Bombay Blues

by Tanuja Desai Hidier

  —So you quit the Hare Krishnas? Godhead?

  —I didn’t quit them, he said as I, with neither faithlessness nor further ado, merged with Dopehead. —I just didn’t quit anything else, either. ISKCON really helped me, you know? I mean, I’m not doing the four thirty screening so much lately. But I needed it for a start. To tie myself to the mast.

  Our ice-packed knees bumped as we sat hunched on the terrace ledge.

  I nodded.

  —I know what you mean. Me, I needed to bring down the whole ship — and inundate a little shore for good measure.

  —I was on a sinking one to begin with. It was a complete mindfuck to come here, to India, you know? I thought I’d feel more at home in the place where my father had lived. But I didn’t find anything I was looking for.

  He looked as confused as I felt about how any of this could have happened, and not happened. To us. Not to us.

  —Me neither, I admitted. I recalled our toast in Tompkins Square. —But I found a lot of other things, I guess. And you did, too.

  —I did. I found that I can’t be one thing, for one.

  —Indian American, American Indian? I asked him, though that dilemma seemed to be from a past life (so I did have one!). I wasn’t so surprised when he shook his head.

  —I tried to swap music for spirituality, take a clean path, purge, purify, find my silence. But the spiritual path led me full circle back to music — I mean, what drew me most to ISKCON in the first place was the singing, the dance. And the connection with the divine — I caught a glimpse of it, and it’s a beautiful space to be.

  —You’ve always had that, though, I pointed out.

  —I guess I see that now. And I see that I need all of those things, all of those sides. You know? At the same time, even — not in some kind of evolution that takes me down a straight path.

  —There’s no straight path. In Bombay, anyway.

  —The sacred, the secular, the purity, the grime. I need the saints, and I need the sinners.

  —Here I am! I waved a little cheerlessly.

  —You’re no sinner.

  —I’m no saint, I replied quietly. A beat; our eyes met. Nobody asked.

  —But you know what? Karsh said finally, such kindness in his voice. —You’re, we’re … we’re all of those people, you know?

  —A walking — or hobbling? — contradiction?

  —I’m not sure it’s a contradiction.

  —Maybe not, I said, with a little forced levity. —The sacred cow; the burger at Rock and A Hard Place. You, my dear, are both vaca and lunch.

  —Fucking eloquent, said Karsh, and grinned. —And damn deep.

  —Or very superficial, I said, considering it. —All you have to do’s look at a Bombay street — all those jigsaw pieces missing or broken or sticking out of the pavement. They still make a road, a path. Albeit a road that can really trip you up, make you fall on your face. But it’s like … if you see just a few random parts of a puzzle, it looks like they don’t fit — but if you could view the entire image, they’ve all got their place. Maybe we just go along amassing the pieces, the pavers in life — and one day, you get a sense of the bigger picture. Of a path … paths …

  He was nodding thoughtfully, mulling it over.

  —And for whatever it’s worth, I said softly now, —I’m glad ours crossed.

  —We did more than just cross paths, Dimple, he replied, even more softly. I nodded.

  We’d also spent so much time diverging during this trip — but it seemed we’d been running parallel all along, crescenting, even, life companions bound to brighten and bend, join forces to reunite tonight, in a near-not-miss.

  —So, he said now. —You fly in a couple days?

  Day after day after. But thank gods there was a day after.

  —I fly, I said. And then, hesitating, —You?

  He shook his head.

  —I’m staying on, he said gently. For some reason that made me picture the entire Jet Airways return flight pilotlessly empty, save for me.

  —Vrindavan at last? I asked, a little sadly. He shook his head again.

  —Bombay, he told me. —We’ve got that track to finish. And a couple gigs seem to be falling into place, finally, thanks to Ravi — and Shailly, too. We’re even talking about taking Crosstreet to New York one day … and maybe bringing Adda here!

  Running parallel. A circle, more like. —And I’m looking into working with Tiny Drops, SlumGods; I want to find a way to give something to this city instead of just seeing what it can give me. There’s always tech work if that doesn’t pan out; I can do a lot remotely.

  Good old the hardware.

