The Last Taxi Ride

by A. X. Ahmad

  “Madam. Wake up, madam.”

  The hands rubbed gentle circles into her cheeks, and she reluctantly opened her eyes. She was lying on the stage with her legs splayed out, the heavy red silk of her ghaghra bunched around her waist. The dancers circled her with their heavily made-up faces, the concern in their eyes mixed with satisfaction: the biggest star in Bollywood, so removed from them, was human, after all.

  The hands withdrew, and Shabana looked up into a young man’s face. He was not conventionally handsome: his face was too long perhaps, the jaw too heavy, covered with a three-day growth. But his eyes were a deep hazel, and a lock of his badly cut, too-short hair flopped boyishly onto his forehead. He was very muscular, and wore a faded gray T-shirt and jeans torn at the knees.

  “Madam, you fainted. Are you all right? Have you eaten today?”

  Shabana thought back to her five A.M. start and the two other films she had worked on before coming onto this set at noon; her usual workday stretched from early in the morning till late at night.

  Had she eaten? All she remembered was a cup of tea somewhere along the way. She shook her head.

  “Aare,” the young man shouted offstage in an authoritative voice. “Get Madam a cup of tea, lots of sugar, and bring the biscuits from my locker.”

  The young man pulled her to her feet. There were orange starbursts in her peripheral vision, and when she staggered, he put a muscular arm around her waist.

  They sat on folding chairs in a corner of the set, and she held her aching head in her hands.

  “I hope you like Britannia biscuits. The orange ones with cream filling.” He smiled, and she could see that his two front teeth overlapped slightly. Along with his dark, heavy eyebrows, it gave him a wolfish, hungry look.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the director of the film enter the set, accompanied by a thin, bespectacled man she recognized as the studio doctor.

  She turned quickly to the young man. “Are you an actor?”

  “No, I just graduated from the film college in Pune. I’m the third cameraman. Third assistant cameraman.”

  Cameraman. Thank God. Actors were impossible to date, with their competitive jealousy and their narcissism.

  “I love orange biscuits,” Shabana said, mustering a faint smile. “My father used to buy them for me.”

  “Nice to meet you. I’m Sanjeev.”

  “I’m Shabana.”

  “Yes, I know who you are.” Sanjeev smiled his wolfish smile and Shabana felt herself blush.

  Just then the director and the doctor came hurrying up, and Sanjeev walked away. He returned a few minutes later, wordlessly handed her a packet of biscuits, and vanished beyond the glare of the lights. She took a bite of a biscuit, and the citrus sweetness filled her mouth, a taste from childhood.

  She inquired about Sanjeev, and the makeup woman said that all the backup dancers were in love with him. He ignored them, though, and spent all his time messing around with the Arriflex 35mm cameras and pestering the older cameramen about obscure technical issues. Hearing this, Shabana felt heartened.

  At age twenty-eight, she had dated all sorts of men: young, swaggering actors; older directors; tycoons in suits who collected art. But nothing lasted, and none of them could handle her; they ended up resenting her stardom or viewed her as a trophy.

  Now she relied on Ruksana to shield her from men. Like an old-time governess, Ruki would stand next to Shabana, her arms folded over her chest. As soon as a take was over, Ruki would hustle Shabana to the next set, handing her a script in the car.

  “There is no time for these useless lafangas,” Ruki would remind her. “They just want to brag that they’re sleeping with a star. And if word gets out to the press, you will lose respect, the roles will dry up. We don’t want to be poor again. Ever again.”

  “Yes, Ruki,” Shabana would sigh, wishing she could meet someone who valued her for herself. Now, thinking about Sanjeev, she felt an unusual quickening of her pulse. Other men had wooed her with diamond rings, private jets, trips to Bali; never before with a packet of orange biscuits.

  Three days later, after a neurologist pronounced her fit, Shabana returned to Film City to reshoot the dance scene. She was so nervous that she couldn’t even tell if Sanjeev was there, hidden behind the lights and the hungry eyes of the cameras.

