Bombay Swastika

by Braham Singh

  ‘How is that your fault? By admitting to that, what are you not admitting? What are you not telling me?’

  Seeing him starting to drown, she descends to make sure the concrete remains in situ; then grinds her pelvis to pour more concrete into his erection. Where did she learn to do that? Clinging to her while not letting go of maya, he finds it difficult to hang on to both.

  ‘So your father killed himself because she became the enemy’s mistress?’

  ‘You could say that. He protested, and pissed them off. If you piss off Nazis, you’re going to end up with pissed-off Nazis. He killed himself to avoid being shipped East.’

  ‘But he was a sophisticated man. You said so. He would have understood she collaborated to survive. How could she be a traitor if forced at gunpoint? Your father would know that. What are you not admitting? What was so unacceptable he had to go protest in front of such dangerous men? Piss them off like that?’

  He wants to defend Schwester Ingrid more than anything else. Ask, what does an Indian Goddess know about survival? Try being a Jew for one day in Nazi Germany.

  Goddess Bhairavi hovers. ‘What aren’t you telling me?’ she asks again. ‘Why was your wife the only Yehudi to run back to the Nazis?’ The Goddess then leans forward the way he does to get Indians to open up. When she does that to him, he becomes a faucet and pours his heart out.

  ~

  Bombay Ingrid was waiting to be recruited all her life. A platinum blonde Jewess and more Aryan-looking than the most Aryan-looking Aryans, she resented not being one. Like Beatrice Taylor, she couldn’t hide that longing. It must have shown on her perfect face, the huge relief at being back. So they got her admitted into the hospital, where she got rid of the baby and went to work.

  The Goddess looks at him. That’s a salty taste in his mouth. It’s okay to cry, she says.

  ‘She worked at the detention area keeping Jews calm. My father would watch his daughter-in-law—a beautiful, freshly showered Jewess smelling of soap—hold their hands to inspire trust, place their children on her lap so she could tell them not to worry. That the death camps rumours were nonsense. She would ask them to look across the barbed wire at all the Jews strolling the hospital grounds. See? Those are Jews, just like you. And you, well you’re simply being sent to other nice, happy places just like the Jüdische Krankenhaus; to work, keep busy like them.’

  The Goddess turns pensive. ‘That picture of her in uniform with those children on her lap? The one your father sent you.’

  ‘He sent it to explain why he killed himself. It was his suicide note. When their time came, she let those children skip happily to the boxcars.’

  It had been a while since he thought of his father doing anything other than slicing his wrists in a bathtub. Things like teaching him to play the piano in their parlour. Teaching him to fly a kite. Ruffling his hair. Holding him in a bear hug. Doing whatever it takes to get his only son out of Nazi Germany. To get past the bathtub scene though, one had to first acknowledge what Ingrid did. Acknowledge that she enjoyed whispering lies to children. That she enjoyed being with Aryans, yearning to be one of them, as badly as Beatrice Taylor wishing she was a full, hundred-per cent European. Admit that Ingrid never did anything she didn’t want to do in the first place.

  ‘You acknowledging that would have let your father rest. Instead, he keeps slashing his wrists every night, trying to convince you there was nothing else he could have done. He didn’t kill himself to escape the Nazis. He died to protest what she was doing.’

  ‘You’re asking me to blame her for his death? She is my wife. I loved her.’

  ‘Did she love you?’

  ‘She married me. Came with me to India. No one put a gun to her head.’

  ‘You told me about your people marrying someone, anyone, those days, just so they weren’t alone.’

  When angry, Goddess Bhairavi is found on garish Hindu calendars, sitting on a faithful donkey with her mouth full of demon blood, her body covered with a tiger skin while holding a skeleton. Today, the Goddess rides a mule, and though there is anger at the size of his denial, she is here to open his eyes before they close forever.

  ‘Look, what denial does. You won’t even contact the Yehudi hospital for your own sake. ’

  He didn’t want to deal with that now. He had all of his rest of three minutes left to do that.

  ‘That’s why you are not sending them your X-rays. Because then memories start to gush, demanding answers.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Will you send them now?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And what else?’

  ‘Ask my father to forgive me. Allow him to rest.’

  ‘And what else?’

