Bombay Blues

by Tanuja Desai Hidier

  —It’s more than cool by me! I exclaimed. —But I thought they launched at Heptanesia the other night?

  —They launch pretty often, Mesh laughed. —Whenever they feel like it, in fact.

  —That’s all great, Mesh. But I’m a little confused. Don’t you do their art?

  —My stuff’s much more realistic — whatever that means. They wanted less local. So I suppose you’re the ether, and I’m the real. A continuum.

  He looked at me … and for a moment he looked faraway, or we did.

  —I’d be honored, Mahesh, I said quietly. It felt like a promise, and he nodded.

  —And I loved your shots of Karsh, he added now. —A few of them slipped onto your flash drive. His site looks great, too.

  —I haven’t been online this trip. But I thought your shots of Karsh were on his site now?

  —As well. But mostly yours. Room for all, after all.

  He nodded towards the corridor. The beats had notched up in the back, but not so much as the conversational tide. —And all are in that room now. I’m going to wrap up some work. Why don’t you go brainstorm?

  That room had indeed filled up during our meeting. I slipped directly into the side shadows, a perfect vantage point for my I-spy.

  The vibe was like a happening, even though I’d never been to one: circlings, no rows. People lounging on gaddas, slumped knee-hunched against walls, and some impressively erect freestanding (or sitting) lotus positioners (well, the white guy from your Iyengar class … and was that Gopi?). A skinny twinlike pair of silhouettes sidled into the shadows by the grille leading out to the balcony, so adumbrally blended, they conjured a two-headed creature with what appeared a swaddling babe across their conjoined laps. And just viewable through that window, a few tenebrous figures, mostly obscured by smoke, some bitter, some sweet: clearly the Gudang Garam (and hash, and possibly hookah) section. I could make out a shining shaved head amongst them, likely artist/DJ Pozy’s, amidst a bevy of longer-locked folk. Light pooled upon that scalp. Halohead.

  A bare-bones console was set up: a laptop piped into speakers on a rainbow desk that must have been moved here from the away above the chimney tops room. Everyone was swaying to the tuneage — something très (diasporically) ’97 was on now; that state-of-grace flight song from Talvin Singh’s Anokha? Shy held a little control panel and sat at the front of the circle, if a circle had a front.

  —… so any of you up for joining the protest to bring back Bombay’s nightlife, meet as Pooja’s explained at Carter Road in a week’s time. Lucky for us, The Fifth Room’s been brave enough to take on the next Crosstreet party —

  A familiar voice struck out then.

  —I just think it’s fucked up. Partying in the heart of the Koliwada — a gaonthan.

  It was none other than Sabz, cross-leggedly knee-bumping Kavita beside her. —It’s like … slum tourism. Crashing someone’s house and you don’t even invite the owners!

  —Are you suggesting we ask along the fishermen? Flip laughed with Old Monkish abandon.

  —The fisherpeople! Sabz corrected him. —What, you think the women just sit around on the beach descaling the catch for your entertainment? Anyway, we should be careful about partaking in this … homogenized brand of cool that’s cold to its surroundings. Upper-middle-class cash cold.

  —Cash cold? someone inquired now, sounding hopeful for some reason.

  —I mean, in New York, lots of spots you can mingle with more of a range, Sabz expounded. —Even at HotPot — all sorts of tax brackets throwing it down to the same beat.

  I caught her eye from the sidelines — or rather, she caught me snapping her with my digicam — and smiled.

  —But the gap between blue collar and white isn’t so pronounced there as it is here, right, Sabz? Shy suggested. —Maybe that’s why the same kind of mix doesn’t occur.

  —So it is about money! Sabz yelped accusingly. —Check Shy’s soundtrack right now. Anokha, if I’m not mistaken? South Asian music in ’97 was a political and cultural statement as well as a musical one. State of Bengal. Outcaste Records. Asian Dub Foundation. Anjali. In New York, we had, still have, Basement Bhangra, and, just as groundbreaking for the second gen, was Mutiny at the Cooler. These were the sounds of a subculture becoming culture, a people gaining critical momentum — carrying the debate and the diaspora to the dance floor. I mean, can anyone tell me the sound of Bombay today? How much non-English music do you hear here in the equivalent — the hip — venues? And isn’t the term indie an oxymoron when this music scene is so infiltrated by Bollywood, ads, corporate sponsorship? This tuneage isn’t creating a new language, a new hybrid sound. It isn’t the sound of a people, a moment.

