Bombay Blues

by Tanuja Desai Hidier

—I cannot even say the last time I was in this part of Bombay. Shall we take a ride?

  My mother and I both turned to her, surprised.

  —Actually, I read these horses are kept in substandard stables, that the carriages may actually be phased out, I said, immediately regretting it upon seeing my aunt’s disappointed expression. —Though if you really want to …

  But my mother emphatically shook her head.

  —What nonsense! Did you know at Columbus Circle, one of those horses ran wild, knocked a couple of tourists out of the seats — and then got hit by a car? No horse-drawn carriages for me, no, thank you.

  —Baapray! They must attach the horses better! my aunt exclaimed.

  —No, my mother disagreed. —They must release the horses better. Loosen the reins. Let them —

  —Fly, I filled in, picturing Horse in Motion.

  —I think I need to sit down, my aunt said weakly. And then she suggested her cure-all. —Chai?

  —If I have one more cup of chai! my mother replied, perking up nonetheless. —A coffee? There is a Starbucks at the Taj Hotel now — the only luxury hotel in the world with a branch!

  I laughed. —I thought you hated Starbucks!

  —I was not suggesting we go there. It was simply a bit of information.

  —How about LPQ? my aunt said now. —Kavita mentioned it. She loves the one in New York.

  We took a cab all of two shakes to the Colaba branch of Le Pain Quotidien, located in an Art Deco former palace, and ordered our coffees. I roamed around photographing the café, thinking it could be interesting to shoot an LPQ in New York as well, see what was different and not so about the same space in two places.

  As I full-circled back to the table, I caught part of their conversation.

  —So you knew? my aunt was saying to my mother.

  —About which one?

  —Both.

  My mother hesitated. Then nodded.

  —Sangita called to tell us earlier when we were in Delhi, so we wouldn’t feel a need to rush back to help out, she admitted now. —Although I then felt even more in a hurry to return. And Kavita … well, we’ve known about her for ages.

  My aunt averted her gaze.

  —And so have you, my mother added quietly.

  Maasi was silent. And then, in a voice tinged with irony:

  —Sabina Patel. The roommate who made Kavita’s first year away from home bearable …

  My mother nodded firmly. —Sabina. Without whom Kavita’s days have apparently been unbearable.

  My aunt digested this a moment, then spoke up.

  —Baapray. This generation is so confused! Perhaps if we hadn’t let her go to America …

  —Every generation is so confused! America, India. You have one daughter in each. It is not the place, sister. Bol: What is it you are really afraid of?

  —That it is not the place, my aunt replied slowly.

  I dared rejoin now.

  —I suppose love is untameable, I suggested, selfishly. Upon getting no reaction, I blurted, —The heart is not in control!

  —What nonsense is this, Dimple? my mother scoffed. —The heart is in total control. We just must get our heads around it.

  We paid, and my aunt rose to use the bathroom. But my mother wasn’t done with me yet.

  —What? I asked. —Do I have scone on my face?

  She cut to the chase. —How’s Karsh?

  I couldn’t speak, but shot her two thumbs-ups. My mother nodded down at my plate, where I’d unconsciously crumbled the entire scone into a mash-up mount of sultana-studded flour, back to its original elements. Busted.

  She was narrowing her eyes at me as if to see me better.

  —I don’t know, I whispered. —He’s on a retreat. From me.

  —A retreat? Well, when in India, I suppose … Don’t take it so personally, Dimple. Retreats are from everyone, not just you. Just think, beta. How hard it must be for him after what happened with his father.

  —Oh, Ma, I sighed. —I know that. But I didn’t realize just how hard it would be. It’s like … we came here together, to the place that brought us together … and it all fell apart.

  She didn’t look as surprised as I felt.

  —Dimple, she said. —This isn’t the place that brought you together.

  —Huh? We were destined to be together. But now I wonder if we’re destined to be apart.

  —You chose to be brought together. If you and Karsh are having problems, you can work on them … or not. It’s a decision. Choices that make up your destiny.

  We stood to go, leaving the scone to its own fate.

