Zarin went up to the sleeping man and kissed his forehead. “Wake up, my Oxford-returned bevakoof. You are a crazy man, but pig or no pig, I’ll marry you.”
Mehernosh Kanga was laughing as heartily as the old men and women surrounding him. “Wow, that was quite a narrow escape I had,” he said. “If Mummy hadn’t taken pity on Dad, I wouldn’t be here today.”
“Hats off to your mummy,” Coomi Bilimoria said. “She knew how to handle your daddy from the start.” Everybody in the crowd picked up on the implied dig at Rusi.
Looking at Rusi’s flushed face, Jimmy felt a rush of pity. And amazement at his good fortune. In the old days, all the bets were on Rusi to be Wadia Baug’s most successful resident someday. When Jimmy and the other neighborhood boys were spending endless hours standing at street corners, Rusi was already reading books on how to start a small business. While Jimmy couldn’t remember whether he had even bathed that day, Rusi was begging his mother to buy him a business suit. While Jimmy was lost, bitter, and trying to decide what to do about the chip on his shoulder, Rusi was single-minded, focused, and determined to succeed by his own efforts. When they were younger, Jimmy had felt that he and Rusi were in some kind of invisible race, and now he wondered if Rusi had felt that way, too. Of course, Jimmy had stopped thinking that years ago, after he had left his opponent in the dust. Jimmy remembered a conversation with Rusi a few days before he left for Oxford. “You go and study everything that you can, bossie. By the time you come back, who knows? If my business is successful, Inshallah, maybe you won’t need too many clients other than me. We could even form some kind of a partnership, maybe.” Jimmy had wanted to laugh at the thought of an Oxford-trained lawyer being on exclusive retainer to a small businessman, but the look on Rusi’s face stopped him. He realized that Rusi was not being funny.
Still, even after he’d returned from Oxford, it was far from clear that Jimmy would be the more successful of the two. Rusi, after all, had his paper factory by then. Both their lives had taken sharp, divergent turns. Jimmy had attended one of the most distinguished universities in the world. Rusi, on the other hand, had refused to go to college because he was much too eager to jump-start his destiny.
Now, Jimmy wondered if Rusi’s life would have been different if he’d had a mentor. Someone who could have helped him realize what was possible for a middle-class Parsi boy and what was not. Instead of looking to multimillionaires like the Tatas and Birlas for inspiration, perhaps Rusi should have lowered his sights a bit, Jimmy thought. He had always believed that Rusi had made a mistake by not going to college or working for someone else before he launched his own business. All the things that the rest of the gang had learned in college or at someone else’s expense, Rusi had had to learn the hard way. Jimmy remembered the first time he had an inkling that Rusi’s business was in trouble. Rusi had approached him to ask him a simple accounting question. “Saala, this is the kind of thing that a professional would know like the back of his hand,” Jimmy said. “Why don’t you hire someone to do the books? I can get you some good names.” He was unprepared for the sheepish look that crossed Rusi’s face. “Jimmy, to be honest, I don’t even know what I should know and what I’m expected not to know. I’m so afraid an accountant will swindle me if he knows how ignorant I am about financial matters. Besides, who has the money to hire someone like that? No, I’m just going to have to teach myself this, like everything else.”
Perhaps if Rusi’s father had lived, it would have all turned out differently, Jimmy now thought. He would have insisted that Rusi go to college. And with his bank experience, he could have guided his son in the business. After all, Khorshed Auntie could not be expected to have played both roles. She adored her only son too much to deny him anything. Jimmy felt a rush of compassion toward his neighbor, although he knew that Rusi believed that Jimmy had usurped his destiny, that Jimmy was somehow living Rusi’s life. Don’t ask how Jimmy knew that. He just picked up some dissonance, some envy, on the finely tuned radar developed by the very successful. Still, Jimmy had a reservoir of good feeling for Rusi. After all, it was Rusi’s mamma who had first befriended the little orphan boy. Rusi had a birthday party a month after Jimmy arrived at Wadia Baug, and Khor-shed Bilimoria had personally come to Hormazd’s flat to invite the building’s newest resident. Jimmy had been painfully shy during that meeting, speaking only in monosyllables, but Khorshed had bribed him with gifts of marbles and a spinning top. Before she left, she made him promise that he would attend the gathering. And he was glad he went. It was at Rusi’s birthday party that Jimmy had begun to make the friendships that had lasted a lifetime.
