Bombay Swastika

by Braham Singh

  He shut his eyes to enjoy the sea breeze squeezing its way past buildings to the balcony. It helped him squeeze all of the peace he could, from all he had. Those zeroes on the cheque helped of course, while the whorehouse parrot hopping about its cage upstairs, cursed away in Marathi. It reminded him the way she had abused the E.M. Foster Brahmin, the one they caught shitting outside her home at Sindhi Camp. He found himself missing her, somewhat like how he would miss Bombay Ingrid.

  The three of them sat and stared at the invisible harbour. Just the thought of ocean could make one feel better. If you looked past the rows of flaking, art deco style buildings struggling in the same repair the British left them, then peered to the top, right hand corner of the panorama—there it was, a glint of water—a sliver of hope that refused to go away even when the rest of everything was hopeless beyond redemption.

  ‘You have cancer,’ Salim Ali said, ‘and look at you. Calm as the ocean.’

  Parvatibai snorted. At times, she understood English perfectly.

  Salim Ali pointed to Sassoon’s cheque again. ‘So, we’re going ahead with the aeroplane ticket?’

  ‘Is that so? Where’s the money to draw those pipes for Sassoon? What about Salary Day? Who clears the Seth’s cheque?’

  ‘There are enough zeroes there for salaries, and your aeroplane ticket. Let me worry about the pipes. ’

  ‘What about the Seth? He can pluck aeroplanes off the sky if his cheque bounces.’

  ‘I have a solution for that too,’ Salim Ali said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Tell him go fuck himself.’

  He looked at Parvatibai, whose eyes showered praise. They fed off each other—overweight cat and little black mouse.

  ‘You’re going to Germany for treatment. Why worry about paying back the Seth? You probably won’t even see him again.’

  ‘Thanks. You don’t appear confident about my chances.’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  Ernst did. For most Indians, leaving for the West was a one-way ticket. Salim Ali then spoke to Parvatibai in Marathi. ‘Other owners fire workers left and right, or simply don’t pay them. He goes sells his imported machine to pay us. Now he wants to pay that crooked Seth.’

  Then in English to Ernst, ‘Why can’t you think like a bania for a change?’

  ‘He’s right,’ Parvatibai advised. Then we can move away from this whorehouse. Even I’ve been approached. The shame of it.’ There was a stunned silence. Salim Ali coughed.

  ‘By the way,’ Ernst said, ‘how come you’re suddenly fine with supplying those pipes to Sassoon? What if they’re for that plutonium reprocessing plant?’

  ‘Can’t be. Punjabi’s pipes are pharma grade. I checked,’ Salim Ali said.

  ‘So?

  ‘So, they can’t be for plutonium reprocessing. I told you already. To reprocess spent fuel, the stainless steel has to be nitric acid grade, otherwise it corrodes. Punjabi’s pipes are for something else. Just relax.’

  ‘I’m relaxed. You’re the one who went into a tizzy over Sassoon supplying our pipes to AEET.’

  ‘Why do you think I checked?’

  The question remained. Then what was Sassoon doing with blueprints for a plutonium reprocessing plant?

  ‘Supplying something or the other. Needn’t be pipes. These people will sell anything for a profit.’ Salim Ali’s Marxist credo declared all businessmen guilty of making a profit and therefore untrustworthy—Ernst being the singular exception. When once asked why he trusted Ernst, Salim Ali had looked surprised one would even ask. ‘Because he’s so unsuccessful,’ he said.

  Later, and in a decent enough ending to a good day, Parvatibai went off to the ration shop for rice against Ernst’s ration card. Then to Colaba Market for vegetables, and mutton on credit.

  Salim Ali left for the 6-Limited bus ride back to Chembur. Well before Bhairavi came over for an hour of translating the Munshi’s books into double entry. Beatrice could well be keeping her money, but this Bhairavi was Sindhi and would be on time. Walking Salim Ali to the door, Ernst gave it another shot. ‘I know the gunny bag’s still here, somewhere. Just tell me what’s in it. She won’t let me even enter the servant quarters. Locks the door. You people seem to forget this is my flat.’

  ‘You have no proof of anything,’ Salim Ali said. ‘All you need to know is we would never do anything illegal.’

