The Death of Mr Love, page 41
There! There it was! Moosa’s! The shadowy archway with its wrought-iron gates. Here we had sat, the string beds arranged in a rough circle in the street, and the goat had watched the movie with me. A street-lamp stood just where I remembered. There was the old warehouse across the road . . . but something had happened to it. A huge scorchmark flared across its face. The SAURASHTRA TRADING COMPANY was still there, but its sign was charred, nearly obliterated. Now it simply read CURRY . . . YARNS.
Then it struck me that there were no string beds in the street. Nobody had come out to greet us. The alley was deserted.
‘Bhalu, I don’t like it,’ Phoebe said. ‘Can we go?’
I said, ‘I don’t know what’s happened here. I’ll ask someone.’
‘Please!’ she said, tugging at my arm.
‘Ey! Yes? What do you want?’ A voice from a doorway. A thin man about my own age. Phoebe was still pulling at me. I said I was looking for a friend I had not seen for a long time.
‘He lived here? What’s his name?’
His real name, Mohammed Khan, was like searching London for Peter Smith. ‘His friends called him Dost,’ I said. ‘We used to meet in this lane. Years ago.’
‘Really?’ the man asked, staring at Phoebe, who could not understand what was being said. ‘What did you do here?’
‘Drank chai. Chatted. Debated . . . we were students.’
‘Oh I see,’ he said politely. ‘Whereabouts?’
So I pointed to Moosa’s dark gateway.
‘Well, I don’t know,’ the man said. ‘Sorry.’
I had an idea. ‘Is there still a tea shop round the corner?’
‘This is a city of tea shops.’
The Café Jam-i-Jam (Cup of Jamshid), which had once belonged to Dost’s uncle, seemed unchanged. Memorable, the meals I had eaten here, in those days when the city was at war, the time of blackout and sirens, when we sat, stoned as mystics, and watched orange blobs of tracer float slowly up into the darkness. But no one remembered Dost. We gathered a small crowd before it was clear that nobody could help us. The adda was gone. I could not find my friends.
DOST (BOMBAY, JULY–AUGUST 1999)
There was a taxi parked a few yards up the street, its driver dozing in the back. Bombay is full of taxis. In Sewri, where taxi-drivers seem to flock at night to roost, the lines of parked cabs are five miles long. I told the cabby to head for Mahalaxmi, more or less the opposite direction to our hotel. I didn’t want to go back to Apollo Bunder, to sit and brood. Our latest failure was somehow the most depressing. There had been – what was it? amusement? impudence? insolence? – in the manner of the people we had talked to. We would enquire again, I told Phoebe, at that other haunt of our youth, the adda on the shore by Haji Ali’s tomb. But I knew we would find no trace of Dost.
‘Go via Zaveri Bazaar,’ I told the driver, so we wound at a snail’s pace through little lanes clogged with handcarts and bicycles and people until we found ourselves in the goldsmiths’ quarter.
‘Stop here a moment.’
Above the clutter of roofs and awnings rose the pink-and-white tower of a Hindu temple.
‘Mumba’s temple. This is where it was rebuilt after the first one was destroyed.’
‘Why was it destroyed?’
‘The English,’ I said quite unconscious of the fact that they included her forbears (there had been Killigrews in India since the early eighteenth century). ‘Deep down, they always feared us natives. Smiling faces, knives in the dark. We were devious, treacherous, sly, on no account to be trusted. That’s why they cleared the ground round the fort. To give their gunners an uninterrupted field of fire in case of trouble. Mumba’s temple was in that zone, the Esplanade. It was demolished to make way for fortifications of some sort. Mumba Devi moved here, and has been here ever since.’
‘How do you know all these things?’
‘I’m a bookseller. What else do I have to do all day but read?’
We asked the taxi to wait and took a walk along Mumbadevi Street: stalls hung with rosaries of rudraksh beads – Srinuji would have felt right at home here – posters of exuberant gods and goddesses. Siva, moon-browed. Kali doing her victory jig on his decapitated corpse. Hundreds of times I must have seen this image, but had never noticed before that the severed heads in her necklace all belonged to men. At a flower stall by the temple gate – jasmine, marigolds, roses, lotuses – I bought Phoebe a garland of jasmine, wound it round her neck like a triple necklace of pearls.
