Bombay Swastika

by Braham Singh

  ‘Remember Mr. Ernestji, I’m always there for you.’

  Ernst’s Tantaji, the gardener’s wife at Purandhar Fort, used to say the whole purpose of any ritual was to meet expectations. No point otherwise, just like there was no point to the cheque ritual anymore. So Ernst did his namastes and got up to leave. It had taken the Seth twenty minutes of meandering to tell him, no money for you. Something Sassoon managed earlier in just five. Ernst couldn’t say he preferred one to the other.

  Preparing to leave, he had to watch his steps to avoid another ambush because Beatrice Taylor was eyeing him from across The Great Divide. She looked like a tigress—a fat one with tits. Ernst looked around for Beatrice Taylor’s one-girl body shop, and found her on the sofa in a huddle with Sassoon over that ledger. The great man was locked in on her like she was Goddess Bhairavi and nothing less. Ernst glanced at his watch.

  ‘Don’t forget your good luck swastika, Mr. Ernestji,’ the Seth reminded him. Ernst’s dud cheque had reappeared in the Lala’s hand; the man too busy studying it to say goodbye to a good friend.

  Across The Great Divide, Beatrice the tigress was positioning herself to intercept him. He gave her full marks for trying. Sassoon walked over to the reception to take a phone call and the girl was left alone. A bearer walked by and Ernst heard her order chai. The bearer ignored her.

  Meanwhile, Beatrice couldn’t hold it any longer. ‘Ernst,’ she said, and he pretended he hadn’t heard. Over there, the girl asked once more in her Sindhi accent. The bearer probably knew her from Sindhi Camp and wasn’t amused. He may be a waiter, but she was a fucking refugee. There are limits. When he snapped, asking her to go to hell, the verandah stopped in its tracks.

  Beatrice turned around to the girl, and then focused back on him. ‘Ernst,’ she called out again but fuck that, because Sassoon had come up from behind and tapped the outraged bearer’s shoulder. ‘Memsahib asked you for chai,’ he said, and struck the man on the mouth.

  No one moved except Beatrice, who did a slow, half-circle. The girl just sat there, and Ernst pictured a Lady Justice with buck teeth, wearing a blindfold. There was a confused silence on both sides of The Great Divide. This wasn’t happening. Stepping up for one darkie by punching another in public, made no sense at all. Clearly, the great man wasn’t himself, and Ernst felt Goddess Bhairavi was to blame. After all, he thought, look what she’s done to me. But to Sassoon? Sassoon wasn’t Ernst. Sassoon was Sassoon—letting Ernst know with a smile and a pat on the shoulder that Salim Ali needed to ante up, else no advance, no order; no more brothers-in-arms. That’s how it’s done, with scotch in hand. Yet there he was, the great man making a fool of himself over a refugee girl. It’s that Goddess Bhairavi legend come true, but Ernst didn’t find that funny anymore. He thought of distracting Sassoon with the news Salim Ali had just resigned. Save the great man any further embarrassment. Yes, the Darkie’s gone and what got stolen may well be in my apartment. You’re welcome to it. So, for fuck’s sake, leave this poor bastard of a bearer alone and let’s get on with it. I need the advance. Twenty-eighth is Salary Day.

  However, Ernst was wearing his Indian hat and therefore, superstitious about saying out loud that Salim Ali had resigned. Because it would then come true.

  21

  Schwester Ingrid

  Old acquaintances return to help you cross the river.

  —Yama, King of Hades

  Mohan Driver would do the ten miles from Chembur to Colaba in around forty-five minutes, throwing his timing back to what it was during Bombay Ingrid’s short reign. He preferred to do it under thirty. ‘Like with the whores on Foras Road.’ Ernst overheard him say that once to Kirti, the shy caddie-boy loved by all, and also by Lala Prem—a bit more than necessary. Turns out, he’s the girl’s brother.

