Mumbai Noir

by Altaf Tyrewala

  And then he turned and left.

  That night Rahman emerged, feverish and fearful, gagging on the imagined smell of rotting flesh. His cache of ittar had vaporized awhile back. He now needed some sea air to wash the stink away. Worse, all the Bisleri bottles inside the room had already filled with his piss, and now he needed to shit and get something to eat. To get his mind off Rahim, he tried to remember the taste of daal and rice. All he’d eaten in two days was stale pav and dried chilis. He took the beach path out, so that he’d be seen by as few people as possible.

  Returning with a rice plate packed in flimsy plastic, the thought of dining alone was starting to depress him when he saw her at the mouth of Khoja Gully … Langdi, leaning slightly on the raised footpath, as if waiting for him.

  Langdi

  Rahman inhabited Langdi on the third day. He had tried not to, but he had run out of money, and the rickshaw owner had sent him a warning to drive or go fuck his mother. Missing Rahim desperately, he gave in and for the first time ever he spoke to the auto, calling her Langdi just as Rahim used to, hoping that being friendly with the lame one at last might make her spit out a clue to his brother’s whereabouts. When Rahman lovingly wrenched her starting lever, black and yellow Langdi spat out nothing except for a thick vomit of smoke from her rear. She was overdue on her PUC check.

  The smell of decaying flesh now burned through his entire being. That evening on his way back after a fruitless day spent waiting for passengers in the October heat, he had screeched to a halt before the large tree in the center of the road and puked all over its roots. He desperately wanted to crawl into the auto’s belly beneath the backseat but Langdi seemed oddly unwelcoming. In the face of her uninviting stoicism then, Rahman said to himself, I have to be brave. I can’t get weak now. What if Rahim needs me? And with that thought he denied himself the coziness of his ammi’s imagined womb.

  He bought himself full rice plates every night, and saved exactly half of everything, packing it back up in the little plastic bags that the sabzi, daal, rotis, rice, onion, and pickle had come in. You never know when Rahim walks in through that door, he’d say to himself. What if he’s hungry? With the passing days, the packets of stale food began to accumulate, stacked up in a messy corner of the single-room kholi like a miniature memorial to the missing twin. In time, the room began to smell like something had died inside it.

  A passenger commented on the stench one evening. “Did someone die in here?” he asked as he squirmed in the backseat.

  Rahman, stunned, said aloud, “You can smell it?”

  The old man nodded, staring at Rahman as if he’d seen a ghost, then asked, “You can speak?!” And Rahman realized what he had done. This was a man who hailed his auto every Saturday—his off-day—to take him to Juhu beach, to let the sea wash away his desiccated solitude. And now, in one brief moment of confusion, Rahman had destroyed what Rahim and he had taken nearly four years to construct.

  They continued their journey in a strange cloud of silence. When the man got off, he paid Rahman and waddled away, vigorously dusting his hands, cleaning them of the dirt of deceit he had been party to for so long. Rahman was done with the day.

  The next time Rahman took Langdi out it was at night. And as soon as he turned the corner near Hanuman Mandir, he was flagged down by Ramdulari. He tried to drive past; Rahman was choosy about who he allowed into his vehicle. He was not going to let a sex worker sit atop his mother’s womb. But Ramdulari seemed desperate—she didn’t just stick her hand out like others do, she stood square in his path. And scurried into the auto before Rahman could change his mind. Rahman sat still for several long moments wondering if he should ask the sex worker to get off. Ramdulari sat still for several long moments too, feeling guilty, unable to phrase the beginnings of a conversation inside her head. Just as Rahman turned to her, his cheeks smarting, she sputtered, “I’m sorry.” Rahman’s eyes went round. There was a dark tinge of familiarity in her tone. Rahim! She must know him. She might even know where he is. So Rahman veiled his ignorance and enthusiasm and gestured, What for? “I know you must be mad at me,” Ramdulari said. “I was scared. Scared the cops might implicate me if they saw me with someone they suspected of being a terrorist.” When he heard that, Rahman couldn’t veil his sadness. “I’m so relieved to see you,” she continued, looking genuinely pleased. “I thought they might have … might have … you know, encountered you or something.” And her gaze dropped to the floor. A long moment slowly passed between them, thick and heavy with their private despairs, and then Rahman gestured, Where can I take you? and gifted her a gentle smile. It was unlike any smile she had ever gotten out of Rahim. She said, “Aaraamnagar,” and smiled back mischievously. Rahman, confused, turned back to the handlebar, twisted the accelerator, and made his mind speed through all the possible ways he could broach the subject of Rahim without arousing this lady’s suspicions.