In 1888, about a hundred years after the original temple of Mumba was knocked down – and about the time that a disgruntled Englishman was correcting proofs of his futuristic fantasy India in 1983 – its old site began swarming with coolies carrying bamboo scaffolding poles, marble, decorated tiles, stained glass, metal, bricks. Where, for centuries beyond memory, the goddess had dispensed her fishy blessings, they built a railway station and named it after the Great Mother Over The Sea. Victoria Terminus. VT. It was renamed Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus by the same politicians who, in a bid to reinvent their missing history, to fill a history-shaped hole, had renamed the city after the goddess.
The adda at Haji Ali was also long gone. No one there but a few beggars and a steady stream of faithful returning across the causeway from the sea-mosque, where the day’s last namaaz had just finished. Waves were breaking at their feet. They looked as if they were walking on water.
We sat on the sea-wall and watched the tide swell round Haji Ali’s dargah. White marble on troubled darkness.
‘Would you like to go out to dinner?’
I had in mind to take her to one of those little places in the bazaars, a café like the Jam-i-Jam, where we’d sit at a table in the street and eat whatever was good and hot and ready.
She shook her head. ‘I’m tired. But I don’t mind sitting here. The mosque is beautiful.’
‘Yes.’ Was it my faulty memory, or had this lovely old building once been disfigured by a huge neon sign advertising SHALIMAR BISCUITS? After a while I said, ‘Really precious experiences can’t be recreated or shared. One shouldn’t even try. It’s impossible.’
‘Why do you say that?’ she asked, lighting a cigarette. ‘You sound cross.’
So I told her about the meals I remembered so well, at the Jam-i-Jam, the pleasure of sitting in the street . . . ‘But it wouldn’t be like that for you. You’d be pestered. People would stare. You’ll never be able to share that experience.’
‘I’ve already shared it,’ she said. ‘It was in the story you gave me to read. About you and Jula and Dost . . . at that place where we’ve just come from.’
‘Yes, where you saw only a depressing and frightening alley. How can I bring it back to life for you, what it was really like?’
‘You already have,’ she said. ‘You wrote about it.’
‘Such things can’t be captured in words. You have to feel them for yourself.’
‘I can’t relive your memories,’ she said. ‘I don’t expect you to relive mine.’
I wished she would say again, as she had earlier, ‘I love you,’ but she sat on the wall, smoking a cigarette, looking out to sea, where the lights of a ship glowed distantly, on a horizon lost in night.
Some evenings later I returned to the Rudolf alone, exhausted from trudging the streets of Dongri visiting printing works, and going to see every political party I could think of, to ask whether anyone knew a Shambhumitra Kashele, alias Mitra, who had once been our old friend Jula. I’d ask for some tea, I thought, then go to Phoebe’s room and see her. For the last few nights she had been sleeping in her own room.
In reception were the usual gaggle of white-robed Arabs. Among them was a large man with a fleshy face who stared at me as I entered. Not an Arab. His shirt, unbuttoned to halfway down his chest, disclosed a gold chain nestling on a great deal of hair. Several rings flashed as he folded his paper.
The desk clerk said, ‘Sir, this man has been waiting for you.’
‘This is him?’ said the man, standing up. He gave a great bellow of laughter. ‘Never. Not a hope. I don’t believe it.’
‘I’m sorry, are you looking for me?’
‘Wah, what an English gentleman you’ve become.’
‘Do I know you?’
‘You mean you don’t recognise me?’
‘Should I?’
‘Put it this way,’ he said. ‘If I hadn’t been circumcised . . .’
The hotel clerk, disconcerted by this strange remark, was quite dizzied to see me run forward and embrace the stranger, who spread his own arms in generous welcome.
‘How on earth did you find me?’ I asked, when we were in my room, and a pot of tea stood on the table between us.
‘I didn’t find you. You found me,’ he said, looking round at the shabby furnishings. ‘Bhalu bhai, what are you doing here? Don’t you know this is a rather shady place?’
‘But I couldn’t find you,’ I said. ‘I’ve been trying for days. I went to Moosa’s but it has all changed. What happened there?’
