I realized life has orbits too. But being in love with someone shifts and takes one away from the orbit one is born into. And it’s this changed orbit that simplifies things in a complicated manner because it gives us that overview of life which we assume—rightly, wrongly, I don’t know—is worth everything. It was perhaps because of this orbit shift that no amount of alcohol or degree of pretense or level of forced indifference could make me forget Mehfil.
Every time images of her on bed with strange, lustful men flooded my mind, I felt disgusted. There was this rage inside me which wanted to kill those men even though I was yet to know whether Mehfil at all liked me or not. Still, I felt like I was her man—her knight in shining armour—who, pushed by a moral responsibility, must rescue her from the shithole she was in. Funny, I had never even had a word with her till then about her profession, and here I was designing hopes of rescuing her from something that I didn’t have a clue if she was doing willfully or otherwise.
There were times when I took my taxi to Faras Road and stood like a fool, too afraid to go to Neela Makaan in fear of what would await me. What if I went there and found her in the arms of someone? Or worse still, Mehfil opened the door and said she was busy with someone? I used to crib not at what options I had—to fight for her or to forfeit her from her world—but at the simpler fact that I had options. Life was easier before I saw her for there were no options, no roads to choose from, and certainly no preformed tracks. Then I saw her and I don’t know how so many unnecessary flies of options started hovering over my conscience only to spoil my instinct and colour my impulse. Worse, I knew I had to choose an option else there would be no respite.
Something happened at the start of the third month since I first saw her in Neela Makaan which took my mind away from her temporarily. I bagged my first film role.
‘Aren’t you ashamed to ask for money from me?’
Shahraan turned, noticing his last passenger for the night for the first time. The immense growth of unkempt hair had disguised the man’s facial structure. His neatly-combed shoulder-length hair were sticking to each other thanks to the pungent smelling hair oil. He had a cloth bag on his right shoulder and was wearing saffron-coloured clothes. He was a sadhu. In Shahraan’s dictionary it read: asshole. There were plenty of them in his home town feeding on people’s weak sapling of a faith.
‘I’m not in the mood for nonsense.’
The sadhu leaned forward, looked closely at Shahraan’s forehead, and murmured, ‘There’s a Sun on your forehead. You know what that means?’
Shahraan gave reaction.
‘You will be a big man. Successful man. Popular man. Mark my words. Baba Bholaji is never wrong, son.’ ‘Still, the fare is thirty-five rupees.’
Anger swapped inquisitiveness on Baba Bholaji’s visage.
‘You fool!’
‘What did you say? You have had it now,’ said Shahraan moving out of his taxi, opening the back door, and catching hold of the sadhu’s cloth bag, pulling at it with all his energy.
‘Help me!’
Hearing the ruckus, some fellow taxi drivers came running toowards them and separated Shahraan from the sadhu with the latter fleeing away quickly. The fare remained unpaid.
That night, the irony of the Baba’s prediction didn’t let him sleep properly. Sometime in the night, Krishna shook him up almost malevolently.
‘Bachcha, get up!’ said Krishna grasping Shahraan’s vest.
‘There’s a boy here who wants to take you to a film set.’
‘I don’t want to be a clapper boy anymore,’ muttered Shahraan, his sleep dictating his slurred speech.
‘Idiot, he says there’s a role for which the director wants you urgently on set.’
For a moment Shahraan didn’t blink.
‘Oh, God. Where is he?’
‘Downstairs. He said you will get one hundred and fifty rupees for it.’
Shahraan almost crawled the distance to the open roof-top bathroom for he was still half asleep. He splashed water on his face five vigorous times and only then did he realize that the moment he had been waiting for all his life had actually come.
The messenger boy was a lean fellow who himself looked like he was fighting sleep valiantly. The moment he saw Shahraan, he blinked tightly and then looked at him again.
‘What?’ Shahraan asked the boy restlessly.
The boy took out a comb from his back pocket and gave it to him. Shahraan snatched the comb, went to a nearby parked scooter, and perused his reflection on the scooter’s rear-view mirror.