  —And what you decide to do about it, she added. —Well, that’s up to you. And I’m sure you’ll do the right thing.

  —Which is?

  —Whatever you do, beta, my mother said, gently drawing my wrap closer around me.

  Though nothing was resolved (or all was unresolved), a wave of relief washed over me. We stepped into the brilliant day, waiting for my aunt on the sidewalk. I laid my hand upon my mother’s, there upon my shoulder.

  —Ma, I’m so glad you’re back. These last days here … I’ve never felt so alone in my life.

  She turned to look at me, and I was surprised to find a grin on her face.

  —What? What is it?

  Laughing, she swept her arm majestically through the air, in a gesture that seemed to encompass not merely Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Marg, where we stood, but all this city’s hustle-bustle hurly-burly margs, roads, streets, circles, chowks — the whyways and becauseways, the little lanes, and even Harbour and Back Bay.

  —In Bombay?

  Sun ablaze in my eyes, I began to laugh, too.

  She put her bag back down then, not even checking the sidewalk for paan stains, and wrapped me up in a hug warmer than one hundred and one of the finest pashminas, an embrace that forgave me everything — to the extent there was nothing to forgive in the first place.

  My aunt joined us.

  —What’s so funny? she asked.

  —What isn’t? my mother said, and pulled her into this hug as well.

  The next day, I finally had a (real!) meeting about my work: Mahesh passed a message to me via Flip that he urgently wanted to discuss a potential collaboration and I should meet him at his gallery that night. Flip suggested I swing by his place later so we could share a rick, and also hit up Shy’s brainstorm session, texting me a typically landmark-intricate address in Khar West.

  And of course it was also (one of) the day(s) when something old would have become something new, something borrowed, blue: Tonight would have been round about Sangita’s wedding sangeet, her night of music and dance, if they’d taken the traditional route.

  Or any route at all.

  Not that I’d seen her since her colorful revelation. Kavita had been out all day yesterday, I imagined with Sabz, but had returned at night. Sangita, however, I guessed had opted to stay in the hotel until things cooled down.

  Miraculously, my mother convinced my aunt, uncle, father, Akasha, Kavita, and Sabz to attend the latest Bollywood hit at Infiniti Mall: Dil something Zindagi whatever Love (Hey!). It was possible they all felt the same way about Bollywood, and common loathing could go a long way to bonding people.

  I opted out and walked them down to Shoppers Stop, trying to figure out what to photograph in the hours I had till the meeting. Three days to find the real Bombay — ha! When I returned, I wasn’t sure who, if anyone, would be behind the magical mystery door.

  I entered — and discovered the bride-not-to-be back home, in the uncustomarily relaxed pose of reclining on the couch in her stained jeans and top.

  In repose, Sangita appeared another, near-fluid creature. She seemed even to be emanating a bluish haze as the late afternoon light swam over her dreaming lids, which fluttered up at my entry. As did a plumed presence perched upon her fingertips: Zepploo, now scared, bolting back through the open door of the cage across the room.

  —Sorry, Sangita, I whispere
d. Though she appeared peaceful, I felt tentative, not so sure her bravado was still in full force. —Go back to sleep….

  —No, it’s okay. I wasn’t sleeping. Just reflecting.

  She took in Zepploo, shuddering in the cage. —Takes a while to get used to freedom, doesn’t it?

  I nodded, sat down on the arm of the couch.

  —Well, it’s good to see you, freebird. Asleep or awake, I said. —What you been up to?

  —I’ve been working on my portfolio.

  —At the hotel? Do you have a deadline?

  She shrugged.

  —All over. All hours. And I like to think of it as a lifeline.

  —I’d love to see it. I guess I’ve been working on mine as well … but what I see seems to keep changing.

  —Funny thing about seeing, that. Things never stay the same.

  I nodded, appreciating this synchronicity with the family member I’d once thought I had the least in common with.

  She tickled my knee. —Thanks for the Bandra base, by the way. That Parsi partying Congress keeps getting trashed and ringing the doorbell … but it’s good for working late.

  —No issues. How are you feeling?

