A Matter of Geography

by Jasmine D'Costa

  Isabel, who we thought had the most money—after all, her husband was a police inspector—came up to Dad and whispered, “Bhovoji, maybe I can provide some biscuits for the meeting. What do you think?”

  “Dev bare karo, may God bless you, Isabel. That would be nice.”

  Isabel returned with a tray of biscuits, followed by Joe and Sammy Marchon, Mrs. Cabral, Jacob Olivera, our next-door neighbour Anthony Vaz, and Ali, the fourteen year old son of our Muslim neighbour, Mr. Farooqui.

  Dad looked pleased. This was more than he’d hoped for. Mimosa peeped out and, noticing the crowd, joined them when she saw the biscuits.

  Dad told Ivan, “Please tell Mr. Surve that we are ready to begin the meeting.” Ten minutes later Mr. Surve came upstairs with the drawstring of his underpants dangling through his buttoned trousers. As one, the women moved away from him. Mr. Mitchell came slowly up the stairs, dragging his feet, and Dad began the meeting.

  “Thank you for coming. As you know we have several problems as tenants of this building.”

  Everyone nodded and Joe would have said something if Dad had not launched into his next sentence while we listened from behind the passage door.

  “Let us first start with our immediate problem. Isabel, could you come here?” Isabel took a quick pinch of snuff from her little box, stuffed it back into the top of her dress, pushing it to some secret depths of her bra, and limped forward.

  “As you all know, two factors led to Isabel’s limp. Number one, the banana skin on the stair.” Dad loved to talk in numbers. We spent endless evenings with him and our math books. “If two trains enter a tunnel and the length of the tunnel…” at which point our interest waned considerably. However, out here everyone listened intently.

  “Number two, there is no light in the passages.”

  “Number three,”Ivan whispered, “what was she doing at that hour on a dark stair?” We giggled. Dad looked at us sternly.

  “This meeting is not for children.” We slunk back behind the door of the passage once again.

  “As I see it, we need, number one, a waste disposal system. We need dustbins.” Anthony Vaz, to the right of Isabel, started sneezing, having inhaled her snuff. He moved next to Joe.

  “Number two,” Dad continued as if there had been no interruption, “we need to have well-lit passages and stairs.” He looked around. Everyone seemed interested but looked helpless.

  Finally, Mimosa asked, “Mr. Fernandes, how do you propose we get that?”

  “We should form an association and then meet the landlord.”

  “How much will it cost us?”Glenda…s mother asked.

  “What do we do with an association? How will it get us the dustbins and the lights?”Mrs. Cabral asked. “Isn’t that the duty of the landlord?”

  “Yes, true,” Dad said. “But Billy will not listen to us if we go separately. However, if we are an association he will have to meet with us.”

  “Do we have to pay to be part of the association?” Glenda’s mother asked.

  “There will be a small monthly fee.”

  “What for? If we are forming the association to get Billy to do the job, then the association does not need to collect money.”

  Dad tried not to look impatient. “In case Billy ignores our demands then the law allows the association of tenants to carry out the necessary repairs, lighting or the duties of the landlord and recover it from our monthly rent payments. But we need some capital to begin with.”

  “Then if it involves any money I am not interested,” she said.

  “Nor me,”Mrs. Cabral said. The others kept silent.

  Disappointed, Dad looked around, his eyes settling on Ali’s bored face. Standing to the side, Ali had bit little half moons around the edge of his biscuit till it looked like a star. He was holding it up at nose level and gazing at it.

  “What are you doing here?” Dad asked softly, though we who knew him well could detect annoyance in the question.

  “I have come for the meeting,” Ali said, unfazed. We were always surprised that Dad, who we all treaded so carefully with, was not seen as intimidating to our friends.

  “Where is your father?”

  “Working.”

  “Your mother?”

  “Mother not come to meeting, she no speak English,” Ali said, still watching his star.

  Dad’s eyes moved away with what our trained eyes could recognize as frustration. Our eyes, which had barely moved from the plate of biscuits for that minute, watched impatiently as Sammy Marchon stuffed his pockets. At last, his pockets full, he sidled out. Why was he at the meeting anyway, when Joe, his dad, was already there? He’d taken the leftover biscuits we were hoping to get.

