Haunting Bombay

by Shilpa Agarwal

  During the season, the trees dripped with the fleshy, golden fruit and Maji gave away all they did not need, sending baskets to friends and relatives throughout Bombay. Mango-picking day was a festive day in the bungalow, a holiday unto themselves. The gardener arrived at the crack of dawn with extra workers and they collected huge basketfuls of the fruit, while Pinky and her cousins sat under the trees, biting into the sweet flavor, their faces smeared bright orange. They are Lord Ganesh’s favorite, too, Maji always told them as she clipped a handful of auspicious mango leaves to hang on the front verandah. Later in the day, she supervised the distribution of the mangos in the ornate dining hall while her daughter-in-law, Savita, sauntered around the long, polished dining table, squeezing and prodding the fruit to ensure that the best ones were earmarked for her relations.

  Pinky stepped into the stifling hall, deprived of the artificially cooled air that the bedrooms and the front parlor typically enjoyed. The wooden floorboards, which normally creaked and sighed with the slightest pressure, absorbed the lightness of her feet. Pinky knew these floors, knew where they gave way and where they were supported. She walked across them with unthinking familiarity.

  She crept past her uncle and aunt’s room, stopping to peer through the crack at their door where their low voices diffused into the hall along with the soft whirring of their modern air conditioner. Wedging her body against the crack, she indulged in the rush of chilly air that dried the sweat along one leg, arm, and cheek.

  “As if it isn’t enough that we’ve taken in Pinky,” Savita sniffed, her delicate features tightening with anger. The upper ribbons on her imported silk nightgown lay untied, revealing the tiny glitter of a diamond dangling between her breasts. “I can’t believe you just sent ten thousand rupees to her father.”

  “At Maji’s request,” Jaginder said as if to assure her that he would not have been so generous on his own. The years had added a slouch to his once proud shoulders, a shadow of stubble fell across his handsome face. “A loan only.”

  “Loan?” Savita’s voice grew shrill. She pointed a slender, manicured fingertip at him in accusation. “We have nothing to do with them anymore. Why should we give them money?”

  “He’s Pinky’s father after all.”

  “What father,” Savita snorted. “He’s remarried, he has other children now, he hasn’t even bothered to visit since Maji took her in!”

  Outside in the hallway, Pinky felt a hot sting of tears in her eyes. Savita never let an opportunity pass to make her feel unwelcome in the bungalow, like a beggar. She’s not your sister, she would admonish her sons whenever Maji was out of earshot, she’s your destitute cousin. Remember that.

  Pinky retreated into the comfort of darkness, making a quick left under a scalloped archway, breathing in the bungalow’s aroma of sandalwood, peppers, and fried cumin. It was so dim, that for a moment, she thought there might be a power outage. Then her eyes fixed on ruby stains of color flickering upon the walls emitted by series of stained-glass and brass handis. She pressed her hand to the wall of the corridor, watching as the color settled upon her skin like a kiss.

  At the west hallway, she turned right, into the kitchen where a tall, decorated earthen urn of boiled water stood on a marble counter top. Pinky glugged down the tepid water with relief and refilled her cup. A wave of sleepiness washed over her.

  Turning down the corridor to return to her room, she unexpectedly heard the scrape of a door and backtracked, first peeking around the corner, then tiptoeing to her cousins’ bedroom. The three boys were the only inhabitants of this side of the bungalow. Pale moonlight filtered in through the window, revealing the sleeping bodies of the fourteen-year-old twins. Dheer’s pudgy body was thrown carelessly across the mattress, his mouth gaping open, while Tufan’s lean one was curled tightly into a ball as if he were still a baby. The third bed, that belonging to seventeen-year-old Nimish, however, was empty.

  Thinking she had a few minutes before his return, Pinky crept to his bedside and placed her cup of water on his night table next to a cluttering stack of books, bookmarks sticking out midway from each one. She leaned in and inhaled his salty, sensuous scent and then, blushing, glanced at the slumbering twins to ensure they had not awakened and seen her. Dheer let out a reassuring, rumbling snore.

