Maayi continued: ‘If needy people come asking for clothes, don’t hesitate. And don’t give them torn clothes. See, there’s your father’s wedding coat. It’s quite sturdy. Give that away too. It will come in handy against the cold. And my saris are here.’ Saying this, she went away.
Maayi did not come back that night. Gangadhar took out clothes to give away. As he pulled out his father’s coat, he thought how all the clothes would acquire a new life. As he lay down to sleep, Patient Number 2132 appeared before his eyes.
Having lost his religion, address, age, name and surname, and become a human infant, this 2132 is being fed by Maayi as he lies on the bed. Unprotestingly, he is swallowing the gruel in small gulps. At the corner of his mouth, a sliver of a smile is slipping out. He is wearing Gangadhar’s blue shirt.
When would the sun rise, when would he open his shop, and when would the young man in need of photos appear? Gangadhar waited anxiously. In the morning, he put the bundle of clothes in the neighbour’s house and strode rapidly to his shop. The boy was there, as if he had been there all night. Opening the door hastily, Gangadhar climbed up on a stool. He removed the garlands from his father’s portrait, unhooked the picture, wrapped it in newspaper and handed it to the young man.
As though he had found a hidden treasure, the boy stammered: ‘This is enough for me, sir. Anyone would understand that the mother is anyway there…’ He shook Gangadhar’s hand and sped away like an arrow.
‘Amritaballi Kashaaya’, 1993
OPERA HOUSE
Indranil found a rather heavy bag when he was dusting the seats after the last show at the Opera House Theatre, which is just shouting distance from Chowpatty. As he did when such things happened, he left the broom on the floor and came running out with the bag. Usually, when someone left things behind in the theatre, they would come to the box office or, if the gate was closed, to the chowkidar outside. But since it had been quite some time since the last show, the courtyard was empty.
There were so few vehicles on the road that one could look down the five roads radiating from the Opera House circle and see far into the distance. It was as though people had evacuated the city propelled by a great fear. But the lamps on the empty streets threw their brilliant light around. As if cutting through this brightly-lit silence, the sound of a local train could be heard from under Kennedy Bridge.
After standing outside the gate for some time, Indranil slowly opened the bag. There was a thermos flask nestling quietly there. It was warm to the touch. Something that had to reach someone in a hurry had lost its way – Indranil felt bad about this. There was no use standing around, though. So he went back to the office, put the bag down on a small carved plank which had been there since British times, and hurried to finish sweeping the upper stalls. The three men who had been sweeping the Balcony section, Family Box and other areas of the auditorium had already spread their little bedrolls out on the balcony porch and were playing a round of rummy.
‘Hurry up! Shall I deal you some cards too?’ asked Bhalekar, clattering down the broad stairs. On hearing Indranil’s news, he said: ‘These things only happen to you. Don’t worry, they’ll come for it.’
‘When they see the closed gate and the dark front entrance, they might go away. I’ll wait outside for some time.’
‘You’re looking for an excuse … All right, come and sleep soon. If you like, you can hang the bag on the gate,’ Bhalekar scolded Indranil as he began to pull the grill door of the main entrance shut. Indranil came into the courtyard and sat on the neck of the fountain’s cement peacock, shouting to Bhalekar not to turn out the outside light.
This old building covered with sculptures had already started a conversation with the night. Once, Opera House was a theatre for dance-dramas and plays, but it had become a cinema from the era of the silent films. At first, Indranil used to be upset that the intricate décor of the theatre, which looked like the upper floor of a palace, was drowned in darkness during the screenings. While cinema halls usually had the balcony only on one side, here there was a balcony on all three sides, making the hall look grand and luxurious.
Mausam and Balika Badhu had seen silver jubilees during Indranil’s time. He had seen the filmstars Sanjeev Kumar and Sharmila Tagore on this decorated upper floor. When the screening began, along with the upper floor, the stars too were drowned in darkness. Even then Indranil had kept on staring at those seats in the dark. When the days of jubilees passed and it was a great feat to have a film run for at least fifty days, a kind of dullness filled the cinema hall. However much Indranil wielded the broom, the dust was never dispelled. The taps began to leak. The hundreds of hands waving notes and coins in the interval, screaming for popcorn, samosa and batata vada as if at the share market, were not to be seen anymore, and the counters looked deserted.
