by Braham Singh
‘By the way, what did he steal?’
‘American valuables. Right from their enclosure. What is the meaning of this, I ask? They are our guests.’
‘Salim Ali went into their enclosure and stole valuables? Why don’t they arrest him?’
‘Haven’t you heard of the worldwide communist conspiracy? It’s worldwide. He doesn’t have to do anything himself, per se. He got it done. They are everywhere.’
‘I’ll bear that in mind, Major.’
‘I have to go,’ the Major said. ‘Busy, as you know. What to do? Remember, thirty-one millimetre, otherwise we will reject the lot.’
In that case, best to be nice to the mian.
‘Get rid of him,’ the Major advised Ernst before hanging up.
Edging through the corridor, he resisted letting Salim Ali know he was pissing off powerful people left and right. It would only make his day. There was however the other matter the Major raised—rampant trade union activity and very likely accessory to theft. Such goings-on were out of line.
Salim Ali agreed. ‘You should fire me,’ he suggested.
They stared at each other, Parvatibai joining forces with Salim Ali to ensure a rout. Ernst felt a camaraderie with the 9th Punjab. It was difficult to manage a Salim Ali behaving like this. He squirmed. He was never constipated like this before the mole on his face developed a heartbeat.
‘We need Punjabi on our side, if we want more orders.’ It was the best he could offer .
‘Why for?’ Salim Ali asked. ‘You have Sassoon.’
~
‘How long have you known Salim Ali?’
‘Since school.’
She paused to reach back. ‘The boys played cricket after class. We girls would come to watch even though Salim Ali ignored us. The other boys all copied him. All, except Arjun. He would happily play with us girls when not playing cricket. This one day, we were standing outfield and a boy pointed straight at me and said loudly, “Cover that face and fuck the base”.’
She had his complete attention.
‘Salim Ali was about to bowl to Arjun. He was famous for his leg spin.’ She smiled as she narrated. Total pride in someone who had ignored her, their whole childhood.
That day, Salim Ali delivered a full-toss that was so amateur, it was beneath his dignity. She was behind the wicketkeeper with the other girls. The ball rose high, coming in to Arjun and giving him all the time needed to hook and smash it straight into that boy’s head—the one who had pointed at her and shouted, ‘Cover the face and fuck the base!’ The boy needed twenty-one stitches after that and the next day his father beat up Arjun very badly.
‘Salim Ali went back to ignoring me, and I went back to following them like a puppy dog,’ she said, grinning like a bunny rabbit.
She was sublime in her innocence, and with an openness found in children, sometimes in women, never in men. Her eyes were on fire, as she recalled Salim Ali’s deliberate full toss to Arjun for him to smash the boy’s skull. Or maybe she was getting off on that boy needing stitches, or maybe Arjun taking the beating for her. Ernst didn’t enquire. He did remember Arjun calmly shaking his head—NO—and being clobbered by a hockey ball for that. It took a fatal stab to the femoral artery for him to show any panic.
‘He was tough,’ Ernst said, ‘your Arjun.’
‘He was the gentlest soul on earth. Out of place here, like his Uncle. Stray dogs in a mad city.’
‘You loved him. ’
‘What’s there not to love? He had a huge feminine side. That’s why I still can’t get over his hitting that boy like that.’
‘He did it for you,’ Ernst said, just to see her eyes light up again.
‘Arjun loved cricket, but I know he would rather sit with my brother and me all day drawing rangolis.’
‘That wasn’t a rangoli, what you drew,’ Ernst said. ‘It was a powder mandala.’
‘No one should know,’ she said. ‘No one should know.’
‘Your mother does.’
‘A mother’s duty is to protect. Other people don’t like our Tantra. They call it evil. But Arjun was from there,’ she said, pointing to the east. ‘There, they are more real. He taught my brother and me. Became our Tantaji and showed us the path. How did you know it was a powder mandala?’
He thought of his teacher, the gardener’s Sahajiya wife at Purandhar. ‘I found my Tantaji on a desert island.’
‘He was Sahajiya at heart,’ she said. ‘Arjun. The perfect mix of male and female.’ Looking somewhere into the distance while wiping her eyes, she recited from the Mahabharata. ‘Prince Arjun was the third brother to enter the king’s palace. His hair was long and braided, and he walked with the gait of a broad-hipped woman. His feminine attire attenuated his masculine glory, and at the same time, it did not.’
