by Anosh Irani
He stared at the bowl, at the dead bird that would be his and his mother’s deliverance. He massaged the chicken, mixed the cold cream into its skin some more, and watched as the red chili powder made his fingers bleed. With each touch he loved the taste, the taste of the touch; there was a direct connection between his brain and fingers, bypassing the tongue entirely. He pushed his fingers into the breast of the chicken and the breast bounced back, as if it was daring him to cook it, to finish it, to get the job done. Sweat was rolling down his cheek and forehead and he wished he had his mother’s sari to wipe it away. He loved that particular movement, the total naturalness of it, compared with the clumsy movements of his father—the way his father was nervously shaking his legs right now, in fact, when Sujoy peeked at him in the next room.
Everything, he understood, was about movement. What movement did he need to execute now?
He overturned the contents of the bowl into the container and let the flesh cook and scream its way back to life. There, one movement accomplished. “Done,” he said to himself, and his voice purred out of him. He loved hearing it; it was not a sound he had ever made before. He looked at the chicken again, the bubbles in its skin large and round, bursting into air. Then he heard his father’s voice, calling out to his mother. The vice-principal was leaving. Would she come out and say goodbye?
Did his father smell the chicken? Sujoy wondered. Surely he must smell the chicken.
He saw his mother slowly raise her arm. She could hardly speak, and she didn’t even bother to pull the pillow away from her eyes. Sujoy gave his fingers a quick rinse, went into the bedroom, held his mother’s hand, and gently tried to tug her out of bed. Once again his father’s voice, irritated now, was calling for her.
“You go…” she said to Sujoy. Her voice was weak and soft, a feather falling on a carpet.
Sujoy wasn’t allowed to go out into the main room. She knew that. And yet she wanted him to respond to his father’s call, to complete the movement. He tried to gather his courage to step out, but he felt ashamed, backed into a corner. He could feel his resolve and strength waning. If he didn’t rise today, he never would, but he needed something to help—his mother’s hand, his mother’s strength. Sujoy’s own hand was still grasping his mother’s wrist, her green bangles. When his father called out her name a third time, Sujoy pulled off his mother’s bangles, pushed them over his wrists, and walked out of the kitchen into the hall. He felt like someone on display in a world of courtiers and jesters, and at last he walked just as he wanted to, as he felt inside, not caring a silver hoot about what his father thought. And his father’s face, that Sunday face, changed shape, lost its form, and crumpled.
* * *
—
“THE THING IS, THE VICE-PRINCIPAL had come over to tell my father that his services were no longer required,” Sujoy said to the audience. He could only see the faces in the first row, but the woman right in front of him seemed to understand what he was saying. He wondered where she was from; he guessed Kansas. The room was cold, and Gupta’s Butter Chicken was almost done.
“My mother died a few months later,” he said. “The headaches were because of a tumour, but in those days…” He trailed off. He was giving them a real show, a chef with heart. James must be loving it; he could feel James’s approval. The host carefully tried to jut in, but Sujoy carried on, he needed to complete the inevitable tidal movement. “But she didn’t want to waste his money,” he said. “So she’s dead, and that prick is still alive.”
“Well…” said the host. “We’ll have to…”
“I have to complete the movement,” he replied.
“I’m sorry?”
“The movement,” he said.
He went ahead then, and did what he’d done back then, after the vice-principal had left, after his father had slapped him hard across the face, the back, then the face again, and the legs too, his father covering every inch of his body, as if his body were a map and his father the most adventurous, daring explorer. His mother had come out of the room, even with her headache, and taken one or two blows herself.
Now Sujoy dipped his palms into the paste he had made and showed them to the audience. Palms of purée, palms of milk, palms of chili powder, palms of cilantro, palms of ketchup. Palms from more than thirty years ago. Back then, he had marinated those hands, “fetched” his father’s atlas, opened it to a random page, and smeared it, an act that had given him a sense of delight unmatched by any lover since.
