Mumbai Noir

by Altaf Tyrewala

  Sometimes the two of them shared her with some other enthusiasts. Once there were two friends who thought that a chat with Ravi was indicated as well, and so positioned themselves one to each side of him. Much better than Kennedy Bridge, said one with the air of sharing a confidence. The other leaned across Ravi, nodding judiciously, his elbow practically in Ravi’s crotch. Much better. Have you been? they asked him. No, he allowed. You must make your way past the sluts on the bridge itself, they pointed out. Then you have to descend a putrid set of stairs. Then you must wake up the musicians and the girls and the madam herself. Then the musicians tune up, the madam calls out the beat, and the girl, if she’s in the mood, dances.

  Really, said Ravi, trying to sound interested.

  Yes. The closest Mumbai still has to a real mujra. And what a parody it is. Half-hearted dancers, tone-deaf musicians, and that toothless harridan with her hair still crazy from the mattress.

  This is much better, said the other one. No pretense.

  No, agreed his friend. The music is canned, but what music. Pakeezah!

  And the woman. Isn’t she something?

  Ravi had to agree.

  She calls herself Meena. She’s obsessed with Pakeezah. That’s all she dances to.

  Is that all she does? he asked.

  They looked at him slyly, and then with real interest.

  Clearly you’re a shaukeen, they said. But of what?

  They spoke, as friends will, into the silence that followed that question. There’s no better dancer in Mumbai. Not one who dances for our money, at any rate.

  All you want is the dance? asked Ravi.

  That’s it, they said eagerly. We’re disciples of beauty. In music. In dance. In women. We don’t need to touch it. It’s enough for us to know that it’s there.

  Ravi looked at them as at aliens on furlough from a distant planet. Besides, they continued, you know that man in the corner? Ravi could only nod. If he can’t touch her, what chance do we have?

  You mean, he isn’t?

  Apparently not. But you didn’t hear it from us. Anyway, we don’t come here as often as we’d like. He’s not the sort of man you want to offend.

  Clearly not, said Ravi.

  But she is a dancing girl, mused one of them, while the other one nodded.

  She’s also a woman, said Ravi. She can choose who to give it away to.

  The other two drained their drinks and then went away, but not before they shook their heads and muttered shaukeen again, half-admiringly.

  That night, sitting through the second and then the third loop of the soundtrack, he thought he detected an extra smile from Meena. She looked at him from under her lashes as she swung and twirled to “Inhi logon ne,” seemingly beckoning him to sing the male part to “Chalo dildar chalo.” And, so bidden, he did what he thought he never would. He slipped away to the bathroom and wrote his number on a currency note and held it out to her; and as he did so, he held it in his hand a moment longer than was necessary and permitted himself a long, slow look into her eyes. And then she was gone and ten minutes later, so was he.

  Akbarzeb sat unmoving in his corner, and didn’t even look in Ravi’s direction as he left.

  The drunk and his new friend were now almost the only inhabitants of their terrace area. The only other table was the one in the corner, and the earnest murmurings of the mismatched pair there had all but ceased. The rain had picked up and the wind was whooshing away and it seemed obvious to everyone on the terrace that a lack of conversation doesn’t equal silence, in this world or any other, and so they sat, semimute and deafened by their individual solitudes, looking at everything but each other, morosely putting their alcohol away.

  Into the breach stepped the drunk.

  No Arabic insights on shaukeen?

  None, admitted the tourist glumly.

  Pity, shrugged the drunk. Anyway, you’re probably thinking: what happened to the whores?

  The comfort of that world of naked bulbs and stained sheets, plywood partitions and idols in the corner and little slabs of soap on strips of clean towel, was suddenly a cold one. It had been alien and had spoken to that part of him that the Bombay Gymkhana and his flat with its view of the sea and his friends who’d all been to school and college together couldn’t touch. But even that, now, was not enough.

  He wanted Meena.

  And so he waited for her to call.

  Did she? inquired the listener.

  Of course she did. What did she have coming through her door? Young men committed to beauty? Aging reprobates in the revenue departments of the Maharashtra and central governments? Enormous gangsters groping toward some approximation of love?

