Mumbai Noir

by Altaf Tyrewala

  Fear turned his bowels into water, drip, drip, drip.

  Color? Flying? Flightless? Too easy.

  First bird seen after running away to Hira Bai.

  He paused, confused. A red-necked falcon? A black drongo? “Wait,” he said. “Wait.” The dai closed her eyes. Shabnam looked at her helplessly. “A water cock? A painted snipe?”

  In the creamy blue sky sailed a kite and its colorful tail wagged this way and that. Goodbye! Good luck! it said to Shabnam drifting away to a happier place.

  “A common teal?” begged Shabnam. “A kestrel?”

  His knees gave way.

  He felt water in his mouth, a steady stream that splashed his torso, rolling down to his feet. Now he cried, as they demanded, “Mata! Mata! Mata!” He cried, and the dai held up her newly sharpened knife.

  How she enjoyed a good meal.

  A hot-hot double rot. Methi ki daal. What she called vihar dai ki raita—curd sprinkled with chopped onions, tomato, coriander, and a handful of crisp boondi. In the summer she would spend days chopping and spicing vegetables for pickles. On her window stood an army of glass bottles and as the pickles ripened, friends would find excuses to visit her at meal times. Nothing beat homemade carrot pickle with hot roti and a fat glass of lassi.

  These were small pleasures, she told herself. Not too much to ask.

  Phallus, scrotum, testes.

  He crumpled.

  The blood was rubbed across his body; hot oil was drizzled on it.

  A helper placed the severed parts in a plastic bag. Some liked to take them home to preserve in alcohol.

  Shabnam awoke a few hours later and called out weakly to the dai. She hurried to his side. Picking him up like he was weightless, she carried him to the grindstone and thrust his naked body into a sitting position. She hugged him so tight.

  Blood trickled down his legs. Menstruation.

  IV

  When Sharad returned home after running away with the hijras that first time, his mother had cried into his shirt. They had walked up and down the colony, she told him, accosting every hijra they saw, demanding to know his whereabouts. “We went to the shamshan ghat,” she wept. His father didn’t speak to him. The neighbors had heard, and were pleased. For all their book learning, their protestations that they didn’t share a kitchen with the Muslims, the Sharmas were no better than them.

  The second time, he stayed away for weeks, dancing at weddings, travelling to Kalyan with Hira Bai to attend the urs of Haji Malang, a patron of the city’s hijras.

  This time when he returned, his mother’s grasp had an unmistakable foreignness to it. It wasn’t her fault. She was as full of longing as the first time she had held him in her arms.

  V

  After news of his castration spread, Shabnam became as popular as a cinema star. Hijras he had never met, and a few he had, visited him daily.

  One would be so bold, having once lain on that same bed, to push aside the covers that swaddled Shabnam’s shoulders down to feet. Here was a lemony yellow rib cage and a stomach uneven as upma. But above the womanly hips and before the small feet, their oval toenails a clear pink, was the reason why they had come to pay homage. A hairless mound of raw flesh. And crawling on it, a fresh puckered scar.

  All the while he was being examined, Shabnam drifted between dreams.

  On the fortieth day, the one who survived was celebrated with jalsa. He would be scrubbed with turmeric and dressed in the red sari of a Hindu bride. There would be flowers everywhere. The guests would jostle in high pitch. A few would be envious, he imagined, with a small shiver of pleasure. No doubt their masculinity would weigh heavier than usual and they would whisper that he thought too much of himself.

  Hira Bai would be ecstatic.

  And his parents? Would they come?

  He giggled sleepily, imagining his father’s reaction to his chili curled up in a jar.

  And so the days passed, days that seemed like nights, nights of weeks that were a miasma of dreams, of bedside visits, of hot poultices.

  Then broke a dawn destined to be his last.

  When Shabnam awoke he did not know this and daydreamed again, perhaps aloud, as the dai fed him a broth of vegetables and chicken liver.

  She said nothing.

  Sometime between lunch and dinner, as she waited patiently outside the hut, Shabnam died.

