by A. X. Ahmad
“No, but I have a feeling you’re going to tell me.”
“New York is a bitch goddess. She gives success to some, keeps it from others. What I say is, make your own luck. Reach out and take what you want.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
Both men laugh and embrace, and Ranjit walks away down the dark alley. The last he sees of Mohan is a slim, disheveled figure in a lemon-yellow shirt, his hand raised in farewell.
Finding the nearest subway station, Ranjit takes the stairs down to the fetid, stifling platform, and just makes the southbound local. It’s only when he’s halfway to Queens that he groans, remembering his black gym bag, left behind on the floor in Mohan’s apartment. In it is his postcard of the Golden Temple, and he doesn’t like to drive without it. It’s too late to go back now, and he resolves to call Mohan first thing the next morning.
As the subway rattles and screeches, Ranjit thinks about the girl Mohan is setting him up with. Leela is an old-fashioned name, and he immediately conjures up a prim and proper Indian girl with thick glasses, hair held back with one of those big plastic clips. The kind of girl who still lives at home and remains a virgin till marriage. But he’s probably being ridiculous; she must be pretty cool if she goes out drinking with Mohan.
Meeting his old friend was indeed a stroke of luck. Ranjit has spent so much time in the company of dour, exhausted cabdrivers, he’s forgotten that there is life out there. Instead of fantasizing about some movie star, he should buy some new clothes and go out on Friday night. What the hell, he might even have a good time. Thinking about it, he feels a surge of excitement, an emotion he hasn’t felt in a long, long time.
Chapter Five
Ranjit wakes the next morning in his tiny basement apartment in Jackson Heights, hearing the rattle of trucks unloading on Thirty-seventh Avenue, not the predawn silence that he is used to. With a curse he reaches for his alarm clock: nine thirty.
He had forgotten to set an alarm. There is no hope in hell of getting a cab to drive now, and the next time he goes in, Jacobo will chew him out.
Groaning, he sits up in bed, and across the room, a shadowy figure does the same: to make this tiny room seem larger, the previous inhabitant had covered the far wall with mirrored tiles. Whatever Ranjit does, his every movement is reflected, as though he has a phantom roommate.
He rises from his bed and stares at himself: his eyes are bloodshot, his beard is streaked with gray, and worse, there is that thickening of his midriff, the muscle from his army years now overlaid with fat. Soon he’ll end up like all the other cabbies, their cholesterol through the roof, their backs and knees ruined.
Well, all that is going to change. To hell with driving. He’ll take the day off, relax, buy some new clothes for his date on Friday. But first, some exercise.
Falling to the floor he does fifty push-ups, his arms turning to rubber. Then a hundred sit-ups, his stomach cramping, but when he’s done he feels more alive than he has in a long time.
After showering, he wears a white T-shirt, his old jeans, worn brown boots, and then ties on a bright red turban. His hangover is gone, and the figure in the mirror now looks presentable, maybe even handsome.
Walking down Seventy-fourth Street, Ranjit heads into the heart of Indian Jackson Heights. The coolness of the morning has burnt off, and the shops are coming to life, shopkeepers pulling up their shutters and washing down the pavements.
Inside the plate-glass window of Shree Krishna Jewelry Store, a pretty, dark-haired young woman is draping the mannequins in heavy gold necklaces. She waves at him as he walks past, and he waves back; everybody in the neighborhood knows the tall, unmarried Sikh.
Ranjit has never believed in luck, but today he feels as though the bitch goddess of success is smiling at him: he has found an old friend, he has a date on Friday night, and his daughter is coming in three weeks. Life is good.
Hurrying down the street, he buys a hot, milky chai from a Pakistani sweet shop, flavored with cinnamon, cardamom, and cloves. He stands on the sidewalk, inhaling the aroma, savoring every sip, when his cell phone rings.
Shit. It is Jacobo’s number, and he doesn’t answer, fearing that he’ll be called in to work as a substitute. The phone immediately begins to ring again, and this time he sighs and accepts the call.
“Ranjit. Where the fuck were you this morning?” The old man’s scratchy voice fills his ear.