‘God, was I sleeping or getting my hair fucked in hell?’ said Shahraan looking at his dishevelled hair in the mirror.
It happened the way things happen in a dreamer’s life; by chance. One of the henchmen of the antagonist in the film was suddenly down with cholera. The absentee actor had a miniscule role to play in the night’s action sequence that was to be shot in a sprawling replica of a dance bar. But the producer had spent quite a bit of money on the set and wanted everything to go according to plan. So, a quick replacement was asked for. The director bellowed at his assistants, one of whom had been bribed by Bheem to arrange for a role for Shahraan.
‘What is the name of my character?’ Shahraan asked the assistant who was standing beside him trying to arrange a bunch of papers in sequence, while a make-up man furiously dabbed some foundation on Shahraan.
‘Shut the fuck up, okay?’ was the assistant’s first brief. ‘You open your mouth only when the director shouts action, else nobody needs your ass here.’
Shahraan zipped his lips; a bit out of obedience and a lot out of fear. He heard the assistant say, ‘Here, you are one of the villain’s men and you have to say “haramzaade” when the hero hits the villain and then jump onto him. He will punch you and you shall fall on the ground.’
‘That’s it?’
‘Did I hear you speak?’
‘Absolutely nothing.’
The shot went well and Shahraan was able to impress the director by doing it right at the first take. It was pack up at five in the morning and Shahraan got the promised amount in cash right after.
Sitting by Juhu Chowpatty, Shahraan felt a strange emptiness overcoming him. At first he thought he must be hungry but later understood what it was. He couldn’t share the news of his first film role with his siblings, nor could he show the currency notes to his parents. They would still be angry at him. And then suddenly Mehfil’s face flashed in front of his eyes. Will she understand my emotions attached to the currency notes? But why will she? What she is in my heart and in reality are two different things. Only if she weren’t a prostitute… his heart whimpered. The wind had suddenly picked up speed and as it hit him, gravid with sand grains, Shahraan turned his face sideways and saw someone at the distance. There weren’t many people around apart from the few carrying a globe of a belly and running after their pets. Shahraan, after a fixed stare, was convinced it was someone wearing a white vest, khaki half-pants, high-power spectacles, and doing some calculations in the air. He instantly knew who it was—Unnisau Saitalis!
He got up, dusted his back, and walked up to Unnisau. It was when the latter heard someone breathing hard beside him that he turned.
‘Remember me?’ Shahraan smiled.
‘Shahraan Ali Bakshi. Victoria terminus to Parel to Bheem’s Biryani Centre.’
‘How have you been?’
‘Good. You want tea?’
‘Is that what you do for a living? Sell tea?’
‘No. I once befriended a foreign visitor here who happened to be a loner. He was suffering from cancer. After his recovery, he went back to the States but keeps sending me dollars off which I feed myself and keep writing to him. I am the only one he has to call a friend, so he keeps me alive with money and I keep him alive with companionship. Do you want tea?’
For a trice Shahraan thought Unnisau would chant a magical mantra and make tea appear in front of him. He looked like he could do anything.
&n
bsp; ‘From where?’
Unnisau flexed his waist slightly and a satchel with a flask came in to view. Unnisau opened the flask and poured hot, steaming tea on its plastic lid that doubled as a cup. Shahraan took the cup with a faint smile.
‘Your cup?’
‘We can alternate taking sips.’
They sat on the sand and together looked at the wide expanse of nature ahead, alternating their sips of tea. Time flew like the wind.
‘Why is your name Unnisau Saitalis?’ They were done with tea.
‘I’m an orphan. The old aayi who raised me, goofed up the name and date-of-birth section in my birth certificate. She had written Unnisau Saitalis in the name section.’
Again silence. Shahraan felt the back pocket of his pant and took out a two rupee note.
