The Satanic Verses (81 page)

           
She was right, of course; no sooner had he resolved to set his face towards the
future than he started mooning around and regretting childhood's end. "I'm
off to meet George and Bhupen, you remember," she said. "Why don't
you come along? You need to start plugging into the town." George Miranda
had just completed a documentary film about communalism, interviewing Hindus
and Muslims of all shades of opinion. Fundamentalists of both religions had
instantly sought injunctions banning the film from being shown, and, although
the Bombay courts had rejected this request, the case had gone up to the
Supreme Court. George, even more stubbly of chin, lank of hair and sprawling of
stomach than Salahuddin remembered, drank rum in a Dhobi Talao boozer and
thumped the table with pessimistic fists. "This is the Supreme Court of Shah
Bano fame," he cried, referring to the notorious case in which, under
pressure from Islamic extremists, the Court had ruled that alimony payments
were contrary to the will of Allah, thus making India's laws even more
reactionary than, for example, Pakistan's. "So I don't have much
hope." He twisted, disconsolately, the waxy points of his moustache. His
new girlfriend, a tall, thin Bengali woman with cropped hair that reminded
Salahuddin a little of Mishal Sufyan, chose this moment to attack Bhupen Gandhi
for having published a volume of poems about his visit to the "little
temple town" of Gagari in the Western Ghats. The poems had been criticized
by the Hindu right; one eminent South Indian professor had announced that
Bhupen had "forfeited his right to be called an Indian poet", but in
the opinion of the young woman, Swatilekha, Bhupen had been seduced by religion
into a dangerous ambiguity. Grey hair flopping earnestly, moon-face shining,
Bhupen defended himself. "I have said that the only crop of Gagari is the
stone gods being quarried from the hills. I have spoken of herds of legends,
with sacred cowbells tinkling, grazing on the hillsides. These are not
ambiguous images." Swatilekha wasn't convinced. "These days,"
she insisted, "our positions must be stated with crystal clarity. All
metaphors are capable of misinterpretation." She offered her theory.
Society was orchestrated by what she called
grand narratives
: history,
economics, ethics. In India, the development of a corrupt and closed state
apparatus had "excluded the masses of the people from the ethical
project". As a result, they sought ethical satisfactions in the oldest of
the grand narratives, that is, religious faith. "But these narratives are
being manipulated by the theocracy and various political elements in an
entirely retrogressive way." Bhupen said: "We can't deny the ubiquity
of faith. If we write in such a way as to pre-judge such belief as in some way
deluded or false, then are we not guilty of elitism, of imposing our world-view
on the masses?" Swatilekha was scornful. "Battle lines are being
drawn up in India today," she cried. "Secular versus rational, the
light versus the dark. Better you choose which side you are on."

           
Bhupen got up, angrily, to go. Zeeny pacified him: "We can't afford
schisms. There's planning to be done." He sat down again, and Swatilekha
kissed him on the cheek. "I'm sorry," she said. "Too much
college education, George always says. In fact, I loved the poems. I was only
arguing a case." Bhupen, mollified, pretended to punch her on the nose;
the crisis passed.

           
They had met, Salahuddin now gathered, to discuss their part in a remarkable
political demonstration: the formation of a human chain, stretching from the
Gateway of India to the outermost northern suburbs of the city, in support of
"national integration". The Communist Party of India (Marxist) had
recently organized just such a human chain in Kerala, with great success.
"But," George Miranda argued, "here in Bombay it will be totally
another matter. In Kerala the C P(M) is in power. Here, with these Shiv Sena
bastards in control, we can expect every type of harassment, from police
obstructionism to out-and-out assaults by mobs on segments of the
chain―especially when it passes, as it will have to, through the Sena's
fortresses, in Mazagaon, etc." In spite of these dangers, Zeeny explained
to Salahuddin, such public demonstrations were essential. As communal violence
escalated―and Meerut was only the latest in a long line of murderous
incidents―it was imperative that the forces of disintegration weren't
permitted to have things all their own way. "We must show that there are
also counterforces at work." Salahuddin was somewhat bemused at the
rapidity with which, once again, his life had begun to change.
Me, taking
part in a CP(M) event. Wonders will never cease; I really must be in love
.

