Bombay Time

by Thrity Umrigar

  Rusi looked bewildered. “Mani? Who—what are you talking about? You think my mamma wants her only son to be a divorce? What has gotten into your head to make you think like this, Coomi?”

  “Yah, take your mother’s side blindly. What else did I expect? God forbid that my husband would ever side with me. What do you know about what goes on in that house while you are at work all day long? Perhaps I should put on pants and go to work, while you stay at home with your sneaky mother.”

  “How dare you talk of my mamma in that tone. I want you to apologize to her, Coomi, when we go home tonight. Don’t you think my poor widowed mother has suffered enough in her life already?”

  But Coomi was not one to apologize. On rare occasions, she felt a twinge of regret and cursed herself for her careless words, for her awful ability to sting both Khorshed and Rusi with the lash of her tongue. But that night was not one of those occasions. “Over my dead body, I’ll apologize to that woman,” she said. “It would just give her more ammo against me.”

  “ ‘That woman’? This is the woman who never raised her voice at me, who raised me with love and respect, and my wife refers to her as that woman? Like she’s a commonplace ganga or street sweeper?” Without warning, Rusi’s body began to heave with sobs. “I married you with such hopes, to bring joy and good fortune into our house. Instead, I have a wife who acts as if my mother is her bitter enemy.”

  His tears shattered her anger and she reached for his hand. “Oh, come on now, Rusi, you know me and my temper. You know I didn’t mean anything against your mamma. She’s a good person. I know that. How many times must I tell you I don’t mean anything by my words. Dangerous to drive a car this way, crying and all. Stop, na.” After he dabbed his eyes dry with his starched handkerchief, she put her arm around his neck and massaged it. “Sometimes I feel I’ve married a woman, I swear,” she murmured. “Whoever heard of a man being so sensitive? Delicate as bone china, you are. One stern look and you can crack. But I didn’t mean anything, honest.”

  More than once, she found herself longing for the brusqueness and bravado of her three brothers. The very things she had once loved about Rusi—that ridiculously long, vulnerable neck, the softness of his tone, his loving, thoughtful words—all irritated her now. Or rather, Coomi took it all personally, as if Rusi’s quiet dignity, his softspoken words, his sensitive nature were all ways of showing her up, an affront to her loud and boisterous family.

  Like the time before her marriage when she and Rusi were having dinner at her mother’s home. Rusi was in the middle of a sentence when Sorab, her youngest brother, let out a loud fart. “What was that?” Fali asked, while the others burst into laughter. “Sounded like an earthquake in here.”

  Coomi noticed the look of shock and disgust on Rusi’s face. At that moment, she was ashamed of her brothers, hated them for their rude manners and juvenile ways. “My God, Sorab,” she chided. “That was so rude, even for you.”

  Before Sorab could respond, Fali turned to his sister, his face gleaming with malice. “Not even married yet and already acting like a madam?” he said softly. “Arre, Coomi, for your wedding, we’re not going to hire a band. Sorab will play the trumpet with his bum only.” Only Coomi and Rusi did not join in the laughter that followed.

  Now, the memory of that dinner made Coomi feel defensive and protective of her brothers. Who did Rusi think he was? she fumed. Acting like a bara sabib, like he was royalty or something. Sorab and the others were just being boys, having fun, that’s all.

  Still, it was hard to know whom she should blame for the fizzling out of her marriage. They had started out with such promise, after all. She had liked Rusi months before he ever took notice of her, before their eyes met in the rearview mirror of his car. He was in love with whatshername—that plump woman—when Coomi first met him. Tina, that was her name. A girl with caterpillars for eyebrows. Still, Rusi’d had eyes for no one else at the time. But once he noticed Coomi, once their eyes met in the rearview mirror of his car and she smiled at him before looking away, he pursued her vigorously. Not that she had fought him too hard. In those days, Rusi had been like lightning in a bottle, dazzling. Aflame with ambition and guts and fire. None of this weakling stuff, this obsession with failure that dominated his life now. Once it was known that they were a couple, they were the envy of all their friends. How strange, how wrong it was that it was the others who had ended up with the good marriages, Coomi thought. After all, who would’ve bet on Bomi and Sheroo? Two nice but inconsequential people. Lightweights. She and Rusi had been different—smart, dynamic, ambitious. That was the big secret: She had been ambitious, too. Nobody saw it because she wasn’t loud about her ambition the way Rusi was. He would talk about his dreams to a stranger at a bus stop, Coomi often thought, affectionately at first, then contemptuously. Anybody who knew Rusi for five minutes knew he wanted to be successful in business, own a factory with a huge, well-manicured front lawn like the one he’d seen in a German magazine, have lots of children, and, someday, have his sons take over the family business.

