Haunting Bombay

by Shilpa Agarwal

  “It’s not me you want, is it? Is it?” Savita cried out. And then, before she could control herself, she flung the Indian attars one by one, shattering the crystal vials against the wall. They released a cacophony of scents so noxious that she barely reached the bathroom before vomiting.

  “What’s going on in there?” Maji yelled from the parlour when the first vial hit the wall.

  “Mummy!” Nimish raced to the bathroom. “Are you okay?”

  The twins followed with equal anxiety, pawing at the door with sticky fingers.

  “Go!” Savita hissed to all of them. “Just leave me alone!”

  She wiped her face, brushed her teeth, and then urinated—scanning the small, neat room with a sad whimper, as if to refuse the degradation the next four days would bring. She wondered now what her life might have been had she accepted one of the other marriage proposals that had arrived before Jaginder’s. One had been seriously considered by her parents, a boy with first-class biodata whose father wielded considerable influence in the Congress Party. Savita’s mother had been thrilled. But when Savita saw the boy, secretly spying on him at a social event, she flatly refused. He’s too short!

  So what? her mother had responded, regaling her with the story of Lord Vishnu’s fifth avatar. Vamna conquered the universe in only two strides and he was a dwarf!

  As Savita stood and retied the nala of her pants, she tried to recall what exactly about Jaginder had made her say yes. His photo, though fair and handsome, had not made her heart flutter. Nor had his bio-data. Simply put, she had acquiesced because there was no apparent reason to say no. And here she was so many years later, having successfully delivered three sons and ensured the continuation of the Mittal family for another generation. Here she was, too, forsaking her daughter because the sacrifice required to do otherwise was too great. Savita pulled the chain and watched intently as the last bit of water in the household was flushed away.

  The ghost woke in the bathroom pipe with a start. Usually she found a short nap to be refreshing, soaking up residual moisture while she slept. But this evening she felt strangely lethargic, and terribly thirsty. She slid through the length of the pipe, searching for relief, but unbelievably, the entire length of the cylinder was dry. The ghost squeezed herself through the faucet and landed in a blue plastic bucket. The effort exhausted her. She had lingered for thirteen years in the bungalow, she and the other inhabitants coexisting by some strange set of rituals—a bolted door, a memory repressed. Then, Pinky!

  Pinky had unbolted the door, had discovered her, and had kept coming back to the bathroom, again and again, determined. And the ghost grew stronger, nourished by her presence, by her story, until she was ready to reveal the truth of her death. But when that moment arrived, Pinky had run away, not wanting to believe her. Hurt and angry, the ghost had struck back. And from that moment, the bungalow had spiraled into devastation.

  The ghost wanted everything then, she wanted her family to suffer and she wanted the power only the monsoons could give her. With that power, she intended to infl ict harm to the core of the Mittal family.

  She vowed to kill Maji.

  In the parlour, Maji called to Nimish, “The sun has fallen, chain the gates.”

  “But Papa?” the twins cried out in union.

  “And Gulu,” said Parvati. “Neither has returned.”

  “Chain the gates,” Maji ordered. Her mouth held steady in a thin line, but the crevices that surrounded it deepened.

  “He didn’t come back!” Savita cried out, wanting to curse Jaginder, wanting to yell out, That lying, cowardly, bloody bastard!

  Tufan began to cry. Nimish put on his boots and walked into the twilight. He opened the gate and peeked down the road. Now’s my chance, he thought, to put one foot in front of the other, to find Pinky, to know the truth. Behind him, the bungalow clawed at him, suffocating him with the sufferings of its inhabitants. The storm lashed at his face, smearing his spectacles. Nimish stepped out onto the street. Ahead of him, the empty road beckoned. A row of gates in pinks, greens, and blues, illuminated by winking yellow lamps, stood barricaded to the night. There was so much he wanted from his life, yet he remained trapped within the tiny confines of the bungalow, within the tightly knit expectations of his family.

  He stood in the middle of the road and lifted his arms up to the heavens. For a moment, he allowed the rain to drench his upturned face, washing away his responsibilities, freeing him to walk down the street and out of his family’s life. You mustn’t put off what you think right, E. M. Forster’s character had said. That is why India is in such a plight, because we put off things. That line from A Passage To India had stayed in his head, finally goading him to action on this rain-swept night.

