Mumbai Noir (20 page)

I don’t know, said the drunk reflectively. As gracefully abandoned as her dancing, I’d like to think. But I don’t know.

They pondered that for a space, long enough for it to register that the mismatched pair at the table by the corner were now gone.

Of course—said the drunk—he walked in through the door.

It was quick and painless. For Ravi at least. He was told to get his trousers on and get the hell out. He considered protesting and then thought better of it and as he glanced back, he saw, through the frame of Akbarzeb’s muscular arm propping open the door, Meena in their freshly shared bed, the covers drawn up to her naked shoulders and a look of calm defiance in her eyes.

He didn’t know how the time passed, that night or the next. He waited by the phone till he had to leave, and then waited by it again. He lived in Colaba and waited for the knock on his door but it never came and by and by, he found himself, later that week, at a party in Worli. In Samundar Mahal.

You know it? asked the drunk.

I do, nodded the listener. The drunk raised his eyebrows, then continued.

Ravi was up near the top, looking away toward Mahalaxmi and Malabar Hill. He was very drunk and it seemed to him that the city itself was reflected in the churning, crashing sea below. It roiled around the Vellard and broke across the thin line of Haji Ali and in the spray and the foam and the noise was Mumbai itself, lighted skyscraper and glistening slum, a mirror held up to every sinner in the world and only to him. It was a trick of the monsoon, a play of propinquity, an accident of being across from Malabar Hill at just the right time and place. But he was down the elevator in a matter of moments and heading toward Jacob’s Circle and the beacon of Heera, past the jail and across the Chinchpokli Bridge.

The bouncers didn’t stop or harass him in any way. He made his fearful, courageous way up to the top room and the man there said it was closed, as he looked at Ravi almost with concern. Is Meena coming back? Ravi finally asked.

Probably not, said the bouncer.

Will Akbarzeb be coming?

This isn’t his bar, replied the bouncer. But he’s free to come whenever he wants.

Do you know where he lives?

The bouncer peered at him speculatively, as if trying to make up his mind whether to help him or not. Arthur Bunder, he said eventually. Someone there will lead you to him, if you want it badly enough.

Arthur Bunder, murmured the tourist. Over there, correct?

Correct, answered the drunk. Just over that parapet, away from the sea.

Ravi parked near the causeway and wandered down Arthur Bunder, knowing what he wanted yet not how to ask. The traffic at the late-night paanwallas and ittar sellers ebbed and flowed around him and the rain fell, first gently and then more and more insistently, and before he knew it, he found himself, wet and bare-headed, at the water’s edge, down by the Radio Club.

Where he sat down on the seawall, his legs dangling over the edge, next to Akbarzeb.

He was truly a giant, that man. His wet clothes clung to him as one of his men tried, ineffectually, to hold a bedraggled umbrella over him. A couple more men hovered within a few feet, holding off a knot of late-night rubberneckers, who were all trying to peer into the bay.

What happened? asked Ravi finally.

She came by my office, replied Akbarzeb calmly. Back there, he gestured over his shoulder, down the length of Arthur Bunder.

She told me that I didn’t own her. That she wasn’t mine to order around, that she’d take any man she so chose, if he’d have her. That she didn’t choose me, at any rate, and there was no future in my holding my breath. That she danced for the music, for herself and for Meena in
Pakeezah,
and for any young man who walked in through her door with kind eyes and a warm smile.

All these things I already knew, said Akbarzeb reflectively. She’d told me all these things before and I’d made my peace with them. To love is sometimes enough, don’t you think? You don’t need for it to be returned.

So I asked her what she really wanted and she told me she wanted to be free of me. My presence and my shadow. Her life was dark enough without that as well.

So I said, Why? So you can fuck insects like that idiot who left you in that whore’s room without a backward glance, with one hand on his pants and his dick in the other? Is that what you want? To be a tourist’s whore?

She never cried, you see. She just turned around and left the room and the man I told to watch her was walking behind her and was too far away to stop her when she moved across the pavement and to the seawall and over into the sea.

