Bombay Blues

by Tanuja Desai Hidier

  That small gesture — this gentle withdrawal — stung miles. I mean, the Beatles wrote a smash hit on the joys of hand holding. The aching gladdorious desire to do so.

  A semi-epiphany (I was too worn out to have a full one):

  Was that song why it hurt so much?

  —I feel … sick … like someone just kicked me in the gut, I burst out.

  —Can I tell you something? he asked now. —Without you getting upset?

  I shrugged, nonchalant, already upset.

  —You think too much about how you feel, Indie Girl.

  I mulled that over.

  —That doesn’t make me upset…. I concluded.

  Oh. I couldn’t help but laugh then; he, too.

  —The reservoir, he said now. —Run, run …

  —It’s just funny, I said finally. Not even a week. —That I’m the one who’s leaving.

  —You feel like it’s me, na?

  I nodded as we turned from Off Carter Road to Carter Road, Unbombay perhaps back to Bombay. Back on the map.

  —But you forget, Indie Girl, he said quietly. —From the very beginning …

  —I know, I know, I said. And despite what I knew, Off Off Carter Road — the ever-departing, always-arriving Arabian Sea blurring these unpaned windows — gave me hope that both places, spaces existed still, were part and parcel of the same mythical metropolis. —We were never here.

  We passed Bandstand, where lovers paraded in public in order to be alone, leaned against one another, staring seaward, towards that bridge to everywhere and nowhere, or into the oceans of each other’s unfathomable eyes. That bell would chime at the tidal rise, ring them out their reverie before the waters took them.

  They say true love never dies, but it could kill you in an instant at high tide.

  The hotel loomed majestically and somehow inappropriately in the near distance.

  In Unbombay, Phoenix was no mill mall, but that firebird who after centuries ignites its nest, its home, so painstakingly built — casting all to ashes … from which another firebird eventually flies. The garuda, Vishnu’s vahana — a sister creature? The avalerion: a legendary winged thing that drowns itself upon laying its eggs.

  Back to zero. Double that zero. Tip into infinity.

  —Doesn’t this feel like a dream? I whispered now.

  —Every day feels like a dream, he replied, smile soft in his voice. I dared take him in. So much affection in his eyes, my logical mind couldn’t piece it together: this strangerlove, his fastidiously sustained distance with his easy proximity. How the closer we got, dragging in our respective tales and travails in a years-miles-long fishnet, the quicker we slipped through the holes and tears.

  —Message me before you go, he said, pulling to a stop.

  —Should I put it in a bottle? I inquired, stepping out.

  When you cross, don’t turn round. Save for that fateful day in Customs, he never had. But me, ever since, I’d always glanced unblinkingly back at him — neighless, all-yes — double-taking so gallopingly towards, so craningly far … it nearly became looking forward. No front and back to a circle, see.

  Sea knees weak, a shaky landing. The Jeep swirled back round, single-footing, spun gone. And I saw:

  I was truly at the beginning of Lands End.

  And then I had to see what lay beneath. Past Castella de Aguada (which had done no good at keeping intruders at bay for me), the open-air amphitheater (where our story seemed middlelessly all beginning and end), beyond the tourists (who we were to each other), the locals (who we were to each other as well), and onto the palm-fronded path to where the world did indeed seem to end, in a swift headlong drop to the sea. A staggering return to dry land: I teetered down the steep steps, banked by rock face and brush. Passed a few men working wall-side, hauling chunks of rubble upwards — unclear whether something was being raised or razed.

  Heartbreak or heartmake?

  I felt an affection for them, surely unreciprocated, as I descended. Through palms below: a peak of sea, tarp roof, rubbish.

  At rock’s bottom: a low wall with a couple rust-blue wheelbarrows collapsed against it. Yellow buckets, trees flagged with plastic bags. And upon flattened gravel, a fleet of heat-defeating knurled banyans evoking a roofed space, a shaded gazebo with roots slung well beyond the flockering leaves.

  Just ahead, gravel gave way to saffron sand, then to the black-cracked flat jut of sea rocks, jagging water between them, a waterworld version of the city’s jigsaw pavement. A few fisherfolk squatted here or there, a child or two navigating the slippery surface with ice-skater ease. A hurl of blue netting. Beyond: a few scorched-sky red-edged boats.

