Haunting Bombay

by Shilpa Agarwal

  “While we men travel to Bandra each night with our own wet goods,” the undershirt-man laughed insinuatingly.

  The other men guffawed.

  By then, they had reached a relatively impressive two-story home that sat opposite the fenced-in cross belonging to a Christian family that unofficially governed the Koli community of Koliwada, situated in the northwestern section of Dharavi. Hari Bhai used their residence for all of his public audiences.

  Parvati and Kanj were taken into the main room where Hari Bhai sat, sipping a cup of tea. His face was handsome, jaw strong, hair gelled back, eyes shaded even though the interior was dark. “Come, come,” he said invitingly, snapping his finger at the servant to bring some more chai. “So you are friends of Gulu?”

  “Yes,” Parvati and Kanj both said, remaining standing.

  “He’s like a brother to me,” Hari said reassuringly. “Sit, sit.”

  They sat.

  “What can I do for you?”

  “We need Tantrik Baba.”

  Hari Bhai smiled and leaned forward intently, pulling his sunglasses down to take a better look at his guests. An ugly scar ran up from the top of his eyelid through his bushy eyebrow.

  For a freakish moment, Kanj thought that he and Parvati were going to be murdered. I’ll beg, he decided, cook them first-class aloo tikkis in exchange for our lives.

  But then Hari sat back languidly and snapped his fingers at the mustached man, “Jao, usko bulao.”

  Parvati nodded her thanks. Kanj tried to keep his knees from shaking.

  Hari Bhai let his gaze linger on Parvati’s body, tightly clad in a mango-colored sari. “So sister,” he said, his words slow and deliberate, “you need the tantrik.”

  It had been Hari’s relationship with the tantrik that had fueled his mythical rise to power. With his help, Hari had taken control over Koliwada unchallenged, even by the extremely violent slumlords like Vardraja Mudaliar whose ruthless influence was felt all over Dharavi, including the Zone III precinct of the Bombay police. Hari’s growing business enterprise tapped into an ancient Koli tradition, the only one remaining after the Mahim Creek had dried up and deprived his community of their ancient ways of fishing. Hari coined his famous slogan. Mahasagar nahi? Navsagar chali! No ocean? Go alcohol!

  According to ancient traditions, Koli communities all over Bombay had always distilled alcohol from various fruits including jamun, guava, orange, apple, and the sweet brown chikoo—whose stems additionally provided milky latex for chewing gum. The famous Dharavi Koliwada Country, brewed right in Koliwada, was the most potent because of its special saltwater infusion. When the Chief Minister of Bombay, Morarji Desai, imposed Prohibition in 1954, the Kolis’ distilleries were forced underground. Hari rallied his community by accusing Desai of country-bandi instead of daru-bandi, banning their homemade country-made liquor while, at the very same time, selling his own version of legal alcohol in bottles labeled Indian Made Foreign Liquor.

  Then, enterprisingly, he took advantage of the open spaces Dharavi had to offer—the unreclaimed swamps and the illegal dumping sites—to bury hundreds of barrels of the sugary liquid for fermentation. Sometimes he stored them in the sewers of nearby neighborhoods such as Sion, where school boys would dare each other to lift the heavy cast-iron sewer grates for a better look. After the alcohol was distilled, up to fifteen liters were stored in a tire tube which could be easily carried around the worker’s neck, leaving his hands free to help him wade through the marshlands. Hari had procured a fleet of huge, black American cars—Plymouths, Chryslers, Dodges—to drive his homemade liquor from there all over the city, the best stuff going to the addas along the coast, including to Rosie’s in Bandra.

  Hari was seen as a savior by the Kolis, a Robin Hood of sorts, fl outing the law while at the same time maintaining a certain degree of moral integrity by refusing to partake more dubious practices such as adding battery acid to his brews. His fellow Kolis began to call him Bhai—Big Brother—for Hari ensured each and every male Koli member of his community a steady job in his business empire and a salary of two-hundred rupees a month. In return, his people were remarkably loyal, obeying him blindly when he asked them to vote for a particular politician or later, when they became foot soldiers of the Samyukta Maharashtra Samiti.

