Haunting Bombay

by Shilpa Agarwal

  “Sahib!” he screeched, almost dropping his cup of chai as he rushed to fold his hands in greeting.

  “You’re late,” Jaginder said, annoyance scrawled upon his face.

  “Hahn-ji, Sahib-ji,” the servant stammered, sweat beads popping up on his bald head. “Bus was late. Road was being bad due to monsoon.”

  “Bring me some tea.”

  The servant scampered away in search of the resident chaiwallah, his tea and tune both forgotten in the rush to execute his orders.

  Jaginder stared outside. Just below, workers had begun to arrive at the godown, moving iron fragments, the thoka-thaki sound of their hammering filling the air with a sad, hollow rhythm. When he was a little boy, he had often accompanied his father, Omanandlal, to this very same place. Taking the train from their bungalow to nearby Reay Road Station, his favorite time to visit was Diwali and New Years when the Gujarati businessmen in the area cheerily called out “Sal Mubarak! ” and when Omanandlal kept stainless-steel trays of pistachios, almonds, cashews, cardamom pods, and golden raisins to offer to all those who visited.

  For hours, Jaginder had sat by his father, watching him check his account books, learning how to conduct business transactions, manage his underlings, and interact with clients. He imagined himself sitting in his father’s place; every action he undertook was done with full consciousness that—one day—he would. Sometimes he had stayed there until the end of the day, arriving home with his father who would slip the bathuee off his shoulders before even washing his hands, handing Jaginder the heavy cotton vest with large pockets in the front, filled with rupees, to be stashed in one of Maji’s locked metal cabinets.

  Omanandlal had been a simple man, always dressed elegantly, clean-shaven but for the small, neat moustache that represented honor and manhood for men of his class. He never lost his temper, never walked too fast, never berated his workers, and never let an impoverished man leave his door empty-handed. He had painstakingly learned to read and write in English, keeping his Hindi–English dictionary by his side and signing his checks in laborious cursive writing, the belly of his broad-tipped Parker pen filled with India ink. Jaginder always wished he could have been like his father, but the time of Indian honor and chivalry had quickly passed in favor of the new reigning empire of bureaucracy, coercion, and corruption. What choice did he have but to keep up with the times?

  In a rare sentimental act, Jaginder had preserved his father’s office after Omanandlal’s passing, rather than modernizing it like many of his colleagues had done by installing permanent walls, desks with chairs and such. Sitting cross-legged on the thick mattress, his father’s old desk in front of him, Jaginder felt the comforting weight of Omanandlal’s legacy. Though irritatingly Nimish had never shown any inclination for shipbreaking, Jaginder had always assumed that his son would take over the trade after college. He imagined them sitting side by side, he teaching Nimish the ins and outs of daily affairs until Jaginder was ready to retire. And then, he imagined, he would still visit his office each morning to socialize, but he would also be free to spend his afternoons walking along the exclusive shores of Juhu Beach. What Maji was trying to do was an insult to the natural order of things. How could he be passed over? And in favor of a mere boy?

  The company servant returned, a cup of scalding chai cradled in his hands. He placed it beside Jaginder on a small table and brought a tray of Parle-G biscuits to accompany it. Then he scampered to the storage area, pulling out mats, sheets, and bolsters, setting up the office for the day as unobtrusively as he could. Jaginder could not concentrate upon his task. He wrote, Be Known To All Men This Indenture Of Will Executed On The Fourteenth Day Of June 1960 By Mr. Jaginder Omanandlal Mittal . . . and put his quill down. Unwillingly, he remembered the first and only time he had held the infant Nimish in his arms. His child had been impossibly small, heat emanating from his fuzzy head as if it were a furnace. Don’t drop him! Aiiee, you’ll break his neck! Savita had cried out. Jaginder grew so afraid, felt so clumsy, that he never picked up his son again until he had grown into an unbreakable toddler. By then, though, Nimish squeezed uncomfortably from his father’s big arms, racing instead into the soft ones of his mother. No, Jaginder thought, Nimish never really cared for me. He picked up his quill and dipped it in the ink.

  Just then his assistant, Laloo, scurried in with the morning’s newspaper tucked into his armpit.