  Pinky touched her hand to Nimish’s warm pillow and inhaled again. A book peeked out from underneath it and she reached for it, fingering its odd title, The Fakeer of Jungheera. It felt old and dusty and she knew immediately that it belonged to the musty library at the end of the hallway. It fell open to a page where a miniature chart titled “An Ideal Boy” was carefully taped inside the book, covering an entire page. The chart detailed the twelve most essential behaviors, including “Salutes Parents” and “Brushes Up The Teeth,” each one accompanied by a gaudy illustration. Pinky could not help but smile. Nimish had received this chart in primary school. He had showed it to her and the twins when he returned from class that day, the four of them rolling with laughter and taking turns pretending to be the upright little boy in the pictures with his clean, white shirt and knickers, dutifully “Taking The Lost Children To The Police Post.” And yet, even though they had mocked it, Nimish had kept the chart all these years, taped inside this random book. Perhaps Dheer or Tufan needed daily behavioral cues but Nimish already, effortlessly, embodied the dutiful son.

  Curious now at Nimish’s lengthy absence, Pinky replaced the book and decided to look for him in the library. She hesitated as she passed the children’s bathroom, which consisted of two separate doors, one leading to a tiled bathing area and the other to a toilet and sink. The door to the bathing area was like all the others in the interior of the bungalow, made of shiny wood inset with three panels. A delicately carved chakra occupied the center of each panel. What made it different, however, was the vertical bolt at the very top of the doorframe, out of reach.

  For as long as she could remember, this door was unexplainably bolted at night, the thick metal rod sliding into place with an echoing crash. The children were forbidden to touch it after sunset. In place of a rational explanation for this nightly ritual, the children came up with their own wild theories. The twins were sure that the bathroom was transformed nightly into the headquarters for their father’s superhero activities or perhaps into a hideout used by the infamous criminal Red Tooth. They, of course, dared each other to get out of bed to touch the door or wiggle the handle, which they did before racing back and throwing themselves under the covers. Once they even rigged a pair of chairs so they could reach the bolt. But as Tufan touched it, he tumbled over. The weight of the seats left ugly bruises and cuts. At the sound of the crash, Savita had come running at them hysterically. What do you think you’re doing? she had yelled, slapping them each several times across the face. Do you want to die? Do you?

  After that, none of them dared to try again despite their claims of bravery and the shrugging off of Savita’s ominous warning. Yet they could not account for the sound the water pipes made at night, the odd rattlings, the strange whooshing that did not settle until just before dawn.

  Pinky pressed herself against the wall to be as far away as possible. She did not want to look but of their own will, her eyes fell upon the bolt. A chill shot to her fingertips. She raced to the library.

  “Nimish?”

  The library must have been grand in its day, with its elaborately carved bookshelves, dark paneled walls, heavily upholstered couches, and glass chandelier, but by the time the bungalow passed into Maji’s hands several years before Independence, it had already suffered from neglect. The once-plush carpet was bare in ever-growing patches, the chandelier housed an intrepid family of spiders, and even though they were thoroughly cleaned once a year, the thick, gloomy curtains stank of stale cigar smoke.

  Its faded, forgotten glory soothed Pinky. When the rest of the bungalow had been updated, this sole room remained as it was, lost in the past. Nimish spent hours in here with the books, breathing in the residu
e of another era. His plan was to read every single book that the library contained, from the hard burgundy or green leather covers richly engraved in gold to the small ones dressed in cloth dust jackets, all the while imagining what it was like to have been a pukka English sahib. So far he had read every single autobiography of the English Indian Civil Service officers—the elite competition-wallahs who governed India and then vainly penned their memoirs upon retirement—the works of Kipling, and the entire, paperback series of Wheeler’s Indian Railway Library.

  A faint sliver of moonlight filtered between a crack in the heavy drapery and fell in a jagged line upon the threadbare carpet, across a rectangular table adorned with a large, multiple-piped hookah, and onto several books with intense blue bindings. Pinky felt her way to the window and looked to the sky. The moon slipped into a dark haze. The clouds had started gathering that afternoon, little billows of smoke in the bright, sunlit sky that foretold the monsoon’s impending arrival. Oh, how they had obsessed about nothing else all that scorching day but the joy of those first drops of eagerly awaited rain from the heavens.