‘All that later,’ he said. ‘First, where is she?’
‘She?’
‘Your girlfriend! Or forgive me, maybe she’s your wife . . . The blonde with the sulky mouth that everyone’s talking about.’
‘But how do you know? And who is everyone?’
‘The tea-drinking elite that hangs out at my uncle’s place. Only it isn’t his place any more.’
‘Whose is it then?’
‘Mine.’
‘Yours?!’
‘Mine,’ he repeated, evidently enjoying himself.
‘But I went there and asked for you . . .’
‘You certainly did – the most exciting thing that’s happened there for years. I’ve lost count how many people have come sidling up to me and said, “Dost miyah, an old friend of yours came from England with . . .” ’ He made an hourglass gesture.
‘I must have asked a dozen people. Nobody knew you.’
‘Nobody knew? Everybody knew! Most people in the street would have known. I’ve lived in that area all my life. My whole family is there. Of course they know me.’
‘But . . .’
‘. . . But they don’t tell you that, eh? Well, Bhalu, take a look at yourself. You come to Dongri. Do you look like a Dongri-wallah? No! Do you even look like a Bombayite? No! You’re someone from outer space. A Martian! Look at those trousers, those shoes. Your face is a normal brown colour, but everything else screams phoren’. (The last word was English, he was otherwise speaking Urdu.)
‘Not only that, but along with you is this woman. Is she a woman you might pass in the street without a glance? No, she has a pink skin, hair the colour of butter and blue eyes . . .’
‘Green,’ I said, laughing. ‘She’s very clear on that point.’
‘I like green better,’ he said. ‘So you and green-eyes have already attracted the attention of every loafing idiot on the street. Okay, this is no big deal. You might be a pair of lost tourists, except . . . what do you do next? You ask for me. Mohammed Khan, used to be known as “Dost” – well, that was in my youth, my dear, a time of indiscretions and things best forgotten. Still, out of sheer curiosity they might have brought you to me, but then you really excelled yourself. Aapne saari duniya-jahaan mein dondi pitwa di (you banged the drum to the whole world), saying – “Dost and I used to meet at a place around the corner.” And not just a vague round-here-somewhere, but that corner, over there, in that lane. And then, as if that isn’t specific enough, you inform everyone. “It used to belong to a man called Moosa Ali.” ’ He began to chuckle. ‘But the funniest thing is that you told Moosa’s nephew we were a debating society.’ Dost laughed until his eyes were wet.
‘Arré bhai, you always were a bhola Bhalu.’
‘So,’ he said, smiling at me. ‘Say.’
Old friend! For a moment I could say nothing. A salty tide rose inside me, and hung, poised to overwhelm. Say? What could I say? He seemed to understand what I was feeling, because for quite a while we just sat and smiled at one another.
What’s the story? Where did you go? What happened?
Stories begin before their beginnings. A blue room. A Ganesh calendar on the wall. A plain-clothes cop who interrogated me.
‘Remember the night we were arrested?’
I began to tell him what had followed – my life in England, Katy, the twins, the lost years, the bookshop. He listened carefully, rarely interjecting, except when something puzzled him.
‘This bookselling,’ he said. ‘If it doesn’t make money, what good is it?’
‘I’m happier since I stopped making money.’
‘Over here that kind of happiness can kill you. You know the first rule of life in Bombay . . . Agodar potoba, nantar vitthoba!’
First Mr Gut, then Mr God.
‘I see you follow your own advice,’ I said, indicating the swell of his kameez. Quite a belly, had Dost. Doing well, clearly. Glitter of gold round his neck. On his knuckles.
‘Takes time and money to make one of these,’ he said, patting Mr Gut. ‘After marriage, children, I quit fooling about. Settled down. Took over the Jam-i-Jam . . . must be fifteen years ago. Now I have two restaurants. Some side businesses too.’
I said, ‘Well, I’m afraid with me it’s quite the opposite. Katy’s the earner in our household.’
‘So she’s not your wife.’
‘Of course she is,’ I said, thrown by this.
‘Your wife is Katy, and she is at home,’ Dost said patiently. ‘So who is she, this other woman, the one you’re here with?’
