The Lost Flamingoes of Bombay

by Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi

  ‘I know you’re adept at handling most situations, Rhea, but you can never be sure with these things. I mean, look at what happened to Zaira. It would seem that a celebrity of her stature was unassailable and yet…’

  She cupped her hands around her face. ‘Why’re we talking about Zaira and the trial? I’m sick of it!’

  ‘Rhea?’ He looked at her with concern, but a sliver of suspicion pricked his mind. Was she deflecting from the conversation at hand with a quick crying jag? ‘What’s up?’

  ‘I don’t know if I’m ready to have a child,’ she said, clearing her throat.

  ‘Of course you are!’

  ‘I don’t know, Adi.’

  ‘We’ve wanted to have a child forever, Rhea.’

  She rolled her eyes. ‘You, Adi, have been wanting to have a child. You.’

  ‘Are you saying a child will make no difference to your life?’

  ‘I am sure it will, and not all the differences are going to be as pleasant as you make them sound.’

  ‘Tell me what scares you about becoming a mom. Do you worry your life is going to turn upside down? That you won’t be able to attend to your pottery for a few months? That you will have to quit the animal shelter…’

  ‘Why would I quit the animal shelter?’

  He looked at her in amazement. ‘Are you kidding? You should have stopped going as soon as you knew you were pregnant. All those stray mutts in that skanky place carrying God alone knows what kind of bugs…’

  ‘So it’s fine for me to hang out with bugs in “that skanky place”,’ she said mordantly, ‘but God forbid if I expose your child to them!’

  ‘That’s not what I meant…’ Luckily, traffic had parted now and the road was clear all the way up to Haji Ali.

  ‘Am I some sort of a cow? Useful only when in calf? When I can be milked?’

  ‘Rhea!’ He braked abruptly and pulled over to the side of the road. ‘Do you have any idea how much I love you?’

  ‘And do you have any idea how much I don’t know if I will be able to love this child? Now,’ she said impatiently, ‘can we please get home?’

  ‘This is absurd.’ He started the car again.

  ‘Is it? Why?’

  ‘Because there isn’t a single mother on this planet who would not love her own flesh and blood.’

  ‘Oh, please, spare me that Mother Earth bakwaas!’ Only a few days ago at the animal shelter a pie dog had eaten her newborn puppy; one day, she decided, she would tell Adi about the incident to inspire him to revisit his corny notions of maternal love. ‘What if I bring this child into the world and can’t care for it?’

  ‘Sweetheart…’ Adi purred, ‘you’re asking all these deep and meaningful questions…but the questions have no basis to them. You’re not even a mother yet! Once our baby arrives, everything will change. You’ll even look back on your outburst and laugh. You’ll adore the baby more than you do me.’ He scrunched up his face with mock envy. ‘I’m going to come second place.’

  ‘I don’t know why I’ve been crying, why my moods are all over the place…’

  ‘Maybe it’s because of that photographer freak. He’s unhinged you. You’re feeling vulnerable and insecure, that’s why you’re talking like this.’

  ‘You think so?’ she asked. Under ordinary circumstances, she would have reproached such a childish deduction but today she wanted to believe Adi because she was having trouble believing herself: if life were only a catalogue of illusions, why couldn’t she occupy his, now that her own had failed her so fabulously?

  ‘The dude’s taken over your thoughts.’

  She looked out of the window of the car and saw hundreds of pigeons soaring into the indigo heart of the late evening sky. The birds took off from the temple courtyard, circled Cadbury House, then turned back and landed in the same courtyard they had fled. Roosting birds fly the coop, she thought; but then they also fly back home.

  ‘I wouldn’t go so far as that…But maybe you do have a point,’ she said. ‘That man could be mad.’

  ‘That worries me; we might have a real psycho on our hands.’

  Like a valium in whisky, at Adi’s utterance of the word—psycho—Rhea’s entire body melted into the narrative that had opened wide its devious arms to embrace her. Karan Seth was a psycho. She was the victim of his terrible attention. But now Adi, her husband, would keep her safe. These lines became the mantra that could keep her marriage intact. Not only did the word psycho possess a nimbus of insanity, but it also came with a textbook tinge of pathology; she could forgive Karan once she accepted that he was, in fact, clinically crazy.

