He looked over his shoulder at his motorcycle, parked next to the kiosk: a black-and-silver hunk of metal with a kaleidoscope of reflections trapped in its curves. The headlight was angled toward him. In that instant, a conversation took place between man and machine, resulting in a plan. He’d seen the sun set in the sea, but never rise from it. So he was going to head east, to Calcutta. And from there, north to the Himalayas—Darjeeling or even Sikkim—because another thing he’d never seen was snow.
Buoyed by the idea, he jumped to his feet, but stopped abruptly when he remembered something. He breathed softly, eying the gold band on his finger.
Do I really need to do this?
Couldn’t he just leave without telling her? He realized he couldn’t. He went over to the kiosk to use the pay phone. After unhooking the receiver, he pressed it to his chest as he gathered the courage to make the call, then dialed her number.
A voice answered, dry and crackling with anxiety.
“Hello.”
Sanjit swallowed. “Reshma.”
“Sanjit! Where are you? How dare you disappear like that? Mama’s hysterical.” She scolded him as if he were an errant child.
“I couldn’t take it anymore.”
“Take what?”
“She doesn’t let me go anywhere. Won’t let me out of her sight for a second. She hugs me all the time and cries as if I’m already dead. I can’t take it.”
“So you run away. What are you, a teenager?”
“Even prisoners are allowed to go to the toilet by themselves. I’m not. She wants to stand there while I take a dump. I’m not going home. Not now. Not ever.” There was no anger or melodrama in his voice, just steel.
The line went quiet. She must have realized this wasn’t a tantrum. She knew exactly what his mother was like, though she’d never uttered a word of complaint. She was one of those annoyingly nice people, never an unkind word about anyone.
“Okay, don’t go home,” she said. “Come to my place. We’ll get married and live together.”
“And then what? You wipe my ass, clean my bedsores? Wake up—this isn’t some fairy tale. It’s a nightmare. My nightmare. You don’t have to be a part of it.”
“It’s my duty to be with you … look after you.”
The earnestness in her voice made him laugh.
“Duty? What duty? You’re not in the army. I discovered something yesterday. Freedom. Such a beautiful thing. I want you to be free. Free of me. You’ve got your whole life ahead of you. Just go.”
“You’re dumping me.”
“I’m not dumping you. I’m asking you to dump me.” Of course he was dumping her. And worse, he was trying to transfer the guilt to her. He closed his eyes and thumped the wall, hating what he was doing, what this bloody disease was making him do.
He listened quietly as her hurt and anger poured out of the receiver in a hot stream. She called him all sorts of things, none of which he bothered to deny. Selfish? Of course. But if you couldn’t be selfish when you had a terminal illness, then when? Irresponsible? Fuck responsibility. Life had no business expecting it after what it had meted out to him. He wedged the phone between his ear and shoulder and slipped the gold band from his finger.
“Sanjit, please don’t,” she pleaded, as if she could see him removing their engagement ring. “I love you.”
Sanjit winced.
She wanted him to say it, too. Even if he was going to leave her, she needed to know that it wasn’t because he didn’t love her. But he couldn’t bring himself to say it, not because the words were stuck in his throat. They weren’t even there in the first place, not in his throat, nor in his heart or anywhere in his being. Because unlike her, he knew the difference between loyalty and love. He’d been in love once, but not with her. This was an arranged marriage. He’d chosen Reshma because he thought she’d make a good mother to the five kids the astrologer said he was going to have one day. What a load of bullshit that was turning out to be. No kids. No future. Nothing. Just this fucking disease.
He listened to her cry for as long as he could. And when he couldn’t bear it anymore, he hung up and walked off, leaving the ring gleaming on the pay phone.
He returned to his bike and sat motionless for a few moments, hating himself for what he’d just done. But it had to be done. One day she’d thank him.
A kick of the pedal roused the bike from its sleep. The sea exhaled a warm breath, and palm fronds swayed in the breeze, waving him goodbye. A tingle of excitement shot through his body as he set off. The beginning of an adventure.
