The Lost Flamingoes of Bombay

by Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi

  ‘I’m sorry I haven’t called—’

  ‘You had a lot going on, Samar.’

  ‘Have you been to work?’

  ‘On and off.’

  ‘More off than on?’

  ‘Iqbal said he might have to let me go.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, Iqbal cut me a lot of slack during the trial because I often didn’t turn up for work as I was at the courthouse. He was a brick. But now he wants me back on the saddle, and I’m just not up to it.’

  ‘But surely he must know you’ll need some time to get back into gear.’

  ‘He suspects I’ve lost my nerve.’ Karan bent to tickle Mr Ward-Davies and the dog’s body wiggled with pleasure. ‘He knows I’m not going to be able to take the kind of photographs I used to.’

  When they resumed their stroll, Samar asked, ‘Would it help if you took time off?’

  ‘I doubt it. This big, bad wind came and knocked everything over inside here,’ Karan said, jabbing his head with his index finger.

  Samar had noticed a shift in Karan—not only the physical disrepair but also something else that was intangible and severe. It was as if the world had descended upon him in all its terrifying beauties: betrayal and disappointment threatened to wreck him. Through this wound, small sparkling things would enter Karan and shake him by his bones. The ache would pave the fat from him, leaving him with muscle and angularity. That’s when the wolf in him would finally feel safe enough to emerge from its shadowy retreat.

  ‘There’s too much fuzz on the lens.’ Karan rubbed his chest. Now every day in Bombay felt like walking deeper into quicksand.

  ‘You could take brilliant photographs with blinders on.’ Samar stopped as Mr Ward-Davies sniffed a lamp post. ‘Besides, if things don’t work out with Iqbal, any joint in this city will hire you.’

  ‘But I don’t want to work for another magazine. Iqbal is a dream boss. He raps my knuckles, and cheers me on. He knows when I have to pull myself together, and he knows when to let me be in my corner. I was a college kid when I joined him; he gave me his old Leica, and I still use it to do most of my work. He saved me from Delhi and got me this job in Bombay. When I decided Bombay was the subject of my study, he knew I wasn’t joking.’

  ‘He does sound like a dream boss.’

  ‘And now I’m showing Iqbal in bad light at the headquarters. The hacks who think in headlines are going: Boss’s Protégé Fucks Up Big-time.’

  ‘I had no idea Iqbal meant so much to you.’

  ‘We prize people in quiet, simple ways; just because we don’t go on about them doesn’t mean they don’t mean…the world to us.’

  Samar thought to himself then that perhaps Karan was telling him how much he had come to miss Zaira. ‘Have you told Rhea?’

  ‘No. She doesn’t give a shit what happens to me. She can’t swallow the fact that I have given up on my camera. Our time together is now a wrap-up, I guess.’

  ‘I guess she must feel awful that you gave up; after all, she took you around the block.’

  ‘She took me around, and we talked pictures for miles.’ Deep in Karan’s eyes, a little bird thrashed against the dusty window of an abandoned room.

  ‘She was good to you,’ he said, wishing he had had a chance to know Rhea. They had met only once, in the courthouse on the day of the verdict: he had folded his hands, and she had smiled at him, and they had gone their own ways.

  ‘We talked about Atget and his Paris…about war photography and ethics…of Cartier-Bresson. All those hours, those weeks, those months blur into each other…’ He looked furious when he said, ‘I find it insulting to have to consider she was more interested in my work than in who I am. I never thought things would end this way.’

  ‘End? Aren’t you being a bit dramatic?’ Samar arched his eyebrows.

  Karan said dejectedly, ‘Well, it’s all headed downhill in a hurry; besides, she said that her husband suspects something’s going on.’

  ‘Well, that’s got to be a bummer.’

  ‘One time I went to see her, and she had the guts to look right through me!’

  ‘You went to see her? But didn’t you just say that her husband had smelled a rat? Isn’t it best to lie low?’

  Karan did not appear to heed Samar’s words. ‘I waited outside her apartment block for hours.’

  ‘But she’s got to cover her tracks, Karan! She’s got a husband. And a marriage she might want to save.’

  ‘I waited outside her apartment block and when she went by in her car she didn’t even stop!’

