Bombay Blues

by Tanuja Desai Hidier

  —Whatever you say, l’artista, I grinned. —Your big night.

  —Yours, too! They’re your photos; we could hardly have moved the walls themselves here.

  —I don’t know about that. I get the feeling your Piscis Volans might be able to fly off them and land where they like.

  Where we like. Where I so loved now: below us, Mahim Bay; beyond, the Arabian Sea. Ages ago during the tsunami, an urban legend had circulated that a mermaid carcass had washed up on the Chennai shore. Later, the story was deemed to be a hoax. But that didn’t mean mermaids didn’t exist, did it?

  Unicorns?

  The unknown existed whether we knew it or not. The unknown number could still ring your cell phone; out of habit, I gripped mine in hand, though no call was expected at this point, perhaps never had been.

  Ahoy, Cowboy, avast. I wasn’t over him; I wasn’t under him. My solace was simply knowing he was just … around. Crossing that bridge now, a visceral feeling that I was nearing him. Somewhere on this side, that space he was so fiercely loyal to, even in his possible infidelity. I felt a loyalty to it as well, and the people it housed: a place I’d possibly never set foot in, people I’d perhaps never meet. Or perhaps already had met? Who knew?

  Bandra-Worli. Over here. You?

  Back in Jersey, when I was small(er), an elderly man, surely retired, would wander the school playground after hours with a metal detector like a grippy golf club. He let me try it once, and that feeling, ah — when slight suction occurred under sand: voilà! A long-lost spoon from the cafeteria would emerge, scintillating as a doubloon. The yearn of metal upon metal, as magnet sidling fridgeward to pin up a photograph, echoed in me now: anticipation.

  Strangely, the draw towards Worli I felt from Bandra swapped around as soon as we got off the Link. Now, an emptiness filled me, and I got the distinct feeling that what I was seeking was back in Bandra. Always on the other side. It was only on the bridge itself that I felt I was where I was supposed to be, and he was at just the correct distance. Not far enough to create pain, just a pull, not close enough to make me hectic, just quietly happy.

  I seemed to have a penchant for finding stability in transit. We met in Arrivals, re-met the moment I’d makeshifted a home in a train station. We’d connected by shifting ships in the Cuffe Parade sea — then parted ways by a bridge. Even that room in Chuim — sinkingly linking in a home that was neither mine nor his — we’d claimed with kisses, sold for a sigh.

  But tonight, I thought, smiling at my beautiful cousin, was about another kind of homecoming. For tonight was an evening for sisters and brothers, lovers, ex-lovers; for dreamers, possibilities teeming; for drunken moonbeamers, dance delirious screamers, poets and preeners.

  For our coconspiriting team. (And hopefully heart healers.)

  Left off the Link. And tonight, no whirling back round. First (Flip) landmark: turning off at the last cigarette vendor. Past tarped shacks, mewling cats, supine pipes, cosmopolitan trash. Second: the cement-stack-surrounded COAST GUARD HEADQUARTERS sign. We squeezed up the narrow road, just beyond a lot hubbubbed with kaput cars, to a squat rambling bungalow.

  It kind of fit in, and it kind of didn’t, this shack. Abstract art tagged a rippling number 5 across one wall.

  This must be the place.

  Onto the dirt path; a lone fisherman made his way down it, and a couple of saried women carrying totes aflow with cilantro, stalked with lemongrass.

  —Do you think they know? I whispered.

  —Know what?

  —I don’t know. It just seems weird there’s going to be a party going on right here. In their village. Pronto.

  For some reason, I was embarrassed in front of the Kolifolk, and waited for them to pass before opening the door and slipping in with Sangita.

  —Yes, well, said Sangita, —I guess off the map is still someone’s map.

  We stepped on in. The decor in room one of The Fifth Room was a mash-up — trattoria meets opium den meets knickknack-paddywhack attack. Red-and-white-checked tablecloths on the pizzeria-round tables, cushions stitched with elephants on the wooden chairs. A pudgy jovial man whose silvering hair surprised his baby face, and a black crochet skullcapped creature with back (and swanning nape) to me were seated at one table, deep in discussion.