  ‘Maybe. But your definition of what’s legal is somewhat elastic.’

  ‘I repeat. Arjun didn’t do anything illegal.’

  Maybe. But something was stolen and Arjun was dead.

  31

  Rubbing Knees

  The Kamasutra defines four types of women. It fails to say the vast majority belong to a fifth type that cannot be defined.

  —Sir Victor Sassoon

  Like Salim Ali, she too was categorical. Arjun was incapable of any wrongdoing. ‘He was my moral compass.’ As for Chhote Bhai—guilty, not guilty—Bhairavi couldn’t care less and remained deadpan. Ernst wanted to protest on behalf of the slumlord. You’re fucking him for Chrissake. Then there was the other thing.

  ‘What were you doing with Adam Sassoon at the club?’

  ‘Madam Beatrice wants me to help Sassoonji with filing and accounts.’

  Sassoonji needs help with filing and accounts? He let that go. Adam Sassoon had grinned like an idiot seeing the moonlighting, part-time accountant from Sindhi Camp shimmy up. As if Goddess Bhairavi herself strode into the permit-room. He had beaten a waiter to pulp for slighting the refugee woman who smiled at him like a Goddess. Ernst felt, maybe, someone should advise the great man what a smile from Goddess Bhairavi implied.

  Bhairavi then went got lost in Ernst’s ledgers until Parvatibai rang the doorbell. She put down the pencil to go answer the door before Ernst could react. Later, when Parvatibai brought in Bombay Ingrid’s Wedgewood teapot to the living room with two matching teacups, she got up to help .

  When Parvatibai stumbled and spilt chai putting the tray down, she gripped her forearm to support all that weight with ease. Not just that, she then took the tray and things back to the kitchen with Parvatibai wrapped around her little finger.

  ~

  ‘What made you leave your own country?’

  That was an easy one for most German Jews. Not all that easy for one from Berlin. Berlin was a Jewish city. They built it. No Jew was going to pack up and just leave because of some effete, Austrian arsehole. Moreover, almost half of Berlin’s Jews were married into gentile families. In fact, Aryan women preferred them to their own men; Jewish men worked hard and didn’t drink or beat their wives. So even after the rumblings, the Jews stayed put. Everything would be fine, they said to each other. This is our home. Let the Arschloch go back to Austria if he wants.

  That was then. A few years down the road, Jews were marrying Jews they didn’t even know, just to have someone by their side while herded to the camps. People marrying people they never met in their lives. Everyone marrying anyone, to avoid dying alone.

  ‘At least, I left Germany safely with the woman I loved. Look what happened to the others.’

  ‘Then why did she go back?’

  Yes, Ernst, why did she?

  ‘Ingrid never liked India. She was out of here and back home even before the war started.’

  Be that as it may, Bombay Ingrid broke all sorts of records the way she flung herself back into Nazi arms. When was the last time a Jew did that? It would take all evening to try explain why, because one would need to first understand the different Ingrids—the one from his Berlin school days, who became the one in Bombay, who went back to Berlin and became a nurse. Besides, Bhairavi was wearing a green-and-white salwaar kameez today, and her hair in pigtails.

  ‘When did you last see her?’

  Ernst hesitated. His knee accidently touched her’s and she didn’t retract .

  He pointed at Bombay Ingrid posing deadpan from the Kashmiri salver in front of the “Zaankert” at Sassoon Docks. One could see th
e First Officer in white and out of focus up the roped gangplank. She was polite that day, but couldn’t wait to turn around and leave. Ernst remembered her stiffen when he hugged. Better not to have hugged at all.

  ‘Where was the other picture taken? That one. With your wife in that white uniform and those children on her lap.’

  Oh. You mean my father’s suicide note. The uniform went with the platinum blonde hair. Schwester Ingrid’s face had aged somewhat from that day when Bombay Ingrid couldn’t wait to leave, get on that boat. The figure though, suggested nothing of that sort.

  ‘At the Jewish Hospital.’

  ‘She liked children?’

  Ernst pondered the possibility and gave up.

  ‘She never came back to India?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Where is she now?’

  ‘In a better place.’

  ‘Who took that picture?’

  ‘My father.’