  —Funny, I said. —Not so long ago, you couldn’t wait to leave this place.

  —I know. But I feel I’m just about ready to have my India experience now, you know? I didn’t realize there’d be so much to work through to get to this point to begin with: grieving, soul searching. I thought it’d be hit the ground running. All about the music.

  —That’s all still part of the music. At least the way you do music.

  —Thank you, he said sincerely. —That means a lot.

  He looked down now. —You know, it’s funny. I thought all I had to do to get here was arrive.

  —Yeah. I know what you mean.

  —You always do.

  Our hands were inches apart on the terrace ledge. Summer. HotPot. Bartop. How our fingers had wrangled against magnet tips, an elemental desire to interlace. No such pull tonight, but no repel, either.

  —We never did everything, I said now, considering all those places we’d meant to visit during this trip. —Banganga …

  —Actually, I went, Karsh admitted. —With Ravi. But we never hit Linking Road to buy our future children future toys.

  A pregnant pause.

  —They’d probably break within the hour, so maybe that’s a good thing, I said finally. —Elephanta Island —

  —And that incredible vinyl dealer in that chawl, near Mohammed Ali Road. Still haven’t gone. Those hip-hop boys in Dharavi. But Chor Bazaar —

  —Um, I went, I confessed. —These beautiful Victrolas you’d have adored, Karsh. Phonographs for miles —

  —Actually, I went, too. But all I could see were cameras, old photographs forever.

  We digested this.

  Neither of us mentioned Breach Candy.

  As far as that list, though, I supposed we’d done many of the things we’d meant to do. Just not together. It was as if we’d ripped it in half: You cover the top; I’ll do the rest.

  In a weird way, we were still a team. Just in new positions.

  —Mazagaon, he was saying quietly. —We never made it to Mazagaon.

  His father’s last home. A small silence.

  —But I don’t think I want to see it, he said finally. —I mean, part of me does. But the other part knows: Closure happens in your head. Nowhere else. And you can’t wait for someone, something — someplace — to give it to you. You have to close that loop yourself. Maybe if there were two of me …

  That crumpled pink paper I’d smoothed, confused.

  —But we saw many, many things we never guessed we’d see, Karsh said now, trying a smile. —And that counts for something.

  Inside, a child calling out in her sleep. For a strange moment, I thought it was ours. Padded footsteps, door creak, a murmur of a voice — at first I couldn’t tell whether it was mother, father, ayah — lulling her back to slumber with a song that traveled to us in fragments across the flat.

  It was father. Through the sliding door, I could see Ravi now, backlit, gently rocking the sleeping girl in his arms, all baby face and gangly limbs. A muted lullaby.

  He lifted his face just then, caught sight of us on the terrace, and nodded.

  My ice-packed-knee hand touched the edge of Karsh’s. Our fingertips linked in passing the last embers of the joint.

  The desire to hold, to hold on; I wasn’t so sure anymore that could be done. Wings molted at different s
peeds. People slipped your grip, flew the coop when you least expected it — even you yourself. Coup.

  He was gazing down at our hands as well. Then he picked mine up, turning it palm up as he’d done at HotPot, reading himself into my future that summer evening we’d once-upon’d.

  He squinted now, straining into its network of forks and intersects, sideswipes and parallels, shortcuts and long and winding roads, then finally sat back with an Aha! look.

  —Well?

  —It would appear to me, he concluded, —that it’s most certainly … fucked up.

  He grinned, and we both burst out laughing. My ice pack flumped off my knee, and he pushed it back into place.

  —I’m not sure what happened, he said, smiling a little sadly. And I knew he wasn’t talking about the accident, but the accidental: the love we hadn’t intended to handle with such indelicacy. The love we hadn’t made. And the love we had made, too.

  —I’m not sure either, I said. —But I guess bright side is … anything’s possible?

  He kept smiling, rueful but appreciating my attempt to leaven the situation. Ravi had vanished back down the hallway, surely to tuck in his daughter.

  I gave Karsh my arm, helped him rise with me. Our knees buckled simultaneously, and we caught each other, tipped against the railing a moment. I looked at him.

