Breathless in Bombay Page 15

  Chacha walked over to the bubblewalla, who waited with a smile. “How much?” Chacha asked, and the bubblewalla said, “Teen sau! Three hundred rupees!”

  Chacha shook his head. “Say the correct amount. You know that is not fair.”

  “What do you mean not fair?” the bubblewalla said, frowning. “That is the price. It is fixed.”

  “Why, brother, do you want to cheat?” Chacha said kindly. “A single transaction won’t make a rich man out of you.”

  “What’s it to you?” hissed the bubblewalla. “It’s not your money, going out of your pocket. Let the Arabs pay. They can well afford it!”

  “No, brother, it doesn’t look good for our country, to cheat a guest this way.”

  “Don’t tell me what looks good and what doesn’t, you old scoundrel. I bet you are overcharging them yourself. And what are you trying to do—cut me out, huh?” Then lowering his voice, he said, “If you want your cut, just say so. Why you are being difficult?”

  Chacha was adamant—not a paisa more than hundred rupees. So what if his customers were rich and could afford it many times over? In his book, honesty had to be maintained.

  Finally, the bubblewalla relented, but not before calling Chacha names under his breath.

  Chacha returned with the gadget and gave the remaining money to the Arab, who pulled out a hundred-rupee note and held it to Chacha, saying, “Rakhlo, baksheesh. Keep it, as a tip.”

  Politely Chacha refused the money. The bubblewalla eyed him resentfully.

  Chacha returned to the driver’s seat, thinking he would show the boy how to use the gadget: how to twirl the object round and round in the mixture and blow gently at the film till it became a steady, rising bubble. But the boy didn’t seem interested. He had found a new toy, which occupied his attention. The whip dangled in his hand, left to right and back again. He stood up, showing the whip to the passing traffic. Chacha kept the bubble jar on the seat and tugged at the reins. The victoria resumed its journey.

  The boy kept swinging his whip at the passing cars and saying, “Sultan.” He squealed his invincibility to the skies, and his father bristled with pride, his mother grinned through tobacco-shot teeth, and his sisters nudged one another and looked at him adoringly.

  The victoria clattered along. Behind it the first gray of night rolled in. The lights came on—in buildings, in flats, on the streets, and overhead, on electronic billboards. Headlights from outgoing traffic, headlights from incoming streams—they flashed and they blinded. In the center, on street poles, translights shone like soldiers carrying shields, poised to defend the beauty of the Queen. Slowly, Her Majesty donned her necklace. The ocean stirred approvingly. The clouds gathered and formed a canopy—a still gray blanket, or a fashionable wig. Chacha returned to his thoughts—as dark as the advancing night.

  He thought of Badshah. His brother was aging. There were signs, small signs like him tiring after two stretches. He would wheeze on the way back, which was so unlike him. And last week, on a Bombay-by-night tour, Badshah had begun to shiver, breaking into a warm, trembling sweat. Of course Chacha had fussed and comforted him; he had wiped him down, while the tourists had disembarked for pictures, but there was a look in his eyes that spelt defeat, that said the race was run, the finishing post was in sight. Yes, it’s time, Chacha thought. Time for him to retire.

  But today Badshah appeared fine; his gait was sprightly. Looking at the red crest bobbing reliably, Chacha felt a surge of admiration. His mind went back to the days of old, to the classics Badshah had won. How the onlookers had cheered. How they had gone mad. How many fortunes had been made by Badshah and how many strengthened and multiplied. What a horse! What an animal! Unbeatable, unbeatable Badshah, uncrowned king of the turf. Oh, what would Chacha give to see him race again, to see him thunder home, warm, victorious, and welcomed by all.

  The red crest also raised an unpleasant memory. It reminded Chacha of Amir Jawaab. Amir Jawaab, prince of beggars, thin, gaunt, and bearded, who wore a cocky hat with a red plume and strutted his successful career down the garish lanes of the red-light area. “Sab bhookhe, sab bhikari, amir bhikari, garib bhikari, sab sale bhikari,” he would say with undisguised conviction, daring anyone to challenge his theory, which held that all were beggars: the rich, the poor, all were wanting, all were craving; in some strange way no one was satisfied.

