“You have made me very happy tonight,” Akhtar says, smiling. “You have honored me with this visit.”
Cassim thanks Akhtar for his kindness, and tells him that we must go, that it’s 2:30 a.m. and that I am very tired. Akhtar asks his manager if he can walk us outside to say goodbye.
We leave the kitchen and find ourselves in an alley adjacent to the club entrance, where throngs of people are still trying to push their way inside.
“Cassim Brother, try and come to my native place,” he says. “You will love Bihar.”
“I will try,” Cassim says solemnly.
The two embrace, and I take a picture of them, arm in arm in the alleyway.
“We will meet again soon, insh’allah,” Akhtar says as we walk down the lane in search of a taxi.
“Insh’allah,” Cassim says, and salutes Akhtar goodbye.
15
SECOND-CLASS CAR
BOMBAY, FEBRUARY 2002
Make sure you take the ladies’ car on the local train,” people tell me repeatedly. “Especially at rush time.”
“When is the rush time?” I ask, and get various responses, most of which include most of the afternoon.
There are three kinds of compartments on the local trains: first class, where the businessmen ride; second class, where the majority of male passengers travel; and the ladies’ car. First class is more expensive and slightly less crowded; second class fills up quickly with men who occupy every available inch of the train car. During rush hour, both classes of travel are packed to the brim, and I feel lucky that I am able to travel in the women’s compartment, which is never as full. It’s difficult to know where to stand while I’m waiting for the train in Grant Road Station, which spot will be an appropriate one to board the correct car. Most often, I stand near the nearest group of women traveling together and try to bundle into the train with them. Sometimes when the train arrives I get lost in the rush of people trying to board all at once, and I miss my chance. Other times, sensing my inexperience,other women grab me by the shoulder and push me in front of them, and I feel my body hoisted up by the momentum of the group. Once inside, we arrange ourselves throughout the compartment, and a young girl goes through the train passing around a flat, wide cardboard tray of hair ornaments, plastic jewelry, ladies’ underwear, and coloring books for children. The women pick through the merchandise absentmindedly, holding earrings up to their ears and hair ornaments up to their braids, testing different items. The other passengers look at them and act as mirrors, giving signs of approval or disapproval in their choices.
One afternoon, I am on my way to Andheri, one of the northern suburbs, to visit a Bene Israel family and take their portrait. I find the station almost empty; I don’t see any other women. When the train arrives, it is nearly deserted, and I find a seat easily in the second-class car. There doesn’t seem to be any harm in riding in one of the mixed compartments in broad daylight, I think, and I keep my tripod between my legs and my camera bag on my lap for safekeeping.
As the train goes farther north, I watch the sun fading and realize that it is later in the day than I thought. I watch as the car fills up with more and more passengers, all of them men. They look at me with a little curiosity, but I stare straight ahead, determined to seem unfazed. I realize that the train is getting more crowded, so that I will have to stand up well before my station to make sure I’m able to exit. Reluctantly, I give up my seat and try to make my way toward the open train-compartment doors.
At each station, more and more men enter the car, each time more than I think is humanly possible. I have seen the clamor and rush of men boarding Bombay’s trains before, but never from the inside of the train, only from the vantage of the platform. I watch as men on the ground reach up their arms to be pulled in, thousands of arms reaching to pull them up, up and inside. If they are light, their feet will not touch the floor; their upper body will fill the usable space just under the ceiling.
I feel a growing sense of panic that I am going to be trapped on this train. I see my station on the map, a chipped line of paint above the door of the compartment. Five more stations, then four. Men are packed on either side of me now closer than is comfortable. I am holding my tripod over one shoulder, and my camera bag above most of the men’s heads, so that no one can reach inside and pull anything out. I begin to see how the men make their exits when it’s time for their station, yelling that their turn has come and then being forcibly evicted from the throng as ten more men climb on board to replace them. I am getting frightened about how I will do the same, and try to make my way closer to the door. We are packed in so tightly now that my body is surrounded on all sides, pressed next to the men’s bodies, my sweat mingling with theirs. Suddenly I feel a hand push between my legs from behind. My hands are caught, holding my bag in front of me, and I can’t slap the man or push his hand away. Three more hands, four start reaching for my breasts, and there’s nothing I can do—my hands are trapped above me, and I can’t let go of my bag. I start shouting in English, barely audible over the din of the train and the mob of passengers.