  A pause for reflection (or inhalation). But perhaps it was something much simpler, I thought then — a grass-is-greener kind of thing. Kids of the diaspora were looking for a sound to bring their scattered hemispheres together — to wed their motherland with their homeland. Isn’t it?

  Even those question-mark-ending statements by American desis: Wasn’t the true query buried beneath Do we really have the right to impose a Western framework on a non-Western culture or is this a continuation of the legacy of colonialism? really, on one level, or all (like my feeling at Chor Bazaar), basically a Secret Admirer valentine, a conversation candy heart to India: Could you/Be mine/Please say yes/Marry me?

  Kavita was gazing at Sabz with that pride of old, mixed with a good measure of bemusement.

  —But you can’t impose a Western diasporic framework on India, can you? Shy was asking patiently. —This was the sound for that particular cultural and historical moment. And once it’s been done in ’97, the terrain’s changed. How can you do it again … and why would you need to?

  I was surprised to hear her say that, given her love of that particular year in South Asian music out of the UK. But then, perhaps this was her testament to that love — the firm belief that that sound was unique and had already done its inimitable work.

  —But could you tell me which music you mean specifically is not the sound of a people, a moment here in Bombay? Flip asked Sabz now.

  —Of course not, Sabz scoffed. —I don’t listen to it. I’m just offering a critique.

  Well, what could you really say to that? But Flip had Clairefontaine out and gridding to go.

  —Shy. And according to you: What is the sound of this tribe?

  —Any sound any of the tribe makes. Whether in Bombay or not, over here or over there, Shy replied with a hippie chillness that belied the bossy, overly generalizing, and perhaps correct nature of her statement. She was a little in love with the sound of her own voice in that spoken-word-artist way — as was pretty much everyone else. It was a very nice voice, I had to give her that. Like, from the diaphragm.

  —But we from over there made it possible for you to come back here and branch out from being quote Indian, Sabz pulpiteered, rather cavalierly now that she’d hooked Kavita’s look. —We even made it possible for you to work your Indianness in India, Shy. How many chicas from here can get away with that? What I’m saying’s just: You’re coasting on globalization. People here don’t seem to know the history.

  —That’s somewhat true, Slinky joined in. He was in a beret, booting up his own laptop near the console. —One thing I love about being in Bombay’s I get to relive my UK youth, watch a new generation discover DJ culture. What’s been going on for decades there’s just beginning here: people going out for the music, not music as background noise. Organizations like SlumGods and Tiny Drops are bridging economic and social gaps in the music scene. And that scene itself is expanding into a wider variety of genres. We had psy-trance, Goan trance. Then dubstep. Imminently, subgenres will appear — are already appearing — and we’ll see the development of cultural mash styles. Culture here isn’t mixed in the same way as in the UK, but it’s mixed in a whole other way….

  Halohead’s soft-spoken, perhaps smoke-muffled voice, piped in from the balcony, —And Bombay’s youth will actuall
y live through this evolution and have the real experience, not do the iPhone jump. You know, going from no phones to cell phones with no in-between. So they’ll learn the history by living it. And they’ll make it that way, too.

  I slid to the floor, back against the wall.

  —Maybe India’s had enough history, needs a break, at least in some spaces? I considered aloud now. I didn’t know if it was all these nights of not sleeping, but at the moment, even the thought of my own history exhausted me, and I hardly had one.

  —Dimple, how can you possibly suggest breaking free of history? Sabz was sighing despondently.

  —Well, we have, Kavita said quietly, laying a hand on Sabz’s knee now. —Sometimes you have to just move on. Begin again. Not take it all so personally.