  She danced like a demon to the thumping music, surrounded by the troupe of dancers. By the time she finished, she was slick with sweat, and a girl assistant hurried up to her with a hand towel. When she took it, she felt something heavy within its folds: it was a packet of orange biscuits. Looking up, she saw Sanjeev standing at the edge of the stage, smiling his wolfish smile. He was wearing his torn jeans again, and another faded T-shirt, red this time.

  Seeing him, she blushed. She walked toward him with her undulating walk, thinking up a pretext—should she ask him if the camera angles were okay?—when Ruksana, whose radar was finely tuned, swooped down upon her.

  “Chalo, let’s go.” Ruksana scowled. “We have an interview at Filmfare in fifteen minutes.”

  In front of her sister, Shabana’s courage ebbed away. Smiling weakly at Sanjeev, she trailed Ruksana to the waiting car.

  Later that evening, she returned to the huge flat in Bandra she’d shared with Ruksana ever since their mother died. She sat alone on its wide veranda and ate the whole packet of orange biscuits, cramming her mouth with their buttery sweetness.

  The next time she returned to the set, Sanjeev slipped into her changing room. She was sitting in front of her mirror, plucking her eyebrows when his reflection just appeared in her mirror, making her jump, but he said nothing, just leaned against the wall and crossed his arms. She sat stock-still with her back to him, her tweezers halfway to her eyebrows.

  “So, what? You’ll eat my biscuits but you won’t talk to me?” His words were teasing but his tone was serious.

  She addressed his reflection. “No, no, it’s not that. I’m so busy, doing four movies right now, and—”

  “That was your sister. She doesn’t approve of men, right?”

  Shabana was stunned at his perception, and swiveled to face him.

  “Yeah. I’ve heard about her. You know that everyone calls her kala makra, black widow spider? What, she won’t let you even talk to anyone else?”

  “She … she protects me. So that I can just work.”

  “She doesn’t like you.”

  Sanjeev said it as though it was a fact, and Shabana knew it was true. Ruksana’s resentment came through in so many ways: she packed Shabana’s schedule, kept their finances vague, and conducted complex negotiations with Don Hajji Mustafa. When Shabana asked for details, Ruksana answered curtly, saying that Shabana need not worry her pretty little head. Over the years, Ruksana’s very presence—her hair pulled back into a severe bun, face hidden behind huge sunglasses, her skin turning dry and ashy—had become a rebuke to Shabana’s beauty.

  “Look, don’t worry about your sister. After you finish this scene, here’s what you do.” Sanjeev leaned in and whispered into Shabana’s ear. Without waiting for a reply, he winked at her and slipped out of the dressing room door.

  The next scene was a cocktail party, and Shabana wore a little black dress and a diamond necklace and looked the part of a rich, spoiled girl. Going out onto the set, Shabana was surrounded by a crowd of extras—the men in black tuxedos, the women in heavy brocaded gowns, all sweating under the heat of the arc lights. She found it hard to concentrate, and kept messing up her lines, and each time the director had to restage the entire elaborate scene. During take after take the extras went through the same clockwork gestures and mouthed polite nonsense, and Shabana began to feel that she was surrounded by automatons.

  Six takes later, she finally got it right. As she walked off the set, she felt as empty as an earthen pot: if someone dropped her, she would break into a thousand pieces. She saw Ruksana gesturing at her from the entrance, and knew that she would soon be whisked away, perhaps to a sho
ot at another studio, or another print advertisement, adding a new image of herself to the thousands already plastered on giant billboards all over the country.

  Enough of being bullied by Ruki. Remembering Sanjeev’s whispered instructions, Shabana turned to her sister.

  “Just one minute. I forgot my script in the changing room.”

  “Get in the car, Shabana. I’ll send a boy for it.”

  “I’ll be right back. You go ahead.”

  Ruksana snorted in exasperation, but turned toward the waiting car.

  Shabana walked quickly past her dressing room, then down the long corridor beyond it, passing the badly lit dressing rooms that the extras used, the mirrors clouded with talcum powder, tuxedos lying in heaps on chairs. She reached the end of the corridor, and there was Sanjeev, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed. He looked vaguely bored, like a man waiting for a bus.

  “Hello.”

  She halted. “Were you worried that I wasn’t coming?”