  In the darkened room, holding her cup of tea, Parvati related the story of the baby’s drowning and the ghost’s sudden appearance in the bungalow. The men nodded solemnly. The haunted lanes of Dharavi teemed with wailing ghosts, vengeful spirits, and restless souls.

  “Yes,” Hari Bhai said afterward, surprisingly moved by their tale. “Tantrik Baba will help.”

  THE TANTRIK

  The tantrik had been meditating when one of Hari Bhai’s men summoned him. Irritated by the interruption, he commanded his favored spirit, a perverted ghost named Frooty who liked nothing better than to slip into a loosened lungi and give the unsuspecting organs a blood-constricting twist, to visit the mustached man that night.

  The tantrik and Hari had an uneasy relationship, one bound by an unbreakable promise, but ultimately, weakened by differing philosophies. Even so, they upheld their solemn vow to each other, taken when they were mere boys. The tantrik continued to tie protective amulets on Hari’s wrist, warding away potential rivals and police alike. And Hari took care of the tantrik’s family, even some years later, after the tanneries were relocated securing them a top flat in Diamond Apartments, Dharavi’s first high-rise building built overlooking Mahim Station. And, though the tantrik refused all association with Hari’s ring of corruption and crime, he had not been able to refuse his gift of a transistor radio. For in his spare time, the tantrik had become terribly addicted to the government-owned broadcast Akaashvani and its continuous emission of the most depressing Hindustani classical music.

  Destiny had brought the tantrik and Hari together. Dharavi’s dense mass of humanity served as a veritable wall that separated their neighborhoods, located on opposite ends of the triangular community. The tantrik grew up near the Central Railway Line that formed the slum’s eastern border, while Hari was firmly ensconced in Dharavi’s northwestern pocket. And while Hari traced his ancestry back to the original Koli inhabitants of Bombay, the tantrik descended from the Konchikori community of traveling magicians and performers originally from Sholapur, a city known primarily for its textiles, located on the outskirts of what until recently had been known as Bombay State.

  The tantrik’s special powers first manifested at age four when he cured his sister by putting his hand to her feverish head. After her miraculous recovery, word spread quickly and the tantrik spent entire days sitting on a charpoy administering to every sick, ill, or desperate person who came to his doorstep. But he quickly grew resentful of missed time with his friends. So, for a stretch, instead of curing them, the tantrik inflicted his supplicants with relatively harmless ailments such as diarrhea, impotence, and massive hair growth.

  “Stay away from him,” the neighbors began warning each other. “Otherwise you’ll be running to the latrine ten-twelve times a day, your motions coming out with such force that even the rats run for cover.”

  “Hahn,” said another, “and what hope does poor Dhondya have of finding a wife now? Not even the five-rupee whores on Falkland Road are able to restore his manliness.”

  “And what about me?” complained a third whose lion’s mane of hair growing from his ears much later earned him a coveted spot in the Guinness Book of World Records. “I simply asked him to help me secure a proper dowry for my daughter.”

  The tantrik’s family became veritable outcasts and no amount of ear-pulling, cheek-slapping, or general physical torments by his parents could convince him to change his ways. Only when his father threatened to uproot his family and return to his itinerant street-performing ways did the tantrik attempt to cure again.

  He went into seclusion for a year, dutifully practicing sadhana in the dark hours of the night, staying up to recite mantras or visiting Matunga Ceme
tery in order to learn how to tame the most powerful spirits. Each night between midnight and two, he exhumed a corpse buried less than three days, one that would still have its spirit lingering nearby, and bathed it in thirteen liters of milk. After the contaminated milk curdled while being heated, he rolled the curds infused with sugar, ghee, and wheat flour into small balls which he placed at the corpse’s head and feet. Finally, using a special mantra, he cajoled the spirit back into the body, and—once there—brought it firmly under his control.

  During the day, the tantrik refused all food, drinking only a bit of nimbu-pani to survive. His neighbors began to approach his hovel again, excitedly keeping track of his progress and even placing ten-paisa bets on whether or not he would survive the grueling routine. He did survive, emerging from his self-imposed exile more powerful than ever, and was henceforth known as the Tantrik Baba of Dharavi. While Hari continued expanding his empire across the city’s vast perimeters, ensnaring politicians, police, and the privileged within its intoxicating net, the tantrik continued to mainly serve those in the heart of Bombay, the people of Dharavi Slum.

