‘Tell him to wait. I’m coming for him.’
‘You?’
‘Yes…Can you tell him to wait for just a little bit longer?’
A few seconds later, her hand slumped, the delicate weight of her body suddenly heavy and glum. She sank into his lap, no longer buoyed by a defiant will to draw another breath. She fell deeper into him, a pebble tossed into a canyon, and then she was in him, briefly watching the world, its horror and its glory, its frolic and warped melodies. He covered her face with a crossbow of his arms; a dark silence took hold of him. The delicate, strained echo of her heartbeat continued to resound in his head like a whisper from the past. At the time he did not know, but when Zaira died the person he had been around her, the custodian of her deepest pain, the jester in the court of her imagination, also faded into a great, trembling nothingness; he would never be the same again.
‘Can you share Zaira’s last words with the court?’
‘Huh?’ Samar looked jolted.
The lawyer repeated himself. ‘What were Zaira’s last words to you?’
‘She said…’ He experienced a great churning in his chest; he felt dizzy.
‘What did she say to you, Mr Arora?’
For a moment, the entire courtroom tilted forward, eyes unblinking, ears peeled.
‘She said nothing.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘I am certain of this much.’ Closing his eyes, he bowed his head, his nails digging into the wooden rail around him.
Samar touched his lover’s neck. ‘I wish you did not have to go through all this; it will soon be over.’
Leo flinched from Samar’s caress. He rose from the bed. ‘Zaira would’ve been proud of you. Let’s wait for the verdict. You were very brave.’
‘This is not only about bravery.’
‘I know.’
‘Why’s it so tough to believe that?’
‘You doubt everything I say, Samar.’ Leo walked up to the window and stared out at a cool, moonless night.
‘I’m sorry.’ He sighed. ‘They made me stand in a box, Leo.’
‘That was…’
‘They asked me.’
‘Don’t…please, Samar.’ He turned back toward the bed.
‘They pointed at me.’
Leo did not want to comfort Samar; he did not want to ask him to stop crying.
‘They asked me.’
‘They had no right…’
‘They took my most honest thing…’
‘And they couldn’t touch it.’ Almost against his will, Leo was drawn back to Samar, into the orbit of his raw hurt.
‘They took what was most personal…’
‘And they were scared of its power.’
‘They had…’
‘Hush…’
‘You know…’
‘I do.’
The men in the courtroom had deemed them depraved, their desire diseased; they had been looked upon with pity and scorn, envy and odium; it now clung to their skin like a stain. Desperate to rinse it off, the lovers bathed each other. Carefully, quietly, they paid meticulous attention to the other’s body, mindful that even if life would divide them, this night, its stillness and longing would remain unextinguished. So they took the body and gave it spirit; they took spirit and rubbed its broken back, made it whole again. In the minutiae of anatomy hid their most urgent promise, their calm and baroque rage; they touched, smoothened, scratched, ruffled, caressed, kissed—ear, foot, navel, neck, back, shoulder, flank, toe, nape, shin, cheek. When morning arrived, unable to stand the emerging rays of light Samar shut his eyes and floated to and from everything, wrapped in the continuous, hollow sound that had shrouded Zaira in her anguished last moments, a deep blue swathe of feeling.
19
On the day of the verdict, Rhea sat on a bench in the packed courtroom, three rows ahead of the last. As Judge Kumar arranged his papers and the crowd shuffled its feet, her eyes fell on Karan; the two women sitting next to him were Diya Sen and Mantra Rai, whom she recognized from photographs she had seen in the papers. In the first row, ahead of Karan, Leo sat next to Samar. When Rhea tilted her head she noticed on the adjacent row of benches, across the aisle, Malik Prasad and Vijay Singh, their jaws clenched, sweat glistening at the base of their stout, bovine necks.
Rhea craned her neck to see Malik’s face but could not.