‘For taking me to Bheem’s Biryani Centre.’ Since he held the note by its edge, it was fluttering in the wind. Unnisau looked at the note for some time. Then he took it saying, ‘First time I have earned money for taking someone somewhere. Usually love does that.’ He smiled caressing the note.
‘Are you married?’
‘No, I’m not. Like you.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Married men never sit alone in the morning by the Chowpatty side.’
‘Right,’ Shahraan said averting his eyes and looked deep into the sea. ‘Actually, I am in love with someone.’
There was no response from Unnisau. It didn’t surprise Shahraan though and he continued telling him about her.
‘Her name is Mehfil. She is a prostitute.’
From the corner of his eyes, Shahraan made sure to check if Unnisau was gawking at his courage of falling for a prostitute or his dastardliness? Unnisau didn’t budge an inch; not even give a slight scowl. A second later, he asked with a steady poise, ‘What is the point?’
‘Problem, not point,’ said Shahraan, surprised at Unnisau’s lack of grasping power. ‘I told you she is a prostitute.’
Unnisau finally glanced at Shahraan obliquely with a hint of a frown as if he still wasn’t geting the point. ‘But you said you are in love with her. And prostitution is only her profession, right?’
The comment squeezed out anger from Shahraan’s impulse. ‘Don’t tell me I have to explain to you what it means.’
‘A profession is a reaction to one’s survival instincts. It means she sleeps with people to survive. Like I run errands for people. Like your Bheem bhai runs the biryani centre. And profession has got nothing to do with the kind of person one is because if it was so, then for a top-notch business man, driving a taxi would be as shitty a profession as prostitution. So would you appreciate him loathing you?’
Shahraan frowned. Why was he trying to read Mehfil through the literacy of her profession? Why was the nature of her profession challenging his newfound love for her? Wouldn’t he have fallen for her had he not known she was a prostitute? Why the hell was he upset? Was it because she must have been carnally conquered on bed by other men? The thought shot bile up his tongue, almost. And that even if she agreed to his proposal, he would never be the first man to own her? Her? Really? Or her body? Was his love a euphemism for his lust to deflower her first? Shahraan abhorred himself for having such thoughts.
‘Look Bakshi, if you are into her with an intention to conquer her, then all you will see are her good points, her beauty. But if you want to go from black to grey with her from here on,’ Unnisau continued, ‘then know her flaws. In doing so, if you come to terms with a few of your own, then give your possible togetherness a shot, a chance. And anyone’s profession cannot be taken as a flaw, right?’
‘But I am yet to talk to her properly.’
‘Now, that’s a problem for sure since that means you are only in love with the idea you have developed of her in your mind which, if and when you get to know her, may or may not be true.
There was silence.
‘Have you ever been in love, Unnisau?’ ‘No, but I know what love is.’
‘What is it?’
‘Like reading a good story is about travelling without moving an inch, love is about winning even without caring to win.’
‘How do you know this if…’ Shahraan saw Unnisau make some quick calculations in the air.
‘Hey, what do you keep calculating?’
‘I have animated discussions with time.’
Unnisau Saitalis was different. He was weird. Informed. Confusing. And perhaps, right too. Shahraan had to know Mehfil to take a decision. He had to confront his mental spider so that it stopped spinning further web of assumptions unnecessarily.
And for that, he had to go to Neela Makaan, at least once more, to meet his prostitute princess.
It was exactly eight forty at night when Shahraan, perspiring profusely, knocked at the green-colored door of Neela Makaan. After smoking half a packet of bidis for the first time, Shahraan had finally given his courage preference over his cowardice.
Standing outside, he prayed hard for Mehfil to open the door. It would imply she wasn’t busy. Wasn’t busy with—he controlled the incorrigible spider in him knitting debilitating thoughts. The door opened. A sweat drop slowly trickled down from his forehead to his lips. He tasted it.
‘Shahraan?’
‘How do you know my name?’ ‘You have told me twice.’
How many strangers’ names do you remember? He felt tempted to ask but restrained his stupid self.
‘I need to talk.’ There was this momentary eye contact and when it broke, Shahraan wondered: Am I still living? Why?
