Bombay Time

by Thrity Umrigar

  “Thanks again,” Cyrus said to Tehmi as he pocketed the money. He turned to Naju, poker-faced. “You know, I do all this for you. Buying good clothes, expensive shoes. All so that you have a brother you can be proud of. So many sacrifices . … ”

  Naju rose with a roar. “You ungraceful scoundrel. Give me back my money right this minute. It’s bad enough you buy those ridiculous, expensive Italian shoes, but then to expect me to lick your boots, now that’s the limit.”

  Cyrus sat there, shaking with silent laughter, watching as his sister spluttered with indignation. Then, with a satisfied look, he rose to his feet. “Was very nice meeting you, Tehmi,” he said. “You’re a great partner in crime.” He winked at her conspiratorially, and then he was gone. Tehmi felt as if he had sucked all the sunlight out of the room with him.

  The darkness that Cyrus left in his wake stayed with her for the next three days. Out of that darkness, his shiny face would rise before her eyes at unexpected times. She was irritated at herself for this sudden infatuation, but irritation did nothing to dispel it. Finally, on the fourth day, she asked Naju if she could scop by that evening to pick up her philosophy notebook. They made plans for Tehmi to stop by at 6:00 P.M., but she deliberately showed up an hour later, when she knew the Engineers would be sitting down for dinner.

  Cyrus answered the doorbell. He was wearing blue pajama bottoms and a thin white saadra, instead of a shirr. He did a double rake when he recognized his visitor. “Why, hello. Come in, come in, please. We just sat down for dinner. Hey, Naju, it’s your friend, that nice, generous girl from rhe cafeteria.” He winked at Tehmi, a warm smile lighting up his face.

  Naju’s mother, Mani Engineer, insisted that she join them for dinner. “Naju, go get an extra plate and set it at the table,” she ordered. Tehmi did the required amount of demurring, but her heart was singing. So far, her plan was working beautifully. Dinner at the same table with Cyrus seemed like bliss.

  But to her horror, she found herself dumbstruck and unexpectedly shy during dinner. Each time she caught Cyrus’s eye, he smiled, but she looked away sternly, certain that he could read her thoughts, could see on her flushed face three days worth of lustful thoughts. To make matters worse, Naju was looking at her curiously, even thumping her on the back once and saying, “Why so quiet, Tehmina? Has a great big black bilari got your tongue, or what?”

  She sat through dinner dumb with misery, angry at herself for having connived this disastrous plan, unhappy at liking so very much a boy who seemed to be looking at his dinner plate with more interest than at her. Tehmi had always been proud of her slim, tall body, her fair skin, her straight, proud nose, but today she felt gawky and ugly.

  So that when she saw Cyrus striding toward them as she and Naju sat in the college cafeteria two days later, she made herself look away and then focus on him again to make sure that her eyes were not playing tricks on her. Naju’s groan at spotting her brother confirmed for Tehmi that the smiling man standing beside them was not a figment of her imagination. “Oh no, here comes Mr. Readymoney,” Naju said. “Wonder what he wants from his sister this time—new shoes, new shirt, a vacation in Paris? Go away, Cyrus. You’re going to make a pauper out of me, I swear.”

  Cyrus pretended to be hurt. “Such ingratitude,” he said, addressing Tehmi. “Such suspicion. Here I am, all ready to repay the many favors my sister has done me. But I’m an unfortunate man, Tehmi. Bad kismet. Chalo, it’s simply not in my naseeb to repay my debts to my sister.” And with the same hangdog expression that Tehmi was coming to recognize, he turned away from them in mock dejection.

  “Arre baap, what an actor he is,” Naju said, rolling her eyes. “Not so fast, you ruffian. The sun must have risen in the north today, but if you are wanting to pay me back for my many kindnesses, I am ready, able, and willing. What did you have in mind?”

  A slow grin spread like a sunrise on Cyrus’s golden face. “I just thought I’d treat my beloved sister—and her best friend, of course—to lunch at the Leopold. But if you two ladies have a better offer, I’ll understand.” He was addressing his sister but was staring at Tehmi, an expression on his face she couldn’t read. She looked uncertainly from brother to sister.

  “I swear, Cy, if this is another trick of yours to patao a free meal off me, I’ll kill you,” Naju said. “Tell you what. Show me your wallet before I say aye or nay.”

