by Anosh Irani
“Bakul,” she said. “A mosquito got the better of you.”
“Reshma, please.”
“I’m not blaming you,” she said. “All I’m saying is that the dengue was due to a mosquito. Doesn’t that tell you something?”
How well his wife knew him, Bakul thought. Even though he had given his son the best treatment, dengue was unpredictable. It took away and spared, spared and took away, depending on its mood. Reshma sensed exactly what he thought and how he felt, even though he never voiced it. She knew that he, the indomitable Bakul Gawande, ruthless disposer of destinies, was dealt the severest blow by a mere mosquito.
Bakul looked into the light again. He was not reading the article but trying to find something in the beams emanating from the iPad, some respite, some grain of truth or common sense that he could impart to his wife. He got nothing, so he just slid his finger along the screen and kept reading. There was a comment from one Jignesh Shah: “What was the need to rob these beautiful creatures of their natural habitat in the first place? To entertain our Mumbaikars?!?!” How right this man is, thought Bakul. Why couldn’t the zoo stick with lions and elephants? Where had this sudden urge for penguins come from?
“Reshma…I miss him too, you know,” he said.
“I know…”
But Reshma longed to tell him so much more. How, after reading about one penguin’s death, she was now certain that the other penguins beneath the bridge were sending a signal to their children because they did not want them to die as well. How penguins in the water were called a raft, while on land they were a waddle. Keshu had never entered the water; he hated having a bath, and he cried when water touched his skin. This proved that the raft of six penguins had nothing to do with the seventh! The seventh was waiting to waddle his way back into Reshma’s life. Would Bakul understand? Was he open enough?
“After Keshu, I felt I could not even breathe. I felt there was a rope around my neck and it was choking me. Now he wants to come back to us. Don’t let there be one more death,” she said. “Please, Bakul. I beg you.”
* * *
—
IT WAS UP TO LALIT to get the guns inside the zoo.
The recent arrival of the penguins had meant beefed-up security, and this was going to make it extremely challenging, but the solution to Lalit’s problem lay in the beautification plans for the zoo gardens. Just before one passed through the metal detectors, there was a display of animals—all of them plastic—owl, tiger, parrot, eagle, and monkey, perched on a wall and arranged in a semicircle facing the public. Below them, there were replicas of the Humboldt penguins. A man was painting them, adding big splashes of white to their bellies. Lalit saw him enter the zoo with his bag of brushes and paint—and without passing through the metal detectors. With cash and threats, Lalit convinced this man to place the guns at the feet of a giant mouse in the zoo. The mouse was covered in fake grass and zebra flowers, and he instructed the man to dig a hole directly underneath the mouse’s ass and cover it up with more fake flowers. Easy for the hit men to find.
But first, the hit men, Mohan and Tapas, needed to survey the penguin enclosure. The two of them were relatively new to the Gawande gang, but they had accomplished a lot in five short years and had it not been for the fact that Gawande himself had briefed them on their task, they would have felt deeply insulted at the ridiculousness of the undertaking. When they saw their boss hem and haw, almost at a loss for words, as he described the assignment, they had realized how important it must be.
Tapas, the younger of the two, was always being scolded by Mohan—something Tapas resented. Just because he was younger did not mean he could be chided day in and day out. Tapas did not have a formal education, but he was convinced that his ideas were superior. Mohan and he were the founding members of the Fatka gang. As twenty-somethings, they had run alongside railway tracks with the speed of cheetahs and administered “fatkas” with sticks—sharp, electric hits on a commuter’s hand, the one holding the mobile phone—thereby making the commuter drop the phone onto the tracks, which the gang members then picked up and sold on the black market. Their start-up was thriving until one day Mohan and Tapas made the mistake of giving a fatka to one of Gawande’s men. He hunted them down over the next few days, and administered some grand whacks in return, but eventually “all’s well that ends well”—or at least, that’s what Gawande told the boys when he recruited them. He liked their enterprising nature, he said, and their ability to take a severe beating.