  I have to find Lovely! he resolved.

  He grasped at the memory of their encounter under the tamarind tree, the silkiness of her dupatta against his cheek. He couldn’t possibly sit around the bungalow for four days while Lovely was missing and put his foolish faith in the Bombay police. Unexpectedly hearing the sound of an engine approaching from the main road, he dropped his arms. The headlights of a familiar car came careening towards him. In that moment, as Nimish realized he might be crushed under its wheels, he had one thought—

  She will die without me.

  The Mercedes skidded to a stop.

  “Nimish! Nimish!” Jaginder urgently rolled down his window.

  “What the bloody hell are you doing in the middle of the road?”

  “What are you doing here?” Nimish shouted, his whole body straining as if bracing for the impact of the car.

  “I was taking care of some things.” Jaginder said, shielding his face from the rain. “I thought I was too late.”

  “You are too late! I’m going!”

  “Going? Going where?”

  “Lovely’s still missing!”

  “Arré, hero,” Jaginder said as he hopped out of the car. “How do you plan on finding her, eh?”

  Nimish cast his face down to hide the torment in his heart.

  “Be sensible, beta,” Jaginder said, putting his arm around his son’s shoulder. “Inspector Pascal’s one of Bombay’s best. You know nothing of police work.”

  Nimish felt his father’s words mocking him, once again pointing to his inadequacies. You mustn’t put off what you think right. He shrugged off his father’s arm. “I’m going!” he yelled, dashing away.

  “Nimish!” Jaginder called out, running after him. “Stop! Don’t be a bloody fool!”

  Nimish ran faster. In front of him lay possibilities: hidden, unknown, exhilarating.

  “Nimi!” Savita came screaming into the driveway. “Beta, come back! Come back!”

  She will die without me, Nimish thought again, realizing with a shock that the she was not Lovely as he had imagined, but his mother. He felt his determination falter. Involuntarily, he slowed. Jaginder came charging up behind him, pouncing upon him with his burly arms.

  “Let go!” Nimish fought back, punching his father in his chest. “Let me go!”

  Savita caught up and threw herself upon her son, clasping him to her. “You’re the only one who cares for me,” she whispered into his neck, “the only one.” And then, coldly, to her husband, “You came back?”

  “I promised, didn’t I?”

  “Come, beta,” Savita said, pulling Nimish onto the driveway while Jaginder firmly gripped his arm from the other side.

  There was nothing more Nimish could do. Fighting back tears of shame, he watched as Jaginder chained the front gate, trapping them all within the bungalow’s merciless grip.

  The deluge struck against the windows of the pediatric ward at Bombay Hospital, lulling some of the children into torpor, and frightening others into crying frenzies. Pinky slept through it in a feverish delirium. She woke sometime in the middle of the night, droplets of water beading her face. The barred window just next to her cot seemed to have blown open. A chilly breeze rapidly worked its way under her blankets. Pink
y threw them off. Now, she thought, I have to go now.

  There was still a way, still some hope, Pinky believed, recalling how she had once thought of the ghost as a sister, her cousin-sister. There had been love then, in the tiny space of the hallway bathroom, a coming together across boundaries, across fear. And then Pinky had refused to accept the image with the disembodied hand, refused to believe that the drowning could have been anything more than an accident. And that’s when the ghost broke away from her. Now, faced with Lovely’s terrifying disappearance, Pinky was willing to do anything to find out the truth.

  Outside, a mimosa tree strained against the wind, its branches scraped against the black window-bars, depositing a flurry of leaves just inside. In the flash of lightning that followed, Pinky thought she saw something hanging from the tree but couldn’t be sure as the moon was shrouded by clouds. The only light came from the little lamp that stuck out from the pillar behind her cot. She was tired, so tired as she bent down to slip on her sandals. The branches swept against the window, as if reaching in to grab her. Pinky glanced around the room, confirming that all its other occupants were fast asleep before standing in front of the open window. She looked outside at the tree, feeling something familiar—a dark, frightening presence. A voice whispered to her, Come, come. It was deep, gritty, unmistakable. The grill fell away, the tree beckoned. I have to escape, Pinky told herself, I have to reach the ghost before it’s too late. And Nimish, I have to find him too.