  Anthony Vaz from No. 15 had finished his biscuit and, ever since, kept glancing at his watch, his forehead creased with tense impatience. Earlier that evening, we’d heard through the thin wall the strident voice of his wife, Lolly: “Be back in fifteen minutes.”

  Anthony seldom, if ever, disobeyed anyone. He gradually took a step back, then another, and slipped away without a word. Ali soon followed.

  Mrs. Cabral had not finished.

  “Besides, I don’t think this concerns us. We never go out in the dark ever since Mr. Cabral expired.”

  Joe laughed. “Well, Mr. Fernandes, no one can say you did not try!”

  Dad shrugged at that and tried to hide his disappointment about the others. He gave a half-scornful laugh.

  “I will do it myself.”

  As she collected her tray, Isabel said, “Bhovoji, I will share the cost of installing the light with you… and the waste bins.”

  Early the next day, Dad set out to Mohammed Ali Road to buy electrical wires and returned home around noon. On a Sunday, lunch was always late. It was the day we ate beef. The rest of the week we ate fish, except on Fridays when we had either egg curry or a vegetable curry. It is a Catholic thing we do.

  Dad sat in his easy chair for a while and then pulled out his toolbox. Ivan, Dad’s little helper, put out the high stool for him.

  At around one p.m., Dad started the wiring near our kitchen switch, which had a plug point. He fixed the wire on strips of wood that he had nailed to the wall, on which were clips made of metal strips with a T-loop. Half an hour later, lunch served, Mum called out to Dad to come to the table. Dad had wired only a little way outside our door. He left the coil hanging up on the ceiling, where the last clip held the stretched wire, and Ivan brought the stool home. Dad led the grace before meals, and we ate silently while he rested in the easy chair until we finished. Then Mum and Dad ate in silence.

  Another Sunday afternoon siesta—a dream of the adults! The parents in the noisy neighbourhood were indoors, strictly instructing the children, once again, not to disturb the neighbours, who were all napping. Dad said, “On second thought, I think all of you should sleep too,” thus confining us indoors. It was the only day of the week that all doors remained closed and latched from the inside in daylight.

  After evening tea, Dad and Ivan, armed with a high stool, went out onto the verandah to resume their task. Dad stared at the ceiling where he thought he had left the coil of wire. Gone was the huge coil of wire that he had left hanging!

  He knocked on 19 to look for Sammy. But Sammy was not in and no one had seen him. Dad said there was no point in waiting, because Sammy would have already sold the wire.

  Isabel came running.

  “Bhovoji, I heard about your loss. I will pay for a new wire, but please do get us a light.”

  So Dad, Ivan and Isabel went to Mohammad Ali Road once again. They came back with four large waste bins, chains, locks, a cage that could be locked to encase the bulb in the passage, and Ivan came back with a bar of chocolate that Isabel had bought him. Dad insisted that Ivan bring it home and share it with the rest, and Mum put it away for “after dinner.”

  Dad went out with Ivan and the tall stool. This time he worked without a break with hammer, nails, and rivets. Soon it grew dark and Isabe
l brought a large torchlight, the kind that watchmen or security guards double up to use as weapons, and stood near the tall stool and directed the beam at the ceiling. Three hours later Dad was affixing the bulb and its cage to the ceiling. He did not stop till he had locked the cage and climbed down from the stool that Ivan was holding steady. He rubbed his hands together in loud claps as if to shake off the dust, but conveying a sense of a job well done. When he entered the home, he looked at Mum for approval, just as Francis used to do after he’d finished colouring. “What is it, Francis?” I’d ask, pointing to a wriggly line across the page. “This is the fish,” he’d say, pointing to the bottom of the line, and then moving upwards with a stubby finger to the top of the page. “He died, and now he is going to heaven,” or some such thing.

  Dad gave that self-satisfied look at Mum and invited her to stand by him.

  “Well, dear, now what?”she asked.

  “You get to switch it on for the first time.”

  Mum put her finger on the switch, and then changed her mind.