  Just past these tripled terrains, after a margin of seawater, a dark strip sanded ran, another besurfed stony turf under construction beyond it, a thin rivulet between these two fingers of land. Like a peace sign, a fork in the road — both? Roads not taken? Or two taken?

  And raised aloft on sea-sunk piers, echoing the suspending slinks above: the bridge itself. That bridge that had been my soul’s Pharos these days, suddenly no longer the sole highlight from this vantage point. Now there was also the fishing village, the Koliwada below it — which was always tucked out of sight viewed from a high-up hotel window or speeding crosswater taxi.

  Viewed from this perspective, the Link was all bottom. Gazing under-bridge, cross-bay: tops lopped off the buildings Worli-side, my eyes flooding mostly with water. Above, the pylon mast and spans appeared a bit of wigwam, a brief curving up and off and away. Those sea-sunk pillars supporting the entire enterprise delved deep, elongated reflections joining cement reality to endow them with plummeting skyscraper dimensions, as if the real story were here — down, down to where they dove and clutched at ancient shifting sands.

  The bottom of the deep blue me, we: All that running around, clubbing in Bandra, launching SoBo-ward from that slipdip road, clicking this town from either side, and it had never until today occurred to me to call upon this underlink, get wind of her side. All these untold stories — or at least untold to me.

  And even the stories that seemed known: Cowboy. Karsh. Beneath the bridges we made to join each other, connect: Seashells screamed, doubloons dreamed. Sailors drowned, shit abounded. Currents hurtled, mermaids ungirdled, longed for land legs, then grieved the shedding of their scales. Sirens wooed the entire crew, seducing them to slip off sails.

  The only way to let a place inside, a person inside, was to love it, I thought then. And no matter where these beings dispersed, dispelled to, whether we would meet again or not — throw each other a line from time to time — you couldn’t lose what you let in. Just had to carry it across.

  I crossed back now from water’s edge, beneath the banyan and onto a shaded walkway. The Koliwada temple. In a small saffron mandir to the left: a Sai Baba with bell pepper flowers draped around him, single bulb filamenting an orb of light in the root-ropy haze.

  The temple priest dozed in a chair to the side. I removed my shoes, moved past the crackled grey walls into the alcove beyond.

  In that cavelike interior: bells, Oms; a wick-lit portrait of goddess Durga atop tiger. And center stage, a potholed, chunnied, and garlanded head, blazingly orange and raucously beautiful. Mouth agape (or perhaps nose, as it was bejeweled) in a sideways oval. Two huge-pupiled white eyes — an oddly rainbowless Iris; a third one in bindi position.

  These irises didn’t touch the tops, lending this vivid Technicolor goddesshead a nearly enraged look. She appeared nigh frilly, like babies in flouncy christening outfits, lolling there upon a little tapestry, accompanied by a feast of coconuts, bananas and blooms, and rupees, to which I added a note.

  On a small low table before her: a pair of plaqued silver feet. Facing away from her.

  When I turned my own feet back, I saw the whole of the banyan tree filled the Koliwada temple entrance. The bulb burning off the little yellow mandir seemed to glow brighter; day dropped a dab, a glimpse of dimming sea before I began my exit and ascent.

/>   As I retraced my steps upwards, pathward, I saw the workers were building, not breaking. Up higher and crowds now at the Castella de Aguada. Friends slung arms around one another, hanging out on the low wall, the more adventurous (or better shoed) venturing out onto the knobby terrain of rickety rocked sea edge, rendered minuscule against the backdrop of Coca-Cola billboard, luxury hotel, sea, and Link — now viewed from above again.

  A half bridge that had been finished … and yet still remained half: abridged. Like that chimerically unspooling skyline I’d viewed upon first crossing. Incompletion. Don’t tell me how the story ends.

  One more shot with Chica Tikka.

  The lights along the Link blurred in my lens, luciolian.

  In my eyes, too. For bridges made me blue. But a beautiful blue. They were so magnificent, and yet so humble — so earnest and optimistic in their endeavoring. Reaching, stretching, spanning out to the other side, the Other. Lending an unwary hand, keeping both lands from falling off a flat map.

  Keeping the faith. And always a sense of promise, potential upon crossing.

  Sometimes bridges brought you closer. Sometimes they just took something away.

