Bombay Swastika

by Braham Singh

  When the Nazis managed to edge past Siegfried’s penis, they smashed his Victrola to prevent Emmy Destinn flying around and embarrassing them further, but it was too late. The suicide spread amongst nurses like wildfire—his father’s cock growing a full inch with each narration.

  Why embarrass her like that, Schwester Ingrid had asked Ernst. ‘If he wanted to die,’ she asked, ‘why come to the Jüdische Krankenhaus? The Nazis would have obliged him outside.’ She would never forgive Ernst for so many things, and his father was one more. Be that as it may, here she was, laid out on the bed. It was all he wanted earlier that day in the toilet stall. It was all he wanted now. Schwester Ingrid waited and waited and here he was, unable to open his mouth. Not even to ask why she left him. Why didn’t she come back? Who was back there in Germany? What was so wrong with me?

  ‘Why change the music?’ she asked. ‘Just because it reminds you of your homo class teacher? Guess what? This Czech bitch reminds me of your father. I can be a bitch too and bring up that homo, but do I? How he made you feel special? What went on behind closed doors?’ She then mimicked their dead teacher by singing the ‘Flower Duet’ in an exaggerated falsetto and he thought, how can I possibly love this person the way I do?

  They remained on the bed wedded in silence, and in complete agreement nothing had changed. All this while, Emmy Destinn flew around the bedroom after the arpeggiated chords did their overture. The two of them listened to her until Ernst fell asleep, just after that bit at the end, when she lulls you before the build-up .

  Fast asleep, he knew Schwester Ingrid had left. He looked around and saw Bhairavi sway toward the jhopadpatti. She had Chhote Bhai in tow with his head down. Quite the role reversal. Once again though, she was Sindhi-white in his dream. White like that, she could be Kirti, but for the sari.

  30

  So Many Zeroes

  A cancer cell is, what it is,

  For it does, what it does,

  And it does, what it does,

  For it is, what it is.

  —The Other Face of Cancer

  The world doesn’t stop because you have cancer.

  The locals kept running and people continued falling from open carriages. They died on impact and those squatting along the railway lines continued shitting. Politicians continued printing money and famine continued looming over the rain-shadow side of the Western Ghats. People continued starving than consume American PL 480 wheat they couldn’t hold down. The brave ones, though, went ahead and risked the shits tomorrow, just so they could fill their bellies today.

  Sethji continued smuggling gold so Hindus could marry off their daughters. Hanson continued distributing biscuits, anna coins and school textbooks to pavement dwellers, who ate the biscuits, pocketed the money and burned the books for fuel. Chhote Bhai continued with his Matka gambling business and fixing cricket matches, even though they said his heart wasn’t in either. Didn’t matter because people continued to bet on matches, or play the Matka numbers, or do both. Most of India continued without healthcare, running water or electricity while the father of Atomic India, Dr. Bhabha, Mastermind, continued repeating the same message to the nation over AIR: a nuclear program didn’t mean The Bomb; it meant medical breakthroughs and cheap electricity for all. Sure, said the nation as one, and winked. They were positive a bomb was about to be reprocessed by the Mastermind out of thin air. Anytime now. Phoenix became the new buzzword.

  Over at Sion Medical College, the de facto Dean continued to fuck with his student body. Perched safely on the far end of the operating table, Ernst watched as several unhappy interns shuffled their feet at the unsafe end near the glass vitrines. Waller looked happy as a pig in shit holding a syringe. He placed the syringe on the operating table adjacent to a half-glass full of what could be red wine, though Ernst had his doubts. Another glass tumbler, next to it, had a thin rubber sheet stretched tight across its mouth and held in place with rubber bands. There was a small quantity of yellowish liquid in it. The students experienced a harrowing moment when, reaching into a vitrine with a metal rod, Waller snared a snake with the hooked end. It was the same plump, brown Russell’s Viper that had eyeballed Ernst the last time he was here. Ernst was back today to have his damaged nose checked, find out what the damned X-rays had to reveal on the cancer spread, and be gone. Looking at the snake being freed from its confines, he swore never to return.