           
Once they had settled matters―how many friends each of them might manage
to bring along, where to assemble, what to carry in the way of food, drink and
first-aid equipment―they relaxed, drank down the cheap, dark rum, and
chattered inconsequentially, and that was when Salahuddin heard, for the first
time, the rumours about the odd behaviour of the film star Gibreel Farishta
that had started circulating in the city, and felt his old life prick him like
a hidden thorn;―heard the past, like a distant trumpet, ringing in his
ears.

           
* * * * *

           
The Gibreel Farishta who returned to Bombay from London to pick up the threads
of his film career was not, by general consensus, the old, irresistible
Gibreel. "Guy seems hell-bent on a suicide course," George Miranda,
who knew all the filmi gossip, declared. "Who knows why? They say because
he was unlucky in love he's gone a little wild." Salahuddin kept his mouth
shut, but felt his face heating up. Allie Cone had refused to have Gibreel back
after the fires of Brickhall. In the matter of forgiveness, Salahuddin
reflected, nobody had thought to consult the entirely innocent and greatly injured
Alleluia;
once again, we made her life peripheral to our own. No wonder
she's still hopping mad
. Gibreel had told Salahuddin, in a final and
somewhat strained telephone call, that he was returning to Bombay "in the
hope that I never have to see her, or you, or this damn cold city, again in
what remains of my life". And now here he was, by all accounts,
shipwrecking himself again, and on home ground, too. "He's making some
weird movies," George went on. "And this time he's had to put in his
own cash. After the two flops, producers have been pulling out fast. So if this
one goes down, he's broke, done for,
funtoosh
." Gibreel had
embarked on a modern-dress remake of the Ramayana story in which the heroes and
heroines had become corrupt and evil instead of pure and free from sin. Here
was a lecherous, drunken Rama and a flighty Sita; while Ravana, the demon-king,
was depicted as an upright and honest man. "Gibreel is playing
Ravana," George explained in fascinated horror. "Looks like he's
trying deliberately to set up a final confrontation with religious sectarians,
knowing he can't win, that he'll be broken into bits." Several members of
the cast had already walked off the production, and given lurid interviews
accusing Gibreel of "blasphemy", "satanism" and other
misdemeanours. His most recent mistress, Pimple Billimoria, was seen on the
cover of
Cine-Blitz
, saying: "It was like kissing the Devil."
Gibreel's old problem of sulphurous halitosis had evidently returned with a
vengeance.

           
His erratic behaviour had been causing tongues to wag even more than his choice
of subjects to film. "Some days he's sweetness and light," George
said. "On others, he comes to work like lord god almighty and actually
insists that people get down and kneel. Personally I don't believe the film
will be finished unless and until he sorts out his mental health which, I
genuinely feel, is affected. First the illness, then the plane crash, then the
unhappy love affair: you can understand the guy's problems." And there were
worse rumours: his tax affairs were under investigation; police officers had
visited him to ask questions about the death of Rekha Merchant, and Rekha's
husband, the ball-bearings king, had threatened to "break every bone in
the bastard's body", so that for a few days Gibreel had to be accompanied
by bodyguards when he used the Everest Vilas lifts; and worst of all were the
suggestions of his nocturnal visits to the city's red-light district where, it
was hinted, he had frequented certain Foras Road establishments until the dadas
threw him out because the women were getting hurt. "They say some of them
were very badly damaged," George said. "That big hush-money had to be
paid. I don't know. People say any damn thing. That Pimple of course jumped
right on the bandwagon.
The Man that Hates Women
. She's making herself a
femme fatale star out of all this. But there is something badly wrong with
Farishta. You know the fellow, I hear," George finished, looking at
Salahuddin; who blushed.

