“I don’t think you should needle Jadhav so much,” I said.
“Abbe, what can he do? If it weren’t for us, he’d be buying a purple Scooty Pep, not even a Nano.”
“It’s not us, big shot, it’s Haider bhai who pays him off,” I reminded Osama. Haider bhai was our boss—he owned the cybercafé, all the pirated DVD stands in Mahakali, and the Starlight DVD library on the corner.
“So? We’re a reflection of our boss, isn’t it? We’re his little bastards, aren’t we? Haan? Ha-ha-ha … haan?”
I ignored Osama, who by now had started fidgeting at one of the computers.
I’d worked for Haider bhai since I was eight. Those days VCRs were the craze. Haider bhai had set up shop in the Mahakali area, about eight stops from Mograwadi, where I live. For a hundred rupees a month I’d deliver VCRs to the chillar class who couldn’t afford to buy video players of their own. Three hundred rupees rent for Sunday, five hundred for overnight.
At that time, seventeen years ago, the neighborhood wasn’t very developed. Sometimes I’d go sit on top of the Mahakali Caves, which are supposed to be some ancient temples but were basically full of pissing bats and kissing couples. From there you could see the whole area—a few four-story buildings, hutments stacked up the hill like stadium steps, and the big leafy convent next to Holy Spirit hospital. Roses and jasmines bloomed in the windows of the transit camp houses. Ladies sat outside cleaning rice, while their cats and dogs slept in the sun. Nowadays, the view from the Caves is clogged by new sixteen-story buildings coming up, one after another, in clouds of red dust. And on the other side, far below the Caves, where there used to be only jungle, the new special economic zone, full of call centers, with walls like curving sheets of white silk.
The cybercafé I ran was in a semiconcrete market opposite a big residential complex. Two hundred square feet, with a tinted-glass front and booths with lockable doors covered in orange laminate. There was nothing dangerous about our customers— I could have told Jadhav that when he came with his stupid warning sign; that would be giving them too much credit.
Only losers and misers visited cybercafés those days—the kind who didn’t have their own computers or who were lying to their wives. Film strugglers from the PMGP tenements, college kids from the transit camp whose parents worked menial jobs, and unemployed fellows whose parents had managed to buy a one-bedroom place in one of the tackier new buildings. I’d read the chat histories of many. The art talk, the politics talk, the family-life talk—it all ended in some version of cybersex. No matter what, it was always the same—pretending to take an interest in each other when all you wanted was to have someone pay attention to you.
Like there was this dude, Prashant. Struggling actor, muscle-boy type. Wife had some fancy job, but the fellow still used the cybercafé. You could ask why but you don’t get answers by asking questions. Walked in pumped up from the gym and sagged like a relieved addict when he logged on. He sat there doing faltu Facebook chat with people better than him to convince himself that he was intrinsically above his own station in life. When you saw a guy like that you knew he’d eventually be careless. Sure enough, one day he forgot to log out. I went and read his chat. He was talking to some woman who claimed to be a TV writer in her profile. Not a hot type at all. He probably though she’d get him work.
Prashant: Can I pay you a compliment?
Kamakshi: Gosh. Well no one minds hearing nice things, so sure, why not?
Prashant: I’m not talking about anyone, I’m talking about you. You know what’s totally unique about you?
Kamakshi: Ha ha, okay, okay. Say.
Prashant: I think it’s amazing, the way you remember lines from like, the most amazing songs. You know, you’ll suddenly say “romance on the menu” or “sangria in the park” and I’m like, whoa, what a woman.
Kamakshi: Gosh, you’re making me blush. But come on, that’s not so unique.
Prashant: Trust me babe, it is.
Kamakshi: Ok, if you say so. But there’s lots of people like that, maybe you just don’t know any.
Prashant: You know that you are special. Why won’t you let me just tell you that babe?
Kamakshi: You’re just flirting with me.
Prashant: What if I am?
My mantra was Ctr+C, Ctr+V—to be read later in all those empty hours. There were lots of people like that jerk. I had no shortage of reading material.