  She squeezed through the window opening, assessed the darkness below, and jumped.

  SCRIPTURES & SEX

  Gulu made his way to Falkland Road in the red-light district of Kamathipura, north of Victoria Terminus train station, to find Chinni. She would be the only one, he knew, able to comfort him in his troubled state. The gloomy road was lined with decaying wooden buildings, painted in greens and blues, covered in thick layers of grime, rust and urine; the ground-floor doors were heavily padlocked. The lower section of the structures consisted of open windows fitted with bars, cages behind which cheaper prostitutes beckoned, pulling up their garish pink saris to expose their legs. The upper stories had open windows with shutters, each sporting a red Chinese lantern upon which the brothel’s license number was pasted. Girls leaned out alluringly while plaiting jasmine into each other’s hair. Equally dilapidated hotels were nestled within the street, their owners selling cold drinks on the front steps and illegal country alcohol from special rooms in the back.

  The road itself was packed with taxicabs, stray goats, water-carriers, chaiwallahs, the homeless street prostitutes forced to rent cots, and enterprising vendors, one selling a grayish solution in a vial promising an extra burst of vitality to the men entering the brothels. Paanwal-lahs sat by their carts offering chara-ki-goliyaan, balls of hashish and opium, some with a pinch of cocaine, along with less hallucinogenic offerings and the suggestive “bed-breaker” aphrodisiac, paans, each wrapped in a thick, moist leaf. Men squatted over card games just in front of the brothels, gambling away what little money they had earned that day. Others were lined up at the cinema, Pila House—the venue of Parsee theater a hundred years ago before its decline—lured by a poster depicting a leggy Hollywood blonde reclining on a divan, even though the exiting crowd had been visibly disappointed by the Indian Censor Board’s extensive cuts. Filmi music undulated onto the streets along with hijras flaunting their bodies, teasing homosexual customers back to their own special brothel.

  The doorway to 24 Falkland Road where Chinni lived reeked of waste: garbage festered in the corners with swarms of flies lifting up and settling back down in unison, vomit swam in the gutters, and cigarette butts littered the entrance. Used and discarded FLs–French letters–floated in the slime, little opaque vessels carrying human seed into oblivion. The paint had long ago peeled away from walls, bodily fluids: urine, spit, semen had rotted the wood underneath. Rats scurried along the open drain gang-style, leaving their telltale crisscross graffiti upon a man slumped in a stairwell. A street-hardened prostitute, no more than fifteen, stood at the doorstep smoking a bidi, her arm thrown back to accentuate her breasts in their tightly darted blouse. Gulu nodded to her familiar face, as he climbed the narrow staircase to the third floor where Chinni spent the majority of her life, on-duty from 6 p.m. until 1 a.m., the rest of the time undergoing a torturous process of tweezing, bleaching, waxing, and applying stinging creams all in an effort to rid her body of unsightly hair, especially in the nether regions. Only when she was deemed hair-free and thus, clean, could she begin servicing her clientele: exceptionally hispid men whose breath smelled of rancid mutton.

  The top of the third-floor stairs led into a impossibly narrow hallway connected to a small, dimly lit room festering with the smell of unbridled sex.

  “Ay bai,” Gulu called to the grossly overweight madam who was chewing a paan while reclining on a low, brightly covered sofa. “Darwaza khol.”

  The madam briefly studied Gulu in the dim light, deciding whether or not to open the folding iron gate.

  “It’s me, Gulu,” he said, exasperated by the unusual scrutiny. Normally, during his regular visits every other Tuesday, the gate was thrown open and Gulu welcomed in as if he were family.

  “Oh ho,” the madam teased, “why didn’t you say? I didn’t recognize your kalia trouble-making face. Today’s not Tuesday, is it?”