When the triplet theatres in Andheri – Amber, Oscar and Minor – shut down overnight and a huge shopping mall was built in their place, Indranil’s colleagues found other jobs and melted away. Trivikraman of the box office, because he knew English, became the sales representative of an ointment company. One day he was seen on the footpath across from Opera House, holding a small battery-operated megaphone, shouting: ‘Take a free sample! Get rid of colds and headaches!’ and applying ointment on the foreheads and noses of passers-by.
Seeing his former colleagues on the upper balcony, Trivikraman said through his megaphone: ‘Indranil! You with your lovely name shouldn’t sink with this broken old theatre. Come on out! Come Bandya, Bhalekar, Maganbhai, come out … let me start counting … ten … nine … eight…’ He shouted like the police did in the movies, flushing out hidden terrorists. They all came down to see him. Bandya even went off with him. Not feeling brave enough, Indranil, Maganbhai and Bhalekar remained where they were.
While the others slept on the balcony porch, Indranil used to sleep in the hollow behind the stairwell of the broad steps. Once a week he went to the Anantashram khanavali opposite Gaiwadi to eat a fish meal. During the day, he worked at Nimkar Art Studio painting signboards. He could make the Devanagari script look attractive by giving it a Bengali touch. The taxi drivers would come there too, to get something painted on their back windshields. At night, when the shows were over, Indranil would walk up and down the yellow-lit streets. The city seemed to him like a mother watching wakefully over all the children asleep on her lap.
He must have turned twenty-five some years ago, but if someone were to ask him suddenly how old he was, he could not remember. At midnight, after the last show, there didn’t seem to be an age for anything. It was five or six years since water had spouted from this dry fountain. Perhaps the fountain had last worked on the hundredth day of Amanush. His favourite Bengali hero was Uttam Kumar – it was he who had acted in the Hindi Amanush, and he who had come for the centenary celebration. On that day they had lit little coloured lights under the fountain. Like a soundless spider without any great expectations, Indranil wove his small world around the Opera House theatre. The night streets, the local trains, the colourful curtains of the rooms of the naachwalis that one could see from Kennedy Bridge, the Anantashram rice-and-fish plate, the round aluminium boxes containing the film reels – these were the strands of his web. Indranil had had no reason to disturb the warmth of this web. Because of the theatre, the entire locality was called Opera House, and Indranil had gotten used to the idea that the whole neighbourhood was his home.
The thermos flask he had found in the bag under seat D-57 in the upper stall had piqued his interest. It didn’t look like a new flask. The soft white of its cap had lost its sheen. It seemed to contain some liquid all right. Would it be a good idea to see what it was? Would it spoil by tomorrow? Would it spoil if he opened the cap? Indranil felt he should keep the flask with him. He got off the cement peacock, squeezed into the building through the grill that Bhalekar had left partially open and picked up the bag from the box office. This was definitely a flask on its way to a hospital. But why had a person bound for th
e hospital come to see a movie? Or was it someone snatching a couple of winks in the cinema hall because he didn’t have anywhere else to go, and had to stay up all night in the hospital, and forgot the flask while leaving in a hurry? Indranil pulled the flask out of the bag. The body of the flask had a dark red design like the diamonds on playing cards. The cap was white. Before putting the flask back, Indranil peered into the bag and saw a small piece of paper. He fished it out and took it near the light. In badly written Devanagari script, it said: Nandabai, B 12 Sonawala Building, Tardeo.
Tardeo wasn’t far. And sleep was not anywhere near. If he walked fast in these empty night streets, it was barely a fifteen-minute walk. Deciding to deliver the flask, he took the torch from his pocket and was about to slip it into the bag when Maganbhai came clumping down the stairs, grabbed the flask, and said, ‘Let’s take a sip in the name of the lucky inheritor,’ and rushed back up the steps.