  The wall behind them was hot pink, rani pink, graffitied to the hilt with neon streaks. The adjoining walls were pista green, mustard yellow. Mesmerizing metallic dashes flocked in every nook and swoop, these glints schools, shoals, aggregates of fish — some Matsya-like (god-headed, human-headed, animal-limbed), others asteroidal (sea star, brittle star, basket star), all framelessly floating in circular backdrops upon the bungalow walls, winging their unwavering way out of the insinuated circumferences.

  Unsinkable. I seized Sangita’s hand, unable to withhold a gasp.

  —Damn beautiful, she whispered. —If I, we, must say so ourselves.

  Sangita’s images finned the space, made it feel for a moment like we were underwater — but it was a different inundation from that floating Union Park elixir of a bar, less sinking than Chuim. Here, a sea-sky: that aloft feeling.

  —We must, I averred. —Oh, Sangita, your first-ever exhibition!

  The skully flipped around, revealed it cappingly contained Shailly — already kitted out in full party dress: fluorescent man-beater tank tucked into a multiply belted, sequined maxiskirt, hitched up on one side to reveal leg warmers and biker boots.

  —The projections look incredible, don’t they? Shy enthused. She indicated the jovial man, who bumbled up and clapped his hands in delight. —Sangita, Bobby here loved them so much they’re thinking of making them permanent fixtures — or hiring you to paint directly on the walls! Perfect starting point for honoring the Kolis and the art scene.

  —What? Sangita stammered. Shy hopped over to us, taking us each by an arm.

  —Bobby, this is the artist!

  Bobby half bowed towards Sangita.

  —And this is Dimple, Shailly continued.

  —Ah! The photographer.

  I was finally the photographer? Not the DJ’s girlfriend, not the ABCD photographer? It felt like a coup. Now I was grinning like a kid.

  —Shall we take a look around and see if you’re happy with the placement? he asked now, addressing us both.

  —Go on, I nodded to them, tapping my camera. I’d leave her to her moment. —I’ll case the joint.

  Aquarium: Sangita’s fishes lured me farther into the space, a few pitching light onto a bottled wall running the entire length of the room. The bar, complete with a lone boozer: Flip, scribbling as usual in his Clairefontaine notebook — nearly on the last page. I decided not to disturb his reverie — his writerie — just yet.

  Above the bar, a filamented word: JALA.

  A matryoshka collection ran the upper echelons of the room on a long lining shelf. On a facing wall, a set of bookshelves crowned with a massive Buddha head, and carefully cluttered with items perhaps left over from the home’s former incarnation as a bric-a-brac shop (which hadn’t gone down so well in a city that seemed composed of bric-a-brac): a silver tea service, ceramic rabbit collection, Moroccan tagine, wicker basket of polished stones, and on the bottom, stacks of board games. Scrabble and Monopoly. Taboo. Connect Four. Life.

  Fresh flowers injected olfactory swank here and there. Hitchka-type sofas scattered with pillows like in our living room back home. A vase of peacock feathers. A thick book of Mario Miranda’s original drawings of the Jazz Yatras. Taj Mahal Foxtrot.

  Other portals — minus doors, but swing-glimming with beads — beckoned. But so did someone else.

  Flip had finally looked up and was saluting me … with an Oberoi Hotel pen.

  —Pinto.

  —Lala.

  I photographed him now.

  —You ever put that thing away? he said with a smile, echoing my recent words to him.

  —And you? I said, snapping that epic gridded notebook. —Last night in the Bay. Might as well sho
ot it.

  —Don’t remind me, Lala, Flip sighed. —Let’s drown that sorrow. What’s your poison?

  —I’ll have what you’re having.

  He nodded to the bartender, who was already pouring out his potion: Old Monk. Three cubes.

  —A shot here’s the cost of an entire bottle, Flip now informed me.

  —Where is your bouteille?

  —Bottom’s up. But no issues; Bobby’s given me open-bar privileges, seeing how I’m mentioning this spot in my piece.

  Still, we tried to sip slowly.

  —And where’s your subject? I asked him, glancing around, a little nervously.

  —Funny you should say that. I asked him how he’d transitioned from tablas to turntable, and he thought about it, then said he’d move from the decks to the drums tonight and show me in reverse. He headed back Bandra-side to pick them up.

  —Yeah? I said, relieved to hear that busted-wheel trolley might be rolled open at long last. —How’s that article going anyway? Any takers yet?

