Bombay Blues

by Tanuja Desai Hidier

  When had I lost the ability to console him?

  —Chalo, ya, Shy suggested. We moved towards the exit, which such a short while ago had been an entry.

  —And Karsh, Gokulanandini said gently. —Always remember. The world inside is the greater universe.

  I got the feeling she didn’t mean the dining area, but I took a last look anyways. The room appeared just as it had upon our arrival; that musical alchemy hadn’t occurred here, transformed it. In fact, despite the drinking crew, the increase in diners now, it felt somehow empty, bereft.

  I glanced back through the flung-open doorways seaside, caught a glimpse of the terrace. To add insult to abrasion, out there under the tropical jet-plane-sparkling sky, the crowd was now actually dancing … to the waiter’s set.

  Before I could block the view, Karsh caught it.

  —Look at them now, he said.

  I followed the trio out, a demoted roadie loaded down with gear, somehow including Karsh’s laptop.

  As we stepped out into that young night, Gokulanandini floored me by beginning to sing the sweetest song — a lullabye? — in Hindi. Or Urdu? It was familiar, trilled a plangent thread through the honks and hollers, the rickety racket of the still-buzzing street.

  Was it … “Jana Gana Mana”? The national anthem? Talk about inappropriate! No — talk about appropriating! Shy joined in, too, with a weirdly colonialist undertone as well. From my shaadi-chafed perspective, it seemed she and Gopi girl were walking down the aisle with Karsh. I tried to quell the feeling that tonight I was the giveaway.

  Flip hopped up out of nowhere, wheeling Karsh’s LP trolley, and relieved me of the laptop. I smiled wearily at him, grateful I still, apparently, existed. He raised his eyebrows at me, then shrugged: What can you do?

  We stood around by the paanwallah. Flip even bought a piece, and a small silence ensued while the wallah rolled up and slake-limed the areca nut.

  —It didn’t go down all bad, Flip attempted now. —Sweet visuals; everyone was commenting.

  Huh? Karsh didn’t start at this revelation; was that why he hadn’t wanted me at sound check? I turned to him.

  —I brought yours, Dimple. It’s just …

  —Yeah, yeah, I said. —Ravi.

  Shailly smiled now. —Same dude who designed my last Crosstreet stuff. Mesh. He was here earlier, shooting.

  Flip spat his paan. I suddenly just felt lost.

  I sneaked a glance Karsh’s way. To my surprise, and relief, he appeared lost as well. I was pissed about the visuals — but for better or worse, right? Maybe he just needed a reminder of where he was from, who he was — and who he was with. This coked-up frantic-eyed Karsh wasn’t the one I knew, and I worried the distance between us would only lengthen by evening’s end if we didn’t call it a night, quit while we were only a little behind.

  Karsh seemed to feel the same, eyeing the ricks now. I looked at him; he began nodding at me.

  But Flip begged to differ. —Come on, guys. Don’t bail! Let’s go have the quintessential Bandra experience. I’ve got an Old Monk in my bag to kick things off.

  —I don’t know…. Karsh trailed off.

  I held my, our ground.

  —I haven’t caught any zzzs since we got here. Let’s get your gear back safe and sound, Karsh.

  Karsh hesitated, then handed me the control vinyl.

  —Thanks, Dimple, I appreciate it. The laptop’s pretty much it, and the LP case. The rest is on loan.

  He nodded to the others now. —You’re right. I don’t want to end the night feeling like this.

  —Karsh? I tried again, a little feebly.

  —Go on, Dimple, he said dully. —I’m going to chill a while. Maybe powwow with everyone about Plan B.

  How the frock was a Hare Krishna devotee going to advise him on salvaging his rep in Bombay’s DJtronic world? I took in the motley crew … which now included the rickshawallah pulling up to Shy’s beckoning hand. He appeared the friendliest of the lot, and I driftered towards him for asylum.

  —Seahorse, Gokulanandini instructed him, like I couldn’t say it.

  —Meter! Shailly added. The driver grudgingly flicked down the lever. As I bent to get in the rick, Shy leaned in to me:

  —I just don’t think he should go home yet. Might be better to get the shit out of his system. Sweat it out.

  —That’s what I was thinking. Sweat it out.

  She didn’t catch on. Why were DJs so bad at hearing?