“Sorry, Mr. Jacobo. Not feeling well. I’ll be back tomorrow morning.”
“Bullshit. You haven’t missed a day in two years—” Jacobo pauses. “Look, we have a problem. I need you to come in. Now.”
Ranjit’s heart races. Has the fat guy from yesterday reported him to the Taxi and Limousine Commission? That will mean a huge fine, maybe a suspension of his license.
“Has someone complained? If so, I can assure you—”
“Just get your butt here. Hold it.” Jacobo’s voice fades out as he addresses someone else. “Yes, ma’am. Yes, I’m stressing the urgency of the matter.” His voice gets louder. “You hear me, Ranjit? Come in, now.”
“Yes, sir.”
Ranjit hangs up. Who was Jacobo talking to? Has the TLC sent an inspector?
It is only when he’s on the subway that he realizes the seriousness of the situation: Jacobo had called him by his name, instead of “Taliban.” And that has never happened before.
* * *
Getting off the train at Court Square, Ranjit walks quickly toward the depot, feeling his anxiety grow. Soon the Uptown Cab Company appears in the distance, looking like an outpost of civilization among the vacant lots of Jackson Avenue, but with all the cabs out on the streets, it seems deserted. The mechanics are still to arrive, and have left a half-gutted cab elevated on the lift.
Ranjit looks for an official-looking car parked outside, but there is only Jacobo’s aging white Mercedes, its license plate reading OFFDUTEE.
As long as it’s not the TLC, he can handle it. Taking a deep breath, he enters the concrete block building. The cashier’s cage is empty, and there is no sign of Jacobo, so he takes the stairs to the office up above. Entering it, he instantly senses the change.
Normally the air conditioner is whirring, trapping the smell of cigarette smoke, but today all the windows have been flung wide open. Jacobo is sitting behind his wooden desk, his bald head bowed in respect, and across from him are a man and a woman. All three of them swivel and their eyes focus on Ranjit.
The woman is slim, fiftyish, with stylishly cropped gray hair, dressed in a smart brown pantsuit. Next to her is a short, wavy-haired Hispanic man, wearing a rumpled tan suit. He might have shaved this morning, but a dark shadow already shows on his wide face.
The woman turns to Jacobo. “Thank you. You can go now.”
The old man rises, and whispers as he passes Ranjit. “Remember what I told you about the cops.” He shuts the door softly and his footsteps clatter down the stairs.
The woman gestures to Ranjit to take Jacobo’s still-warm chair, then leans in. Her eyes are gray-green and shrewd, her nose as sharp as a blade.
“I’m Detective Martha Case, and this is Detective Santos Rodriguez, NYPD.”
NYPD. It can’t be about the fat man. Ranjit’s mind flashes to his job at Nataraj Imports; it is off the books. “I’m sorry, how can I help you?”
Ignoring him, the man named Rodriguez picks up a manila folder and opens it.
“You’ve been driving a cab for two years now. No traffic violations. You have a green card, sponsored by a Senator Neals.” He looks up. “So you have friends in high places. Before the cab, you worked as a caretaker in Martha’s Vineyard, also for this Senator…”
Ranjit forces himself to be calm. “My green card is in order. My taxi license is brand new. I even retook the vision test.”
Case turns her hawklike gaze on him. “Yes, we know all that. We also know that you moonlight as a security guard for that scumbag Jay Patel. So you’re not exactly a solid citizen.”
Ranjit is silent. So it is about Nataraj Imports.
Case twists her thin lips into a tight smile. “So where were you last night?”
“I was … visiting a friend.”
“At the Dakota?” Rodriguez closes the file. His voice is louder now, edged with impatience.
Ranjit doesn’t know whom to look at as he answers. “Yes, I visited my friend Mohan Kumar. He’s a doorman there.”
“And you went into Shabana Shah’s apartment?”
Damn it, has Mohan been arrested for trespassing?
“Answer the question.”
Suddenly Ranjit remembers what Jacobo was referring to. When he first started driving, the old man had said: The fucking NYPD are not our friends. If you get into an accident, don’t say, “Yes, I killed that man, sorry.” Shut your mouth and get a lawyer.