  ‘Ask for her forgiveness when she visits me again.’

  ‘She may not. She’s a woman.’

  ‘I’ll ask her anyway.’

  ‘Oooh!’ Goddess Bhairavi squeals. ‘You’re saying all the right things!’ She leans forward while still riding him like a mule, and licks at his tears before kissing his open mouth to deliver a carrot he will never forget. Her pupils rolled back again as he surges inside her. If Parvatibai hears the Goddess screaming like this, she’s going to come rushing in with that bloody glass of milk and a cold compress.

  ~

  Her ankle scrapped his, the sari bunched around the swell of one calf. Light brown, wedding henna vines crawled across her dark brown feet. Each scarlet toe nested against the one next to it, with no need for pumps to align the formation.

  Raag Bhairavi is morning music, and its strains filtered through the window grill from some neighbourhood radio. She sat up with a smudged dot on the forehead, like a red, third eye, her face crimson from the rising sun favouring her through the bedroom window. Seeing her glow, it dawned once again that she was too beautiful for his own good.

  It was vivid, what he thought happened last night. But then, so were all his dreams. He had woken up a couple of times and watched her sleep, listened to her giving off little Goddess snores every once in a while. Sure, the face was smudged and hair spread on the pillow, not coiffured the way it had been with sindoor and all, but he wouldn’t have had it any other way.

  ‘Did something happen last night?’

  ‘What do you mean,’ she demanded, and he girded up for the face from the other day at the dining table, when he tried holding hands after feeling her up. She smiled instead. Urdu poets would line up to declare she looked like a piece of the moon. Gautama Buddha, the ninth avatar of Vishnu as Hindus have you believe, urges we go ahead and dig the pond without waiting for the moon. When the pond is finished, the Buddha says, the moon will appear in it. Just that, he’s been digging away for so long now, when the moon’s finally appeared, it’s time to go.

  ~

  When he brought up her brother, Goddess Bhairavi took leave and a frightened, over-dressed girl sat up.

  ‘I don’t know where Kirti is. She’s simply gone and vanished.’

  He wanted to tell her not to worry and that a big gora Englishman had her cross-dressing brother. That the English fool would die before letting any harm come to the boy. ‘Kirti’s fine,’ he said, and they left it at that. Her look of relief had him worried she still thought he could do anything. Then there was this other thing.

  ‘Sassoonji.’ Smile, you idiot, smile when you say that. ‘You in his Mercedes.’

  ‘All the time you thought he was looking after you. Now someone has to look after him.’

  She locked eyes, but then went wriggled her toes and he was distracted. Besides, just because she looked like a Goddess, didn’t make her one. Rather than challenge her, he changed the subject. ‘How’s the accounting work getting along?’

  ‘It’s for your pipes,’ she said. ‘Sassoonji’s Lala has me keep separate books.’

  How could he let that one go? He asked about the pipes—what were they for? When she said for Atomic Energy, for the new, nuclear reprocessing plant, he explained, more to try convince himself, that stai
nless steel has to be nitric acid grade to reprocess spent fuel. Salim Ali said so. ‘Those pipes are not nitric acid grade. So, cannot be for AEET.’ He didn’t add—although, this was India and we’re talking about Sassoon.

  ‘You may make the pipes, but I do the books. So I should know.’ She was emphatic. ‘They have already been delivered to AEET,’ she said, not telling him anything he didn’t know.

  He did want to know why though, as if asking himself. ‘Why sub-par pipes for a nuclear facility? Why do something like that for money?’

  She became a coquette again, wriggling her toes for him. ‘Why don’t you find Kirti and ask her?’

  When Parvatibai came with chai for two, she didn’t bat an eyelid at what looked like miscegenation and adultery rolled into one bed. Bhairavi used Parvatibai’s thick forearm for support when sitting back up. They smiled at each other like best friends. Ernst felt under siege. He was relieved no end when Parvatibai left, and the two of them fell back to hold hands. One couldn’t miss how married she looked.

  ‘Like my wife, you went married someone you don’t love. Do you hate him?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Why? Because you are a Goddess?’

  She giggled like a schoolgirl. ‘No,’ she said, ‘because I am Indian.’

