by Farahad Zama
Pari pushed herself out of Mrs Ali’s arms and wiped the tears from her cheeks. Jumping up, she said, “Come on, chaachi. Let’s go and get some tea. That’s enough moping around for one day.”
♦
A well-dressed, handsome man in his late twenties strolled past the Gateway of India in Mumbai. It was Sunday afternoon. Tourists, mostly Indians from smaller towns and villages – they were all smaller than Mumbai – milled about under the shadow of the massive stone monument erected to commemorate the visit of King George V to Bombay before the Delhi Durbar of 1911. Like many Indians of his age, the young man had heard about this royal audience, and the fact that it was from this spot that the last British soldiers left these shores after India’s independence, but as far as he was concerned it was all ancient history.
Hawkers sold everything from toys to snacks and drinks underneath the eight-storey-tall yellow basalt arches, built in a Muslim style with pointed doorways and carved trellises but decorated in Hindu fashion. It was originally conceived to be the end of a grand avenue that had never been laid out for lack of government funds and therefore stands at an angle to the streets leading up to it. Constructed by the British, paid for by the Indians, in an amalgam of styles and oddly aligned, the Gateway of India is even more representative of the country than its original designers ever intended.
For many in the crowd, this was their first visit to India’s biggest city and they stared goggle-eyed at everything – from the crenellated top of the monument to the unceasing traffic on the roads, from the beautiful Taj Mahal Hotel in front of them to the jetty behind, leading to ferries for the nearby Elephanta caves, known for their thousand-year-old sculptures of handsome gods and voluptuous goddesses. Dustbins were dotted around the plaza – not always a common sight in India – in the shape of penguins.
A young boy asked his father, “Why does that penguin have such a wide-open mouth?”
The father, carrying a smaller girl in his arms, replied, “Look at his big belly; he is hungry and that’s why he has opened his mouth wide.”
The handsome young man smiled and walked on, outwardly confident, although it wasn’t long before his nervousness came back. He was surprised by how jittery he felt. His heart was beating fast and, in an attempt to calm down, he repeated to himself, “My name is Ricky.”
The noises of the city surrounded him. He loved cosmopolitan Mumbai – here he could live the way he wanted to, without nosy neighbours interfering. Parts of Mumbai are among the most crowded areas in the world – with places where the population density touches a million people per square mile – and paradoxically, it was here, in the heart of this multitude, that he could be his true, individual self. But he was gradually admitting to himself that he was on the verge of a very big step and it was putting him on edge.
How had he come to this? A couple of weeks ago, he had gone to a café in the suburb of Bandra to catch up with a friend. He’d been stood up – the friend never made it. After nursing a couple of coffees he’d started to feel hungry and he had made his way to a nearby McDonald’s.
“A McMaharaja, please.”
“Would you like to make it a meal?” the person behind the counter asked with a practised smile.
Ricky nodded. A minute later he carried his food to a table and unfurled his newspaper. He finished his burger and started on the fries, slowly reading the paper. A young woman in figure-hugging jeans and a cropped T-shirt walked past, talking on a mobile phone – all painted lips and nails. Ammi would have a fit if she saw a girl dressed like that, he thought idly.
Somebody cleared their throat next to him and he turned to see a guy in his early twenties standing next to his table. His first reaction was that it was a restaurant employee and he almost pushed his tray towards him, but a second look made him stop. The newcomer had a cleft chin, full lips and smooth cheeks; he was wearing a tight T-shirt that showed off his biceps and his rippling abs. A couple of giggling teenage girls walking past suddenly fell silent, both staring out of the corners of their eyes. Ricky could empathise with the girls. The youth was worth staring at.
“I knew you were one of us as soon as I saw you,” said the young man.
“One of us?” Ricky said, puzzled.
“There is no need to be shy. Why don’t you come here on a Sunday, about five in the evening,” the young man said, tapping on a card and pushing it across the table towards him.