  In an old empty garage, Amir Jawaab ran a school for beggars. With Ghulam, his stray dog, at his feet, whom he’d kick or feed depending on his moods, Amir Jawaab gave instructions to his students, aged between six and fourteen.

  Amir Jawaab’s day would begin at 8:00 A.M., after gobbling a masala omelet and drinking two cups of chai because he was too drunk to have eaten the night before. Then, munching on a pink-icing cake for a rush of glucose energy, he would walk the lanes, hurling his greetings to the madams, who were the only ones awake, brushing their swollen, acidic mouths in narrow doorways. “Good morning, Chachi; good morning, Auntie. May poverty stay away from your door. May the day bring you luck.”

  The madams liked Amir Jawaab and his bravado. They had known him since childhood, the bastard seed of Aminabai Maktoud. Amir was fourteen when they had taken Aminabai away in an Ambassador car. They took her at knifepoint, because they thought she told on Latif Chickna, a member of the dreaded Salim Bhangar gang from Nagpada. Amir never got to see his mother again, and no one—least of all the cops—bothered to find out what had happened to her.

  In time, Amir learned to fend for himself, to get by on his wits, to switch careers depending on his needs. He tried his hand as a pickpocket, a car thief, a pimp. He failed in all these, landing each time in a police dragnet that seemed to dog his footsteps. Then he saw Amitabh Bachchan in Naseeb and knew that he, too, could act. He could convince people to part with their money. Time-harried Bombayites would be glad to get him off their backs and off their conscience.

  Dressed in filthy rags, Amir Jawaab would tilt his head, twist his hand, make his fingers quiver, and stoop and walk with a pronounced jerk, throwing one leg before another. He would approach cars at signals, cars with softhearted girls and curious children and businessmen guilty of the wealth they had amassed. He would throw back his head, roll his eyes, and give a deep, low animal groan. His tongue would dangle in mid-air, a starving blue serpent, and he would continue rolling his head, groaning like some dying animal, till the occupant of the car would shift uncomfortably and release a generous amount of change into Amir’s outstretched palm.

  It didn’t take him long to wise up to places of easy profit. He took his act to the gates of temples, where people arrived in a charitable mood, and to hospitals, where the relatives of patients prayed for miracles, and to wedding halls, where the families of the bridal couple were anxious to collect blessings for the to-be-weds. He knew which of his customers would succumb and at what point. Boyfriends wishing to impress their girlfriends, mothers waiting for their children outside schools, businessmen in their cars, locked in important discussions, and foreign tourists who’d never seen anything like this—all of them came under the spell of Amir Jawaab’s act.

  Working the streets, he got to know others like him, other beggars not as successful. At first, he’d give them free advice, telling them how to playact successfully. Then, realizing he had a talent and possibly could gain a following, he began a school for beggars. He started with street children, whose parents worked as daily-wage earners, pushing a handcart, toiling at a construction site, or watering plants in parks. The parents were glad to have the children off their backs and were gladder when they saw the children’s earnings. They encouraged their children to attend Amir Jawaab’s school, to listen carefully and learn his tricks. In some cases, when the parents landed jobs in the Gulf, they even left their children with Amir Jawaab, and he was fine with that. Children were lucky for him. The more dependent they became, the more they ended up earning for him. His flock grew; his income, too. But it was never enough, for there was so much money to be made
in Bombay, if only you knew how to plead and persist.

  That morning Amir Jawaab had dropped in at the adda. Zarinabai Doobrasta welcomed him warmly, saying, “Give me a tip, no, Amir Jawaab, for the matka bazaar?”

  “Later,” he replied, unbuttoning his shirt and rubbing the hair on his chest. “Right now I have business with Simran, business that cannot wait.”

  Zarinabai nodded and called to Simran.

  The moment she saw him, sprawled on the bed, in flared green trousers, his shirt open to his navel, Simran knew it to be a bad sign. She knew he had come for Zulfi. Zulfi, who was a natural-born beggar, he said. Who would get his customers’ hearts bleeding, empty their pockets in no time. Amir Jawaab knew an actress when he saw one. And Zulfi was the right age, too, when her mind could easily be molded.