  —Can’t you see? she laughed, indicating her extremities. I touched her arm. That was no imaginary bluish haze: A hint of tint still undertoned her skin.

  —Man, you gots the blues, sister, I remarked.

  —And they’re a bitch to get off! The acrylic soaped off pretty easy, but I waited a little too long for the Holi powder. Several rounds of washing, and I’m still stained.

  I smiled. —Well, you look good in blue. You know, Sangz, I came here figuring I’d be shooting the browns. But as this trip’s gone on, blue’s overruled. For me, too. Both in terms of how I feel and what I see …

  She nodded. —You see what you feel. I get that. Me, I decided to wear my blues on the outside and get them out of my system that way. Or change the feel, the meaning. Even in sadness, you can find a little winged thing. You know?

  I did. In fact, I was counting on it.

  —The color suits you, I replied. —Like you were doing a female take on Krishna? Shiva?

  She fingered the string of beads around her neck, mahogany still tinged in parts.

  —Well, Shiva did have the blues — after an erotic meditation spilled out of him as a tear. This tear grew into a rudraksha tree.

  She went on to explain the seeds wore up to 108 faces. Though brown-black when dried, when ripe with life, they were shelled in brilliant blue: blueberry beads. This blue wasn’t a pigment, but a structural color — like sky, blue eye, beetle carapace, butterfly wing, bird feather, fish scale. Mother-of-pearl. Goddess Iris’s iridescence begotten by interference effects: parallel lines, layers scoring the material, sometimes scattering light of shorter wavelengths to the forefront.

  My blues felt structural as well, belying the brown pigment of my skin. And they’d certainly been catalyzed by interference effects of another kind: I was scored with the lines, the grooves, the waves of life, love, loss, longing — Bombay itself rubbing up against me. A long-play record.

  —Although, she concluded now, —my first inspiration to go blue is, of course, a woman.

  I scanned my zeroic knowledge of the blue-hued goddess pantheon and came up blank.

  —At Mount Mary. The Basilica in Bandra? Please don’t tell me you haven’t seen her yet.

  —Someone told me the story, I whispered now, and it ached a little.

  Not far, a hilltop chapel. Our Lady of the Mount, marred — right hand riven by goldrushing raiders. Our Lady of Navigators, holding her place. How she’d arrived before arriving — in a Koli reverie — and then, one long-ago day, washed up on those waves. An inundated virgin, thought gone to the grave. A stunned fisherman netting her in: Mot Mauli, mother-of-pearl amongst the sweltering sows. The priests, the Perreiras.

  To me dreaming now.

  I felt I knew the story so intimately — because of the teller — and was surprised to realize only now I’d never visited the actual setting, though it must have been only moments away from that Chuim Village bungalow. But Chuim felt long gone too far.

  —I’ve never been, I said finally.

  Sangita took my hand, yanked herself up with me, then me up with her.

  —Well, no better time to visit her than l’heure bleu …

  —You have time?

  —Of course. What else have we got? she replied, reaching around for her bag. Then she turned to me. —Why didn’t you tell me you wanted to explore the blues? You’ve come to the right girl.

  This time, with Sangita as my guide, we found the correct slope. The day I’d visited the underlink, I’d passed another uphill entry to the left, before which a cartload of little pink wax body parts was being sold. I’d thought it was the mount to Mary’s, but turned out it was the access to an ashram.

  Here we stood at the base, somewhere near Bullock and Cart Road. Steeplechasing the sky upwards: a set of long pink-edged steps, creating over their ascending span a mosaical whimsical portrait of an enormous kidface in profile, pointing up. The only way.

  —Our mothers came here, you know, Sangita said, easing into my thoughts as we climbed. —For Bandra Fair, in September. When they were children.

  I just remember being very small, I remembered my mother saying. And looking up, up, so far up I couldn’t see a down.

  Gazing up up the steps to the mounting hill beyond, I wondered if this was that very view — me, we standing in the very place she, they’d stood.

