My wife was now waking up. Chaddah gently placed the tray down on a rickety stool and respectfully intoned, ‘Your tea, Begam Sahib.’ My wife didn’t like Chaddah’s obsequious joke, but the tea service looked so good that she couldn’t refuse it. Her mood improved after she drank two cups, and in an insinuating tone she said, ‘You two already had your tea?’
I said nothing, but Chaddah bowed and then confessed, ‘Yes, it was wrong of us, but we knew you’d forgive us.’
My wife smiled, and Chaddah laughed loudly. ‘We two are very high-class pigs—nothing is forbidden to us!’ he said. ‘Let’s go, we’ll take you to the mosque.’
My wife didn’t like this joke either, and in fact, she hated everything about Chaddah. While she basically hated all my friends, she reserved a special hatred for him because he mocked social conventions. But I don’t think he ever thought about etiquette, or if he did he felt that such nonsense was a waste of time, on par with a game of Snakes and Ladders. His eyes gleamed as he looked at my angry wife, and then he called out, ‘Prince of the Country of Kebabs! Go get a tonga, a Rolls Royce one!’
The Prince of the Country of Kebabs left with Chaddah for another room. My wife and I found ourselves alone, and I tried to convince her that she shouldn’t be angry. I explained that sometimes you find yourself in circumstances you never could have imagined, but that the best way to get through them is to let things go. But as usual she didn’t listen to my Confucian advice and continued to grumble to herself. Then the Prince of the Country of Kebabs came in to announce the Rolls Royce tonga outside, and we set off for Parbhat Nagar.
It was fortunate that only my film buddy’s wife was there. Chaddah asked her to entertain my wife for a while and in doing so said, ‘Wives prefer their own company. When we come back, we’ll see how you two ladies got along.’ Then he turned to me, ‘Manto, let’s get your friend from the studio.’
Chaddah went about things in such a whirlwind that he never gave anyone time to contradict him. He grabbed my arm and led me outside before my wife could stop us. Once we were in the tonga, Chaddah relaxed, ‘Okay, that’s over with. Now what are we going to do?’ Then he burst out laughing. ‘Mummy! Great Mummy!’
I was about to ask him who exactly Mummy was when Chaddah started talking about something and I couldn’t get a word in.
The tonga returned to Chaddah’s house. It was called Sayeedah Cottage, but Chaddah called it Kabidah Cottage because he said everyone living there was depressed. And yet later I found out that this wasn’t true.
The cottage looked uninhabited from the outside, but in fact many people lived there. Everyone worked for the same film company, which paid monthly salaries every three months and then not even in full. When I was introduced one by one to everyone who lived there, I learned they were all assistant directors: some were chief assistant directors, and some were aides to these assistants and some aides to these aides. Every other person was an assistant to someone and was trying to raise cash in order to set up his own film company, though if you judged them by the way they carried themselves, you would have thought they were all film stars. Back then it was the era of wartime rationing and yet no one had a ration card, so they bought on the black market even those things you could get cheap with just a little effort. They went to the tracks in the racing season; otherwise, they gambled with predictable results. They lost money every day.
There were so many people living in the house that the garage was also used as a living space for the family of a woman named Shirin and her husband who, maybe just to break the monotony of their pursuits, wasn’t an assistant director but worked for the film company as a driver, although I never saw him there and had no idea when he came and went. Shirin was very pretty and had a little boy who was the centre of attention whenever anyone had free time, and yet she herself spent most of her time in the garage.
The best part of the house went to Chaddah and his two buddies—two actors who got roles but weren’t yet stars. One was Sayeed, whose stage name was Ranjit Kumar. Chaddah would say, ‘Sayeedah Cottage got its name from this bastard, otherwise it would be Kabidah Cottage.’ Sayeed was handsome but didn’t talk much, and sometimes Chaddah would call him ‘Tortoise’ because he did everything so slowly.
I never found out the real name of the other actor but everyone called him Gharib Nawaz. He was from a rich Hyderabadi family and had come to Pune to get into acting. His salary was 250 rupees a month, yet he had been working for a year and had received that much just once, and that time he had given it to Chaddah who was being pressured by some bloodthirsty Pathan to pay back a loan. He wrote romances for the film company, and sometimes he tried his hand at poetry. Everyone who lived in the Cottage had an outstanding debt with him.
