Bombay Blues

by Tanuja Desai Hidier

  And just beside me, below, other signs of shoelessness: no pair of red sneakers by the entry, laces always intact, backs scuffed down where the nimble-toed wearer had pried them off.

  I’d swiveled them around once, those shoes, when he’d forgotten them on my summer doorstep, to point into my house in New Jersey.

  Suddenly, I missed my Birks so acutely I wept. If I could somehow conjure them back onto my feet … would his sneakers reappear as well, followed by his feet, legs, the whole of him? Of us?

  In the trash bin, one remnant of his stay here: a crumpled pale pink envelope. It looked familiar, and I extracted it, smoothing it out. The landlord in Mazagaon, that letter: He left these.

  It felt difficult, too precious to trash again, and I folded it up, slid it into my camera bag pocket.

  My phone dinged.

  Cowboy: Juhu-Bandra-Worli … You?

  Cowboy.

  Indie Girl: Bandra. You.

  And so we made a date. Or they did.

  The place he’d suggested was on a little landslide of slope, a slight challenge to navigate in the purple peep-toes I’d brought along for the wedding. In the entryway, I ransacked my brain for a reason not to head on in, but not a single negative came to mind. And for every inch of me that bucked to run away, a mile of me went galloping into that room.

  Behind the streetside wall, an alfresco section paved in white gravel. I wandered through; no one here save a couple bartenders, viewable through a porthole overlooking this front part of the restaurant. I followed around that bend, telling myself I was doing nothing wrong, would keep one foot on the ground.

  And in a country of one-point-three billion people: no one at the bar but him. Even before I laid eyes on him, everything in me pivoted in his direction, like I had some kind of internal compass that knew, remembered the way. And he turned towards me as well, a smile lighting his face in a manner I felt on my own.

  I wanted to hotfoot it towards him so much that I slowed down completely. A confession on my tongue, but the one that emerged surprised even me.

  —I don’t have a permit, I whispered.

  —Indie girls don’t need permits, he whispered back, eyes twinkling. This was true; no one could catch us. We weren’t us. He patted the barstool beside him and I joined him. Our eyes were level.

  I no longer had one foot on the ground.

  —I … have to go after, I blurted, setting my camera bag on the bar. He had no camera. —I have a … meeting.

  —Worry about after after, he said easily. —It’s good to see you, Indie Girl. What’s your poison?

  —Halahala, I replied, still whispering. He said something to the barman, who’d appeared out of nowhere and disappeared back into it.

  —Did you sleep after all? Cowboy asked now, picking up like we’d never left off.

  —Yes, I lied. —No. You?

  —So deeply, he said. —It felt like an extension of that whole day. Night.

  All those little lights and buoys …

  Chiarascuro: The bartender from nowhere was lighting rows of wicks. Another server swam near-silently throughout the tabled space, setting these candles down for no one. For us.

  —To disorientation, I said now, raising a glass that had materialized. A clink; a swig; a swilling thrill. I was stirred but less shaken. And now his voice again.

  —Speaking of which, oh, found girl who longs to be lost … how are you doing with that out of frame? Boundary, border control?

  I mulled it over: Karsh had chosen the spiritual; me, the physical … with a vehemence in part to spite him. But truth was, in being physical — a part of the touchable, tangible world — I stumbled upon the spiritual at all turns, like my dirt-toed experience of the sacred street today. And although I was no longer quite Karsh’s girlfriend, I didn’t feel like an ex, either.

  —Recent events have led me to believe I don’t think I can choose a side, I concluded now.

  —Ah. But contradiction is in the eye of the beholder, isn’t it?

  —True. And I no longer feel like beholding it. Seems I’m developing a penchant for spilling over.

  He nodded. —I hear you. Me, I no longer feel a need to feel complete. On either side, even both together. Ain’t gonna happen. Why do we think we need so much to belong?

  —I guess to feel less alone, I ventured. —Though I’m beginning to think hermits may be onto something.