  The moon brightened and Pinky’s heart stopped as she caught sight of Nimish. There he was, on the driveway, his tall, slender frame, finely chiseled face, and copper brown skin glowing. He was pacing back and forth, his fists clenched as if in determination, eyebrows knitted above thin, wire spectacles. Pinky wiped the sweat trickling from her hands onto her pajamas and rapped on the window. But Nimish had already turned away, heading toward the back garden.

  Pinky raced down the hallway, out the side door, and past the garage which Gulu, the driver, shared with the black Mercedes. A frisson hummed in her chest as the humid air drenched her thin pajamas. Above her, a gust of wind rustled a broken kite impaled upon a tree branch. And just past the bungalow, a grand white-marble lotus fountain stood in the grassy center of the garden surrounded by a pond, a stone pathway, and a ring of rosebushes. Beyond that lay the thickness of the trees.

  Pinky stood breathless, pressing her back against the stone wall that separated their bungalow from their neighbors’, the Lawates, on the other side. She called to Nimish in sharp whispers. A love song from the hit film Dil Deke Dekho, took root in her head as she cut into the expansive garden, which was exquisitely groomed by the gardener who arrived every day with nothing more than a rusted sickle for landscaping and a fresh coconut for quenching his thirst.

  She had always loved Nimish, even as a little girl, drawn to him as if he were the father she never had. When she was younger, he had hovered over her, shielding her from unkind remarks and accidental harm. In the last years, however, as her body began to change, Pinky wanted more from him than simply this . . . this paternal affection. She had begun to notice, with a flush, the soft tones of his laughter, the gloss of his hair.

  He was so carefree with his younger brothers, teasing them, guiding them, and occasionally throwing a sympathetic arm around them after they were punished. But with Pinky, he had become more distant, his communication limited to passages read out loud from his countless books or professorial monologues if she asked for help with her schoolwork.

  “Nimish?” she whispered again. Could he be right there, behind that tree, waiting for me? She reached out, imagining the feel of his strong hand in hers, on her.

  She could almost picture a flash of silk behind a tree, betraying the presence of a troupe of dancers that was waiting for the lovers to meet before breaking into flirtatious song and dance. Nimish had led her out here, she was sure of it, to confess his love. This was her Bollywood moment.

  Somewhere in the distance a door closed.

  Pinky snapped out of her reverie.

  Had Nimish gone back? Had she somehow failed in her scripted role? She raced back through the foliage, carelessly treading upon lovingly tended flowers until she reached the edge of the bungalow. And then she dashed across the moonlit driveway.

  The bungalow’s darkness embraced her.

  Back in the air-conditioned coolness of the boys’ room, Dheer snored in loud, choppy breaths and Tufan lay in a sweaty, satiated slumber, his hand tucked into his pajama bottoms. But Nimish’s bed was still empty. Pinky hid herself behind it, slowing her pounding heart and fighting off the cold, clammy feel of sweat beginning to dry.

  “Where are you?” Pinky whispered into his pillow.

  She could not imagine what he could be doing in the dark garden alone, behind the immense stone wall that surrounded the bungalow on three sides, the fourth protected by an equally imposing gate complete with welded-iron arrowhead caps. But then, as she mentally walked the yard, she remembered that the wall was not impassable after all. There was a way to get through, to get out. Could it be?

  She once again picked up The Fakeer of Jungheera and glanced at the poem opposite the gaudy “Ideal Boy” chart. My native home, my native home, Hath in its groves the turtledove, And from her nest she will not roam—For it is warmed with faith and love. But there is love, and there is faith, Which round a bleeding heart entwine, To thee devoted even to death—And oh! That love and faith are mine!

  Slowly, meticulously, as the urgent words sunk in, she untaped the chart from the opposite page. There, hidden behind the “Ideal Boy” was his not-so-ideal truth, his turtle dove in a tamarind tree. Yes, the stone wall had a small opening that led to one and only one place, the Lawates’ next door. And Nimish’s little bird was none other than seventeen-year-old Lovely Lawate, beaming exquisitely in black and white.

