Bombay Blues

by Tanuja Desai Hidier

  —Well, you know what they say: Bright lights, big shitty. You were hungover, Karsh. And hungry. So I don’t know how much purity has to do with it. Believe me, I don’t think it’d take much to throw some of these guys off the straight and narrow. Did you see how Gopal’s face lit up when she said Godhead?

  —Dimple. That’s extreme, even for you. In fact, you were kind of rude back there.

  —I’m just saying. Those two clearly need to engage in some illicit onion action. It’s usually people who get dumped or don’t get laid enough that become spiritual seekers, after all. Otherwise they start wars.

  —Is that all you ever think about?

  —Is that all you ever ask me?

  —And even if you’re right, he went on, —there are worse things you can do with a broken heart than become a Hare Krishna.

  —Like … lie? I mean, come on, Karsh — computers? Agarbathi?

  —I do work with computers. And I am a nonsmoker.

  —Since when?

  He pulled out Flip’s lighter and chucked it into an otherwise empty bin surrounded by heaps of trashfetti.

  —Since now.

  I stared at him; he stared at me. Then he reached back in and pulled it out, wiping it off on his shirt.

  —Well, maybe after this gig. Ravi gave me a little hash stash that might be nice after the show — or during, depending on my nerves.

  Now, that was more like my Karsh!

  —They’ll need to cater the console, considering how long your munchies last, I teased him. He was smiling, too — but it was a distant smile.

  —Gokulanandini was beautiful, wasn’t she? Like she had some inner light.

  —Gopi girl had some outer light, too, I snorted. —She’s white. I mean, gimme a break: Gokulanandini?

  —She just seemed … to make sense.

  We cut back through the beach, in silence now. Suddenly, Karsh’s eyes fell on something half buried in the sand, a glimmer of dusky pink, and he darted forward, knelt to lift it.

  I caught up to him.

  —What, Karsh? What is it?

  A curved slab of pinkish-white rock. He lay the stone back down, but his eyes were looking elsewhere now, to the horizon. He shook his head.

  —Sometimes I wonder if I was only dreaming. Or maybe he lost it, gave it away — you never know if things have the same meaning for other people.

  —He’d never give it away, Karsh, I said.

  —Never say never, Dimple, he replied quietly, but there was an edge to his voice I’d never heard before.

  I looked down. Chica Tikka on my hip, silhouetted in the sand like a swaddle-slung baby.

  My own feet. In Bombay. Karsh’s: now out of frame.

  They’d said the blowing of the conch symbolized the start of battle. And I’m not sure why I even thought this, but I sure hoped it wasn’t the start of ours.

  Finally, it was the day of Karsh’s gig. I couldn’t make sound check. As it was a sundowner show, the check was pretty early — and it was also the afternoon my parents were flying to Delhi for honeymoon two.

  Karsh didn’t insist.

  —Forget sound check. You’ve seen it all before.

  —And you’ve got the visuals anyway, right? I fretted, unsure about leaving him alone on his big day. He’d been more nervous than I’d ever seen him — except, oddly, post his California shows. —You’ve run them, and it’s cool?

  I’d laid the final touches on the images of Karsh in Bombay and New York last night, during my then-helpful bout of insomnia.

  —Sure. Listen, Dimple. You should see your parents off. Just turn up a little before the set, shoot the venue then?

  Maybe he was being extra understanding, making up for how tetchy things had been between us as his nerves worked overtime. He’d snapped at me twice already, though he was immediately remorseful after, and he’d been vanishing into his noise-cancellation headphones for increasing spells. I’d even spied him in front of the mirror practicing DJ facial expressions and intonations on his usual call to dance:

  —Desi dance cohorts! Let me take you on a journey … ! Nooo … let me take you on a journey….

  Some of those facial expressions were astonishingly Ravi-like. Even Amitabh Bachchan-like.

  I began to grow anxious, too.

  But no one needed to know that.

  I accompanied my parents to the domestic airport in Santa Cruz, driven by Deepak (bigger car, though still a squeeze) and joined by Sangita and Kavita. (The former was doing wedding errands with Deepak after, and Kavita was sneaking off with me, ostensibly to shoot the sunset, but in fact for the sundowner set.)

