Bombay Swastika

by Braham Singh

  ‘Please…’ she pointed to the dining table, handing it to him. ‘If you don’t mind. It gets in the way when I practise.’

  ‘Of course.’

  She then went to the wall and drew the Golog from its scabbard.

  ‘The sword dance,’ she explained. ‘Teaching me keeps Aunty occupied, otherwise…you just now saw.’

  They knew he was watching when Tobi Basar took the Golog from her and Bhairavi tied her dupatta like a sash so it didn’t come in the way. She crouched with legs spread like Tobi Basar demonstrated; how the Japanese POWs at Purandhar would take a stance doing karate katas. When Tobi Basar’s sword arm floated in a wide arc and then back to the centre, it was how Salim Ali had shredded through Chhote Bhai’s abdomen—just because Tobi Basar whispered something into his ear. And now he was in jail.

  ‘Why did you have to tell Salim Ali about Arjun and Chhote Bhai?’ Ernst asked, and the two women stopped what they were doing. He couldn’t see Tobi Basar’s face, but the girl was frowning.

  ‘Why? Where was the need?’

  Tobi Basar remained in the shadows and he knew it wasn’t fair on her, but what had happened wasn’t fair on anyone.

  ‘What am I supposed to do with him gone? Did you think of that? What do I do now? ’

  He stood there watching Bhairavi twirl the sword listlessly, when instead of just asking him to leave, she turned around to say, ‘Look after yourself.’ There was something final in those words and maybe regret too, but by now his judgement was anyway suspect.

  Mohan Driver was waiting downstairs, so Ernst lugged himself to the lift. Heading towards the one-eyed Fiat, he wanted to know why was he now wearing her gold pendant. She’d asked he leave it on the dining table; instead it was now around his neck. How, no idea. Except that on top of everything else she had on him, he was also a thief.

  ~

  The rains were back to fucking with the city after showing up that other day, so the car windows remained rolled down to allow air. The breeze brought in a strong, wet whiff of clean jasmine; not the same without her sweat. Ernst looked back towards Atomic Energy—leaking away from behind Trombay Hill and making Bombay glow. Now he could see the light the blind Andhi Ma had been complaining about; yelling, as she did, like the mad woman she was, pointing at the skies and calling everyone idiots.

  And being an idiot, Ernst found himself still wearing her gold pendant. Parvatibai could return it to Bhairavi, for all he cared. That girl was gone as far as he was concerned. And it didn’t matter. After all, could anything with anyone come even close to how Bombay Ingrid would spread out once a month to allow him his Christmas in July? No? Then why bother? Besides, there were other things to worry about.

  Saving his arse for one. Not depend on Waller being the other. Man was a placebo, not a doctor. First and foremost, then, was to find sufficient courage and call the Jüdische Krankenhaus. In spite of all evidence to the contrary, he remained terrified Schwester Ingrid would answer the phone. Almost as terrifying as the thought of Salim Ali alone in some cell at the police chowki.

  38

  Bhairavi’s Engaged

  Draco Dormiens Nunquam Titillandus.

  (Never tickle a sleeping dragon)

  With Salim Ali’s Buddha avatar locked inside, the police chowki developed an aura.

  At least one knew where Salim Ali was. Where was Willie?

  When Ernst called, Daisy Lansdowne answered.

  ‘Hello Daisy. Willie around?’

  ‘Hello Ernst. Actually, no.’

  ‘Haven’t seen him in weeks.’

  ‘Funnily enough, neither have I,’ she said cheerfully, before disconnecting.

  Back at the chowki, the moustached havaldars were quite surprised at Ernst’s audacity, showing up with the half-dead Chinaman.

  ‘We have a full confession from the Muslim communist. This is now a national issue. Death sentence guaranteed.’

  Tsering Tufan leaned against the police chowki wall, rich with moss, yellow paint peeking out from here and there. He slid against the green slime and fell. Rushing to him, Ernst was riveted by the defeat and fear in the man’s eyes. He heaved him up and held him tight.

  ‘I said don’t come.’

  ‘Salim Ali’s in there.’