He entered Bandra’s concrete sprawl, threading an irregular sine wave as he weaved through the beginnings of Mumbai’s traffic chaos: cars, cycles, auto-rickshaws, buses, all trying to imitate random molecular motion on asphalt. Buildings rose and fell and then leveled off to a cluster of low roofs as he passed through a small hamlet. The road narrowed, shedding sidewalks.
Sanjit felt a twitching in his thigh, then out of the blue, his legs turned weak, as if they were made of paper.
Not now.
He looked down in panic, commanding his sneaker-clad foot to move a few inches from the step to the clutch so he could change gears. But this missive from the brain was lost somewhere in the vast neural black hole below his hips.
A sustained horn made him look up. He’d strayed into the path of an oncoming bus. He swerved back to his lane. But just a few meters ahead, a stopped auto-rickshaw was blocking his path.
Fingers crushed the brake. The force of the sudden stopping was like a slingshot, launching him out of his seat. Feet that suddenly came alive groped for ground as he flew toward the rickshaw. A second later, his head slammed into its hard yellow canopy. Pain, blinding pain filled his skull. Then more blows when he went to ground: a jab on the forearm followed by another punch to the head from a fist of stone.
One last thought in the nanosecond before losing consciousness: What if he never woke up again?
3.
MUCH TO SANJIT’S DISAPPOINTMENT, HE DID wake up. An inert ceiling fan and a tube light with black ends emerged from the blur. He rose slowly, dulled brain trying to process the familiarity of his spartan surroundings: single bed, sweating water jug, vase with fake geraniums on a low table, the stinging smell of fresh paint and bleach.
Then it struck him.
Of all the bloody hospitals in the city, why this one?
Suddenly, the door flew open and Dr. Pandey marched into the room. Sanjit stiffened reflexively, as if he were in his late father’s presence.
“Didn’t expect to see you so soon. You must really like this hospital,” the doctor remarked. He was short and round, with a moustache that dwarfed his mouth. It was one of those moustaches that tempted you to pull, to see if it was fake. But the stern eyes deterred anyone from attempting it.
He whipped out a penlight and shone it in Sanjit’s eye.
“How’s your head?” he asked, blowing a large cloud of onion breath in Sanjit’s face.
“Hurts a bit.”
“I bet it does. Looks like you may have suffered a minor concussion,” the doctor diagnosed. “But it could’ve been worse. You had no business riding that motorcycle. What if you’d been on the highway?”
“With some luck, I’d be dead.”
The doctor’s face softened. He laid his hand on Sanjit’s shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze. “Have you been taking your antidepressants?”
“Yes,” Sanjit lied.
“This must be hard for you. But we must accept God’s will and face it with courage and dignity. How would your mother feel if you’d died in an accident?”
Sanjit stiffened at the mention of his mother.
Had he called her?
He remembered his mother exchanging numbers with the doctor when he was there a few days ago. The perceived threat of her arrival galvanized him into action. He jumped to his feet and drew out his sneakers from under the bed.
“What are you doing?” the doctor asked, perplexed by
the sudden burst of activity.
“You said I’m fine, so I want to go.”
“Don’t you want to wait for your friend?”
“What friend?”
“The Mohammedan fellow. The one who brought you here. Ah, there he is,” the doctor said, looking over Sanjit’s shoulder.
Sanjit turned around. The man who filled the doorway had the build of a sumo wrestler. He was dressed in work clothes, the fabric of his white shirt stretched taut around his belly. His plump face was hidden under a beard that looked like it could house a flock of birds. A complete stranger.
“You can take your friend home now,” the doctor said to the man. “Keep a close watch for the next twenty-four hours. If something’s wrong, bring him straight back. And make sure he doesn’t go anywhere near his bike. Understood?”
“Understood,” the man replied.
Sanjit stared blankly at him after the doctor left the room.
“I’m sorry … who are you?”
“Who am I? Have I changed beyond recognition, or have you?” The man spoke with a lilt, as if reciting a poem.