Ranjit forces himself to remain calm. “What is this about?”
Case continues calmly. “You gave Shabana Shah a ride in your cab yesterday. Then you returned to her apartment at night. We know that. We also know that you have one of her dresses in your bag. We found it in your friend’s apartment.”
“Shabana dropped the dress in my cab. I was going to return it—”
Rodriguez leans in. “What was it, some kind of sex thing?”
“What? What the hell are you saying?”
Rodriguez sighs dramatically. “Oh, come, Mr. Singh.”
“I need to know exactly what you are implying here—”
“Shabana Shah is dead.”
“What? It can’t be—”
Both the detectives just stare at Ranjit. In the silence he can hear the mechanics laughing outside, hear the whine of the lift as they lower it.
Rodriguez leans in. “You and your friend Mohan went to her apartment and bashed her head in with a big marble statue. We have both your prints all over the statue. And now your friend has split, leaving you to face the rap. Where is he, Mr. Singh?”
Disjointed images flash through Ranjit’s mind: Shabana dropping her dress in his cab, perfumed with sandalwood and jasmine; her stark white bedroom, littered with dirty clothes; eating in her kitchen, then Mohan saying that he was going to spend the night there …
Rodriguez raps his knuckles on the desk. “Hello? I asked you a question.”
“I don’t know anything about this. I barely know Mohan, we used to be friends, years ago—”
“So that’s how you’re going to play it. Okay.”
Rodriguez stands, buttoning his crumpled suit jacket, and glances over at Case. She rises too, her mouth compressed into a thin line.
“You’re coming downtown with us. We’re charging you as an accessory to the murder of Shabana Shah.”
“No. Wait. Please.” Ranjit remains sitting, gripping the threadbare arms of Jacobo’s swivel chair.
Rodriguez is taking the cuffs from his belt, walking around the desk, and Case has her hand on her holster, the blunt butt of her pistol clearly visible.
The sun shines through the window, and the laughter of the mechanics floats in.
Rodriguez jerks Ranjit upright and pulls his arms behind him.
The cuffs cut into his wrists, and Rodriguez holds him tightly under the elbow as they go down the stairs and out the back door. A police cruiser is parked behind the taxi depot. No one will have seen the cops enter, or leave.
Rodriguez clears coffee cups from the backseat and shoves Ranjit’s head down as he gets into the cruiser. It is a gesture that Ranjit has seen a thousand times, on television and on the street, but what is happening now is real: he smells the stale coffee, sees the wire mesh that fences in the backseat, notices that the doors have no handles.
What in God’s name has Mohan gone and done?
As they drive away, Jacobo’s wan face appears in the upstairs window, and he lifts a hand in farewell.
Chapter Six
BOMBAY, 1991
Shabana and S.K. sat high up in the gloom of the Eros Cinema, waiting for the movie to begin.
The balcony was a graceful Art Deco curve that protruded into the darkness of the cavernous hall. In the old days, families would pay top prices to sit up here and watch the latest blockbuster. Now the air-conditioning barely worked, and the balcony was empty except for a few college students busy making out.
S.K. looked around and hid his anxiety with bluster. “Aare, don’t worry, the crowds will come. The first showing is always like this.”
“I’m not worried. Not when you are the director.” Shabana smiled demurely at him. Her face was devoid of makeup, and she looked radiant and much younger than her twenty-four years.
Her smile masked her doubts about the film, because everyone knew that Bollywood was in trouble. The reigning superstar Amitabh Bachchan, “King B,” had produced a string of flops. His violent, angry-young-man films, with their vigilantes and corrupt officials, now seemed like relics of the 1970s, when India stagnated, cut off from the outside world. The country was opening up now, and the new middle classes had cable TV and VCRs; even slum dwellers watched foreign television shows where blond women in bikinis cavorted on beaches.
With this film, Shabana’s first, S.K. had added a romantic subplot to the standard story of revenge and retribution. Maro Ek Baar, Maro Do Baar—Hit Me Once, Hit Me Twice—was to be a test, and the critics would be harsh. Vast armies of unemployed youth still went to the movies, and when they disapproved, they ripped up the red leather seats with their switchblades.