  Ramdulari made Rahman stop in the center of the field. She reached over and killed the engine, her breasts spilling onto Rahman’s frail shoulder. Rahman protested, but she shut his mouth with a kiss, unlocking their lips as soon as she had locked them, shying away and waiting for her “Rahim” to take it from there. What she heard instead was a loud, alarmed, “Lahaulwillaquwat!” and looked up to see a red-faced Rahman, his eyes bursting with furious tears, his lips trembling, glaring at her with an agitated mixture of distress and shock.

  “Y-you can sp-speak?!” she asked, on the brink of tears.

  It was the second time in as many days that Rahman had been slapped with that question. But he didn’t realize this then. Instead, he stuttered and gesticulated in a confused attempt at coherence, “Rahim a-and y-you … you a-and Rahim … ?!” Before Ramdulari could figure how to react, he said, “Please … request … get off … please!” And she did. Standing alone, cold and bewildered, she watched the man she thought was mute rev the auto up like a raging beast and lurch into the darkness. She didn’t know what had just happened. Her heart squeezed so tight that she didn’t know if she ever wanted to know either.

  How could he not tell me? shrieked Rahman silently. How could I not have figured it out? He used to be able to read Rahim’s mind. Rahim had admitted it. That’s why, perhaps. The sly chutiya, he had made that admission to make me overconfident, so that I’d think I could read his mind, when in reality he hid things in its little corners that I’d never be able to reach. Unless he allowed me to. And now Rahman had found out that Rahim never did allow him.

  For nearly an hour Rahman drove around like a crazed bull, missing ramming into cars and buses by mere millimeters. When he was spent, the fuel gauge nudging E, he killed the engine, glided down the sandy incline to the far end of Khoja Gully, braked hard behind the dead boat, muttered, “I can’t take it anymore,” and stared at the backseat, urging himself to step inside his ammi. And as he lifted that seat, he saw inside—scrunched up in a fetal position—Rahim, decayed almost to the bone.

  Khoja

  The stench was unbearable.

  But Rahman, curled up on Langdi’s backseat, was getting used to it. He inhaled long and deep. He didn’t even care anymore about how Rahim had died. In fact, what he felt in greatest measure right now was rage. A suppressed implosive rage. At the betrayal. Not only had Rahim hidden the most important part of his life from him, he had now snatched away his last refuge, their mother’s womb, the only thing—the only thing in the whole world Rahman had coveted as his own. Not to be by-twoed.

  Rahman pushed the auto, its fuel tank run dry, to the same turning where he had found it last week. He stepped back and looked at it one last time, leaning on the pavement, waiting to be found again. And when he peered above it he saw a sign that read, Khoja. Lost.

  Who am I now? he wondered aloud.

  Rahim?

  Rahman?

  Neither of the two?

  Rahim alone had been proof that Rahman was real. With him gone, who remained? The Rahim Rahman pretended to be? Or Rahman, who no one knew�
�or would believe—ever existed.

  Rahman wondered. Louder and louder. Not caring if anyone heard. He was done with being mute. He spoke all the way back to his little hellhole. And once inside, he continued to speak. For all the years he hadn’t spoken. About all the things he always wanted to say, but never could. He spoke. And he spoke. And he spoke. Through fits of hacking cough. Through day and night. Through hunger and a raging fever. He spoke.

  Until there was a sharp knocking on his door once again.

  Doglekar

  The Borivli blast had left Rahim terrified. At the crossing of Seven Bungalows, the images of blown-up bodies tumbling through his mind, he had jumped a signal. So distracted was he that he didn’t even notice when a pandu on a bike started to trail him. It was only when the bike angled its nose sharply across his path that he hit the brakes, and he felt his heart freeze with fear.

