A Son Of The Circus (24 page)

The question deeply disturbed Dr Daruwalla, who shuddered to recall the origin of his idea for the cartoon-drawing killer; the source of the doctor’s inspiration had been nothing less than an
actual
drawing on the belly of an
actual
murder victim. Twenty years ago, Dr Daruwalla had been the examining physician at the scene of a crime that was never solved. Now the police were claiming that a killer-cartoonist had stolen the mocking elephant from a movie, but the screenwriter knew where the original idea had come from. Farrokh had stolen it from a murderer – maybe from the same murderer. Wouldn’t the killer know that the most recent Inspector Dhar movie was imitating
him
?

I’m over my head, as usual, Dr Daruwalla decided. He also decided that he should give this information to Detective Patel – in case, somehow, the deputy commissioner didn’t already know it. But how would Patel already know it? Farrokh wondered. Second-guessing himself was the doctor’s second nature. At the Duckworth Club, Dr Daruwalla had been impressed by the composure of the deputy commissioner; moreover, the doctor couldn’t rid himself of the impression that Detective Patel had been hiding something.

Farrokh interrupted these unwelcome thoughts as quickly as they’d come to him. Sitting next to his answering machine, he turned the volume down before he pushed the button. Still in hiding, the secret screenwriter listened to the messages.

Upon hearing Ranjit’s complaining voice, Dr Daruwalla instantly regretted his decision to forsake even one minute of Dhar and Julia’s company for as much as one phone message. A few years older than the doctor, Ranjit had nevertheless maintained both unsuitable expectations and youthful indignation; the former involved his ongoing matrimonial advertisements, which Dr Daruwalla found inappropriate for a medical secretary in his sixties. Ranjit’s ‘youthful indignation’ was most apparent in his responses to those women who, upon meeting him, turned him down. Naturally, Ranjit hadn’t all this time been conducting nonstop matrimonial advertisements, dating back to his earliest employment as old Lowji’s secretary. After exhaustive interviews, Ranjit had been successfully married – and long enough before Lowji’s death so that the senior Dr Daruwalla had once more enjoyed the secretary’s prematrimonial industriousness.

But Ranjit’s wife had recently died, and he was only a few years away from retirement. He still worked for the surgical associates at the Hospital for Crippled Children, and he always served as Farrokh’s secretary whenever the Canadian was an Honorary Consultant Surgeon in Bombay. And Ranjit had decided that the time for remarrying was ripe. He thought he should do it without delay, for it made him sound younger to describe himself as a working medical secretary than to confess he was retired; just to be sure, in his more recent matrimonial advertisements, he’d attempted to capitalize on both his position and his pending retirement, citing that he was ‘rewardingly employed’
and
‘anticipating a v. active, early retirement.’

It was things like ‘v. active’ that Dr Daruwalla found unseemly about Ranjit’s present matrimonials, and the fact that Ranjit was a shameless liar. Because of a standard policy at The Times [_of India – _]the advertising brides and grooms eschewed revealing their names, preferring the confidentiality of a number – it was possible for Ranjit to publish a half-dozen ads in the same Sunday’s matrimonial pages. Ranjit had discovered it was popular to claim that caste was ‘no bar,’ while it was also still popular to declare himself a Hindu Brahmin – ‘caste-conscious and religion-minded, matching horoscopes a must.’ Therefore, Ranjit advertised several versions of himself simultaneously. He told Farrokh that he was seeking the very best wife, with or without caste-consciousness or religion. Why not give himself the benefit of meeting everyone who was available?

Dr Daruwalla was embarrassed that he’d been inexorably drawn into the world of Ranjit’s matrimonials. Every Sunday, Farrokh and Julia read through the marriage advertisements in
The Times of India
. It was a contest, to see which of them could identify all of Ranjit’s ads. But Ranjit’s phone message was not of a matrimonial nature. Once again, the aging secretary had called to complain about ‘the dwarf’s wife.’ This was Ranjit’s condemning reference to Deepa, for whom he harbored a forbidding disapproval – the kind that only Mr Sethna might have shared. Dr Daruwalla wondered if medical secretaries were universally cruel and dismissive to anyone seeking a doctor’s attention. Was such hostility engendered only by a heartfelt desire to protect all doctors from wasting their time?