There were also the brothers, Shakil and Aqil. Both were assistants to some assistant director and always wrapped up in impossible schemes.
The three big ones—I mean, Chaddah, Sayeed, and Gharib Nawaz—treated Shirin extremely well, but they never went into the garage at the same time. There was no fixed visiting schedule, and if they found themselves together in the house’s main room, one would go to the garage where he would stay for a while, sitting and talking to Shirin about household affairs, and the other two would busy themselves doing their own things. Those who were the assistant types did favours for Shirin: sometimes they brought things back from the market, sometimes they ran laundry errands, and sometimes they comforted her crying child.
But nobody was depressed—just the opposite. On those few occasions when they turned to talk about what was wrong with their lives, they did so cheerfully. They were really an interesting cast of characters.
We were just about to push open the cottage’s gate when Gharib Nawaz came out. Seeing him gave Chaddah an idea, and he took some money out of his pocket. Without counting it, he gave some to Gharib Nawaz and told him, ‘We need four bottles of Scotch. If this isn’t enough, you’ll have to make up the difference. If there’s change, give it back to me.’
Gharib Nawaz smiled mischievously. Chaddah laughed loudly, looked in my direction and then said to Gharib Nawaz, ‘This is Mr One Two, but I can’t let you talk to him because he’s been drinking rum. If there’s some Scotch tonight, you can talk to him then. But please go get the Scotch.’
Gharib Nawaz left and we went inside. Chaddah let out a loud yawn and picked up the half finished bottle of rum. He held the bottle up to the light, glanced to see how much was left and shouted, ‘Oh, Prince of Kazakhstan!’ When the servant didn’t appear, Chaddah poured himself a large drink and said, ‘The idiot must have passed out drunk!’
After finishing his drink, Chaddah became worried. ‘Hey, you shouldn’t have dragged Bhabhi here. I swear, it’s a big responsibility!’ But then he comforted himself. ‘I don’t think she’ll get bored where we left her.’
‘Yes,’ I answered, ‘she’s okay over there. For the time being she’ll forget about wanting to kill me.’ Then I poured some rum into my glass even though the stuff tasted like rotten molasses.
The storage room had two iron-barred windows through which we could see an empty lot. From out there someone shouted out Chaddah’s name. I was startled. I looked again and saw the music director, Vankatre. I couldn’t figure out what race he was—Mongolian, African, Aryan, or God knows what else. You would be about to decide on one when you would see something that contradicted your first impression and force you to revise your thoughts again. Actually, he was Maratha, and yet, instead of having an aquiline nose like Shivaji he had this surprising apparatus, broad and pressed down, which he said was necessary for producing good nasal sounds. When he saw me, he shouted, ‘Manto! Sir Manto Seth!’
Chaddah shouted back in an even louder voice, ‘To hell with all this sir-seth business! Come on, get in here!’ Vankatre immediately came in. Laughing, he pulled a bottle of rum out of his pocket and set it on the footstool and said, ‘Hell, I went over to Mummy’s. She said my friend had come, and I wondered who the hell i
t could be—hell, I had no idea it was fucking Manto!’
Chaddah thumped Vankatre on his pumpkin-shaped head and said, ‘Stop fucking talking about him, would you? At least you brought some rum.’ Vankatre rubbed his head. Then he picked up my empty glass and poured himself a drink. ‘Manto, when we met today,’ he said, indicating Chaddah, ‘the first words out of this bastard’s mouth were how he felt like drinking, but I didn’t have any money and so didn’t know what to do.’
Chaddah pounded him on the head again, ‘Sit down, will you? You make it sound like you really cared.’
‘Hey, if I didn’t care, who the hell brought this big bottle? Your dad give it to me?’ Then Vankatre slugged down his rum. Chaddah didn’t pay any attention to Vankatre’s chatter but asked, ‘So what did Mummy say? Anything? When will Mozelle come? Oh, yes—the platinum blonde!’
