by HM Naqvi
“What exactly are you proposing?” I ask.
“We,” the Major announces, “are proposing disposing of the Lodge.”
“One disposes of old magazines, mango rinds, not the family estate!”
“The house is falling apart!” the Major thunders. “The roof is caving in. Who needs such a big place?”
“Nargis, Babu, the children!”
Babu, scrutinizing his palms, mutters, “We don’t really need so much space.”
“We should have done this long ago,” the Major continues, “but you know that the court could not appoint a nazir to appraise the property because Bakaullah was away and Tony was in America and then there was the whole business of the lease renewal.”96 The Major neglects to mention that nobody was interested in “disposing” of the Lodge because property prices were depressed through the turn of the century.97 “Better late than never,” he is saying. “Bakaullah is in a bad way, and I have to support my children, and what about Guddu and Tota?”
“Toto—”
“How can you deny them their right? We all need money, shehzaday. We all have needs.”
“I also have needs—”
“Liquor?”
“What of it?”
“It’s haram!”
“Show me one place it is haram in the Holy Book and I will leave the Lodge tomorrow—”98
“You’re a loafer!”
“I’m an intellectual!”
“Go do your thinking elsewhere!”
Where? In one of those new, exorbitant flats overlooking the smelly lagoon? I cannot afford that. Then what? A semidetached Gulshan-e-This or Gulistan-e-That? The Major will say that I would be able to live like a king from the sale of the Lodge, but my needs are not regal and why should I leave heaven for hell? No, I will die on my own terms, in my own home. Am I selfish? Perhaps. But survival is a selfish imperative—the reason for the success of the Homo sapiens species! Passing gas, a cracker more than a thunderclap, I exclaim, “I will not!”
“Don’t be the dog in the cupboard—”
“Manger, sir—”
“You will be happy to know we’ve found a buyer, a carpet tycoon. He wants to put up a high-rise—he will pay up to 60 percent up front. Bakaullah is flying down to sign the iqrarnama!”99 A carpet tycoon! Comrade Bakaullah! Surely the End of Days is upon us! “We just need your consent.”
Bovine fecal matter! I can wager my stipend on the fact that Tony has not yet assented. They know they cannot accomplish anything without the written consent of Tony and I. And I decide I will get to him first. They also know that I happen to possess the title deed. Papa handed it to me himself.
“It will be a boon for us all,” the Major is saying. “What say you?”
“I need to soak my rump in the tub.”
Just then Nargis arrives with a glass of water. “Too little,” I mumble, standing up, “too late.”
“You cannot run every time we discuss the subject!” the Major exclaims. “You need to commit now! You will commit now! The express train doesn’t wait for the passenger!”
“Let me think about it.”
“You need how long?”
“Six, maybe seven years?”
“Nothing doing!” he hollers. “You have three weeks, and three weeks only! Any later and I’ll sort you out! The courts will sort you out! You have no locus standi!”
“Locus standi, my foot,” I declare, marching out. “Exit, Cossack.”
93. One understands that they do it right in two countries in the world: Ireland & Ghana. Denizens of the former famously hold wakes, drinking until they are sozzled, sottish, sick, whilst the latter revel as if celebrating a wedding. Oh, how I would like to die in Ireland, Ghana, the South Pacific! Oh, how is it to live before you die!
94. There is a variety of man who believes he has scaled the summit of sophistication by dint of his command of cigar-related argot—the Wide Churchill, the Narrow Nostril—and naming a couple of single malts. There’s a reason Scotch is blended: single malt tastes like paint thinner. My urine’s sweeter.
95. I don’t mind the noble steeds—I actually prefer them to doves or to the feeble stabs at Modern Art by that society artist with the glasses and big nose—but these seem to be overdone.
96. In the nineties, leases for many properties in Garden lapsed and the renewal cost was something like Rs. 1,300 per square yard or almost Rs. 6 million in total.
97. These America-, Gulf-return types are in search of “investment opportunities,” and there is no doubt that because of its square yardage & location, the Lodge has become a bona fide goldmine. Many have sold out over the years—Mr. Silveira, the Mascarenhas, Ghulam Mohammed & Sons. Amrohi’s brother, the formidable poet Jaun, was reportedly compelled to move to Buffer Zone. How can a canton be called Buffer Zone?