  ‘Maybe she didn’t see you?’

  ‘Maybe. But then one evening I went to the fruit sellers outside Amarsons. She was buying pomegranates. I tried to speak to her but she pretended to be busy. She didn’t give me the time of day.’

  ‘Perhaps her husband was nearby—’

  ‘She probably thinks I’m following her around Bombay.’ Karan tilted his head as he heard a car approaching them from behind, and a few seconds later the car went past them.

  ‘And are you?’

  ‘Well, sometimes I see her when she’s out shopping or I’m hanging around Silver Oaks Estate. I have to keep an eye on her.’

  ‘She’s a grown woman; she doesn’t need anyone to keep an eye on her.’ Samar knew his voice sounded more strident than it needed to, but he could feel himself growing irritated on Rhea’s behalf.

  The sound of a car zooming away in the distance, its tyres burning up the tar, distracted Karan momentarily. He turned his head to look. ‘I guess that must freak her out.’

  ‘You know, you might be on to something here,’ Samar said as discreetly as he could.

  ‘You’re saying I’m losing it?’

  ‘You’re spending too much time alone. And hanging around outside her apartment is not the right thing to do. She probably thinks you’re stalking her…’

  ‘Stalking? Isn’t that slightly extreme?’

  ‘I’m sorry if I have offended you, Karan, but perhaps she’s coming apart at the seams as a result of your attention?’

  ‘No—maybe you have a point. Am I sounding like a loon to you?’ He ruffled his thick black hair with his hands. ‘Have I gone off the deep end?’

  Samar sighed. ‘I’m saying you need to go easy on her, Karan. Step back and try to see—not only see her as a married woman but also see yourself as the man you used to be before you met her.’

  He bit his lip. ‘Do you think Rhea ever loved me?’

  ‘It’s too early to swing to the past tense.’

  ‘I’m not sure she ever did.’

  ‘She has to have.’

  ‘A little?’

  ‘Who’d settle for anything less than the whole nine yards for you?’

  ‘I spent some of the most beautiful afternoons of my life watching her work in her studio.’ His mouth scrunched up with pain. ‘She has such long, tender, purposeful hands, and fingernails painted the colour of ox blood.’

  Samar was quiet for a few seconds. He was trying to find something to say that would comfort Karan, parent him through this smouldering agony. But words were like shadows, indecipherable and elusive. On some days love was a big bad truck cruising down a freeway, and you were only a skunk in its path: a stripped, stinking piece of aspiring road kill. ‘Anything I say is futile but I hope you know that you’re not in this alone.’

  ‘Are you telling me something about Leo here?’

  ‘I’ve been trying to, Karan.’

  ‘I’m sorry; I’ve been a self-indulgent asshole. Tell me what’s going on.’

  Samar braced himself to speak when Karan had to interrupt him again. ‘Did you see that car?’

  ‘What car?’

  Mr Ward-Davies lifted his head and sniffed the air.

  ‘It was coasting in our direction before it turned the bend. It was…’

  ‘I didn’t see it. I did hear a car racing, though, a few minutes ago.’

  ‘Probably some rich kid rushing home after a night out at
a club. Sorry to have cut you off. You were saying…’

  ‘About Leo…He’s going to return to San Francisco very soon.’

  ‘But he goes back every few months…’

  ‘This is different. The thing is…’ As Samar steeled himself to go on, the black car that Karan had seen earlier came up to them from behind and slowed down beside them.

  The driver of the car extended his hand and shoved a piece of paper, an address, into Samar’s hand. Samar studied the piece of paper and gave him directions to his destination.

  The driver thanked him for his help, and before Samar knew it Mr Ward-Davies’s leash had been yanked out of his hand. A sharp, terrified whine punctured the air as the car sped off.

  Samar and Karan tore along as the car raced and slowed and raced again.

  Then they saw Mr Ward-Davies slam into a lamp post and heard a sound like a twig crackling in a fire. The dog’s body became completely limp. The car zoomed down its path with Mr Ward-Davies hanging like a toy at the end of a string. As suddenly as the driver had snatched up Mr Ward-Davies, he let go. Then the car turned a corner and vanished from sight.

