Bombay Swastika

by Braham Singh

  He declined the tea but concluded that for all the over-the-top drama, Princess Kirti’s grief was genuine. When did this love develop? Over how many golf games? He asked instead, how she was doing. She asked about Willie.

  ‘How did it happen?’

  ‘Truck.’

  ‘Did he suffer?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You know, he was coming to see me when it happened.’

  ‘Yes.’ Either that, or he was directing traffic at 2 a.m.

  ‘PL 480,’ Princess Kirti said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s this PL 480 business. American food aid. That’s why he was coming here. So we could teach the Seth a lesson he would never forget.’

  ‘What’s the Seth got to do with American food aid?’

  Everything, she said, wriggling her toes, but it wasn’t the same.

  ~

  When Willie broke into the police chowki and stormed out with her, he went straight next door to the Bombay Presidency Golf Club.

  ‘With you?’

  ‘Of course. Why?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘I know I am not allowed inside,’ she said, sounding defensive. ‘He asked me to wait at the reception.’ Ernst stared at the boy’s painted toenails sticking out from under the widow-sari. He corrected himself. Her toenails.

  She reminisced about her hero. ‘I saw him go straight up to Sassoonji. They spoke. You should have heard him yell. Just imagine. Yelling at Sassoonji. But it worked, because doors opened just like that and I was able to come here. Imagine what would have happened to me at the police chowki.’

  He tried picturing Willie yell at Sassoon, and wasn’t sure if imagining that was allowed. On the other hand, he had poured Salim Ali’s remains over the great man and here he was, still alive.

  He had to ask. ‘You and Willie. Since when?’

  ‘Two years now. You were there the first time we met. He hated me talking to anyone else. Even to you.’ She smiled at that, reminiscing about her man. ‘What people don’t realise is we are women. We can’t bear your babies, but we can love just as passionately. He was my life.’

  A racist Englishman and an Indian cross-dresser. His head started to ring.

  ‘What about Lala Prem? He’s all over you too.’

  ‘True. He will do anything I want. We share all our secrets with each other.’

  ‘And Arjun? Did he tell you his secrets too?’

  ‘Of course. We were childhood friends. He was an idealist. Silly boy. Where was the need to get involved? Look what happened.’

  ‘You know what happened?’

  ‘Of course. Arjun never hid anything from me.’

  ‘Yes, yes. Neither did the Lala, I know. By the way, did Willie know about you and the Lala?’

  ‘Of course. We promised to tell each other everything. No secrets.’

  ‘But you just said the same about the Lala.’

  ‘Yes. I would never hide anything from Lalaji. Nor would he from me.’

  Ernst gave up and focused on the matter at hand.

  He tried picturing Willie yell at Adam Sassoon and once again, he couldn’t. Instead, he felt feverish.

  ‘What did you two talk about?’

  ‘What do lovers talk about?’

  ‘And the Lala and you? What secrets did he share?’

  ‘He would tell me about this American PL 480 food aid business. He complained it was taking up all his time.’

  ‘And you told Willie.’

  ‘He got excited when I did. Said it would solve all our problems. I believed him. Now, who cares? ’

  ‘I do. You told him what the Lala and Arjun told you. Now tell me.’

  ~

  The Princess watched Ernst sip his tea. ‘With him gone,’ she said, ‘I may not be here too long.’

  She didn’t have a bloody choice with Willie gone, but a Princess is a Princess and defines her own terms.

  ‘Where will you go?’

  ‘The hijras want to take me in.’

  He felt a chill. He couldn’t see the Princess a eunuch, doing the rounds at marriages and births, clapping her hands cross-wise and threatening to raise her sari if the baksheesh was insufficient. It was unbecoming. But before that, there would have to be a castration ceremony for the Princess to join the club. His stomach turned.

  ‘I know,’ the Princess said, reading his reaction. ‘But I don’t need it anymore.’ She floated into a dream state.

  ‘You know,’ she said on coming back, ‘he loved mine.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Played with it for hours. He loved that I couldn’t fake it. Called it my barometer. Hated anyone else touching it.’

  Lala Prem came to mind and the flying Japanese, and God knows who else, but yes, I know what you mean, thought Ernst.