Vankatre wanted to say something but Chaddah grabbed my arm and began talking. ‘Manto, I swear to God, she’s so great. I’d heard of platinum blondes but yesterday I saw my first. Her hair is like delicate silver threads! It’s great! I swear to God, Manto! Long live Mummy!’ Then he looked fiercely at Vankatre and snapped, ‘You idiot, Vankatre! Repeat with me—“Long live Mummy!” ’
Chaddah and Vankatre shouted together, ‘Long live Mummy!’ After several rounds of shouting, Vankatre tried again to answer Chaddah’s question, but Chaddah stopped him, ‘Okay, enough of that. I’m all emotional now.’ Then he went on, ‘You know how the beloved’s hair is usually black, like black clouds? This is something else.’ He turned to me again. ‘Manto, it’s very confusing. Her hair is like beautiful silver threads! But I can’t say it’s silver, and I don’t know what colour platinum is because I’ve never seen it. It’s a strange colour, a mixture of steel and silver.’
Vankatre finished his second shot and suggested, ‘And then add a little XXX rum to that.’
This made Chaddah furious and he shouted, ‘Don’t talk shit!’ He turned again to me with a compassionate look and said, ‘Man, I have really become emotional! Yes—that colour—I swear to God it’s unprecedented. Have you seen it? You’ll find it on a fish’s stomach—no, no, not just their stomachs—on pomfret fish—what are those things on fish called? No, no—on snakes—on their delicate scales—yes, scales—just that colour—scales—I learned that word from a fisherman. It’s such a beautiful thing and yet such an absurd word! In Punjabi we call it ‘chane’—shining—yes, that—it’s exactly how her hair is. Her hair is so beautiful, it could kill you!’ Then he suddenly got up. ‘Fuck all this! Man, I’ve got all emotional!’
Then Vankatre asked very innocently, ‘What do you mean by “emotional”?’
‘It means “sentimental”,’ Chaddah answered. ‘But you won’t understand, you, the son of Balaji Baji Rao and Nana Farnavis!’
Vankatre poured himself another shot and turned to me. ‘This bastard Chaddah thinks I don’t know any English,’ he said. ‘Hey I graduated from high school! Fuck, my father … he loved me so much … he.… ’
Chaddah interrupted him, ‘He made you into Tansen. He twisted your nose so you could make good nasal sounds. He taught you how to sing dhrupads when you were still a child. When you cried for milk, it was in Mian ki Todi, and when you cried to go to the bathroom it was in Adana and the first words out of your mouth were in Patdeep. And your father … he was a great musical guru, better than even Baiju Bawara. And now you’re better than your father, and that’s why your name is One-Up Vankatre!’ He turned to me. ‘Manto, this bastard … whenever he drinks, he starts going on about how great his father was. Why should I care if his daddy loved him? And should I tear up my BA and throw it out the window just because this fool graduated from high school?’
Vankatre wanted to fend off this storm of insults, but Chaddah wouldn’t let him. ‘Be quiet! I already said I’ve become emotional—yes, the colour of pomfret fish—no, no—like a snake’s fine scales—yes, that’s just that colour—God only knows how Mummy charmed this girl out of hiding.’
Then Vankatre said, ‘Ask for a peti. I’m going to play something.’
Chaddah laughed. ‘Sit down, will you, you idiot savant!’
Vankatre poured the rest of the rum into his glass and then said, ‘Manto, if he doesn’t get this platinum girl, Mr Chaddah is going to go to some peak in the Himalayas and become a yogi.’ And then he tossed down his drink.
Vankatre started to open the bottle he had brought and then said, ‘But, Manto, this girl’s really great.’
‘We’ll see,’ I said.
‘Actually tonight—tonight I’m going to give a party,’ Chaddah said. ‘Fortunately for me, you came and so Mr One-Hundred-Eighty Mehtaji gave me that advance, otherwise things would have been really tough. Tonight … tonight …’ Chaddah began to sing in a very coarse voice, ‘Tonight, don’t play any sad melodies …’
Poor Vankatre was about to protest against Chaddah’s awful singing when Gharib Nawaz and Ranjit Kumar came in. Both had two bottles of Scotch, which they set down on the table. I knew Ranjit Kumar well enough, but we weren’t close friends and so we exchanged only a couple words, ‘When did you come?’
‘I came just today.’ Then we toasted each other and began to drink.