The crowd in the cheap seats below was still talking when the music swelled and the film began. The star, Pinku Kapoor—pushing forty, with a large paunch—played a young policeman fighting against a feudal landowner. When he came onscreen the crowd tittered, but were silent during the first two scenes of village life. Then came the obligatory scene where Asha, the starlet who played Pinku’s wife, was raped by the landowner, thus setting up the cycles of retribution that would drive the film.
As Asha, clad in a white sari, fled from the landowner, her bosom heaving, the crowd burst into laughter. A man shouted, Hey, fatso, did you forget your girdle? And someone followed up with Go home to your children, oi!
S.K. sank deeper into his seat. Wait till intermission, he told himself. This was just the beginning. He would jump to no conclusions.
The story cut to Bombay, where Pinku’s young sister was living in poverty. She was waiting for her boyfriend under an overpass, but he did not show up, and it began to rain. A young man offered to share his umbrella with her, and she fell in love with him, not knowing that he was the corrupt landowner’s younger brother.
S.K. was so wrapped up in his fears that it took him a few minutes to register the silence that now filled the vast cinema. Even the college students in the balcony had stopped groping each other and were transfixed by the screen.
It had been Shabana’s first scene, and she was so nervous that S.K. had to shoot it a dozen times. Giant fans had simulated the monsoon rains, blowing water at Shabana, and she had been soaked to the bone, but had never complained.
The scene deepened—raindrops shone like jewels in Shabana’s eyelashes as she walked through the rain with the young man—and S.K. could hear the audience holding its breath. After the man escorted her home, Shabana broke into a heartbroken song, lamenting that she would probably never see him again.
A few people clapped when the scene ended, and it set a pattern: every time Asha appeared there were jeers and whistles, but Shabana’s appearance led to pin-drop silence, followed by applause.
S.K. turned to look at Shabana, but she didn’t seem to have noticed, and was gazing steadily ahead.
In all his years in the business, S.K. hadn’t seen anything like this. Women in the films of the last few decades were decorative, mainly to give the audience a break from the unrelenting violence. Plus it was Bollywood lore, engraved in stone, that leading ladies came from one of the six established film families of Bombay, carrying in their DNA the big bosoms, pink cheeks, and light eyes of their mot
hers and grandmothers. Why was the audience responding to this elfin girl with no chest, no hips, and a quiet, subdued manner? Was it a girl-next-door phenomenon? Did the unwashed masses now want to see themselves in films?
Sitting silently next to S.K., Shabana felt a strange thrill run through her. She realized that the audience was feeling every one of her emotions: when she sobbed, they sighed, and when she wept, they too wiped their eyes. Like an alchemist, she had found a way to transmute all the guilt and sadness of her life into gold. In that moment she was hooked, and she never wanted to stop acting.
When the film ended, two and a half hours later, she was sick with anticipation. Standing by the exit, she tried to read the faces of the audience, but they were uniformly mournful—the character she played had died in the end, trying to protect her lover from her own brother’s wrath.
The college students left, holding hands. The unemployed young men drifted into an alley to piss, or clustered around a street stall to purchase single cigarettes. Not one person had recognized Shabana. In a simple cotton salwar kameez, her hair up in a ponytail, she simply did not look like a movie star.
“So? How did we do?” Shabana blinked as she walked out into the afternoon sunlight.
“I don’t know yet. Come, let’s have a cup of tea.”
Holding Shabana’s small hand in his beringed one, S.K. crossed the road, heading to a dingy chai shop. Shabana looked confused, but S.K. pointed across the road: from here they had a clear view of the ticket counter at Eros Cinema.
Twenty minutes passed, and as Shabana sipped the too-sweet, milky tea, the magic of that moment slipped away. She felt like her own dull self and began to crave the communion of the darkened movie hall.
Soon it was time for the next show, but there was no one at the ticket window.
S.K. grew tense, and blew on his hot tea to hide his concern. The unemployed young men, with their greasy long hair and their grimy polyester shirts, remained clustered at the corner, talking desultorily and taking long, stylized drags at their cigarettes. Then one of them flicked his cigarette butt to the ground and walked back toward the cinema.