  ‘What do I need it for, now that he’s gone?’

  ~

  Not only did she have a room to herself, but a room with a view.

  Were the Princess to stand, she could have seen Ernst walking out toward the main road. Mohan Driver was parked by the Chagan Mitha petrol pump down at Chembur Naka. The Seth’s Impala though, was parked on the opposite curb outside her window. Johnny Walker was in uniform, and along with his full-paunched posse could be seen clinging to the Seth’s vehicle. The Impala’s fin had protected the police against a Salim Ali doing his sword dance in the Golf Club compound, but why did they need protection today? Also, was the Impala there just to serve and protect, or was there someone inside? That the Seth was inside wasn’t improbable after hearing out Princess Kirti. Still, Ernst refused to consider the possibility. Sensible, because then he would have to consider the consequences.

  ‘Are you the homo, Mr. Ernst?’ Johnny Walker asked as he crossed the road and walked toward them.

  Was he the homo? Almost, though, not quite. His schoolteacher notwithstanding and for all of Princess Kirti’s obvious charms, only the Ingrids, and now the Bhairavis, did anything for him.

  ‘Why for this homogiri?’ Johnny Walker wanted to know, and then in a pensée that screamed of original thought, ‘Why abominate, when you can conjugate?’

  Sick and tired as he was, Ernst felt he should note that one down.

  Preamble done with and bona fides established, Johnny Walker got down to business. ‘You realise this cannot continue, Mr. Ernest.’

  Given his deteriorating state, Ernst was willing to cease and desist, if he only knew what Johnny Walker wanted discontinued. The policeman kept going on with the threats, his broadsides becoming very general—rendering Ernst culpable for almost everything.

  Ernst felt weak, tired and very ill. It showed, and he could see they sensed blood. One of them had a towel wrapped around something rod-like and wicked-looking. He wrung the towel. It could be Ernst’s neck.

  There was another way of looking at it. A thrashing correctly delivered could beat wasting away in bed from cancer. The policemen were beginning to resemble a viable alternative. If anyone were his friend right now, it was the leader of this pack. Ernst looked at Johnny Walker fondly. A good fellow, really. He found himself liking the man. To help speed up the process, he went up and slapped him across the face.

  In retrospect, a mistake. While Ernst may have forgotten he was white, the policemen hadn’t and they backed away. Uncertainty flickered over them like a desi florescent tube. They looked to Johnny Walker for direction. Johnny Walker looked at the Impala. The Impala looked empty behind its tinted windows. The Princess looked out from her room with a view .

  ‘PL 480,’ she said, talking down to the masses. She may well have been right, but Ernst wished she hadn’t done that. Who knew, the Seth could be in the Impala. He could’ve heard her. On the other hand, it was true what Goddess Bhairavi had whispered in his ear. He had cancer. No one could harm him any more.

  ‘Get out of here,’ he told Johnny Walker, and took a step forward to within body odour distance. Johnny Walker took a step back.

  ‘Go,’ and pointing at the Impa
la, ‘hide behind it. Hide wherever you want, but fuck off.’

  All of this sent a rumble up his insides and he felt his arse corking up, then uncorking. No one spoke that way to the Bombay Police. Johnny Walker almost went pink, blood mottling his dark brown face, and in needless awe of a cancer-ridden white man who couldn’t shit if he tried.

  The police phalanx broke to let Ernst through to the Impala. As if aware what Ernst could do, the Impala rumbled into life. It crawled forward and stopped—in two minds—then tore off towards Chembur Naka.

  Instead of walking on to where Mohan Driver was waiting, Ernst crossed the road again and ran back into the Protection Home, past the dire warnings to unescorted men with a startled Khaki-sari busy beneath it—her mouth forming a perfect O as she jerked up from a yellow file to see him go by.

  He braked, and returned to the reception desk.

  ‘Can you sign her out? I want her to come with me.’

  ‘Cannot, Sirji.’

  ‘It’s okay. Make the call,’ Ernst urged, pointing at the phone.

  This time when Khaki-sari put the phone down, there was a sea change in her attitude and no more Sirjis.