  A shrill Bombay Ingrid was the brake those days, staying Mohan Driver from pressing on the accelerator. Now, it was burgeoning traffic around Chembur Naka. There at the Naka crossing, the Trombay and Chembur suburbs mated in a haze of diesel fumes while vehicular traffic stopped to watch. Chembur Naka jams were grand affairs. The bottleneck funnelled vehicles on to the Sion-Trombay Highway in a choked sea of yellow-black Fiat taxis, and private Ambassador dowagers with their superannuated backsides from the early Fifties. Both in turn dwarfed by overloaded Tata-Mercedes trucks of every vintage, swaying on the road to violate statutes by the dozen and help feed a police force. They were supposed to enter the city limits only at night, after ten, but they paid up, so who cared. Diesel fumes gave the air a mirage-like quality. Horns tore at eardrums. The obstruction ahead appeared to be pre-monsoon roadwork .

  Taxis began cutting through the corner petrol pump with the smiling ESSO Oil Drop to get past the roadwork. An outraged Gujarati attendant hollered protests in the face of cheerful Sikh disdain. Still, Bombay was nothing compared to the disasters brewing in Calcutta and New Delhi. Ernst noticed the coy Esso Oil Drop tempt Mohan Driver. Taking the Sethji’s round, little box with the gold-plated swastika from his pocket, he reached out to stay the man.

  ‘For you. Just don’t hang it in the car.’

  There was another Krishna Temple coming up ahead at the Chembur Naka corner and resting behind it, the amber-walled, Sassoon Protection Home for Women & Children with its red roof tiles. That’s where they dumped Foras Road whores after police raids. Facing the Krishna Temple was a Siva Temple—the compound already a beehive, work underway on the clay Ganesh statues for the immersion festivities in September. Temples populated every nook and every corner of every city, but Chembur Naka was special. Cars slowed to a crawl outside the temples, making the jam worse. One could only hope they slowed down to peek at Krishna and Siva and at the fat little Ganeshes being crafted. However, heart of hearts, everyone knew it was to crane and stare at the Sassoon Protection Home, hoping to catch a glimpse of whores nestled amidst the gods.

  ~

  Ernst’s mind drifted away from thoughts of money, and back to it. To what would happen were the Lala to try cash the dud cheque and whether there was room left to get fucked further. Given his history, there was always room. He looked out at the roadwork instead, and was distracted by formations of big, Lambadi breasts behind their mirror work. The women were sifting gravel, the line-up of mammoth titties moved along the roadside as if choreographed—to and fro between heaped gravel and an inclined, wood-framed wire mesh. They could just as well be working the sulphur pits at the Fertilisers, or for that matter, digging into radioactive dirt at Atomic Energy. Their bodies glistened in sweat from the enervating heat, and remembering Salim Ali telling him about the radioactive shower, he could see how they must have run to the fountain gushing out from the manicured grounds around the CIRUS nuclear reactor. First, made to work on radioactive lawns, then allowed a radioactive shower to cool off.

  Were any of those irradiated, out there working in the heat? Were those facial blisters from the sun, or the radioactive shower? Reasonable enquiry. They were, after all, the itinerant engines behind Industrial India, moving from site to site until they dropped dead from exhaustion, malnutrition or radiation exposure. How did one feel being exposed to just enough caesium to not exfoliate you right away; only blisters for now? Like him? Not yet ill, but not well?

  He caught a svelte, non-existent frame with platinum hair and in a starched, white uniform observe the women labouring away. She had calves to die for. Passers-by seemed unfazed by a foreign nurse at Chembur Naka—like she didn’t exist. She did to Ernst, who saw her looking at the labourers as if she understood a country she disliked so much. Hindu philosophy and especially the Sahajiya’s Tantric school had several explanations for why an eidolon would appear like this—none that augured well. All his euphoria at being a healthy hypochondriac vanished in a rush seeing Ingrid in her nurse avatar. Schwester Ingrid is what they called her, over at the Jüdische Krankenhaus in Berlin. Ernst saw her stare at the working women and sniff.

  Feeling short of breath, he lowered his window for air, trying to deal with
his wife showing up in a nurse’s uniform and all that it implied to a Tantric Sahajiya. He didn’t need a Goddess Bhairavi smiling at him to know his time was up. A dead wife appearing out of thin air was enough.

  ‘Sa’ab, are you okay?’ Mohan Driver could read the rear-view mirror like a book, while tearing down Sion-Trombay at snail’s pace during rush hour.

  No, he wasn’t okay. Because to now have Schwester Ingrid appear out of nowhere and deliver a diagnosis in full uniform, where was the need to call Waller? He already knew the results.

  ‘Stop the car.’