  Only a few minutes later, the dai entered and kneeled down to check his pulse. His flesh was cool. She straightened up briskly and walked toward the windows. Drawing back the curtains of sari cloth, she threw open the rotting shutters. December had arrived in the park. The sky crackled with the flap and caw of hundreds of migratory birds.

  “How peaceful it is,” murmured the dai.

  The room would air out quickly, she thought, pleased.

  Gossip churned like pepper in a mill.

  What was it? Neither akwa nor nirvan but in-between.

  “He wasn’t fit to be one of us and so Mata took him,” Hira Bai shrugged.

  “He fucked women,” the hash smoker lied.

  His parents had forgotten him, the hijras said, and if they had not, who would be the first to tell them?

  The dai’s reaction was swift. She performed a puja of selfcleansing, then announced she would never again castrate. They begged her to reconsider. She was helpless, she said. Guilt had stilled her lucky left hand.

  Death’s rituals need no indulgence. Penis and testicles to the dogs. The helpers, faces disguised in shawls, feet anxious to leave the scene, disposed of Shabnam.

  VI

  In the Vihar Lake, a body watches a child slipping on his mother’s bangles. He watches a teenager trying to escape something he’s anchored to. He watches himself, his head on Hira Bai’s lap, sighing as she runs a fragrant oiled comb through his hair. He spots a great eagle, a bristled grass warbler. He turns to share the sighting with his parents, only to find them standing behind him. His mother is crying, but it his father who surprises him. “Come back,” he sighs heavily, so heavily. Now his womanly self wishes to be heard. She bends forward with a secret. Her chest is heavy with rolled-up socks. He leans in, pleased. Her face collapses into a swarm of wrinkles. The dai smiles at him with curious satisfaction.

  THE EGG

  BY NAMITA DEVIDAYAL

  Walkeshwar

  On the fourth floor of Tirupati Towers, an all-vegetarian building near Teenbatti, Anita Mitesh Shah heard the doorbell ring and instantly burrowed deeper into the comforter, her billowing pink cave. This is where she took refuge when she wanted to distance herself from the household’s daily ablutions. Although her bedroom was at the end of the corridor, she could never keep out the gurgles and grunts of the servants, Tarini’s whines, and the daily stream of terrorists disguised as broom vendors and fruit-sellers who came to her door. Everyone was trying to unhinge her in a sly, subtle way. She knew their game.

  Some days, Anita felt threatened even by Rajkiran, the muscular sweeper, because she was convinced that he had stockpiled pictures of her in his head. Uncensored ones, accentuated with frozen nipples and blue toenails. As she lay there, she saw a flash of something being hit by a car in the building’s driveway. She deleted the thought before it could completely unspool its menacing visuals. They didn’t leave her alone.

  Anita swung her legs over the bed and went through the ritual of double-clicking her feet, first the left one, then the right one, on the red line that ran through the carpet, over the gentle creeper that had been woven in by some kind Kashmiri to give her solace. She went into the bathroom, shut the door, delved into the corner of the cabinet behind the mirror, and took out the little pillbox with a green cap. Two capsules ensconced in her palm, she wrapped her gown tightly around herself and stepped out.

  Suman, the maid with a slight hunch, was dusting, carefully working her way through the crevices of a crystal Ganesh.

  “Get me water!” Anita barked. “Who rang the bell just now?”

  “It was the maharaj, bhabhi.
He had come to collect his clothes. He wanted to meet you, he came yester—”

  “I don’t want to meet him. Did you give him his clothes?”

  “Yes, of course, bhabhi.”

  Anita was convinced the girl was being sarcastic. She glowered at her, hating even more how she always walked around with the bottoms of her salwar rolled up to just below her knees, revealing skinny white legs streaked with faint black hair, because she was endlessly washing clothes.

  Fifteen minutes after Anita took her pills, the thoughts slowed down. She went into the bathroom and smoked a cigarette, blowing smoke out of the window and waving her hand in front of her face each time she did, so that the smell would go away. But the smoke merely curled its way back and seeped into her thick hair, lingering there like a halo of discontent.