  —But the personal and political are the same thing! Sabz contended, laying her own hand upon Kavita’s. If she was correct, that made me for one ragingly political, considering how personally I usually took everything. —I don’t mean I have no regrets. Personally. Or politically. But you can’t erase the past. History. You have to own up to it. And I do.

  She trailed off. This I do was an apology, loud and clear; it was a commitment, too. No one in the room seemed jarred, though; for a moment, I couldn’t recall why we’d even gathered here today in the first place. Kavita was silent, but interlaced her fingers to church-steeple-see-all-the-people meshiness with Sabz’s, leaned on her shoulder.

  —Dimple. Would you break free of your own history? the terrace guy piped up suddenly, halohead tilting.

  I heard two layers to this question as well, though I was probably the only one who did. But I didn’t have to brainstorm long: amor fati, loving what is necessary — that one must live in such a manner they’d wholeheartedly relive any moment to eternity. At the very least, or even most, it was a handy way to banish useless guilt and regret and general negative vibing in your daily life. The line you needed to draw wasn’t a rupture so much as a seam between your then and now — a peppy willingness to do it all again (though a gratitude not to have to).

  By embracing all that came before, you liberated yourself of it.

  —I wouldn’t change a thing, I replied, considering it, meaning it.

  My heart was bruised, but it wasn’t broken, not really, and even the bruising was somehow an accustomed feeling, an ancient evocation — perhaps even a residue from the way we came from nothing into something, and would one day dissolve into nothingness again. Always coming and going. A cycle.

  I mean, it also kind of sucked. But what was I going to do about it?

  A shindigging twang: The Siamese twinlike formation by the window wall lifted the swaddling babe, which turned out to be an acoustic guitar, and one half of the duo began to strum, the other to hum.

  —Not a thing? Halohead asked again.

  I vigorously shook my own, highly unhaloed, head.

  —And that’s what frees you of your history, I concluded. —I guess … history’s not always linear. The yellow brick road begins with a swirl. There’s no place like home, because home is not a place.

  A silence into which the strumming, the humming expanded. I was pretty sure I heard my own words echoing out the humming mouth: Home is not a place.

  —Home is about harmony. It’s about finding a way to coexist, Shy said now, calmly reining the conversation back in. —And that’s precisely what we’d like to do at The Fifth Room, what Crosstreet’s about: being local and global. My dream for this party is one day it’s not bound to a physical location. We find our tribe all over the world, an open invitation. I mean, where’s everybody in here from, for example?

  In this space, no one got touchy about the question. A few people offered up their backgrounds: Delhi (met with a couple sympathetic clucks), DC, Shillong, Kenya, Toronto, even Espírito Santo.

  —You know, the next generation this conversation will be over, said the white yoga guy (currently residing in Goregaon East). —Kaput. No one will know where anyone’s from. Or even bother to ask.

  —No more cultural confusion that fills our days and nights and NYU debates, Kavita added pensively.

  —And then maybe, finally, a person can love someone from anywhere, said Sabz. —Any country, city, socioeconomic status. Any gender.

  I chewed on that. I thought about my-not-my cowboy from nowhere, in an Unbombay that had become palpably perspiringly real, tangible as a shattered hourglass. And Karsh from a solid somewhere that had dissolved before my very eyes, slip-upped through my fingers.

  No matter where we were, we each carried around a universe inside us, slid it into our lens, our headphones, and all that we saw, heard, experienced was colored from that viewpoint.

  A map was every map you’d ever known, was written in your skin. We were many places, many people at once. Reincarnation at all times.

  An idea for the Crosstreet flyers occurred to me then: an image of paths that never physically crossed, yet intertwined in spirit, were inextricably linked on the emotional, psychological, experiential level: 14th Street greeting 14th Road. Gansevort gliding into mantra Grant. Rivington rocking up to Rebello Road. Malcolm X Boulevard to Mahatma Gandhi Marg.

  Catch you at the curve of Union Square and Union Park.