  “No. Why would you do that? After all, I was being my most charming.”

  He smiled his wolfish smile, opened the back door, and helped her down the wet, slippery metal stairs to the empty parking lot below. She saw the tattered trees dripping with water and realized that she had missed the entire rainstorm.

  He handed her a motorcycle helmet, slipped on another, then reached down and hand-started his motorbike, an old, heavy Royal Enfield Bullet.

  “Hang on to me, okay? Lean when I lean.” He had to shout above the racket of the engine.

  She nodded and climbed behind him, holding tightly to his slim waist. He kicked away the stand and the bike roared away, faster and faster, the grounds of Film City giving way to the broken asphalt of the main road. She smelled the wet earth, felt the whip of air in her face, and leaned into his strong back.

  It was like a scene from one of her movies, but, for once, it was real.

  On that first date, she wore huge sunglasses and one of Sanjeev’s baseball caps, and they walked around the Hanging Gardens. It was empty except for some old people reading newspapers. When Sanjeev pulled her behind a hedge and kissed her, she couldn’t stop giggling.

  Shabana put fake beauty parlor appointments and personal training sessions on her calendar, and went on surreptitious dates with Sanjeev for three months. They behaved like any other young couple in Bombay, except that she wore shabby salwar kameez, huge sunglasses, and always had her hair up. They walked on the beach in Juhu, kissed on a bench in the Hanging Gardens, and roared through the city on Sanjeev’s motorbike, her face hidden by a motorcycle helmet.

  Once they were almost caught in a Chinese restaurant on Cuff Parade, when an off-duty film photographer took a snap of them holding hands. It took all of Sanjeev’s considerable charm, as well as fifty thousand rupees, to get the man to hand over the film.

  After that they ate only at Azeem’s, a biriyani place that had private “family booths,” separated from the main dining room by dirty pink curtains. Other desperate young couples bribed the waiters, and used these booths to make out. Shabana and Sanjeev enjoyed the biriyani, but it was always accompanied by the heavy breathing and rhythmic moans of their neighbors.

  Shabana giggled, and just went on eating, but Sanjeev’s face became serious.

  “How long can we go on like this, Shabbu?”

  “What’s wrong? Isn’t it fun?”

  “Yes, it is, but what about six months from now? Are we still going to be hiding? We’ll be caught, sooner or later. This is crazy, you’re a movie star, not some penniless girl living with her parents. Why are you so scared of Ruksana?”

  Shabana stopped eating, and the biriyani in front of them grew cold.

  “Well, what is it?”

  “She has no one, and, well, I don’t want to hurt her feelings.” Thinking about Ruki made Shabana’s head hurt. “And she says that being involved with a man will harm my career. The fans like to think of me as single and glamorous. She says that if I get married, I won’t get these roles anymore. Don Hajji agrees, and he’s the one who finances all of my films.”

  “So … we can never be a couple, because your sister and some has-been mobster have decided it?” Sanjeev leaned closer, his eyes blazing. “Shabbu, wake up, this is 1995. In case you didn’t notice, the Indian economy has been liberalized. Hell, your ads for Pepsi and Gucci make more money in one day than the old movie stars did in a year. The multinationals are calling the shots now, not the mob.

  “The Don’s strong-arm tactics don’t work anymore. If you say good-bye to him, what’s he going to do? Send that guy … what’s his name, ‘the Hammer,’ to break your fingers? You don’t need the Don. A goddamn bank will finance any movie you want to make.”

  Shabana wiped her mouth. “Really, you think so?”

  “One hundred percent.”

  “What about Ruki?”

  “What about Ruki? You don’t need the kala makra. Get a professional manager.”

  “But Sanjeev, she’s my sister, how can I—”

  Sanjeev sat back and smiled grimly. “Shabbu, you know I’m right. She’s ruining your life—our life. Fire her.”

  Fire Ruksana? Shabana knew that Sanjeev was right, but … the two of them had always been together. Her sister knew her better than anyone on earth; Ruki could take one look at her and know that she was about to pull out her hair. Yes, Ruki was a pain, but what would life be like without her managing all the complicated logistics? Their lives were intertwined, impossible to unravel.