  “Let us say a prayer of thanks,” she said, drawing us into a circle,

  “Dear Jesus, who has been the light of the world, we thank you for the light on our stairs. Please let it work. Amen.”

  “Amen,”we chorused.

  Mum pushed the switch down with her index finger. We walked to the stairs, followed by Isabel, Miriam, Shirlen, Mrs. Cabral from the other side of the L, and even Sammy, who had returned from his mission.

  We applauded. Mum looked at Dad with pride, just the way he wanted her to.

  “Thank you, my dear. We really needed that light.”

  The next morning Mum looked at the four large waste bins sitting in the centre of the kitchen floor.

  “You will have to take these out today, dear,”she told Dad.

  “I will, tonight after work. They need to be chained and locked so that they do not disappear.”

  That night Dad hammered holes on the bins near the top rim to pass the chains through. We kids sat outside No. 19 huddled in a tight circle, waiting for Joe. He bounced in, jumped over Dad’s outstretched legs and headed straight for us.

  “Joe, how was the day?”

  “I had a very good day, till I set out for home.” He paused and looked around the circle. Satisfied he had our attention, he went on. “It was 8.30 p.m. Time for my last round of the day. I started from the front gate of the factory and moved along the main building, way down the manufacturing unit where I’m stationed. It is a very long walk there—almost a kilometre. Halfway there I felt this tap on my shoulder.”

  We waited, sixteen round eyeballs.

  “I turned, my hand on my gun.” We gasped. Joe was the only one in our acquaintance with a gun. Though we had not seen it, we were impressed nonetheless. After a satisfied half smile at our wonder, he carried on. “I could barely see the outline of a man through the fog…Maybe security, I thought. ‘What do you want?’ I asked him. He was more discernable now, though I could not really see him. He asked me for a light… A hand stuck out from the mist with a cigarette...” Long pause. “I opened my lighter and looked at the man in front of me.”

  We gasped. The suspense was killing us. Francis put a shaking hand in mine. Joe lit a cigarette, watching our gaping mouths.

  “Dad, Mum wants you,” called Miriam, his daughter.

  Damn, we wouldn’t hear all of Joe’s story tonight. He would not dare to disobey Chickpea.

  “You kids,” he said, wagging his index finger, “if you are

  here tomorrow at this time, I will tell you what happened. Hold that thought, and good night. I must run. My Chickpea wants me.”

  Now Dad finished his hammering and set up the bins at various points in the passage. He passed the chain through the holes and around the balustrade and locked the two ends.

  “We have to find a way to empty the bins,” he said to Isabel, who was looking over his shoulders at the bin. Isabel was much taller than Dad. I think she was the tallest woman in the building.

  “We can ask Soni to clear the bins every morning when she comes to clean the toilets,” he added. “You and I can share the extra wage we have to pay her. As you know, the others are a dead loss. Pretty much a waste of time asking them, if you know what I mean.”

  Isabel agreed. The next morning Soni agreed to dispose of the garbage for an additional ten rupees per month. But Soni drank like a fish and did not come to work every day. On days she did come, she just tipped the bins over the balustrade into the compound—defeating their purpose.

  “Where do you expect me to take the garbage?”she asked, to which no one had an answer. Dad, of course, did attempt to answer, and opened his mouth to Soni’s vanishing behind.

  We had no system of garbage disposal, the toilets always leaked and were never maintained, and the compound was filthy as ever, collecting what the tenants threw over the balcony. Now, with the bins installed, the garbage disposal merely changed hands but not geography. We still lived atop a giant landfill!

  Chapter Fourteen

  Thursday, the 2nd October 2008, I woke in the stifling heat to a sweat-soaked t-shirt and a noisy fan, my dreams cut short. I’d been standing with Anna in a passageway right outside a door with the number two on it.

  “My apartment is no.3,” I said as I took her hand and walked down the passageway. We could not find no.3. There was no door where I had imagined it would be, and I walked with her, searching for my apartment.

  “Let’s go back to the beginning and start the search again,” I said to a silent follower.

