvalho Trio or the Janu Vaz Band14 at jam sessions at each other’s houses, in the backyards of Cincinnatus Town: somebody would bring a guitar, somebody else the drums, and horns became de rigueur by and by. And of cours
e, everyone would bring liquor—Murree, caju feni, or Goan hooch, and if they could afford it, the foreign sauce: Dimple, Black & White, Vat 69.15 Before long, the legendary Eddie Carapiet began hosting the weekly radio show “The Hit Parade,” injecting jazzy riffs into the bloodstream of the city. And one fine day Dizzy Gillespie rolled into town, cohort in tow, selling out the garden at the Metropole.
Although there was not much demand for what came to be known as Three Star Accommodation in the old days, there was the Killarney run by Mr. Wyse, North Western, Marina, the Bristol on Sunny Side Lane,16 and the Olympus. Then the Parsees, consummate visionaries, entered the frame: C. Framji Minwalla, for instance, transformed his guesthouse in Malir into the Hotel Grand, the only establishment that boasted a swimming pool. And when the city became the regional entrepôt—all flights, East to West, West to East, flew in & out of the city—the Dutch set up Midway House, and there was the Hostellerie de France, and with the advent of cabarets, the Taj, Lido, the hospitality landscape began to change. We had to compete.
Run by my father, a Khoja,17 the Shadow Lounge at the Olympus was naturally tamer than establishments such as the Excelsior where Gul Pari bared all, or Roma Shabana, where you would attend cabarets featuring the likes of the Stambuli Sisters, or “Carmen & Anita in French Can-Can.” What you got at the Shadow Lounge were musicians who knew their Bird from their Beiderbecke. The stage was elevated and so spacious that you could fit a chamber orchestra on it. It faced a round, oak dance floor surrounded by tables draped with crimson tablecloths. There was a solid oak bar at the entrance and ferns everywhere and on a good night, there would be close to a hundred aficionados, sipping cocktails, smoking 555s, nodding and snapping their fingers emphatically.
I knew all the musicians of the time because they were all regulars at the Olympus. They wore thin black ties and their black hair swept back: recall the Ay Jays, Bluebirds, Thunders, Keynotes. One night I came across this crazy, trumpetplaying cat, Felix Pinto, known to his audiences by his nom de tune: the Caliph of Cool. He possessed the shiniest trumpet this side of Saddar, or, for that matter, the Suez.
It has been said that the Caliph had a hand in the composition of the National Anthem though the stories were apocryphal even then.18 When asked, Pinto would just grin mysteriously and raise a toast to the well-being of the country—a wooly, wily strategy. Some attribute the commission to the Caliph’s doppelganger, old Dominic Gonsalves, but I believe that it belongs to Tollentine, or Tolly, Fonseca, the celebrated bandmaster known for original compositions that include the “Barcelona Waltz,” “Officer’s March,” and “Diwan-e-Khaas.” I never had the opportunity to meet the man—he expired soon after the anthem was completed19—but have come across his nieces at the Currachee Goan Association. Whatever the story, this much is certain: the Caliph of Cool was a legend in his time.
Although the Shadow Lounge was leafy, smoky, and dim, you could always spot Felix Pinto: he sported a slick bouffant, a boxer’s jaw, and thick-rimmed, shaded glasses, whether it was three in the afternoon at Café Grand or three on a moonless morning at Clifton Beach. Verily, he was a dandy in a way that was only possible in Currachee in the Sixties. I would wager that he wore his glasses in the bath and to bed, sleeping or making love. Because they were glued to his nose, you would have never noticed his sunken blue vertiginous eyes. Ask me then: how do I know?
Pinto’s trademark frames were knocked off his face once and only once, one night at Le Gourmet circa ’59, when he was boffed in the face during a bar brawl with a young landowner known for his two-toned patent leather shoes. There was a dame involved, a sexy Anglo named Eleanor or something like that, and a spilt glass of wine. Although Pinto sported a black eye that night, he got his opponent in the bird’s nest. When the arriviste crumpled, I whisked the Caliph out via the kitchen. Otherwise he would have had to contend with the landowner’s thuggish entourage.
When said landowner was elected Prime Minister some years later, I helped Pinto escape to Australia.20 My friend knocked about down under during the Disco Era before returning to Currachee but by then, the Prime Minister had imposed prohibition in a gutless attempt to gain currency with the excitable religious rabble. The clubs, bars, and cabarets were shut down soon after. Many Goans left. It was the end of an age.
13. Who knows now or acknowledges the fact that the city as we know it is actually arranged around churches?
14. Lynette Dias-Gouveia reminds me that the band comprised Alex Rodrigues & Dominic Gonsalves on saxophone; John Fernandes on trumpet; double-bassist David William; and Basil and Rudy D’Souza on the drums.