As the woman from Kansas looked away, Sujoy stared above the heads of the silent audience, past the bright lights, towards his father, that unreachable god who lurked in the dark uncharted waters beyond.
* * *
Reshma looked at her wrist, then realized she had stopped wearing a watch a long time ago. She had her iPhone in her lap, but she didn’t really want to know the time. She was just impatient because her driver had stopped the car to use the public urinal, and he hadn’t returned. It wasn’t the waiting; it was the stench. Even though the windows were rolled up and the AC was on, nothing could keep the foulness away.
She regretted leaving the house. She hadn’t left the house in three months. She knew she wasn’t ready, but Bakul had insisted. And when Bakul Gawande insisted, human beings wilted. That was what had attracted her to him in the first place, that he didn’t have to exert his might, or resort to the cartoonish histrionics some of his contemporaries displayed. He was a born overlord; there was something within him, some gene, that made people listen. Men, especially. Women could occasionally drive him batty and make him maudlin. It was he who had insisted she go to the salon today and get her hair done—sitting in the dark wasn’t doing her any good. He had promised to accompany her and stay at the salon the entire time, but had backed out at the last minute because he had to engineer a hit. An opportunity had come up and he needed to oversee the operation. That was his key word: “I have to oversee,” he would always say. “If I don’t oversee, things go wrong.”
Well, they had. For both of them. And no amount of overseeing had made any difference. Just like the red roses that were painted on the walls of the urinal made no difference to the stench. Her husband and she were both red roses.
Reshma’s phone rang. The tune of its ringer filled up the inside of the car like temple bells. She immediately switched it off; she wanted nothing to do with temple bells. They reminded her of how she had begged and prayed, how she had prostrated herself before every god, a sapling begging for water, until her stem broke, and she had collapsed onto the ground.
Even though the phone had stopped ringing, the sound remained in her memory, suffocating her. She reached into her handbag for her anti-anxiety medication. She liked the name: Zapiz. It had a magical feel to it, 0.25 mg of some fairy dust that prevented her from tearing her hair out. It was clear now that her driver had gone for a shit. Not a piss, as he had mentioned; he had lied to her out of embarrassment, perhaps. What did it matter? Piss or shit, he was lucky—it would be out of his system in no time. In her case, loss had found a permanent home inside her. It had immigrated there, crossing the borders and walls of her heart, threatening to remain forever. She hated the feeling of heart-pounding terror that currently occupied her breast, until the Zapiz kicked in. She needed some air. She pressed a button and the window of her black Audi rolled down smoothly, providing the perfect opening for the shameless pungency of the urinal.
Just as she realized her mistake, and was about to roll the window back up, something caught her eye. Pasted on the wall of the urinal, far above the roses, was a cartoon sketch of a penguin. He had a big smile on his face. It unnerved her. Not the smile itself, but there was something about the penguin, some familiarity she could not identify. It was as though he was looking directly at her. She rolled the window up, and then down again, immediately. She kept pressing the button, and up and down the window went, showing her that face, then taking it away, showing it to her, taking it away, and each time it was taken away, she f
elt a longing for it, and, equally, an immense stupidity. She knew she shouldn’t have gone out of the house.
The door on the driver’s side suddenly opened, and there was Lalit. He seemed relieved, as people do when they have been to the toilet after an unbearable urge; they are like people who have won the lottery. Lalit’s expression signified that he had won more than enough to buy a plush apartment in any part of Bombay. Truly a shitload of cash, she thought. It made her smile. The smile brought her no joy, but at least the shape of her mouth and lips had changed for the first time in three months.
“Sorry, madam,” he said sheepishly.
She did not reply. She was just waiting for the Zapiz to work. She would take a Restyl when she got home. One calmed you down, the other made you sleepy. Together, they made you forget.