When Ricky automatically reached for the card, his new acquaintance had touched the back of his hand with his fingers. Physical contact between men is not uncommon in India and Ricky did not pay it much attention at first. But then the youth’s fingers made a rubbing motion against his skin. The tiny movement felt very personal and an electric shock passed through him. Taken by surprise, Ricky jerked his head up to look at the youth. He was smiling and Ricky noticed how beautiful his eyes were. They seemed to be smiling too.
“I don’t u-understand,” stammered Ricky.
The youth moved away but, as he did so, he gripped Ricky’s shoulder and said, “Be brave, be true.”
Ricky had left the McDonald’s and rushed home to his flat, where he propped the business card up on his fridge. Over the next several days his stomach had flipped like a pancake every time he had seen it. The little card grew larger and larger in his imagination. Even at work, while locked in meetings about a new advertising campaign for an old detergent, his mind would suddenly go back to that scrap of white, standing oh so innocently on his refrigerator.
Sunday had come and gone but still Ricky had ignored the card’s silent call. However, he found himself having conversations with himself: “I can just go for a lark. I don’t have to do anything. Just curious…”
Another part of his brain would reply, “Curiosity killed the cat.”
By the following Sunday, he had convinced himself that a visit would be all right. Come the afternoon, he slid into the driver’s seat of his car but after a moment’s thought got out and walked to a nearby taxi rank.
“Afternoon, saab,” said the driver, an old Muslim with a grey beard and a white lace cap hugging his head. Golden lettering on a green sticker along the bottom of the windscreen proclaimed in elaborate Arabic calligraphy, “There is no god but God, and Mohammed is His prophet.”
Ricky’s throat was dry as he said, “Gateway of India.”
He thought that the pious driver would be able to make out his guilt from his face. But the driver calmly turned the flag down on the meter and set off. Along the way, they drove past the Haji Ali Dargah, the tomb of the fifteenth-century saint from Bukhara in the old Persian Empire. The tomb stood out at sea, a third of a mile from the mainland, and a line of pilgrims were walking on the narrow causeway linking the two. It must be low tide, thought Ricky. At high tide, the causeway was submerged, making the tomb an island. The driver bobbed his head in a prayerful gesture towards the white dome and minarets. Ricky’s face reddened with guilt once again at the thought of going to the Gateway of India. But of course, the driver didn’t see anything wrong in a young man visiting one of India’s most popular tourist attractions. Gradually, Ricky had relaxed.
A crow, scavenging around the bins for scraps, suddenly flew past him, flapping its wings almost in his face. This brought Ricky back to the present. He would have to stop daydreaming and keep his wits about him.
He crossed the plaza and went down some steps. Several men stood in a small open area by the water. A few sat on broken concrete pillars. They were distributed in small groups and seemed to be deep in earnest conversation.
His legs suddenly felt heavy, as if he would need a forklift truck to move him forward. He didn’t know what to do. He turned and looked back despairingly towards the solid mass of the Gateway of India, the world of normality where families congregated and fathers answered their children’s questions. Ahead…Ahead was his destiny, maybe.
Four
As bravely as he could, Ricky walked towards the group of men. One of them stopped h
im and said, “Yes, what do you want?”
Ricky took out the business card and glanced at it, even though its contents were seared into his mind. “I am looking for Shaan,” he said.
The man looked at him curiously and called out to one of the others, “Hey, Rambo. Is Shaan coming today?”
The man called Rambo, who despite his name was short and slight, strolled over and looked at his watch. “Yeah, but later,” he said. “Why don’t you come back in an hour’s time?”
Ricky nodded. His mouth was dry. As he walked away, he felt reprieved. He was about to throw away the card but realised that would be littering. I have to be in the office early tomorrow, he thought. I need to go back home and it’s for the best that Shaan wasn’t here.
He passed the hungry penguins, but did not feed them.