“Perhaps we should go to the Bandra railway yard and steal some mangoes to jog your memory?” His left cheek rose in a lopsided smile.
Sanjit gasped.
“Ali! Oh my God!”
He looked Ali up and down with wide eyes. “The last time I saw you, you were like this.” He waggled his little finger to indicate how thin the Ali of his memory was. “How long has it been?”
“Fourteen years.”
“Fourteen? What have you been doing all this while? Eating?” Ali’s belly made a hollow sound when Sanjit tapped it.
“Oy. Stop it.” Ali moved to slap Sanjit’s hand, but wasn’t fast enough.
“We’ve hardly talked and you’re already making fun of me,” he moaned.
“Ha. Still sensitive, like a girl. Remember what they used to call you back in school? Alisha.” Sanjit chuckled.
Ali made a face.
“This is crazy. Meeting like this. I mean, what are the chances?” Sanjit exclaimed.
“Tell me about it. I was in the coffee shop when I heard the crash—”
Sanjit grasped Ali’s forearm. “The bike. Where’s the bike?”
“Relax. I took it to a garage.”
“Which one?”
“The one near Turner Road petrol pump.”
“You can’t leave my bike with any old mechanic.” Sanjit frowned. “Let’s go and pick it up.”
“You heard the doctor. No bike. Let’s get you home first.”
“Fuck the doctor. And I’m not going home,” Sanjit hissed.
Ali raised an eyebrow. “Okay. Where were you planning to go, then?”
“Calcutta. I want to see the Bay of Bengal,” Sanjit replied warily.
Ali scoffed, “Calcutta? You couldn’t even make it out of Bandra without nearly getting yourself killed. And even if you made it to Calcutta, have you thought about the future? What happens when you become an invalid?”
“How do you … ? The doctor told you.”
Sanjit gritted his teeth. He’d grown to hate that word: invalid, as if he were going to turn into a wrong password.
Ali squeezed his shoulder. “I really think you should be with your family.”
Sanjit pushed the hand away and let out a sigh. So, was the freedom that he’d experienced that morning just an illusion? Another one of life’s failed promises?
“I can’t go back home,” he said, clenching his jaw. The thought was making him sick with despair. “You remember what Mama was like, don’t you? The time she called the cops when I came home late after the Deep Purple concert? She’s a hundred times worse now.”
Ali responded with diplomatic silence. Sanjit’s mother had never approved of him, largely because he was Muslim. She blamed him for corrupting her son—little realizing it was the other way around.
Ali clicked his fingers. “I have an idea. Why don’t you stay in my spare room?”
Sanjit looked at him.
“I’m serious. There’s a lot going through your mind right now. Just come and chill out at my place for a bit.”
Sanjit pursed his lips. The offer was tempting.
“Are you sure?”
“Of course. It’ll be like the old days. Remember? All the mischief we used to get up to?” Ali said with a glint in his eye. “We were like brothers, weren’t we? Or have you forgotten that, too?”
“No, I haven’t.” Sanjit smiled as he recalled two ten-year-olds contemplating the technical challenges posed by their religions in the context of their newly affirmed relationship, namely, how could they be brothers if he was Hindu and Ali was Muslim? Then one of them had the idea to adopt Christian names. For a brief while, he became Sam, Ali became Al.
“That’s a yes, then? Good. Let’s get out of this depressing place.”
Ali clapped twice. It was then Sanjit noticed two fingers missing from his friend’s hand. For some reason, it had escaped his attention until now.
“It was an accident,” Ali said when he caught Sanjit looking. He turned the hand and held it up. With missing index and ring fingers, it looked like he was making the devil-horns sign.
“Shame I stopped listening to heavy metal,” he said.
4.
THE TAXI CRAWLED ALONG THE ALLEYWAY, honking through a thick sludge of pedestrians. Sanjit looked out the window. The minarets of the Sufi shrine, the dargah, soaring above a plateau of low-rises, announced they were entering the Muslim quarter. One side of the street was lined with shops selling sweets, garlands, prayer rugs and trinkets. On the other side, beggars armed with bright plastic bags formed an orderly line in anticipation of food from the mosque.