  My cousins and Deepak waited in the car, neither quite parked nor in motion, as I accompanied my parents in, wheeling their one suitcase. As if I were the one leaving, and for a post-nuclear-war bunker, my mother tearfully pressed a box of granola bars and two packs of Huggies aloe vera wipes into my hands, my father slipping me a ziplock of refill meds: Advil, Tums, Imodium, Zantac, and, for some reason, folic acid — the same items he’d supplied me with when I began NYU.

  A barrage of parental advice:

  —Now, promise you will not be up to any altoo faltoo business….

  —Do not hang around Colaba at night….

  —Or the mills …

  —Or the beaches …

  —Or the slums …

  —Take taxis, or have Arvind drive you. Or Deepak.

  In other words: Stay in?

  —Or just stay at home, beta, relax, my father suggested, confirming my suspicions. —Enjoy the hotel.

  —Um. I kind of wanted to see the city.

  —Does the hotel have Internet? You can do a lot of sightseeing without even leaving your room these days, he informed me. —Always wear insect repellent.

  —Try to stick to home-cooked food, my mother added, though I wasn’t sure there was a lot of that going on at the hotel. —But do not miss the free breakfast. Especially when you shift to Lands End and that four-star — well, five-star, as they call four-stars here. If I recall correctly, the akuri is divine. Basically bhurji — almost like mine. Just take a Zantac first.

  —But they put garlic in it, na? my father queried her now.

  —Check in with family regularly, my mother went on. —Should we call you every night?

  —I think you’ll be more prone to worry if you call me and I don’t pick up right away, which might be the case if I’m … in the middle of applying insect repellent? I advised them. —Daddy, Ma, this is your city! I’ll be fine.

  —We know it is our city … my mother said slowly.

  —… and that is why we are worried, my father concluded.

  Though we’d only be apart a little over a week, monsoonal parental tears were a-rolling when we split ways at security. As I watched them pass through the detectors — back-glancing the entire way, and waving fervently as if I were about to set sail, never again to return — I realized the tears were in my eyes, too. It felt strange, epic, even, them leaving this city, me staying behind. As if, in some funny way, despite the fact they’d still be in India, I, without them, no longer would be. I hadn’t realized before this trip just how much my geographical historical coordinates were tied in to those of my parents, a twisting twirling umbilically bound compass you could spend a lifetime trying to detach. Or hang on to.

  I really would have to find my own Bombay.

  It was a thrilling concept, but I felt a pang of loneliness when they finally moved out of my line of vision.

  As I exited, I startled a moment, thought I peripherally caught a six-foot-and-then-some blue suede brown-banded cowboy hat. My heart, illogically, lifted. I turned eagerly to say hello — and found myself checking out the robin’s-egg-blue-hued turban on a wonderfully elegant Sikh gentleman.

  I was strangely disappointed. As I headed back to the car, I wondered what that international airport cowboy was doing right now, which frontier he was framing with that twin SLR.

  Rejoining the posse, I was
swept with a nervy anticipation for Karsh’s impending major moment as we found ourselves heading towards L’Heure Bleu.

  The club was relaunching tonight after a spate of seedy events. Well, two: One evening, a couple Bollywood stars came to blows there, butting egos in the dining area and, oddly, given they weren’t so tall offscreen, destroying a chandelier in the process. The next, rumors of a rave had spread — although joining the concepts of Bollywood and raves was a little like a Zen koan, along the lines of clapping with one hand. A police commissioner had busted into the place, flailing a cricket bat, pulled out a videocam and begun taping whoever was there. It was cricket season, but this seemed a bit much.

  The whoever-was-there were mostly fine diners and deal makers who were clearly not raving, merely ravenous, and in the end, all the buzzkill fuzz could charge the place with was a faulty gas cylinder. However, everyone in the joint had fled upon the emergence of the cam — probably more likely due to the company they were keeping (not their spouses, according to Mallix) and the deals they were making (often under the table) than the drugs on hand (coke, a little MGMT — or was it MDMA? — and the ubiquitous reefer).