98. There are basically three verses in the Holy Book that explicitly pertain to the consumption of alcohol: Al-Baqarah 2:219, An-Nisa 4:43 & Al-Mai’dah 5:91. Each offers a varying view. It is, for the record, mentioned a fourth time in a list delineating God’s bounties. “And from the fruit of the date palm and the vine ye get intoxicants and wholesome food.” Imagine that!
99. I might not know much about the law, but I know this much due to cross-questioning Kapadia over the years: according to the Colonial Era Land Transfer Act circa 1860 or 1870, the iqrarnama, or agreement to sell, is basically only a promise by a potential seller. It is not legally binding.
AN ORAL HISTORY OF THE COSSACK ERA
“You see, after three years of praying, praying for inspiration or direction, praying for his mother’s soul, he forsook propriety, society, family, and our one and only God. He started the day in the afternoon with the equivalent of a three-martini breakfast. He evoked that mathematician Khayyam, proclaiming, ‘If there’s no truth, no certainty, what does it matter if I in my ignorance am sober or drunk?’ He staggered in Hawaiian shirts and an Elvis bouffant from bar to nightclub, from gambling dens to the brothels up and down Napier Road. Needless to say, he acquired a reputation overnight …
“One heard things. My clients were talkers. They said he was seen with a dancer of mixed parentage who was known to bare all on stage except her rainbow wigs, and also kept company with several society beauties known to be regulars at the Key Club. Once they found his Chevrolet floating in the shallows beyond Bath Island—you won’t remember but Bath Island was once an island—with him in it. They kept it out of the papers on account of his having been out with the wife of a serving provincial minister. Another time he had to be rescued from jail for driving into a parked police car in the middle of the day. Then there was the straw that broke the camel’s back. There was this band of hippies who had hitchhiked from Bavaria and were running around town peddling hallucinogens. Our hero adopted them, lodging the hippies at the Olympus. When his father learnt of the arrangement, he had everybody thrown out, including his son …
“The story goes that one night at the bar at the Central Hotel, the young man happened upon a delegation of Soviet technocrats in town to advise the government on nationalizing industry—was it the steel mills? A bet was struck behind the bar and Abdullah found himself seated face to face with a Tartar and a Georgian and a dozen bottles of vodka. You know these peoples are famed for their capacity to drink. They laughed and postured and pounded shot after shot as if they were guzzling Roohafzah. Word spread. Idlers from neighbouring Metropole and Excelsior down the road showed up. More wagers were placed with the barkeep, some say close to half a lakh altogether. The Russians started to sweat and swoon. They cried foul but it was too late: at the end of the evening, our hero was the last man standing. He picked up a bottle of Cossack brand vodka and raised it to the cheering audience like a hero, then took a bite from the rim of his glass and spat it out. That night, he was crowned, no christened, the Cossack. The year was 1974 …
“There are numerous tales and myths associated with the Cossack Era. Once at the annual Fancy Dress Ball at the Burt In
stitute, it’s said he donned tights and flitted up and down the hall all evening, telling the ladies he was Petipa’s Don Quixote looking for his Dulcinea. He bedded two together. Another time he and his cohort dressed as firemen, pumping beer into everybody’s mouths through an elaborate contraption. Ironically, he set the lavatory on fire that night when he collapsed smoking a cigar …
“I can go on, and on. I could tell you that one of the last visiting Lebanese dancers in the city was coveted by all, from landowners to the city’s biggest businessmen. The Cossack dispatched a certain politician with her. He thumped up the stairs at the Excelsior, then thumped down half an hour later, proclaiming, ‘The bloody woman is a man!’ He never forgave the Cossack …
“Some still call him the Cossack. I suspect he still sometimes likes to think of himself as the Cossack. But times change, you know, people change. He might have grown up or given up. He might have realized that he couldn’t run all the way. He once said, ‘Whoever turns a bandit on God’s highway will turn tavernward once he sees the light.’ I am not certain what he meant, but there you have it.