As Judge Kumar was about to speak, a sparrow flew into the room, and after circling about in a delicate, fluttering loop slammed into the blades of the fan. Rhea was appalled to see the folks sitting below perfunctorily wipe off the remains, as if the blood would indelibly stain their clothes. She had volunteered at the animal shelter for years but had never treated the death of a puppy or a kitten so lightly, as if death was catching, like a cold.
The court was restored to its dignity when the judge cleared his throat and opened the file of papers in front of him.
In the racket that attended the verdict, Rhea made a dash for the exit.
Much to her consternation, she found Karan stalling her passage, his hand extended before her. ‘Please stay. Talk to me.’
‘I need to go. I’m terribly sorry.’
‘I can’t believe the judge would let him off like this.’
‘It’s truly awful, Karan. You should be with Samar. He needs you right now.’ Her voice was darting, afraid.
He kept his arm stretched in front of her, like a bar over a gate. ‘Can we talk outside for a few minutes?’
‘I told you I would come here today, but I have to go now. Adi will be getting home any minute.’ She looked at her watch; she did not want anyone to see her with Karan.
‘Just stay for a few minutes.’
‘No!’ She hit his outstretched arm. It fell to his side; his face looked like he had been knifed.
On her way out, she glanced at Samar, who was staring at the floor.
Then he looked up, their eyes locked.
She tilted her head and Samar, perhaps recognizing her from Karan’s descriptions, folded his hands in acknowledgement; his pain was raw and lunged toward her in thundering waves. She nodded at him and moved through the crowd like a stingray negotiating the billowing currents of the deep sea, pushing at backs and elbows, sweat gathering on her neck. Outside, in the quad, she stopped to watch Malik Prasad and his cronies get into a black Mercedes and drive off to escape the noisy assault of flashbulbs.
She stared after Malik till something clicked in her head, like the trigger of a gun.
Two weeks later, Karan and Rhea met at the Babulnath temple, on a Monday morning; the wind was intent, wet, carrying something of the sea in its hot, uneven blast.
‘Thanks for the birthday present.’
He was wearing grubby jeans and a white shirt; she wore a taupe sleeveless cotton dress. They looked incongruous in each other’s company.
‘I’m glad you liked it, Karan.’
She had sent him a Bombay Fornicator, a keepsake from the evening they had met in Chor Bazaar.
‘I liked it a lot; but not as much as I liked your letter.’
‘You inspired it. Have you not been eating well?’
‘I’ve been a bit preoccupied.’ With his dirty stubble and sunken eyes he looked a bit like a mobster. ‘I’ve lost my appetite, mostly.’
‘But the trial has come to a close. One way or another you’ll have to find your motions and swim along.’
‘In a way the trial has ended, but in another way it has just begun. Now we know what was really at stake.’
‘How’s Samar holding up?’
‘He’s furious, and damaged. And so tired, he complains that even his bones hurt.’
To escape the relentless battery from the press Samar had taken off to Sri Lanka, retreating to a house in a private forest owned by Leo’s friends. ‘He’s rooting for a reinvestigation.’
Rhea could understand Samar’s resolve. He was not the only one incensed by the verdict; all across India, in little towns and big cities, people ha
d come together to express shock and solidarity in strong, simple ways, candlelight vigils, silent protests, letters to newspapers. The entire nation had united to demand a retrial of Zaira’s case.
‘But a retrial could take forever.’ Her thoughts now turned to Leo. ‘And the prospect of a trial that could stretch for years won’t go down well with Leo.’
‘The only thing Leo cares about is getting his ass back to America.’
‘Aren’t you giving Leo the short end of the stick? It’s not been easy on either of them.’
‘It’s not been easy on any of us.’
She sighed. Karan sounded like a professional martyr. She said, ‘Samar shouldn’t let the trial mess up his private life.’
‘There’s a thin line between the public and the private, and it blurs easily.’
‘So it’s all the more important he should know how to tell the two apart.’