“Why are the cybercafé booths orange? It’s like we’re seeds inside a pumpkin.” Wise words from Osama.
“I don’t know, Osama. Mrs. Haider must have liked it, she got it done up. If you don’t like it, go out, no, and do your work. I think the raid is over …”
“I hear Haider bhai is planning to shut down the café.”
“What crap,” I told him.
“Arrey, I’m telling you—Mrs. Haider is trying to persuade him to let her put in a costume jewelery counter in here.”
“As if he’ll let his wife work.”
“That’s also there. But times are changing. And our Haider bhai is not one to be left behind. He said it to me himself: Times are changing, Osama, and we must change with them. ”
Osama was one of those guys who threw words into the wind to see how far they’d fly. For instance, his mother had named him Sadiq Osama. So he went around telling the boys he had a danger name because his mother wanted him to be a revolutionary of Islam. Then he told one documentary filmmaker lady that his name was Obama and his mother had named him that before the black guy came around. So she interviewed him and he even made her pay him two grand for it. He also said various other sleazy things to her about undergarments and whatnot, but instead of being disgusted she was fascinated. That’s respectable people for you.
“Haider bhai will never shut down the cybercafé,” I said.
Osama laughed. “You think he loves you and won’t take your little kingdom away from you, even though all the customers have disappeared? Come on, Surya!”
I ignored him. Haider bhai would never shut down the cybercafé because it was the one thing he did which didn’t go counterfeit.
VCRs gave way to VCDs and then DVDs and then everything gave way to piracy—and Haider bhai may be bald and burly but he was light on his feet and he pranced nimbly like a fat fairy from one change to another. He still ran Starlight DVD library for the types who loved their country and wanted to rent legit copies of bastard Bollywood films for onefifty a pop. For other normal people, he put three guys along Mahakali Caves Road selling pirated DVDs—fifty rupees for five films on one disk.
But in between he opened the Hai Five Cybercafé. A technology requiring English and education was here to stay, he thought, and would mean a better class of customer too. Haider bhai’s son, Asif, was put in charge of Hai Five.
The technology may have stayed, but business began sliding in a couple of years. At that time I used to stand under the big tree in Sher-e-Punjab, where there was a lot of traffic of young Sikh boys in tight T-shirts wanting XXX DVDs. But we had to vacate that spot because the cops didn’t have a police station in the neighborhood, so they put up some chairs under the tree and said it didn’t look good if they shared the shade with a pirated DVD seller.
So I was moved to the cybercafé—which saved Asif’s face. It’s what I’d been waiting for. You had to get from outside to inside. Outside, there was no difference between you and the guy who sold dead fish or the guy who cleaned people’s ears. You all smelled alike, of Mumbai sweat. Inside you were you, or somebody.
That’s why I stuck it out with Haider bhai. The rule was simple— you had to have a maibaap in this city. This was the thing that stopped both of you from feeling all alone, the idea that you were there for each other although you may or may not be.
“I think I know Haider bhai better than you,” I said to Osama.
“Accha, forget it,” he whispered. “Your RC is here.”
RC stood for Royal Challenge whiskey. Earlier Osama worked in one of the many da
nce bars around here, before they were shut down. RC was also how he referred to a girl who came to the cybercafé. He thought I liked her, hence my Romantic Customer. I told him that was nonsense. But who can stop a talker from talking?
She was in her second year B. Com. at Tolani College. Her father was a friend of Haider bhai’s, so she was allowed to come to the cybercafé for her “studies.” She was very thin, with the sticking-out collarbones that made you feel protective. She wore those salwar kurtas with shiny flowers that glittered at you. You could see her bra straps through the kurtas and her nails were long and pink. She wore big hoops or long dangly earrings. You could hear her nails and earrings and bangles all going clink, tick, chink in the booth while she typed.
That day she walked in wearing a kurta of dusky pink with gold roses. The salwar was like bell-bottom pants. Her name was Shagufta Ahmed. It meant bouquet of flowers. I had made the mistake of telling Osama and he asked me how I knew.
“She told me,” I said.
“Huh? Just like that?”