  Wordlessly, he pulled out his wallet. “There. Unless you two devis order all the animals at Victoria Gardens for lunch, I should have enough money.” Naju grunted in satisfaction and surprise at her brother’s unexpected solvency.

  At lunch, Tehmi was mostly quiet as brother and sister kept up their usual banter. But halfway through lunch, she looked up from her mutton biryani and caught Cyrus staring at her. The expression on his face made her stomach lurch, as if she were on a boat. In that moment, she knew for certain that lunch was a ploy to get to know her. A feeling of tenderness swept over her. She basked in the warmth of the knowledge that Cyrus had gone through the whole charade simply to get her to have lunch with him. One look at Naju’s face told Tehmi that her friend was oblivious to her brother’s intentions.

  She could scarcely believe her luck when Naju rose and declared that she would use the loo while Cyrus settled the bill. “And Tehmi,” she said, looking over her shoulder, “don’t let this scoundrel trap you into spending a single aana on lunch. Not even the tip, saamji ne?”

  Cyrus looked bemused. “Baap re, that sister of mine should be the lawyer in the family, instead of me. She should have been up there, along with Gandhiji and Nehru, negotiating India’s independence. The British would’ve left India long before they did, just to get away from her, I swear.”

  Tehmi laughed and then stopped abruptly as she saw the flame that leapt into Cyrus’s eye. He was silent for a moment, his face uncharacteristically serious. And then he said, “I’m not maroing a line or anything, Tehmi, but I must tell you. You have a laugh that a man would want to hear on his deathbed.” The look in his eye was velvet and there was no trace of the mocking young man from a few minutes ago.

  She felt uncontrollably shy and young. “You are so funny, I can’t help but laugh,” she said finally. “I like it when you make jokes and all.”

  “Thank you. I’m glad someone thinks my jokes are funny. Now, here’s a confession to match yours. Tehmi, the reason for the lunch today is that I wanted to see you again. Do you understand what I’m saying? Um, see, I liked seeing you at dinner at our house the other night. Oh God, I hope I haven’t embarrassed you or anything.”

  Somehow, it evolved into a weekly tradition, the three of them having lunch at the Leopold each Wednesday. Cyrus never asked Tehmi out by herself, but she was too happy at seeing him even once a week to care very much. They both got practiced at exchanging secret glances over Naju’s head. It took Naju about three months to smell a rat. It simply wasn’t like Cyrus to spend his money on her and her friends. And he was different around Tehmi, she realized, softer, more protective. Still, she knew better than to ask her brother and expect a straight answer. Instead, she cornered Tehmi on their way to college the day after. “Tehmi, don’t feel bad, yaar, but I have to ask. Is there something going on between you and my brother?”

  Tehmi tried to look confused, and when that failed, outraged, but she was a poor actress. Under Naju’s steady gaze, she stammered, “I don’t know about Cyrus, but I sort of like him.”

  Naju let out a hoot of laughter. “Mara baap. A sensible girl like you falling for a badmash like Cyrus? What lines has he been pataoing you with? Not loaning him money, are you?”

  “How can you say that? That poor boy has been feeding us every week and never asked us for a paisa. You make him sound like some roadside beggar.”

  Naju made a clucking sound. “Poor Tehmi,” she said gravely. “My brother has struck again, I can see. A goner, you are. Still, I’d rather see Cyrus with you than with some of those tarts who pant after him. So tell me. Have you two kissed yet?
Is my dear brother a good smackeroo?”

  “Stop it Naju. I never should have told you. We’ve never even been out alone. I mean, I don’t even know if Cyloo likes me.”

  “Ah, Cyloo, is it?” Naju teased. “And what do you mean, not sure if Cyloo likes you? Of course he does. Haven’t you seen the way he looks at you? Like you’re a piece of chocolate mousse?”

  The next Wednesday when Cyrus arrived to pick up the two women, Naju faked a stomachache. “Must be the bhelpuri I ate last night or something. You two chickies carry on without me. I’m not eating lunch today.”

  “That’s a first,” Cyrus said automatically, and for one awful moment, Tehmi thought Naju would change her mind just to punish him for the comment. But Cyrus was already saying, “Accha, if you’re sure you’re okay, we’ll carry on, then.”

  “Saala mawali,” Naju muttered to Tehmi, who was trying to suppress a smile. “You’d think he’d protest even once, naam ke vaste. But this is what happens when you’re an ordinary salad leaf sitting next to a chocolate mousse.”