  Just before dawn, the tantrik stepped onto Maji’s front verandah, stopping to pluck a jasmine bud and indulge in its divine fragrance, one unadulterated by the sickening smells that normally assaulted his nose in Dharavi. And then, as if trying to hold onto the aroma, he proceeded to eat an entire vine.

  Maji and Savita shrank back. The tantrik was a fearsome-looking man covered head to toe in white ash, naked except for a small loincloth and brass bells around his ankles. His matted hair was coiled into a huge bun that rested slightly askew on the top of his head, a thick beard fell from his face to midchest, where a rosary of 108 conch shells dangled. His body was powerful, eyes blazing scarlet. He carried a peacock-feather fan and a bullwhip.

  He arrived with his son who set up the items required for the puja including rice, curds, sandalwood paste, ghee, incense, and water for washing the tantrik’s feet.

  “The natural order in this household has been violated,” the tantrik announced after the necessary preparations for the puja had been made. His voice came out in a low echoing moan, as if he were speaking from an underground tomb. His gaze lingered momentarily on Maji. “Your household will never find peace unless the path designated by nature is redressed.”

  The tantrik stood up suddenly and wandered inside the bungalow, tapping the walls and swatting the air with his fan, demanding, “Tu kidar se aayi hai? Where have you come from?”

  The rest of the household followed him at a distance, walking from the parlor up to the dining area, down the east hallway where Jaginder and Maji’s rooms lay, back across to the west hallway past the boys’ bedroom. The tantrik stopped just outside the bathroom and, for a moment, inwardly lamented. Too often he was called upon by desperate or greedy people to enact some sort of revenge. In those cases he would put on a show, cracking his whip, letting out bloodcurdling screams, eventually making a spirit speak out of an unsuspecting person’s mouth, declaring that it had traveled all the way from the cemetery to make trouble. This spectacle was usually enough to frighten the guilty charlatan into confessing to having stolen goods or whatever his crime might have been. But on occasion, the tantrik’s services were actually needed to reweave the cosmos, to restore the natural order that had been overset by ignorance, desire, attachment, or greed. And that is when he tapped into his cosmic powers.

  As soon as he had entered Maji’s bungalow, the tantrik immediately felt the ghost. Her pain, anger, and silent accusations dripped from the cracks in the roofing and bubbled from crevices along the baseboard.

  He stepped inside the hallway bathroom.

  The ghost unfurled itself from the ceiling, invisible to all but the tantrik and Parvati. Almost human like now, she was more powerful than ever. She vowed to make them pay, her entire family, for their crimes, for allowing her to die.

  “Tu kidar se aaya hai? ” the tantrik repeated more vehemently, looking directly at her.

  “Where is she?” Savita cried out, shivering. “Where is she?”

  “Over there!” Parvati pointed.

  Cook Kanj threateningly waved a frying pan in the air.

  The ghost opened her mouth, expelling a secret language that, like waves upon the ocean, crashed upon the tantrik’s ears. The ceiling began to drip as if it were raining inside.

  The tantrik chanted, “Shiva Shakti Shiva Shakti . . .” calling out to the male and female forces of the universe. He began to sweat; white ash trickled from his face. The ghost approached him, her diaphanous silver mane twisting with fury behind her. The black pipes that encircled the bathroom wall began to shudder, blasts of water erupting at random.

  Savita clung to her boys, Maji rested heavily on Kuntal’s shoulders. They stood frozen in the hallway, sodden laundry whipping at them as if being blown by a powerful wind.

  The tantrik’s son whispered cryptically, “Tantrik Baba seeks the unification of the polarities of the world, consciousness and energy. Only then will illumination be possible.”

  Nimish opened his mouth to respond but Savita swiftly pinched his arm.

  The ghost swirled around the tantrik’s head, her arms moving in slow-motion like a silken cloth fluttering underwater. The tantrik held firm, matching his powers with hers. Rain pelted the room; the naked bulb swung wildly. Frost crept over the tantrik’s naked body, slowly, slowly encasing him in ice.