  —I’ll dance to that, Shy was beaming. Slinky had stepped seamlessly to the decks and was now playing a joyful blend of funk and fizz. And, hesitatinglessly, the who-knows-where-from cross-leggers, lotus-ites, shadow skulkers third-dimensioned upwards and began to dance their this-conversation-will-be-over consensus to his life-affirming beats, Flip’s Old Monk an oceanic message in a bottle, a pass-it-on making rounds of the swilling swaying room.

  Shy was packing away her own laptop, and I walked up to her now.

  —The Fifth Room. Maybe there are other ways as well, to find that harmony, I said, for her ears only. —Not just about sound, but vision.

  —Yes! she smiled. —Mesh told me you’d be here, and I’m so glad. I was going to tell you, Dimple. We’d love to use your work at the next Crosstreet. Your art, their music. Those io shots were amazing.

  But I had a different idea.

  —Take the io shots. But I’m not your mystery artist, I replied. Then: —Have you considered using a painter?

  She tilted her head. I went on: —Even … a street artist?

  —We are looking at painting The Fifth Room, if that’s what you mean. Maybe even the outside.

  —Well, I just may know, I told her, —someone who was waiting so long for a wall….

  That tribe danced every inch of that room to multilimbed life.

  When the plug was finally pulled, Kavita and Sabz told me they were heading back home. Meaning: Andheri.

  —We don’t want to worry your parents, Sabz said, nodding to Kavita. —Especially if we want them to be … one day, however long it takes … mine, too.

  A question in her gaze. But Kavita’s entire open-armed self exuded an unequivocal yes. And with that, the perhaps most die-hard romantic pair of the lot was off in rickshaw number one.

  As the last straggle of stormy-brained revelers was gently kicked out of the Manhole, Mahesh materialized, taking it upon himself to organize the transport to the inevitable after-party. One by one, he gestured over the lurk of circling ricks and expertly performed the late-night arithmetuk-tuk of dividing everyone into groups of three.

  —Moving right along … okay, Flip, India, Shubhra … Pokie, Pooja Sound System, Iza Viola … Dimple …

  I hesitated but was thrown into the next rick in line, then wedged in by:

  —Gokulanandini …

  Gopi girl flung her sweaty Hare Krishna mantra’d Manhole-dancera’d arms around me and planted a kiss on my cheek that was, if I was not mistaken, heavily perfumed with eau de ye monk of olde.

  —We need one more for this rick. Go in and scout out the after-partiers! Mesh called out to a random hipsterite lingering on the balcony. She indolently walked back into Manhole … and then — with military precision and surprising vio
lence — ejected another clump of carousers onto the sidewalk.

  From that clump, the head-glow halo boy was shoved into the remaining space in our tuk-tuk. I leaned over to say hello … and found a strangely familiar-looking creature before me.

  More than familiar.

  It was Karsh. Minus the goatee, the headful of wavy hair, and, more notably, any kind of smile whatsoever.

  He looked at me.

  I looked at him.

  Mahesh patted the rick to move along. But not before Gokulanandini crawled over us and ejected herself back onto the sidewalk.

  —Never mind. I live in Bandra now, she explained sweetly. —Why go all the way to fucking Versova just to come back here?

  As we pulled away, she stuck her evidently third-principle-flouting grin back in the window. —And don’t forget, guys — the world on the outside is so much bigger than the inside!

  The rick swiveled around.

  Me and Karsh sitting in it.

  We had a scant moment to register this reality — the two of us together in the more-than-chummy confines of a tuk-tuk — before it lurched off, following, I imagined, Mesh’s directions.

  I swallowed hard. Karsh was looking for space not in the Krishna-historic hills … but in Bombay? My hunch had been right: He’d been looking for space from me.

  I trained my eyes on the PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH ME sign on the driver’s meter—which he’d actually slotted down to zero without our asking. Proof that we’d finally arrived? I was no longer a tourist in my own motherland?

  But thing was, being with Karsh made me feel like a tourist in my own life. So much had happened — so much I could never tell him, probably, and perhaps his own journey had been one he couldn’t take me along on either. My head roiled with all the things said and unsaid. I considered chanting Om, but what came out was:

  —Um …

  —Oh … he replied.