“Look,” said Mohan. “There’s the mouse.”
“Is that Mickey Mouse?”
“No,” said Mohan. “It’s just some unknown mouse.”
Tapas looked at the mouse again, but the fake grass and flowers that ran up and over its face made it difficult to discern its features.
“I think it’s Mickey,” he said.
“Who cares?”
A young couple was taking a picture of themselves with the mouse using a selfie stick. This spot had been designated as a “Selfie Point” by the zoo authorities.
“Why would you want a photo with a mouse?” asked Tapas.
“Why would you want a penguin in your house?” asked Mohan.
Tapas had no answer to that. Neither he nor Mohan had dared question Gawande about the strangeness of his order. “Get Mr. Molt,” was all he had said. Tapas wondered if it had anything to do with the fact that Valentine’s Day was just around the corner. Maybe Gawande wanted to do something unique for his wife. Maybe Mrs. Gawande—Didi, as the men called her—was tired of receiving Gucci handbags and perfume. There was no doubt that Mr. Molt would be unlike anything she had ever received.
Mr. Molt.
When Tapas thought about a penguin with that name, the image of a short, strict man wearing a tuxedo and bow tie came to mind. There would be something regal about the chap, like a butler in an English film. What did butlers do if, whilst serving dinner, their underwear got stuck in the cracks of their arses?
“So many cops around,” remarked Mohan.
But Tapas wasn’t looking at the cops. He was staring at a couple who were smooching. The man had his hands around the woman’s waist, which was lusciously exposed by the gap in her violet sari.
“Are you listening?” asked Mohan. “Focus.”
“When we reach America, I will get a woman from all nationalities. I mean, a woman each from each nationality—”
“I get it.”
“German, Brazil, France, Ugandan…”
“Yes, yes. First, let’s make it out of this alive.”
Mohan was not yet ready to daydream about their life abroad. Gawande had already organized their American visas and booked them on a flight to Vegas, where his associates would set them up in the business of their choice: either a convenience store on the Strip or a shawarma place, it was up to them. After the penguin job, Gawande had told them, they’d best be out of the country. The man who had bumped off Gawande’s rival had already been shipped to Vegas that very evening. This penguin gig would get the cops involved, plus animal rights activists, and those activists were irritating creatures, and dangerous—they had nothing better to do than worry about the plight of lions, hippos, moths, and mosquitoes. They would go on and on until Molt got justice.
Waiting in the lineup to see the enclosure, like upstanding citizens, was making Tapas edgy. He shuffled his feet and sang, his song felt more like a complaint—it was so off-key he might as well have been singing about not wanting to pay an electricity bill.
“Shut up,” said Mohan.
Tapas shut up.
He and Mohan smiled at the attendant, trying and failing to look normal. Tapas turned his attention to the white tiles, noticing how they sparkled like the bathroom of a five-star hotel. As he and Mohan shuffled a few steps further, they were hit by the sudden blast of the AC.
“They are giving us a 3-D experience,” Tapas said. “North Pole type.”
“Maa ki aankh,” said Mohan. “Just look at those birds
. They’re torpedoes.”
And indeed, the penguins were jetting through the water at top speed, leaving a trail of bubbles. They were having so much fun, it made Tapas think of his childhood with his brothers, how they had chased each other for no reason at all. There was nothing to be gained, and yet the thrill was so real and true.
“There’s an elevator that goes up to the office,” said Mohan, nudging Mohan, and pointing with a discreet finger.
“Hah?”
“You’re not here to enjoy these mutts. Think of how we’ll capture one instead.”
Tapas examined the elevator. It led to a room right above the penguin glass tank. He knew what Mohan was thinking. Go up there, get someone to let them into the glass tank. Simple. Clean. Effective. No human being, especially an underpaid zoo employee, was going to risk his life for a penguin. Even though, Tapas had to admit, they were damn cute.