  “You should be grateful I have spotted her,” he bragged to Simran. “Without me, what chance does she have? She will have to watch you dying, alone and unwanted. Or she will have to come into the trade herself. Working with me, she can earn for you and for herself. She can make good money for both of us. And she can see to you, when you are old and useless.”

  Simran knew this to be the truth. Many mothers had given up their children just to save them from a life of prostitution. But she had nursed a dream for Zulfi, a big and sacred dream. And she knew not whether it was possible or real, but it angered her to hear Amir Jawaab speak like this.

  “Stay away from my daughter, O prince of beggars,” she said to Amir Jawaab, raising a finger and her voice. “I will slit your nunu if you come near her. She is not going to join your school. She is not going to be your puppet, living on people’s charity. She will study. She will educate herself. She will meet fine people, and look like them, and talk like them, and she will learn their habits and their tastes. I will see that she does that, no matter what it takes.”

  “Fool yourself, you insane woman,” snarled Amir Jawaab, rising from the bed. “This is not you talking but your opium. It has filled your head with impossible dreams. No one makes it out of here; no one breaks the code. Haven’t you heard? Haven’t you seen? Now hear this carefully. Just the other day I heard Bhikoo Bhadva ask about some very young girls. He has a request from a sheikh who likes them young. And when the sheikh finishes with them, he puts them in the camel races. And you know what those are, don’t you? Death sentences in mid-desert!”

  Tipping his hat, the beggar-prince left, pausing at the door to remind Simran that he would be back and that would be the last time.

  Seeing he was gone, Zarinabai clutched her head and wailed. “I don’t even know what to play for the matka bazaar. How will I make up my losses?”

  Ignoring her, Simran lifted her petticoat and ran full speed to the stable. Chacha—she needed to see Chacha. He would know what to do. Chacha cared. He cared deeply. He was God’s own man. And he loved her child like mad, almost as much as she did.

  “What is happening? Is this a horse or a donkey?” the Arab’s voice broke.

  Chacha awoke from his thoughts. What was wrong with Badshah? He was almost trudging.

  Chacha tugged at the reins gently, then hard, and Badshah, after snorting twice, began to trot again.

  A car with kids whizzed past. In it was a German shepherd, his head and neck out of the window, his long, pink tongue dripping. The Arab boy showed the dog his whip.

  WHEN SIMRAN BROKE IN on him, Chacha was massaging Badshah’s legs. He was applying mustard oil in a swift, downward motion. Although expensive, the oil brought Badshah relief; it prevented his bones from degenerating. Simran entered nervously, for in Chacha’s presence she felt the shyness of a niece. She sat on her favorite seat, the old biscuit tin, fumbled in her blouse, pulled out a half-smoked cigarette, and managed to light it after a couple of aborted strikes.

  “Amir Jawaab wants Zulfi,” she said without looking at Chacha. “He says either he gets her or that Bhikoo Bhadva. I won’t let them have her. I will kill them. Then I will kill myself. But I will not let their dirty hands fall on her. Why, that Bhikoo Bhadva, son of a serpent, wants to sell her to a sheikh who is a real animal—he likes to have his fun with young girls. You will help?”

  Chacha did not look up. He continued massaging the leg. At one spot, he thought he felt a quiver, a kind of recoil, but then Simran’s problems were more serious, so serious that he could not even turn his face lest the uncertainty showed. He continued massaging up and down, increasing pressure. After a while he stopped and said, “No . . . they won’t have her. Not Amir Jawaab, nor Bhikoo Bhadva, nor that sheikh who comes to buy our children. Our Zulfi will go to a fine school in the hills, away from all this squalor. A fine lady she will be. She will speak English, write English. And she will wear fine clothes and have sahibs open doors for her.”

  “Promise! Promise me, Chacha Sawari,” Simran said, jumping up and knocking the tin over. “Promise me that our Zulfi will never know the corridors of hell. That she won’t have to live with criminals, and pimps, and madams, and drug addicts? We will be able to save her all that?”

  Chacha Sawari cleared his throat and raised his hands to the sky, and just then Badshah neighed.

  “See, even he agrees,” Chacha said with a smile. “Arrey, Badshah, you will have to be there, too, on Zulfi’s wedding, in her procession. Who will bring the groom otherwise? But make sure you don’t run away with him—okay?”