  The first time she had smoked was ten years ago, on her wedding night in Udaipur, where her family lived. She was in Hotel Marigold with the man who had suddenly transformed from stranger to husband after some well-meaning relative had fatalistically circled a Times of India matrimonial. He had handed her his lit cigarette with a grin. She’d felt flattered and strangely excited at the prospect of doing something so new and naughty. She had coughed and coughed, then vomited a week’s worth of rich wedding food over the balcony, and finally lain flat on her back on the bed, and fallen into deep abiding sleep amidst the scent of stale tuberoses. In the morning, as they both sat on the balcony overlooking the lake, surrounded by low hills dotted with temples and mosques, he offered her another drag of his cigarette and she had breathed it in without any hesitation, like a pro. Then they made love. And she held onto that moment—the orgasmic skies and the temple chimes and the distant clanging of a Rajasthani brass band that applauded their union.

  Ten years can change so much.

  She vaguely knew that Mitesh had left very early in the morning. She had stirred, but not woken when she heard the shower go on and off. She had smelled the sweet incense that he lit in front of the little Laxmi photo in the corner of their room, a ritual he followed just before he left every morning, and she knew he was gone. The doorbell woke her up to that familiar paralysis of loneliness.

  Back in the bathroom, she sat on the toilet seat smoking her second cigarette, and absentmindedly called his number.

  The first line of the Gayatri Mantra screeched into her ear before she heard his voice.

  “Hello?”

  “So, what are you doing, Mr. Mitesh?” she asked. Playfully.

  Hopefully.

  Mitesh reminded her that it was budget day and a busy time for Paypal, his subbroking office. It was a brief conversation. She put the phone down, popped a minty Kushal Kanthil into her mouth, and went outside into the dining room. She stood at the window. The sounds of an angry street swam up through the dazzling summer heat. Car horns jolted with the chants that emanated from the Jain temple on the street corner. A reverse horn plaintively belted out the Titanic theme song. Two people were fighting, perhaps over a parking space, or the price of onions, or maybe it was just the way they spoke.

  Anita sat on her dining table sipping tea out of a melamine mug. She scratched at a dried-up patch of yellow daal on the clear plastic table cover and contemplated the day that loomed in front of her. She had to go to Dr. Jain, who kept changing her dosage, taking her on a merry-go-round of emotions which she didn’t mind. It had become her new reality. She’d long forgotten what it was like to feel normal. She also had to pick up two new muslin dhotis for Mitesh. He wore them every morning to the temple and they grew thin quickly, probably because the cursed maid spent all her time washing them too hard. Taru needed a new box of HB Natraj pencils. Anita also had to interview the new maharaj. She felt overwhelmed and weakened by her task list.

  A few minutes later, she picked up the telephone handset and dialed her husband’s number again.

  “Actually …” She paused, clutching the phone tightly. “Actually, I just wanted to tell you to bring home some money.” She waited, desperate, wanting him to continue the conversation. But obviously that was not to be. The stocks must have been flickering like little green aliens in front of him. Soma Cement. Alpine Industries. He was in another world. So she put the phone down after a weak, “Don’t forget.”

  Those were the conversations she now thrived on— money and food and which social event they had to attend that weekend. They were distant dialogues, but they gave her immense comfort because they took her away from the diabolical dramas that banged around all day in her head during the times between the pills. She thrived on the quotidian. Her daughter’s schedule of school and classes, her husband’s routine of work and home. The food that had to be ordered, bargaining with the vegetable vendor, visiting the family jeweler to break and remake the same necklaces, bangles, rings. Once a week, they ate out. She was grateful that he no longer nudged her in the middle of the night, because she would slip into a deep sleep after her last pill. It had been three years since they had touched each other.

  Some time back, she had popped into his office in Bhuleshwar, after stopping by Pannalal Jewelers on the next street, where she’d dropped off a kundan necklace to get its clasp repaired. When she pushed open the tinted glass door that had Paypal Finance painted in red letters, she was surprised to see that the old man who sat at the front desk had been replaced by a young girl. The girl had curly hair with blond highlights and a big pink mouth. The girl looked at her strangely, as if she were an imposter, not the proprietor’s wife. Mitesh had come out of his cabin and seemed surprised to see Anita. He turned to the girl and asked her to bring madam a cup of tea, just a little tenderly, she thought.