  We were ancient. I was seeing the boy I’d loved at seventeen, eighteen, nineteen … for a hundred and one years. Like when you look at baby pictures of someone you’ve known only older — parents, grandparents — and in that young flesh behold the features of the person they would many years and experiences later incarnate: as if they were prehistoric babies, wizened children. This was the spleen of that feeling: Somehow I was seeing Karsh now, yet aged, elegant — and in his accumulation of years, still beholding the boy — that beautiful boy I’d so loved my whole life.

  He was standing here now. It was the closest I’d ever come to seeing what seemed to be the soul. That special something that flowed through the time-and-space-bound body, defying geography and metronomy and chronology. If we could see the light of stars millions of years after they’d died, didn’t it mean we could maybe also see the light of objects, of people, of actions — actual destinies — millions of years before their birth … perhaps whether they’d be born or not? Did they meet in that transit? That cosmic Link in the sky, so to speak?

  The ether?

  All I knew was: I loved Karsh with every ounce of my being. I missed him with every ounce as well, although he was right here beside me. I had a feeling I always would — and neither his company nor his absence would alleviate this. A nostalgia steeped even this present moment with him, an anticipation even for what had already passed.

  We were bigger than boyfriend-girlfriend, ex-boyfriend-ex-girlfriend, even than friend. In fact, we were bigger than the both of us.

  Was that what Cowboy had meant about meeting in unconventional spaces?

  Whatever he’d meant, or that I’d projected onto what he’d meant, I was getting the distinct and highly non-frocked-up impression, the surefire sense of what that most unconventional shifting morphing space of all was, in fact:

  Home.

  Ravi’s silhouette, back in the kitchen. Karsh entered ahead of me to explain what had happened.

  Tentatively, I approached Ravi, stuck out my hand.

  —Dimple, I said.

  —I know who you are, Dimple, Ravi said, and his eyes were bright with genuine worry. —Man, that’s messed up, what happened to you two. You sure you don’t want to go to a hospital or anything? I can take you both.

  —We didn’t bump our heads, I replied, touched. —I think it’s fine. Just a little limp.

  —You can stay here tonight if you need?

  —Oh … no, thank you. I better get back.

  —Where?

  Suddenly, there was nowhere I wanted to be more than Ramzarukha, surrounded by the elders and the younger, my sister-cousin equals, and even the wallahs. Most of all, I wanted my mommy and daddy.

  —Andheri, I replied. —West.

  —Are you sure, Dimple? Well, there’s no way you’re taking a rick tonight, said Karsh. —I’ll call a Meru.

  He accompanied me down. In the lobby, we stood a second longer staring at each other, words failing. But this was very different from the strained tuk-tuk silence earlier this evening. The one in the Children’s Park. Now there was so much felt that nothing needed to be said at all.

  And our goodbye no longer felt like one — given the fact we could have had our final one tonight. That arm that used to wrap around me every day, that hand I’d once held and could no longer hold the same way: It was still the arm that threw itself protectively in front of me before the collision, by pure instinct pushing me back from the barrier, the border, to this side of life. It was still the hand I knew, attached to the boy I’d always know — even if now that boy and I were at a crossroads, for maybe a little, maybe a long while.

  A moment could last forever, as it had in the instant leading up to the crash. And conversely, forever was a rip, a pothole, if you will, on the road of time — eternal while it lasted but could be over in the blink of an eye. Yet a kalpa whirling-dervished a trillion times — a kind of kalpa — in that blink. For forever, whether a minute, a month, a sigh, a century, was simply this: immersion. A circle. No beginning; no end. No front; back.

  No sides. You could never really lose a person you loved — even if that person up and got gone. As long as you didn’t lose the love. And there was a lot of comfort in that thought.

  —We almost died tonight, he said now.

  —But we completely lived, I replied. And I took his hand. That hand. I buried my face in his palm, and kissed it — those mysterious lifelines and lovelines encrypting our tale, each and every one still including us no matter where the story went from here. Then I lifted my face, folded his fingers over that kiss, sealing it there, squeezing his fist tightly closured with both hands now.

  —Dimple, he whispered.