  ‘Cannot. The chhakka has to remain here until produced before Kurla Court.’

  ‘Why?’ Ernst asked. ‘Prostitution is not a crime.’ Technically correct, but weak.

  Her disdain showed. ‘Soliciting, vagrancy, cross-dressing and sodomy are.’ All Indians are lawyers.

  ‘What if he removes the sari and wears trousers?’

  She looked impressed, despite herself .

  ‘I’ll have him thrown out in a second. No unescorted men allowed.’ She pointed to the warning sign without looking at it. The khaki trousers hung next to it. She mulled over the huge technicality coming down to bear. ‘The police may still file charges for sodomy. But that’s their problem.’

  The Princess was back in her corner in #47, squatting to drink tea from a glass. She sipped at it like royalty handling bone china.

  ‘Put this on,’ Ernst said, and held out the khaki trousers. ‘I’ll go find you a shirt. We’re leaving. I am taking you to my place.’ The thought of getting the Princess past Parvatibai had his penis go foetal in his scrotum.

  The Princess looked at the khaki trousers with the contempt they deserved. Ignoring him totally, she got up to go stare out of the window. The police were still out there and they stared back. The Impala was gone.

  ‘Put those fucking trousers on,’ Ernst said. ‘And do it now. Those men are waiting to get at you, not me.’

  45

  A Transvestite at Karim Court

  Daddy’s angry at my ways,

  Be a man, he always says.

  Daddy wants I learn to bowl,

  Hit a six, score a goal.

  Daddy said, it’s for my good,

  Then he beat me raw, but I understood.

  —Kirti the Poet

  A bristling block of hostility, Parvatibai barricaded the doorway. In comparison, Khaki-sari was a pussycat. Behind Ernst, Princess Kirti remained afloat inside gargantuan khaki trousers.

  ‘Not a word,’ Ernst said and pushed the Princess past.

  Although taken aback by how easy that turned out, he doubted he could pull it off again. When Ernst wanted the Princess shown to the guest bedroom, Mundu the servant-boy sprang past a Parvatibai still coming to grips with what just happened. He snatched Princess Kirti’s valise that looked like something Willie would own, and led her away, ignoring a frozen Parvatibai. Mundu’s expression made it clear this was worth any martyrdom to follow.

  Parvatibai regressed to a simpler Marathi for Ernst’s benefit. ‘All these years, he leads a nice, quiet life. Then he falls ill, and now look.’

  Her comment brought his health back centre stage. He felt dizzy from too much for one day—a dead Willie directing midnight traffic through Chembur Naka and now Mundu directing Willie’s Princess through the corridor. He instructed Parvatibai to make sure the Princess got something to eat. Hindi grammar allows the subject to be gender-free, in turn, allowing Ernst past any potential embarrassment of the he/she type. Or, so he thought.

  ‘A snack perhaps, or does the chhakka want lunch?’ she asked.

  ‘Show some respect. That’s your best friend’s brother. Why? She didn’t tell you about him?’

  He slammed the bedroom door shut before Parvatibai could power back on. He would recall walking to the bed and the lights going out before he hit the pillow. He barely slept a few minutes before someone started banging away at the door. The clock declared otherwise. It was six in the morning and men were asking for him.

  ‘Police,’ Parvatibai said.

  ‘Wrong floor. They probably want the whorehouse.’

  ‘They asked for you by name.’

  ~

  The Deputy Commissioner was not used to waiting by the door but he was a St. Stephen’s man.

  Kirti’s father Chabildas, on the other hand, couldn’t care less. His bulk was halfway through the corridor by the time Ernst emerged. Parvatibai surged forward seeing her citadel stormed again, and it looked like an imminent clash of the titans. As far as Princess Kirti’s father was concerned, Parvatibai’s three hundred pounds of dark matter didn’t exist.

  ‘You have my son.’

  Ernst did not have the heart to correct the gender.

  ‘Yes. There are people after him. So, I brought him here.’

  ‘I know. People like you. I am his father. Let me handle his affairs.’

  Behind him and still at the door, the Deputy Commissioner shrugged. Parvatibai turned in the narrow corridor—an oil tanker reversing down the Suez Canal. Ernst reversed in formation.