  On the way to the restaurant, Tehmi was excruciatingly aware of Cyrus’s every movement. She was terrified that once at the restaurant, they would find that they had nothing to say to each other. But she had underestimated her companion. Cyrus asked her questions about herself with a greater interest than anyone had ever shown in her. Under his skilled, gentle questioning, she found herself talking about things she had never shared with another human being. She told him about the death of her father when she was seven, how she could still recall the rattle of his keys as he let himself in after working the late shift at the mill. She recalled the mysterious time that followed her father’s demise, how she had lost her voice for about seven weeks. Seven weeks spent in total silence, her eyes filling with tears as she heard her distraught mother’s pleas, her teachers’ stern rebukes but was unable to explain to them the terror she herself felt at this silence that draped over her like a sheet. Her mother had taken her to see her family doctor, who told Dinabai that Tehmi was simply seeking attention. After seven weeks, her voice came back, as mysteriously as it had disappeared, like a gold ring she had lost and found. But Tehmi never forgot the whiteness of that silence. And although it had terrified her, some part of her had grown to valorize that silence, so that even now she held on to some of it, like a childhood coat she had long outgrown but couldn’t bear to part with.

  It wasn’t just Tehmi who had been traumatized by her father’s death. Her strong, jovial mother had aged overnight. The first time Tehmi knew for certain that things would never be the same at home was when Dinabai forgot to bargain with her favorite fish vendor and automatically paid full price. Tehmi would never forget the look of pity that stole over the fish vendor’s face as his eyes swept over Dina-bai’s listless body. And that sad listlessness had come to define Dina-bai.

  Under Cyrus’s warm, watchful gaze, Tehmi described the small apartment in Wadia Baug, where she and her mother, Dinabai, had moved after her father’s death. She told him how lonely she felt there, especially in the evenings, when her mother delayed turning on the lights until it was almost dark in order to save on the electricity bills. Sometimes they would sit in their darkening apartment, bathed only by the shaft of light from a nearby streetlamp, and Dinabai would suddenly whisper, “There. Did you feel it? Your father was here with us. He’s watching over us still.” At such times, Tehmi was filled with an inexpressible sadness and an unnameable terror, a feeling that most of life was being played out away from the main stage and that in the wings lurked unimaginable sorrows and heartaches. Then, everything cut her to the quick and she felt connected to the universe by its common pain. She became excruciatingly aware of the powerless pacing of the caged animals in Victoria Gardens; the longing in the eyes of a child whose parent had just refused her a ride on the merry-go-round; the sad lopsided face of the moon three days before it swelled into fullness; the pitiful shivering of the homeless men who slept on the streets, covered only by a worn cotton sheet. “I feel so responsible for my mummy’s happiness,” she heard herself say to Cyrus. “You know, after Daddy died, my mummy didn’t touch any of his belongings for almost three years. It was as if someone blew a whistle and a certain part of our life stopped forever, just froze up. I try so hard to cheer Mummy up, and I know that she tries hard, too, for my sake, but when you have to work to be happy, it’s not the same, na, as just feeling happy from the inside.”

  She looked at Cyrus, ready to stop if she saw the slightest hint of boredom or pity, but all she saw on his face was kindness. Encouraged, she went on. “You know the worst part about this? I feel guilty when I’m happy myself. I feel like, How dare I be happy when the person I love the most, my mummy, is so miserable? She thinks I don’t know, but I’ve seen her sometimes just sitting on my daddy’s bed, silently stroking the sheets, as if feeling for his shape, like she expects him to show up. After so many years, my mother misses my daddy as acutely as that. Then I think, What right do I have to any joy, in the face of so much suffering?”

  He touched her then, for the very first time. Leaning forward, he gripped her arm, squeezing it until it hurt slightly. “Tehmi, listen to me. What you just said, that’s a sin. A paap, do you understand? Tehmi, a person can only give to others what he himself possesses. So if you have happiness in your heart, you can share it with someone and make them happy. If you have only grief, that’s all you can pass on to someone else. Your being unhappy or guilty does your mother no damn good. No good at all. If anything, it adds to her suffering. Please, you must change this way of thinking.”

  She was absurdly moved by the fervent expression on Cyrus’s face. To lighten the mood, she said, “Wah, wah. Such a good barrister you will someday make, Cyrus. I can see you now, arguing at the high court and all.”