She kept the window down as the car moved, not caring that the breeze undid her hairdresser’s hour-and-a-half of work at the salon. In fact she welcomed it, inviting it to tangle her hair up, dishevel it as much as possible, so that she could go home to Bakul that way. She passed by the Byculla vegetable market, and a restaurant that her husband’s rival, Ahmed, owned. It was funny: both Bakul and Ahmed called themselves restaurateurs even though they didn’t know the first thing about food. But they owned so many restaurants in the city—it was one of the best ways to launder money—they had started believing they were arbiters of good taste. Bakul dealt in vegetarian cuisine while Ahmed had a chain of non-veg lounges called Panther Heart. He used a strong animal name to position himself as the true king of Mumbai, unlike his Hindu rival, who took a more spiritual approach to restaurant names: Tantra, Lotus, Blue Sky. Reshma wondered what Ahmed’s wives were like. He had three. But only one showed herself in public, or was perhaps allowed to. Were any of his wives on Zapiz?
The car slowed down, waiting for the handcarts and cycles to get out of the way so that they could turn left on S-Bridge.
Once again, he was there.
A small penguin, smiling at her from his place high atop a lightpole. Reshma squinted to read the print that ran below his feet: Humboldt Penguins at Byculla Zoo. There he was, looking at her, beguiling her. He was utterly stupid, and yet…there was an innocence to him that drew her in. He had a bit of a tummy, just a bit—perhaps that’s where he stashed his joy, where his secret reserves of happiness lay, enabling him to keep smiling like that. She could picture him rubbing his tummy and laughing, sending out a sound way more soothing and truthful than temple bells.
She looked at her wrist again. Once again, she did not need to know the time; it was pure habit. She had nowhere to go, nowhere to be. Only her bedroom beckoned, its darkness and shadows her companions—but they would always be there. She was struck by this thing in front of her, this soft, happy thing in black and white that gave off so much colour. If a picture could do this, a mere sketch, what might the actual being do?
“Lalit,” she said. “Go straight.”
“Madam?”
“Don’t take a left, go straight and make a U-turn from the signal.”
“Did you forget something at the salon?”
That was the problem with Lalit. With all drivers. They all needed to know more than they needed to know.
“Just do as I say,” she said.
He accelerated the car as a form of protest, his ego bruised by being barked at, that too by a woman. After all, Lalit had once been Bakul’s driver-cum-bodyguard, feared by all who knew him. But he was now a reformed man, of his own accord. He had told Bakul that he would no longer stab anyone or even hit them, except in self-defence; but he would gladly take a bullet for Bakul. Of this, there was no doubt. Bakul inspired that kind of loyalty. He looked after his people, and their families. If only he had been able to look after his own.
Even though the car was stopped at the red light, Lalit kept pressing and releasing the accelerator. The Audi felt like the sizzling black body of a creature in the afternoon heat. A creature ready to slide away from the rest of humanity. Once again, Reshma’s heart thudded: she had spotted three large penguins underneath the Byculla bridge, right opposite the Zoroastrian fire temple. Huge plastic bodies with curving beaks. How had she not noticed them before? Perhaps they had just sprung up during the past three months of her self-imposed exile. She wondered when penguins had first wandered the Earth. Had anyone noticed them? Was there anyone to notice? Unlike the baby penguin on the poster for the zoo, these plastic penguins did not soothe her; there was something sinister about them. Was it the fact that they were adults? No, no, it was the way they looked, their posture, the defiant manner in which they leaned their heads towards the sky, as if incanting something in a language unknown to her, the same way the Zoroastrian priests chanted their prayers in a tongue that was foreign to her ears, and to the ears of anyone belonging to another religion.
Lalit took a very sharp U-turn. Reshma decided to give in. She would give him the coordinates he so desperately sought.
“I want to go to the zoo,” she said.
“The zoo?”
There it was again. The redundant, idiotic retort of a man who knew how to use a knife but not his brain.