           
"Not very well. Just because of the plane crash and so on." He was in
turmoil. It seemed Gibreel had not managed to escape from his inner demons. He,
Salahuddin, had believed―naively, it now turned out―that the events
of the Brickhall fire, when Gibreel saved his life, had in some way cleansed
them both, had driven those devils out into the consuming flames; that, in
fact, love had shown that it could exert a humanizing power as great as that of
hatred; that virtue could transform men as well as vice. But nothing was forever;
no cure, it appeared, was complete.

           
"The film industry is full of wackos," Swatilekha was telling George,
affectionately. "Just look at you, mister." But Bhupen grew serious.
"I always saw Gibreel as a positive force," he said. "An actor
from a minority playing roles from many religions, and being accepted. If he
has fallen out of favour, it's a bad sign."

           
Two days later, Salahuddin Chamchawala read in his Sunday papers that an
international team of mountaineers, on their way to attempt an ascent of the
Hidden Peak, had arrived in Bombay; and when he saw that among the team was the
famed "Queen of Everest", Miss Alleluia Cone, he had a strange sense
of being haunted, a feeling that the shades of his imagination were stepping
out into the real world, that destiny was acquiring the slow, fatal logic of a
dream. "Now I know what a ghost is," he thought. "Unfinished
business, that's what."

           
* * * * *

           
Allie's presence in Bombay came, in the next two days, to preoccupy him more
and more. His mind insisted on making strange Connections, between, for
example, the evident recovery of her feet and the end of her affair with
Gibreel: as if he had been crippling her with his jealous love. His rational
mind knew that, in fact, her problem with the fallen arches had preceded her
relationship with Gibreel, but he had entered an oddly dreamy mood, and seemed
impervious to logic. What was she really doing here? Why had she really come? Some
terrible doom, he became convinced, was in store.

           
Zeeny, her medical surgeries, college lectures and work for the human-chain
demonstration leaving her no time, at present, for Salahuddin and his moods,
mistakenly saw his introverted silence as expressive of doubts―about his
return to Bombay, about being dragged into political activity of a type that
had always been abhorrent to him, about her. To disguise her fears, she spoke
to him in the form of a lecture. "If you're serious about shaking off your
foreignness, Salad baba, then don't fall into some kind of rootless limbo
instead. Okay? We're all here. We're right in front of you. You should really
try and make an adult acquaintance with this place, this time. Try and embrace
this city, as it is, not some childhood memory that makes you both nostalgic
and sick. Draw it close. The actually existing place. Make its faults your own.
Become its creature; belong." He nodded, absently; and she, thinking he
was preparing to leave her once again, stormed out in a rage that left him
utterly perplexed.

           
Should he telephone Allie? Had Gibreel told her about the voices?

           
Should he try to see Gibreel?

           
Something is about to happen, his inner voice warned. It's going to happen,
and you don't know what it is, and you can't do a damn thing about it. Oh yes:
it's something bad
.

           
* * * * *

           
It happened on the day of the demonstration, which, against all the odds, was a
pretty fair success. A few minor skirmishes were reported from the Mazagaon
district, but the event was, in general, an orderly one. CPI(M) observers
reported an unbroken chain of men and women linking hands from top to bottom of
the city, and Salahuddin, standing between Zeeny and Bhupen on Muhammad Ali
Road, could not deny the power of the image. Many people in the chain were in
tears. The order to join hands had been given by the
organizers―Swatilekha prominent among them, riding on the back of a jeep,
megaphone in hand―at eight am precisely; one hour later, as the city's
rush-hour traffic reached its blaring peak, the crowd began to disperse.
However, in spite of the thousands involved in the event, in spite of its
peaceful nature and positive message, the formation of the human chain was not
reported on the Doordarshan television news. Nor did All-India Radio carry the
story. The majority of the (government-supporting) "language press"
also omitted any mentions. . . one English-language daily, and one Sunday
paper, carried the story; that was all. Zeeny, recalling the treatment of the
Kerala chain, had forecast this deafening silence as she and Salahuddin walked
home. "It's a Communist show," she explained. "So, officially,
it's a non-event."