Bombay Blues

by Tanuja Desai Hidier

  For Karsh’s father, it had been Karsh.

  The pink light seemed to emit from atop the piano. And upon that piano, I saw now, a split second before this age-old woman bird-queried her head at me, blocking it inadvertently from view: a conch shell? A spiraling dizziness. The concha in the auricle, its deepest depression, leading sound out the ear canal to the world. I was hearing Karsh’s story from angles perhaps even he did not know.

  For I was an oracle today, akashwani — voice from the ether, sky. And I was loving him from angles maybe he didn’t know as well.

  Abruptly, I could see Sangita at this moment. Breathe through the ear:

  Dimple. Something bold, something true; I woke and I knew. An image within spilling forth in a rush —to flesh out from my fingers, the finest hairs of the brush.

  No notepads, no sketch for the final — never — likeness. Crystalline in my mind, how I must unwind it. My sojourning suitcase packed with magic tint tricks (replenished near Jude’s, by Pali Market). Sari rags — half a length, my old ones ravished, used up. For blending, a few simple takeaway cups. A couple liters acrylic, outdoor, artist paints — much richer, dries quick, on these streets named for saints.

  This would be small-scale stuff. Brushes bathed, not too rough. (Pray stay wet for the night.) And stainers seeking my blues — easing just the true hues — (and perhaps other shades, too; breaking news!) — into being from white.

  Bylanes, smooth patches, like the back of my hand. In this goddess-harvest moon — skin still steeped in sky swoon — brushes whirling of their own irrepressible command.

  Iris. Iridescence. Seashell. Magnifishence. Goddess of the rainbow, sky, and the sea. Wed to the wind. Sandals, like Zara’s, wing-finned. An eye that encompasses god and human. Arco iris: a spiraling to the heartland.

  Oft I dream of a shady street, a piece of breeze to ward off the heat. In the fevered day, they stand just at bay, ask do I get paid; if not why on earth do I bother to paint? Offer water, chai, sometimes a chair. Linger, loiter.

  Stare.

  But now it’s night on Chapel, in Chuim. A couple bystanders pause, perplexed, then move on. Here comes the drunkard who likes to art-direct — giving me tips on how to do my work best.

  —Why so much blue? he asks, full of rue.

  —Because it’s my truth. My birthingest hue.

  No police, blue meanies on this scene do tread (though I’ve got a fake go-ahead on Deepak’s dad’s letterhead). The locals don’t know, and if they stop me, I say: Of course I have permission; I’d just name a name. I used to name others, fictitious ones. But today I’ll say I’ve Sangita’s volition.

  They will meet me, Kavita and her beloved, too. I’ll tell them, my sisters: These are for you. (It will strengthen them for what they know they want to do.) Their happiness true, one will tender:

  —So … you do?

  And the other will reply, —I have. And I will. And forever will do.

  I’ll be here a few hours, then make my getaway. When it’s all over: a main road chance (stencil and spray).

  Approaching day.

  And when dawn washes over these inlets of streets, they’ll swirl clockwise in concha … rainbows ringing round shankhas …

  Every color we’ve won:

  Spiraling lovers complete.

  The rock of a chair, in time with Sangita’s cycling hand. My aunt in Dadaji’s Andheri seat, Akasha sprawled across her lap, asleep. Gazing down at her and seeing her own once-little girls incarnating there, limbs eventually outgrowing her well-intentioned embrace. Widening it, trying to encircle, if not contain them.

  I felt the full force of Karsh’s father’s love as well, likewise circling him close, yet spiraling him loose. Letting him go.

  Upon the pink paper in my hand, a love letter of sorts, that address, the words: He kept it.

  And I couldn’t be sure, so brief had been my profound glimpse through the grille: But it appeared this conch, this shankha, swirled left.

  Beat scupped. For I knew then the truth of the matter: that Karsh’s father had not fallen from that train. That one day, he’d put ear to shell and heard not the song he sought — only white noise.

  He’d always known he wouldn’t stay long in this home, in this world. No way to pay up. No other out. No other direction without that old tune to follow. So he would create a manhole, an exit of his own. He’d just needed to feel a little love first.