‘Maybe you’re right. Trials take years, and he really shouldn’t get carried away by the possibility of a fair reinvestigation.’ Much of the principal evidence had been doctored at source. Bunty Oberoi had said his initial statement had been wrongly recorded. Nalini Chopra had claimed her sunglasses had compromised her vision, and although ‘someone rather like’ Malik might have been present at Maya Bar, she was not sure it was him. Having recently resigned, D.K. Mishra was no longer available for questioning as he had left town and could not be traced.
Karan sighed. ‘Samar might be setting himself up for another let-down.’
They ascended the stone steps of the temple, past the betel leaves arranged on every ledge holding lit wicks flickering defiantly in the wind; the strong scent of ghee was lightened by the vivid, sacred fragrance of lilies. Rhea told Karan she had seen Malik at close range right after the verdict. ‘He was nothing like I had expected,’ she said, a trace of amazement in her voice.
‘What were you expecting?’
‘I don’t know, honestly. I wondered why he didn’t look more like a murderer.’
He found her naivety intolerable. ‘And what exactly is a murderer supposed to look like?’
‘I know what you mean. There’s no “type”. But Malik really got to me.’
‘Why?’
‘Because he could be anyone. He looked like a college kid; he looked like my neighbour’s grandson.’
‘But Malik is not your regular thug; he’s the son of the nation’s Minister for Labour and Employment, so he’s not going to pass for a petty pickpocket.’
She shook her head. ‘What did my brain in was suddenly finding that he resembled someone I knew, or almost knew. When I thought about it later, I couldn’t put a finger on it and it’s continuing to bug me.’ Her expression was that of a person searching for the last missing word that completes a crossword.
‘Well, maybe Malik reminds you of a distant relative or an old friend.’
‘Maybe,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘By the way, I saw Malik’s father on television last night. He was at the shrine of Vaishno Devi, praying for his son.’ In the television report, Minister Chander Prasad had claimed ‘justice had been served’ and that his son had ‘finally been vindicated from a terrible political conspiracy’. ‘He actually went so far as to warn the reporter that any further criticism of Judge Kumar’s verdict would amount to contempt of court!’
‘Minister Prasad is as smart as he is ruthless,’ Karan said. ‘It’s a combination that makes him lethal.’
They reached the top of the stone stairwell.
Rhea looked at the deities, Ganesh and Hanuman, and then turned to Karan. ‘I’ll be right back.’
‘Take your time, Rhea.’
She entered the sanctum.
Standing there, amid plump, perspiring housewives and lewd stockbrokers, haggard, toothless widows and randy new brides, she was soon absorbed in the chaos and chanting, the trampled tuberoses, the fragrant plume of incense, the pealing of bells. When she got her chance before the mammoth lingam, she pressed her palm on the black stone as cold streams of milk continued to fountain over her fingers. As she kneeled there, her hand on the lingam, the sounds surrounding her began to fade, the devotees blurred, and she could hear something invisible, primal, the heartbeat of the world, the place where rivers were born, the womb of instinct. A powerful jolt passed through her, animating her eyes with an ineluctable charge, turning her complexion devastatingly radiant. She emerged shaken, and she was eager to tell Karan what had occurred, but in the quad she had to give Karan’s face just one cursory glance and his cynicism divided them like a curtain.
‘Feeling better?’
She nodded shyly, disappointed that she could not share her experience with him.
‘Why are your hands trembling, Rhea?’
‘Are they? Let’s go, shall we?’
On the way down they passed fat, mottled cows stabled in dim, squalid quarters.
An old, bearded sadhu on the landing held out some prasad for them. They accepted the prasad and walked on.
‘I’m going to teach.’
‘In a school?’
‘Yes; I’ve been looking around for jobs.’
‘Oh, Karan! Don’t throw away your talent.’ She joined her hands as though in a plea.
‘Teaching is a wonderful vocation.’
She gave him a bored look. ‘Teaching is perfectly valid, even noble, but it’s not your bag.’
‘Well, neither is photography.’
‘God, Karan, snap out of it!’
‘Out of what?’
‘It’s like I’m talking to a door or something. What the hell is wrong with you?’