  “Fire her,” Sanjeev repeated. “Get a professional manager, get a lawyer, get financing from a bank.”

  Shabana resisted at first, but Sanjeev kept explaining to her how it could be done. He said it so many times that it began to feel like a real possibility.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The morning after his encounter with the two men, Ranjit wakes early, his body caught in a tangle of sweaty sheets. He is still exhausted, but cannot sleep anymore.

  Getting up, he forces himself to do a hundred sit-ups. When his belly starts cramping, he turns over and begins push-ups. He has to stop at sixty-three, his arms giving way, but he has succeeded in clearing his mind.

  After a cold shower, he sits with his battered laptop and types into a search engine. In ten minutes he has a list of sixteen garages in the South Bronx with Indian-sounding names. From long experience, he knows not to call; nobody will give out information over the phone.

  Soon the Saturday crowds will invade Jackson Heights, but right now he has the neighborhood to himself. He strolls down the unswept streets, past stores with their shutters still pulled down. Luckily the Pakistani shop is open, and he gets a cup of chai to go, the sugar entering his bloodstream and giving him a sudden burst of energy.

  The yellow cab he’s borrowed from Ali is parked a few blocks away in an alley. He examines it again in the harsh morning light, finding no damage other than the missing mirror. Even if the cops give him a citation, a busted mirror is much easier to explain away than a bullet hole. Ali was expecting the cab back last night, and is bound to be pissed off, but Ranjit needs it for a few more hours.

  He gets into the hot, stuffy cab and drives down Broadway toward the Triboro. Bare-chested men have appeared on street corners, selling cold drinks from their large plastic coolers. The sky is cloudless and glittering with heat.

  Sixteen garages. It is going to be a long, hot morning.

  * * *

  It is just past noon, and Ranjit’s long-sleeved white shirt is soaked in sweat. He’s headed down a narrow road in Hunt’s Point, not really sure of where he is going.

  The first twelve garages were washouts, but he’s made his way through a large swathe of the South Bronx, from the larger garages on Webster Avenue to the shadier shops in Hunt’s Point. Some of the garages were owned by Sikhs but employed only Hispanics; other Indian owners frowned at him when he asked questions about their employees, and wouldn’t talk until he convinced them that he wasn’t from U.S. Immi
gration. He has smiled, bullshitted, drunk cups of tea, and shaken so many hands that his fingers now stink of auto grease, but no one knows anything about Mohan’s cousin, Kishen.

  There are four places left: Khalsa Autoworks, Lakshmi Narayan Motors, Singh Repair, and the place he’s now trying to find, Golden Temple Mechanic.

  He turns onto Oak Point Avenue, passing what seems to be a colonial graveyard, complete with leaning tombstones and a chipped stone obelisk. He drives past large warehouses with barred windows and a waste processing plant, all seemingly deserted. He hasn’t seen a person for the last twenty minutes, and after the clamor of the other boroughs, the echoing silence feels eerie.

  He finally sees a garish blue and yellow sign that points down an unpaved street. Bumping over potholes, he hits a dead end, curses, manages a tight K-turn, and heads down another unmarked fork.

  This must be the right place: he sees a corrugated metal shed with a dilapidated shack next to it, rusted car chassis littering the yard. When he turns off the engine, the quiet is broken only by the cry of a rooster.

  As he wipes the sweat from his eyes, a portly Sikh emerges from the shed. He is at least sixty, with a long white beard, and wears a saffron turban wound tightly into a tall cylinder. The man’s style tells Ranjit that he is an orthodox Sikh, probably a supporter of Khalistan, a separate nation for Sikhs.

  “Yes? What do you want?” The man’s lips are hidden under his whiskers.

  “Sat Sri Akal.” Ranjit uses the religious greeting.

  “Sat Sri Akal, bole so Nihal.” The man’s frown softens. “What can I do for you? Want that mirror fixed? I have a spare one, cheap.”

  Something tells Ranjit not to rush the man. This place is so remote, it would be a perfect spot for Mohan to hide out.

  “How much for a mirror, bhai?”

  “For you…” The old Sikh considers. “Twenty-five, okay?”