“Look,” he said, pointing to the monitor that flashed happy Humboldt penguin images to the public. “There are three males and four females. Donald, Popeye, and Mr. Molt. And Daisy, Olive, Flipper, and Bubble.”
“We want Molt,” said Mohan. “No one else.”
“You think Gawande’s wife will know the difference?”
“No, but in the paper they will report the name, won’t they? What if the papers say that we took Daisy instead? Then we’re…”
Mohan abruptly stopped talking. A female cop was moving towards him and Tapas. She had been eyeing them for a while now. Mohan was concerned about Tapas. He got super-edgy and idiotic around cops; he hated them with genuine passion. They scared him too, and his fear made him ferocious.
“Just relax and say nothing,” said Mohan. “If she asks questions, I will answer.”
“But we are just watching these pandas. Is that a crime?”
“Penguins.”
“Hah?”
“These are not pandas.”
“They’re both black-and-white animals!”
Just as the cop was about to ask them something, Tapas did the exact opposite of what Mohan had told him to do. “Mohan,” he said, “do penguins have a penis?”
Mohan did not answer. So, it was Tapas’s idiocy that would shine today, not his ferocity.
“They don’t have any knees,” Tapas continued. “Therefore, it would be impossible for them to do it doggie-style.”
The cop had heard Tapas, and repugnance showed on her face. But Tapas didn’t notice. He was laughing nervously and mimicking a penguin on its knees, trying to go on all fours but unable to, just staying on its stomach instead. Mohan thought it best to get out of there. He placed his arm around Tapas’s shoulder, yanking the younger man’s neck so hard that Tapas could hardly breathe.
“Not another word,” Mohan said. “You hear?”
Tapas let Mohan drag him towards the exit, but as he left he turned his head and caught sight of one of the penguins sliding and pressing its belly against the glass. He wondered if she might be pregnant. The thought of holding one of these slippery beings and taking it out of its cage reminded him of so many things—of his days in prison as a teenager, when he was wrongfully locked up, way before he started the Fatka gang; of his disbelief at being inside even though he had done nothing, he’d just been taking a walk with his friends, one of whom had a gun, which Tapas had not known of; how volunteer groups came to him in prison and tried to counsel him, talk him out of a life of crime, which he wasn’t into to begin with, and of how he kept telling them he was good at painting, and if they would just give him some brushes and colouring pencils he would draw the world for them and prove it; and of how once a kid younger than him had vomited and shat at the same time, right next to him, and it was all black, blacker than the arms of Mr. Molt, or Daisy, or whichever penguin this was, and he’d screamed for help until the prison guard came, and all the guard did when he saw the boy was click his tongue, and that was that, the boy was gone, a click of the tongue the final send-off—and what was the use of staying in a country where these things happened, what did India mean, what was Bharat, what was this desh of his, and America was great, and he would sell cigarettes in Vegas, and Red Bull and chips and lottery tickets, and condoms, no problem, and if it meant taking Mr. Molt away from his family, it was okay, it was fine, because Mr. Molt was just like Tapas. They had both been imprisoned for a crime they did not commit.
* * *
—
THAT NIGHT, BAKUL GAWANDE almost could not bear to look at his wife’s face. She had never been so beautiful. He watched as she stood in front of the mirror with a blow-dryer. She had just emerged from the shower and her hair was wet, wet with promise the way it had been when he had first laid eyes on her, all those years ago, at the temple. He had asked the purohit who she was, and that was that. It had taken him a while to get her to say yes, because of his reputation—not a don yet, just a goon with a dream—but he was good-looking and quite the conversationalist, and a simple man at heart. It had worked.
Tonight, she looked just as striking as she had then, and as the hair dryer howled at her, blowing a stream of hot air her way, Bakul wished its nozzle could suck in instead of blow out, suck in all the demented thoughts of her brain. In front of him now was a false beauty, a fake prettiness, and the dahi and chapatis he had eaten only an hour ago gurgled in his stomach, a sign that his and Reshma’s future together was curdling. His wife was gorging on grief, and it was making her look more and more attractive even as she was more and more repulsive, and he had a hand in feeding the beast, no doubt; how he regretted giving the order to capture Mr. Molt.