“Get the FUCK OFF ME, YOU FUCKING ASSHOLES!” I yell, which only delights the crowd further. The men snigger at me. Some look away, embarrassed.
I struggle to turn around slightly and halfway face the man behind me.
“DO YOU HAVE A SISTER?” I scream.
He withdraws his hand and tells the men in front of me to drop theirs. A man closer to the door looks back at me across the crowd, almost kindly.
“Come, come here,” he says. “I’ll help you.”
I don’t feel I have any other choice. I take his hand and let him pull me, firmly and with assurance, through the mound of people plastered to the door like bees in a honeycomb. “Go!” he says, when we get to the next station, and pushes me out the door. I hit the ground running, tripping over myself, gathering my bags, making sure that I have everything.
I stand on the platform of the unfamiliar station in the dark, looking up at the anonymous train car, filled with hundreds, what feels like perhaps a thousand men, and swear at the top of my lungs to anyone who will listen until well after the train has departed.
16
OMENS
BOMBAY, MARCH 2002
Every morning, I walk to the corner stall to buy copies of The Times of India, The Asian Age, and The Hindu. The news is filled with chilling stories of attacks being waged by right-wing Hindu fundamentalists against the Muslim population just across the border to the north, in Gujarat. Bombay experienced traumatic violence in the winter of 1992- 93, which began with protests against the destruction of a mosque in the northern Indian town of Ayodhya built on what is believed to be the site of Hindu deity Ram’s birthplace. The clashes swelled into an anti-Muslim pogrom that raged across the city, and in March 1993, this violent period in the city’s history culminated in what was widely considered a “Muslim response”—the detonation of bombs at the Stock Exchange and several bus stations. There is concern that Hindu-Muslim violence could break out again, but so far Bombay is largely quiet, and I am grateful to be far from the storm.
On the afternoons when I’m not at ORT India or interviewing older members of the Bene Israel community, I go to the David Sassoon Library on Rampart Row. The library looks across the art district known as Kala Ghoda, or Black Horse, named after a statue of King Edward VII that once stood in its center. Inside the lobby of the building, an imposing marble statue of David Sassoon keeps watch over the entry desk, where a sleepy attendant checks out books with a large, loud stamp. I walk up the curving wooden staircase, tap my way across the parquet floor of the landing and through the reading room, where students sit hunched over their textbooks, and retired men sift lazily through the magazines and periodicals. I have lived in Bombay for almost three months, and it’s nice to have routines, places that I frequent. The reading room has tall, open doors that face the veranda, a space filled with oversized wooden lounge chairs that look suitable for a country estat
e or the deck of a luxury ship. This is where I make my nest for the afternoon, books of Bene Israel and Bombay history in my lap. Several members have discovered that the chairs make excellent sites for naps, and are unabashedly resting, their books perched precariously on their stomachs.
The library faces a low, modern building which houses the Jehangir Art Gallery, where I go to look at paintings when I need a short dose of air-conditioned air, stopping for tea and parathas in Café Samovar. One day, a familiar gesture catches my eye as I am walking inside. I look to my left and see Rekhev sitting on the steps of the building, holding a large green hard-bound notebook in his left hand, pushing his hair out of his eyes with the flat of his right palm. It’s been a few months since I’ve seen him, since I left Pune at the end of December. I realize, with a flash, that I’ve missed him, and the feeling pulls on me. For reasons I will wonder about later, it does not seem surprising to see him out here in Bombay. When I approach him, he looks up at me as if he was expecting me, and we speak as if we had been interrupted only minutes before.
“Are you speaking Hindi now?” he asks me casually.
“Hardly,” I say, sitting down. “I’ve been taking lessons, but I’m not getting very far.”
“What are you reading about in the library?” he asks.
“Bene Israel history, mostly material about the Christian missionaries who taught the Bene Israel Hebrew and tried to convert them to Christianity.”
“It’s a very punishing God, your God,” Rekhev says slowly.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“I have been reading the Bible. I have no training in Christianity; I can only appreciate it as a narrative. But this is how I read my own holy books, the Puranas. These, too, are stories. The Bible is full of stories.”
“That’s true.”
“In our tradition, gods are often eating and drinking, visiting us on earth. Your god sends locusts. I find him quite violent.”
I notice that Rekhev pronounces the “v” in “violent” like a “w.”
“Why are you reading the Bible?” I ask.
“The Western canon—your entire education, for that matter—it’s all based on the Bible. But I don’t understand the references. I’ll never make sense of you if I don’t read the Bible.”