15. Three Parsee brothers—technically speaking two brothers and a cousin—had a virtual monopoly on distribution in the country by the middle of the century. They ran the Quetta Distillery Ltd., which along with the Murree Brewery remains the premier producer of liquor in the country. One ought to avoid the former’s Peach Vodka and also the whisky of the newer distillery in the Interior. It tastes like paint thinner.
16. The Bristol was built in 1910 by two Hindoo brothers & run by my drinking buddy, the honourable Mr. Rizvi.
17. For those not in the know, Khojas, known once upon a time as Lohanas, are a metropolitan mercantile community who revere the Mighty Ali (AS), cousin & right-hand man of the Prophet (PBUH). Although an intellectual, Ali (AS) could break you in two if you crossed him. Since the Prophet (PBUH) was a businessman, since business is Sunnah, we follow in his footsteps, pursuing commerce from Calcutta to Zanzibar to Canada. In fact, this country was fashioned by a Khoja. But I get ahead of myself.
18. The words, of course, were penned by the renowned poet, Hafiz Jalandhari, and the orchestra, reportedly a navy band, was conducted by one Ahmed Chagla.
19. Although he was known to frequent the Olympus, I was not allowed into the bar before I was eighteen. Of course, I didn’t drink until my turn as the Cossack. It should be noted here, however, that since Mummy treated my childhood colds with brandy (to Papa’s chagrin), I was, in a way, weaned on spirit.
20. I suppose he could have fled to Canada or the United States of America—if I were compelled to leave I would escape to San Remo like the White Russians—but the Australian Consul General at the time, a certain His Excellency Darling, was known to us, so I leaned on him to help a man out.
ON RITES AND RESPONSIBILITY
(or TAKE FIVE)
The Goan Association is housed in an imposing doublestoried stone edifice featuring arched windows and cornices and pilasters flanking the entrance. There is a library and wine shop downstairs, typically manned by a ruddy tubby chap whose mouth is permanently fixed in a golden grin, and a vast hall upstairs where concerts and plays and marriages are staged with great foon fan—not to mention the annual Valentine’s & Independence Day balls. It’s always cool inside because the walls are thick and the ceiling is high and the doors open out to a shaded alcove featuring a fountain. As you enter you pass sequential portraits of past presidents whose solemn expressions suggest a tale that is best not to broach with the members of the storied institution.
I find Felix in his tatty tuxedo and dark glasses towards the far end of the hall, leaning for effect, nursing one of those deadly bottles of feni. “I looked at him,” he is saying, “he looked at me, then I said, ‘Why don’t you sit on the trumpet, mister!’” There is a roar of laughter from the audience, a cast of pirates arranged in a circle: the barkeep, magnificently named Titus Gomes, and two others, a walnut of a fellow with bushy whiskers, and a ponytailed character in a Hawaiian shirt who elbows Pinto upon my advent.
As if parting a stage curtain, Felix proclaims, “Ah, the Cossack cometh! Happy birthday, you rascal!” Turning to the trio, he adds, “He might be a Musalman, but he’s all right!” They hoot and toot and raise empty glasses. “Get the birthday boy a chair, and some hooch.” Although I rarely partake in libation anymore on account of sugar and gout, I cannot refuse my old friend. I down a Patiala peg21 and wince. It feels warm going down; it feels like t
he old days.
“I was going to hold a party for you, man,” Felix begins, “but you don’t have any friends anymore and mine are dead or in Australia—it’s the same thing. You know, I’ve been everywhere in that penal colony of a country—Perth, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, I’ve even been to that big rock in the Outback—and I tell you I’m happier in this godforsaken place any day of the week. How ya goin? they ask. What tribe ya from? ‘Goan, man,’ I’d say, ‘Pakistani,’ and they think I’m saying Papua New Guinea. G’day, mate, good on ya. Sure, I played gigs there, good gigs, or good enough, but here I’ve got a name, a place—”
“Context—”
“You have a way with words, Cossack.”
“That’s what I do.”
“I walk into any hotel in this city and somebody comes running, Good afternoon, sir, good evening, sir, because they know I’m an old-timer. I’ve survived, banjo. The other day, I was at the Intercon, and who do I see? Do you remember that bacha, Yusuf? He’d ask me to call him Joe, and I’d say, ‘Joe, help me carry the equipment back to the Foxy.’ Now he’s a big seth—he’s got buildings on the beachfront. Anything you need, he said, you call me. But what do I need? I need a drink, my trumpet—I need people to know that I am the best bloody trumpet player in the country.”
“They need to know you knocked out a prime minister—”
“Exactly, man, exactly!”
“Aun-houn,” Titus Gomes chimes in in pidgin.
“Enough jib-jab!” Pinto proclaims, biting his trumpet. “Time to jam!” As the others conjure a double bass, an accordion, and a dhol because the snare drum is torn, Pinto says, “I know what you want to hear, Cossack.” Tapping his foot, he adds, “Happy birthday, old friend.”