  ‘I know. ’

  Farther down Trombay Road, Jack Hanson was dispensing charity by the club gates. He appeared done with doling out loose change and biscuits to mobs clamouring for more. Murli Chowkidar too had finished handing out textbooks to those who didn’t want them. The road was littered with discarded school textbooks. As the pavement dwellers drifted off, the jhopadpatti folk moved in to collect the textbooks for fuel.

  Seeing them approaching the club, Hanson came up with a smile the size of Texas. Tsering Tufan politely shrugged Ernst off and waved back.

  ‘Why this daily early morning tamasha?’ Tufan asked with the gentlest of smiles, reverting to his half-dead normal. ‘Why not assist in a more structured manner?’

  ‘Structured assistance?’ Hanson asked. ‘Oh, you mean like the American PL 480 food aid you don’t want?’

  Tufan did not see that coming, but continued smiling. Ernst could have kissed the American’s arse for resuscitating the Smiling Buddha.

  ‘You are a good man, and I’m indebted to you for Arjun,’ the Smiling Buddha said. ‘But doesn’t it bother you why American aid always comes with a catch?’

  Hanson didn’t look bothered. Instead, he looked in the direction of India’s nuclear facility nesting behind Trombay Hill in the distance.

  ‘You know first-hand that people are getting irradiated over there,’ he said, sweeping a paw, large enough to scoop up Trombay Hill. There was an American-style pause, the way they do on Madison Avenue. Next, he turned ninety degrees to point eastwards at Bombay’s hinterland behind the Western Ghat mountains. ‘And there’s a famine brewing over there.’ Another flourish. ‘PL 480 food aid is the least of your worries.’ He paused again before a classic First Amendment close. ‘Having said that, I respect your right to hold a contrary view.’

  Ernst was bent over the reception desk signing-in Tufan, and missed the detente failing to get underway.

  ‘People getting irradiated?’ Tufan was still, all smiles. ‘What are you basing that on? A single incident?’

  Hanson looked at the Smiling Buddha and his eyes widened. ‘You can say that after what they did to you?’ he asked .

  ‘They didn’t do anything, Mr. Hanson. We all have to go, one way or the other. It’s no big deal.’

  ‘I’ll tell you what’s a big deal,’ Hanson said. ‘You know about criticality excursions? Of course, you do. They happen around reactors, they happen in the PUREX reprocessing plants, and they happen during experiments like the one your great Bhabha conducted in his Aunty’s kitchen. By the way, fucking around with radioactive material like that, we call it Tickling the Dragon. People die when they tickle the dragon. Except in India. Here, it’s as safe as Italian salad dressing. In the rest of the world, criticality excursions are accidents waiting to happen. Even with all the failsafe shit we put in, we still have accidents. The Soviets have them all the time. As do the French, the Brits. All of us are guilty of somehow, at some point, doing something wrong and inducing radioactivity in open surroundings. All of us, that is, except the Indians. Not a single recorded incident! Experiments in kitchen sinks, labourers taking radioactive showers, workers manually handling fissionable material and yet, a hundred per cent safety record. What a country!’

  ‘Maybe because we have people like Dr. Bhabha.’

  ‘Then what happened with you? How come your Dr. Bhabha lets you burn up from the inside? How many roentgens did you take in his radioactive shower? Hopefully no more than a hundred, because then you may survive a while. But that’s not what I hear. I heard you were in there far too long, pushing those labourers away, taking samples. Looks like you have a death wish. Let’s say you absorbed a conservative two to three hundred roentgens. In which case, you hav
e barely a couple of months unless you received immediate medical care. What’s the great Bhabha doing about that?’

  Hanson had maintained a sarcastic tone through the monologue. The kind you adopt in friendly debates. Now, he was angry.

  ‘But you didn’t get medical attention, did you? How could you, when the accident never happened? India, after all, has a hundred per cent safety record. Prepare to shit blood in about a month, and be dead in two.’

  Even a Salim Ali would have backed off in the face of this Texan blowout. Tufan and Ernst were mere mortals .

  ‘America no longer risks reprocessing spent fuel,’ Hanson said. ‘But, it’s fine to play around with it here in your largest city? The damned reprocessing hasn’t even started, and look at what’s already happening.’

  Tufan remained silent, Hanson continued to smoulder and Ernst felt it incumbent to contribute at least a line or two.

  ‘India needs nuclear energy. Don’t forget, old chap, the country has a power shortage.’