  Before turning to her side for a quick nap, she leaned over his ear again. He shivered waiting for the tongue to tickle his brain, but all she did was bend low and whisper. How exhilarating was it, she asked, to know that no one could harm him any more? To no longer be afraid of anyone? He should thank his cancer.

  Later, when he spooned against her, she let him. When he thrust, the phone rang.

  It was Dr. Waller. They had found Willie. He was no longer missing.

  43

  Directing Traffic

  Without road accidents, India’s population would double.

  —R.K. Karanjia, Editor, Blitz

  The Tata truck had adhered to the laws of angular conservation of momentum, twirled in a tight circle at high speed, and come to rest face-down. What would be incredible anywhere else in the world was nothing new at Chembur Naka. Nighttime, it becomes a racetrack.

  The dead driver—half-in, half-out of the caboose—was a Marathi local. In this topsy-turvy world, Marathas were driving heavy vehicles now, not Sikhs. The dead man had the same handlebar moustache as the one in that truck at Sindhi Camp. The one who did a hit-and-run on a kid goat while aiming for Salim Ali. Sprawled like that, the driver looked almost bitter at how things had turned out. The cleaner was missing. Must have run like hell, leaving one shoe behind. It was a large, gorilla-size, and couldn’t belong to your typical, little cleaner-boy—someone to spoon with over lonely nights. The gorilla-size cleaner had run away, probably just like how he did that day at the Golf Club after Salim Ali’s sword dance. This time, Ernst was pretty sure he would keep running.

  Another body lay more than fifty feet from the capsized Tata—almost too far to be part of the accident scene. A hand was stretched out towards the truck, trying to be part of the story or possibly commanding it to stop. The rest of Willie lay in a pool of blood. Goras were milling around. It looked as if the whole Anglo-section of the Golf Club was at Chembur Naka this warm, sultry evening to mourn one of theirs.

  Ignoring Ernst the way great men dismiss people from their lives, Sassoon wondered aloud. ‘What the bloody hell was Willie doing here in the first place?’

  When Daisy Lansdowne stepped out of his Mercedes, the great man rushed over to guide her away from the body, throwing a parting hiss at the hovering policemen. ‘Someone cover him up, for fuckssake.’

  The constables in their dark blue half-pants were alert lamp posts. There were too many white people around for business as usual. Between the police and their inertia, Willie remained as is—arm thrown out to direct Indian traffic from the afterlife—until Ernst gathered enough of the gunny bags floating around the Tata to go cover his friend. There was a nick at the side of Willie’s skull, the kind that normally self-healed. All the blood around the body seemed to have drained from that single scratch. After the direct hit from a Tata, one guessed Willie forgot to clot. Ernst was surprised how removed he felt. Admittedly, not very different from the past so many days after Willie first went missing on getting fired, then went native, to finally go for broke. Ernst’s mind had been on other things. Primarily Sindhi Camp Bhairavi—recently turned Goddess.

  Deputy Commissioner Jahagirdar was also there and came up to commiserate. Salim Ali from just the other day, and now Willie. The way Ernst saw, he was all that remained between Jahagirdar and a hat trick. The way Jahagirdar looked him up and down, he seemed to agree.

  They shook hands, old acquaintances meeting under unfortunate circumstances. Ernst remembered Willie raging through the Deputy Commissioner’s police station, conducting a second British invasion. He had the distinct feeling the Deputy Commissioner was visualising the exact, same thing.

  ‘Unfortunate.’

  ‘Very.’

  The Deputy Commissioner was suave as they came. ‘At least we can both agree this time, there’s no bullet-hole.’

  ‘Commendable,’ Ernst said. ‘You must have exercised great restraint. ’

  Looking past Jahagirdar, Sassoon’s Protection Home for Whores was visible from where he stood, peering at him from behind Chembur Naka’s two temples. Its disarrayed red tiles demanded answers he didn’t have. Logic after all, was in one’s head. The outside world progressed with none at all.

  ‘Ernst!’

  It was Daisy Lansdowne brushing past a bemused Sassoon. Her face—red like the Sassoon Protection Home’s roof tiles—also demanded answers. As if he would know why Willie was here past midnight, directing traffic. The Deputy Commissioner hightailed, than stay around to see how Ernst fared.