  —Cool, then. We’ll get him on his feet, Dimps. And he’ll be back with you and better than ever before you know it. After all, everything here closes at one thirty.

  —Uh-huh. Hotels, three.

  I was surprised to find myself fighting back tears. I supposed it couldn’t hurt to try to sleep. Was I overreacting?

  As my rick made a surely illegal spurl-a-round to head us off in the right direction, I caught a glimpse of that Café Coffee Day — now more accurately appellatable Café Coffee Night, though I could have sworn I could still discern the silhouette of the squatting Sisyphusians. The sight of it comforted me; it appeared a small visual oasis, a resting place soap-bubble déjà vu amidst the grime and garrulosity of the nonstop street, the battering battle in my head.

  Unchanging. As if nothing had even happened back there — to Karsh. To us.

  And perhaps nothing had?

  I crawled into bed, knocking the fresh jasmine flowers scattered on the pillows to the carpet. I kept my phone in one hand and flicked on the TV with the other. But there were just too many Indians on air, dancing and singing and newscasting and looking generally like the LHB crowd. It made me feel like a failure. Like I should be dancing and singing and looking generally like the LHB crowd.

  I switched channels. But the flatline laughter of US sitcoms on satellite now made America feel like a failure to me.

  Maybe something was wrong with my phone? Or Karsh’s? (Please?) Someone had mentioned signals vanished around the Sea Link. Were we near enough to disappear?

  I called my cell from the hotel phone to find it, unfortunately, working. But maybe texts weren’t?

  Then suddenly: Gur nalon isqh mitha hi hi — Karsh’s ringtone! I fumbled to answer his call … but my phone wasn’t ringing. I stared at it, confounded.

  The song continued: Gur nalon isqh mitha ho ho!

  It was coming from outside my window. I threw open the curtains. It took a quick seaview glance — at the spotlit mandap, buffet tables, ribboned palms, and dance floor ebullient with shoulder-shimmying divinely dressed folk — to see: A wedding was going on.

  Gur nalon isqh mitha, gur nalon isqh mitha … !

  With unabashed enthusiasm, the wedding DJ was playing that song.

  And everyone was dancing.

  One thirty came and went. All over Bombay, the bars were closed.

  My eyes: not.

  Nearly three thirty.

  Had he run out of battery? Fallen asleep? If anything had gone wrong, Shy or Flip would surely have called me. Unless they were what had gone wrong?

  Where the frock were they? I could resist no longer and tried Karsh … but his phone was switched off as the vastly vexing, almost smug-sounding woman on the recording informed me — first in Marathi, I assumed, and then, clearly showing off, English.

  I hit the sack, sacked the lights, and tried simulating sleep, figuring I’d worn myself out enough with worry and fury to fool myself into actually believing it.

  A click of the door opening …

  I continued my slumber act, slit-eyedly observing Karsh’s silhouette entering.

  It felt like spook spotting. He quietly set down his bag, slipped out of his shoes, then paused, possibly looking at me; a sigh, a sip of bottled water, and into the bathroom. Just ajar, and I could see his shadow sifting about inside, the soft scuff of clothes falling to floor. Door closed: a toppling gush of bathwater, split-second silence, then the smooth ominous rush of the shower.

  Water stopped; hush-tone towel to skin. He was ta
king great care not to wake me — fool that he was — door barely slivering as he glided out, flicking off bathroom fan and light. He dug around his suitcase; from his bend and rise, it seemed he was easing on a pair of pajamas.

  I bemoaned the PJ-less days of old. But at least he was coming to bed. I deepened the sound of my breathing and closed my eyes, awaiting the sinking of his side.

  But there was a mere mattressqual dip as he perched on bed edge.

  What stopped me from reaching an arm out to touch him, pull him near — confront him? Seek reassurance?

  Maybe I knew you shouldn’t ask a question unless you’re prepared to hear the answer.

  Plus, I was sulking.

  And then the near-unthinkable happened: Karsh pulled his shoes back on and rose. I caught a whiff of the noxious fish-story fumes of his treachery — Johnson’s Baby Shampoo — and opened my eyes all the way as he stealthed to the door, clicked it open, and stepped out. The glare of the corridor lights spotlit his freshly kurta’d figure.