  But Coomi’s dreams remained unsaid, even to her closest friends. When she was a young girl, she had wanted to be a hero. As a small child, she believed that being a hero was a profession, so that one could choose to be a hero in the same way one could choose to be a doctor or a tonga driver or a banker. She spent hours daydreaming in the bathroom, ignoring her mother’s incessant beatings on the door. “You selfish girl, I want you out, in one, two, three,” her mother would scream. “Who you think you are, the Maharani of Jaipur? Using up all the hot water, you shameless thing.” But Coomi barely heard her, dreaming as she was of rescuing infants from burning buildings, of stopping old people from getting evicted, of leading the Indian Army into glorious battle. She was a naturally curious child, and all her dreams were about exploration and adventure. She wanted to discover everything—from lost tribes in dark continents to what lay inside people’s heads. Her father came home one evening, to find his six-year-old daughter sitting on the floor with the two dolls that she owned. Coomi had smashed their wooden scalps and was pulling out the stuffing with a pair of scissors. “Oh my God,” he muttered. “Daughter, are you mad? What are you doing?”

  “Oh, nothing, Daddy,” she answered. “I am just wanting to see what their brains look like.”

  Surrounded by her teasing, boisterous brothers, Coomi grew up knowing that dreams had to be zealously guarded and kept secret. One day, when she was eight and Sorab six, she asked her younger brother to reverse the usual order of their play. Today, she would be the policeman and Sorab would be the thief, Coomi declared.

  Sorab stared at his sister uncomprehendingly. “We cannot do that,” he said.

  “Why not? Why do I always have to be the poor thief? I’m older than you, even.”

  “Because you are a girl. Everybody knows a girl can’t be a policeman.” Sorab giggled at the silliness of the idea. “It is my job to catch you.”

  As she grew older and her dreams became more subversive, she hid them even more carefully. By the time she reached college, Coomi already understood how little value she had as a woman. She noticed how her mother unconsciously served the largest portions to her brothers, gave them the pieces of meat with the fewest bones. She observed how all her professors assumed that she was in college to find a suitable husband. “Miss Katpitia,” her beloved professor Krishnamurti said when she went to his office in tears over an average grade. “What would I give to have my male students be as diligent as you are. It’s so nice to see a student work so hard. Such a shame you will settle down any day now with your own family. Such a waste for a woman to be as smart as you are.” She left his office, shaking with frustration. But Krishnamurti had done her a favor. She saw her earlier dreams of heroism and adventure for what they were—a child’s fantasy. After that, she aspired to something even more fantastic—marriage to a man with prospects and with the good manners and culture that her family so badly lacked. Plainly said, Coomi was determ
ined to marry above herself. It was painfully clear that she could not pull herself out of her lower-middle-class origins by the sweat of her own brow; no, she would need to perch a ride on the shoulders of a man who was unafraid to work hard himself. This was not the path Coomi would have preferred—she was too intelligent and proud for that—but it was the only path that would lead from her small, noisy, sweaty house to the outside world.

  Rusi met her needs perfectly. It was too good to be true that she also found him easy to love. She liked Rusi the first time she met him. She had known about the Bilimorias for years, but she and Rusi had never really talked until the night of the New Year’s Eve dance at Parsi Gymkhana. She had seen Rusi across the room and asked Sheroo to introduce them. After a moment or two, Sheroo disappeared, leaving them to chat for about ten minutes. Despite the fact that Rusi seemed distracted, despite the fact that most of their conversation revolved around Tina, the woman he was in love with, Coomi felt a sense of loss when Rusi finally excused himself and left her side. “It was nice chatting,” she said as he got up to leave. “Nice to have finally met you.” He nodded absently, but his eyes were already on Tina, who had walked in the door. Although they ran into each other regularly after that first meeting, it was about six more months before he noticed her again, during the car trip to Khandala. But Coomi was smitten. Everything about Rusi—his excruciating sensitivity, his gentleness, his moodiness, his relentless desire for self-improvement—was new and foreign to her. “That Rusi Bilimoria,” she said to Sheroo, “he’s different from the other chaps, no? Like he’s made of milk and cream or something. So soft.”