  That voice stayed on in her head and kept coming back, in startling ways, while she bathed, when she sifted through apples, looking for the nonbruised ones, when she walked on the treadmill. Sometimes she woke up to it. She kept nursing that moment, allowing it to enter her, letting it change volume levels. Sometimes that simple sentence—bring madam a cup of tea—was the only voice she heard for hours. Like now, as she sat at the dining table, her elbows sticking to the clear plastic sheet.

  She called Mitesh. This time, she just heard his voice and hung up. He called back.

  “No, no, nothing. I pressed redial by mistake,” she said, gathering and regathering the little dried-up flakes of yellow daal in hurried finger movements.

  A pungent lemony antiseptic smell pervaded the room. Rajkiran was swabbing the floor on the other side. When he reached the dining table, she lifted her legs onto the chair, folding her gown over them, so that he could get on with his cleaning. She watched him, moving in rhythmic movements next to her, and felt fearful again. Bring madam a cup of tea. She shut her eyes and the feeling went away. Maybe the three of them could go and have veg sushi at Cream Centre; it had been awhile since they had taken Tarini out. They could leave at seven after she returned from her abacus class. Anita was about to pick up the phone again, then decided against it.

  The bell rang. When Suman opened the door, a light automatically went on and illuminated a photograph in the hallway. It was laminated, frameless, and enormous, covering almost half the wall. In the picture, they looked like any other happy family—a man, a woman, and a little girl, smiling on a beach, frothy ocean at their feet, with a balloon seller walking away from them. There were no dead bloated fish; no maimed characters smelling of urine. There was no other woman, no scent of a stranger in the medley of sweat and perfume and aftershave and stale cigarettes. The print ensured that the memory museum meant for public viewing would be filled with happy Kodak moments. Maybe loss showed up in the negative, or in dreams, or in an act of violence that would be passed on like a family heirloom.

  That was the time the three of them had gone to Kovalam, to a timeshare beach resort. Mitesh had complained that there were not enough vegetarian dishes on the menu and he’d hated the smell of fish that lingered like a bad conversation and followed them everywhere, even into their room. They had not fought, but he had been on
the phone most of the time. The market never sleeps.

  It was the dhobi at the door. Suman walked in, hunched, with a pile of freshly ironed clothes. Anita then remembered that she had to interview the new maharaj that afternoon. Her sister-in-law had promised to send a candidate who was known for his exquisite undhiyo. Perhaps she could do a trial meal with him, but only if he was willing. She knew the breed; they could be quite difficult.

  A week back, when Anita was out shopping, her household had turned upside down. She heard the story later from Suman, dramatized in her high-pitched voice. The maharaj was in the middle of cutting long yellow ribbons of khandvi and he couldn’t find the coriander. He accused Suman of hiding it and started rummaging around in the refrigerator. That was when he made the discovery.

  Deep inside the vegetable drawer, hidden under a sheaf of spinach, there lay a candy-striped paper box that said, Pom Pom Wafers. The Maharaj wondered what it was doing there, so he opened it. Inside, there sat a solitary, oval, faintly cracked egg. He held it for a split second, with a look of horror on his face, and then dropped it as if it were a ticking bomb. He stared at the yolk spreading slowly across the white Granamite tiled floor, then gathered up his dhoti and ran out of the kitchen, cursing the bhabhi loudly in his native language, cursing her parents—Suman repeated this detail twice over—and left the house.

  Later that evening, Anita’s mother-in-law came upstairs and confronted her about the egg, her green-brown eyes blazing, her two-carat solitaires sparkling furiously.

  “Do you know we could be thrown out of the building? The only reason no one has said anything is because Papa is so close to the builders and they have their accounts with Mitesh.”

  “Mummy …” Anita was in tears, shaking. She could hear them. The mean voices started moving and knocking about in her head. She contained herself and told her mother-inlaw what Dr. Jain had said. Little Tarini was not meeting the growth charts and she had to supplement her diet with something more substantial. He was the one who suggested eggs, she pleaded, only one a week.