  ‘Old chap? What are you, fucking British? If there’s a power shortage, old chap, build more commercial power plants. Reprocessing nuclear fuel has just one outcome,’ and Hanson mimicked an explosion with his big hands. He then looked the Smiling Buddha in the eye. ‘So, Mr. Tufan, why waste time protesting food aid you need, instead of a reprocessing plant that you don’t?’

  Jack Hanson raised his hands in cowboy-style surrender and walked away to seek sanctuary in the permit-room. He opened the heavy teak door like it was plywood and was gobbled up by the air-conditioning. And over there hanging from his divan, the Seth’s leg was a pendulum keeping time while he watched the exchange. He nodded towards the permit-room door. ‘A den of inequity, I tell you, Mr. Ernestji,’ he said loudly, ‘brother to brother.’

  Ernst did his namaste and led Tufan away, out of the club and down the steps to the compound.

  ‘How does Hanson know so much of your medical history?’

  ‘It’s this American desire to be loved,’ was Tufan’s take, shuffling along with Ernst help. ‘So they show an interest in everything and everyone.’

  ~

  The skies above the Mian Building went dark, as if someone had switched off the lights. Ernst remembered lazier sunsets. Way past nine over July evenings and the sun would still linger behind the Quadriga atop Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate, making the golden horses glow. Berlin Ingrid and he would watch it trying to set while they strolled by the Unter den Linden—minus the lindens. The Nazis had cut down the trees so they could put up their flags. A swastika every ten yards. He had made a grab for her hand. Those being different days, he remained undefeated by her lack of cooperation and had tried again. Cheerful Nazi flags fluttered in the evening breeze nudging him on. To embellish the evening further, Mein Führer’s strutting line-up of Aryans had erected these tall, ugly, black posts blazing Klieg lights from either side at the Brandenburg Gate. Still, Kristallnacht was nowhere on the horizon, allowing Jews a few more years. Almost happy days.

  Across the road from Salim Ali’s balcony, the ringing Krishna Temple went about its business of trying to drown out the namaaz time prayer at the local mosque. A cow tackled the traffic with the equanimity of a Buddha. Jhama Sweetmeats lit up like a Roman candle and lined up behind it, the Nissen huts were glow-worms trying to follow suit. Compared to 1935 Berlin, 1964 Bombay was a garbage dump. Looking down over it from the balcony, Ernst never felt more at home.

  Inside, Tufan was seated on a sofa across Salim Ali’s mother, holding her hands and explaining meaningless shit. Fact remained, her only son was in police custody with no way out. The blind old woman was in the same black sari and the same black mood from the last time Ernst was here. Whether what Tufan was blabbering registered or not, was an open question. Ernst hoped Tufan’s bullshit on Salim Ali being fine was getting through, because, how would it matter? Best she remained blind.

  She turned to glower at him and he thought, so now she can read my mind.

  ~

  Outside, Bhairavi’s father stepped into view from inside Jhama Sweetmeats’ pink radiance. Chabildas presented an impressive silhouette. His barrel of a chest made matchstick figures out of the others who were out and about in Sindhi Camp. He balanced a pile of rectangular Jhama cartons in his hands. Gulab jamuns and samosas would be a good guess. Rather than taking the gully and risk slipping on Jhama grease, he walked up Trombay Road to track back to his home .

  This evening, her family’s half of the elongated Nissen hut shone almost as bright as Jhama Sweetmeats. Just for me, Ernst decided, looking down at it from the balcony. Just for my eyes. Rented florescent lamps made two crude ‘V’s on either side of the door, and little bulbs thrown across the front wall, blinked happily.

  Clearly, a celebration was underway. Although come to think of it, why? Why were fresh strings of thick marigold lining the top of their doorway? Why was the father shopping for sweetmeats when his only son had taken to wearing saris? Why were people coming in and out of her home? They weaved around the traditional rangoli design chalked on the threshold—an orthodox Hindu blessing this time, and nothing Tantric.

  The father reappeared in the inner room behind the window grill, struggling with his jute, charpoy cot. He placed it down, facing the steel Godrej cupboard. She appeared in the window frame to sit on the charpoy. Looking down at them, Ernst felt it was a movie being played out just for him. Tufan came up to watch the movie and placed his elbows on the balcony parapet.