  I reached for my phone. Changed the number: Cowboy to Unknown.

  And went myaway.

  Stowaway to a castaway past: Myaway turned out to be a rewind to my own road not taken. I was Chor Bazaar bound at last.

  Truly alone at last, too. But, I thought, gazing down at my bag (third-, even fourth-eyed): both cameras accompanying, anchoring me in my adrift.

  Once I realized that, I appreciated my solo state. And for a time-traveling return to zero, what better place to go than a marché des antiquités?

  Plus, given the fact that such a significant part of my trip had been turning souvenir before my eyes, it seemed as good a time as any to pick up a few actual mementos for friends and family back home.

  I’d scribbled a list of names on a scrap of paper, followed by eddying question marks as to what to get them … and was surprised at some of the ones that had flowed out:

  Jimmy. Zara. Amanda.

  But also: Gwyn? Karsh? Dadaji?

  Every border: blurring.

  At Grant Road, I pocketed the paper, took a moment to get my bearings, then wandered into the heart of Muslim Bombay. Hand-painted store names declared (in English, Devanagari, and, I assumed, Urdu): Ebrahim Esmail. Parda Manzil Shop.

  It also seemed the heart of meaty Mumbai (thank gods Karsh wasn’t here, or we’d be exiting as we entered): Butcher Street towards Mutton Street. The lanes grew carless, stallful — wares avalanching from shopfronts on either side, like they’d been jack-in-the-boxed out.

  I’d come here with the intention of starting anew, clearing the slate — regaining my own balance, confidence, cool. But as I began to stumble around, pulling out Chica Tikka, I started to feel a little self-conscious. Exposed. And I wasn’t sure if it was just me and the reaction I inspired, but there wasn’t a whole lot of smiling going on here, like, say, at Crawford Market. Was this related to a fruit-heavy diet (at the latter) versus a meat-driven one?

  Shallots?

  Even the occasional female vendor I spotted on Mutton Street regarded me with the same look of mild suspicion. But I wasn’t smiling anymore either, so I guess I wasn’t really being the change I wanted to see in this world.

  I unlidded Chica Tikka. That hijabed woman — the only other femina on the street now — was definitely giving me a reprimanding look.

  Would anybody ever, ever love me again?

  Or was it simply my big bolshy camera inspiring the demising of smiles?

  Camera back in bag, I wondered if I was truly meant to be a photographer.

  Walking around in public in India on my own, I couldn’t shake this old knee-jerk tear-lurk sensation, out-of-the-blueing back to me today, of appearing somewhat … loose (as in sexually deviant, not relaxed) and … peripathetic — like I had strayed, diasporically speaking, to the other side and was now pleading for an in again. I didn’t know if it was a sentiment left over from my Lee-jeaned and permed prior visits (before Bombay itself got Miss Sixty’d and keratin-haired). But something in me, the prodigirl daughter, always felt it was begging for India’s approval, pardon even — and a hint of that feeling remained with me today. Hey, Motherland! Like me, like me, like me! Please? With sugar on top?

  (Actually, you’ve got too much sugar on top.)

  A couple generations ago, we used to be the cool ones: the Americans — the pioneers who dared go West, shipping dishwashers and TVs back to our less well-off relatives East, galloping around and returning now and again to visit this forsaken city by the sea, always arriving overfed and still hungry, clenching bottles of hand sanitizer like feeble weapons against what we once were.

  That’s how my parents described it, anyway. Though they still insisted on the hand sanitizer. But now, it felt the other way around: so many Western Heston boys and girls, expats, trust fund babies, NGO workers, transferred bankers, Fulbright scholars and Bombayologists — Bombayologists! — flocking to this town. We — this American-born compensation culture generation — were simply soliciting to come back, practically offering sexual favors in exchange for five-year visas, or the Holy Grail of the PIO card. But sadly for us, no one needed that 1975 dishwasher now (not when you could purchase one at Vijay Sales in pincode 400058 opposite the Maharashtra Bank, diagonally across from Bharat Petrol Pump from eleven A.M. to ten P.M. daily — or hire a 1995-born human one).

  Or maybe it had always been the other way around on some level: Maybe staying in India was where it had always been at. Was living in a state of permanent homesickness a proof of that truth — my parents’ for here, mine for who the hell knew where? A signal that one should never have up and left? Or was it a sign of a deeper discontent, an anywhere-but-hereness?