  Samar and Karan fell on their knees, on either side of Mr Ward-Davies, their shirts, damp with perspiration, plastered on their backs.

  ‘Something is hanging by the end of this nerve.’

  ‘It’s his eye. The blood vessels have burst.’

  ‘What are you doing Samar?’

  ‘Trying to put it back in its place.’

  ‘He’s breathing; we should get him to a vet. Leave his eye alone. I don’t know if it can be saved.’

  ‘I have to fix it.’ Samar’s hands went red again. ‘Please,’ he said looking up at Karan beseechingly, ‘make him stop whining.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Just make him hush. Make him whole again.’

  ‘Let me get a taxi.’

  ‘His eye is not staying, Karan; it’s not staying.’

  ‘Please Samar, don’t touch it. Let it be.’

  ‘I can’t leave it on the kerb. This is my baby.’

  ‘Let’s go to the vet. He will know what to do…Please…don’t do anything.’

  ‘They took my baby. Oh God, my baby.’ Samar was breathless, weeping, turned inside out with pain.

  ‘There, I see a taxi.’

  ‘His eye is not staying in place!’

  ‘We might be able to save him.’

  ‘They took my baby, Karan; they took him from me…’

  23

  Following the afternoon when the verdict on Zaira’s case was delivered, Rhea had planned never to take Karan’s calls again, claiming that Adi was in town. She was furious that he had stalled her in a public place; she would have been happy to talk to him privately but the indiscretion of his actions had stoked the fire of her wrath. At the courthouse her anxiety had been compounded further when she had seen Malik entering his car; she believed she had seen something worryingly familiar in his countenance. Malik’s face continued to flash before her eyes, and she struggled to locate what had unsettled her so. She had hoped to talk about it when she had met Karan at the Babulnath temple; she also hoped to convey her distress and her anger at the deceitful trial and the unfair judgement. But on the way down from the temple, Karan had raised his hand as if to hit her and she had wanted to flee there and then. And then, over the last few days, his conduct had been shocking. She saw him lurking outside her apartment block and was forced to drive off in such haste that she almost ran over a stray cat. Then there was the time when she was shopping for fruit outside Amarsons and she suddenly felt his hand on her shoulder. Even the fruit vendor had given Karan a look that said, Keep off!

  She had tried her best to keep the break as dignified as possible, hoping that her silent treatment would make him go away. But she was perplexed to discover that the reverse had happened.

  ‘Can you please not call me?’ she said into the phone when she heard Karan’s voice at the other end for the fifth time that day.

  ‘You haven’t given me a reason why you won’t see me, Rhea.’

  ‘You want to take a different route in your life, and I wish you good luck with that.’

  ‘You sound like you’re firing me from a job.’

  ‘Do you have any idea how many questions Adi asks me when you keep calling up like this?’

  ‘That’s your problem, Rhea.’

  ‘Why’re you being such a jerk? I don’t mean to make it sound like it was a favour but I put in a lot of my time in your life, and this is payback?’

  ‘Don’t talk to me like that.’ He took another gulp of whisky, liquid fire going down his dry throat.

  ‘You don’t have any right to talk to me like that.’ She remembered again the encounter at the Babulnath temple, his impulse to strike her. A shiver ran up her spine.

  ‘But I am. I’m furious. I can’t help it.’

  ‘You’re furious with me?’ Feeling nauseous, she pressed her tongue against the roof of her mouth, hoping the feeling would go away.

  ‘You asked for it.’

  ‘I don’t believe this!’

  ‘You led me on!’

  ‘I took you around Bombay in good faith.’

  ‘No. You led me on.’

  ‘Maybe I did,’ she said. ‘But here’s where you get off.’ Rhea banged the phone down and stood by the phone console, shaking. She composed herself when Adi called out to her from the bedroom. The nausea, which had plagued her over several days, abated.

  ‘Coming, jaan!’ she said. She bit her lower lip, rubbed her eyes dry. She took a deep breath, told herself: Everything is just right.

  ‘Who were you talking to?’ Adi asked.

  ‘Oh, some annoying telemarketer.’

  ‘They call so late in the day?’

  ‘I’m getting tired of Bombay, Adi.’

  ‘Then why don’t you come with me to Singapore? I have an assignment that’s likely to keep me there. We could use it as our base for a year or so.’