Remembering Coomi’s snide comment from a moment ago, Jimmy felt a renewed sense of gratitude toward Zarin. I’ve had two great people in my life, Jimmy thought. Zarin and Cyrus Engineer. At the thought of Cyrus, Jimmy’s probing eyes searched the crowd to look for Cyrus’s widow, Tehmi. He was surprised but glad that the reclusive Tehmi had accepted their invitation to Mehernosh’s wedding. Perhaps this event would draw Tehmi out of her shell, much as Cyrus had once drawn him out of his. Cyrus had cracked open the shell that covered a sullen, moody boy. Jimmy could count on one hand the number of actual conversations he had had with Cyrus. But as a teen-ager, Jimmy observed how infectious Cyrus’s enthusiasm and zest for life was. He noticed how people lighted up around Cyrus, and it made him want to be like the older boy. What a lawyer Cyrus would have made, Jimmy now thought. It was Cyrus who had persuaded Jimmy not to quit school, and he had been helpless against Cyrus’s charm offensive. And once Jimmy made the decision not to quit, a funny thing happened. He realized that he really enjoyed learning. And that he enjoyed succeeding, being on the top of every list.
But God, it hadn’t been easy. Losing his parents like that. More than three hundred passengers died in that train crash, but all he could do was feel the enormity of his own loss. He could still recall the screams of his ayah when the policeman came to the door with the news. And the first time he heard someone use the word orphan and realized with a thud that they were talking about him. And those awful three months when he was moved from the home of one relative to another, like a parcel. “Dhobi ka kutta na ghar ka na ghaat ka,” one of his older cousins said about him. “The washerman’s dog belongs neither in the house nor outside.” Which was pretty much how he felt. Uprooted. Even after Hormazd Uncle brought him to Wadia Baug, it wasn’t easy. Grief had crystallized into anger by then. Hormazd was a bachelor and had no experience with children, let alone an angry, brooding nine-year-old nephew whom he barely knew. You had to give Hormazd credit for trying, but God, the poor man was so out of his element. While his uncle was at work, Jimmy spent the day on the streets. When the other Wadia Baug boys refused to skip school, he mocked them and then hung out with the street kids. The boy who had grown up in a genteel, solidly middle-class home in Hyderabad now came home bloodied from yet another street fight. Hormazd was beside himself, threatening to beat Jimmy, threatening to turn him out of the house. But he was constrained by the enormity of the tragedy that had befallen his nephew. And whatever his flaws, Hormazd provided Jimmy with the stability that the boy had so badly needed. No matter how far Jimmy wandered, he always had a home to return to.
During his visits to America, Jimmy was always struck by the proliferation of therapists. “A child falls on a playground in America and the parents rush her first to her therapist, then to her lawyer, and last to her doctor,” he often joked. But he was also envious. There had been no counseling or any other help for him when he was growing up. He had wasted precious years acting out his anger on the streets, punishing others for his parents’ death. No adult ever sat him down and asked him to tell them how he felt. Instead, they lectured him on how he ought to be feeling and behaving. “Be a good boy now, Jimmy,” they said. “Poor Hormazd has been very good to you. Don’t make him regret his kindness.” He’d felt a murderous rage then, felt like spitting on their scrubbed, righteous faces, felt like annihilating them. Instea
d, he rushed back out on the street and tried to annihilate himself. Cyrus had entered his life at exactly the right time. Saved him from self-annihilation. Cyrus, too, had never talked to him about his feelings. But he could tell that Cyrus knew how he felt. While the adults seemed oblivious to the fact that rage can be as comforting as a blanket, Cyrus understood. He never tried to talk Jimmy out of his anger. He just urged him to rechannel it, use it to his advantage.
In a sense, that’s what Zarin had done for him, too. Told him not to take his anger out on his clients, but on his opponents. In the courtroom, Jimmy’s thundering oratory, his deliberate pacing of the floor, his exaggerated mannerisms were legendary. The older judges smiled knowingly at Jimmy’s trademark lines and gestures—the clenched teeth, the long, thoughtful pauses, the elucidating of various points on all five fingers—but lawyers facing him for the first time were petrified. But Zarin had taught him to be compassionate toward his clients. Although most of his clients were big corporations, on the rare occasions when he represented an individual, Jimmy made sure that he did not intimidate him or her.
