After some time she turned around, but I refused to meet her eyes. I stared steadily at the computer, where I was logged in on Osama’s account as Ghulfam88. She soon logged on and sent me a message, as I knew she would.
Her: Are you still angry?
Me: That makes you happy, doesn’t it?
I could hear her breath. Why should I feel good if you’re angry?
“Isn’t that what girls want? They want men to be angry because of them,” I said out loud.
She laughed then. I got up from my seat, walked over to her booth, went in, and closed it behind me.
“See, you’re laughing. For that very reason, isn’t it?” I clutched her shoulders and she did not stop me. She was flushed. I moved my hands down and squeezed her breast again. We were both breathing very hard. I sat on the edge of the computer table and kissed her. She wouldn’t open her mouth and I could feel her teeth hard against my lips. I put my hand between her legs and pushed. She groped her way up my leg. Mrs. Haider’s orange laminate was blurry. Shagufta said, “Surya, Surya, I love you …”
“I also love you,” I said between my gasps.
After I left the booth, she stayed inside for some time, the door open just a little. I watched her, openly now.
“See you,” she said while leaving.
The next day there was another customer when she came, so I ignored her. But the next day and over the following days there was no one around so I went into her booth. I always positioned myself to face the door. In case anyone came I could pretend to be checking some virus problem.
After a few days I suggested that we meet somewhere else, but she said that was impossible for her, she wasn’t allowed to go out alone anyplace but college and the cybercafé. I was feeling bold, so I tried to pull her kurta off, but she stopped me. She didn’t mind hands under clothes, but not clothes off. Finally, she did not stop me from unzipping my pants.
It was understandable and maybe it had to happen, but that day I did not realize Osama had walked in.
“Abbe!” he yelled. Wise words as usual. It was awkward. He stood around, looking pale. Then he said, “Sorry,” and fled. I quickly sorted myself. Shagufta looked like she was going to cry.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “He’s my friend, he won’t say anything to anyone.”
“How do you know!” Shaghufta cried. “My father will kill me!”
“I’ll kill Osama then. Nothing will happen. Really!” I touched her cheek.
She turned away. “What we are doing is wrong.”
“Who says?”
She shook her head and left.
* * *
The next day she did not come, and the next and the next. A week passed. Osama didn’t come in either. I tried to talk to him about it after a few days, but he just mumbled, “Don’t worry, yaar …”
One afternoon, he came and sat at a computer and made feeble jokes. I saw him checking his chat messenger. Haider bhai paid a surprise visit that afternoon. When Osama got up to go, Haider bhai exhaled in exasperation and waved at him to continue. Osama sat awkwardly, trying to look serious while Haider bhai checked the accounts and looked over the register. “Ahmed saab’s daughter hasn’t been coming?” he asked me.
“No, bhai, been a few days.”
“Oh, I must check with her father if she’s all right.”
My heart thudded and tried to get the better of me but I gritted my teeth to keep it down. As soon as Haider bhai left, Osama also sidled out. I quickly swapped my SIM card. Jadhav might have considered my extra SIM card suspicious activity. But sometimes you had to lie low and switch off your phone, so you needed a number to call from, right? I dialed Shaghufta’s number. After some rings she answered. My heart unfurled when I heard her voice.
“Shaghufta, are you okay?”
She was quiet. Then she said, “Who is it?”
“It’s Surya. Haider bhai was here, and he was saying he was going to check with your father if you’re okay, so—”
“Okay, thanks,” she said, as if the conversation was over.
I quickly said, “Shall I meet you at your college gate to discuss it?”
“Why? I will handle it.” She hung up before I could respond.
My heart felt tight. I didn’t think she was cut-and-dried like most girls. But she’d have to prove she was innocent if things got dicey. Which meant she might have to prove that someone else was guilty. Like me.
I thought a lot about what to do. I realized there was only one option: I would have to tell Haider bhai myself.
The following Saturday, when he came in for his evening check-in, I told him that I needed to show him something. I opened up Ghulfam88’s chat history and told him it belonged to Osama. Haider bhai read it slowly and got very quiet.