  In seconds his license was gone. In minutes he found himself before Doglekar once more. The name on the challan popped up in the system as a suspect in the blasts. And the RTO had spun him around and sent him to the same chowki Rahman and he had already visited five times that year.

  Standing before the raisin-faced SI once more, Rahim didn’t know why but he thought of Ramdulari, and how this time when he returned to the streets with Langdi, she would never turn to look at him ever again. His mind wandering, once again he lost track of where he was. By now he had missed answering two questions shot at him by the SI. And even as he collected his wits, a heavy palm slammed into the side of his face. Bouncing back off the floor, burning with indignation, Rahim didn’t know why, but he slapped Doglekar right back!

  The next thing he knew he was being beaten by a rifle butt, a different bone cracking under the weight of each blow. Growing dizzy with what must have been the loss of blood, he did what any normal person would do. Any normal person who had broken the law. He confessed.

  At first he gesticulated feverishly, trying to tell Doglekar that there were—not one—but two of them, yet Doglekar understood nothing. So Rahim, his mind a blur of red rage and yellow fear, desperately lunged for a notepad and pen on Doglekar’s desk. At which point the SI slammed the blunt edge of the rifle into Rahim’s ribs. Rahim hung by the precipice of the desk’s edge, numb to the hammering, choosing his words one by painful one, pinning them down on the paper, trying to tell Doglekar in the only way he could that he … and his identical twin … drove one rickshaw … by day and by night … only for some extra income … and that they were not terrorists … and that he was sorry … very, very sorry … for breaking the law … they would pay for it … swear to God … but please stop beating him now … or he might die. At that Rahim had slipped off the edge and crumpled to the floor, the pen’s nib puncturing the page.

  The last thing he remembered was Doglekar kicking him in the mouth as he lay smashed and bleeding on the floor. Doglekar had simply said, “Liar.”

  And then Rahim’s broken heart had stopped ticking.

  For a good minute, heaving from the exertion of his workout, Doglekar didn’t realize what had just happened. Then he bent over and checked Rahim’s breathing. There was none. “Bhenchod!” he had muttered, his blood going cold. And then he had lunged for the sheet of “rubbish” the “pimp” had scribbled on, and as he frantically made sense of it his back slowly straightened and a sigh of relief nudged out from between his raspy breaths.

  By Two

  Rahman answered the door. Two policemen stood outside, grimacing at the stench. “Rahim?” they asked. Rahman felt the strong urge to shake his head. He nodded. “Is that your auto?” they asked, pointing at Langdi, half-hanging from the hook of a tow truck. Rahman nodded. “We found a dead body inside,” one of the cops said. To which Rahman nodded again and muttered, “That was Rahman,” and held his hands out to be led away.

  CHACHU AT DUSK

  BY ABBAS TYREWALA

  Lamington Road

  Every night, as the last train leaves a station that used to be called Victoria Terminus, and the last club closes its cop-smeared doors, nothing melts out into the night. No secret city slowly takes over the darkness, lit by naked bulbs that cast more shadows than light. No creatures of the night, whose silent nods to each other hold more coded information about weight, rank, and pecking order than any Internet research could ever hope to find. Frightening place, this city now. A city of law-abiding folk. The night belongs to their expensive, million-PMPO car stereos and the screaming bikes of hyperpubescent idiots.

  Fuck the day the Mumbai evening dimmed into a night that was no longer Bombay.

  How did they douse the city in so much antiseptic? How did they get it so well behaved? Really, how do you turn Bombay into the least sexy city in the world?

  One of these days, I’ll have to get a job. Give up on the night. Give up picking on this nocturnal scab, hoping to see something that still makes sense, something that gives a man a sense of his place in the world, hoping to wake up one day at sunset to find I’m back home.

  They offered me a job in the early days of the new city. A parody of my earlier job. From guarding the door of the small gay drug-den pretending to be a nightclub to guarding by day the franchise coffee shop that replaced it. The landlord of the dilapidated building was trying to be kind. I know because he never had a sense of humor; certainly not one so cruel.

