irately as he shaved. He would cut himself — tiny
nicks like spattered paint, wash himself with soap.
He never applied aftershave. This boxer
was afraid of its sting. I gave him a T-shirt
that said “Oxford University” in white Gothic letters;
he wore it occasionally as he went out into the great,
unruly, smelly stream of life on the Causeway.
He took an inordinately long time getting ready.
Next to him was the oblong bathtub that was used
as storage space for water; brimming idly—
Bombay’s perpetual water shortage; the taps
dry for most of the day, the flush
not working. Then going out. Our walks
by turns quarrelsome, silent, jocular,
amidst the crowds that jostled before the Taj, where on other
days I’d sit in the Sea Lounge, listening
to the piano; now pressing past balloon sellers
and pushers, to whom he claimed he was immune
in my company. My father retired, and later
my parents moved from this city; they sold
their lovely post-retirement flat in St. Cyril Road
in Bandra. And Suresh kept “slipping” and going
back to smack. “An addict can smell out drugs anywhere
he is,” he boasted. Britannia Biscuits
had changed, as things do, been touched by scandal, in a tussle
for power between two share-buying players,
a textile tycoon, Nusli Wadia, Jinnah’s
grandson, and a Singaporean cashew prince, ending
in the latter’s arrest and his death in prison.
“Take me out of here,” said Suresh, meaning “Colaba.”
When we come to Bombay these days — my wife,
myself, and our infant daughter — we stay
in either the Yacht or WIAA Club or
are put up for a few nights at the President Hotel
— this five-star orphanage or dharamshala—
when my book readings beckon. We go to see Suresh
in his room in Colaba, or he comes to see us;
he’s still shy with my wife, and would rather speak with me,
but makes dramatic attempts to win over my daughter.
He’s going bald. Since I’ve no home in this city,
we stop for lunch and wonton soup
at the Bombay Gymkhana, whose verandah is the only
place I can put down this mewling, regurgitating
baby on a wicker chair. People
around us are eating; the curious mix
of children from Cathedral School and lawyers
and managers and society ladies and poets
like Imtiaz Dharker, and editors of newspapers.
Not infrequently, I run into
old school friends or acquaintances
like Anurang Jain, one of the twins,
Anurang and Tarang, who now lives in
Aurangabad, a businessman,
or Anant Balani, film producer,
still awaiting his big success,
or Saran, who always says “Hello”
although I didn’t know him very well in school.
It’s odd how the bullies have calmed down, how
the slimes and duds and good guys have
alike transformed into gentlemen,
or moderate successes, or ordinary
executives. There’s Shireen — who was
in my class before I was transferred
to B, both of us teased pitilessly
because she lived on the floor below me in
Il Palazzo. Her father, an irascible
cardiologist, practised the violin furiously
for relaxation. My friends burst into “Knock three
times on the ceiling if you want me”
whenever they saw her to embarrass me.
The first flush of that shame’s over. She’s
a solicitor, and looks assured. “Amit,”
brown hair around her freckled face, “I read about you
in the papers.” She’s nicer than I can ever remember.
After this, we ignore each other, no longer
burdened with having to fulfil the jejune
prophecy of that popular song. Suresh
comes regularly if reluctantly
(apprehensive of whom he’ll run into),
and shares chicken Manchurian and
fried rice. Each day we study the menu.
This is the last stop on my book tour.
Suresh has been seven years “clean,” ever since
his mother, whom he loved more than anyone else
(and whom he also blames for loving him—
“She made me weak”), this short, round-bellied
Mangalorean woman, for whom a picture
of the Madonna is illuminated
in their drawing room, died; she had a congenital
heart murmur not unlike the one I was born with,
which tired her at times and made her look absent;
she was too old to operate on. This — her life’s soft
companion — didn’t kill her; one day
her synthetic negligee caught fire
as she was heating milk on the stove. Suresh,
who was still flirting with smack, spending more time
at home than at work, overheard her screams
and saw her from the ventilator windows
above the doors to the other room, which
were locked. Since then, he’s stopped “taking,” and
they commemorate her death once a year, the father,
the son, and the still single sister, whom he
still resents but accepts now, philosophically;
though in what way the sight of a mother burning
should be a reprimand to an old habit,
I don’t know. Anyway, he has not the means
to compose her a more fit epitaph than this,
this second attempt to return, like a prodigal
son, to “normal life,” for her sake
and his, though “normal life,” rediscovered,
is an empty promise filled with cars and people
and noises that frighten him slightly. He tells me
how fourteen years of semi-oblivion and a sort
of absence have left him maladjusted
and inept and unsure of himself. The book tour
goes on even after it’s supposed to be over; reporters
who haven’t read my book come and ask me questions.
It’s Valentine’s Day. Elsewhere in the city,
the Shiv Sena is burning Valentine cards.
Here, in the Gymkhana, young couples hold hands
and look wide-eyed and unnaturally devout and composed.
Evening brings the dark to the maidan, and, with it,
mosquitoes. This morning, we mentioned Sujata
Birla, rhetorically. “Hey, d’you remember
Sujata?” “Yeah,” in a tone of disbelief,
“she died in a plane crash, yaar.” We already
know this, how she married after college, was divorced,
then married again — a happy flowering; on that plane
were her mother and her father, Ashok Birla. The husband
wasn’t with them that day. I pick up my daughter
and we head for Pipewalla Building in a taxi,
my wife carrying the feeding beaker and the packet
with the sari she bought from Cottage Industries
earlier today. For her, this city
means shopping expeditions, leather handbags
to admire in Csango, which she’ll visit even if
she buys nothing, only inspects and desires.
“Looking at” costs nothing; but the proprietor
doesn’t mind, as if he knows it’s somehow connected
to business. Then the haunts whose names
she’s inherited from my parents; the incredibly Olympian
Joy Shoes; R. H. Rai; Ramniklal Zaveri
to exchange an old ornament; from shop to shop, as
the book tour fizzles out, and we find we’re at a loose end
with two days left in this city, and nowhere