What a difference a good marriage makes, Jimmy thought. Zarin had brought him nothing but good luck. And with Mehernosh now working beside him, his joy was complete. Hard to believe that his only son had given up the lures of America to come home to practice law with his dad. Hard to believe that his only son was now a married man. It seemed only yesterday that Mehernosh was running around the playground near Wadia Baug in his khaki shorts and that cute yellow Bugs Bunny T-shirt. Although they became best friends only a few years later, Binny Bilimoria and Mehernosh had hated each other then. Every evening, Binny would go up to Mehernosh and greet him with an innocent “Hey, Georgie Porgie. How are you today?” As Mehernosh would stomp his foot, Binny would solemnly recite:
“Georgie Porgie pudding and pie
Kissed the girls and made them cry.
When the girls came out to play,
Georgie Porgie ran away.”
Mehernosh hated that nursery rhyme, hated that nickname. Every evening, he would come screaming into the house, tears running down his cheeks, while Binny continued to play outside, looking like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. The Bilimorias and Kangas tried hard to repress their smiles as Coomi chided Binny and Zarin consoled Mehernosh.
Jimmy could remember it all so clearly—attending Mehernosh’s kindergarten play and laughing at the sight of his son dressed as a red lollipop; attending his son’s sixth-grade awards ceremony, where Me-hernosh won more prizes than any boy in the history of the school; sitting up with his boy all night, after his son broke his arm playing hockey; traveling through Germany with Mehernosh and watching the local girls fawn over his handsome teenaged son.
Thinking back on Mehernosh’s youth made Jimmy think fondly of the old Wadia Baug gang. Jimmy had come to Wadia Baug as a stranger; his son ran around it as if it were his private kingdom. Mehernosh had the run of the building, going in and out of the houses of most of his neighbors. In those days, many of the neighbors kept their front doors open all day long. Jimmy and Zarin never had to worry about attending one of Jimmy’s many business parties—they knew Mehernosh could sleep over at a neighbor’s house. Whenever Sheroo Mistry made the bread pudding that Mehernosh loved, she would nab the boy and insist that he have dinner with them. Knowing full well that Mehernosh would beat him, Soli Contractor still agreed to one-on-one games of basketball with the young boy. And after Binny and Mehernosh stopped being mortal enemies and became good friends, Mehernosh practically lived in the Bilimoria apartment, refusing to come home even for dinner. “Leave him, leave him,” Rusi would say. “He can just eat with us.”
During the summer holidays, Rusi occasionally took Mehernosh and Binny to the Bilimoria paper factory for a few hours. An excited Mehernosh would return from those trips singing the praises of the “big-big” machines that Rusi owned. “Hey, Daddy, Rusi Uncle promised me a job at his factory when I grow up,” he told his father importantly. “He said I can start as the night watchman.”
“And I will be the foreman, so I can dismiss you if you don’t do a good job,” Binny added.
Jimmy still regretted the move to Cuffe Parade when Mehernosh was eleven. Looking back, he wondered what on earth he had been thinking. Truth of the matter was, Jimmy had gotten a little puffy with pride. He was at the peak of his powers; his practice was booming. He had just argued and won his first case before the Supreme Court, which had resulted in a landmark decision about corporate liability. The case made him the darling of the business community. The Illustrated Weekly of India did a short piece on him. He was turning away more clients than he was accepting. Money came pouring in like the rains during the monsoon season. Some of it, he gave away. Twice a year, Jimmy and Zarin went to Udwada and fed a lavish dinner to the impoverished Parsi families living there. He established a Parsi Pan-chayat scholarship that each year paid for a deserving Parsi student to study law or engineering in America. A lot of the money, he spent on his family. He remodeled the apartment, bought a new car, got Zarin a membership at the Taj Health Club. And still there was plenty of money left over.
So he bought a flat in Cuffe Parade in a skyscraper owned by one of his clients. He told Zarin it was a good investment, that his client was selling it to him at a price he would be foolish to refuse. And the view of the water from the sixteenth floor couldn’t be beat. They would be far removed from the nasty pollution, from the noise of the Bombay traffic. The move would be good for their health and their sanity.