  ‘She’s gone,’ Parvatibai said to Ernst.

  ‘Talk to me,’ Chabildas said, acknowledging the elephant in the room. ‘What do you mean gone? Where’s he gone?’

  ‘She left,’ Parvatibai said to Ernst. ‘While you were asleep. ’

  ‘Where did he go?’

  ‘She didn’t tell me.’ By now, the oil tanker had done the impossible and turned around on a rupee coin.

  ‘I don’t believe you. Show me where he is.’

  From behind Chabildas, Deputy Commissioner Jahagirdar did that Indian thing with his head, suggesting Ernst acquiesce. Ernst nodded to Parvatibai, who walked backwards to allow Chabildas passage. This had Ernst reverse some more and trip over his golf bag leaning against the wall.

  When Chabildas came through, Parvatibai said, ‘The guestroom’s over there, but she’s not.’

  Chabildas wasn’t a Sindhi zamindar for nothing. He stared at Parvatibai but stopped short of making a fool of himself. Ernst pointed at the guestroom to help him along. He almost asked the Deputy Commissioner in but hearing Salim Ali voice a protest in his head, he demurred.

  Chabildas was red-faced emerging from the guestroom, and giving off fumes. Ernst hoped the Mundu didn’t have any lit beedies lying around.

  ‘Where’s my son?’

  ‘I don’t know. I was asleep.’

  ‘Bhenchod. Where’s my son?’

  The temperature was going up and over at the far end, the Deputy Commissioner appeared torn between St. Stephen’s College-style decorum, and being Bombay Police. The policeman won and came inside to take charge. Timing was good because Parvatibai reached for a nine iron sticking out of the golf bag. In that confined space, her swing could as easily take down Ernst instead of the father.

  ‘The boy is an absconder. You cannot aid and abet,’ the Deputy Commissioner advised.

  The fumes were getting to Ernst. He turned to Parvatibai. ‘What happened when I was asleep? And put that damned thing away.’

  ‘Two hijras came and took her with them.’

  Princess Kirti’s father flinched but remained silent. Ernst ventured on his behalf .

  ‘And you let them?’

  ‘How do you stop hijras? All that noise they were making at the front door—the neighbours thought you had a baby boy. I had to get rid of them.’
<
br />   Point taken. Indian eunuchs turn up out of nowhere at the front door to bless newborns; their noisy presence while auspicious, is fraught with embarrassment if not handled properly.

  ‘Anyway, what’s the problem? She left willingly.’

  ‘Fucking whore,’ Chabildas said. ‘You are the type to go willingly, not my son. Your gora pimp and you have cast a spell on my child. I’ll see you both in jail. That much I promise.’

  Even the Deputy Commissioner looked impressed. He took Chabildas by the elbow to steady the man.

  ‘We’ll leave now,’ DCP Jahagirdar said. But mind you, this is a serious matter. Chabildas-bhai has filed an FIR accusing you of kidnapping his son. At the Colaba Police Station, if you must know. There is only so much I can do for you.’

  Walked to the door by the good policeman, Princess Kirti’s father calmed down a bit and stopped to reflect on India’s broad-spectrum antibiotic for homosexuality.

  ‘He’ll be fine once we get him married.’ Hope radiated from the father and bounced off the corridor walls.

  ‘By the way,’ the Deputy Commissioner said, after instructing two dark blue constables to escort Chabildas downstairs. ‘You know about Henry Gomes?’

  ‘No. Why?’

  ‘You don’t know?’

  Hindus and Jews will both tell you, the trick is not to engage.

  ‘He was found dead yesterday, near Deonar. On Trombay Road. Outside the Tata Institute of Social Sciences.’

  Where Arjun’s mother worked.

  ‘I see. I am sorry.’

  ‘No, you’re not!’ The Deputy Commissioner laughed. ‘But I am. I knew him well. A good, family man. God-fearing. Do you know how he died?’

  ‘Bullet-hole between the eyes? Or maybe a truck accident?’

  ‘You think it’s funny? ’

  ‘We have both of those going around. I could make you a list of fatalities.’