‘Hey, hey … stop!’ Indranil ran after him. ‘Don’t, boys. There’s an address in there. Perhaps someone urgently needs it. Let me go and give it to them. Please, don’t drink that.’ As he pleaded, Bhalekar removed the cap, tried to pour out the contents into the cup, and hit his head with his hand, cursing the flask. There was nothing inside it. Indranil felt as though it was the soft cool night that was being poured into the cup.
Bhalekar grumbled that their hopes had been dashed at that late hour. ‘Indoo, please, go and fetch us some tea in this flask,’ he pleaded. Obediently Indranil took the flask and stepped out of Opera House, which seemed as if carved from darkness and light. To his right, in the distance near Roxy Cinema, he could see three food carts silently cooking away. At this time of night, they did not need to call out to customers. Those who were hungry came to them as if sleepwalking, and ate with tired eyes. Who knew where these carts went in the daytime? After midnight, they would rise up in the empty streets as if from nowhere. Those who slept on the footpath opposite Opera House were already sweeping their usual spots and spreading out their bedding. Sapan, a man who slept near the electricity grid, called out: ‘Indoo, shall we go and get a single palti egg to eat?’ Indranil signalled to him to indicate he was running an errand, and started walking briskly towards Kennedy Bridge. ‘And who’s invited you today? Parveen Babi or Zeenat Aman?’ cackled Sapan, laughing.
It was a relief that the flask turned out to be empty. For no reason at all, Indranil turned to look down from the bridge. Opera House lay below, looking helpless, without a trace of Maganbhai and Bhalekar. In daylight, its tower appeared as though praying to the skies, but now they had melted into the darkness. From the colourful windows of the buildings by the side of Kennedy Bridge the sound of the sarangi and the anklets of the dancers could be heard. Last week some of those girls had come to the matinee show of Haiwan.
‘What’s this we hear, Indoo? Are they closing the theatre? That’s our plight too. Who wants this singing and dancing these days? There are now dance bars in every single lane of Mumbai, and that’s where everyone goes. Now no one wants to hear the songs from Pakeezah, Umrao Jaan and Mughal-e-Azam. Only those penniless old seths come here now,’ said the girls. ‘What a lousy film you’re screening!’ they had added.
The fair girl Saavli had said: ‘Come to our kothi for timepass.’ He was not sure why she was called Saavli, which meant ‘dark’. During the day these girls sat outside cleaning raw rice or haggling over tomatoes on the footpath. Somehow the word ‘timepass’ had stayed with Indranil. There was no connection between the time told by the clock at Victoria Terminus or the one in the Rajabai Tower, and this ‘timepass’. Or with the channawala with his little round basket piled high with peanuts who roamed there all day, calling out, ‘Timepass … timepass … with eight annas, timepass.’ In his basket, he even had a small fire-pot in which red coals shone through the holes. The channawala took care to keep the pot warm, and moved it up and down on his peanuts, preparing his wares for his customers’ timepass. Before, he used to be at Opera House even during the interval of the last show. But he hadn’t been seen lately.
Indranil always remembered the man’s tiny fire-pot. It raised in him the same strange warmth as the stove his mother used to light during his childhood. Her face would glow with the coals, calm, as though she had just woken up from sleep. Indranil forgot himself when he saw burning coals. In the morning, when Laundry Babban poured coal into his iron and coaxed it to a blaze, Indranil was usually fascinated. He helped Babban fan the blaze. That heat, that forgetting of self, that was the real timepass. Then what was this cold empty flask telling him tonight?
As though the flask were leading him, Indranil descended the steps of Kennedy Bridge and stopped by the roadside tea vendor. He watched him boil tea on a blue gas flame and strain it before pouring into the flask. The scent of the tea seemed to blend with the yellow streetlight and burnish the night. And the tea vendor was like a mother stroking the night’s back as it slept. Picking up the flask, Indranil began to walk quickly on the lower street to avoid being seen by the mischievous girls of the kothi. As he went along, looking up again and again at the colourful windows on the upper floors, he heard a triumphant female voice saying ‘Caught him!’