  —But you are alone, Cowboy said, not unkindly. Lonestar belt buckle and faded jeans. I didn’t think he meant just me, or was getting psychic on my situation with Karsh. —And incomplete.

  Strangely, that comment only made our us-ness more apparent.

  —But at least we’re all alone together! I declared cheerfully. —Maybe there are no sides. Maybe we’re always just riding the bridge. You know. Try to lasso this.

  He smiled. —Worli-Bandra, Bandra-Worli. Does your horse scare on them?

  —Hell no. I think my horse has more of a fear of getting off them. But luckily, me gots a flying horse….

  I wasn’t even sure what I meant, but it somehow still felt true.

  Horses. L’Inde. Darkroom. Light passing through a pinhole, forming an inverse image.

  —Muybridge, Cowboy said quietly. —With a single negative, proving the theory of unsupported transit.

  I nearly dropped my glass.

  —Muybridge? He’s one of the reasons I turned to photography! I said, astonished … and not … at the coincidence.

  —Horse in Motion’s how I turned to film … though I’ve returned to photography for the time. Trying to stop motion a little, I guess. Better to see where I’ve been.

  —Muybridge made movies before movies even existed. Even invented the precursor to the movie projector …

  In unison, and what a weird and wonderful unison it was:

  —The zoopraxiscope.

  Stop bath: The two of us stared at each other, glasses in hand. But it felt we’d been staring forever. Had we blinked even once?

  —Funny that when you stop motion, I said, —horses fly.

  —At the right shutter speed, he agreed, —anything’s possible.

  —Unicorns … I whispered, testing.

  —Of course. In fact, the first unearthings — stone seals depicting them, from twenty-five hundred BC — were from some of the main Indus Valley civilization sites.

  Mom’d be feeling pretty righteous: these legendary creatures … invented in India.

  —It is said whoever drinks from the horn of the alicorn is cured of the incurable, he added. He raised his glass. I was already guzzling. —And Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro seals or not, the Indian ass exists for sure. I’ve met him. Many times.

  I couldn’t even laugh, my throat tangled up. My poison was a queasy elixir, one I had a feeling that was more likely to make you incurable.

  My heart was pounding so hard my horn, the glass, the bottle went seismic. I suddenly sensed flight, a breath away.

  —I have to go, I murmured. A pushmi-pullyu, this resulted in my freezing completely. But then, I thought:

  Which kind of flight was a breath away?

  —You don’t have to do anything, he said gently.

  Away or towards?

  —Just do what you want, he said.

  Part of the fear of running towards something, I suspected now, was that it likely involved an away from something else.

  —I’m going to go, I announced, woozily rising. The world tipple-turvied, came crashing back at me when I did so, fraught, outlined, cornered, its unrelentingly inflexible stretches.

  He didn’t rise, just gently waved away my crude and flurried presentation of rupees. He nodded towards my camera.

  —I thought you usually wrapped her up in there, he said, eyes lingering a little upon my Horses tee. My heart.

  Goddess with no mouth: a loss for words. So I picked up Chica Tikka and aimed her at Cowboy.

  —Smile! I said. It sounded absurd.

  —Don’t hide behind your camera. />
  —I try to connect through my camera.

  —Put down your camera, he said. —And connect.

  So I put down my camera. My mane tumbled into my eyes, and he pushed it away, unearthing an iris into which he continued to gaze.

  —You can be yourself with me, you know.

  —I can be whoever I want with you, I said. —Hell, how would you even know?

  —Whoever you want to be is who you are, just waiting to happen.

  I got the feeling it was already happening, and a surge of panic filled me.

  —I think whoever I want to be, I whispered with an urgency that had nothing to do with my urinary tract, —is in the bathroom.

  —See? he said gently. —Flight.

  So I fled.

  I didn’t really have to go to the bathroom, but now that I’d said it, of course had to seek it out.

  Once there, I stared in the mirror.

  You are here now, I told myself.

  I needed, as usual, a sign. That this whole feeling I was getting around Cowboy was kosher. Or halal. Halahala. Or, ideally, vegan.