  The poor woman didn’t stand a chance. He was the closest thing to normal she’d ever seen.

  You think?

  Not really, shrugged the drunk. Who knows why she called. She was a woman. She fancied him. Can’t that be enough?

  * * *

  They spoke in Hindi, a language she spoke beautifully and he’d all but forgotten. She could only meet in the afternoons, she said, or the early evenings. That’s okay, he told her, he’d find time for her, leave work early, make it possible. And as he said this, and the euphoria of her having called and his almost being home washed over him, came the realization: he could make the time, but could he make the place?

  The uniformity of his own world was never as apparent to him as in that first conversation over the phone. English, ease, and entitlement defined his set, and Meena had none of those. He’d only seen her in the chastely sexy raiment of the kathak dancer. He didn’t even know what she wore when she took the open air.

  If she were just a friend, a curiosity, a trophy of a big night out, he could have taken her anywhere and been hailed as a hero. But the promise of intimacy carries its own weight and Ravi knew he would never be able to bear it in public. Not his public. It isn’t just me, he reasoned to himself. She’ll be humiliated too. But his own pusillanimity was stark in his own ear as he told her where to meet him. There was only a hint of a pause before she said, gracefully as ever, of course she knew the place, she would be there.

  It was a bar just off Ballard Estate, where the sailors came and picked up their prey. In the early afternoon, though, it was still relatively clean. Ravi walked in and saw her immediately, sitting off to one side, dressed in a spotless white salwar kameez that gave the lie to the wet filth outside. She was sipping her lemonade with an air of quiet ease that brought a catch to his throat. He knew then that he could have introduced her as his young aunt from Pakistan or a dress designer friend of his sister, drumming up business for her studio in Lucknow. Anything at all. But the die was cast and there she was and she smiled at him as he walked up to her and her hand came up in the adaab he’d grown accustomed to.

  So they sat and they chatted and the waiters hovered and if she felt the weight of time slipping away, she didn’t betray it. She hung on his words and touched his fingers with hers and once, just once, she leaned across and gently flicked an errant curl away from his face.

  He didn’t even think of Akbarzeb. No more than half a dozen times.

  He owned that place, just as he did everything within five kilometers of Colaba, whether on land, out to sea, or in the air. The waiters knew who she was and they knew who she belonged to and Ravi knew that too. But she’d chosen him and so it had to be.

  Finally, they ended up at that hotel on the dock road, a few hundred meters down from Ballard Estate. Where the sailors take their prey. Trucks outside, air conditioners in every room, a few hundred rupees an hour, and the boy with the condom and the soap carrying a whole towel instead of just a scrap. An actual bathroom, imagine.

  You know the place? asked the drunk politely. If the tourist knew it, he didn’t let on.

  So: That’s where it was done. And if she’d been there before, that poor darling in her spotless salwar kameez, she never let Ravi know.

  Well? prodded the listener.

  I don’t know
, said the drunk reflectively. As gracefully abandoned as her dancing, I’d like to think. But I don’t know.

  They pondered that for a space, long enough for it to register that the mismatched pair at the table by the corner were now gone.

  Of course—said the drunk—he walked in through the door.

  It was quick and painless. For Ravi at least. He was told to get his trousers on and get the hell out. He considered protesting and then thought better of it and as he glanced back, he saw, through the frame of Akbarzeb’s muscular arm propping open the door, Meena in their freshly shared bed, the covers drawn up to her naked shoulders and a look of calm defiance in her eyes.

  He didn’t know how the time passed, that night or the next. He waited by the phone till he had to leave, and then waited by it again. He lived in Colaba and waited for the knock on his door but it never came and by and by, he found himself, later that week, at a party in Worli. In Samundar Mahal.

  You know it? asked the drunk.

  I do, nodded the listener. The drunk raised his eyebrows, then continued.