  But Cyrus was not done. “Tehmi, please. For my sake, change your thinking. It hurts me deeply, believe me, to hear you talk like this.”

  After their first date, they reached an unspoken agreement that they would no longer include Naju in their Wednesday lunches. They smiled at Naju’s good-natured lamentations about how quickly her good fortune at eating at Cyrus’s expense had vanished. But they were seldom moved enough to invite her to join them.

  They had been dating for about seven months when Cyrus asked her to skip classes one day and go with him to Marine Drive. Sitting on the cement wall overlooking the heaving ocean, he turned to her. “Ae, Tehmi, a question for you. What will you be doing on this day a month from now?”

  Tehmi smiled. “Silly man. How would I know?”

  “Wah. I know, but you don’t? Okay, I’ll tell you. You’ll be marrying me on that day, darling. And if you don’t, then you’ll be attending my funeral at the Tower of Silence. Either way, you’re spending that day with me.”

  “Ovariu. What dirty things you say sometimes,” Tehmi said, snapping her fingers three times to ward off the evil spirits.

  Cyrus grinned. “So it’s settled, then. In a month’s time, we are getting married.”

  “But Cyloo, we have no money, no place to live. The pocket money you get won’t keep us alive for two days even. And the main thing is, you have your big law exam to prepare for next year.”

  “Law can wait. I can’t. Besides, I already spoke to a fellow in my class. He can get me a job as a foreman at Bombay Chemicals anytime I want. His uncle works there, and I’m to go meet him this week. Pay’s pretty good, he says. As for a flat, I was thinking that maybe we could live with your mother until I save enough for our own place. That way, you won’t worry too much about her, either. Think your mummy will say yes? But those are all chota problems, solvable. Main thing is, I wanted to know your answer before I tell Daddy I am leaving college.”

  “Leave college? But Cyloo, you have less than a year to go,” she cried, horrified.

  “One year? I think I will go mad if I have to wait ten more minutes to marry you.”

  She was flattered, bewildered, scared. The thought of tellin
g her mother about her plans terrified her. Her mother didn’t even know that Cyrus Engineer existed. She enlisted Naju’s help, asking her to come over when she broke the news to her mother. She had expected the older woman to list a hundred reasons why wanting to marry Cyrus was a bad idea, but Dinabai withheld her judgment and instead expressed an eagerness to meet the young man who had stolen her daughter’s heart.

  She could tell that her mother liked Cyrus right away. He was at his best that day—warm, funny, deferential, sensitive. Tehmi felt her heart ache with love for this young man, who, seemingly without effort, could wipe the sadness off her mother’s face. She had left it to Cyrus to broach the subject of their living at the Wadia Baug flat after marriage, and it was gratifying to see the look of happiness on her mother’s face when Cyrus proposed the idea to her. On one point she was adamant—under no circumstances would she allow the two of them to contribute toward the rent. “We are poor people, deekra,” she said to Cyrus. “Apart from some of my wedding jewelry, not much I will be able to offer by way of dowry. Instead, I want you to put away whatever money you were thinking of paying me as rent and save for a place of your own.”

  “Dina Auntie, you are wrong,” Cyrus replied. “You have already given me a huge dowry, the biggest treasure that you possess— Tehmi’s hand. What more can I ask from you?”

  Dinabai’s eyes filled with tears. “Live for a hundred years, beta. You have made an old lady happy with your godly words. May you and my daughter have long years of happiness.”

  Part of Dinabai’s blessing came true. They did have years of happiness. They just weren’t long.

  In the years to come, Cyrus’s father, Dali Engineer, told whoever would listen that he had never been opposed to his son’s choice of a bride, just the alacrity with which his only son was willing to sacrifice his future as a lawyer to take up a mediocre job at Bombay Chemicals. “I only said to him, ‘Get your law degree first and then marry,’ “ the distraught father would recount. “Bas, that was my only demand on him. We all liked Tehmi a lot, nothing against her. By the grace of God, we have enough; we didn’t care about dowry or anything like that. Only reason I boycotted the wedding was that I hoped my absence would shock Cyrus into leaving his job and returning to college. Of course, if he’d never taken this job, my son would have someday prayed for his dead father’s soul, rather than the other way around. May he rest in peace, my beloved Cyrus.”