“Shh! The boy is in the next room! What do you want, that all the neighbours hear your screaming?”
“I don’t care! Let them hear! You think they don’t know already? You think you are …”
Mrs. Bulsara next door listened intently. Suddenly, she realized that Jehangir was in there. Listening from one’s own house was one thing — hearing a quarrel from inside the quarrellers’ house was another. It made feigning ignorance very difficult.
She rang the Modys’ doorbell and waited, adjusting her mathoobanoo. Dr. Mody came to the door.
“Burjorji, forgive me for disturbing your stamping and collecting work with Jehangir. But I must take him away. Guests have arrived unexpectedly. Jehangir must go to the Irani, we need cold drinks.”
“That’s okay, he can come next Sunday.” Then added, “He must come next Sunday,” and noted with satisfaction the frustrated turning away of Mrs. Mody who waited out of sight of the doorway. “Jehangir! Your mother is calling.”
Jehangir was relieved at being rescued from the turbulent waters of the Mody household. They left without further conversation, his mother tugging in embarrassment at the knots of her mathoobanoo.
As a result of this unfortunate outburst, a period of awkwardness between the women was unavoidable. Mrs. Mody, though far from garrulous, had never let her domestic sorrows and disappointments interfere with the civilities of neighbourly relations, which she respected and observed at all times. Now for the first time since the arrival of the Modys in Firozsha Baag these civilities experienced a hiatus.
When the muchhiwalla arrived next morning, instead of striking a joint deal with him as they usually did, Mrs. Mody waited till Mrs. Bulsara had finished. She stationed an eye at her peephole as he emphasized the freshness of his catch. “Look bat, it is saféd paani,” he said, holding out the pomfret and squeezing it near the gills till white fluid oozed out. After Mrs. Bulsara had paid and gone, Mrs. Mody emerged, while the former took her turn at the peephole. And so it went for a few days till the awkwardness had run its course and things returned to normal.
But not so for Jehangir; on Sunday, he once again had to leave behind his sadly depleted album. To add to his uneasiness, Mrs. Mody invited him in with a greeting of “Come bawa come,” and there was something malignant about her smile.
Dr. Mody sat at his desk, shoulders sagging, his hands dangling over the arms of the chair. The desk was bare — not a single stamp anywhere in sight, and the cupboard in the corner locked. The absence of his habitual, comfortable clutter made the room cold and cheerless. He was in low spirits; instead of the crow’s-feet at the corners of his eyes were lines of distress and dejection.
“No album again?”
“No. Haven’t got any new stamps yet,” Jehangir smiled nervously.
Dr. Mody scratched the psoriasis on his elbows. He watched Jehangir carefully as he spoke. “Something very bad has happened to the Spanish dancing-lady stamp. Look,” and he displayed the satin-covered box minus its treasure. “It is missing.” Half-fearfully, he looked at Jehangir, afraid he would see what he did not want to. But it was inevitable. His last sentence evoked the head prefect’s thundering debating-style speech of a few days ago, and the ugliness of the entire episode revisited Jehangir’s features — a final ignominious postscript to Dr. Mody’s loss and disillusion.
Dr. Mody shut the box. The boy’s reaction, his silence, the absence of his album, confirmed his worst suspicions. More humiliatingly, it seemed his wife was right. With great sadness he rose from his chair. “I have to leave now, something urgent at the College.” They parted without a word about next Sunday.
Jehangir never went back. He thought for a few days about the missing stamp and wondered what could have happened to it. Burjor Uncle was too careful to have misplaced it; besides, he never removed it from its special box. And the box was still there. But he did not resent him for concluding he had stolen it. His guilt about Patla Babu and Jhaaria Babu, about Eric and the stamps was so intense, and the punishment deriving from it so inconsequential, almost non-existent, that he did not mind this undeserved blame. In fact, it served to equilibrate his scales of justice.
His mother questioned him the first few Sundays he stayed home. Feeble excuses about homework, and Burjor Uncle not having new stamps, and it being boring to look at the same stuff every Sunday did not satisfy her. She finally attributed his abnegation of stamps to sensitivity and a regard for the unfortunate state of the Modys’ domestic affairs. It pleased her that her son was capable of such concern. She did not press him after that.
IV
Pesi was no longer to be seen in Firozsha Baag. His absence brought relief to most of the parents at first, and then curiosity. Gradually, it became known that he had been sent away to a boarding-school in Poona.
The boys of the Baag continued to play their games in the compound. For better or worse, the spark was lacking that lent unpredictability to those languid coastal evenings of Bombay; evenings which could so easily trap the unwary, adult or child, within a circle of lassitude and depression in which time hung heavy and suffocating.
Jehangir no longer sat on the stone steps of C Block in the evenings. He found it difficult to confront Dr. Mody day after day. Besides, the boys he used to watch at play suspected some kind of connection between Pesi’s being sent away to boarding-school, Jehangir’s former friendship with Dr. Mody, and the emerging of Dr. Mody’s constant sorrow and despair (which he had tried so hard to keep private all along, and had succeeded, but was now visible for all to see). And the boys resented Jehangir for whatever his part was in it — they bore him open antagonism.
Dr. Mody was no more the jovial figure the boys had grown to love. When his car turned into the compound in the evenings, he still waved, but no crow’s-feet appeared at his eyes, no smile, no jokes.
Two years passed since the Mody family’s arrival in Firozsha Baag.
In school, Jehangir was as isolated as in the Baag. Most of his effeminateness had, of late, transformed into vigorous signs of impending manhood. Eric D’Souza had been expelled for attempting to sodomize a junior boy. Jehangir had not been involved in this affair, but most of his classmates related it to the furtive activities of their callow days and the stamp-flicking. Patla Babu and Jhaaria Babu had disappeared from the pavement outside St. Xavier’s. The Bombay police, in a misinterpretation of the nation’s mandate: garibi hatao — eradicate poverty, conducted periodic round-ups of pavement dwellers, sweeping into their vans beggars and street-vendors, cripples and alcoholics, the homeless and the hungry, and dumped them somewhere outside the city limits; when the human detritus made its way back into the city, another clean-up was scheduled. Patla and Jhaaria were snared in one of these raids, and never found their way back. Eyewitnesses said their stalls were smashed up and Patla Babu received a lathi across his forehead for trying to salvage some of his inventory. They were not seen again.
Two years passed since Jehangir’s visits to Dr. Mody had ceased.