  Kurta?

  The 212 glinted above his head.

  And he was gone.

  I froze momentarily, then skedaddled to the bathroom. Aquafresh: uncapped. His toothbrush: wet. My toiletry bag had tipped, spilling a couple of goods by the sink and revealing the corner of a transferred Condomania six-pack strip. I yanked it all the way out. One. Two. Three. Four.

  Four?

  I dumped the contents of my bag onto the counter: Burt’s Bees lip balm, various skin care sample sizes, dental floss, Zantac, a stash of toothpicks from Lucien in the East Village. Yet no preemptive pair to bring that four up to a grand mollifying total of six.

  I hated Shailly. I loathed Gokulanandini.

  Where the frock does a freshly showered sure-footed double-condomed kurta’d DJ go at 3:42 in the morning in Mumbai — or even Bombay, for that matter?

  Perks of being an insomniac: No matter the hour, you could turn secret agent spy girl at the drop of a hat. I got up, pulled on my jeans. Birks. Phone in pocket, room key in other, so no risk of data wipeout. Skip the camera; I wasn’t sure I’d want to remember what I was about to witness.

  No. Take the camera. Witness.

  I stuck my nose, followed by an eye, into the hallway. Way down it, I saw Karsh still pacing by the elevator bank. It dinged open. In he went as I hit the well, took the stairs.

  Two floors down, I was about to burst into the lobby, when I glimpsed the elevator touching down, two, one … and Karsh stepping out. I ducked back into the stairwell, peeked out after him.

  He strode out the back doors, turning 2-D lineation towards the pool area. I followed a safe distance behind, though the jaunty concierge nearly blew my cover:

  —Good … morning, Mrs. Kapoor!

  I tried a smile back but kept moving. And it occurred to me as I exited into the temperate night, trailing that silhouette slinking its seaward wall path:

  Perhaps it was she who was the real ghost.

  The light from the twenty-four-hour hotel coffeeshop paved the way to the drop wall. I lurked poolside, cloaked in the shadows of one or two still sprawlingly oblivious umbrellas, and watched Karsh move along that barrier, to behind the Fire Evacuation Point palm tree.

  I could just see him lining up his figure with one of the still-clad areas of the bones of the mandap, a perfect near–four A.M. hiding place.

  And then: He stepped up onto the dividing wall — and jumped!

  I nearly shot out of my hideout in anticipation of Karsh’s last hurtling scream — when I recalled the wall wasn’t so high, and banks of sand lay below. Considering the snoozing canines that other day, the greatest danger, I figured, would be landing in dog shit. Me, I was already in some kind for sure.

  I slipped stealthily from umbrella’d table to table and found myself mounting that same divider.

  I took a breath. Invoked my inner Nancy Drew (minus that doofus Ned Nickerson), and slung myself over and off …

  Ouch! No springy dune cushion awaited me; a knee-scraper. But there was no time to waste licking minor wounds. I rose. Dusted myself off. And, Birks in hand, continued the chase.

  I gulped in the salty breeze, wildly, wickedly awake. Finally, something productive to do during my insomniac hours — stalk my boyfriend!

  Wall gave way to bramble, rust, and brush. Lamplight threw halos to the moonscape sand, where I could now discern Karsh’s prints. I followed, then glimpsed their owner well down a side street. As I turned right onto it, Hanuman the monkey god cheered (or jeered) me on from whitewashed tile, followed by a crucifixed Christ accompanied by another, less afflicted, Jesus and Mary, pressed against raw rock face.

  Juhu by night was another place altogether. An arboreal sky over cobbled road. As I walked on, I noted banks of sleeping rickshaws parked to either side, backseats blanketed with dreaming drivers. Seeing so many tuk-tuks clustering like that, I felt I’d stumbled upon an entire carapaced species unto itself, a dozing herd of wild urbanlife. I never suspected a rick could be so quiet … though a faint peal of crackling music, rife with strings and swoons, filtered from one, staticking down the street towards me.

  Karsh had vanished into the forward distance. I passed now the tune-playing tuk-tuk, an aloft lion just atop it.

  A leonine serenade: I knew that king of beasts. And well before the street nearly ended in that edifice — before I crossed over and laid palm to it, tracing the strains of that mantra printed direct upon glowing brick, I knew where I was headed. Perhaps had known from the moment my soles hit sand.