  Muttering away, Mohan Driver swerved left on the grass shoulder flanking the highway’s seaward side and braked. Salt pans rose from the marsh—white crystalline heaps filling up perfect squares in neat triangles. Ernst got out, staggered towards them and threw up. People craned out of crawling car windows to stare, see a white man retch. Mohan Driver tried willing the whole thing away by gazing into space instead. From the looks of it, there was a fire alarm ringing in his head, at seeing his gora sahib behave like this. ‘Make this go away,’ his eyes screamed. ‘Make this go away.’

  On his part, Ernst tried to think his way past what was happening—beat back a hypochondriac’s terror with some suitable argument on hand. This time though, calm refused to take hold. Blistered Lambadi titties lined up in his head, Schwester Ingrid inspecting the guard of honour. The message was clear. Prepare. Tantra tells us that preparing to die is an important element of keeping it simple. As a Tantric Sahajiya of sorts and given his age, he should have started to prepare some time ago. He didn’t, forcing Schwester Ingrid to now come remind him. That she would do anything for him was a bigger miracle than her appearing out of thin air.

  Walking back to the car, Mohan Driver held the rear door open for him. When he fell to his knees instead, Mohan Driver watched in horror. Ernst realised his own state was not from fear, as much as sadness at how things turned out. Not just for him, but also for Ingrid. Not just because he knew he was dying, but also because he now knew for certain she was dead. Not just because he would never know how she died, but also because he knew that’s how she would want it. Times like these, kneeling in dirt, and so what if constipated, a man takes stock of his life. Finds he never served any purpose. He was a complete waste of time. When the tears came, he let them run.

  All the way home, Mohan Driver and he refused to look at each other. On arriving, he got out and bolted up past Parvatibai straight into the bathroom. Splashing water on his face, Ernst yanked the plaster off and tried muting the sliced mole with some Max Factor pancake—left behind by Daisy Lansdowne after their forgettable tryst. He saw Parvatibai filling up the bedroom doorway to watch him apply it, his hand shaking in fear at all this change hitting at him from all sides. He turned to her in his terror because she was the one, safe place left .

  ‘Phone,’ she said, calming him with her presence.

  ~

  Dicky Waller was Salim Ali’s reason for deigning to even speak with Ernst again; not resign immediately; not tell him go fuck himself.

  ‘Dr. Waller asked you to see him tomorrow for the results?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘After what you did, you deserve to go alone.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It wasn’t just Gomes, was it?’

  ‘There could be others.’

  ‘Chhote?’

  ‘Possible. I saw him hit Arjun with his hockey ball. Then Gomes goes and kills Arjun, and on that same day meets Chhote in the Golf Club compound. I was there. Chhote saw me and walked off.’ So did the girl, and how, but that’s for another day.

  ‘Who else?’

  ‘I know you suspect every white man on the subcontinent, but really? More to the point, where’s the gunny bag? Parvatibai won’t tell me what she’s done with it.’

  ‘Of course she won’t. It doesn’t concern you.’

  ‘It’s lying at my flat and doesn’t concern me? Or is it you won’t tell because white people can’t be trusted?’

  Silence prevailed, and Ernst let it go. It was best to treat Salim Ali like an adult. And set an example by being one.

  ‘Like your father?’ Schwester Ingrid whispered and he dropped the phone with a start, but of course she wasn’t there.

  22

  Das Jüdische Krankenhaus

  Nichts Juden. Juden kaputt.

  — Russian soldiers, surprised finding Jews in Berlin

  Those days when Germany’s Jews craved escape so much they would even pay to get out, the platinum blonde Bombay Ingrid became the only Jew to return. Once in Berlin, she donned a nurse’s uniform and became Schwester Ingrid. She didn’t just survive the German fly swatter, but safe to say, she thrived; something Schwester Ingrid never tired telling Ernst. There were several letters, long letters, pages and pages trumpeting a triumphant survival, written on onion paper and real ink that even real Aryans couldn’t get their lily-white hands on.