All of a sudden, he changed his mind about going home. It was better to have dinner in town and avoid the evening traffic, he decided, and he crossed the road towards the Taj Mahal Hotel. As he approached its entrance, a magnificent, tall Sikh doorman, sporting a glorious handlebar moustache and a bright turban, opened the door. A cool, air-conditioned atmosphere enveloped Ricky as he walked in. The foyer was busy: with Arab men in white robes leading wives covered in black burqas, with Europeans and Americans in suits, and with rich Indians in a variety of clothes. He had been before and knew his way to the restaurant.
He lingered over the meal of Hyderabadi biryani washed down by a Kingfisher beer, thinking about the next day’s work at the office: a presentation about the advertising campaign for his boss’s boss. Briefly, the image of the young man, Shaan, came to his mind but he pushed it away. I’ve had a lucky escape, he reflected. I don’t want to get involved in that scene. This biryani is really good, he thought. Each grain of rice separate and the lamb cooked to perfection, succulent and almost melting in the mouth, the spices precise and offset by the yoghurt raita.
When he emerged from the hotel, it was dark and the streetlights were on. The same moustachioed doorman who had welcomed him asked him whether he wanted a taxi. Ricky thought for a moment and shook his head. “After that wonderful meal, I need a walk,” he said.
He crossed the road towards the sea and the Gateway of India. The crowds there had thinned out a little. He started walking aimlessly and before long he was hailed by the skinny and weedy man called Rambo.
“Welcome back,” said Rambo. “Shaan should be here shortly.”
Ricky nodded, surprised by how he had ended up here again, despite his intention to go home. His stomach tightened and he wondered whether he should leave. Before he could make up his mind, a voice behind him said, “Hello, darling. I haven’t seen you here before.”
Ricky turned to see a man of indeterminate age standing in front of him. His lips were reddened and his long hair was slicked back. His black eyes were well defined with kohl. The man put his right hand on Ricky’s shoulder with a languid movement. Although extremely nervous, Ricky was fascinated too.
The man patted Ricky’s cheek, his long nails scraping over his skin, sending shivers through Ricky’s body. “Oh, what a plump cockerel you are. I am coming over all faint.” The man waved his left hand in front of him as if it were a fan and fluttered his eyelids with a simper.
Ricky felt hot and blushed.
“Oh, maa!” cried the man and moved closer to Ricky. “You are sooo handsome,” he purred.
Ricky was frozen to the spot, like a fawn caught in the headlights of a rushing car.
“My name is Manek. People call me the Queen. What’s your name, darling?”
Ricky didn’t know how it had happened, but Manek, the Queen, was now so close to him that, as he said those words, Ricky could feel Manek’s breath, warm and tingly on the side of his face. As Ricky started back, the Queen’s lips brushed against his cheek.
“Hai rabba,” Manek said, before Ricky answered his question. “Oh, God. We’ll have such fun, darling.”
Suddenly, Ricky felt hands on his back, pulling him away from Manek. Ricky looked around, surprised. It was Shaan, the young man who had given him the business card in the café the other day. Ricky saw that his memory had not been false: Shaan was really handsome, with broad shoulders, an oval face, a perfect, long nose and thick, jet-black, shoulder-length hair. His lips didn’t need to be painted; they were naturally pink.
Manek, the Queen, reacted with a screech. “I saw him first, he’s mine,” he shouted, waving his arms.
As Ricky gazed at the screeching man, it was as if the scales had fallen from his eyes. Manek was much older than he had first thought – well into his thirties or even forties. There were wrinkles around his eyes and the flesh on his upper arms was flabby.
“I – ” Ricky began to say.
“He came for me,” interrupted Shaan. “Go away and find somebody else.”
“And how are you going to make me go away, pretty boy?” said Manek. “You won’t be so attractive with a few scars down your cheeks.”
To Ricky’s horror, Manek’s long nails now looked like the claws of a raptor.
