And mergers of a bluer, more salubrious nature as well …
Actually, it was difficult distinguishing day from night as sleep had eluded me once again, up up and awaying with my butterflying anticipation. Karsh and I had texted back and forth up to the moment he boarded at JFK. And even once he was jet-winged, I remained wakeful and wired, obsessing over all the things I had to show him. Despite the challenges our coupledom had experienced of late, surely here we’d find an indelible reminder of all that had united us in the first place, a bridge back to our old two-headed, big-hearted self.
I’d been keen on picking him up at the airport (as had Kaka), but Karsh had informed me that Ravi (Mallika’s contact, the promoter) had already organized a car to fetch him; he wanted to go over some details for his impending show ASAP.
—It’s going to be a little hectic, rani, Karsh had explained from check-in. —But plenty of time to hang with your family once all this music business is settled …
No problemo, I’d told him. I couldn’t wait. For all of it.
My own bags seemed not even to exist, so seamlessly did they flow from Arvind’s grasp to Maruti trunk to, about forty-five minutes (and two miles) later, the Seahorse hotel porter’s.
It had been my mother’s suggestion that Kavita drop me off so we could get some girl time with my NYU roommates; Kavita had eagerly agreed (boldly adding how she so rarely got to come out in India). But to our alarm, at the last minute Sangita had shyly asked if she could join us.
As we emerged from the car, I was slightly stressing out about how to explain the lack of any other chicas involved in this fictitious girl time to her. But Sangita, stopping the porter from making off with another rickety rolling suitcase in the trunk, just waved to us.
—Okay, aacha! Have a lovely day! Sorry, I can’t stay after all. We’re working on Deepak’s office today.
She ejected handle from suitcase. Where was his office? Simla? Before I could inquire further, she was off with a rick-hailing Bhai!, pulling the edge of her faded blue sari overhead.
I shot a querying glance at Kavita, but she was already passing through the metal detector, into the lobby.
I stepped up to the blankly cheerful man at the desk (name tag: Sunhil).
—I’m booked with Karsh Kapoor, arriving today?
He typed away, then looked up at me, this time with an expression of recognition now that I was confirmed in the computer system.
—Welcome to the Seahorse, Mrs. Kapoor!
Kavita gave me a look. I was probably giving myself one as well.
—Is there a problem, madame? Sunhil inquired. I burned my gaze into Kavita, beaming a no-issues telepathic signal her way.
—No issues, Kavita said. —I just always took her for a Ms. type.
—There is a message for you, Sunhil-ji went on. —Mr. Kapoor will be here momentarily but was detained at the airport. I hope this will not be too much of a problem for you, Mrs. Kapoor.
Kavita and I burst into a fit of giggles at hearing the name spoken aloud again.
—Madame is highly excitable, Kavita explained impishly, while I fervently nodded. —She has not seen her husband in … almost a day? Newlyweds only.
—Ah, then you will feel right at home here, madame! It is the season, of course. We have weddings on nearly every evening at the moment! Please wait one moment….
He glanced at his screen, rolling his mouse into a tizzy.
—I’m pleased to inform you, in celebration of your choosing the Samudri Ghoda as your honeymoon destination, we are happy to offer you a free upgrade to a seaview room!
He handed me two key cards.
Room 212? New York City’s prime area code? It was a sign! Of … whatever!
Kavita saw me into this honey-glow seaview room: a warm (A/C not on), cozy (small), inviting (paid for by someone else, key worked), and utterly charming (warm, small, paid for by someone else) space.
A vase of radiant blooms! Such tiny bananas in the fruit basket!
Kavita drew the curtains, and the pane flooded with brown-blue Bowie-eye sea-sky. Below, that patch of electric pool blue was today perimetered by a bevy of brunettes. Bent over the end of the beach barrier wall, that pacing dark knight of a guard appeared to be pulling up a sock.
The message light flashed on the bedside telephone. While I dialed in for calls, the luggage arrived and Kavita dealt with the tipping. The first message was from a music journo named Flip, about kicking off the profile pronto upon Karsh’s arrival. A second was from Ravi, detailing an address in South Bombay.