  And by the way. Would anyone ever love me again?

  My dizzying bout of circular thinking was interrupted by a tiny bleat. My gaze dropped and fell upon a lovely little brown-spotted white-ankled goat, bestowing upon me its beatific smile; its shadow resembled a small girl twisting, turning in a long ball gown.

  The goat was tethered on a very short rope to a metal ring sticking out of the ground. I looked back up. This creature was my vahana — my divine vehicle, my godvan caravahana: for I’d been teleported to the nexus of Chor Bazaar, arriving dizzied, dusted, and amazed — literally, I was in a maze, a warren of sun-moted alleyways, riddled with stalls and stores peddling a mishmash of tantalizing — and sometimes incomprehensible — wares.

  I pulled out my list. Chandeliers; tea sets. For Catherine, tea-drinking queen. Projectors for a lumière unbrother; rotary dials, cell phones; missed calls. Missed. Goddesses, gods, Jesuses, Mary, medicine dolls for all-believing Gwyn. Old cameras, like Chica Tikka’s foreclickers: a singular reflexing back to Dadaji. Stereo systems, 78 rpms, gramophone hi-fives and vinyl, vinyl, vinyl.

  Karsh, Karsh, Karsh. My third eye, fourth, circled from LP to ship wheel, car spring to fish-eye lens, trays of jeweled undoored doorknobs, spinning a 360-degree love song. To him. To them. My lost-and-founds, and sometimes lost-agains.

  As I seeked-and-hid, deep biddened into the heart of this haggling, dazzling helix, it began to feel what I sought was in fact what those objects collectively conjured up. The past fusing seamlessly with the present moment. A strain of an almost-forgotten refrain.

  I know that we will meet again. Will you recognize me then?

  The sun slued downward with all the velocity of a destringed marionette. I began to retrace my way out this labyrinth. Arjuna had whispered to his wife’s womb the secret of the maze, and when his son Abhimanyu grew, so he made his way. I wondered what we’d been whispered in utero — the melodies, the myths we’d overheard, ingested — and how even now they were playing themselves out.

  Though the market was emptying, I could hear the dueling duet of deal-making before the sounds fragmented into words. It was a novice negotiation in progres
s, as the upwards tilt of the phrase endings suggested, and the smile in the voice, too. An English (American English?):

  —Come on!

  I rounded the bend to see — standing before a god-and-goddess-laden stall, blue eyes zeroing in on a brilliant blood orange Titwala Ganesha — the proprietress of this accent: a milkily gold-skinned salwar-kameezed woman browsing through mountains of deities.

  A street away, evocative strains of the muezzin from the nearby mosque tugged the air with longing and faith so intermingled as to become a wish accompli as I trained my eyes on this girl.

  It was Gwyn.

  I zoomed in.

  It wasn’t Gwyn. But somehow I knew then, she’d been here, or was en route. She’d gone one way, West, and I’d thought her lost. But one-way West brought you East, was a circle, after all.

  Ganesha: ally of origins. Shiva. Friend of ends.

  When I exited the market, I had no knickknacks in hand. Nothing but that list of names.

  They say whatever you lose you find at Chor Bazaar.

  I hadn’t found anything.

  So perhaps that meant, it occurred to me as I flagged down a taxi on Sir Jamshedji Jeejeebhoy Road:

  I hadn’t lost anything?

  And maybe it was time to be found as well.

  —Andheri, I told the driver, —West.

  I’d get one more girl back to my maasi and kaka at least.

  I sank back into the seat, covered in a ruggy fuzz of blue blooms with sanguine heart centers.

  The driver’s eyes, a warm cinnamon, glanced at me from time to time in the rearview, looking like a separate entity, a severed stretch of face run astray from the upper back, wavy hair, broad shoulders resting against towel-twined headrest, like a visage trying to spin around, step back, and take a good look at itself.

  I gave him the address. I asked him his name.

  —Mehboob, he replied after a moment’s hesitation. —I am Mussulman, madame.

  I wondered why he felt the need to elaborate. Unless what he’d heard in my question was another query buried beneath, perhaps one he’d often been asked in his life, one that was maybe not always so buried beneath.