Saavli and her friends were blocking his way. With them was their well-muscled bodyguard, who kept an eye on them lest they be carried away by cars with black windows. He came with them to the pictures too. Pretending to point a revolver at Indranil’s chest, Saavli said, ‘Hands up! Hurry up. Are you trying to smuggle tea out of our ilaka in the middle of the night? Hand it over.’ She grabbed the flask and ran into her building. The other girls ran behind her. ‘You can come too if you like,’ one of them called back. Helpless, smiling, Indranil followed them.
This building too seemed as old as the Opera House cinema. Dance-and-song rooms on the upper floors, a room on the right – where the steps began – where the girls lived. Without make-up and without Madam’s clear instructions, no one was allowed to go upstairs. The girls sat scattered across their room, while one of them brought a few chipped cups. Saavli began to pour tea in each. As they took the first sip, a wave of good cheer spread through the group.
‘Indoo, we had fried fish this afternoon. You do eat rawas, don’t you? Will you have some?’ asked one of the girls. Indranil declined.
‘Why do you ask without meaning what you say – like Marathi people?’ admonished another. ‘Just bring him some. Where does he eat home-cooked food?’
Saavli retorted, ‘Wah, my housewife, did your husband bring you fish? Hasn’t your husband come home from office yet?’
‘And you, my dear? What about your mother-in-law? So you can’t eat until she’s eaten, right?’ snapped back the one who had been teased.
The long-faced Yasmin ran her fingers over Indranil’s chin and said, ‘See, my husband has just arrived from Dubai.’
Feeling tickled, Indranil bent his head and shook it. ‘Stop this nonsense of yours. Give me my flask.’
Now Saavli got after him: ‘Hey husband, didn’t you bring me my two-in-one? Didn’t you bring me China silk?’
Cute little Padmini said, ‘I don’t want saris, I want foreign panties. Embroidered with flowers. When I’m dancing, I’ll lift up my skirt – so – and flash the flowers!’ She began raising her skirt as if in slow motion.
‘Baap re!’ yelled Indranil, as he snatched the flask and dashed outside.
The girls laughed in glee. Saavli shouted after him: ‘Fill up the flask again and tell the tea vendor it’s on our account. Don’t pay him…’
Obediently, Indranil had the flask filled. The tea vendor laughed, ‘Naughty girls! I’ll take the money from them, don’t worry.’
In the cool breeze, Indranil clasped the warm flask to his chest and walked towards Opera House.
From inside the flask, he began to hear the voices of Saavli and her friends. They played the game of house–house, of fake families. Their dialogues were all in the flask. The channawala’s small burner, the chaiwala’s blue flame, Ba
bban’s iron with the glowing coal inside – they too were inside the flask. Bent on getting the tea to the silent Opera House, Indranil ran back, pushed open the gate, crossed the dry fountain with the cement peacock, and ran up the central stairs to the balcony.
But Maganbhai and Bhalekar had already finished their game and gone to sleep. Assuming they had fallen asleep just moments ago, Indranil said softly: ‘Are you fellows asleep? Hot, hot tea here … wake up … wake up!’ But they were so deeply asleep that they would not have woken up even if all the bogies of a local train had gone over them.
Maganbhai’s leg shivered in sleep. Pity they slept without drinking this, and it’ll all be spoiled by tomorrow, thought Indranil, stretching out a hand to wake them, but then pulled back. How tired they must be. Maganbhai worked like a donkey all day. All of last week, he had, in his spare time, gone through the cinema hall cleaning the fans and the coloured glass chandeliers with his broom rigged onto a long pole. If any of them said to him, ‘Everyone who was watching the film is now back home and having fun. The film stars too have had their fun. Why are you struggling with all this? Stop work now,’ he would reply, ‘This is our home, fellows, if we don’t look after it, who will? You think Amitabh Bachchan will come to polish this globe?’ And biting his lip, Maganbhai continued polishing the glass globes of the chandeliers. Since he knew a little carpentry, he was always going around until the afternoon show began, holding nails and hammer, a saw, plastic fabric and a large needle, repairing the torn seats. He had come up with the idea of stuffing scraps from the tailor’s shop into the seats where the foam had gone missing.
No Presents Please Page 4