  ‘Let’s have a drink when we get back,’ she said as they started up the banyan-shaded slope of Silver Oaks Estate.

  ‘I don’t think that would be good for you,’ Adi said firmly.

  ‘What would not be good for me?’

  ‘Alcohol. Under the circumstances.’

  ‘Oh, damn,’ she whacked her palm on her forehead. ‘I forgot. The bloody baby.’

  ‘Darling, please—’

  ‘Try not to work yourself into a sweat, Adi,’ she snapped as the car pulled up at their entrance. She stepped out in a huff. ‘I’m going to have to be a teetotaller for the next few months while you get to guest-lecture me on how I should live my life for your kid. Welcome to the party, sunshine.’

  In the lift they were met by Miss Cooper, her trusty, incontinent dachshund held firmly on a leash. Miss Cooper smiled at them gingerly, unsure why both Rhea and Adi looked like they didn’t want to be in the lift with her.

  On the day of the visarjan, the last day of the festival, Karan stumbled into his kitchenette, plucked out the sharp steel blade his landlady used to mince lamb into a fine keema and, slipping the blade under his arm, stepped out into an evening of scintillating chaos. Thousands of men, women, children, decked in lower-order finery of their choice, were marching toward the sea. On Napean Sea Road a giant canary-yellow Ganesh with a curved white tusk and indigo robes painted over his divine obesity, was seated on a plaster peacock, surrounded by devotees with a distinctly bovine air about them. Karan stumbled in front of a lorry; luckily, it skid to a halt inches before him.

  The driver thrust his neck out of the window, ‘Rand ki aulad! Can’t you see where you’re going?’

  Picking himself up, Karan brushed off the dirt from his sweaty tee-shirt and carried on walking toward Breach Candy, to Silver Oaks Estate.

  When the elevator halted on the ninth floor, he stepped out, a whirring in his head.

  He rang the doorbell.

  Rhea answered.

  The sight of him, smothered in red dust and yellow sepals, swaying drunkenly, provoked her to panic. ‘Get out!’

  Rhea’s urgent whisper was like acid thrown on his face.

  ‘Adi is in the dining room. If he catches you he’ll thrash you to within an inch of your life. Go!’

  ‘Listen to yourself!’ Karan was lurching from side to side. ‘What a warm welcome from the lady of the house!’

  She caught sight of the blade under his arm. ‘Why’re you here, Karan? What do you want?’

  Right then, Adi appeared on the scene.

  ‘I’m here to ask this man a few questions,’ Karan slurred.

  ‘Watch out, Adi!’ She gripped her husband’s arm. ‘He has a knife.’

  ‘Who is this?’

  Karan stared at Adi. ‘I want to have a word with you. You might like to know a thing or two.’

  Sensing there was not a moment to waste, she cried out in horror, ‘Adi! It’s him, the psycho.’

  ‘Psycho?’ Before Karan might say another word, Adi’s fist had decked him to the floor.

  ‘How dare you!’ Adi shouted.

  ‘Stop it…’ Rhea yanked at Adi’s shoulder. ‘Just let it go. Come inside, Adi.’

  But Adi was on top of Karan, delivering punch after punch.

  ‘Adi…let’s go in, please…’ Rhea tried to haul Adi indoors but found herself powerless before his brute
strength.

  Although he tried to hit back, Karan could not fend off Adi successfully for the booze had left him blurry and dazed.

  Slowly, each punch seemed to smash the inebriation out of him and the pain began to register with awful sincerity.

  When Karan was at the edge of the stairs, Rhea flew into the scuffle. ‘Leave him, Adi. Let him go!’

  ‘You stay out of this.’

  ‘Adi! Listen to me!’

  ‘Rhea…Get back inside or you’ll get hurt.’

  ‘I don’t care—come in.’ Rhea was holding Adi by his waist, trying to drag him back. ‘Leave him be…’

  Adi paid her no mind. ‘I’ll break every single one of your goddamned bones…Harami…fucking son of a bitch.’

  ‘Please, Adi!’

  ‘You think you can barge into my house and…’ Adi aimed another blow at Karan’s face.

  ‘Let him go, Adi!’