  “Ye bahut zordar atama hai, this is a very strong spirit,” he gasped, falling back. “She will not go.”

  “I knew it!” Savita blurted out. “She’s come back to me!”

  “She’s always been here,” the tantrik said. “An astral alignment brought her out.”

  “What alignment?” Maji asked.

  “A violation of a boundary or possession by a girl—”

  “Pinky!” Savita shrieked. “I knew it!”

  “Girls have certain unconscious powers at transitory times in their lives, power to commune with the otherworld—”

  “Divine or demonic?” Parvati asked.

  “Either,” the tantrik’s fiery eyes rested on her. “She died before her time. She is angry.”

  “But what can be done?” Nimish asked. They had all suffered after her death, the pain of loss, Savita’s dark descent into superstition and fear, Jaginder’s retreat into alcoholism, Nimish’s own unassuaged guilt.

  “Shiva Shakti,” the tantrik intoned. “The universe must be brought into balance. What you have given will be given; what you have taken will be taken.”

  “But my little moon-bird!” Savita cut in feeling once again the dark pain in her chest. “Is there no way to end her suffering?”

  “There are two ways,” the tantrik held up his flattened palms in the air. “Allow her to stay here, replace her pain with its cosmic counterpart. And one day she will leave on her own.”

  “Just like our Mama and Baba’s ghosts,” Parvati whispered to Kuntal.

  “And the other?” Nimish asked.

  The tantrik dropped one of his hands, the other remained firmly in the air, five fingers tautly splayed to represent the elements of visible life: earth, water, fire, sky, and wind. “Invisibles are only made of fire, sky, and wind. They seek water and earth in order to inhabit the world as we do.”

  He waggled his thumb. “What once killed the ghost now sustains her. She is bound within the walls of this bungalow. Her life and death are once again at your mercy.”

  The tantrik fell into a meditative trance.

  The show was over.

  DEATH &DISINHERITANCE

  A ray of early morning sun broke through the clouds. Jaginder hailed a taxi from a hotel near the Asiatica to Darukhana, the gritty industrial area where his office was located. Usually he never arrived before midmorning. By then the grounds were already pullulating with workers sorting through remnants of ships broken at the yard, and his assistants were buzzing around the office, negotiating deals, and recording accounts in their ledgers. Tod
ay, the godown, where the wares were stocked, was eerily quiet. Two refrigerators rusted in the muck; large steel pipes glinted from overnight rain.

  Jaginder climbed the steps onto the raised, open platform and went into his office. A locked storage facility lined one end, containing round bolsters to lean against and thick mats that were unrolled onto the floor by the company servant at the start of each day. Opening the storage door, Jaginder maneuvered one of the heavy mats onto the vinyl-covered floor and covered it with a white sheet.

  Sweating now, he pulled out his small, wooden floor desk and placed it in its usual position, by the entrance, next to the black phone that only needed to be plugged in. His ruby-colored ledgers lay neatly in a stack in one cabinet. Sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of his desk, Jaginder opened the top ledger. The cover lifted from the bottom, thin pages folding out like an accordion. He blankly stared at the accounts, all recorded in the cryptic Lunday script used in their family to notate financial transactions.

  Sluggishly, he uncorked the inkpot resting on the flat backboard of his slanting desk and dipped the quill into its dark depths. Usually he used an imported Schaeffer pen, kept tucked in his shirt pocket. But he didn’t have his pen with him and was too tired to try to locate one within the cabinets. Jaginder checked his watch, wishing for a cup of hot chai. The servant was already fifteen minutes late. So this is what bloody happens when I’m not here.

  He turned to a blank page. Quill hovering over the sheet, he hesitantly began drawing a Ganesha, a symbol he formed at the start of every new account or transaction to signify an auspicious beginning. There was nothing favorable about what he was going to do, yet out of habit, he completed the symbol and put his pen down. Outside, he heard the scurrying of feet. The company servant, wearing a white undershirt, cotton lungi, and wool shawl, was bounding up the stairs loudly whistling the tune to “Prem Jogan ke Sundari Pio Chali” and gyrating his hips as if he were a Moghul prince with hoards of courtesans at his feet.