  Before the snake knew what was happening to it, Waller had its head pressed on the operating table with the metal rod while he held on to the tail. He let go after taking a comfortable grip just behind the Russell’s Viper’s triangular head. With the tail hanging free, four feet of snake coiled itself around Waller’s forearm and the girls screamed. His arm now had a triangular head at one end, its pink tongue flickering. When he took it to the glass tumbler with the rubber sheet, the girls screamed again, alarming the head into becoming bigger. The entire class cowered as one, stumbling back against each other in retreat. Ernst couldn’t recall Waller this happy. When the arm’s triangular head neared the tumbler, it struck and was a sight to behold—walking across the tightly stretched rubber sheet on its two-inch fangs seeking purchase. The fangs finally buried themselves into the rubber sheet and a drop of urine-yellow venom welled from each tip inside the tumbler. After the screaming had quietened down and the snake—poor bastard—returned to its glass container, Waller began.

  ‘Okay, you buggers,’ he said, and never mind there were three female students in the group, pale as death. ‘Today we do Disseminated Intravascular Coagulation, or as I like to call it, DIC,’ and he cackled. ‘Under normal conditions, your body is in finely tuned balance between coagulation and the fibrinolysis that prevents unnecessary blood clotting. Fuck with the balance, and you have DIC.’

  Most of the students were Marathi vernacular, so that one flew right past; they just stared, not sure who was scarier, the snakes staring back from their glass confines, or the cackling dingo. That his pun failed, seemed to simply embolden the crazy old coot.

  Waller syringed venom from the tumbler and pressed out a single drop into the wine glass. The blood in the glass went from liquid to frothing semi-solid in seconds. When Waller tipped the wine glass, a foaming, red disc fell into the petri dish. He looked at the two female students.

  ‘Here, have some DIC,’ he said.

  The students stared, wide-eyed. Done showing off, he threw them out.

  ‘Short shrift,’ he said. ‘Short bloody shrift. That’s how you treat them.’

  Why not treat my flapping nose instead, Ernst suggested, and he would be glad to get the fuck out of here too.

  ‘What do you mean nose is flapping? It cannot. You just think it is. Keep it iced and it will be fine in a few weeks. There’s nothing else to do. It will remain a bit crooked, but what do you care?’

  The drug-addict bastard was right. Ernst didn’t care. They moved on to the X-rays. Ernst tried to focus on Waller’s finger, pointing at something in his abdominal area that meant bugger all. Why couldn’t an X-ray be like any other photograph?

  ‘A mild spread, around stomach. Intestines clear.’

  Ernst was impressed, but then the good doctor continued. ‘Cancer rarely hits the small intestines, I’ve noticed,’ he said. ‘Maybe shit’s antiseptic.’

  ~

  ‘Why not?’ was Waller’s response, when Ernst suggested the Jüdische Krankenhaus as an alternative to Tata Memorial. ‘Europe, after all.’

  Spoken like a true Anglo-Indian.

  ‘At least they take you buggers back into Germany. The British don’t want us. We’re just dingos to them.’

  After all these years, Ernst finally went and asked. ‘Why dingo?’

  ‘Because when the Brits left,’ Waller replied mournfully, ‘we could’ve buggered off with them too, but we dingo.’

  He stared into the X-ray, looking resentful at the unfairness of it all before elaborating on the advantages of Europe. If Ernst went into surgery, he would need catheters after that.
Urinary or renal—probably both. If so, infection was guaranteed in Indian hospitals. Ernst found it hard to remain calm in the face of tubes sticking out from his lower anatomy. He drifted off to the safety of the Jüdische Krankenhaus.

  When it came to harbouring Jews, no place was safer. Right through the war, even as they plucked them like low hanging fruit in Occupied Europe, the Jüdische Krankenhaus stared Nazis in the face from a Berlin suburb. It remained a sanctuary the Nazis refused to violate, except that one time to retrieve his father and who could blame them. They could have also plucked Bombay Ingrid without any qualms when she returned to Germany, packaged her off in a cattle cart to be processed at Ravensbruck if lucky, otherwise Treblinka, Auschwitz, Kulmhof, or Janowska—pick one. Being pregnant though, she got admitted at the Jüdische Krankenhaus as early as her second trimester. That must have required some doing.