  “And what are other men made of? Wood and bricks?” Sheroo laughed.

  But it was true. Rusi was so different from the men she’d known that she could scarcely believe they had grown up in the same city, much less in the same neighborhood. He seemed untouched by the realities of common life, somehow. In some ways, he reminded Coomi of herself when younger. Then she, too, had lived in a fantasy world of dreams and ambition. But there were two vital diffetences: Unlike her, Rusi had a plan to turn his dreams into reality. And unlike her, Rusi was a man.

  Her oldest brother, Fali, was appalled when he had found out that his sister was dating Rusi. “Of course, my only sister had to go and find the weakling of Parsi Gymkhana. Arre, yaar. your boyfriend doesn’t even know how to bench-press, such a dandy he is. So many of my friends are interested in you, good strong he-man types, and you have to go out with a homo. Ever seen his legs? Saala. they’re like two pieces of sugarcane. And how he speaks? Like he was educated in fucking Oxford or Cambridge instead of at the same ghaati schools we all went to. All because his daddy was having some nice post at Central Bank. No, Rusi isn’t our type of folk, Coomi. You better think twice before you go paagal over him.”

  It was good advice, Coomi often thought in later years. But it came too late. She was already crazy about Rusi by then.

  It was Dosamai who had bumped into Khorshed Bilimoria on the street accidentally on purpose one evening and told her about Coomi and Rusi. Khorshed, who prided herself on being an involved parent, was peeved to hear about Coomi from Dosamai. She was hurt that Rusi would keep his girlfriend a secret from her. Also, she was perturbed at the ominous tone Dosamai used to describe Coomi’s family. “A little different from the people who live in Wadia Baug,” Dosamai said. “The brothers, I’ve heard, are a little wild. All kinds of mischief making they are into. But they are boys, after all. Nothing to do with the chokri your Rusi is interested in. Also, what can their poor mother do? People say her husband was a drunkard. Just took off one day, only, and, has, they never saw him again. How can such fatherless children not be junglees? Far be it from me to judge that poor woman.”

  Khorshed went home that evening with a heavy heart. But she hid from Rusi what she had heard, merely telling her son that she would like to meet the woman he was seeing, now that the whole building knew about it. She just wished he had heard it from Rusi, instead of an outsider, Khorshed said. And no, she would not tell Rusi who had told her the news.

  The following Saturday, Coomi visited her future home for the first time. She was a little disappointed at how bare the rooms were and how simple the furnishings. Somehow, she had expected Rusi’s home to reflect the largeness of his imagination. There were no pictures up on the walls, other than a large portrait of Khorshed’s dead husband, no trinkets in the living room. Silence was a living thing in this apartment, she felt, and the thought made her shudder. But Coomi also noticed how gloriously large the rooms were compared to her cramped little flat, how high the ceilings were and how neat and tidy everything was, compared to the messy chaos that reigned in her home. She liked the orderliness of things in the Bilimoria household, but it also felt a little too sanitary and antiseptic, so that she felt a twinge of affection for the glorious mess that was her brothers’ bedroom. At least you know that flesh-and-blood people live there, she thought, a little defensively. People who bleed when you cut them. But then she felt ashamed of this involuntary put-down of Rusi. Rusi was very much a passionate man, and she had the love bites to prove it.

  Coomi could feel Khorshed Bilimoria’s eyes on her and she fought the urge to shuffle in her seat. Khorshed was an imperial-looking woman with garlic white skin and thoughtful brown eyes. Next to her, Coomi felt gauche, awkward, and dark. Something about the old woman’s regal bearing made her feel inadequate and nervous. She jumped as she realized Khorshed was saying something to her.