  Ernst’s father on the other hand did not display the requisite skill set to survive, let alone anything close to her level. Also, unlike Schwester Ingrid, he never bothered with letters. Actually, not entirely true. There was that envelope Ernst received several years after it was handed to whomever, to hand to someone, to give the Red Cross for safekeeping with the reminder, not to forget to deliver to this Jew in India. Oops, the Red Cross said, when he finally received it five years later. On opening the envelope, a photograph fell out. It was his father’s last message—that picture of Schwester Ingrid in uniform behind barbed wire, with the children on her lap and calves to die for. There was nothing else inside. Still, Siegfried couldn’t have sent his son a more eloquent suicide note. His visits began soon thereafter .

  When Siegfried Steiger wasn’t sneaking into his son’s dreams to demonstrate how he slit his wrists, he would whisper about the goings-on at the Jüdische Krankenhaus. He looked nervous popping up without warning, aware his acerbic daughter-in-law could do the same. He complained to Ernst that despite his best efforts, it was getting intolerable.

  ‘I’m not talking about the detailed records on Jews they make her keep. And as for keeping a tally in the Sammellager, someone had to do it.’

  The Gestapo set up a temporary holding camp—their Sammellager—in the Pathology Department pavilion at the Jüdische Krankenhaus and cordoned it off with barbed wire. When Schwester Ingrid’s tally hit one thousand, trucks would come pick up the parcel of Jews for shipment and she would begin a new tally, as the Sammellager began filling up again. The rule was applied, German-style. Ship a parcel only when it totals one thousand—not one less, not one more—and that’s what she did. Jews have done worse things to survive. Besides, his father understood if she didn’t do it, someone else would. When she tallied off friends and relatives, once again, he understood. What choice did she have?

  Her boss was this Herr Doktor Doktor Walter Lustig. He held a doctorate in Philosophy and was also a doctor of Medicine. Hence the two Doktors he insisted upon at all times. Even after July 1938, when they stripped Jewish physicians of their medical licenses. Legally, he was now just one Doktor. No worries, because Lustig was a powerful Jew. Unlike Siegfried, they needed him. Like Siegfried he was also married to an Aryan. Unlike Siegfried, his wife was still alive. Like Siegfried, he was associated with the Jüdische Krankenhaus. Unlike Siegfried, he headed it. As a cherry on the top, he authored several books including a nurse’s textbook, as well as the popular, Little Lustig —an indispensable handbook for Germany’s medical administrators. In a rare exception to the rule, the Aryans let this Jew and his two Doktors be.

  No surprise therefore, that Herr Doktor Doktor Lustig cultivated some serious Aryan friends because of all of the above. One being the commandant of the SS contingent at the Sammellager, with whom Herr Doktor Doktor Lustig shared his nurses. As one nurse put it, ‘It was not good to be pretty. ’

  Schwester Ingrid was not pretty. She was sensational.

  A platinum blonde, Marlene Dietrich. Siegfried would see hi
s daughter-in-law walk to the Sammellager after work, in the evenings. There, she would spend some time consoling those waiting to be shipped. Something so out of character that Ernst refused to believe it. That picture of her in uniform, seated on a bench in the Sammellager with two children on her lap was relegated to the back of the picture corner in his living room; as if he didn’t want to deal with the subject.

  Coming to complain after Ernst was fast asleep, Siegfried said he would see her sitting on a bench in the Pathology Gardens behind the barbed wire, holding some woman’s hand and whispering, or comforting a child, speaking to a group of worried-looking men. Once it got dark and those interned taken indoors, she would walk to the area sequestered for housing the SS. Her father-in-law would watch as the sentries let her past the guardhouse and see her disappear into the Commandant’s living quarters.

  Siegfried would stand and watch all night from his window. He would walk up to the Sammellager early morning to allow everyone see him witness his daughter-in-law emerge; freshened up and showered in hot water, smelling of real soap and wearing a laundered uniform. ‘Look!’ he’d say, smiling at the Nazi guards and the impassive Jews. ‘My daughter-in-law!’

  She wouldn’t react and would continue with the morning routine—spending time with the Jews parcelled in there before exiting to the hospital section to begin her day. She would walk past Siegfried without a word but in a silent fury that Ernst knew all about; the kind that makes a man’s knees buckle. Even so, Siegfried would be there the next morning, and the next.

  ‘What was I supposed to do?’ he asked.

  ‘Slit your wrists?’ she suggested, popping into the dream out of nowhere, all of a sudden, all in white, platinum-blonde hair like a halo around her face carved in white marble, and the blood-red lipstick she wore to hit men between the eyes with the contrast.