So Ravi wasn’t with him?
The third message was for me, from none other than my parents … welcoming me to Bombay.
—Well, Dimps, Kavita said now, bidding me farewell. —Chalo. My love to Karsh …
She gave me a sneaky smile. —And yours to him, I’m sure.
And she was off. In a flash, most of my clothes were as well.
I dug around in my bag. Pulled out a strip from the Condomania pack and strung it around my neck like a lei (lay!), then stood there in my bra and boxers, glancing around the room for inspiration.
I was beheading the flowers, scattering petals upon carpet and bedspread, when I heard that much-longed-for knock on the door.
The baby bananas! I tore one off the bunch, stuck it between my lips like a randy monkey, flung open the door with a bushy-tailed:
—Karsh!
… then slammed it shut, mortified. A breath, and I eeked it open, peeked apologetically through the crack at the hotel attendant waiting there, shyly, holding a bottle of champagne.
—Um … yes? I managed, the freed fruit at once pealing from lips to floor with a defeated thud.
He appeared more embarrassed than me.
—Very sorry to be disturbing you, madame, he whispered. —But the hotel would like to offer you this in honor of your wedding.
He bent down, setting the bottle at the threshold.
—I’ll just … leave it here …
He scurried away, probably not daring await a tip from a girl without pockets. When he’d vanished, I rescued the champers.
Had word spread so fast? For I’d barely thrown on one of the two fluffy white bathrobes when the door edged open (I’d never shut it) … and there before me stood another hotel attendant, bearing a wicker basket with a brand-new bunch.
—May I replenish your fruits, madame? he asked — courteous in tone but curious insolent eyes unyieldingly fixed on my bathrobed, condom-lei’d, hootch-handed self. Perhaps he was wondering what fate might befall the bananas.
I furiously shook my head, closing the door on his uninterrupted stare.
I threw off the lei, dramatically ripping up the condoms (along the perforation, of course, so as not to render them unusable), and threw them on the bedspread. Then I flopped down among the strewn petals, exhausted from my failed seductions.
When I heard the next set of knocks — these strangely rhythmic and overlapping (had the entire staff turned up?), I didn’t budge.
But the ever-attentive fruit replenishers kept at it, finally ringing the buzzer.
—Ayurvedic full-body massage? a deep, thickly accented voice offered through the door.
—Um. I’ll pass, I replied, then translated: —I mean, thanking you only.
A pause. Then a chortling.
—Rani! It’s me!
I catapulted up. Flung open the door. And there, at last here, was he of the percussively skilled fingertips, a single tabla in hand. He returned it to the cylindrical case he was towing behind him, one wheel a little banged up from that airport carousel crash landing.
Karsh was five o’clock shadowed beyond the usual boundaries of his beard, fatigue lines below those crinkling eyes — my favorite shade of brown in the world — and a devilish grin I immediately attacked with my own, kiss-steering him into the room with one arm, slamming the door behind him and flicking on the Do Not Disturb light with the other.
I threw Karsh onto the b
ed and finally released my mouth from his (delicious, though slightly lagery) lips. Then I sat on top of him, victorious.
—Duggibug! I can’t believe it’s you!
He smiled. —It’s always me. Me and you.
I threw off the bathrobe, revealing all my bra-and-boxer glory.
—You and me. Finally here …
—Imagine, he whispered, both hands in my hair now, pulling up from the nape as I so loved. I lay down, snuggling up beside him.
Now that he was here, it felt he’d never not been. I’d never not been.
He brushed a petal from my hair.
—Doing a little gardening? he laughed.
I nodded towards the condoms.
—Fertilizing, I sighed. —What took you so long?
—The usual. Gear check. They stopped me for the cables, cartridge, needle. And then they got stuck on the tablas — thought they saw some dubious drug dust in the duggi case. Must’ve been the talc.
The baby powder he sprinkled on his palms before finger-singing bayan and dayan (legendarily once one drum) to when-broke-it-still-spoke toda, tab bhi bola life.
—So how’d you get out of it? I asked.