  Ravi was up near the top, looking away toward Mahalaxmi and Malabar Hill. He was very drunk and it seemed to him that the city itself was reflected in the churning, crashing sea below. It roiled around the Vellard and broke across the thin line of Haji Ali and in the spray and the foam and the noise was Mumbai itself, lighted skyscraper and glistening slum, a mirror held up to every sinner in the world and only to him. It was a trick of the monsoon, a play of propinquity, an accident of being across from Malabar Hill at just the right time and place. But he was down the elevator in a matter of moments and heading toward Jacob’s Circle and the beacon of Heera, past the jail and across the Chinchpokli Bridge.

  The bouncers didn’t stop or harass him in any way. He made his fearful, courageous way up to the top room and the man there said it was closed, as he looked at Ravi almost with concern. Is Meena coming back? Ravi finally asked.

  Probably not, said the bouncer.

  Will Akbarzeb be coming?

  This isn’t his bar, replied the bouncer. But he’s free to come whenever he wants.

  Do you know where he lives?

  The bouncer peered at him speculatively, as if trying to make up his mind whether to help him or not. Arthur Bunder, he said eventually. Someone there will lead you to him, if you want it badly enough.

  Arthur Bunder, murmured the tourist. Over there, correct?

  Correct, answered the drunk. Just over that parapet, away from the sea.

  Ravi parked near the causeway and wandered down Arthur Bunder, knowing what he wanted yet not how to ask. The traffic at the late-night paanwallas and ittar sellers ebbed and flowed around him and the rain fell, first gently and then more and more insistently, and before he knew it, he found himself, wet and bare-headed, at the water’s edge, down by the Radio Club.

  Where he sat down on the seawall, his legs dangling over the edge, next to Akbarzeb.

  He was truly a giant, that man. His wet clothes clung to him as one of his men tried, ineffectually, to hold a bedraggled umbrella over him. A couple more men hovered within a few feet, holding off a knot of late-night rubberneckers, who were all trying to peer into the bay.

  What happened? asked Ravi finally.

  She came by my office, replied Akbarzeb calmly. Back there, he gestured over his shoulder, down the length of Arthur Bunder.

  She told me that I didn’t own her. That she wasn’t mine to order around, that she’d take any man she so chose, if he’d have her. That she didn’t choose me, at any rate, and there was no future in my holding my breath. That she danced for the music, for herself and for Meena in Pakeezah, and for any young man who walked in through her door with kind eyes and a warm smile.

  All these things I already knew, said Akbarzeb reflectively. She’d told me all these things before and I’d made my peace with them. To love is sometimes enough, don’t you think? You don’t need for it to be returned.

  So I asked her what she really wanted and she told me she wanted to be free of me. My presence and my shadow. Her life was dark enough without that as well.

  So I said, Why? So you can fuck insects like that idiot who left you in that whore’s room without a backward glance, with one hand on his pants and his dick in the other? Is that what you want? To be a tourist’s whore?

  She never cried, you see. She just turned around and left the room and the man I told to watch her was walking behind her and was too far away to stop her when she moved across the pavement and to the seawall and over into the sea.

  An hour ago, friend, said Akbarzeb, as a heavy hand came to rest on Ravi’s shoulder. Right here. And I’ll have to wake up every day for the rest of my life knowing what my last words to that woman were.

  Ravi expected at that moment to be pitched into the sea and truthfully he wouldn’t have minded if that were to be his fate. There’s no point in telling a woman like that that her feet are too beautiful to be put on the ground, continued Akbarzeb. I wish I had, of course. But she was born with her feet dirty.

  The sea broke around their own feet and the angry waves licked and spat at them and it came as no surprise to Ravi to find that not all the moisture on his face came from the wind and the sea.

  Why cry now? asked Akbarzeb, reasonably enough, his reassuring hand still on Ravi’s shoulder. You should have taken her home, to your clubs and bars and parties. All the places she’d never seen.

  I should have. Then she’d still be here.

  Don’t flatter yourself, said Akbarzeb. She didn’t kill herself because you showed her what she was. You weren’t the first. You wouldn’t have been the last.

  But I was.