To be fair to Ranjit, Deepa was exceptionally aggressive in wasting Dr Daruwalla’s time. She’d called to make a morning appointment for the runaway child prostitute — even before Vinod had persuaded the doctor to examine this new addition to Mr Garg’s stable of street girls. Ranjit described the patient as ‘someone allegedly without bones,’ for Deepa had doubtless used her circus terminology (‘boneless’) with him. Ranjit was communicating his scorn for the vocabulary of the dwarf’s wife. From Deepa’s description, the child prostitute might have been made of pure plastic – ‘another medical marvel, and no doubt a virgin,’ Ranjit concluded his sardonic message.

The next message was an old one, from Vinod. The dwarf must have called while Farrokh was still sitting in the Ladies’ Garden at the Duckworth Club. The message was really for Inspector Dhar.

‘Our favorite inspector is telling me he is sleeping on your balcony tonight,’ the dwarf began. ‘If he is changing his mind, I am just cruising – just killing time, you know. If the inspector is wanting me, he is already knowing the doormen at the Taj and at the Oberoi — for message-leaving, I am meaning. I am having a late-night picking-up at the Wetness Cabaret,’

Vinod admitted, ‘but this is being while you are sleeping. In the morning, I am picking up you, as usual. By the way, I am reading a magazine with
me
in it!’ the dwarf concluded.

The only magazines that Vinod read were movie magazines, where he could occasionally glimpse himself in the celebrity snapshots opening the door of one of his Ambassadors for Inspector Dhar. There on the door would be the red circle with the
T
in it (for taxi) and the name of the dwarf’s company, which was often partially obscured.

VINOD’S
BLUE
NILE
,
LTD
.

As opposed to ‘great,’ Farrokh presumed.

Dhar was the only movie star who rode in Vinod’s cars; and the dwarf relished his occasional appearances with his ‘favorite inspector’ in the film-gossip magazines. Vinod was enduringly hopeful that other movie stars would follow Dhar’s lead, but Dimple Kapadia and Jaya Prada and Pooja Bedi and Pooja Bhatt – not to mention Chunky Pandey and Sunny Deol, or Madhuri Dixit and Moon Moon Sen, to name only a few – had all declined to ride in the dwarf’s ‘luxury’ taxis. Possibly they thought it would damage their reputations to be seen with Dhar’s thug.

As for the ‘cruising’ back and forth between the Oberoi and the Taj, these were Vinod’s favorite territories for moonlighting. The dwarf was recognized and well treated by the doormen because whenever Dhar was in Bombay, the actor stayed at the Oberoi
and
at the Taj. By maintaining a suite at both hotels, Dhar was assured of good service; as long as the Oberoi and the Taj knew they were in competition with each other, they outdid themselves to give Dhar the utmost privacy. The house detectives were harsh with autograph seekers or other celebrity hounds; at the reception desk of either hotel, if you didn’t know the given code name, which kept changing, you were told that the movie star was not a guest.

By ‘killing time,’ Vinod meant he was picking up extra money. The dwarf was good at spotting hapless tourists in the lobbies of both hotels; he would offer to drive the foreigners to a good restaurant, or wherever they wanted to go. Vinod was also gifted at recognizing those tourists who’d had harrowing taxi experiences and were therefore vulnerable to the temptations of his ‘luxury’ service.

Dr Daruwalla understood that the dwarf could hardly have supported himself by driving only the doctor and Dhar around. Mr Garg was a more regular customer. Farrokh was also familiar with the dwarf’s habit of message-leaving,’ for Vinod had taken advantage of Inspector Dhar’s celebrity status with the doormen at the Oberoi and at the Taj. It may have been awkward, but it was Vinod’s only means of putting himself ‘on call.’ There were no cellular phones in Bombay; car phones were unknown – a decided inconvenience in the private-taxi business, which Vinod complained about periodically. There were radio pagers, or ‘beepers,’ but the dwarf wouldn’t use them. ‘I am preferring to be holding out,’ Vinod maintained, by which he meant he was waiting for the day when cellular phones would upgrade his car-driving enterprise.

Therefore, if Farrokh or John D. wanted the dwarf, they left a message for him with the doormen at the Taj and the Oberoi. But there was another reason for Vinod to call. Vinod didn’t like showing up at Dr Daruwalla’s apartment building unannounced; there was no phone in the lobby, and Vinod refused to see himself as a ‘servant’ – he refused to climb the stairs. When it came to climbing stairs, his dwarfism was a handicap. Dr Daruwalla had protested, on Vinod’s behalf, to the Residents’ Society. At first, Farrokh had argued that the dwarf was a cripple –cripples shouldn’t be forced to use the stairs. The Residents’ Society had argued that cripples shouldn’t be servants. Dr Daruwalla had countered that Vinod was an independent businessman; the dwarf was nobody’s servant. After all, Vinod owned a private-taxi company. A chauffeur was a servant, the Residents’ Society said.