“You know, he comes from a good family, an old family, but sometimes you grow up too early or too late—sometimes you don’t grow up at all. Sometimes you misplace your moral centre—it happens to the best of us. It’s not unlike misplacing your spectacles, and can I tell you I often misplace those …
“He sobered not long after his father died, retreating into his head, reading literature, history, philosophy, philology, metaphysics, the horticultural sciences, what have you. He never really completed his education. He is a self-educated, self-styled academic, and hats off to him. I understand he has spent many years trying to begin some sort of project pertaining to ‘aspects of intellectual history’ but I don’t know much about it so don’t ask me.
“He came to see me when there were family disputes concerning Transfer Certificates—the Probate Courts. His brothers blamed him for everything from their father’s health to the health of the businesses. One of them lodged a case against him. I defended the boy because I didn’t believe the apportioning of blame was just. I thought him fundamentally a decent fellow.
“You know, he had lived his entire life for others. One day he decided to live for himself. Is that wrong?”
Transcribed from a Telephonic Account Related to BB by Kapadia of Kapadia & Kapadia (Barrister at Law)
ON THE ART OF ENTERTAINING IN THE DARK
(or KISS ME DEADLY)
Jugnu comes when the power goes, wearing reds and yellows and sucking a beedi. We drink, dine, and dance under faint impressions of whirling constellations. There have been a few near brushes with the authorities below, the usual threat of Chambu & sometimes a cloud of dogged mosquitoes descends, but by and large these lantern-lit evenings have been amongst the best of my life, like that number—My lonely days are over, and life is like a song! Such a period of amity in the history of nations is termed a Golden Age.100 Of course, anxieties do conspire and circle the camp, but the idea, anticipation, the nightly promise of Jugnu has the effect of banishing disquiet to the periphery of my consciousness.
Jugnu is cool, quick, charming, mysterious. She will chat about everything from the inchoate shapes in the clouds—“That one looks like a buffalo from behind”—to the gusts of political change—“The war in the North is spilling to the South”—but rarely about herself. A veil separates her life outside the Lodge and one does not want to be seen peering in; but on occasion, when we are wet with sweat and flush with wine and the breeze stirs ever so slightly, the veil lifts. One has gleaned that she can read Urdu though she has not matriculated, that she has worked as a seamstress & beautician in prior lives, prior incarnations. She cannot cook or handle a fork, belches religiously after dinner (and says Alhumdulillah, God bless her), and After Eight chocolate mints make her giddy.
Of course, I am also aware of Jugnu’s connection to Lyari, one of many cantons left by lily-livered politicos to the dogs.101 I want to ask her about Langra Dacoit, the infamous don known for running guns, extortion rackets, and other unwholesome endeavours. According to Chambu, resident expert on all matters including the machinations of the mafia, the fearsome don was recently nabbed by the authorities. Jugnu, however, remains tightlipped.
In the effort to discern more, I offer to read Jugnu’s palm, a ruse that has worked for swains the world over from time immemorial: placing her hands on my knees like a bold bride displaying fresh henna, she looks up expectantly. “Phir?” Then? I explain that the left hand catalogues one’s inheritance and predispositions, the right offers a snapshot of fate, viz., kismet ki photo: “You must have noticed that the length and trajectory of these lines change over time. Fate, you see, is not set in stone. It’s in your hand.” I might not believe such bromides but it doesn’t matter—nothing matters when her hand is cradled in mine. “This is your brain line, long, elegant, and this one is your love line. I am happy to report that it is robust.”
What else did her palm tell this amateur chiromancer?102 Unlike my palms—clean, fleshy & cut by three distinct divergent routes—Jugnu’s are crosshatched like raw silk, the telltale sign of an Old Soul. And she possesses glyphs I have never seen before—a confounding swirl across the Mound of Venus, a triangle in Upper Mars, etcetera. When I cannot discern the import of a particular pattern, I speculate: “It seems that you were happy until you were, oh, about twelve years of age? Things changed thereafter and remained in flux for years. Now you’re looking for something, somebody perhaps?”