He gulped. ‘My life has turned around in the last few months.’
‘Yeah, well…the big bad world bit you. Get used to it.’
‘Get used to it?’
She paused. ‘Look, I’m sorry, Karan. Maybe I sounded a bit harsh. But I’d still urge you not to give up your work. And it will help you if you learn not to take life so personally.’
‘But life is personal.’
‘Well, you can’t take it personally, Karan, because beggars at the traffic lights, cows, flamingoes, and bitches in heat at the animal shelter are all breathing, shitting, snorting and heaving to get by. I hate to break the news to you, but there’s nothing special or unique about your life—or mine.’
‘You know, Rhea,’ he said, ‘I can always count on you for comfort.’
‘I’m not here to play Mother Teresa to your leper-child number.’ She flicked an errant strand of hair from her forehead.
‘Hey, calm down.’
‘I am calm. Who’re you to tell me what I’m supposed to do?’ Her face gleamed like a sword.
‘Rhea!’
‘Don’t raise your voice at me!’
‘You’re really pushing all the wrong buttons.’ He advanced toward her with his hand raised in the air. She felt rage billow out of him. She turned. The sadhu on the landing had stood up and was looking inquisitively at them.
‘You wanted to hit me!’ Rhea hissed, turning to Karan.
‘You’re overreacting, Rhea.’ Karan had moved away.
‘You did, didn’t you? Look at me when I’m talking to you!’
‘I’m…sorry.’
She strode up to him, whipped him around, met his eyes. ‘Did you want to hit me, Karan?’
‘I’m sorry.’ He bent his head.
‘You cannot be sorry for what you intended to do but you had better be ashamed for a long time.’
‘You hit my arm in the courtroom. What was that all about?’ he countered foolishly.
‘You were in my way, Karan,’ she said. ‘And what you were going to do right now is completely different; don’t you dare compare.’
‘I don’t know what I was thinking.’ His voice choked up. ‘I don’t know who I’ve become. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry, Rhea.’
Her most natural impulse then was to turn and run for her life. She was, she feared, in the distressing presence of a man capable of anything. But sh
e managed to pull herself together. ‘I’m sorry about that; my prayer is for you to return to your vision of yourself. Be true to who you are, and if teaching feels true then go for it. But if you’re using it to dodge a truth larger than yourself then it’s bound to catch up with you quicker than you turn the corner.’
‘I’ll go back to photography, I promise.’
‘You don’t have to promise me anything. It’s your life.’
‘Please don’t be mad at me, Rhea.’ He spoke so quietly she reached forward and held him.
Overcome with fear, she started to cry.
Believing that her tears were further proof of their intimacy, he pulled her closer.
‘I can’t believe I was stupid enough to forget the brass monkey,’ she said in between the sobs she tried to muffle.
‘The brass monkey?’
She was breathing heavily as she spoke. ‘The talisman I’d been looking for forever. I had it in my hand the day I met you in Chor Bazaar. I had put it down when I started talking to you but then we got so caught up in the conversation and the search for the Bombay Fornicator that I forgot it there. I went back to look for it but the dealer said it had been sold and that he didn’t have another one.’
‘I will find it for you.’ Karan tightened his hold around her.
‘Thank you, Karan,’ she said quietly. ‘Can you please…please let go of me?’
‘Huh?’
‘I can’t breathe…’ She tugged herself free.
He looked at her; her face was still radiant but tear-streaked. ‘Who did I remind you of?’ he asked.
‘Huh?’ She started to walk away. Soon they would be on the road; soon she would board a taxi and go back to the safety of her home.
‘In Chor Bazaar. You said you helped me look for the Bombay Fornicator because I reminded you of someone.’
‘Maybe you imagined that.’
They were on the busy main road. There was a small temple behind them, a shrine to Shreenathji, bedecked in faded gold and intense green. A sloe-black woman reposed under a tree; a beige cow stood a few feet away from her, tethered to the tree trunk.
The Lost Flamingoes of Bombay Page 21