Her Prince Arjun, her champion. Smashing the skull of a bully who insulted her. Calmly taking a beating from the bully’s father. Shaking his head in the face of a Chhote Bhai.
No.
Every time Chhote Bhai asked for the gunny bag, there was that shake of the head.
No.
Refusing to return whatever it was he stole, then dying for it. So much for the feminine side. Or maybe because of the feminine side.
Anyway, Arjun was how a Sindhi girl from Western India learnt about the Eastern Sahajiyas and their Tantric ways. Now he understood why she did that powder mandala on her porch every morning. Why her eyes were red the day Arjun died. She had been crying, like Salim Ali .
On the other hand, if Arjun was her Tantaji and best friend, what was she doing rolling on the grass with Chhote Bhai that very day they killed him?
~
‘Your books are a mess,’ she said. ‘Just like you, Beatrice Madam says. She thinks you need to settle down, get married. To her.’
They sat across box files containing invoices and pink-voucher slips, next to ledgers with good-luck swastikas dancing across their red-cloth binding. Anxiety would build up facing financial paraphernalia, putting his insides into turmoil. Funny thing, he knew his books of account were beyond help and so was his business. The only reason he had her come, was because she ignored him that day at Fertilisers. The only reason she came, was Arjun.
Ernst reached to touch the mole on his face. It throbbed in response. Sitting with her at the dining table, the mole didn’t bother as much as his financial past—towering in a pile the size of a migraine. Their legs touched, and he was surprised she didn’t retract. Moving through the ledgers with professional ease, she allowed pressure build against his calf. He throbbed like his mole and a fearful thrill took over, throwing him into such a swivet that he remained an idiot for a full minute before taking his leg back; all the time trying to concentrate on her jottings.
Moving away, there was a flash of anger. Was that intentional? Teasing an older man? A bloody game, was it? A few deep breaths and he let it go, squinting at her ink squiggles spelling doom in double entry. She appeared more surprised at the mess he was in, than anything to do with him removing his leg.
‘Should I have Munshiji explain the entries?’
‘No need,’ she said. ‘Just tell him to do as I say.’
Salim Ali came in just about then or Ernst would have asked her about Chhote Bhai. Also, by the way, what did she think of older men?
Walking into the living room, Salim Ali worked at keeping it casual and when she smiled at him, it was the same one she had thrown past Ernst at Chhote Bhai .
‘I didn’t see you after that day,’ she complained. ‘The Mian Building swallowed you, or what?’
Salim Ali wasn’t being himself and didn’t say a thing. He appeared tamed. When Parvatibai came by to look daggers, for once he ignored her. Parvatibai then banished herself to the photo corner and kept dusting Bombay Ingrid’s framed photograph—the one with Bombay Ingrid in front of Ernst’s Morris 8 the day she went bye-bye.
~
Parvatibai had stood aside when Ernst took that photograph with his Leica some t
wenty-six years ago. She had remained to one side, crying into the corner of her sari while a younger, robust Mohan Driver loaded Bombay Ingrid’s luggage into the Morris 8. Later when he drove them to Sassoon Docks, Ernst had sat next to Bombay Ingrid and tried holding on to her hand. Surrounded this evening with tenacious folk refusing to let their dead friend depart gracefully, Ernst felt inadequate at how easily he had let go when she pulled away.
Parvatibai didn’t ever bring it up, but she couldn’t understand why Bombay Ingrid would leave, then go disappear on them like that. As if Germany went swallowed her. Technically, you could say it was the Jüdische Krankenhaus that gulped her down. Berlin’s Jewish Hospital swallowing its Jews, refusing to give them up. Except for his father who was an exception to every rule.
‘What are we doing about Arjun?’ Salim Ali asked. “We”, not “you”. He had a future as a diplomat.
‘What do you want me to do?’
The girl stepped up. ‘Salim Ali says it was no accident. Help us find who did it.’
But I know who did it, he wanted to say, and probably why. Although God knows how killing the kid helps recover what he stole. I can’t tell you anything anyway, because your Salim Ali will go nuts, and then before you know it, there goes what’s left of my life.