  “You’re here, Jaginder-ji?” Laloo’s whiskery moustache and thick hair were slicked back; the oil had saturated the collar of his polyester shirt. His tone was unusually reserved.

  “Yes. Important business.”

  “Important?”

  Laloo squatted down by the floor desk, trying to surreptitiously decipher the curling Lunday script in the ledger book as he fingered his moustache. Jaginder snapped the cover of the book shut.

  “Kya hai? ” Laloo squeaked. “Did something more happen?”

  “Something more?”

  “Since last night,” Laloo stammered, buckteeth nibbling furiously upon his lower lip.

  Jaginder rocked back, shame and anger dueling in his chest. What did Laloo know about last night? So much had happened in the course of several hours that Jaginder had trouble keeping track. It had all started with Savita’s breasts. From there he left for Rosie’s adda, then returned to the bungalow where he fought with Nimish and his mother. Then he left again. The Ambassador had broken down and he’d ended up at the Asiatica.

  Could Laloo have spotted me somewhere? Jaginder had a severe dislike for his assistant. But Laloo’s father had spent his life working for Omanandlal as a babu, a clerk, whose only qualifications were that he knew English and could use a typewriter. At one point the entire business had depended on Laloo’s father’s ability to fill in English-language forms for banks and government offices. Because of this, Jaginder felt a sense of obligation to retain Laloo, despite the fact that he was an idiot.

  “What are you insinuating?” Jaginder shouted.

  Just then, the company servant who had been listening to the conversation while setting up the office, discreetly plugged in the phone by Jaginder’s desk. Immediately it began to ring.

  “Jaginder Mittal,” Jaginder answered without missing a beat.

  “Ah. Your mother did say you would be at the office though I’ve been trying to reach you there for the last several hours.”

  “Who are you?” Jaginder felt the heat rise in his chest. Had Maji already contacted the lawyer?

  “Inspector Pascal from the police—”

  “Police? What do you want from me?”

  “Where were you last night?”

  “That’s none of your bloody business!” Jaginder shouted, keenly aware that Laloo and the company servant were both intently listening in.

  “It’s in your best interest to cooperate considering what happened.”

  “What happened is my bloody business,” Jaginder repeated. “I do not care to discuss this further. Good day, Sub-Inspector.” Jaginder slammed the phone back in the cradle and ripped out the cord. “Ye kya bloody tamasha hai? ” he shouted at Laloo and the servant who were both staring at him with mouths hanging open.

  The company servant scurried about, desperately searching for something to make him appear busy. Laloo simply extracted the morning paper from his sweaty armpit and placed it on Jaginder’s desk. “You’ve seen this already, I assume,” he said lugubriously, inwardly thrilled to have one-upped his boss.

  “Seen what?” Jaginder stood up and unfolded the Free Press Journal.

  Laloo pointed to a headline with a sharp, dirty fingernail: “Daughters of Prominent Bombay Families Missing.” The article went on to read, Pinky Mittal, age 13, youngest daughter of Jaginder and Savita Mittal disappeared from her family home in Malabar Hill at approximately one in the morning. At approximately the same time, their neighbor Lovely Lawate, age 17, only daughter of Mrs. Vimla Lawate also disappeared. The two cases appear to be connected. Further down was an article deta
iling a missing motorbike, a ruby red Triumph 500cc, the only one of its kind in all of Bombay.

  “This is a bloody joke,” Jaginder said, smashing the back of his hand against the paper, recalling the college boys’ conversation at the Asiatica.

  Desperately trying to hide his excitement at being involved, however tangentially, in this unfolding drama, Laloo rocked from leg to leg like an overanxious child.

  “Call me a taxi,” Jaginder roared at the company servant.

  “I’m very sorry,” Laloo said gravely, though he was not in the least.

  “She’s not my daughter,” Jaginder retorted. Even so, he tucked the newspaper under his arm as he walked out onto the unpaved street, impatiently waiting for a taxi to take him home.

  Along with the newspapers, including the Free Press Journal, a stream of relatives and friends arrived at Maji’s green gates, each hoping to be the first on the scene to express concern about Pinky’s abduction. Relatives far and wide all appeared wearing muted colors almost as if in mourning, keeping their eyes open, their alarm tucked behind their ears, as Savita revealed that their ex-ayah was the culprit.