But the truth was, Jimmy had grown a little too big for Wadia Baug. He felt much more comfortable among his associates from Breach Candy and Marine Drive and Cuffe Parade because, among them, his wealth and success did not make him stick out. Especially after the Illustrated Weekly article appeared, his old neighbors seemed unsure of how to act in his presence. Some of them fawned over him, and their ingratiating manner annoyed him. Others acted nonchalant, and their refusal to acknowledge his success irritated him. He also became sensitive to the sting of their envy. Before, he could brush off their poison darts with a breezy, careless flick of his hand, but now they burned him for days. Once again, he began to feel like a stranger at Wadia Baug. The final straw came when he overheard Dosamai lecturing his son one evening. “Now that your daddy has become a big shot, don’t you be all stuck-up around us,” she told the teary boy. “Never forget where you come from, understand? Remember, what Ahura Mazda gives, Ahura Mazda also takes away.” Jimmy flew up the remaining steps and pulled his son away from the venomous old woman. “Please, Dosamai,” he said, choking on his anger. “Nobody has become a big shot. Whatever little I have, it’s through the sweat of my brow. Everyone here is free to work that hard, if they like. Anyway, I don’t like to involve my son in adult matters. I would wish that you wouldn’t, either, ever again.” Like a roach under the glare of a flashlight, Dosamai scuttled wordlessly into her dark apartment.
“I want to move,” he said to Zarin that night. “I don’t want my son growing up feeling like he can’t enjoy the fruits of his father’s labor. I can have the Cuffe Parade flat in move-in condition in two months.” Zarin tried to talk him out of it, but Jimmy’s mind was made up.
“Promise me this much at least,” she said, when she knew that she had lost. “Let’s keep this flat also. After all, it’s paid for and we don’t need the money. This way, we can come back occasionally to visit our friends and still have a place to stay.”
He was so relieved at her assent that he readily agreed.
Good thing, too, Jimmy now thought. The year they had spent in Cuffe Parade was the worst period in their marriage. Mehernosh was miserable. He pined for his old neighborhood friends and hated his new school. “Such snobs, they are,” he told Jimmy vehemently. “I told them where we used to live and that boy Ramesh said, ‘Where is that? Out of Bombay?’ I was ready to give him one big whack on his back-side.” Zarin, too, was silent around her neighbors and reluctant to get involved in ne
ighborhood projects. Jimmy fumed about it to himself, convinced that Zarin was punishing him for making her move. But when he confronted her about not making an effort to get to know her neighbors, Zarin looked at him sadly. “I’m really trying, Jimmy,” she said. “It’s just hard. The people here are so different. They don’t welcome Mehernosh into their homes, and everybody keeps their doors locked. The building association does not even allow the pauwala and the doodhwala to deliver groceries to the door. I just miss Wadia Baug. I can’t believe it myself, but I even miss Perin and Villo fighting with the milkman every morning. Even the constant ringing of the doorbell. Here, you could go for days without anybody stopping by.”
He turned away angrily from her. The truth was that Jimmy felt the same way, but he was loathe to admit it. Returning to Wadia Baug would be much too embarrassing. He had hoped that Zarin was not missing the old gang as fiercely as he was. “Maybe it’s an adjustment period,” he told her. “After all, we didn’t make our Wadia Baug friends in one day, either. As newcomers, it’s up to us to be more friendly. Maybe we should throw a party or something.”
And so they did—the first of many parties. Their neighbors came, admired their flat, ate their food, said hello to them the next time they saw them in the elevator, invited them to their own parties. But somehow, it didn’t take. Jimmy realized what the problem was one day: The people who lived around him were too much like the people he worked with. They had the same interests, the same ambitions. Compared to the eccentric zaniness, the melodramatic passions, the free-ranging diversity of the Wadia Baug crowd, these people seemed too narrowly focused, too bloodless. Too intent on holding on to what they had. This is exactly how I felt in Oxford toward the end, he realized with a start.
But it wasn’t until Zarin’s breakdown that Jimmy decided that his family’s happiness was more important than his bruised pride. He came home late one evening to an astonishing sight. Zarin was sitting on the sofa, sobbing softly to herself. Her hair was uncombed and her dress stained with tears. He was stunned. “Where’s Mehernosh?” he asked reflexively. “Is he okay?”
Bombay Time Page 8