  A true doctors’ daughter, I washed my hands at the sink. Interlace, tips in palms. As I did, I noticed a microscopic black scrawl of graffiti to the mirror’s right. I leaned in, zoomed:

  If you’re reading this right now, you’re my fucking soul mate!

  When I returned to the bar, I was giggling a little stupidly to myself — that was my sign? How … vernacular! I half expected him to be gone, dreamed up and done. But there he was.

  The first thing that came out my mouth was an absurd chortle accompanied by this decidedly non-chortle-inducing comment:

  —It’s just … I want to find Bombay … the real Bombay … my Bombay….

  It felt like a nursery rhyme. If rhyming Bombay with Bombay and Bombay counted as a rhyme.

  He grinned. —Superb! Was it in the loo?

  —Hell, no! I’m not even sure it’s in Bombay!

  —Aha! Then you’ve found it! he said, not missing a beat.

  —That’s right. It’s in Unbombay.

  —Unbombay. I like that. Where I’m currently having a drink and damn good conversation with you …

  He dipped finger in glass, sang the rim. A theramin hum. —You know, it was an ugly time — personally, the whole place over — when I was here some years ago. Now I’ve had a chance to rest my eyes, I thought the city … people … deserved a new look. A redefine.

  —And? Now that you’re here?

  —Now that I’m here … I’m still never quite here! It’s hard to explain.

  —I know what you mean. That big Are we there yet? in the sky. It’s like … the Heisenberg uncertainty principle …

  —You can’t measure something because the measuring mechanism changes it.

  —Exactly. That’s why you can never get there — because soon as you get there, it’s not there! And frock, it’s tricky pinning down a place in a photograph, isn’t it? Places pose for you, too, I think — just like people.

  He nodded at me to go on.

  —What I mean’s, even with places, you have to earn their trust to get them to open up. To make something really beautiful. And I guess I’m trying to earn Bombay’s.

  He was really looking at me now. So I spoke to the white stucco wall.

  —Um. Like … Atget with Paris, I said.

  —Or Cartier-Bresson’s Paris, I added, upon getting no reaction.

  —Yeah. Robert Frank’s America! I mightily declared. Then I took a break and offered, —Nan Goldin’s?

  Just as I’d suspected, university-lingo-type name-dropping was primarily invented and utilized to keep you a safe distance from the subject at hand: usually yourself.

  He raised an eyebrow, still twinkling, still staring.

  —Things, places, people also open up, he said, —when you trust yourself.

  His eyes. That birthmark. An accordion of tiny lines across his lower lip.

  I felt slightly sick. Good sick. I wasn’t sure what to say.

  I didn’t trust myself.

  Then, and I don’t know where it came from, I let slip, —I lost someone.

  I was thinking of Dadaji, but then, seamlessly, of Karsh.

  —I’m losing someone, I said.

  And then I thought of everyone in the world who was alive right now and would one day be gone. The earth, in relatively mere decades, inhabited by no one here at this particular moment in the time-space continuum.

  I pictured myself, out of scale, improbably the world’s last survivor, alone upon the 33-1/3 rpm spinning planet — upside-down now, though truly there was no such thing, maintaining a desperate simian terra toehold as the rest of me stretched, even ached to wing into empty space.

  Dark matter. Suddenly, desperately, wingingly, achingly, I missed Cowboy. And he was just an inch, a moment away.

  —I’m losing someone, too, he said quietly. —It’s okay, Indie Girl. Nothing lasts forever, but nothing ever goes away.

  The way he was looking at me it felt like he never had.

  We were molting, skin-shedding our way out of time. Bombay, New York; Unbombay, Anewyork. It could have been anywhere. Everywhere. It was here. When I would look back on this moment — which I was already doing — it would seem we were aloft, beyond even the rigging, barstools dissipating, everyone if anyone around us collapsed into white noise, brown noise.

  Blue-beamed hum. Eternal split second.

  All I registered was this light, dimming now. Candlecadabra: flame-flicker faces, an illusion of motion. Indigo wax in ruby holders pooling us into an unplumbed ocean.