  ‘Something about him,’ she said in her Sindhi Hindi, looking at Siegfried standing next to Ernst’s mother. ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘Definitely in a better place.’

  She impressed him by changing subjects.

  ‘Your nose. It’s going to be that way forever, you know. Whatever happened that day with Gomes?’

  ~

  The ceiling fan spun thick air around, leaving a pre-monsoon sheen on her skin. Back to work and inspecting the Munshi’s ledgers, she leaned over to drop a bead of sweat on his wriggles. Her breasts made tiny dents in the kameez.

  ‘I can’t believe that Munshi of yours…who taught him accounts?’ She snatched at an eraser to correct something pencilled in a column, pressing her knee hard against his and continued annotating. She remained irritated as hell, and not the slightest acknowledgement of any trespass beneath the table.

  He wanted to ask, what’s going on? What is it—rubbing against my leg or rolling on grass with Chhote Bhai? Or bloody both? Besides, you really think you can take on the Ingrids? Her knee kept applying pressure, moving away, then pressing again. At which point he decided, fuck it, and reaching below with his left hand, rested it first on his own thigh, then placed it on hers. No response. He squeezed. Nothing. He stroked her salwaar across the length of her thigh. Nothing, but her eyes were those of a kitten held by the cuff of its neck. He stroked some more, squeezing the thigh, feeling hard muscle through her salwaar. She looked vacant, swollen lips agape as she stared at the ledger while holding the pencil so tight, her fingertips went white. Jews, however, know good fortune comes in discrete packets. So enough was enough, and he brought his hand out from under the table, placing it on hers.

  She pulled away violently. ‘What do you mean?’ she barked, leaving him with nothing to say about his indecent, above-the-table overture. She stared down at the page as if furious with it, her eyes raging. He had never seen a female face contorted like this and it sent a chill down his spine.

  But the years had rendered him a practical man, and he didn’t question the rules when her thigh brushed up again. The face however, continued to rage at the Munshi’s single-entry ledger with its red-cloth binding.

  32

  Atomic India

  I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and, to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says,

  “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”

  I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.

  —J. Robert Oppenheimer, on the world ’s first nuclear explosion

  Tsering Tufan could barely stand, but stood waiting for them at Atomic Energy in Trombay.

  Ernst wanted to know why. Why were they going there, and by the way, what about the pipes? ‘Have we found a cold rolling mill yet? We may want to start earning all those zeroes on Sassoon’s cheque.’

  ‘Leave it to me,’ Salim Ali said. More and more, Ernst seemed to have no problem with that.

  Getting to India’s beloved nuclear facilities meant Mohan Driver doing a sharp right from Trombay Road, just before one fell into Thana Creek. Then, a smooth and unbelievable four-laned, metalled strip cutting a corridor through a thick crop of mango, betel nut and stately banyans came to view. Mast trees lined the sides like folded green beach umbrellas and a sixty-foot divider of green grass ran through the middle; two lanes on either side. The road sign read, CENTRAL AVENUE. It was surreal enough to imagine the four lanes cutting through AEET and continue all the way to become the world famous Central Avenue in Hollywood, where every Indian moviegoer dreamt of speeding in a Chevrolet Impala .

  ‘Welcome to Atomic India.’ Tsering Tufan said as they went past the main gates left wide open. The security guards yawned as they drove past.

  The Atomic Energy Township glowed grey under New Delhi’s love and care. The grey buildings reached out fifteen storeys into the sky from the grey pavements. It was the surrounding greenery, however, that overwhelmed Ernst as grey buses moved grey, bespectacled, Brahmin engineers around. All this hidden behind Trombay Hill, just a few miles from Sindhi Refugee Camp. Who would’ve thought? Ernst made sure to look impressed for Tufan’s sake, and so what if the residential township was spooning Bhabha’s nuclear reactors? If you think about it, so was the rest of Bombay. Besides, he liked Tufan.

  They left the burgeoning township behind as the four lanes cut past dense forest on the right and a cricket field to the left. A young boy was running in from the far side, angled to deliver a tight spin at the batsman. The field was dressed in spotless white. This wasn’t India. It was however, where Tufan’s dead nephew would have been playing. If he didn’t opt to play in a slum instead. Ernst could guess why a Chinese-looking, tribal kid from the Northeast preferred playing at the jhopadpatti with other outcasts. These here at AEET were all upper caste, Brahmin boys. A low caste tribal in their midst was chum for sharks. A stray dog in a mad city.