His mole shot out a distress flare searing his insides, and he asked himself whether it was time to put an end to this. At least ask what’s in that damned gunny bag. One’s entitled to know.
‘Where were you that evening, the day Arjun died? ’
She eyed him. ‘I was a mess. Beatrice Madam excused me and I went home. Why?’
Now was the time to tell her why. Set her straight with: Maybe because I saw you walk out from the greens that evening with Chhote Bhai. Maybe because there was grass sticking to your arse. And then to Salim Ali: Are you aware Chhote Bhai knows the gorilla who stabbed Arjun in the thigh? Also, by the way, your landlord’s fucking your Bhairavi.
‘Do something,’ Bhairavi demanded, looking at Ernst, both legs crossed on the sofa beneath the sari and the toes peeking out to taunt him.
He pointed at his watch. The 6-Limited bus service to Chembur stopped twenty minutes ago. ‘Tell you what I can do. I can drop you both home.’
‘You can do anything you want,’ she said. ‘You’re European. Besides, you have a lucky mole.’ It throbbed again when she said that, and he reached up to rub it.
They filed down the corridor past a Parvatibai using both hands to protect the Fertilisers gunny bag with all those wires sticking out. Try me, she seemed to say, thereby proving Bhairavi wrong. Clearly, there were some things he couldn’t do.
14
Radioactive Showers
Total body exposure of 400 roentgens/rad (or 4 Gy) causes radiation sickness and death in half of the individuals who are exposed.
Without medical treatment, nearly everyone who receives more than this amount of radiation will die within 30 days.
—American Accreditation Healthcare Commission
Colaba to Chembur takes you from Bombay to Mumbai—one world to another—with Sion, a purgatory of sorts, where you wait while traffic decides.
The rear seat was a war zone where Salim Ali’s body odour slugged it out with her jasmine sweat and Ernst’s sensibilities. She was pressed against her end, and Salim Ali lodged in-between. Mohan Driver broke wind from the front seat suffocating Ernst further. He stuck his head out of the open window. She did the same from her side and seeing her looking out, he wanted to reach across Salim Ali, take her hand and not let go—make up for abandoning Berlin Ingrid at Sassoon Docks twenty-six years ago.
Sion Hospital was ahead, to their left. Also all over the news, with its evolution into a teaching hospital; offering sixty MBBS seats to six thousand applicants, twenty per cent reserved for lower castes and minorities. He pictured Salim Ali in a white coat and stethoscope, walking the corridors and knocking patients unconscious with his body odour .
Ernst knew Dr. Waller, the Dean at Sion Medical. Technically, de-facto Dean. A placeholder, until they sorted out who got the job; yet Dean enough to be dangerous. Bombay’s Europeans went to Breach Candy Hospital on Napean Sea Road. Ernst came to Sion Medical College. Waller had been a good doctor once. He was now a Pethidine addict. He was also free.
It was bright outside with the moon hovering close to the horizon. It lit up the city and rendered the feeble street lighting moot. The Fiat didn’t need its one eye tonight. The girl looked up out of the window at the big apple-pie of a moon. Her expression probably stopped Salim Ali from curling his upper lip to ask what was the big deal.
Awash in moonlight, one could see Sion Hospital’s spanking new outpatient building already crumbling. It stood in front of the functional remains of an older, ex-Army hospital—a rectangle of barracks facing Sion-Trombay Road. The outpatient building’s brittle, whitewashed concrete glowed a bluish-white, and a single queue snaked into the entrance. The ginormous moon etched out each crease on every face in line. Ghatis came together here with Madrasis, and Muslim mingled with Hindu, all of them queued since afternoon. In their own localities, they would peer across at each other with hostility or alarm, whereas here they waited patiently together to take it up the arse.
‘Uncle!’ she exclaimed, leaning further out the window. ‘Uncle!’
It was Tufan, standing out from the queue. The way she called him, all that affection in her voice, it was special. Maybe because of way back when Tufan’s dead nephew had batted for her, cracked that other boy’s skull, giving him a twenty-one stitch salute and taken a beating for it. Or could be because Prince Arjun with his huge feminine side had been her Tantric teacher, her Tantaji.