  Bombay Ingrid went in, Schwester Ingrid didn’t come out. On their part, the Nazis did not encroach beyond the cordoned off Sammellager holding area, allowing the small Jewish community of doctors, nurses and patients inside the hospital campus to exist, even flourish, given the circumstances. Schwester Ingrid was proof.

  ‘What are you waiting for?’ Dr. Waller asked, irritated why anyone would want to remain in India. ‘Send your medical file to that Jew Hospital along with these X-rays. Bloody get on with it.’

  Ernst thought of all the reasons why he couldn’t.

  ~

  Salim Ali pointed a dirty fingernail at why he could. ‘We have money.’

  The great man’s cheque lay on the table, his whorled signature declaring emancipation. Salim Ali’s bandaged head gave him the undeserved appearance of a Somalian Haji. With his crooked nose on the other hand, Ernst knew he looked ridiculous. He studied the cheque. All those zeroes could make a man dizzy.

  ‘Punjabi had it delivered last night.’

  Ernst counted the zeroes.

  ‘Now, why would he do that?’ Salim Ali asked.

  Ernst could still hear Sassoon dealing with the horror of white men assaulted on Bombay streets. At this point in our lives? Just be safe, the great man had asked of him on the phone. He would send the pipes and the advance. Just be safe. Still, all these zeroes? Salim Ali had a point. Why would Sassoon do that?

  ‘Because you European people stick together.’

  ‘Technically, he isn’t one. Sassoons are Baghdadi Jews. But why don’t you just simply return whatever Arjun took? Then see how many more orders come.’

  ‘I see. Bribery and blackmail. I try not to sell my soul for twelve pieces of silver. And why do you keep saying we took something? What proof?’

  ‘You’re joking, right? I saw the damn gunny bag. It’s probably still at my flat because you’re too scared to keep it.’

  ‘Conjecture. Conjecture and lies. Typical. Go search your flat. Ask Parvatibai.’

  ‘Sure. She’s just waiting to hand it over. The two of you should get married. Listen, you and I both know something was taken. Knowing you idiots, can’t be for money. It’s some idealistic nonsense that got Arjun killed. And you’re right. You could be next. I am worried. Why won’t you tell me? You really think I’ll go squeal? How paranoid are you?’

  ‘Did I tell you about the French and Americans in Vietnam?’

  ‘You did. I’m not French or American.’

  ‘Germans, French, American, same thing.’

  ‘You still think of me as German? Know what? Forget it. Just tell me, now that we have the advance, how do we draw the pipes? ’

  ‘You should’ve thought of that when you took the order. Lying about the Cold Pilger like that.’

  ‘There are other cold rolling mills in Bombay. We’ll find one.’

  ‘No need. Just tell that Punjabi he’ll get his pipes back in two weeks,’ Salim Ali said. ‘Drawn to spec, cut, and bent, along with the flanges.’

  ‘Whoever’s the supplier, you’d better involve me. Bargaining isn’t exactly your forte.’

  Salim Ali curled his lip.

  ‘Prepare to be surprised,’ he said.

  ~

  They took their tea over to the balcony.

  ‘How is Chhote Bhai?’ Ernst asked. ‘I want to thank him.’

  ‘Why for? You had Gomes under control that day. There was no need for him to intervene.’

  He had a straight razor to the gorilla’s neck, if that’s what Salim Ali meant. A lot like holding a tiger by the tail. Flat on his back and in a clutch with Gomes, Ernst had no idea what to do next until Chhote Bhai did it for him.

  ‘Maybe you should give yourself more credit,’ the Somali Haji advised. They gazed out from the balcony in silence, but Chhote Bhai refused to go away.

  ‘You said he wanted to break your legs at one time and didn’t.’

  ‘I grew up in that jhopadpatti around Sindhi Camp,’ Salim Ali said, as if nothing to it. A boy from the jhopadpatti and Muslim to boot. Stray dogs in a mad city—that’s what Bhairavi called Arjun and Tufan. This stray dog goes on to graduate from one of the best engineering schools in India, if not the world.