  —I may have some very good news. You know DJ Magazine’s launching here? I talked to some cats who sounded interested in picking it up for the inaugural issue.

  —Wow! Congrats, Flip! I said, slapping him on the back so hard, he spit out one of his three cubes, which now drippled down his übertee: And those who were dancing were believed mad by those who could not hear the music.

  He’d been wearing the same one at L’Heure Bleu. Mingling with my thrill for Sangita, worry wicked through me for Karsh, hope and anxiety creating a turbulent brew. I prayed tonight wouldn’t be an experience in that same irony (no one dancing despite hearing the music).

  —I was thinking of using some of your pics, too. If cool by you.

  I tried to smile, swirled my shrinking cubes around the glass.

  —What? You don’t look so happy.

  —Look, Flip, I said. —Just remember: Karsh is a human being who’s been going through his own … journey. So I understand you have to do your writerly duty. But just be gentle about it, okay?

  —About what?

  —His, you know. Bombing that night at LHB.

  —Bombing? Flip grinned. —He was the bomb! I thought you knew me better than that. You think a fellow punk would view that brazen in-your-facing a failure? Dude, it took guts to play LHB first after those crackdowns — and to play what he wanted to play. Not only that, but to do something as subversive as bring trad-gone-rad Indian music back to India when it was essentially against the rules. Yo!

  I stopped swirling.

  —You saw that as subversive?

  —Incorporating history? The past? You bet. He was a total fucking captain brave-art. And I’m sure as hell spinning it that way. You know, very few people here are clued in to the roots of the music scene. And wasn’t it you who once said history’s not always linear, homelands aren’t always in their actual location?

  —That’d be me.

  —Well. I’m calling it “Future Past: Musical Mutiny on the Bombay Bowery.” And you’re mentioned, too, of course —

  I guess he hadn’t heard we were no longer together together.

  —Um. Listen, Flip. Me and Karsh, well —

  —… as a cutting-edge photographer from the New York music scene who shoots on film. That’s pretty Future Past, too. I also quoted some of that wisdom you’ve been spewing along the way.

  I raised my glass.

  —Well, here’s to the Bowery, then, I said.

  —Not to the dowry, he quipped. —She okay?

  He nodded at Sangita, now tour-guiding her own art expo with Bobby and Shy like a pro.

  —More than. You do your thing, Pinto. I’m going to do mine.

  I wanted to click the five rooms of the venue before they were (fingers, toes, eyes crossed) too dance-packed to see, and left him now.

  I was two rooms in, if that first foyer area counted; where were the other three? I looked towards the bead-strung portals, one marked AGNI, the other BHŪMI.

  Eeny meeny into BHŪMI. Vestibule, then two unmarked doors before me. I opened one.

  The toilets, complete with hot-pink hose and drain scattered with those massive tic-tac bug-quashers. Shockingly: no toilet attendant.

  No lady-in-waiting.

  The other room? A bedroom. With a bed.

  It was early. I figured I would just sit a moment.

  There’s a mare black and shining with yellow hair …

  And found the jugular. A ladder; stair.

  I woke up to the beat. A beat I knew by heart.

  What a greeting as I moved from auricle to atrium:

  A torrent of hi hi’s!

  And when I slipped through ante into afterchamber, I could have been anywhere. Even New York — which was where these ancient Punjabi beats immediately transported me.

  A resounding chorus of ho ho’s! Shadow strutters chiaroscuroed in a disco-ball glow. Streamers rippled in the fish-swum flecked-wall candy-foil light. Behind-stage screen echoing back the crowd before it: a perfect circle.

  And though the space was filled to the gills with these gur nalon isqh mitha uncorrallable, choralling boys and girls, my eyes at once landed upon one, only one, all the way on the other side.

  Up at the decks, a beautiful boy in a HotPot double-dhol tee same as me spun out his heart. A boy I used to know and always would, and I felt an overwhelming gratitude for this. But I could barely catch a glimpse of him, so elbow-bump jam-packed shimmy-smacked was the crowd he was playing to — hands in the air and down, screwing the lightbulb on and on and on, hello-good-bying in sweatastic sync. They wattled and daubed, pugged and pined. Through the roof: bhangra gone edgy in a venue on the edge.