“Yes, the zoo,” she said. “The Byculla zoo.”
More coordinates. More specificity. More fodder for the male ego. Lalit seemed pleased with the information. Before he could ask why she wanted to go to the zoo, she told him.
“I need to take some pictures of the garden. They have done it up very well. I saw a photograph in the paper a few days ago.”
“Oh,” said Lalit. “I think I did too.”
No, you did not, she wanted to say. Because there was no photograph.
“Wasn’t it lovely?” she asked.
“Yes, madam.”
“I want to do something like that for my Khandala property.”
“Okay, madam,” he said.
When the Audi approached the zoo gate, the security guard immediately saluted the car. He shooed away a bunch of school kids who were in the way.
“Park here,” she said to Lalit. “And go have some lunch.”
“I should go with you.”
“No, I need to be alone.”
“But Dada will—”
“He will nothing,” said Reshma. “And don’t bother calling him, because he’s in the middle of something.”
Lalit nodded. Reshma figured he knew about the hit. He was still part of the “setting” committee, the ones who orchestrated the hit. Logistics, timings, shooting or stabbing, disposal of the body, et cetera—all of it had to be engineered with precision, and the members of the committee had to devise a plan, a blueprint they then handed over to the men on the assembly line. Lalit was reformed; therefore, he did not execute. But he still orchestrated.
Before the car came to a complete standstill, Reshma grabbed her purse, opened the door, and walked to the ticket counter. She had not felt this energized since forever. And it wasn’t really energy; it was a gasp of air, a sudden inhalation that confirmed that perhaps she was still alive. Fifty rupees was all she had to pay. To feel again, something, anything, she would have paid a crore.
“Does this entry include the penguins?” she asked.
“Just follow the signs,” said the man at the counter, without looking at her. He was busy arranging the currency into neat stacks.
It occurred to Reshma that she had been doing this anyway. Following the signs. The penguin on the urinal, then the same face next to Panther Heart, then the adult plastic penguins underneath the bridge, their mouths open, shaman-like. What did it all mean? Where were they leading her?
She could feel a quiver in her thighs, which could be interpreted as a sign too, a sign that she was heading in the wrong direction, that no good could come from all this. But what else did she have? She was a pathetic moron. Only morons followed impulses, she reckoned. The wires in her brain had received a terrible shock, and they were trying to reconfigure themselves. She should give them time before she ventured out into the world again. As s
he passed through the metal detectors to enter the main zoo, she could feel a current hum within her, signalling an impasse of sorts. She was being given a chance to turn back. She waited, not caring that she held up the line.
“Please move ahead,” said the guard on duty.
Reshma just stood there, feeling the hum. Then she decided to keep going.
It had been years since she had been to the zoo. Decades. The last time she’d been here was with her father. He would bring her to listen to the birds and to see the crocodiles. Birds and crocodiles. Both God’s creations, he used to say. But so, so different. One airborne, celebratory. The other a crawling advertisement for all that is decayed—an angry, ruthless being, whose only aim is to end things. A crocodile is a full stop, a bird is a continuation. Now she understood what her father had meant.
She soon found herself right in front of the statues of a young Shivaji and his mother, Veermata Jijamata Bhosale, whom the zoo was named after. What had once been Rani Baug—the Queen’s Gardens—was now named, rightly so, after the Maratha warrior’s mother. Even in stone, she looked so graceful. Shivaji, as a boy, was in the process of drawing his sword, while she gently placed her hands on his shoulders, protecting him, nurturing him.
Why did Reshma’s hands have no power? Why had her prayers, so real and desperate, had no effect on her son’s health? All Jijamata had done was place her hands on her son and it had inspired him to form the Maratha Empire, become a warrior unlike any India had ever seen. All of this because of his mother’s blessing. Reshma too had tried to bless her son; day and night she had placed her hand on his forehead, cursing the fever, then begging it, then threatening it, then pleading again, but nothing had worked.