  And when later, at the station, the mounting sound from the inside of that undone shankha matched the roar of the world outside him as it pitched along the tracks, and sensing a burning light, a bruising orb rushing towards him, he’d plunged into it and danced his own dark raga onto, off the rails.

  They were leading him nowhere — so he’d take them with him. When I understood he had jumped, I understood in the same breath something unnameable but tangible as the leathery hand of the woman I was now laying my own upon as she reached through the bars towards me. It was about Karsh.

  Karsh lying in fetal position on the dorm room floor that morning, unable to rise. The nightmares, the sweats. The shakes, the constant seeking.

  I understood that Karsh had understood this as well. A low keening. And when the curtain blew again in the zephyr of the slow rotating fan, upon the piano mantel: no conch. Now: gramophone.

  Shiva, god of destruction, was Karsh’s deity. Atop his NYU desk this Nataraj could be found, his dancing god. His blacks were denser than I’d known, or had wanted to know. And I knew then, too, that when it came to Karsh, once my lover, now my brother, always my friend: My blues would be unending as the way the baby blue of this bungalow pooled seamlessly into the now indigo night, and that this — his drive to create, his desire to self-destruct — was the smudgy rubbed-out border, morbidezza, where we two would meet again one day.

  The old woman was nodding, but she was no longer looking at me.

  —It was his time. But I will always be grateful. He gave me a moment with an unknown unborn son when he felt he’d lost his own.

  I nodded back, unable to speak.

  —Come back sometime, child, the old woman said, and her eyes were wet. —I am not prepared for guests now.

  Her voice was kind but firm. There was a love story here, and the mourning of one as well.

  Before she let the curtain drop, finally, between us, I saw that avatar of the concha, this gramophone now in place, swirled clockwise, the direction of life. Karsh would lean that way as long as he could hear some kind of music.

  This I knew, as I turned and walked away: Some of the greatest love stories would always remain unspoken, but would reincarnate in different people, places, songs eternally.

  When we told our own, we told every single one.

  One day I would do something, I resolved then. I didn’t know what it was yet, but it had to do with all this. It had to do with my lens, a new multi-eared and -eyed perspective.

  And for now, and always, I knew: Love had to be allowed in wherever, whenever, and in whatever form it took. We didn’t have to shrink to fit it, box it to casket. And even then, when we found it dying, could opt for ashing down rather than burial, scatter it to all five corners of the earth and ether.

  Whatever could be celebrated must be celebrated.

  I was an oracle today but still had a long way to go. I was an oracle today but still would arrive always here:

  Love could be. Must be.

  I’d wandered wide, and didn’t return to Andheri till nighttide, to find voices conspiring there. I followed these undertones to fall upon Kavita and Sangita and Sabz, cross-legged on the floor by a cartoonishly snoring Akasha in my bed, all in a secretive huddle, like when we were girls reading Famous Five books by flashlight. I hovered just outside the door.

  —It’s going to be difficult tomorrow, Sangita was sighing. —It was supposed to be an auspicious day for a wedding, after all.

  A silence.

  —It still could be, Sabz replied slowly.

  Another silence,
but this one weighted with a kind of understanding.

  —I thought you said marriage was just for people acting straight, Kavita whispered.

  —I know I did. But then I realized …

  Akasha suddenly rose up on an elbow, a dreams eavesdropper. They all glanced up as I stepped into the room as well, and it was both surprising and not that we were seeing the same number imbuing the room.

  A zero could double, tip into infinity: a compass, encompass everybody — even those not in the room, no longer even amongst us.

  —They can also be for people, Akasha murmured.

  —Making a circle, I said. And my mind completed an idea so obvious, that had been always before our eyes, forming over days, hours, these nigh-three incredible weeks. It was high time to announce it to the world. Our world. —And I know just the place.

  The next morning, on what would have been the main day of Sangita’s wedding, a heaviness inundated the Andheri apartment as if it had a weather of its own. All the wallahs had been canceled for the big-now-unbig day, so even the jingle of the mystery door couldn’t cut through the thick haze of guilt, disappointment, despair — AKA, fear for the future — clouding our climate.