“No, I asked her one day.”
After that he started calling her my Romantic Customer.
Okay, yes, I liked her. I just didn’t want to discuss it with that asshole Osama.
She usually came in the afternoons, when no one was around. Initially she used to stay for twenty minutes or so. After I asked her the meaning of her name, she began staying longer. Sometimes she would leave the door of the booth ajar and I could see her e-mails—cute dogs, pictures of giants that once walked the earth, religious e-mails about the ninety-nine names of Allah. It was obvious she left the booth open so I could see her and she could feel me seeing her. Because one day she glanced back when I was watching her and instead of closing the door, she smiled and said, “What are you looking at?”
I was embarrassed, so I just laughed and said, “Oh, I was just lost in thought, sorry.”
She said, “What thought is so deep, Suryaji, that you got lost in it?”
I swear, I almost said something, but just then Haider bhai parked his scooter outside the shop and I pretended to drop my phone and cursed. If he’d seen me talking to her, I didn’t think that would have worked somehow.
There was something about her presence in the cybercafé that made me feel peaceful. Dark afternoons, just the two of us and the sleepy sound of the fan whirring. We could be in a flat of our own almost.
I never opened or checked Shagufta’s windows. You could say I was a fool. But whatever I got from the door sometimes left ajar was enough. It’s not that the desire didn’t overcome me at times. But the waiting and imagining gave time a reason. I knew her e-mail address: [email protected]. I had written her a love letter. It sat in my Drafts folder. I had quoted couplets of Urdu poetry by some guy called Shakeel Badayuni. I was going to send it once it was properly done.
That day of the raid, Osama could have left the moment Shagufta walked in, but instead the fucker sat down in a booth.
I began to hear Shagufta typing furiously. At some point she emitted a little laugh inside her booth. I smiled to myself. I didn’t notice Haider bhai until he was already off his scooter.
I hissed at Osama who quickly got up and went out.
Haider bhai came and looked around. “All well?”
“Yes, bhai.”
Shaghufta greeted him.
“Nice to see you working hard, beta,” he said. “Your father must be proud. Give him my salaams.”
“I will, uncle.” She smiled.
“Very good girl,” he said to me. Then he looked around once more. “Surya, why are the monitors on if no one is using them? Electricity is free or what?”
“Sorry, bhai. Osama was using it.”
“Arrey, how many times have I said he should not sit around here?”
“He doesn’t listen, bhai.” I saw no need to remind Haider bhai about the raid and make excuses for Osama.
“That boy is very nonserious,” Haider bhai said on his way out.
I went to switch off Osama’s terminal and saw that his chat window was open. His ID was Ghulfam88, of all the sidey things he could come up with.
Ghulfam88: Can I say smthng? With yr permission?
Shaghufta_91: Okie.
Ghulfam88: I really love talking 2 u. I keep thnkng, when I see Shgfta I’ll tell her this. Thoughts of U are stuck in my mind like gum.
Shaghufta_91: I also wait for you to cm online.
Ghulfam88: Wd you like 2 meet in real?
Shaghufta_91: Dnt be silly. I dnt knw.
Ghulfam88: Ok. Sorry if I said too much. You wnt me 2 go?
Shaghufta_91: U go if u wnt Ghulfam88: You know I dnt want to stp tokking 2 u ever.
Shaghufta_91: U der?
Shaghufta_91: Hey, RU thr?
Shaghufta_91: Can’t say bye also or what?
I’d read enough loser chats in my time to know not to click on the button called Chat History. It wasn’t a very long history—about a month after she started coming here, soon after he started joking with me about how much I liked the Romantic Customer. The first chat was just after I’d told him the meaning of her name.
Ghulfam88: Is Shaghufta yr real name?
Shaghufta_91: Is Ghulfam yrs?
Ghulfam88: No.
Shaghufta_91: What does it mean then? Why did you choose it?
Ghulfam88: It means the bee who likes to suck on flowers.
Bunches of flowers, Shaghufta.
Ghulfam88: Wot are you wearing Shaghufta?
Shaghufta_91: Guess.