Regardless of the absurd ruling, Farrokh had told Vinod that if he ever had to come to the Daruwallas’ sixth-floor flat, he was to take the restricted residents’ elevator. But whenever Vinod stood in the lobby and waited for the elevator – regardless of the lateness of the hour – his presence would be detected by the first-floor dogs. The first-floor flats harbored a disproportionate number of dogs; and although the doctor was disinclined to believe Vinod’s interpretation – that all dogs hated all dwarfs – he could offer no scientifically acceptable reason why all the first-floor dogs should suddenly awake and commence their frenzied barking whenever Vinod was waiting for the forbidden lift.

And so it was tediously necessary for Vinod to arrange an exact time for picking up Farrokh or John D. so that the dwarf could wait in the Ambassador at the curb – or in the nearby alley – and not enter the lobby of the apartment building at all. Besides, it sorely tested the delicate ecosystem of the apartment building to have Vinod attract the late-night, furious attention of the first-floor dogs; and Farrokh was already in hot water with the Residents’ Society – his dissent to their opinion on the elevator issue had offended the building’s other residents.

Since the doctor was the son of an acknowledged great man – and a famously assassinated great man, too – there was other fuel for resenting Dr Daruwalla. That he lived abroad and could still afford to have his apartment occupied by his servants – often, for years without a single visit – had certainly made him unpopular, if not openly despised.

That the dogs appeared guilty of discrimination against dwarfs wasn’t the sole reason that Dr Daruwalla disliked them. Their insane barking disturbed the doctor because of its total irrationality; any irrationality reminded Farrokh of everything he failed to comprehend about India.

Only that morning he’d stood on his balcony and overheard his fifth-floor neighbor, Dr Malik Abdul Aziz – a model ‘Servant of the Almighty’ – praying on the balcony below him. When Dhar slept on the balcony, he often commented to Farrokh on how soothing it was to wake up to the prayers of Dr Aziz.

‘Praise be to Allah, Lord of Creation’ – that much Dr Daruwalla had understood. And later there was something about ‘the straight path.’ It was a very pure prayer – Farrokh had liked it, and he’d long admired Dr Aziz for his unswerving faith – but Dr Daruwalla’s thoughts had veered sharply away from religion, in the direction of politics, because he was reminded of the aggressive billboards he’d seen around the city. The messages on such hoardings were essentially hostile; they merely purported to be religious.

ISLAM
IS
THE
ONE
PATH
TO
HUMANITY
FOR
ALL

And that wasn’t as bad as those Shiv Sena slogans, which were all over Bombay. (
MAHARASHTRA
FOR
MAHARASHTRIANS
. Or,
SAY
IT
WITH
PRIDE:
I’M
A
HINDU
.)

Something evil had corrupted the purity of prayer. Something as dignified and private as Dr Aziz, with his prayer rug rolled out on his own balcony, had been compromised by proselytizing, had been distorted by politics. And if this madness had a sound, Farrokh knew, it would be the sound of irrationally barking dogs.

In the apartment building, Dr Daruwalla and Dr Aziz were the most consistent early risers; surgeries for both – Dr Aziz was a urologist. If he prays every morning, so should I, Farrokh thought. Politely, that morning, he had waited for the Muslim to finish. There followed the shuffling sound of Dr Aziz’s slippers as he rolled up his prayer rug while Dr Daruwalla leafed through his
Book of Common Prayer
, Farrokh was looking for something appropriate, or at least familiar. He was ashamed that his ardor for Christianity seemed to be receding into the past, or had his faith entirely retreated? After all, it had been only a minor sort of miracle that had converted him; perhaps Farrokh needed another small miracle to inspire him now. He realized that most Christians were faithful without the incentive of any miracle, and this realization instantly interfered with his search for a prayer. As a Christian, too, he’d lately begun to wonder if he was a fake.

In Toronto, Farrokh was an unassimilated Canadian – and an Indian who avoided the Indian community. In Bombay, the doctor was constantly confronted with how little he knew India – and how unlike an Indian he thought himself to be. In truth, Dr Daruwalla was an orthopedist and a Duckworthian, and – in both cases — he was merely a member of two private clubs. Even his conversion to Christianity felt false; he was merely a holiday churchgoer, Christmas and Easter — he couldn’t remember when he’d last partaken of the innermost pleasure of prayer.