‘Just a friend.’ I had not yet broached the subject of Phoebe.
‘Just a friend? But you fancy her like hell, don’t you?’
‘Why should you think that?’
‘Because, my friend, why else would you take her to Haji Ali and sit on the sea wall holding hands like a pair of young lovers? Also, on the way back to the hotel, you put your arm round her and called her “darling”!’
‘How do you know these things?’
‘The taxi you took, from outside the café . . . my Cousin Murad. Speaks no English, but has seen enough movies to understand “darling”.’
Then I remembered that as we left Haji Ali, the same taxi had drawn up beside us and the driver said he’d waited because he had a feeling we might want to go on somewhere else. At the time I’d thought nothing of it. Just a cabby hoping for a tourist-sized tip.
‘What about Mitra? Do you see much of him? We’re looking forward to meeting him. Phoebe hasn’t seen him since we were all about ten. In those days he was called Jula . . .’ I spoke on happily into what I soon realised was a lengthening silence from Dost.
‘We are no longer close,’ he said at last. ‘Things have changed.’
‘How do you mean? Has Mitra changed?’
He smiled. ‘Will he ever? He’s still the same serious, shit-faced old fly-killer, determined to set the world to rights. Still got that chip on his shoulder.’
‘Then what . . . ?’
Dost sighed, spread his hands. ‘Difficult to explain . . . It’s not Mitra. It’s Bombay that’s changed. Politics has got into everything. Like mildew. Ruins whatever it touches.’
‘I don’t understand. I heard that he got mixed up with politics, but how could that affect a friendship?’
‘You really have been living on Mars,’ said Dost. ‘Don’t you get news over there in England? Are you really unaware that—?’
But before he could establish the precise nature or extent of my ignorance, there was a tap at the door. Phoebe came in, wearing an evening dress that appeared to be upheld only by her breath.
‘I’m tired of slumming it!’ she announced, pirouetting to reveal a back scooped to the waist. ‘Tonight we’re going somewhere where the menu is in French—’ She stopped when she saw the stranger, who rose uncertainly to his feet.
‘Phoebe! Guess who this is!’
They stood staring at one another. Never, in all the times I had imagined this meeting, had I realised there would be such a gulf between them. Nor had I remembered that they would not speak each other’s languages, so when I cried, ‘It’s Dost!’ I was unprepared for her to step forward, hold out her hand and say, in a manner absurdly English, ‘How do you do?’
‘Zahé kismet!’ (My good fortune!) replied the dumbfounded Dongri-wallah. His hand, arrested in the act of rising to touch his breast, reached hesitantly for her hand: a peculiar sight, my two old friends, trying to harmonise their rituals of greeting, negotiate the difficult passage that had opened between their worlds.
I began explaining to Phoebe how Dost had found us, while he stood by, looking unwontedly shy.
‘So the taxi-driver was your cousin!’ she exclaimed.
‘Sorry, not speaking too good English,’ he said in that language.
‘Better than my Hindi!’ was her practised reply.
‘Bhalu explained me about you. Meeting you is for me a very pleasure . . . Bhalu,’ (to me in Urdu) ‘it’s sickening not being able to express oneself properly. She must think I’m a peasant.’ To Phoebe, from whose breasts his eyes could not unfasten themselves: ‘Please you will take food . . . dinner . . . at my place . . . ?’ To me: ‘Come on, lad, I’ve got my car outside. You’re expected, everything’s prepared. We’ll make a real night of it . . .’ To a hesitating Phoebe: ‘So you please come? We go now.’
She looked at me. I nodded.
‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘I’d love to.’
Not wanting to embarrass her in front of him, I said, ‘Il faut que tu te change. Ta décolletage est délicieuse, mais pas appropriate.’
‘Et ton français,’ she snapped back, ‘ne s’est pas amélioré depuis l’école! On ne dit pas “appropriate”, c’est approprié. Alors moi, je le suis toujours! . . . Please excuse me,’ she said to Dost, and left the room. When the door had closed behind her, Dost burst out laughing and clapped me on the shoulder. ‘Yaar, tumne kamaal kiya! Kya maal laaye ho!’ (Lad, you’ve surpassed yourself. What goods you’ve brought!)