  Juhu Tara Road seemed to lengthen as we drove along it. To my surprise, Deepak dropped the three of us off across the street from the club landmark, a Juhu branch of Café Coffee Day, announcing he could do with a quick caffeine hit, then stick-shifted off to find parking. Kavita seemed to take it — and then me — in stride: My salwar-kameezed cousins stepped up to either side of me, hooked an arm each, and launched us into that pinball-on-speed traffic tap dance, pausing briefly on the midpoint island, a paltry purgatory, before diving into the multilaned chaos once again.

  —Dimple. Drop the heavy breathing. We’re across now, Kavita informed me.

  My heart was still pounding; I was growing more and more stressed for Karsh as we drew closer to the venue. In the way twins can sense each other’s chills and thrills, I could feel his own nerves shuddering through my system, too. I took a breath, decided I had to be calm for the both of us — infuse him with the kind of cool he had in New York, strolling into those venues as if by chance … before dropping the most dance-frenzy-evoking set of his life, or anyone’s. Every time. Every life.

  We climbed up — past the squatting scrubbing soap bubble boys, one beating sidewalk with a long-haired bamboo-handled brush that looked like it had been plucked directly from a tree (or ISKCON priest), his partner in existential events tipping the bucket of suds out before him, a tandem almost telepathic act of such Sisyphean proportions in this exhaust-choked atmosphere, I was nearly moved to tears — and into Café Coffee Day. Sangita insisted on buying our drinks; when I figured she was out of earshot, at the counter, I shot Kavita a look.

  —We have to tell her, Kavity.

  Before Kavita could reply, Sangita had returned with her obviously bionic ears and inquired:

  —Tell me what?

  A highly uncaffeinated, sleepy-lidded man served our off-the-cricket-season menu concoctions — a Fanatic for Kavita, Nirvana for Sangita, and Blue Maniac for me. We busied ourselves passing around the drinks, which all tasted the same: sugar mixed with syrup.

  —Okay, here’s the deal, I confessed, taking a swallow of these worryingly palatable sweetened sweeteners. —We are going to shoot the sunset, Sangita … but at L’Heure Bleu.

  —LHB? You mean where PJK and ABK had their bout of violence?

  Was this Morse code for the actors who’d bashed hanging lamps? Correct: Sangita looked alarmed, as if contentious Bollywood stars lurked in our near vicinity, readying to jump us.

  —Uh. Yeah, I guess … but it’s also where Karsh has his first-ever Bombay gig! I squealed.

  She sat back, flabbergasted.

  —What? I can’t go like this! I look like an oily aunty, with this coconut oil treatment!

  She ran a hand through her particularly lustrous locks, caught a glimpse of herself in the reflection of the Bisleri-filled fridge. —And I’m not dressed right!

  —You’re in India, Sangita. And a friend of the DJ’s. No problem. I mean, no issues.

  —In any case, we’d never have escaped Mummy’s suspicions if we’d dressed any differently, Kavita pointed out. —I wear salwar kameezes all the time at Karsh’s HotPot parties in New York. Our friend Zara comes in saris. Sabz and I even used to …

  Her voice trailed off. The two had always color-coordinated their kameezes, swapped scarves in an amorous dupatta dance during their favorite numbers. —Anyway. Don’t worry about it. You’re getting married — what do you need to look fabulous for?

  —Not that you don’t, I jumped in, guiltily. —Will Deepak freak? You can blame it all on your wayward ABCD cousin.

  Sangita sighed. —No; he’s had one or two business dinners at LHB. But it’s just imperative we run this wedding errand today. Maybe we can come in for a quick hello and be off? Let me just check on him….

  Her phone dinged his reply within seconds.

  —He still hasn’t found parking, so he’ll just meet us there, she informed us.

  —Chalo, then, I said, rising. —This is a sundowner and, even in India, the sun sets on time.

  There was nothing blue about the entrance to L’Heure Bleu.

  But a giveaway: Like a rabbit hat trick behind the pithy paanwallah stand, throngs of impeccably coiffed, manicured, waxed (threaded?) girls postured on the sidewalk, by the hefty dude closest to that unblue unmarked door.

  These girls were around the same height (a little higher than me), throwing a type of smile at the door dude that confirmed he was the bouncer: the doe-eyed giggly picture-me-naked smile.