“That’s enough,” said a voice. The thin and weedy Rambo was standing quietly near them.
Ricky was astonished when Manek lowered his hands and subsided. “I saw him first,” he protested feebly.
“He came for Shaan more than an hour back. Go away now.”
Manek made a moue at Shaan and walked off, his head held high.
Shaan said, “I am sorry about that. The Queen is a commercial – and a bad one at that. He will be nice and friendly for a couple of months and then he will start blackmailing you – threatening to tell your family and employers about what you do unless you pay him.”
Ricky felt faint at the words commercial, blackmail. He should have listened to his earlier instincts and stayed away.
Then Shaan gave him a brilliant smile. “I am glad you came though,” he said and touched his arm lightly.
Some of Ricky’s doubts vanished. “Why did Manek go away quietly when Rambo said so? Manek looked as if he could snap Rambo into two.”
Shaan laughed. “His name should give you a clue. Rambo carries a wicked knife and can look after himself. He is a good guy, though. He doesn’t like to see innocents exploited by the commercials too much.”
Ricky raised his eyebrows. He had a lot to learn.
Shaan held Ricky’s elbow and pointed. “Let’s sit there.”
The next couple of hours were amazing for Ricky. He found Shaan an intelligent conversationalist. They talked about a number of topics ranging from clothes and fashion to politics and books. Even favourite movies.
“Casablanca” said Ricky.
“For Humphrey Bogart, right?”
Ricky blushed. “What about you?”
Shaan didn’t have to think. “Any of Almodovar’s movies…The Law of Desire, for example.”
“I haven’t seen that one,” said Ricky.
“It’s an early Almodovar. Released in the late eighties, I think. Basically there is a love triangle between three gays. Antonio Banderas is to die for – he looks beautiful and the way he lusts after the older man, mmm…”
“I have seen a couple of the director’s movies. Warm photography and all that, but I don’t really like him that much,” said Ricky.
“Why not?”
“Well, I probably started off on the wrong movie. I saw Talk to Her first – you know the one in which this guy is in love with a girl in a coma and tells her father that he is gay so he can become her carer?”
Shaan nodded. “He looks after her – bathing her, massaging her body every day and talking to her about what is happening in his life during the day. It’s beautifully done.”
Ricky shook his head. “The movie might have looked lovely, but I was not at all convinced. The guy, I don’t remember his name, says – the last four years have been the richest of my life. That is rubbish. Looking after a bedridden person is just soulless work. There is nothing romantic about washing somebody’s unresponsive
body, turning it daily and looking after it. Bodily wastes don’t become less disgusting just because the person is unable to help it.”
Shaan, surprised by the vehemence in Ricky’s voice, shrugged his shoulders. “What about Indian movies?”
‘Sholay,” said Ricky confidently, naming India’s biggest film hit of all time, a curry Western, set in the badlands of the Chambal Valley.
“Who doesn’t? Do you think the two leading men, Jai and Veeru, were gay?”
Ricky looked shocked. “They were just friends,” he said.
“Sorry, buddy. I don’t buy that.”
Ricky laughed. “I’ll have to take out the DVD and watch it again, carefully.”
“Do you know about the court case in Delhi asking for the anti-homosexuality law to be struck down?” Shaan said, changing the subject.
“It has been going for a long time, hasn’t it?”
Shaan nodded. “Almost seven years. There are going to be more hearings soon and a few of us are planning to go to Delhi for them.”
“What will you do there?”
“We’ll attend the court. Go on a procession outside, invite the media.”
Ricky shook his head. “Not me,” he said. “I can’t afford to be anywhere like that. My friends and relatives might see me; I might lose my job.”
“You have to be brave, Ricky. Otherwise nothing will change.”
“Change? Whoever said that the wheels of justice grind slowly didn’t know about Indian courts. Here they don’t move at all – the wheels are jammed fast. Even if the case concluded tomorrow, society will not look at us differently. Let’s talk about something else.”