  It was also the anniversary of Dadaji’s passing. And my own last full day in Bombay. I was blue. But I now knew you had to follow a color all the way through.

  The only sign of life was Akasha, who crouched, wrapped in a furl of flowery fabric in Zepploo’s corner, engaged in some kind of eye-reading session with the tiny twitterer, who under her tender loving care had gone from a flicker of life to full-flamed Passeriforme in the last days. Zep cocked his tiny head in stop-motion movements as if truly digesting, keening in on what Akasha was confiding.

  My uncle and father drank their tea side by side on the zigzaggy couch, then did a few rounds of deep breathing, my father sneak-peeking at Kaka to measure his own progress. That accomplished, they decided to take a stroll on Juhu Beach.

  Moments later, Akasha cast me a look and slipped out the door per plan, carrying an unplanned package swathed in the fabric she’d just been wearing. Had that been a wedding present? To be transferred?

  My aunt had busied herself rewashing thalis in the kitchen, my mother reorganizing the pickle cupboard, lingering over the jars of chundo.

  As for Kavita and Sangita, the duo appeared lost in their laptops — but when I passed the dining table, I noticed they were chatting with each other, online boxes agitated with emoticons and exclamation points. Today, finally, Kavita had dressed as she usually did in the USA — that is, like an Indian (well, my old view of what an Indian dressed like): She and Sabz wore matching blue-green salwar kameezes with dupattas that looked suspiciously like the leftover fabric from Sangita’s wedding sari.

  On Kavita’s finger, that bit of sparkling celestite. On Sabz’s, its matching yet inverse puzzle piece. And on their feet, the red, white, and blue checkered Vans they’d bought together in the Village back in the day.

  Sangita, the unbride to be, stood by the grille, staring out over Andheri. Her shoulders tensed slightly.

  —Not having second thoughts, are you? I whispered.

  —Not at all. I just really miss Dadaji today. More than usual.

  —I do, too. But I don’t think it would make him happy to see you like this. I don’t think it’s making him happy. And after all, he’s most certainly the Best Man today.

  So I smacked my hands together, then addressed them all. —Women, your attention! We can’t sit around like it’s a day of mourning.

  —But we are back to zero, Dimple! my aunt retorted, emerging from the kitchen with my mother at her heels.

  —Um. Okay. But back to zero — isn’t that the same as a fresh start? I insisted. Sangita, Sabz, and Kavita knowingly met my eyes, the latter two a little eagerly. —As in Shiva. Destruction as a precursor to creation?

  I had my mother and Maasi’s attention. I wasn’t going to waste it.

  —Listen. I know we were going to honor Dadaji today, too. Well, he most certainly wouldn’t approve of our focusing on what was lost; his spirit’s still here, in the people and places he loved. Just like in Sangita’s painting.

  Kavita and Sabz were fervently nodding.

  —Further, it’s supposed to be an auspicious day for a union, no?

  —Yes. Sangita’s and Deepak’s, my aunt replied stiffly.

  —Those are just details. The point is: Good energy’s in the air. Who says we can’t pick up other people’s auspicious vibes and put them to good use?

  —What are you saying, Dimple? my mother asked impatiently.

  —I’m saying: We should unite. No reason for there to be an iota of rancor, resentment, resistance in this room: This is a space, an address so full of love, if we could just get past our expectations of what everyone else in it should be, do … and who they should be with. We still have much to celebrate — even if it’s not what we thought we were going to be celebrating.

  They were all not only staring at me now, but leaning slightly in as well … even those (all, save the elders) who knew.

  —So let’s get to that part, I said. —Move past the bitter and on to the sweet.

  Akasha bounded back into the room then, box-free. As planned, she’d just filled Arvind in on our day’s destination.

  —There’s no time for fussing and fighting, she now declared, strummer fretting the air.

  —Yes, I agreed. —For example: You once were the most kindred of spirits, when you were little girls, right, Ma? Maasi?