  Ernst tried touchy-and-feely when she came up, but Daisy brooked no comforting from the likes of him. He understood, and flailing from want of an option, tried chitchat.

  ‘I see you finally found some time for your friend,’ she said.

  Ernst protested; felt like telling her about the quality time spent with her husband in the police chowki.

  ‘I called you the other day. You banged the phone down.’

  ‘Yes, of course, thanks. One pathetic phone call. Adam calls daily. He worried about Willie, as a friend should. He located him some days ago and brought him back home. He sent his car again to pick him up last evening, and now for me. What have you done for us, lately?’

  At times like this, a Hindu changes tack.

  ‘What was he doing here at two bloody am?’

  It was weak, but it was something.

  Daisy had that look of eternal disdain cheated wives favour. She nodded toward the Sassoon Protection Home for Whores.

  ‘What do you think?’

  She then looked at Willie, his arm sticking out past a gunny bag. When the tears came, she said, ‘Fuck him,’ dabbing at her eyes. ‘And fuck you too. Goodbye, Ernst.’

  44

  The Sassoon Protection Home for Whores

  In India, gods may cross-dress.

  —Krishna in drag vs Indian Penal Code

  Arrayed on the floor like that, Princess Kirti’s life had taken a turn for the worse. Or not, depending on where one stood.

  Holed up in a room at the Sassoon Protection Home for Whores and not permitted to leave, could be considered a turn for the worse—result of defective karma. On the other hand, she had the room to herself, no gang rapes by fellow prisoners scheduled on the calendar, fed three times a day, and allowed to meet people.

  Then again, Willie was dead.

  For an audience with the Princess, one had to first sign the register at the Protection Home reception. Then one had to wait while the uniformed lady in khaki-sari at the desk called someone, somewhere, for permission to allow the gora past warning signs in Hindi, Marathi and English, exclaiming one after the other for good reason: NO UNESCORTED MEN ALLOWED! The ceili
ng fan was on and a pair of khaki trousers flailed helplessly from a hook next to the multilingual warning signs.

  ‘That chhakka can leave anytime, you know,’ was Khaki-sari’s surly take on the subject. ‘He just has to put on his trousers and I’ll personally throw him out. All this drama-bazi…such waste of time. ’

  ‘Don’t call her chhakka.’

  ‘Is it a hijra then? Really? A eunuch?’

  ‘Just take me to her.’

  ‘Chai, Sirji?’

  Offering chai seemed the right decision, because the phone rang and someone, somewhere, gave Ernst a huge thumbs-up the way her eyes widened. Khaki-sari simpered and stood. Ernst thought she was going to pat herself on the back. He followed her past the warnings on the signboard and into a corridor cutting straight through rooms on either side. Recent repairs showed off through paan-stained, whitewashed walls.

  Four carelessly thrown corridors made the Sassoon Protection Home for Whores an imperfect square with a compound in the centre. Khaki-sari led Ernst down the corridor, sort of parallel to the main road blaring outside. One couldn’t look into the central compound from here but it sounded like an aviary.

  One could look into the rooms though, the doors left open to prevent the bodies inside from stewing in their own sweat. As Ernst passed by each room, it would turn silent and eyes scour his white skin. Then he’d breathe easy again before the next door came up and once again the women would eat him up alive. Khaki-sari led on, unaware of the wrinkles to space-time in her wake. When they reached Marathi-numerical #47, Ernst was faint from too much of a good thing, and trying not to suffocate in female body odour.

  ~

  Sick though he was, Ernst had come to see her, and bereft as she was, the Princess deigned him an audience. She even offered to strain him some chai bubbling on a primus stove. She sat in a corner just like at the police lockup, only this time not so bedraggled, and in dry clothes in an empty room.

  Also, she had changed into widow-white. Khaki-sari rolled her eyes at the broken bangles on the floor and left him to deal with whatever was going on here. Hindu widows break their bangles on a husband’s demise which, for all her genuine grief over Willie, even Ernst felt to be somewhat over the top. After all, she wasn’t married to Willie, and though he didn’t have the heart to bring it up, she was a he. Besides, there was a real widow in pain out there. He tried, but for the world of him, couldn’t picture Daisy Lansdowne breaking her bangles on the floor at her company bungalow.