Some nights she allows conjecture; some nights she retrieves her palm, changes the subject: “Who is this Sara Awan?” I tell her that Sarah Vaughan was a legendary jazz singer who led a tumultuous life & died early. When she asks, “What is she singing about?” I translate the following verse: “Have you ever heard two turtle doves / Bill and coo when they love? / That’s the kind of magic music we make with our lips / When we kiss …”103
We are sprawled in the verandah late one night, sipping the dregs of a fine bottle of Tony’s wine after Bosco has retired. Jugnu is sweating because she has been teaching the lad proprietary dance moves: Change-the-Lightbulb-Change-the-Lightbulb, Butcher’s-Cut-Butcher’s-Cut. The crevice of her breasts beckons, the zircon stud wedged in her neb glows—she evokes Nefertiti in repose. “What are you looking at?” she asks.
Blood coursing from head to sole, I reply, “You.”
“Why?”
“Because,” I say, leaning closer, “you are the most magnificent creature I have ever set eyes on.” Then I take a Leap of Faith: I shut my eyes and kiss her. She tastes like lipstick, tobacco, hope on the morrow.
Mercifully she does not swat me away. “You are an interesting man,” she says, “a kind man, but you need to be careful. You do not know me.”
“I like what I know, and I want to know more.”
“I have many issues.”
“Let me help.”
“If God cannot help me, how can you?”
“I have resources at my disposal,” I lie. “I can get things done,” I lie again. “But tonight I can help you forget.”
Tugging her to the dance floor, I place her hands on my chest and mine around her waist. We dance cheek to cheek despite the logistics of my belly for the remainder of the evening to the trill of the night birds & cricket orchestra. We kiss again. We do not go further. Why does it matter? We have time.
The last time I experienced intimate relations was in the winter of ’88. It was a hopeful moment in history—the gust of democratic change was sweeping across the land—but my relationship with Khaver, an aging television actress who had had supporting roles in several popular serials, was at best precarious. When I would visit her flat at Rimpa Skyline, bearing fragrant bracelets fashioned of jasmine and a bottle of Italian red wine, she would yell at me—You’re always late! What do you take me for? You don’t know what it’s like!—before making spirited animal love. Sex, good sex, is fundamentally animalistic: it involves li
cking and sniffing and secret secretions.104
The closest Jugnu and I are to carnal congress is the evening she arrives dramatically drenched—a passing automobile has splashed soupy water all over her low-cut, Roohafzah-coloured shalwar. “I am going to take a bath,” she announces. After expounding tubside on the idiosyncrasies of the plumbing system—the blue tap spouts hot water, turned counterclockwise—I repair to the balcony to entertain randy fantasies. Imagine a sodden beauty quietly soaping by candlelight in your tub! Imagine, oh, just imagine!
When she calls for a towel, I stand outside the door, clearing my throat, heart beating like a dhol, and when she bids me shut my eyes and enter—“Take nine steps”—I shut my eyes tight like a child anticipating a surprise: a peck, a caress, congress. But she is swaddled in a beach towel in an instant. I can only take in the wet, fragrant tresses cascading over her broad shoulders, the curly hair adorning her long legs. “You’re gentlemane,” she enunciates. What to do? Tug the towel? The moment passes like a thought.
Although it’s magical having Jugnu over night after night, the rituals that define relationships between two beings—lovers, friends, or family—can slip inexplicably and intractably at any juncture into the Pit of Monotony. Conscious of the peril, I suggest excursions: Seaview, Sandspit, the spectacular beach of Kund Malir, the lighthouse on Manora Island. When I suggest spending an evening at the shrine of Abdullah Shah Ghazi (RA) for qawwali and hashish, she replies, “Things have changed there,” as if she’s a regular. “What about Colombo?” I ask. “Tony is always talking about it. It’s almost around the corner!”
Leaning back, wistfully scanning the horizon, Jugnu entertains the fantasies in her head with a half smile but inevitably invokes certain “responsibilities.” It seems to me as if she is trying to convince herself. Is she married? With child? Dying? Attending to the dying? Of course, if there are matters she keeps close to her chest, there are matters I do not readily divulge either: my piles, the uncertain fate of the Sunset Lodge, my failure to make meaningful progress on any project.