Then he said, “Surya, you’ve been with me a long time and I know I can always trust you. Thank you for telling me this. If something had happened … You know, I owe Shaghufta’s father a large sum of money. If this had got to him, I would have been responsible and … Well, son, you did the right thing by telling me.”
“I’ve worked for you seventeen years, bhai.”
He patted me on the shoulder.
I let my breath go a little; I felt safer. As Haider bhai got on his scooter outside, I saw him say something to Osama.
The following Monday, Amul Butter was at the stand, in his dark glasses and stonewashed jeans. I went out. “Oye, Amul, where’s Osama?”
“Arrey, that bugger. He went to Virar yesterday to pick up DVDs from Kaana Shankar. There was a raid going on and he must have talked some nonsense, as usual. He got a solid beating. Solid. Both his legs are badly broken. Asif went, it seems, and took him to a hospital. Let’s see when he gets okay and comes back.”
Haider bhai, a man of the moment, had never looked back too much.
Days passed and Osama certainly was not back. I felt a bit bad. I missed having him around. It wasn’t like there was much to do in the cybercafé. But mostly, I was relieved. It was peaceful without the constant distractions of Osama walking in and out. Gave me time to plan. Another year here and I would have enough to start something of my own. Once you were inside, you were in, and if you kept your head down, you could keep burrowing further in.
Then one morning, as I walked up the narrow footpath to work, I saw the cybercafé was already open. I entered warily. Haider bhai was standing with Mrs. Haider, who was dressed in pink, looking like a bubble of gum. A carpenter was measuring out some space.
Haider bhai saw me and smiled. “Arrey, Surya, I was trying your mobile since last night but it’s switched off. Why?”
“No balance, bhai, so I just kept it off.”
“Accha, listen. Your bhabhi here has been telling me for long to start something new. This area is also changing a lot—it’s no longer full of riffraff. New buildings are coming—you know Kalpataru? It has a swimming pool even. Gentry like to buy knickknacks. You know that feng shui—Chinese frogs and bamboo and kya kya. We will start up that now. As it is, a modular kitchen shop is opening next to us so next need is good luck for the new house. Bhabhi is also at a loose end since Asif is married and his wife looks after the whole house. We can move one-two computers to the DVD shop. One can stay here for shop purposes. Rest we’ll see what we get.”
I said nothing.
“Frankly, I made the cybercafé with a lot of faith. But what to do—the world changes and one must change with it, eh? It’s no longer a place for riffraff.”
I stood quiet. He looked me up and down with a strange expression.
“Arrey, you’re worried? Why? You’ve been with me seventeen years. You think I’ll just throw you away? For now, you take over the DVD stand, and later I’ll settle you somewhere.”
He slapped me on the back, which made me choke. But it wasn’t like I needed a clear voice to say anything.
With the feng shui shop Haider bhai finally hit the right note. Everything in it was fake from the start. How could it betray him? A
man needed to be very sure about that before he put his wife to work. As for settling me somewhere else, it didn’t really seem to be on his mind. After installing me at the DVD stall, he barely noticed me.
I tried Shaghufta’s number a couple of times from both my SIM cards. She cut the call each time.
Under the sun, steadily steeping Mumbai sweat, I acquired a philosophical perspective on Osama. After all, why would his actions be above the level of his sleazy brain? “Ladies watch maximum adull films,” he would say, standing tipsy on top of the Caves some nights, like a spare part in a gangster movie. “Because they are restricted to the house, they are pent up, so what should they do?”
“Abbe, shut up, you little rat. It’s not adull, it’s adult films. Hurry, we’ll miss the last bus.”
“Arrey, what does it matter how you say it? Thing is the same, is it not? Haan? Ha-ha-ha—haaan?” And he would hurtle down the slope without brakes.
When I thought of him a lot the other day, I didn’t question it too much.
I went to visit him. He lives in Mograwadi too, in the backmost lane, where the later, poorer people built their leantos, close to the train tracks. I took along some DVDs. Adull films, of course. And some Romantic Customer whiskey.