  Food. Few places remain where a man can still eat a meal cooked by human beings. Café Olympia. Holding out. For how long? Already citizens wait for tables, elbowing out the taxi drivers, who, by the way, already have the elbows of private air-conditioned cabs and pollution norms tucked well into their ribs. A dying breed—this tough, sleepless, uncouth, entertaining transporter. Black and yellow. The last remaining colors of a fading city.

  The waiter comes to my table. “Yes?”

  Yes? Yes?! Motherfucker, one of these days you’ll meet your real father, and he’ll hate you. You served me yesterday. And the day before. The same thing every day. And the day before that I was at that table being served by … that fellow—there! What’s his name?

  Fuck. I don’t know either.

  What’s your name?

  I don’t know.

  It’s just the fucking times. It’s just the damn city.

  “Mutton masala fry. Pav. Thums Up.”

  “Thums Up finished. Pepsi?”

  Fuck you and your whole family. “Okay.”

  I saw Guru the other day. Nice film. Bachchan’s son. I cried. They showed Bombay empty. Like the old days. Marine Drive with no cars. No buildings so ugly that you want to kill anyone called Contractor. Don’t know how they shot it. Must’ve done it with computers.

  It’s how Bombay looked the day I first came to work with the Pathan. Khansaab to many. Lala in his absence. Or Lalajaan, as my cheeky friend Shamim called him with a face so straight, he died a natural death many years later. I called him Abbu, for the few years I drove him around in his white Ambassador.

  Shamim had taken me straight from VT to Marine Drive. My first sight of the ocean. After twenty unblinking minutes, I turned to him and shook my head in amazement. He smiled.

  Then he took me to Lamington Road to meet Lala.

  I still remember the first time I met Abbu on a terrace, semireclining, a quivering man standing before him. Lala gently explaining that he had been avoiding violence toward him all these days because he was a simple man. A clean man. And the greatest protection of all, a family man. “The shop doesn’t belong to you. Yet we offer you a fair sum. I have given my word that this will be done. Don’t force me to hurt you. There is nothing I would hate more.”

  A forgotten man in a forgotten time, like many before but none since, he meant it. They had waited seven months before grabbing the man by the collar and dragging him up to the terrace. Not because anything or anyone protected him. In fact, precisely because nothing did.

  The bhais of my time were loath to harm common folk. The rich were fair game. The poor were slapped around without a care. It was
the middle class that they held almost in some kind of reverent awe in those days of scarcity. They never forgot the courage it took to live a clean life and bring up children. If anything, they almost felt responsible for them.

  The proprietor of Eagle Tyres once told Afroze, Lala’s closest aide, to fuck off. Though rather grand-sounding, this was actually the smallest shop on Lamington Road and Eagle seth, as he was generously called, was the total staff of the eighty-square-foot establishment—its owner, salesman, and mechanic rolled into one.

  Afroze had gotten the worn-out tires of his pig Fiat replaced with secondhand ones that Eagle seth had cut fresh grooves into by hand. After a few months, one of them had burst. Afroze wanted it replaced free of cost. Eagle seth asked if he was insane. A new one cost ten times more for a reason.

  Afroze was livid. Threatened to do many things to Eagle, all of them involving death and bloodshed. But the bald, swarthy, belligerent man offered to give as good as he got. Afroze asked a neighboring shopkeeper if Eagle seth knew who he was. The shopkeeper nodded. “Probably. But he’s crazy. Let it go.”

  Afroze walked off. Went up to Lala and told him about the episode. Abbu laughed. Afroze shook his head. And that was the end of that.

  Until Bakr’a Eid, when Lala sent Eagle seth a small packet of mutton from his qurbani.

  When Abbu retired, his soul was tired. A new order was claiming the future; there was little honor left amongst thieves. New friendships were like today’s marriages: for life or convenience, whichever ended first. The Word was as solemn as a beauty cream’s promise. Women found shame sitting heavy on their heads and shoulders and began to shrug it off.

  The old Pathan discovered two things unchanging in life: the warmth of the sun and the Word of Allah. He spent the remainder of his days basking in one, comforted by the other.