“This is it,” Ali announced when they reached a blue building.
The flat, a fourth-floor walk-up, was sparse and tidy. A TV at one end mirrored a computer on a weathered desk at the other. Between the two screens were an old beige sofa, two plastic chairs and a rug that covered a small section of the cement floor.
One door led to the kitchen, and the other to the bedrooms and bathroom. Ali showed Sanjit to his room. A single bed ran the length of the wall. In the corner was a doorless cupboard, into which Sanjit unpacked the clothes they’d bought on the way back from the hospital. Ali opened the window, allowing the outside world to pour into the room. A breeze blew in wafts of meat, smoke and spices. Sanjit sniffed the air appreciatively.
“Hungry?” Ali asked.
“Starving.” Sanjit realized he hadn’t eaten anything since the previous night.
They headed straight for the kebab shop downstairs, a little hole in the wall that spilled onto the pavement. Sanjit sat on the molded plastic chair, careful to plant his feet away from the puddle where people who ate before them had washed their hands. The bright-green table wobbled when the waiter rubbed its warped surface with a smelly cloth.
The seekh kebabs arrived not a moment too soon. Sanjit tore a piece of meat, rolled it in coriander sauce and shoved it into his mouth.
“Mmm. Delicious,” he remarked. “But not as good as the ones on Mohammed Ali Road. Remember we used to go there every year after Ramadan? Although I recall someone wasn’t very good with the fast. Forget forty days. You couldn’t get through forty minutes without begging for a piece of my samosa. And then: ‘Please don’t tell Dad. He’ll kill me if he finds out.’” Sanjit chuckled.
“And what a good friend you were. Making me do your homework in exchange for scraps of food.” Ali grinned. “Talking about homework, remember the time we broke into the staff room?”
Sanjit nodded, smiling. He’d just learnt to pick locks from his cousin Navjot. It was Ali’s idea to test out the newly acquired skill after school hours.
“We struck gold with the question papers, didn’t we?” Sanjit said.
“And the look on the teachers’ faces when they saw our answer sheets? ‘How could these two idiots have done so well?’”
“Hey, how about th
at Playboy we found in D’Souza’s cupboard? Wrapped in brown paper like a textbook?”
Their eyes glazed over at the same time. How could they forget? Inside a musty staff room, under a pale torchlight, the mysteries of the female anatomy had been revealed to them. They gawked, mouths open as wide as their eyes, feasting on every fleshy detail of the red-haired goddess.
The waiter served baida rotis, cut into neat little squares. That disappeared quickly too, as Ali had a monster of a belly to fill and Sanjit was rediscovering his appetite.
“So what happened to you? Here one day, gone the next,” Sanjit asked, licking his fingers.
“Grandad fell sick, so Dad decided we were going to move back to Bhopal. I had no say in the matter, of course,” Ali replied.
“You could’ve said goodbye.”
“I wanted to. But it happened so suddenly.”
“So you went to college in Bhopal?”
Ali nodded. “Studied accounting. Then got a job in an import-export firm. I’ve been with them for the last eight years, based mostly in Delhi and Ahmedabad. Six months ago, they moved me to Mumbai. So here I am.”
Sanjit gestured to the beard. “When did that happen?”
“This.” Ali stroked it affectionately, as if it were a pet. “Grandad made me grow it. I was planning to shave it after he died. But then I became attached to it. Do you like it?”
“I’m not much of a beard person. A bit like Dad.”
“You should try it sometime. You save a small fortune on shaving products.”
“Also handy for storing food, I see.” Sanjit pointed to a fleck of meat trapped in a curl of hair under the chin. Ali extracted it and flicked it to one side.
“So tell me, what have you been up to all these years?” Ali said.
“I went to college, studied commerce, then worked as a salesman in a computer company.”
“Sales. Mmm. I’m not surprised. You were always a good talker.”
“Won the Best Salesman award three years in a row,” Sanjit said, not quite sure why he felt the need to boast.
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