Chaddah really had become quite emotional, and whatever the conversation he brought up the platinum blonde. Ranjit Kumar finished off a fourth of a bottle, Gharib Nawaz drank three shots of Scotch and everyone got drunk, except me (I was saved because I was used to drinking a lot). I guessed from their conversation that the four of them were badly infatuated with the new girl Mummy had brought in from God knows where. Her name was Phyllis. She worked in a hairdressing salon somewhere in Pune and usually went around with a boy who looked like a eunuch. Gharib Nawaz wanted her so badly that he was ready to sell his Hyderabadi inheritance to get her. Chaddah had only one thing going for him, his looks. Vankatre was sure his singing would be enough to win her. And Ranjit Kumar thought that coming on strong would be the best approach. But in the end everyone knew that Mummy herself would decide the lucky one, the one who would get Phyllis, the platinum blonde.
As they went on about Phyllis, suddenly Chaddah looked at his watch and said to me, ‘To hell with this girl! Let’s go, your wife’s probably getting upset over there. The only problem is I might get sentimental there too. Well, look after me, will you?’ He shook the last few drops into his mouth and shouted out, ‘Oh, Prince of the Country of Mummies! Oh, Prince of Egypt!’
The Prince of Egypt appeared rubbing his eyes as though after centuries of rest he had just been excavated from some tomb. Chaddah flicked some rum on his face and said, ‘Get us two tongas, two Egyptian chariots!’
The tongas arrived, and we got in and headed for Parbhat Nagar.
Harish, my old film buddy, was at home. The inconveniences of entertaining there were great because of his apartment’s far-flung locale, and yet he hadn’t overlooked the smallest detail in making sure my wife felt comfortable. Chaddah let him know with a glance where everything stood, and this proved quite useful. My wife didn’t seem upset in the least, and in fact, it looked like she had had a good time, which was likely because Harish knew how to please women with his interesting banter. He asked my wife if she would like to see that day’s shooting.
‘Are you filming any songs?’ she asked.
Harish answered, ‘No, that’s tomorrow. I think you should go then.’
Harish’s wife was tired of going to shootings, as she had ferried countless people to her husband’s sets. She quickly said to my wife, ‘Yes, tomorrow will be good.’ Then she turned to her husband and said, ‘She’s still tired from travelling.’
We all breathed a sigh of relief. Harish entertained everyone for a while with his witty conversation and then said to me, ‘Come on then. Let’s go.’ He looked at my friends. ‘Let them stay. Our producer wants to hear your story.’
I looked at my wife and then told Harish, ‘Ask for her permission.’
My naïve wife w
as caught in the trap, and she said to Harish, ‘When we were leaving Bombay I told him to take his briefcase, but he said it wasn’t necessary. Now what will he show him?’
‘He can recite something from memory,’ Harish suggested. Then he looked at me, asking for my confirmation.
‘Yes,’ I said nonchalantly, ‘that’s possible.’
Chaddah put the finishing touch on the little drama.
‘Okay, then. We’re going,’ he said. The four of them got up, said their goodbyes and left. A little while later Harish and I left too. Chaddah and the others were waiting with tongas at the edge of Parbhat Nagar. When he saw us, he cried out, ‘Long live King Harish Chandar!’
We all went to Mummy’s, except for Harish who had to meet one of his girlfriends. Mummy’s house was a bungalow, and from the street it looked like Sayeedah Cottage although inside it was clean and orderly, which reflected Mummy’s good taste. The furniture was ordinary, and yet everything was so well arranged that the house looked as if a designer had put it together. When we left Parbhat Nagar I had expected a brothel, but the house didn’t look anything like that. It was as respectable as a middle-class Christian house and somehow seemed much younger than Mummy, as it didn’t have any false touches like her make-up’s obvious attempts at deception. When Mummy entered the living room, I suddenly realized that while everything around her was actually very old, Mummy alone continued to age. God knows why, but while looking at her garish make-up, I suddenly wanted to see her young again.
Chaddah introduced me, and then he introduced Mummy, ‘This is Mummy, the great Mummy!’
Hearing Chaddah’s words, she smiled at me and then turned back to Chaddah and spoke in English, ‘You ordered tea in your usual panic—you didn’t even tell me if he liked it or not.’ Then she said to me, ‘Mr Manto, I’m very ashamed. In fact all this mischief is due to your friend Chaddah, my incorrigible son.’
Bombay Stories Page 14