  They packed into the bungalow like overlapping squares of burfiin a box of sweets, sweaty bodies sticking against each other, silver-embroidered dupattas drooping in the morning humidity. The only one undisturbed by the commotion was the baby ghost who, in her almost human like state, now required regular periods of rest. Wearied from her nightly activities, she had curled up in the bathroom pipes and fallen asleep with a tiny thumb in her mouth. The bathroom door was bolted, the jute lines taken down.

  The rains had finally ceased sometime during the night though the sky remained dark. The back living room, which was rarely used except by Kuntal as her sleeping quarters, was finally thrown open. A contingent of bitter men, most of whom had been dragged out of their beds much earlier than they preferred on a Sunday morning, oozed into the room’s stale air seeking relief from the heat, congestion, and their furtive memories of the ayah.

  “She was too pretty for her own good,” a middle-aged man commented, recollecting her fitted choli blouses, the gold embroidery along the neckline hypnotizingly brilliant.

  “Her type was meant for prostituting, nothing else,” said Maji’s cousin, Uddhav Uncle, resentfully. He remembered nonchalantly leaning against a doorframe as he had seen Raj Kapoor do in the movies, throwing a suggestive look at Avni’s sari-clad hips. She had simply walked past him as if he didn’t exist.

  “How do you know about such things bhai?” asked another teasingly, slapping him roughly on the back. “We better get you remarried, with a proper wife to take care of your needs.”

  Other men smoked on the verandah, stealing smug glances at the have-nots—the unrelated curiosity-seekers, the beggars, and a throng of three-legged dogs—that congregated on the other side of the chained gate. Parvati stood guard, brandishing a large umbrella which she swung with great vigor at anyone who attempted to scale the gate for a peek.

  Their neighbor, Vimla Lawate, had unobtrusively brought over her personal cook who worked alongside Cook Kanj, boiling pots of chai and preparing lunch for the crowd. After her initial appearance, Savita had barricaded herself in her room trying to stem the flow of milk from her breasts, Kuntal comforting her. Seeking relief from the crowds, Dheer and Tufan knocked on their mother’s door and quickly fell asleep inside. Nimish remained at his grandmother’s side in the parlor, directing traffic, answering questions on behalf of the family, slipping temporarily into the position of head of the household. It was a burden he accepted with intelligence and grace. Maji, slumped upon her dais with a cup of chai, noted this with pride.

  There had been no time that morning for her to reflect upon either Panditji’s or the tantrik’s words. For the first time since the death of her husband, Maji had forgone her morning rounds. Instead, she had to become an unwilling hostess: accepting the well-wishes of her relations while ignoring their unspoken accusations and the glint in their eyes. Is this the end of Maji, the downfall of the Mittal family?

  Maji grasped her forehead in an effort to stem the rising pain in her head. The bungalow swelled with the intensity of the people packed between its damp walls, each pressing for a bit of space, each vying to show that he or she had been the closest to Pinky and so, by corollary, was the most affected by her disappearance. The din—shuffling legs, uncomfortable coughs, restrained conversations, chai cups clinking against saucers, an occasional fart—grew more insistent, as if in expectation of something happening, as if in anticipation of relief. A phalanx of ladies gathered along the long sofas, whispering away, each clutching a teacup to her bosom as if a thief were loose in the bungalow.

  “Abducted, can you believe?” said one wearing glasses with plastic frames so large that her brightly lipsticked mouth was the only other visible feature on her face.

  “In my day, ayahs did as they were told, hai-hai. Nobody beats their servants anymore,” reflected an elderly auntie with a sharp tongue, drifting into comforting nostalgia.

  “I knew the ayah was a bad seed from the moment I saw her. Hahn, don’t you remember how I tried to convince Maji but she didn’t listen, and now look, utter chaos,” said a third, a no-nonsense woman with a gibbous protrusion on the tip of her nose.

  “She had six toes on her left foot,” Parvati interjected, appearing with a pot of tea. “Chai anyone?”