  Playing upon the halo boy’s angel lips, in a room swum with angelfish: an old smile I hadn’t seen in a long, long while.

  For he’d made a call to dance. And this time, they’d heard him.

  It was one space now, warehouse style. The hippie dripping beads serving as doors ribboned to the sides, tables and chairs stacked away, every inch rendered danceable.

  No longer walled. No floor, no ceiling. Dwelling swelling — a rumpus room, rafters gone rapture, timber to timbre, lumber to limber, mainstayed entirely by burnished flesh, the crackling energy of adrena-skin, boom tone, pheromoans.

  Promise: It was busting its bounds with what was, could be, is.

  I had found it. The quinta-space. For the fifth room was this: the space we made together when all the bulwarks, the barriers, came ashing down. A fortressed undress.

  The fifth element, literally the quintessential: Ether. Akasha. Aether — son of Erebus and Nyx. What souls were of — god breath. Fifth chakra (Vishuddha): blue throat; inner voice. The nothing that was something, Shiva spiraling into Ganesha. The stuff used to delineate the universe, unaffected by the other elements. The medium through which sound moved, song of a conch shell. The sky, the space. The one without a body.

  A blue-black shining.

  I walked into the heart of this hearing … and saw boy meets girl meets boy, boy meets boy, girl meets girl. Meets world.

  Sabz remeeting Kavita, synchronized once more. Once I sank into the music, the lens, all I’d been battling flew out the window as well. Yes, there was an abundance of graphic-print tees here — but so what? A high-on-the-hipster scene — I mean, as soon as you made something an antiparty, you were part of the party — but even hipsters were human, and why not just bring it all together?

  And Shailly — she was a cultural conduit! And a hootchuit as well, as I watched her — maxiskirt pulled up underarm and overchest to turn sequined tube dress, leg warmers as sleeves, hair turbaned up into fluorescent tank, secured by a hissen of snake belts — threading her way through the heaving crowd, funneling shots into their upraised baby bird beaks.

  Moonshine. Even the brawlers were harmonic tonight. Twirling on the dark drenched dance floor, I spun them all into frame: Heptanesiac. We joined our seven islands, our seven hundred, reclaimed on the packed canvas of
a family home in this six-hundred-year-old fishing village, the land of a thousand and one dances — that light-year sound, catching up to come around — and I loved them all. I didn’t know them all that well, but that didn’t matter, did it, when we each contained a fifth chamber, an extra room in the heart that could adore unchangingly, that was all the other rooms together and more.

  Breathe through the eyes: I spun till their faces roundabout merged, a cul-de-sac come crossroads, crosstreeting to circle again.

  And like these Piscis Volans pirouetting off the paintings, finning out of frame, merwomen and mermen, we. In a country of one-point-three billion, you didn’t need everyone to love you. You needed to love someone, or something. You were what you loved. And he loved. I loved. We loved. Did it matter what or whom or how or for how long — or if it was requited? Not tonight. Not applicable, unaccountable. It was ether.

  And now the lifting of the unbridal veil: Through the mic, Shailly was announcing:

  —Little Girl Blue — true!

  Unbridled: a roaring reception, as for royalty. Sangita’s slow-mo wade through the crowd to stand by Shy, her own shy yet graceful bow, our eyes currenting together across that submarine space, a circuit of pride, warmth, sisterhood.

  Tonight, these were my people, this was my sound. At least here and now; all we had, after all. Here for the love of the dance.

  Toda, tab bhi bola. And though apart, Karsh and me, me and him, when broke it still spoke, a jittery jugalbandi: yes, still a team. His four-eyed sound and my four-eared vision blue, blue, electric blue, fated to coincide, collaborate this night of the flying fish. He who Shailly was introducing now:

  —And give it up for our fabulous DJ … Karsh!

  No Jammin’. No Redshift. Blue. Just Karsh. A return to ourselves. Flip and I strained to see him, but it was near impossible in this mad circumgyrating crowd. But we could hear the hoof hurdling of his headless horseman loud and clear, as he unabashedly declared:

  —Let’s take each other on a journey!

  Karsh kept the ho ho’s and hi hi’s running, the crowd whooping along. But they were mixing, melding with another word — a she-vocal stretching the ho ho’s into home homes….