  Another gate came up, looking meaner than the previous one with its lolling guards they’d left behind. There was an arch over the gate and the sign said, North Gate. The army sergeant on duty heard Tufan out, hand resting on the canvas webbing holding his holstered sidearm.

  ‘Nahien,’ he said. No.

  ‘Why for no?’ Salim Ali asked. ‘We were cleared by security back there.’

  ‘Oh them, were they asleep when you drove past?’ the sergeant enquired. ‘After all, it’s afternoon. We, on the other hand, we don’t sleep. We are army. Not rentals.’

  ‘Really?’ Salim Ali asked. ‘You were awake when the Chinese came? ’

  Tufan stepped out to better make his case. Also, to take the conversation away from Salim Ali.

  ‘Who said guests allowed inside?’ The sergeant’s belligerence was up a notch. Could be for any number of reasons, or could be Salim Ali.

  ‘I pre-registered them, Subedarji. Please check.’

  ‘Check what? There should have been a phone call. There was no phone call.’

  A white Ambassador with dark, tinted glass windows approached the gate from inside and honked. The gates swung open in style and the sergeant stiffened, stamping one foot hard to the cement while the Ambassador gave him the once over before coming up to the Fiat. The missing headlight made Ernst’s Fiat look like a boxer with a black eye, facing off the new champion parked alongside. The Ambassador’s dark, rear window rolled down and a chin stuck out. It had a cleft you could lose a coin in. A famous face followed—deep, dark eyes nesting below a forehead the nation watched inch back every year. The jet-black hair was slick with Brylcream. In a more equitable universe, men this good-looking would be brainless gigolos, not nuclear scientists. A monogrammed Louis Vuitton valise lay in the front seat alongside the driver, taking the full brunt of the brutal air-conditioning.

  ‘Bhabhaji!’ Tufan said aloud with folded hands held up high in salutation, as if evoking Govinda, another name for Krishna—most beloved of all gods.

  ‘My Smiling Buddha.’ The good-looking Parsi looked
deep into Tufan’s eyes with a love that anoints. He turned serious and wagged a finger. ‘They tell me you’re not looking after yourself.’

  ‘Where to, Sirji?’

  ‘The PM, my friend. Where else?’

  ‘The PM,’ Tufan said after the receding Ambassador, waving at it. ‘It’s always the PM.’

  ~

  North Gate onwards driving south, the four lanes converged to two, and the sixty-foot green divider disappeared. They cut through a good mile and half of dense forest before seeing cement again in the shape of an upright North American penis. The CIRUS nuclear reactor just stood there, befouling Salim Ali’s mood.

  ‘The Russians were giving us one. But no, it has to be American.’

  ‘It’s Canadian actually,’ Tufan offered. ‘America just provided the heavy water.’

  ‘There’s a difference?’

  Fountains flowered from cooling ponds arrayed around the CIRUS reactor and its peripherals—concrete hexagons showing off their Islamic-style geometry. If this was where a fountain of radioactive water had gushed out for Lambadi women to shower, there was no sign.

  There was however work still going on, as Atomic India flexed its pectorals using another expendable Lambadi formation. The gypsy women formed lines from portable cement mixers on wobbly wheels, to masons laying bricks. Using their trowels, the masons slapped, spread and smoothed the gritty, grey mush that the women relayed in dented, shallow tin vessels. The rotating cement mixers, moving trucks, and trudging feet raised clouds of dust and at one point the Fiat’s occupants had to wind up the windows. The Lambadi had their faces veiled against the grey powder, settling layer upon grey layer on blistered skin. Choli mirror work on their blouses reflected light from breasts arrayed in their usual tight formation.

  ‘Look at them,’ Salim Ali said. ‘The proletariat at work. One day, they’ll fuck you all.’

  ‘One can only hope,’ Ernst said.

  ‘Over there.’ Tufan pointed at the new construction to change the subject. ‘The plutonium reprocessing plant. Bhabhaji’s Phoenix.’ Bhabha may not be around, but he was everywhere.