An hour ago, friend, said Akbarzeb, as a heavy hand came to rest on Ravi’s shoulder. Right here. And I’ll have to wake up every day for the rest of my life knowing what my last words to that woman were.

Ravi expected at that moment to be pitched into the sea and truthfully he wouldn’t have minded if that were to be his fate. There’s no point in telling a woman like that that her feet are too beautiful to be put on the ground, continued Akbarzeb. I wish I had, of course. But she was born with her feet dirty.

The sea broke around their own feet and the angry waves licked and spat at them and it came as no surprise to Ravi to find that not all the moisture on his face came from the wind and the sea.

Why cry now? asked Akbarzeb, reasonably enough, his reassuring hand still on Ravi’s shoulder. You should have taken her home, to your clubs and bars and parties. All the places she’d never seen.

I should have. Then she’d still be here.

Don’t flatter yourself, said Akbarzeb. She didn’t kill herself because you showed her what she was. You weren’t the first. You wouldn’t have been the last.

But I was.

Akbarzeb glanced at him with his quiet heavy eyes, then turned away. She didn’t choose to be what she was, he said. Did she tell you her real name?

No, said Ravi.

They sat there for a space, long enough to gaze into the dark sea, dark as only the monsoon can make it, where even the lights of the street behind and the boats in the harbor and India beyond the bay are dimmed and die. The dark is a powerful draw and Ravi heard its call. But he stayed on the wall next to Akbarzeb, who finally stirred and said: Go away.

Leave the city, or I won’t be responsible for my actions. And then this can all end.

And you? Ravi couldn’t help asking.

I have a world to take care of. I won’t even have time to grieve.

That was fifteen years ago, said the drunk. Fifteen years. The bar girls are gone, Akbarzeb’s a legislator, cell phones are everywhere. Ravi disappeared, and his absence was only remarked upon for a fortnight at the most, at the club, around the bar, by his wondrously endowed Punjabi friend: then he too was smoke on the water of Mumbai. He went on to become a realtor or a consultant or a banker or a shipping agent someplace else, and doubtless he wrestles the dark there as well.

But, prompted the listener.

Yes, agreed the drunk.
But …

Imagine if you will, said the tourist, two men at the seawall. Those two, at the table by the corner: is that them down there? He gestured at two men, one large and one slim, who walked slowly across the street to the pavement and the seawall beyond, the sea a liquid churning devoid of light. Is that the story? That they meet every year to remember her and then walk down to where she jumped into the sea, humming “chalte chalte” to themselves?

The drunk looked at him appraisingly over his glass and then laughed. What kind of story would that be? he asked. What kind of hack do you think I am? Why can’t that be Akbarzeb and a random crony, and the sight of them triggered the memory of that time in me?

Or why can’t I be Ravi? he said. How else would I know the story so well?

He lurched to his feet then, did the drunk, and for the first time the listener grasped his size, the scale of him. Why can’t I just be a drunk you met in a bar and you a tourist looking for a story, and a story all that it is?

He came over to the listener then, a huge hand gentle on the other man’s shoulder. Who then felt himself being led to the parapet to where the building slid off to the street below in a torrent of falling rain and the wet pavement beyond that and then the dark sea and finally:

Imagine if you will, said the drunk. Two men at the seawall.

PART III

A
N
I
SLAND UNTO
I
TSELF

THE WATCHMAN

BY
A
LTAF
T
YREWALA
Worli

S
omeone is going to die today.

When I arrive on duty at seven a.m., I see a cat with blood-smeared whiskers sneaking out the building gate.

While sipping my morning cup of tea, I spill a drop on the
C
of
SHIV SECURITY
embroidered on my company uniform.

Then the milkman arrives wearing a blue shirt.

I close my eyes. I don’t need to see anymore. I know what will happen next.

One: a pigeon will come roost on the gate’s lamppost.

Two: the third-floor youth will return from the pool on his motorbike.

Three: the vegetable lady will set up shop on the pavement outside; and nestled in her hair bun will be a single bloodred rose.

Without verifying the sequence of events, with my eyes still closed, I turn around and enter the security cabin.