  It was odd seeing them work the bouncer look during such unabashedly sun-soaked hours. But the better to see these shining lovely ladkis, all, in white jeans, cool capris, sequined halters, hot-to-trotting in shockingly flat and sparklingly threadbare footwear I couldn’t imagine donning for New York City clubbing. And there was a tension amongst club queuers in New York that didn’t exist here; even the ones who knew they’d get in, like Gwyn, emitted a kind of conquering energy. But these creatures exuded a balmy ease. They’d been in since birth.

  Not-so-goateed boys flocked around these balmy girls as well, but unlike at HotPot — or even in Bandra — they were strangely unremarkable. Nothing stood out about them, though they emitted a general ambiance of well-groomed good looks (shout-out to the dhobis).

  Me, I’d donned my HotPot double-dhol tee, a tasseled turquoise vest I’d scored around Ludlow Street, faded look-poor-on-purpose jeans, and Birks. In fact, I wondered if I was so cool for school I was actually expellable here amongst the semi-glitterati.

  Sangita and Kavita sore-thumbed in their salwar kameezes and dupattas. Kavita, however, had mitigated the aunty effect with her leopard-skin leggings and checkered Vans. But Sangita was in total old school ankle-cinched baggies and chappals.

  You know you’re doing something wrong when the bouncer isn’t even bothering to bounce you.

  —I thought we might be walking in the sand, Sangita whispered now, and I felt bad she’d caught me scrutinizing her feet. Was I so worked up about this show I was going Wintour on her peds? I had to get a grip.

  —Who knows? I smiled. —At this rate, we might be.

  As the bouncer succumbed to the no-split-ends feminine wiles of one compact chica extending an unlit cigarette, I carped the diem and got us through the unmarked portal. Before us, a long alleyway stretched, walled to the right, partially open to the left, allowing in a surge of sea breeze mixed with traffic exhaust. An exhausted breeze? A few more freshly pressed folk were in this line, and looked upon us with a mix of disgruntletude and admiration as we, led by me, onwarded directly up to what appeared to be a maître’d’s stand. I figured we were home free … but as the maître held up a hand in the universal gesture of cease and desist, I guessed he was in fact the second bouncer — who looked so much like the first, I wondered if it was just one guy running up and down from post to post.
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br />   I grinned, too exuberantly perhaps.

  —We’re on the list.

  The bouncer blinketh not.

  —With the DJ? I elaborated in self-doubting American-desi style. The clipboard remained unconsulted. —Karsh Kapoor? DJ Gulab Jammin’?

  —We’re DJ GJ’s entourage, Kavita said slyly. —In all the way from New York.

  —City, I added, in case Poughkeepsie had been insinuated. And GJ it was; there we were, on the list.

  Kavita and I now passed through with an ombre’d random who’d stepped up and, in a classic velvet-rope-cutting move, was acting like she was with us. I could see Sangita getting left behind.

  —Memsaab, bouncerman addressed her now, making a respectful term sound cheeky. —Strictly no desi attire here.

  —Everyone at Karsh’s … GJ’s … New York gigs dresses like that! I cried.

  Deepak now arrived, looking rather like he was in fact here for the paanwallah and had made a wrong turn; he’d likely bribed his way through door one.

  —It’s her wedding in less than two weeks, he proceeded to unhelpfully offer. —Our wedding! We’re here to hear some of the DJ’s tracks for it.

  —Where did you park? Sangita asked him anxiously, as if this — and not the possible non-entry to Karsh’s big show — was the main concern here.

  Deepak mumbled something to her.

  —We do not hire wedding DJs, Bouncer Two retorted. —Next mandap to the left.

  —Dude. Give us a break, Kavita sighed. —They’re just being ironic.

  The bouncer looked confused by the big word. I thought Sangita and Deepak would be offended, but Deepak’s smile faltered not … and Sangita actually looked like she was about to laugh.

  And then we were in. In in. We slipped through the second door.

  Arriving. Frock — it took so bloody long in this city!

  I was no longer bowled over by venues. I’d seen them enough in the buff, during the day, sound checks, and knew it was the magical moment when you became one with the music that transformed the place, blurred the lines between outer and inner space. I’d been shooting a lot of Karsh’s events this way: the Before, where a room was just a room, and the After, when the alchemical occurred — like the dip of photographic paper under rushing river water, currents cameralessly caught by a flash of lightning, a full moon.