I feel immensely flattered that Rekhev would want to “make sense of me.” I look down at my sandals to hide how pleased it makes me feel.
“So, have you found your shipwrecked Jews?”
“Some,” I say. “But there’s a trip out of Bombay that I want to make soon, to a town on the coast. I’ve heard that there is one Bene Israel family left who still make oil out of local seeds in the traditional way—I want to meet them.”
“Do you think they are still there?”
I open up one of my books and show him a black-and-white photograph of two women sitting on an old oil press inside what looks like a thatched hut, a bullock in the background.
“They were there when this picture was taken, nine years ago.”
Rekhev pauses, looking at the photograph.
“Nine years is a long time. How will you go there?”
“By boat, rickshaw, car I suppose.”
“You will go alone?”
“I guess so; I hadn’t thought about it.”
“This is not America,” Rekhev says. “I will come with you.” He looks serious, as if he has been debating this point with himself for some time.
“Really?” I say.
“When you have decided when you would like to go, call me at this number. I’m staying in Bombay for a little while to work on a film.”
Rekhev tears off a corner of his notebook and writes a phone number on it.
“I would like that,” I say. “Thanks, I could use the company.”
“I know,” he says, returning to his book.
I sit down on the step next to Rekhev and watch a man trying to sell handmade drums to tourists. He methodically moves a two-sided drum back and forth, hitting each side with a ball on the end of a long piece of twine, hurrying after a couple in matching khaki shorts.
“Very nice, very nice, very nice . . .” he says, trailing after them, as they wave him away.
“Bombay suits you,” Rekhev says, turning a page.
“Thank you,” I say.
“Perhaps we’ll go next week.”
“Next week.”
I MAKE AN APPOINTMENT to visit the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and find out more about the family who makes oil. The AJJDC is a social welfare organization that has been active in Bombay since the early 1960s. Inside, the offices are decorated with posters of religious sites in Israel and poster boards pasted with snapshots from various youth-group camps and activities. Underneath each picture is a handwritten caption in Magic Marker cursive: “Dance Class,” “Purim Play,” “Getting to Know Israel.”
I have an appointment with Nandini, a social worker who periodically visits the remaining three hundred Bene Israel Jews still living in the villages of the Konkan Coast. In Bombay, Nandini supervises the AJJDC’s Cash Assistance Program, which helps Bene Israel families who are below the poverty line meet their monthly expenses. On the day I visit, several elderly men and women are sitting patiently in the waiting area to receive free checkups from a volunteer doctor; each holds a folder marked with the village surname and containing medical records. As I wait to meet with Nandini, an elderly lady in a pale pink sari leans over to me and smiles.
“You are from Israel?” she says.
“I’m from the U.S.,” I reply. “But my grandmother was from here. Bhorupkar was her Bene Israel surname before her father changed it to Jacobs.”
“Bhorupkar!” she exclaims, looking delighted.
“Yes,” I say. “Bhorupkar was my grandmother’s father’s side, and Chordekar was my grandmother’s mother’s side.”
“Bhorupkar! Chordekar!” she says, turning to the women around me and putting her arm around me affectionately. The women express their surprise and gather around my chair, asking the first woman questions about me in Marathi.
“Your grandmother is in Bombay?” she asks me, translating.
“My grandmother is no more,” I say, using the Indian-English term. “But she was from Bombay.”
The lady squeezes my hand and looks at me with large, sympathetic eyes before she relays this information to the curious onlookers.
“You remind me of her, actually,” I say, noticing a certain similarity in her coloring and her mannerisms.
A woman on my left speaks to me in Marathi, tugging on my sleeve. She has some problem that she seems to think I can help her with. When her predicament is roughly translated for me, I gather that she converted to Judaism at the time of her marriage but does not have the certificate of conversion she needs to begin the process of making aliyah to Israel.
The lady in the pink sari suggests that she go to the synagogue where she was married and ask for some documentation. “Don’t bother this girl,” she says protectively, from what I can understand. “She doesn’t know anything about how to help you.”
A young woman shows me to a desk, where I sit opposite Nandini—a tall, strong-looking woman with wavy black hair and a string of white flowers hanging from her ponytail. I tell her I have read that there were several families in the Konkan still practicing the trade of oil pressing as of the late 1980s and early 1990s, and ask her if there are any left.
“Very few Bene Israel are left,” she says, shaking her head. “Most left for Israel a long time back.”
The Girl From Foreign: A Memoir Page 20