  Their own mother had been born to my then-sixteen-year-old great-grandmother in a kitchen in Vile Parle East, guided by a midwife. Whenever that tale had been told to me, the laboring household in that once-jungle had seemed the other end of the earth … but it had probably been only about twenty minutes from where we were now.

  —It’s hard to imagine our moms doing so much together when they were kids, I said, though I’d caught a glimpse of this childhood yesterday at the Gateway.

  —Maybe they just have to remember when they were children? Sangita mused. —And they’ll find that space again.

  An idea tremored in the back of my mind then, though it was a different kind of ascent I was imagining. I tucked it away for future reference.

  Dust dredged in tic-tac-toe crevices, the steps celestine as they tipped summitward. A stone wall bordering the left was splotched in this shade, too, as if the firmament had loosened its grip and spilled, splattering it.

  We hadn’t even gotten to the top, and already the blues had begun.

  As we continued our Mary mounting (me clicking) of the now-paved and surprisingly peaceful hill, it occurred to me that the biggest blues were perhaps being worn by Sangita’s jilted fiancé.

  —Sangita. I hope you don’t mind my asking, but how is Deepak doing with all this news?

  —Deepak? He’s been my greatest ally. I told him about my reservations a while back. We spent the majority of our time together, me trying to get him to understand. And eventually, he did — once he could get over what all the familial reactions would be.

  Zoom on a dahi wada vendor manning his round table, a couple of motorcycles parked under tarp.

  —Baby steps, she began. —We didn’t want to traumatize the ones we loved….

  She explained to me how, just as she’d dismantled her wedding sari, she’d undone the wedding itself.

  —For starters, we bribed the astrologer to superdelay the auspicious date, then fixed up a computer readout to match. Pared things down to make it a much less complicated event — kept it all in-house, so to speak. And Mallix was right; we managed to cancel in time to get back at least some of our deposits on the venue, the caterers.

  Was that where she and Deepak had shot off to that night at LHB?

  Cresting in my lens, upon the tip-top hillock, the cusp of Mount Mary’s basilica was just visible.

  —You’re quite a team, then, aren’t you? I considered aloud. —What about all the peop
le who’d have gotten you gifts?

  —Well, we pruned the wedding to immediate family and a few close friends; strictly no-gifts policy, and usually they do cash anyways. So nothing lost — in fact, something saved for them! And if anyone bought us anything, we’ll return it to them.

  By the entry gate, wax figures for sale for the wing-and-a-prayer churchgoers. Laid out on berylline cloth, mostly white casts of small humans, limbs, legs, arms — perhaps to heal illness and injury. For more modern expectations: a little magenta car, and a few mini multilevel buildings in splotchy orange.

  —So all those wedding errands you were doing …

  —… were in fact to undo the wedding. And in the end, I just told Daddy and he became our accomplice.

  I spun around, caught her smug sneaky grin in my lens.

  —What? Kaka?

  —What do you think all that deep breathing’s about? He’s at it twice a day now. He’s a very enlightened man, Dimple.

  —As is Deepak, clearly. What else does he know? That you’re already in art school?

  —Deepak was the first person I told, Sangita affirmed with a smile. —In fact, even before, his gift of my eye surgery was to support my … artistic aspirations — he was tired of my paint-splattered glasses, thought it would help me have clearer vision. But neither of us was ready to tell our parents the real reason at the time. Easier to let them think it was other types of aesthetics that inspired it.

  Before us, a waxy white block with the word HOTEL printed across it, next to another labeled TOWER, a disproportionate tallowed human of the same height (or giant) leaning against it. To the side, a tiny blue baby figure. I filled my frame with this infant, snapped Sangita’s hand cradling it.

  —Deepak understands more than he lets on. He knows what it’s like to be forced into a role you’re not ready for, or maybe don’t even want. Forget Delhi: He wanted to go abroad, to New York, actually — get involved in a start-up with friends out there. But his parents set him on the path: education, career, marriage, mortgage, kids. I don’t know if he can stop that machine from turning.

  —What do you mean? You think he’ll look for another wife now?

  —I don’t know. Maybe. Unless he finds a way to buy more time.