  ‘She’ll be fine, under the circumstances,’ he said. Looking at the girl, Ernst wondered how Tufan knew she would be fine or not; then realised he meant Salim Ali’s mother still sitting back there in the living room, tearing a hole through his back with eyes that couldn’t see.

  They let the old woman be, and both surveyed the girl together. That red zari sari she was wearing, with all those sequins. A bit much, he thought. Even for a Sindhi. She looked like her brother, from that day in the Haunted Whorehouse—just a lot darker. He needed to reach down two storeys across Vashigaon road, all the way past that grill, and touch that face. A gaggle of women converged into the inner room around her. She stiffened before disappearing from view. When the women eventually dispersed, she continued sitting there—ramrod straight and face caked with everything the women could throw at it. Her mouth was shut tight the way she did when self-conscious and her upper lip bulged. They had exhausted every trick to try whitening her up. His heart lurched even with her looking like that. For a moment there he thought he could smell her jasmine sweat, and took a deep breath that amounted to nothing .

  There was a commotion outside her half of the Nissen hut, as if the entire Sindhi Camp had converged at the doorstep. Chabildas came out in a spotless white churidar to greet a man who stepped up on the porch with a namaste. A plump fellow, this one. He too was in white churidar, and around the same age. Chabildas got boisterous, spraying bonhomie like an air freshener. A hearty handshake followed the namastes and then came an embrace, with this other man’s head nearly making it to her father’s chest. The crowd released two more actors on to the stage: a purse-lipped shrew, followed by a young man in a drooping brown suit with tie. The young man came with a standard moustache. The celebrations moved indoors to the living room-cum-kitchen.

  And all this while she remained seated on the charpoy, alone in the inner room and magnified by how he felt. The grilled window was transparent to her stiff hostility as she stared into the mirror on the Godrej. Staring into it, she could get a good view of the goings-on in the other room. He knew she was looking at the suited-up boy and he waited for her face to contort, like it had when he tried holding her hand the first time. This time though, he would understand where she was coming from. He felt for her, being forced into an arrangement like this. It wasn’t right and he felt his outrage build. Probably, that is why it didn’t make sense at first when her mouth relaxed open, and her face softened staring into the mirror. A short while later, she broke through the ridiculous make-up and re
ached out with a smile on her face to wrap that boy around her little finger.

  Tufan put an arm on Ernst’s shoulders.

  ‘Let’s go in. Salim’s mother insists we eat something.’

  ‘She’s fucking crazy,’ Ernst said. ‘Like you. Climbing those stairs in your condition. Leave me alone.’

  ‘It’s an engagement ceremony,’ Tufan said, squeezing his shoulders. ‘Not for us to attend. Come on, let’s go in.’

  Ernst knew what it was. He wasn’t blind and besides, his heart was in free fall like that evening at the Haunted Whorehouse. There were no big surprises here. Between him and a cross-dressing brother, it was impossible for her to have remained single any longer. The only surprise was how brutally the change in her demeanour affected him. Still seated on the bed and surrounded once again by women, she appeared less edgy, more gracious. She glowed as they huddled for a bout of giggles and whispers. Seeing her join in and giggle helplessly, his heart sank as if it had expected another outcome. And just when he wondered where they had hidden the cross-dressing brother, a growing murmur brought him back. There seemed to be another tamasha underway, this one outside the police chowki. Salim Ali was in there, so again, no surprise. You could depend on him to stir the pot from even inside a jail cell.

  The intermittent drizzle started up once more. Then, it became a torrential waterfall, monsoon-style.

  39

  The Marxist Buddha

  Better than waiting for court date.

  —Final word on suicides in police lockup

  His yells brought Parvatibai running into the bedroom. This dream was a complete break from standard Nazi fare and slit wrists. From Cold Pilger being carted off. Or the ones where Bombay Ingrid leaves a hole in him the size of Gateway of India. Instead, Ernst finds himself soaking wet in Sindhi Camp with Tsering Tufan swaying by his side, blisters glowing red in the dark. He remembered asking him to go home for fuck’s sake, and he remembered the dying man smile. They are on Trombay Road, separated from the police chowki by a vertical sheet of water. Even in his dream, a Bombaywallah knows when an umbrella means fuck-all.