  ‘I might have to do that,’ she said, suddenly energized by the proposition. ‘At least these bloody telemarketers will leave me alone.’

  That night, exiled from the land of sleep, Rhea clung to Adi, unable to tell him what was uppermost on her mind: that she had seen Malik Prasad for the first time and it had scared her senseless. Her fear, which briskly consumed her, was anchored in her naivety: she had expected to see some vivifying confirmation of Malik’s wicked character, some nervous tic, some telling scar. But there had been nothing to indict Malik, so worryingly plain-faced, in fact, that had she seen him at a party or in a crowd she would never have suspected that he was the sort of man who could gun down a woman in cold blood.

  What a poor judge of character she was!

  To recover from the innocence of her convictions, she took off for their home in Alibaug. But there too Malik’s face continued to flash before her eyes. She could not sleep properly, worrying constantly that anyone could jump over the boundary wall and enter the house. She wondered why they had appointed neither a doorman nor a guard. On her third evening in Alibaug, she noticed someone skulking outside the gate. Was it Karan? She rushed indoors, latched her door. Her heart bolted up to her throat. She instructed the gardener to sleep right outside her bedroom that night and, a few hours later, before daybreak, fled back to Bombay.

  A fortnight later, Adi walked into the house to find Rhea sitting on the bed amidst the pillows and sheets looking indulgently regal.

  She patted the bed. ‘Come here, please.’

  In his light blue shirt and silver tie Adi looked like another corporate type, but his loveliness lay in quiet places.

  He sat by her, sensing she had something to tell him.

  She undid his tie, admiring his classical nose, the thick line of eyebrow; this is my territory, she thought, this is mine.

  Then, gently, she broke the news.

  ‘Isn’t this amazing?’ she said, finally. ‘After all these years…’

  Adi’s
face froze; slowly, the muscles around his jaw relaxed. He smiled.

  He held her hands, then kissed the tips of her fingers. ‘I can’t believe it, Rhea.’ He flopped back on the bed, overwhelmed. When he shut his eyes, his life floated by in hazy, disorganized snapshots. He saw the tree he had climbed to get Rhea the fireflies; he saw himself walking down an abandoned street in midtown Manhattan; he saw himself standing next to Rhea on a barge on the day of their wedding; he saw Rhea in the animal shelter, rocking a puppy in her arms. The random images slowly coalesced into a picture of perfection, an immunity from fate’s insurmountable inequity. He was reminded of a piece of baroque music: each instrument surged forward in anticipation of unity to allow the resultant counterpoint more than benign consonance, and elevate the experience to the level of sublime lyricism.

  He sat up, shaking his head. ‘Are you sure?’

  She walked to the desk, picked up a white envelope and opened its flap. She waved the gynaecologist’s letter confirming the news. ‘I double-checked.’

  ‘You’re not teasing me?’

  ‘I wouldn’t, Adi, not about something as important as this.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘As sure as I can be right now.’

  ‘Oh man! This is the best day of my life!’

  ‘Adi, put me down!’

  ‘You’ve made me the happiest man on this whole damn planet, Rhea Dalal.’ Hoisting her over his shoulders he ran out of the bedroom and circled the living room.

  ‘Put me down! You’re crazy!’ She slammed her wrists on his back repeatedly, her bangles jangling. ‘Put me down! For God’s sake, Adi, get a hold on yourself…’

  ‘I’m crazy! I am. And you, my crowned goddess, are my craziness!’

  Adi was to fly out to Singapore the following afternoon. He cancelled his flight and took the week off. They spent seven blissful days in Alibaug, together, alone.

  On this trip, fearing no intruder, she slept soundly.

  Upon their return from Alibaug, Rhea busied herself with her everyday tasks. Adi returned from Singapore after a fortnight. On the day he returned she cooked him an elaborate meal of the Gujarati delicacies he relished: dhokla, patra, shrikhand. Rhea was talking to Adi about a new surly but bright doctor at the animal shelter when he interrupted her. Miss Cooper, the chummy hag who lived on the floor below theirs, had asked him more than once about a man who had visited while he was in Singapore. ‘Is that charming young man your nephew?’ she had asked.