He was really happy to see me. “I’m mending well,” he said. But it didn’t look like it to me. He looked awful.
“You go out if you want, khala,” I said to his mother. “I’ll stay with him till you come.” She looked reluctant but I knew she’d have many errands that needed doing.
We drank a bit and talked of this and that. Osama asked, “So how’s everything at the cybercafé?”
“It’s fine.” No need to tell him more than this.
“Accha. All is okay between you and Haider bhai?”
“Why wouldn’t it be?”
He looked troubled. I watched him, trying to fathom his drift.
“Look, yaar, you’re the only one from the lot who has come to see me since … you know …” He looked away, his eyes wet. “So I feel I can’t lie to you. That day of the raid, Haider bhai called me over. He had been asking about RC before in the cybercafé and I … I got nervous, and I told him about you and her.”
It took me aback, I admit it. I stared at him. “But why?”
He avoided my eyes. “Yaar, you know me, I don’t think straight sometimes. I panicked. I thought if Haider bhai knew that I knew about you and RC and didn’t tell him, then he’d have my ass. It’s been eating at me since then … and I … I’m so glad nothing’s happened. I’m sorry, yaar, forgive me.”
Ah, Mr. Ghulfam. I wondered whether to tell him I knew his other little secret to really make him squirm. I felt tired at the thought.
I laughed. “Yeah, forget it.” Haider bhai hadn’t known me seventeen years for nothing, I thought. He knew whom to settle where, that’s what made him a man of the moment.
I poured us both a little bit—well, a lot—of RC.
“I’m so happy you came, yaar,” Osama said. “It’s nice to know you have someone of your own from time to time.”
I smiled and nodded. We are not alone, from time to time, that’s true.
BY TWO
BY DEVASHISH MAKHIJA
Versova
Rahim
Rahim liked the night shift. He tilted his head back and filled his lungs with the black sooty air, as his bladder quickly emptied below. He could piss into the sea, even spit his paan into it, and no one would mind. Because at night Mumbai was a brutalized, heaving whore. She didn’t give a fuck who pissed in her seas. It was during the day that Mumbai creaked and rattled like a desperate machine. And you dare not piss in a machine. It gets pissed off. And then it crunches your balls between its tooth-gear wheels. Rahim remembered telling Rahman that over dinner one day, gesticulating so wildly that the daal and rice sprayed out of his mouth, the same way that the shit had burst out of their rickshaw’s exhaust pipe during the surprise PUC inspection. Rahman had looked at Rahim sternly and said, “Don’t talk that way, this city is our mecca, it feeds you and me despite the lies we tell. Don’t offend it. It could as well turn into our jehennum.”
Rahim tired of his brother’s fear of hell. Take Langdi out at night once, he’d gestured to Rahman, and you’ll know. By daylight even a murderer looks like he could do with a hug. Rahman never took his advice. He grimaced each time Rahim referred to their auto-rickshaw as Langdi, the lame one. But Rahim needed to remind himself. What self-respecting man would ride a beast with three legs? A beast that doesn’t gallop, instead sneaks and swerves slyly to survive. A goonga, perhaps, would. A handicapped vehicle deserves a handicapped rider.
Langdi, like Rahim, was made to survive Mumbai. She was an old machine, the kind that had the engine in the front, one that wouldn’t pull it up an incline but vibrated like an electric drill. Rahim didn’t mind the vibration. When he was waiting for a passenger to show up he’d keep the engine on, enjoying the tremors running up the insides of his legs like a cheap champi tel massage. Also, Langdi had a large gassy behind, just like Ammi’s. If Rahim wasn’t wrong, he felt in his heart that Rahman thought so too.
Rahim turned away from the oily edge of the Versova Sea and plodded through the sodden sand, not caring to check if it was the masticated remnants of the evening high tide he’d stepped into or someone’s pasty turds. In the darkness it was one and the same. Rahim heaved his slight self over some rocks to get to the main road, where Langdi stood, her insides throbbing with a Himesh Reshammiya song. Rahim slid into the ghostly blue-lit interior of his rickshaw, turned the music down, grabbed the starting lever near his feet, and jerked it upward. Langdi coughed and shuddered to life. That shudder always made Rahim hard. It reminded him of the way he shuddered in the sandaas some mornings when he grabbed and tugged at himself.