  The wall behind her was a shiny mustard yellow with a lamp hanging in its center. Heavy, velveteen drapes hung from the ceiling to the linoleum floor. A brass statue of Lakshmi, goddess of wealth and prosperity, adorned a cabinet on the far end of the room. A puja vessel with a lighted candle and a steel container of crimson-colored powder rested on a side table. The madam had just finished blessing her staff, as she did every evening before the start of their work. Two of her six girls, both wearing low-cut blouses, sat on the torn, green, Rexene-plastic covered sofa with her—one massaging her back, the other her feet while waiting for customers. One squatted as she cleaned the floor with a soiled rag. The other three, including Chinni, were already working in the back cubicles, each separated by six-foot tall wooden partition.

  “Chaiwallah bulao,” the madam ordered one of her girls who leaned out of the balcony window and called for tea while expertly flirting with a potential customer.

  Gulu sat on a rickety chair, waiting for the chai, listening to the low moans and high laughter, a subtle backdrop to the more blaring sounds emanating from the street. He touched the Bhagavad Gita tucked into his vest. Gulu was illiterate but Chinni had studied through primary school. It was she who, postcoitally, read verses out loud to him from the holy scriptures.

  The chai boy came and went. Gulu sipped slowly at his tea while the other girls teased him.

  “Why only Chinni all the time?” one halfheartedly said. “We are also sugary-sweet.”

  Gulu smiled and shook his head at the dark-complexioned girls, both devadasis from the villages of Karnataka. They had been dedicated by their parents to their local temples out of devotion to the Goddess Yellama or of a need for money, and subsequently sold to the Bombay brothel.

  Just then, a young man appeared, sporting a crisp dhobi-washed white shirt, perfectly creased wool and terylene pants, Zodiac leather belt (still unbuckled), and polished black Bata shoes—the standard attire for boys from decent families or medical students from the nearby Sir J. J. Hospital.

  Gulu self-consciously smoothed his shirt, dark so it could be worn for several days without needing washing.

  The madam’s eagle-eyes momentarily rested upon a young prostitute, assessing her. “Go wash up,” she ordered before leaning on a button which buzzed insistently by Chinni’s cot. “Chinni’s fat fellow’s taking too long,” she said sourly. The corners of her mouth permanently curled downwards.

  Soon thereafter, her client waddled into the room, hastily tying the dhoti over his flabby gut and rushed out the door before the madam could charge him extra. Chinni followed, wiping his saliva from her face with the end of he
r palloo.

  “You?” she said, surprised when she saw Gulu. He had never before visited her during one of his working days.

  He nodded.

  “Oh pho!” she exclaimed, noticing his tucked away hand. “What happened?”

  “Nothing. Small accident.”

  Chinni shrugged her shoulders and walked back to her cubicle, Gulu following just behind. Usually, when he visited her, he paid thirty rupees to keep her to himself for the duration of the evening. Now, smelling another man’s sweat on her, he felt repulsed, nauseated. The dirty green walls closed in around him, the dingy floral bedspread felt warm, damp.

  “Go clean up.” Gulu ordered her to the back where a filthy toilet pit, a tub of cold water, and a cement drain served as the communal bathroom. There purple crystals of potassium permanganate were diluted in water every evening as a postcoital antiseptic or, in more concentrated doses, to induce abortions. Babies, although plentiful in the brothels, spelled nothing but trouble for prostitutes. A Falkland Road woman need not be pretty, need not even have all her limbs. But youth, extreme youth, and virginal tautness were their most coveted assets.

  “What,” Chinni said scornfully, “so you can pretend I’m not a whore?”

  Nevertheless, she washed and changed into a fresh sari, reappearing with a strand of jasmine in her hair. Gulu relaxed, reaching into her blouse to pluck its juicy contents.

  Chinni had been the wife of a lowly bank clerk, living with her husband in a one-room chawl in Byculla. She was sold into prostitution upon his untimely death and her infant son taken away from her. Afterward, Chinni’s first thought was to kill herself. But the madam, experienced with breaking-in girls, chained her to the cot by her ankles and made sure she was watched all the time. You’re missing your son, nah? she had asked Chinni after several weeks had gone by, knitting together her overplucked eyebrows in an effort to appear sympathetic. Sunno, be a good girl and I’ll arrange for you to see him after half your debts are paid off.