  The ladies on the couch drew back with a sharp breath.

  “She was a witch, I’m telling you,” the big-glasses auntie reflected, latching onto this tidbit of information as if she had known it all along.

  “In my day such unnaturals lived in the villages only,” clucked the nostalgic one. “Nowadays, they think nothing of moving into your very home.”

  “Maji must go on pilgrimage to Mehndipur, seek Lord Balaji’s mercy. Otherwise, utter chaos,” said the third, clicking her purse snap as if she were about to leave, though she secretly hoped that the drama would stretch on for the better part of the week.

  “Only a tantrik can get rid of such corruption, I’m telling you,” warned Big Glasses, pursing her lips and peering around the room as if to spot the evil eye.

  “Tantrik-mantrik,” said the nostalgic auntie, delicately biting into a diamond of besan burfi. “In my day, a proper thrashing would have sufficed.”

  Jaginder stepped into the bungalow, still wearing his kurta from the night before, now wrinkled, stained with dried bits of mud, and smelling faintly of smoke and stale liquor. Conversations died out as every eye in the bungalow focused on him: Look at the poor fellow, must have been out the whole night searching for Pinky.

  Maji felt the quiet awe that now surrounded Jaginder. How easy it had been to cover up his drinking all these years, the disintegration of his relationship with Savita, the loss of respect from his sons. These secrets, like others, had circulated safely only from Mittal ear to servant ear and back again, connecting the household in a web of complicity. Maji glanced towards Nimish, who struggled to contain his rage, and touched him softly on the arm.

  Jaginder stood frozen, resentful of the meddlesome crowd and Maji and Nimish’s tight alliance. He puffed out his chest, ready to blindly attack, to do anything to save his reputation, his good name in the community. As he looked at his mother, however, he noticed a sadness in her eyes, the small bald patches at her temples, the tremor of her hands. And it suddenly struck him that his mother was an old woman, worn from having to be so strong all these years, to single-handedly hold the family together. And he realized that, somewhere along the way, he had failed her. After his daughter drowned, he had allowed himself to do the very same—but in an endless river of indulgence, irresponsibility, and inebriation. And he had foolishly thought that his family would not notice.

  But last night had been different. The fragile tenderness he and Savita shared had finally been crushed. Nimish had torn open the thin veil concealing his father’s secret. And Maji had thrown him out, staking the family’s future on
his son. Jaginder thought of his aborted efforts to disinherit Nimish, and shame and sorrow flooded his chest as it had back at Rosie’s adda. He wanted another chance to win their love, their respect. He couldn’t imagine living apart from his family. He suddenly felt weak, as if every muscle in his body was straining to maintain a facade. As he stood there in front of his mother and son, he wanted to surrender, to accept responsibility at last for his misdeeds. But all of his relations were packed into the bungalow, as if in a courtroom, watching, waiting to render their verdict. It was too much humiliation for him to bear. He remained defiant.

  “You didn’t find her?” a relative finally asked as a murmur passed through the crowd.

  Jaginder shook his head.

  Slowly, Maji extended her hand towards her son. She had noticed Jaginder’s hesitation, the slight slump of his shoulders. He was asking for her mercy, even as he stood before her. Jaginder knew better than anyone that Maji would never risk tarnishing the family’s name by publicly shaming him. Yet, he had come back upon hearing the news of Pinky’s disappearance. He had come back.

  “Come, beta,” she said. “We were worried.”

  Jaginder stood stiffly, trying to swallow his surprise at the gentleness in his mother’s voice. She had not used that endearment—beta—since before he was married. If the bungalow had not been packed with spectators, he would have fallen at her feet and wept.

  Outside the clouds abruptly burst with a terrible roar; rain pelted the rooftop and drenched the interior in gloomy darkness. Lamps were switched on and windows closed. The water pipes began to rattle and whoosh. Clutching purses tightly, ladies furtively looked around the bungalow. A leak sprung in the ceiling and then another, and a third. Water dripped rhythmically, ominously, upon the guests below.

  Nimish caught Maji’s eye.

  “Parvati, get some buckets,” Maji ordered, trying to hide her rising horror. From somewhere in the back hallway came a tinny noise.