He grinned. —I played ’em. Did a round of teentaal. They applauded me through after that!
—Hit the ground gigging? Off to an auspicious start, methinks! I effervesced. I smiled lecherously and slid a hand between his shirt buttons, onto his heart. —And we can be, too …
His excitement encouragingly palpable, with a bed-groan moan he exhaled.
—I know! L’Heure Bleu! I can’t believe I’m playing such a hot venue in Bombay. Ravi says in a country of nearly one-point-three billion people — more than half youth, and a bursting middle class — all the elements are in place for me to take this city by storm!
Correction: His excitement about the gig was palpable. Well, I couldn’t blame him. I was on the edge of our seat to see him break India, carry the light of his risen star in the South Asian (and now, beat by beat, subcultural-gone-mainstream) scene in the USA and shine it here, seduce this city into head-over-heeling with his particular breed of bhangra.
Nevertheless, I picked up a banana and seductively stroked it.
—May I replenish your fruits, sir?
He shook his head, still smiling, propped himself up on his elbows.
—I have to be careful, rani. I really have to watch what I eat and drink here so I don’t get sick before the big gig … or the meeting today.
—From a five-star banana? I asked, incredulous. —What meeting?
He rose up now, all the way to sitting.
—I’m so sorry, rani, but Ravi wants to connect to go over the show details. I promise we’ll hang on our own after.
—I thought you met with him in the car that fetched you?
—I didn’t realize just the driver was fetching me. Ravi’s going to call in the deets. Some place in South Bombay.
—Oh yeah, I said flatly. —Ravi left a message. Some place in South Bombay.
Karsh leapt up for the hotel phone like it might run away.
—Man, rani — why didn’t you tell me?
He was scribbling down the instructions on the notepad while I pondered that. Um, maybe because I thought we’d be going wildly nonverbal for a few hours upon his arrival?
He hung up.
—Given the traffic in this town, we better leave a wide margin. I’ll just jump in the shower, then we can push off. Don’t want to be late for our first Bombay industry meeting.
—We? I said, surprised. —Our? Are you sure you want me to come along to an industry meeting?
—Of course! This is India; people always bring people to things. Besides, I want Ravi to get to know New York’s clubbing photographer of choice.
He sat down beside me, planting a kiss on my forehead as he unbuttoned his shirt.
—My photographer of choice, he added.
I hesitated. But only a blink; the idea of roaming Bombay with my boy mercury, as the B-52s sang, sound and vision team back in force, was pretty all right by me.
—Yeeehaw! I grinned, then sang it. —Around the world the trip begins with a kiss …
I was about to begin ours, but at the last moment withdrew; his face was so serious.
—Thank you. It would mean a lot to me if you came along, he said quietly, and there was a hint of a plea in that tone. —To be honest, I feel a little out of sorts this time. It’s strange to be here without family….
I took his face in my hands.
—You’re not without family.
—I’m sorry, he said quickly. —I didn’t mean it that way.
—I know you didn’t, I replied, even though I didn’t know he didn’t. But this was his big moment, not mine, and I wanted to support him — through the pain, and the pleasure as well. —I’d love to come, Karsh. And I can’t wait to meet Ravi.
—Really? he said with audible relief. I nodded.
—Anyway, if you’re getting to work, I might as well get to work, too. I can get some shots of you there, and I can always split and shoot the setting if it seems you two need some one-on-one.
I reached for my camera now.
—Speaking of which … no time like the present? Let me get my first shot of … Karsh in the motherland!
He froze for me. When I peered through the lens, I was disarmed to discover a mournful undertone to the manic smile. And when I clicked, I heard one, too, so low I nearly missed it….
—The fatherland, he said softly.
Driver 4303 was destined to be ours, and pulled up by the hotel entry to whisk us off to Marine Drive.
In the taxi, Karsh kept staring nervously at his phone, picking at a thread on the loose-flowing, casually elegant maharajah getup he’d ultimately settled on (hot out of Edison, Joysey; staple duds at his Adda gigs in New York). I sidled in closer to him, abetted by the fact there were no seat belts in the back of the car.