“Made up for the lack of rain out there, did you?” a voice from the passenger seat barked at him. Rahim grinned into the rearview mirror—it hung out from the side of the windscreen the way a footboard traveler does out of an overpacked BEST bus. “Chhee, those teeth need a PUC test of their own,” the voice squealed. Rahim now gesticulated into the mirror, Where to? The woman in the back leaned her powdered face out into the whipping breeze, her small blouse battling to keep her breasts inside it. “Infiniti,” she told him.
The further out of the speeding auto Ramdulari swung, the further down the driver’s seat Rahim slid, as if to maintain the precarious balance of the rickshaw, but in truth he did so to keep her ample reflection from slipping out of the little round window of the rearview mirror. She was his most consistent passenger. On good nights he made more money than Rahman made in a week. But he never let on how. Or Rahman would slap his own forehead so hard it would kick a Lahaul-willa-quwat out of his God-fearing lips. Jehennum, he would say, we’ll go to jehennum for this.
Rahim hated to admit that Rahman was not entirely wrong.
They had come to Mumbai from Akbarpur, a small filth-heap of a town that sprang up along the railway tracks soon after the East India Company ran the first train across the nation’s breasts. It was a town forever in transit. A quick-halt junction for mostly goods trains. As a result, all the businesses in Akbarpur centered around food, the only commodity people passing through really needed. Their father was a kasaai, a butcher with the dirtiest mouth in the town square. So dirty that he used to cuss his first wife even as he exploded inside her, cursing her for not being able to bear him any children. And then he cussed his second when she bore him not one, but two, simultaneously! So dirty was his mouth that word was he never threw away the shit that came out of the intestines of the goats he cut open; he ate it all.
But Rahim knew better. Ever since he could walk, he used to be given that shit to dispose of, along with the tree stump Abba used as a chopping block, each night, to clean off all the little bits of rotting meat that clung to it. Rahim’s childhood passed in a blur of bleating goats, morose cows, and dead meat. Rahman, though, stayed hidden behind their mother’s abunda
nt girth. In the hefty shadows there he must have discovered the fear of God, Rahim often thought. Abba didn’t dare inseminate their mother again, for fear that she might bear triplets the next time around. Instead he married a third time. Most nights when Rahim would stand alone at the rim of the toilet bowl that was Akbarpur, and toss little bits of rotting meat up into the air for the eagles to grab and devour, he’d peer across the landscape, toward the west, and think of the large sparkling city he saw in movies, where tall, angry young men bashed in the heads of fat, loudmouthed flesheaters like his father.
The night their mother died, coughing her guts out onto the mattress, her TB untreated, as Abba cussed in orgasm inside her, Rahim grabbed Rahman’s hand and ran.
He had watched films where boys running toward freedom from tyranny simply follow the light. The only bright lights around Akbarpur were along the railway tracks. Rahim followed them for days and nights. Until they reached Mumbai.
Through it all Rahman did not utter a word. Though between the two of them, he was the one who could speak. Rahim was born dumb, his tongue stitched by God steadfast into the floor of his mouth.
Rahim never forgot how hard his heart had beaten when he finally stopped running, staring at the thousands of people swelling this way and that in one of Mumbai’s suburban train stations, the choral murmur of their voices promising him lives he could never have had in that little junction they came from.
Rahman was heartbroken. The only person he had cared for in the whole world was gone. He could have been tied to a post for slaughter and he wouldn’t have minded.
In the many years that followed, the boys learned to care for one another. They were identical. Even their beards grew the same way and their hairlines receded in exactly the same curves. They both belched at the same moments during their meals. And if one had a cough, rest assured the other, wherever he was, was being wracked with a phlegm attack too.
Somehow Rahman always knew what was going on inside Rahim’s head. And on those days when Rahim took a deep breath, silenced his furious mind, and paid attention, he could tell what was going on inside Rahman’s head too.
Mumbai Noir Page 4