  —We met in another life, Cowboy said. —Maybe it was another life within this life.

  —They all are, I replied.

  —Yes, they are. And yes, we did.

  Did we? Did what? Guilt kicked in, probably clogging some chakra.

  —I already have someone I did that with, I blurted. I felt mildly oafish, like I’d been gifted a cosmic moment and was getting all plebby with it.

  —Yeah? You can only have that once? he asked. —So where is he or she?

  He didn’t sound sarcastic — maybe curious, maybe slightly bemused.

  —Um. He’s in a Hare Krishna ashram. I think.

  A beat. Cowboy’s face broke out into a big smile.

  —Seriously.

  —It’s almost worse than if he were with another person, I admitted. —I mean, how am I supposed to compete with frocking Godhead?

  —If he’s blocking you out, then something else is going on. It’s not you. It’s not Godhead.

  —There’s definitely been a block, I said. I gazed into my abruptly poured (by me, now) beer; it spumed to the top, me and it in a froth. —I don’t get how this could have happened to us. He’s supposed to be my jeevansaathi.

  —I see. Your life companion?

  —Yeah, ha-ha. Please spare telling me I’m too young to know who my life companion is. I’m either getting that or when’s the wedding from some of the joint family contingent.

  —It’s not an age thing, Cowboy replied. —I was going to say once more: And you can only have one?

  —I’m supposed to have only one.

  —Supposed.

  —I mean, it would be a scheduling nightmare, wouldn’t it? If you had a lot of life companions?

  He didn’t look convinced.

  —Listen, Indie Girl, he said. —What if The One is just a social construct? The stuff of romcoms and conditioned minds.

  —To prevent total anarchy?

  —It’s just different people can be right for you at different times. Or even more than one person, Cowboy explained with a gentle shrug. —He’ll still be in your life for the rest of your life, even if it’s as a memory, an experience you’ve ingested and input into all you do, whether you know it or not.

  Even more than one person? Was he one of those political-status-Very-Liberal open-relationship types who shagged your maid of honor in the name of carpe-the-diem bohemia? I wonde
red now if Cowboy had a girlfriend.

  And I reminded myself: I had a boyfriend. (Did I?)

  —Or maybe it will be in more obvious ways, Cowboy went on, seemingly oblivious to my socially constructed romcom-conditioned chain of thoughts. —But life is complex. In motion. Doesn’t it seem you might need more than one companion to walk its twisting shifting road?

  —Sure, I said. —You might. I mean, isn’t that what Hinduism’s about in a way? All those gods to describe one journey. But there is something really freeing about being with one person. The right person. Even a right person.

  —Which is?

  —For one, all that angst about meeting someone, or being with the wrong person, or even people, I said. —Adios. And that energy gets freed up, can go into creating a kind of … A sanctuary. A jumping-off point. To make things.

  —But to make things, you have to be open. And sometimes being open … well, people get left behind if they can’t evolve in that direction with you. Or if they try to keep you on the straight and narrow when you really want the —

  —Crescent. But maybe he’s on one right now, just knows a different way to the same place, I reflected. I couldn’t bring myself to say Karsh’s name. —Maybe you just have to take the aerial view. I mean, it could be he needs to make this journey.

  —But do you need to make it, darling?

  The tail-wagging wet-nosed puppy in me leapt at the term of endearment. I tried to calm down, remind myself some people said things like that to everyone.

  —Have you heard that saying, he went on. —How we aren’t bodies with spirits inside, but rather, spirits stuck in bodies?

  —Frankly, if he had it his way, I think we’d get rid of the body altogether.

  —Ah. Purity?

  I nodded.

  —995 and 999, I said. —And so many talk about freeing yourself of your body to achieve it. But as my mother always says, my body’s my temple and my home … and I don’t want to free myself of it, dangit! I’ve just started enjoying it. And how can it — that — not be pure if you love someone? If you’re focused on each other and finding beauty in all of it?

  Cowboy’s gaze unwavered upon me.

  —You’re right, he said. —How can it not?