Pandey, my fellow dayshift watchman, is breakfasting from a tiffin box. He looks up in alarm. “Who’s watching the gate, Mishra?” he asks. Pandey’s tone is without rancor. The gate isn’t to be neglected even for a second.

“Someone is going to die today,” I say.

I return to my position at the gate.

Let me be wrong
. I stare at the gravel on the ground.
Please?

I look up and around.

No!

There
is the pigeon. Parked
there
is the swimmer’s bike. And pinned to the just-arrived vegetable-lady’s hair bun is a maroon, blossoming …

Yes. Someone is going to die today, and I can do nothing about it, just wait to be proved correct.

Pandey takes up position beside me at the gate. We are trained to stand with parted legs, raised necks, and hands locked behind our backs; to not smile like doormats or frown like jailers; to guard with a detached alertness.
STRONG &COURTEOUS. SHIV SECURITY. PROVIDING SOUND SLEEP FOR 21 YEARS.

One would think we were trained for a more profound purpose.

“What … what happened? Tell me,” Pandey asks.

From the milkman’s blue shirt down to the rose in the vegetable-lady’s bun—I exclude nothing. “These same things happened the morning Paresh-bhai …” I trail off.

“Are you absolutely sure?” Pandey asks.

“Yes,” I reply. I glance at him. “Don’t look at me that way. You know I’m no seer.”

Pandey mutes the fearful awe in his eyes.

One morning several months ago, right about this time, Paresh-bhai, the second-floor resident, had hailed a taxi. Right about then a passing truck burst one of its tires. The vehicle buckled, skidded across the road, and mowed down Paresh-bhai like a stalk of walking, talking human weed.

That morning, when I heard Paresh-bhai squeal, I was studying the red rose in the vegetable-lady’s hair. And before that I was watching the third-floor boy park his bike. And before that I was awed by the pigeon roosted precariously on the lamppost. And before that … on and on, identically, unmistakably.

“We must do someth—”

“No!” I cut Pandey off.

What could we do? Signs had lined up like the dots children join to complete a picture. I have tried not to look at things. But if a watchman won’t watch, what else will he do? I have tried to ignore patterns, only to learn I have no control over memory—it remembers everything: beautiful or ugly, consequential or not. Some days I dream of working in a mine. I imagine myself chipping off rocks deep underground, where there will be nothing to see and no designs to remember. But today, someone is going to die. And, unfortunately, I know.

I know.

“Mishra, what are you doing!” Pandey cries out.

I have placed a blob of white lime on my left palm and sprinkled flakes of tobacco on it. Pandey doesn’t notice till I begin grinding the mixture with my right thumb.

I roll the paste into a ball and jam it between my lower lip and teeth.

Pandey watches with shock. “That’s too much! You’ll be stoned for hours!”

“That’s the whole idea,” I say—to be out of my mind for hours; hopefully, by then, whoever is to die will have died.

The narcotic blend stuns my mouth.

My salivary glands shut down. White lime slithers across my gums. Tobacco flakes fuse with my teeth. And then …

And then cautiously, little by little, saliva begins trickling in again. Once spit meets lime, tobacco flakes dance. The uproar of intoxication numbs my senses in seconds.

Now I am only a thing standing by the gate. The person in me won’t be back for a while.

The Sunday morning grows busier. People start to go in and out the gate of Sea View Apartments. Pandey begins calling out to residents as they come and go. “
Take care, sir! Take care, madam!”

What a fool. As if you can tell people not to die.

“Mishra!” Pandey nudges me urgently. Through my blurred vision I can sense a huge orange object zooming toward us. Its edges are glinting. When it is almost upon us I … I raise my trembling hand and salute.

Whew! It was only the seventh-floor resident’s Santro on its way out.

Several more false alarms ring through the day. Each time Pandey winces and runs to save some child or woman or man who he fears might be run over by a reversing water-tanker or might fall into an open gutter.

By late afternoon, I stop slurring and swaying.

“Welcome back,” Pandey says.

I spit out the narcotic cud. My senses may have cleared, but with clarity comes a physically excruciating sense of dread.

Pandey retreats into the security cabin, this time for lunch. No tobacco, alcohol, or drugs for him. Pandey’s opiate is food.