  Karan’s nostrils shot open, blood dripped out, he folded up like a smashed-up marionette.

  ‘Motherfucker!’

  The blade, slipping out of Karan’s arm, went sliding down the stairwell. Adi looked at its dirty shine and looked up at Rhea. Even in his rage he felt comforted to know he had saved her from the pyscho.

  ‘You’ll rot in hell, you piece of shit,’ Adi yelled as he stood up, heaving. ‘Trying to go after a married woman…A pregnant married woman at that…’

  ‘Please, I’m begging you, Adi…’ She was crying now. Who had Karan wanted to kill?

  Adi’s final kick, on Karan’s temple, knocked him out, but not before he heard Adi shout: ‘You could’ve taken two lives, asshole!’

  Retreating inside, Rhea leaned against the wall, closed her eyes and slid to the floor, as weightless as a feather floating down from the grey sky.

  26

  Thirteen hours and nine minutes after Karan was deposited at Bombay General Hospital, with a face like the torn sole of a discarded shoe, a nurse asked him if he had any people in Bombay. In the haze of his defacement, he struck off Zaira, Samar, Rhea—which left him with only his former boss and mentor to call. Even Iqbal Syed, long hard-nosed to violence that could mangle the human form in unimaginable ways, felt his jaws slacken at the sight of Karan, marauded out of recognition by a man watching over the woman who would mother his child—a crocodile rage. In addition to the velocity of Adi’s fury, sadness stirred up by Rhea’s deception had swum into the ridges and ruptures of Karan’s body, from where it now radiated a kind of holy, overcast beauty. At Karan’s behest, Iqbal called Samar in San Francisco, who found it impossible to believe what Rhea’s husband had done to Karan: two broken ribs, a hairline fracture of the elbow, a concussion, multiple cuts.

  Iqbal did not ask Samar to come to Bombay.

  But once the details sank in, Samar could not help but imagine Karan’s giant, unbearable loneliness. He thought of how they had partied at his cottage, the long Sunday lunches at Zaira’s apartment, the terrible night at Maya Bar, the exhausting hours at the police station, the long, menacing days at the courthouse. Karan had come with him to the hospital when Zaira was on his lap, breathing her last. Karan had dug Mr Ward-Davies’s grave when Samar was paralysed with grief. Samar knew that Karan’s cuts would heal and his bruises would mend—but this, a personal dismantling, was an entirely different kettle of fish.

  Samar had to think many times before leaving San Francisco. Leo had been through a particularly rough patch: he had spent a week in hospital fighting off a nasty bout of the shingles. But now he was home, in recovery. When Leo heard about Karan he encouraged Samar to go to Bombay; he, too, remembered how Karan had been there for them during the trial. At the airport, Leo kissed Samar and he felt as if he was kissing the man he loved goodbye forever. On the flight Samar heard a rumble in his chest, and when he tried to sleep, he saw himself on the Worli pavement, a bloodied hound at his feet, hands flailing at the relentless saffron sky.

  In the languor of Karan’s recuperation, when memories of Rhea took nips at him like a pack of hyenas, Samar read him fairy tales, cooked bad, bad lasagna, brought him bunches of tiger lilies, adjusted his bandages when the wounds were sore. They watched old films together. They took walks in the lawn of Samar’s cottage and sat by Mr Ward-Davies’s grave. When Karan was better, Samar took him to Gatsby one evening. The elegant guests gawked at the odd duo; they had the defiant, blessed gleam of survivors of a car crash. Between the knowledge that there was nothing a Bellini could not quite fix and few things a walk could not unknot, Karan fell a little in love with the man Zaira had loved a lot.

  Late one night, Samar received a frantic phone call from Leo.

  ‘Andrew died.’

  ‘Lord. Was it—?’

  ‘Pneumonia. Third attack.’

  ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘He was thirty-seven,’ Leo said. ‘His funeral is on Monday.’

  Samar looked at his watch. ‘I’ll take the flight out tomorrow. I’ll touch San Francisco late Sunday afternoon.’

  ‘Which flight will you take?’

  ‘British Airways, via London. It gets in at around 4.00 p.m.’

  ‘I’ll come, pick you up. Is Karan all right?’

  ‘He’ll be fine.’