Salim Ali went, ‘What the bleedy hell? He should be in bed.’
Why, Ernst wondered, because Tsering Tufan was lit up as if on stage. He reminded Ernst of Macheath—in the school’s version of The Threepenny Opera his homosexual English teacher had them perform. A year later, the Nazis banned Brecht for being a communist agitator and killed the homosexual teacher for being himself. Young Ernst had sung ‘Mack The Knife’ from the wings .
Denn die einen sind im Dunkeln,
Und die andern sind im Licht,
Und man siehet die im Lichte,
Die im Dunkeln sieht man nicht.
There are some, who are in darkness,
And the others are in light,
And you see the ones in brightness,
Those in darkness, drop from sight.
A smile broke across Tufan’s blistered face, sweeping away the darkness more than any moon could. The smile lit up Sion. The queue of sorrow snaking into Sion Hospital returned the smile as if it couldn’t help itself. Mohan Driver braked without requiring a tap to the shoulder. Ernst studied the bald tribal with his blistered skull and those weeping sores, standing there all lit up and looking an alien in his own country. There was a quality to him: a Mercedes Benz among one-eyed Fiats.
‘Arjun’s body is in there,’ Salim Ali said.
Ernst reached through the body odour and placed an arm around his engineer. Tufan came up to put his head in the open car window and when up close and smiling like that, he didn’t look tired at all.
~
Jumping out from the backseat, the Sindhi Camp girl clung to Tufan holding his arm. ‘Uncle,’ she said. He tried wriggling free of that hard body being thrust at him, then gave up.
‘The police calls Arjun’s death an accident,’ Tsering Tufan started explaining from above her head. ‘I say no, it’s not, let’s have an autopsy. But who listens?’
Salim Ali announced, ‘They’re all in cahoots, I tell you. Bhenchods.’
Confirming this was exactly how you piss them off, two havaldars at the OPD entrance stared back at Salim Ali, then Tufan, then Salim Ali again. Tufan smiled at them as the Buddha would. The havaldars parted, saluting to allow a khaki uniform through. That would probably be the sub-inspector in charge. There was one permanently stationed at Sion Hospital because of all
the police cases coming here to die. The khaki uniform spotted Tufan and walked up. It was a Deputy Commissioner of Police.
The black, acrylic badge on the chest said, Vijay Jahagirdar. Solid, flat-out, Poona-Brahmin. Deputy Commissioner Vijay Jahagirdar was a lean man with standard moustache. He looked tired and clearly had dinner on his mind. He did not look the type though, who took shortcuts. He switched on his own beam in response to Tufan’s blinding smile.
‘Tufanji,’ he said, smile to smile. ‘Let’s come to terms. What do you say? Sooner or later you have to accept your dear nephew’s body, no?’
His name was at odds with the accent, for he spoke like a St. Stephen’s boy from Delhi, conquering the Vs and Ws insurmountable to most Indians. And Germans. The acid test would come should he get worked up; something Ernst knew all about first-hand. But the Deputy Commissioner didn’t appear an excitable man.
Taking Tufan aside and flanked by the two havaldars, the Deputy Commissioner went into a huddle. The way he cajoled, film star Madhubala would have agreed to anal sex. Going by the dead nephew’s performance at Fertilisers that other day, Ernst put his money on the wilting Tufan. Moonlight glinted off the three-headed lion on the police officer’s epaulet, or maybe it was Tufan’s smile being reflected from the DCP’s polished silver insignias. A Deputy Commissioner, where a sub-inspector would suffice. It stunk to high heaven like the bullet hole in the Sardar’s head. Or those scissors, surgically applied to Arjun’s thigh by a gorilla. Deputy Commissioner of Police, Vijay Jahagirdar, was just one more instance of overkill, and it gave one pause. There were certain things one could reasonably demand be explained. Then there was this. Walking up to them, Ernst knew he should be walking away.
‘The dead boy really stole something from the Americans, Commissioner?’ Ernst asked, in spite of himself. ‘I mean, are we sure?’
The DCP looked at the white man, mulled a bit and conceded, ‘Great question. Maybe you should ask your little friend over there. By the way, is he Muslim or a communist? How can one be both? Maybe we should take him in to find out. ’