For her part, Reshma wondered if Keshu would recognize her. After all, it had been three months. More than anything, she could not let her son see her as a mess. She applied a bit of kajal underneath her eyes and, lo and behold, the dark circles seemed like distant memories, dark clouds that had already poured down their rain a while ago. She marvelled at how quickly she had recovered. Wasn’t that the nature of love itself? It had taken the skeletal remains of a human being, the remnants of grief that could not be called human, to make her alive again. Just the thought of a reunion, and her tissues were rejoicing.
She could tell that Bakul saw new life in her too, as he watched her get ready. She could feel the relief that he felt, and he also felt a small surge of pride that she was the one who was fixing things for a change. She had entered the world again, and—could she say it? should she dare use the word? yes—there was a dance inside her.
She threw the blow-dryer on the bed like a girl who was late for a night out clubbing with her friends, and turned to her husband. “I’m ready,” she said.
Bakul wanted to say something, but instead he followed his wife out of their bedroom. All the lights were on, and there were no shadows, but the room felt darker than ever.
* * *
—
TAPAS RAN LIKE HE HAD NEVER run before. Of course, he could not run fast, considering the bundle he held in his arms, but he was doing his best. The thing he carried was howling, making formidable sounds. He tried not to look at it, but part of its head kept jutting out of the white bedsheet wrapped around it.
Mohan followed close behind Tapas, facing the penguin enclosure, gun in hand, keeping watch. They had managed to pull it off. It had been ugly and clumsy, but clean at the same time. No lives were lost; no one was hit. No one had expected two men to emerge at midnight, six hours after closing time, and demand a penguin. There was only a single cop on duty; he’d been slumped in his chair as if he was on Baga Beach nursing a cold beer. By the time this cop realized what was going on, Tapas had confiscated his phone and locked him up in a room. Tapas had enjoyed that part. He’d even given the cop a tapli on the head, the kind schoolmasters gave impertinent kids.
It would be a while before the police were alerted, but Lalit was anxious to get away. The penguin enclosure was right next to a side entrance, far away from the main entrance of the zoo, one that gave them access to Mustafa Bazaar. Into its bylanes they would di
sappear, and take the highway towards Chembur. Lalit had punched the man guarding the entrance—a pudgy weakling whose sole function was to sit in a plastic chair all day—and took his place. He’d assumed an air of lazy indifference while the abduction was happening, but inside he was quivering. This whole caper was like walking barefoot on rotten eggs.
When he saw Tapas and Mohan running towards him with the package in hand, he rushed to the van that was parked right outside the side gate and slid open its door. Mustafa Bazaar was sleepy at night. Most of the timber shops were now closed, except for a few that had small fires on the footpath, where the labourers were preparing their dinners; and the Parsi colony opposite the zoo was always tranquil, no matter what time of day it was. An old woman emerged from its gates and tried to hail a taxi, but none would stop for her. Their shifts done, all the drivers wanted to go home with the same urgency with which Tapas wanted to get to Vegas.
The cry of the creature in Tapas’s arms was unbearable—something like a sheep wailing, a broken baa that ricocheted inside the van.
Lalit pointed to the container on the back seat—it was one of those things used to transport dogs on planes. Tapas placed Mr. Molt inside, let go of him as though he was contaminated, and bolted the steel door.
Mohan sat next to Lalit in the front, just in case there was trouble.
“Calm the bastard down,” said Lalit.
Not only was the sound excruciating, now the thing was thrashing about in its white sheet. Its flippers hit the walls of the box again and again, and this rattled Lalit to such a degree that he kept trying to start the van even though he had already done so. Mohan gently tapped him on the elbow. Out of the three, Mohan was the only one who’d remained relatively calm. With Tapas and Lalit in a state, he’d had no option.