  “I’m sorry?” Coomi stuttered.

  Khorshed laughed and glanced at her son. “I just said, ‘You will have some chai, correct?’ “ she repeated. “I have brought home some daar-ni-pori from the Ratan Tata Institute to have with tea.”

  Coomi stammered a yes and then was unsure whether she should offer to make the tea. She looked to Rusi for help, but he was staring resolutely ahead. “May I help?” she asked timidly.

  Khorshed shook her head. “Oh, no, no need. The kettle’s already on the stove. It will only be another minute.”

  Willing her hands not to shake, Coomi sipped her tea. Looking over the rim of her cup, she saw Khorshed staring appraisingly at her. She’s trying to decide whether I’m good enough for her son, she thought. The thought made her bristle and, involuntarily, she sat up a little taller in her chair. If she asks anything about my daddy, I’m going to walk out of here, she decided.

  But Khorshed did not ask her any personal questions that day. Instead, she talked about the price of fish, the recent bus strike, her deceased husband and her strong-willed son. “Put some sense into my stubborn son’s head, if you can, deekra,” she said. “Tell him to give up these mad ideas of being a businessman and to allow his mother to find him a decent job at Central Bank instead. My husband, God bless him, was well regarded at his job, and I still have some good contacts there. Soon, with these Hindu politicians wanting to take over everything, I won’t even be able to do that for him.”

  Rusi stiffened beside her and Coomi’s heart ached for him. But she was afraid of interfering in what was apparently an old conversation between mother and son. “Rusi does what he wants, Auntie,” she said finally. “He has a mind of his own. And I’m sure if he changes his mind in a few years, you will be able to help him still.”

  Khorshed smiled a wan smile. “Hard to say. If these politicians don’t mess everything up, then it’s a possibility. I tell you, I still mourn the day the British left India. Took with them the last remnants of decency and culture. The worst mistake we Parsis made was to join the freedom movement. We bit the hand that fed us. Our community had prospered and grown under the British. And this is how we repaid them, by marching in the streets and screaming, ‘English, go home.’ The height of ungratefulness. And look at the result. All these years of Hindu raj, and everything is falling apart. Nehru is a good, sophisticated man, but what can one man do alone? I tell you, India is at least lucky that it was Nehru who survived instead of Gan-dhiji. Mind you, Gandhiji was a gre
at man, but he would have destroyed even a modern city like Bombay and turned it into a village. You know what he used to say about khadi and village industries and all that, no? If Gandhi had lived, I would probably have had to learn to wear a khadi sari and use a weaving loom.”

  Rusi rolled his eyes, as if he had heard this tirade numerous times before. He knew that part of his mother’s opposition to the Indian leadership was purely aesthetic—in the early days after independence, Khorshed had feared that she would have to give up her precious silk saris and wear khadi instead. Rusi simply considered Khorshed’s obsession with the British to be an eccentricity, rather than a political stance. But Coomi was shocked, and for a moment, she forgot her nervousness or the purpose of her visit. “But Khorshed Auntie, how can you miss the British? After all, India belongs to us. For years, those goras told us they were God, and we believed them. We let them into our country as guests and they acted like common thieves. I don’t care how many blunders our leaders make, at least India is our own now. If I’d been a little older, I would’ve joined the freedom struggle, for sure.”

  Rusi tensed, because he knew what was to follow. He was angry at himself for not preparing Coomi any better for this first meeting with his mother and for not steering the conversation away from controversial subjects. After all, his girlfriend and his mother were the two most stubborn people he knew.

  Khorshed spoke in a soft, choked voice. “My dear girl,” she said. “With all due respect, you don’t know what you’re talking about. When we say sir to an Englishman, it’s more than his white skin we’re respecting. We’re respecting the most civilized nation on earth—the birthplace of Shakespeare and Dickens. Where would India be without the British? You answer me that. Still a backward nation of bullock carts, that’s where. No trains, no motorcars, no electricity. Can you imagine? They have given us all these gifts. Now that they’ve pulled out of here, you mark my words, life will continue to get miserable for us Parsis. Soon, we will curse the day we ever came to this country. I can see a day when even the Hindus and Muslims will unite and send us packing all the way back to Persia.”