  A BOLTED DOOR

  A stinging pain took root in the center of Pinky’s chest, its poisonous tendrils radiating outward, tightening, tightening around her heart.

  She panted in small, wet breaths: Lovely. Lovely. Lovely.

  She should have known. Pinky still wore her hair in two oiled braids. How could she compare to a blooming beauty like Lovely with her thick mane of hair delicately adorned with flowers? Neighbors always commented on her enviably fair skin and the delicate shape of her eyes to which Lovely’s mother, Vimla, applied a broad, black smear of kajal every morning to ward off the evil eye.

  Lovely had been Pinky’s playmate for years, especially when they were younger. They had hidden away in a shaded part of the garden, constructing makeshift puja altars with branches and decorating them with flowers and sacred tulsi leaves, and placing a miniature sandalwood idol of Lakshmi, Goddess of Prosperity, within the soft interior. Lovely was always the priest and Pinky the supplicant who kneeled as Lovely sprinkled water upon her bowed head and marked it with vermillion.

  As Lovely entered her teenage years, however, she had lost interest in this childhood game, and the four years that separated the girls felt like a lifetime. Still, Lovely occasionally invited Pinky for a picnic in the park and, away from watchful eyes, they could speak as friends, sisters even. It was at these moments that Pinky glimpsed what the others never saw—a transient shadow upon Lovely’s beautiful face, a hidden recklessness.

  The air conditioner started up with a noisy clanking and Pinky crouched by Nimish’s bed fighting a surge of jealousy. She felt small, insignificant. Wiping away tears, she tried resticking the “Ideal Boy” chart back onto the page of the book, her fingers fumbling with the yellowed tape.

  She was so immersed in this task and deafened by the AC’s toiling engine that she did not hear Nimish’s returning footsteps. And then, before she knew it, he was whispering her name. She closed the book with a snap.

  “What are you doing here?” He sat down on his bed and leaned toward her. “Are you okay?”

  She nodded, her head still bowed.

  He put his hand lightly on her shoulder. That weight, that warmth, should have comforted her but it did not. Is this all she would ever get from him?A concerned question, a consoling hand?She pushed his arm away.

  Nimish sat back, surprised, and adjusted his spectacles. It was then he saw his book in her hands. He stiffened and reached out to take it from Pinky but she held tight. Inside lay the photo that Nimish treasured.
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  “Where were you?” she whispered boldly.

  Nimish disregarded her disrespectful tone but did not respond. Once again, with gentleness, he asked, “Are you okay?”

  Tears began to fall from Pinky’s eyes. She was not immune to him, to his soft voice, his tender manner.

  “Please tell me,” Pinky asked, testing to see if he would lie to her, he who never lied.

  He shrugged. “Out on the driveway, in the garden.”

  “I came outside, I looked for you.”

  Nimish raised an eyebrow. “You shouldn’t be outside at night. If Maji found out—”

  “And what about you?” Pinky shot back, wiping away tears. “What if they found out what you were doing?”

  “Just give me the book,” Nimish said, his voice stern now. He reached out and grasped it but Pinky held on tight.

  Their eyes met, his so soft. Pinky felt her grip slacken.

  “Why her?” she whispered, just as the air-conditioning unit cut sharply to silence. “Why not me?” Pinky’s hand flew to her mouth in disbelief that she had said those words at the very moment he could hear them. She saw him recoil.

  “What do you mean? Oh, Pinky. . . .”

  He shook his head.

  Pinky could not breathe, the stinging in her chest pulsed. She could not see. She did not want to live. How had this happened?

  Fragments from the ancient epics flashed in her head, shards from the Puranas and the Mahabharata that Maji was always recounting to her. The fearless Princess Draupadi married five men, all brothers. And the beautiful Princess Sanjana and her shadow Chhaya shared the same husband, the Sun God Surya. If their legendary loves were possible, surely what Pinky desired of Nimish was not so horrible.