  Both sisters nodded in twinlike unison, looking a little puzzled as well. And as my parents had once advised me, during my rift with Gwyn that seventeenth summer, and Sangita so recently as we mounted to Mary, I told them now: —Then be little girls again. In fact, let’s all be.

  —I wouldn’t mind clearing the air, Sangita concurred. —Getting to the bottom of it once and for all.

  I glanced out that epic window, then back to this beloved room.

  —Or, I said slowly, grinning, —to the top.

  And so on the day where once had been a wedding planned, we found ourselves embarking on our own pilgrimage — ascending towards our own reunion.

  Gilbert Hill wasn’t far from Andheri station. Not that we were going to take the train, of course. Arvind had insisted he not only drive but also ascend with us since he wasn’t sure “what type of people” we’d find on top.

  We couldn’t all fit in the car, which had occurred to me last night. So Kavita and Sabz were going to meet us there — and score some alone time at this significant setting. They announced now they’d head down to Shoppers Stop and catch a rick.

  —How will you ever find us? my aunt worried. —You must go through a slum to get there.

  —Don’t worry, ji, Sabz reassured her. —I’ve been to Gilbert Hill before.

  —You have? Maasi exclaimed. I was surprised as well; Sabz hadn’t mentioned that detail when I told them my idea. —So how is it that we have not? You’ve spent less time in India than any of us!

  Sabz grinned. —That’s probably why, ji. I mean, I’ve never been to the Statue of Liberty, but was born and raised in Jersey.

  So about twenty minutes before us, the pair headed arm in arm down the incline of Ramzarukha. Down to go up.

  As if we were about to ascend Ansel Adams’s mountainous muse, El Capitan, my aunt was tucked away in the kitchen, busily packing up bottles of filtered water and Horlicks biscuits and fried puris, even unlocking that Fort Knox fridge to slip yet another plastic-boxed load into the bag after all that. My mother added several sugar-rushing packages of mithai she’d purchased earlier for the wedding.

  Maasi gave her a pained look.

  —That was for …

  Her voice trailed off. My mother shrugged.

  —Why let it go to waste, Meera?

  Sangita reappeared now in jeans and unusually unstained flowing shirt, looking a good measure happier than moments before … and a good half foot taller.

 
Upon her feet were Zara’s magic slippers.

  My aunt demurred, —Beta, I don’t think this is practical footwear to climb up a mountain.

  —It’s not a mountain, Mummy. It’s a hill.

  —Actually, it’s not even a hill, Akasha piped up. —It’s a freestanding basalt monolith ejected from the earth during the Mesozoic era — Cretaceous-Tertiary, in fact — in the same event that killed off the dinosaurs. Remember?

  —But you are already going to go so high up, my aunt insisted, ignoring this piece of prehistoric trivia. —Why do you need to be higher?

  —If Dimple’s willing to limp up this freestanding monolith, Sangita countered, —then I’m okay to platform it.

  —I’m fine, I jumped in. I still hadn’t told anyone about the accident, had blamed my wobble on a pothole slip. —No need for you to twist an ankle on my behalf.

  My aunt dropped with effort to her haunches to examine the heels, as if they were perhaps removable. But Sangita held fast.

  —These were Dimple’s gift to me, she said. —She had them especially made for my wedding day, and it’s still that day — just minus the wedding.

  My aunt sighed. My mother leaned down alongside her to check out the shoes.

  —They’ll hold up, she concluded. —Zara Thrustra makes a damn tough heel. And in any case, it doesn’t look like your dikree has any intention of removing them.

  —Stubborn as nails, Meera Maasi said, shaking her head at Sangita. My mother smiled at her sister.

  —It takes one to know one.

  —Yes, Shilpa, my aunt agreed, turning to my mother. —It does.

  The two met eyes … and laughed. I awaited a continuation of the diatribe, but Meera Maasi surprised me.

  —Such beautiful shoes —I’ve never laid eyes upon anything like them. Thank you, Dimple. For making the effort. For always making the effort.

  When we descended to the car — totteringly, limpingly, hobblingly, yet still excitedly — for a moment I wasn’t sure who the sweet-faced bare-noggined man in the driver’s seat was. Another halohead?