  ‘Are you sure you can come?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  The next morning Samar told Karan he would be leaving in a couple of days for San Francisco. They were at the racecourse. It was an excellent morning. Horses were cantering in the paddock behind them, their coats glistening in the early morning sun. The fresh scent of dew-laden grass mingled with horse manure to complete the scene’s bucolic charm. It was easy to forget that this green haven was located, in fact, in the midst of a concrete jungle.

  ‘Can’t you stay a while longer?’

  ‘I’d like to do that more than anything else, but one of Leo’s closest friends has died; Leo’s come undone.’

  ‘Oh, that’s awful…what happened to his friend?’

  ‘He had AIDS.’

  Karan froze.

  ‘I’d been meaning to tell you before I left Bombay but Leo is also sick.’

  ‘With AIDS?’

  Samar nodded. ‘I’m sorry to leave you like this, Karan, but I really do have to go back now. I don’t think Leo can cope alone.’

  ‘Where the hell did Leo pick up the bug?’ Karan said after a moment’s silence.

  Samar looked as if he had been punched in the stomach. ‘Pick up the bug? You make it sound like he went shopping for it.’

  ‘I mean, how did he get sick?’

  ‘That’s not a good question.’ Samar felt his pulse quickening.

  ‘But only whores and drug addicts get it.’

  ‘That’s the last thing I expected to hear from a friend.’

  ‘He could have made you sick,’ Karan said. ‘Are you, Samar? Are you sick?’

  Samar pushed Karan. ‘You’re really crossing the line, Karan! Stop right there.’

  Karan stumbled but caught his step. ‘I’d be mad at Leo if he made you sick.’

  ‘Just get out of here.’

  ‘Are you sick, Samar?’

  ‘I don’t know! The only thing I do know is I’m looking forward to San Francisco more than anything else in the world.’

  ‘You are going then?’

  ‘I wish I had left earlier.’ Samar started to march off.

  ‘When you get back, ask Leo where he picked it up…’

  ‘Sure. Meanwhile, you can take a flying fuck to Mars,’ Samar yelled as he neared the entry to the racecourse grounds. ‘It’s no wonder she dumped you.’

  Karan watched Samar’s back blur in the distance. He was distracted by a horse that bucked and neighed. Someone sounded a whip. When he turned, Samar was gone.

  In San Francisco, Samar changed his phone number.

  Within a fortnight of his return, Karan sent him a long, anxious, concerned letter. He said he had gone into shock when he heard about Leo’s illness and didn’t know what had come over him. I
will never forgive myself for what I said, Samar, but I hope you will; you were always the better man.

  Samar read the letter with trembling impatience; how long were you supposed to put up with the bad manners of straight people? Once or twice, he even came close to picking up the phone and giving Karan a piece of his mind. But each time he reached for the receiver fatigue had watered his intentions. He had either spent the night rubbing a wet cloth over Leo’s burning chest or he had been up reading about new diets that could help tank up the T-cells. If Leo had a few good days, they took off on long drives up the coast: for few things were as restorative as a ride by the ocean. As they drove by the powerful and healing blue, passing a temple of redwoods, Samar thought of Zaira. Wherever she was, he wanted her to answer one question: How much was one man supposed to take?

  Other letters followed. And in each of his letters, Karan expressed heartfelt, vigorous regret, insisting he had acted out of character as he had never quite overcome Zaira’s death. The prospect of losing another friend had driven him round the bend. He tried to say, in his own roundabout way, that he had never known what it was to love another man; the strength of their friendship had astonished him. Samar never replied. He knew he would write to Karan only when he could muster up the courage to ask Leo the question that Karan had left him with. Where the hell did you pick up the bug?

  In one of the letters, Karan wrote that he was fine and that he had resolved to return to work; he was broke as a joke, down to his last few hundred rupees. Enough of this photography shit. I have a degree in teaching, and I can always brush up my skills and see if a school will take me on. I have to make ends meet. Samar thought Karan was out of control.

  About four months later he received another letter. Karan had found work with a school in Colaba. He wrote that he had taught for a couple of months at Patel International School. On the Annual Sports Day all the teachers wore T-shirts that said ‘I Love PIS’. Samar couldn’t help the smile that curved his lips.