  We retraced our steps and stood in front of no.2. We took three steps to the right and there, just where it should have been, was no.3. I opened the door with my key and we stepped in.

  The October heat, the noises of the morning…why don’t people talk softly, and who was it, anyway, chattering away in my living room? The unmistakable smells of the creek and the fertilizer plant mixed with coffee brought me back from my dream…Anna’s arrival was just ten days away. Thankfully, I had no lectures that day; though non-violence was no longer an ideology in this country, at least we still celebrated Mahatma Gandhi’s birthday on 2nd October with a public holiday.

  I dragged my caffeine-addicted body to the living room and found it filled with Dr. Apte and Premibai having a lively argument on the value of turmeric as a cure for a cold. It is surprising how two diminutive individuals can fill up a room.

  “Ah, Peter! Finally you wake.”

  “Aren’t you supposed to be in Jaigad?”

  “Aaarey, Peter, I left you that day and went home. As I packed my bag I found Naqvi’s invitation for his daughter’s wedding sitting forgotten on my side table. It is three days from now. He will not forgive me if I don’t attend.”

  “So you did not leave. Gosh, Doctor, do you sleep? When did you come here? It’s only 7 a.m.”

  “I thought I would spend the holiday with my good friend Peter, so I walked over.”

  “Walked? You live ten kilometres from here!”

  “I wake at four, Peter.”

  “Premibai, get me coffee,” I sulked. Mornings are not good for entertaining noisy visitors.

  She left the room and I pulled the armchair under the fan and settled down in its folds. This was going to be a long day. Dr. Apte, much as I loved him, would not let me be, so I stopped my pushing-him-away thoughts and gave in. ‘If you can’t stop it, just enjoy it,’ they say of many such intrusions.

  “Doctor, give me some time to get awake and shower. I had a late night. I need recovery time from this early-morning assault on my senses.”

  “Oh, don’t worry about me, Peter, just make yourself at home. I have not read the Times of India today. You shower and get dressed and that way I can finish my reading.”

  October is the hottest month in Bombay. I shower every three hours. Maybe I should just install an air conditioner…I suppose the air conditioner itself is affordable, but the electric bills are phenomenal with an air conditioner, I
am told.

  Dr. Apte combatted the heat of the October morning by stripping his trousers and shirt off. He sat in my armchair, his bony legs stretched out in front of him, wearing just his Kulkarni chaadis, a blue-, grey- and orange-striped loose Bermuda shorts kind of thing with a drawstring to hold itup. A white vest, a bit yellowed with age, but clean, covered his bony ribcage. His palms behind his head, he stared at the ceiling, contemplative. My entry had no effect on his posture…He did not move, except to roll his eyes to see me better. I sat at the dining table and waited for Premibai to serve our breakfast.

  “Had your breakfast, Doc?”

  “No, Peter, I’m waiting for Premibai to serve me poha. Besides, I thought I should wait for you.”

  “Does she know?”

  “Yes, I told her. What will you have?”

  “Same as you, I suppose.”

  We waited in silence, buried in ourselves.

  The silence was broken by a low mumble: “A Hindu.”

  “A Hindu?”

  “Naqvi’s daughter’s marrying a Hindu boy. Not really boy… She’s old now, nearly thirty-two, and he may be fortyish.”

  “Doc, don’t I hear you call Rashida beti, daughter, and now you are upset she is marrying a Hindu—or should I say a Hindu is marrying her?”

  He sighed. “She’s like my own daughter, Peter, but I’m not for these inter-marriages. There are many unmarried Hindu women. If this goes on then our women will start marrying Muslims. Hobson’s choice… Don’t you see? The tradition of marrying one’s own caste is not as unscientific as you may think. The country has so many cultures, religions, languages, customs… Bad enough, marriage is a major adjustment, but if you have to adjust to more—language, religion, customs—the chance at success is really challenged.”

  “So though you don’t like the idea, you will go to the wedding?”

  “What’s that got to do with me going? I say, Peter, you are a strange man.” He pulled out a pothi, a small cloth bag with a drawstring, which was tucked in his chaadis for convenience, and began putting together a paan. He looked back at me contemplatively.