  —I always will, I said. And I would.

  —I never stopped, he said. And he hadn’t.

  There were tears in his eyes now, or maybe in mine. The Meru pulled up. With my last glance, I glimpsed Karsh raising that held kiss to his heart, like a pledge of allegiance to some new borderless nation.

  —And I wouldn’t change that for the world, he said quietly.

  A fitful sleep, not really a sleep, but an agitated wake, aweep. A few hours tears-twisted, calf-shin-knee athrob — arm flung out before me, arm flung out before we — half dreaming a heartbroken rickshaw.

  My lost-not-lost love: the closeness of Karsh, despite it all. And I knew the only bridge to closerness could be my camera, my portal back into a landscape where so much had changed: all the old markers shifting, the usual wayposts waywarded, waylaid.

  As the waters enveloped me, I felt the underbelly of this unrest — a something slowfrom to be savored. Like negative to positive, destruction to creation, a pulsing sense of a seedlinged sadness, an insuppressible flowering from the heart of something blue.

  All you could get was close. I left a note saying I was out working and, camera in hand, was about to gimp out of the still sleeping house, when I found Sangita observing me from the bedroom door, her face twisted in concern. I guessed I really was weak in the knees.

  —Too much dancing? she whispered after me into the corridor. She’d explain away my absence, I knew. I would conjure my cure.

  —Too little, I replied.

  Fingering those blue-brown beads as I headed down the drive and out to Shoppers Stop to hail a taxi — the sight of any rick now investing me with a new anxiety — an idea began to form, broken bits stringing together.

  I knew then what I was going to shoot today, and raised my hand.

  When a rickshaw pulled up before the taxi I’d set eyes on, I took a breath. And ran into that room. Got back on that horse.

  Dismount. New haunt. I escorted my ears, fol
lowed my nose. Soft sifting sounds. Breathe through the eyes: somewhere, a most wonderful sight. Smelled-before-seen — an open flour mill. Inside, all was enveloped in a fog of the thin winnowed stuff in the midst of which a white-tanked worker, bran-brown limbs besprinkled in the fleur de farine, sat cross-legged on burlap, diligently cleaning grains for a ghostly grinding.

  Deep inhale. A gusting dream wedged in the midst of the streetskin’s tannery of hues. Like Karsh’s tabla-ready palms, talc’d for the duggi, dusting the dayan.

  Listen — and to the imagined rhythm, walk on.

  In my thoughts, I talked to him the whole time:

  A mere stone’s throw from Mallika-posh Malabar Hill, gazing down at the arrow-struck waters of Banganga, ancient tank, its rectangle banked on all sides by steps. Karsh, they say Ram came here in search of Sita when she’d been abducted, and Laxman bowed a baan into the ground, that sibling archery freeing these sweet spring-fed waters, so sea-close, to slake his thirsting brother. My eyes keening to hear: an excellent silence in these elevated tank-perimeter-running pedestrian streets, punctuated by the slap of laundry in the little dhobi ghat; the creaking wheels of the vegetable cart; a bee-drone below-hum from the temple homes of the Brahmin families living upon its banks, amongst the shrines of Advaita gurus, the crematorium where all would one day ash countuppingly to zero once more.

  The submerged roar of Colaba Causeway, once a bridge linking two islands. Wandering past stalls dealing gods, tees, bangles, squirt guns, SJ, a boy from Bihar, draws up beside me. Looks fifteen though possibly twice that. Do you hear him whisper his own mantra: Coca, Manali, what you like? He runs parallel beside me the causeway’s whole length, finally indicating the alley behind the train-ticket-Internet-café shopfront leading to his den of intoxicating goods. I shake my head no; he just nods, moves on to his next dazed and dazzled expat, stained teeth stoking his sweet-boy smile. Life had been hard and he’d had to battle, batter it into a shape that would make space for him. This boy made man too soon, he casts a strong shadow, Karsh, reminds me once again that mine, ours, was, is but one little story in a city of many, many beating cheating bleeding fighting lighting hearts. That we were, we are, so very lucky. That no matter how bad it can get sometimes … it’s really not that bad.