  A jingling singing winging into the not-quite-dawning day. I turned through the gates, into the pavilion. I ran my bag through with the somnambulist metal detectician, deposited my shoes with a more wakeful man in the illuminated P.O.-box-type stalls.

  That percussive sleigh bell song grew louder….

  A pair of well-worn red sneakers was in one of these cubbyholes. I half expected to find a couple seductress stilettos leering against them, but the shoe storage space was largely empty, chappaled if at all. I turned, faced that open-arched marble edifice, dream-luminous at this hour. Followed the water-cupped-sweet crooning into the courtyard now.

  Above: My eyes dilated with stars. By my feet, umpteen leaves patterned the floor, danced in a slight breeze around the pillar bases.

  4:32 A.M. After-party: the pre-sunrise brahma-muhurta first and most effective darshan of the day. Up the steps, in the temple’s heart: those swaying praying devotees, chanting their love to the here unblue-skinned god.

  I slipped inside, to where they gazed towards the triple stage I’d seen … just a day ago? Many donned similar robed apparel; perhaps the ones who lived here? Aureoling the perimeter, those 3-D sculpted paintings were illuminated, as if Krishna were dancing through his days in the very air around us, like the throngs of followers-to-be beneath the leafy tree in that one to my right, I read now, depicting the 1966 day the USA branch of the movement was birthed …

  … in Tompkins Square Park?

  In utero sensation. I stepped across the rose-petaled floor, lining up on the women’s side.

  Dirty-blond dreads at the forefront, Gokulanandini leading the sway.

  This time when the three monks bluesed their conches like busy Dizzy trumpeteers, tilting up to throw it down … as bells brouhaha’d and grown men fell prostrate to the floor … as the crowd raised unblushing unselfconscious arms in the air, singing that mantra with such love, such faith, a no-verse all-chorusing conviction — Hare Krishna Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Rama Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare — syncing to the sound vibration, the joy of the japa: I understood what had drawn Karsh here.

  Music, motion, dance, devotion. Song and surrender. A knowing wonder.

  I pushed forward on the wave of waltzing women; following the followers, I tried to feel it, catch their bliss. These were jubilant gods, inviting gods. But something in me still resisted that joy, that invitation. No blue these Krishnas’ skin, but a deep sad swathe of the hue in
my belly. Up front, I ran my hands over the priest-proffered flame, coving that aarti, fire favor cupped close to me. I remembered my father, blessing me doubly, huge-heartedly.

  When I turned back, instead of returning to the women’s section, I entered the men’s. I knew exactly where he’d be — exactly where he’d been that first time, when his swaying had so startled me.

  Second row to the back, now cross-legged on the floor. I stared at him sitting there, my Karsh, and saw how like a small boy he looked, hunched over in the midst of the praying masses. But a small strong thing at that. On his face such a tranquil expression, as if he were dreamlessly sleeping … but from the steady stir of his lips, whirring fingertips on the string of beads in his hand, it was clear it was a wakeful dream.

  And then, for an instant, a flicker: He wasn’t really my Karsh. He was a person going through his own shit, his own journey — clearing a path through a certain kind of pain that this evening had clarified I could do little about. Yet, with this realization, for a moment, something in me eased off. His peace became … my relief. I tried to hold on to this generous and surprisingly mature sentiment, but it slipped my grip like an eyelash wish, promptly replaced by that tenacious old current of fear.

  He wasn’t my Karsh? Then whose was he?

  His eyes, closed, a strangerness beneath that veneer of familiarity. Palms still cupped, I was moving towards him to pass him my blessing … when I spotted Gopal beside him, chanting with closed eyes as well, the two boys’ wrists gently bumping as they worked their way around the beads.

  I froze, hands inches from Karsh’s head, loath to break this reverie. And to be honest, I wasn’t sure how pure my blessing for him was. I just stood there staring, nervously waiting for him to sense my presence. But then — how would I explain? That I’d followed him all this way — for what?

  It was Gopal who opened his eyes and stared back at me, pupils wide and knowing. A slow burn crawled up my neck. He gave me a gentle side-to-side nod. What the frock did that mean? Hello? Goodbye? Pass the aarti already? Don’t?