4303-ji glanced at us in the evil-eye-deflecting fresh-chili-peppered rearview, molten brown eyes split from the man.
—Missed call from Ravi, Karsh fretted as we passed a you booze you loose sign. —But I can’t get a signal….
—Sea Link, sir, 4303-ji announced, or explained. And next thing I knew, a river of ricks hearkening off left, we’d cruised straight onto the bridge.
The Rajiv Gandhi Sea Link. Through the toll, an unreeling in my belly not unlike at the moment of aviatory ascent. Aloft as if mounting the skeletal soul of a flying ship, eight lanes swung-hung, shimmering suspended over the sea.
The slant-spanning cables zipped past our open windows. And before us — skyline jarringly jaggingly modern, yet mirage-hazy from this distance — that other wavelengthening shore unfurling like a sleight-of-sight Manhattwin.
Unidentical. Sororal twins. Throat catch; scupped beat: the other side suffusing me with a sense of something both instinctively familiar and utterly alien.
Like love at first sight. The farther across the bridge we traveled, like a magic trick, that other skylined shore before us seemed to extend, unfold, undulate through an amniotic gauze deep into the southern distance, a matryoshka city birthing itself as we drove, infinitely expansive, intimately inviting — yet somehow always unraveling just out of reach.
—Wow, Karsh murmured.
—Wah, I concurred, as in aaray. I picked up Chica Tikka, turning to the back windshield to catch where we’d just been … and was swept with something akin to vertigo to discover directly behind me no bridge, no shortest-distance-between-two-points straight-lining back to that Bandra shore, but rather, this slithership giving us the slip: curving delinquently, deliriously, disorientingly off to the right.
How had I not felt that curving away?
Forward, peripheral vision, left: a thrust of near-prehistoric sepia, rust, russet and occasionally blue-tarp-tarned terrain, a ramshacklage of tiny boats, blinks of color along its craggy edge.
To the right: open sea.
All that in approx
imately seven minutes. The bridge let out in Worli, a sign to South Bombay (where I’d thought we were headed) indicating left, though 4303-ji soon after spun around and gassed off in the opposite direction, the congested arterial roads honking us out of that suspended dream state of a bridge.
And into another?
Despite the mind-numbing traffic, we arrived at the Inter-Continental with twelve minutes to spare — not too shabby, as IST (Indian Standard Time, meaning: late) was a given in this town. Karsh was always pretty particular about timing; he was a drummer, after all.
We got the elevator to the hotel roof and exited into a shimmering snowscape: ivory-iridescent sofas and seats, icy sunshades, milk-spill tiles. Fat white candles dripped in glass holders. White bowls burst a bloodbath of blooms, while ice buckets luxuriated, fulgent with bottled bubbles.
It was all so clean. White was a color you didn’t see much of in pure form in Bombay, given all the grime and grit. A few white people even lounged around, sipping on long cocktails and dipping their toes in the upraised pool of glittering blue that put the ashen sea — just visible off the terrace edge — to Technicolor test. Palm fronds unfurled in the ocean breeze. It was like stepping onto a film set.
—It’s so Aryan, I whispered.
—Indians are likely descendants of the Aryans, wiseass, Karsh laughed. —And we’re in a hotel, remember, which may explain the gringo quotient. But, man, it is pretty amazing.
I nodded. No Ravi to be found, we walked to the glass half-wall running the rooftop perimeter, leaning over to imbibe the view. Eight floors down, the mulchy sea muddled a smudged sapphire sky. The air brimmed with white noise from all the rickless traffic below, curving off and away.
We sank into a sofa by the edge. To the side, a glass and aluminum bar, manned by deep-tawned, red-hatted, black-shirted men. I wondered where they hailed from, here in this city of dreams. And why I hadn’t even noticed them initially, but only the pallor palette.
In fact, only about a third of the starletty folk lacksadazing on white cocktailed couches were white. The sipping Indians were several shades paler than the serving ones, and donned billowing shirts and skirts that kept them well sheathed from the searing sun.
Bombay Blues Page 9