Mehfil shot a careful look behind her and said, ‘It’s not the right time for people like you to be here.’
‘I know. But I need to talk to you about something important.’
‘With me?’
Shahraan nodded. Her presence was hypnotizing.
‘What is it?’
‘I like you.’ The words were barely out when there was an immediate correction, ‘I love you. And I want to know you.’
For a few seconds nothing happened. Then Mehfil laughed out compulsively looking at Shahraan who stood there like a life-term prisoner with one helluva prison-break plan.
‘Who is it, Mehfil?’ A heavy sounding woman’s voice called out from inside.
‘Someone wants to know the directions to an address nearby, Begum.’ Mehfil shot back, raising the pitch of her voice.
‘Ask that motherfucker to get lost.’
‘Yes. I have.’ Mehfil turned her head and whispered, ‘Shahraan, you better go away. I’ll meet you soon.’
The door was shut tight. A confused Shahraan slowly retracted away from the place and muttered to himself, I’ll meet you soon. She must be kidding to get rid of me.
One evening later when Bheem was about to get onto his Bajaj scooter, he said, ‘Chhote, when bachcha comes, ask him to take a day off tomorrow from regular driving. Nazakat Begum wants her six girls to go on Bombay darshan.’
There were six places the ladies wished to visit: Mahalaxmi temple, Siddhivinayak temple, Marine Drive, Haji Ali, the Gateway of India, and Juhu Chowpatty. At first Shahraan thought Mehfil, being a Muslim, would not go inside the temples and that shall buy him an opportunity to talk to her. But to his disappointment and surprise, Mehfil was the one who led the girls inside both the temples. It was while leaving from Siddhivinayak temple that he asked her, ‘Is Mehfil your real name?’ He was glancing at her from the the driver’s mirror above him. Mehfil’s eyebrows came together while trying to grasp the quintessence of the query.
‘Mehfil is my real name. And I am a believer. And a believer doesn’t need a religion.’
While waiting at a red light, he kept looking at her reflection as if trying to read a book. She sure was a page-turner with every page taking a different story. But they were all equally intriguing. The more he tried to read and understand her, the more confused he became.
Their lunch session happened inside the taxi where all of them ate what Mehfil had brought in a big lunch box.
‘Mehfil cooks really well,’ remarked one of the girls. They were all between fourteen and seventeen.
‘It reminds me of my mother’s home-cooked food,’ Shahraan said and thought he would get another quick glance from Mehfil but she preferred to focus on the food instead. A woman’s shyness can turn on a person more than any cosmetic ever could, Shahraan realized.
‘She also talks about…’ The girl was about to say something when Mehfil, as if she knew instinctively what it was, put her hand on the girl’s mouth. The rest of the girls began laughing.
‘What is it?’ Shahraan asked.
‘Nothing. Let’s get going,’ said Mehfil sounding alert.
It was during their post-lunch visit to the Gateway of India that they spoke at length for the first time, standing against the cemented barricade below where some boats were harboured and several, others could be seen sailing afar in the sea. The other girls were busy giggling at scantly-clad foreigners.
‘Congrats for your first film role.’
Shahraan was genuinely surprised. ‘Thanks, but how did you know?’
‘Bheem bhai told me a night ago.’
‘It’s only a tiny crumb from the huge bread of my dream.’
‘And what is that huge bread?’
‘I want to rule Bombay!’
His voice had the same raw ingenuity which Mehfil had noticed during their first meeting on New Year’s night. As if he was not merely reading aloud his dream from the notepad of his wishes, but was authoritatively announcing what was already embossed on the iron slab of his destiny. When he said he wanted to rule Bombay, he meant he knew he would rule Bombay.
‘But, do you know what it takes to rule Bombay?’
‘Hard work!’ Shahraan was quick to utter.
‘A little more than that,’ said Mehfil sporting a flirty smile.
‘Sincerity—dedication?’
How About a Sin Tonight? Page 3