Ghulfam88: Wot if I guess right?
Shaghufta_91: I’ll give you something nice.
Ghulfam88: Ok. It’s smthng soft.
Shaghufta_91: Maybe.
Ghulfam88: Maybe black?
Ghulfam88: You der?
Shaghufta_91: GTG.
Ghulfam88: But am I rite? What r u giving me?
Shaghufta_91: Ok, tok to you soon.
I remembered her black and silver kurta with a dupatta that had ghungroos on it, that tinkled along with the chikachickchicka of her nails on the computer. I remembered all her clothes.
So Osama thought he was smart. He thought he could keep a secret from me, of all people. I tried to guess his password. Success on my first try. RC. What a surprise.
I opened a window and typed.
Ghulfam88: Hi, sorry I got DC.
Shaghufta_91: Oh hi!
I could hear her bangles clinking.
Ghulfam88: U missed me?
Shaghufta_91: Wht do you think?
Ghulfam88: U never answered me. u wnt to meet in real?
Shaghufta_91: Maybe.
Ghulfam88: What if I could be in the booth next to u and touch u just now?
Shaghufta_91: Cd be.
Ghulfam88: Ya? Excited?
I could hear her breathing. Maybe she could hear mine.
Shaghufta_91: U r bad.
Ghulfam88: U r making me go mad. U r putting bad thoughts in my head. Whole day I thnk of u, of kissing you, dnt be angry.
Shaghufta_91: Wat is happening to you 2day!
Ghulfam88: I have written a poem for you.
Shaghufta_91: Show.
Oh, I would show her. I opened my e-mail account and fetched that Badayuni fellow’s poem out of my Drafts folder and pasted it into the chat window. I was aroused and angry now.
Shaghufta_91: Is beautiful.
Naturally it was beautiful. It wasn’t written by a guy called Ghulfam88, was it?
Ghulfam88: Wat are you thinking? Y quiet?
Shaghufta_91: I am thinking if you would be next to me then the poem cud come true.
I stood up and looked over the partition at her. She glanced up, her eyes disoriented as if woken suddenly from a lifelike dream. She was flushed and quickly opened up some random window and pretended to be concentrating on it.
“Do you want me to come there, then? And make the poem come true?”
She went pale and looked confused. I walked into the booth and it was ver
y crowded between the two of us.
“What are you doing?”
“Only what you want me to do—you said it on the chat.” I reached out and squeezed her breast. She was shocked, but didn’t stop me. For a minute I thought of doing more. But I wasn’t thinking clearly and I didn’t want to make a mistake.
I went out; she sat inside the booth for some time.
When she came out she said, hesitatingly, “Suryaji …”
I looked up.
“Why were you chatting with me like that when I was here? Why did you want to trick me like that?”
I shrugged. “Maybe you wanted to be tricked. People like that so they can pretend to be innocent.”
“What do you mean?”
I peered away at my terminal. She stood there vaguely for a minute.
“I don’t know how many other people you chat with, do I? Your dad tells Haider bhai you are coming here for your studies. Haider bhai doesn’t charge you. And me, I’m just a fool.
We are all fools.”
She turned red. “How can you say something like that?
Why are you behaving like this? I thought—”
“What did you think?”
She shook her head angrily and left as if she was never coming back.
I could see Osama outside chatting up some customer. He was wearing huge dark glasses and looking like an evil fly in a cartoon—they weren’t his goggles, of course. He must have borrowed them from Amul Butter, his chikna friend who manned another DVD stand. I wasn’t too angry with Osama. It was a matter of expectation. About Shaghufta I felt unsure. She had been carrying on with Ghulfam88, and now that I was Ghulfam88 I didn’t really know what that meant to her, or to me. I felt a bit fucked up.
Then there was no Shaghufta for three days.
I was just getting used to that when she walked in on the fourth day, in the afternoon as usual. She was wearing a strange color—blue and green at the same time—in a shiny material, with some transparent bits. It was sexy. She didn’t look directly at me. She went into the booth, leaving the door open. There was no one else in the cybercafé.
Mumbai Noir Page 3