  ‘Chhote Bhai is seven years older than me. His family’s hut was at the other end of the slum, but he was all over the place. Even as a boy if there was money to be had, he was there before anyone else. He killed a man by the time I was ten. In a couple of years, he was the person you went to. We kids had a cricket team and approached him for a donation. He bought us equipment and bulldozed an empty couple of acres to make us a playground with a proper cricket pitch. Just behind Sindhi Camp.’ Salim Ali paused. ‘He bought us white cricket clothes, so we could compete with the kids from AEET and other colonies, like normal people.’ Salim Ali went silent again, still mulling the white uniforms after all these years; that someone would do that for jhopadpatti kids.

  ‘That’s how I met Arjun. He was an AEET man. They beat the shit out of us every game because of his batting. One day, he showed up alone at our playground. He started playing with us, became part of our team and the next time, we beat AEET. He would walk the two miles to come over play with us every evening after school. We became friends.’

  ‘And Chhote Bhai?’

  ‘Chhote Bhai never liked Arjun. Of late, it’s been almost like he hated him.’ Ernst saw Chhote Bhai smash the hockey ball against Arjun’s porcelain head.

  ‘Our matches became a big deal what with all the betting. I left for IIT, but he would make me come back every month to play the match. He’d begun to make too much money. He had Arjun play too, because he was an ace batsman. Also because otherwise, I wouldn’t.

  ‘Anyway, I also used to fool around with Matka gambling those days. Played the numbers to pay for my tuition. I had a system. It’s all probability anyway, a number game. Easy as shit.’

  For him, sure. Then there was her father, losing four pouches full of diamonds trying to do a Salim Ali.

  ‘I bought my Vespa with the winnings. Paid for college and boarding. One evening Chhote Bhai came by the IIT dorms in Powai. Said he’d been asked to break my legs for cheating at Matka. However, he was proud to see a fellow Muslim in IIT. So instead, he’d break my legs if I ever bet again. He said I could pay him back by throwing a few cricket matches. I refused. He blew a gasket. No one refuses Chhote Bhai. He asked me how come I had no problem cheating at Matka but wouldn’t throw a match? He didn’t understand. To win at Matka, I had to do something. To throw a match meant doing nothing. How demeaning is that?’

  Maybe Chhote Bhai did understand, because Salim Ali said he had a strange look on his face when he left. When Salim Ali graduated, Chhote Bhai invited him to move into the Mian Building for a ridiculous rent. Because of that, Salim Ali could move his mother out from the slums. Yet, they had barely spoken since.

  ‘You would look down, walk away.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Now he looks down and walks away? Chhote Bhai should break your legs for that gunny bag you’re hiding at my place. Instead, he walks away?’

  Salim Ali shrugged. ‘W
hen he sees me, he thinks of Arjun. That’s why. The dead take over your life. It’s the price you pay for killing someone. Why do you think he intervened with Gomes and his men that day?’

  They stared out from aqua armchairs at the skies over a darkening harbour invisible from here. One could feel the seafront. Then with a little effort, sense Dubai across the Arabian Sea, and the Seth’s dhows bringing back gold from there to feed Hindu marriages.

  ‘So Arjun steals something from the Americans. And Chhote gets his pet gorilla to kill him. Why, because the Americans wanted him dead?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘Granted Chhote didn’t like Arjun. But you don’t just go kill someone you’ve known all your life, just because someone asks you to. As for the Americans wanting Arjun dead, did you see Hanson’s state? He was more distraught than you were.’

  ‘And yet.’

  ‘Yet what?’

  ‘Arjun’s dead.’

  ‘Killed by your landlord’s goon. So, let’s blame the Americans? You may want to re-think your thesis.’

  There was nothing to re-think. He was a good Marxist and therefore American complicity was mandatory. All that was left was how Chhote Bhai fitted into Salim Ali’s conspiracy theory—elegantly simple, yet total without basis.

  ‘Who knows why? But he has to live with it now. I feel sorry for him.’

  ‘What’s in that fucking gunny bag? ’

  ‘It’s eating you up, isn’t it?’

  ~

  They could hear kids on the neighbouring terrace yelling taunts at the monsoon clouds brooding over the Arabian Sea. The clouds rose in dark tiers above the invisible harbour, holding on to their waters for now. Parvatibai lumbered over, yelled at the children to shut the fuck up and squatted on the floor with a grunt. Doing so, she completed the circle that made India so liveable. As long as this equation added up the way it did, Ernst felt he would manage whatever was lodged in that stomach X-ray.