  Akbarzeb glanced at him with his quiet heavy eyes, then turned away. She didn’t choose to be what she was, he said. Did she tell you her real name?

  No, said Ravi.

  They sat there for a space, long enough to gaze into the dark sea, dark as only the monsoon can make it, where even the lights of the street behind and the boats in the harbor and India beyond the bay are dimmed and die. The dark is a powerful draw and Ravi heard its call. But he stayed on the wall next to Akbarzeb, who finally stirred and said: Go away.

  Leave the city, or I won’t be responsible for my actions. And then this can all end.

  And you? Ravi couldn’t help asking.

  I have a world to take care of. I won’t even have time to grieve.

  That was fifteen years ago, said the drunk. Fifteen years. The bar girls are gone, Akbarzeb’s a legislator, cell phones are everywhere. Ravi disappeared, and his absence was only remarked upon for a fortnight at the most, at the club, around the bar, by his wondrously endowed Punjabi friend: then he too was smoke on the water of Mumbai. He went on to become a realtor or a consultant or a banker or a shipping agent someplace else, and doubtless he wrestles the dark there as well.

  But, prompted the listener.

  Yes, agreed the drunk. But …

  Imagine if you will, said the tourist, two men at the seawall. Those two, at the table by the corner: is that them down there? He gestured at two men, one large and one slim, who walked slowly across the street to the pavement and the seawall beyond, the sea a liquid churning devoid of light. Is that the story? That they meet every year to remember her and then walk down to where she jumped into the sea, humming “chalte chalte” to themselves?

  The drunk looked at him appraisingly over his glass and then laughed. What kind of story would that be? he asked. What kind of hack do you think I am? Why can’t that be Akbarzeb and a random crony, and the sight of them triggered the memory of that time in me?

  Or why can’t I be Ravi? he said. How else would I know the story so well?

  He lurched to his feet then, did the drunk, and for the first time the listener grasped his size, the scale of him. Why can’t I just be a drunk you met in a bar and you a tourist looking for a story, and a story all that it is?

  He came over to the listener then, a huge hand gentle on the other
man’s shoulder. Who then felt himself being led to the parapet to where the building slid off to the street below in a torrent of falling rain and the wet pavement beyond that and then the dark sea and finally:

  Imagine if you will, said the drunk. Two men at the seawall.

  PART III

  AN ISLAND UNTO ITSELF

  THE WATCHMAN

  BY ALTAF TYREWALA

  Worli

  Someone is going to die today.

  When I arrive on duty at seven a.m., I see a cat with blood-smeared whiskers sneaking out the building gate.

  While sipping my morning cup of tea, I spill a drop on the C of SHIV SECURITY embroidered on my company uniform.

  Then the milkman arrives wearing a blue shirt.

  I close my eyes. I don’t need to see anymore. I know what will happen next.

  One: a pigeon will come roost on the gate’s lamppost.

  Two: the third-floor youth will return from the pool on his motorbike.

  Three: the vegetable lady will set up shop on the pavement outside; and nestled in her hair bun will be a single bloodred rose.

  Without verifying the sequence of events, with my eyes still closed, I turn around and enter the security cabin.

  Pandey, my fellow dayshift watchman, is breakfasting from a tiffin box. He looks up in alarm. “Who’s watching the gate, Mishra?” he asks. Pandey’s tone is without rancor. The gate isn’t to be neglected even for a second.

  “Someone is going to die today,” I say.

  I return to my position at the gate.

  Let me be wrong. I stare at the gravel on the ground. Please?

  I look up and around.

  No!

  There is the pigeon. Parked there is the swimmer’s bike. And pinned to the just-arrived vegetable-lady’s hair bun is a maroon, blossoming …

  Yes. Someone is going to die today, and I can do nothing about it, just wait to be proved correct.

  Pandey takes up position beside me at the gate. We are trained to stand with parted legs, raised necks, and hands locked behind our backs; to not smile like doormats or frown like jailers; to guard with a detached alertness. STRONG &COURTEOUS. SHIV SECURITY. PROVIDING SOUND SLEEP FOR 21 YEARS.