  They both laughed. They both felt released. The monotony of the stable seemed to bind them. And beyond that, there was a higher love, and a higher dream, which both knew was foolish and impossible to achieve. But they weren’t going to admit that, for if they did, they would cease to see meaning in their own lives, and that wouldn’t be good for Zulfi. She was young. Maybe there was hope. Maybe there was a better life waiting. Maybe there was something planned. They would have to wait and see. All they could do was hope. Hope and pray. And pray and hope. And share their hopes, and pool their prayers, and get by that way.

  Maybe I call sell the victoria, Chacha thought. By now they had reached the gymkhanas, where during the day young boys practiced cricket at the nets and at night migrant workers played cards, sang, and wrestled their frustrations away.

  Chacha thought of the last victoriawalla who had left the trade. Khote Singh Durgaspur had felled his horse with an almighty blow, pulled his turban firmly upon his head, and vowed that he would now live, work, and die only in the golden wheat fields of Punjab. The old sardar admitted he had paid a heavy price for leaving home, but now no more. No more lassi that tasted like urine. No more sparrows served up as tandoori chicken. No more sparsely buttered parathas being passed off as the real ones. No, he had had it with this city.

  Khote Singh had managed to get four thousand rupees for his victoria. But that’s because he was in a hurry to sell. Chacha would be a lot smarter. By selling it to a hotel or a heritage site he would get a better price.

  Even as he thought that, Chacha felt a tug of guilt. Was he cutting his nose to spite his face? Selling a brother to save a daughter? What about Badshah? What would happen to him? No one, as far as Chacha knew, took care of old horses. Not unless they had their own farm and a steady income. Chacha had to think of his old partner; he owed him that much at least. And, as if he read Chacha’s thoughts, Badshah slowed. He jerked his head three times. Then he stopped. Chacha felt the reins tremble.

  “Kya ho raha hain? What is happening?” the Arab father exclaimed. “Gadha vapas rukh kyun gaya? Why has the donkey stopped again?”

  With a litheness that mocked his years, Chacha jumped down beside Badshah. His old partner was trembling; his eyes were taut; he was trying to say something with his eyes. Once upon a time Badshah’s eyes had been globes of fire; today they craved understanding.

  “What’s wrong, Badshah? What’s wrong, old-timer? Are you tired? Do you want to rest? I promise you will, if only you go a little farther. Only till the beach, mind you. There I will get you a nice fat sugarcane piece. You will like that—won’t you?”

/>   Chacha was whispering, but the voice that came from the victoria was loud and demanding.

  “Kya hua? Gadha so gaya kya? What has happened? Has the donkey gone to sleep?”

  “Gadha so gaya, gadha so gaya,” the Arab boy chanted. “Jaago gadha, jaago! Jaldi jaago, jaldi bhaago! Wake up, donkey; wake up. Get up and start moving.” The boy started whipping Badshah, a lash here, a lash there, and one that got him on the head.

  The whip startled Badshah; it frightened him; it was many years since he had felt its sting. He neighed with disbelief and shock.

  Chacha leapt onto the footboard and grabbed the whip, almost sweeping the boy off in his rage. He replaced the whip in its holder and, fists clenched, glared at the boy. It was a good thing he was so small; otherwise—

  The boy started to howl, pointing at Chacha accusingly, pointing to the whip.

  The women went into hysterics. The mother beat her chest and shook a fat finger at Chacha. The elder sisters patted the boy’s head and tried to soothe him. The elder boy grinned at his brother. He made sure his brother noticed his delight.

  The Arab father swung into action. Seeing his son upset, he sprang into the driver’s seat, pulled the whip from its holder, and brought it down on Badshah’s back. His face locked in a snarl, he lashed away with all his might. Badshah neighed and moved to and fro. But the lashes kept coming—on his back, on his sides, on his slender gray neck.

  The victoria rocked from side to side. As the father lashed harder, the boy’s sobs diminished. Chacha was paralyzed. He tried to say something, something like, “Poor animal, no, please, stop,” but the father paid no heed. He continued to rain his fury on Badshah.

  Cars slowed. Ocean gazers turned their heads. The locals in the maidan broke from their cards and chatter. Who was this crazy man? Why was he expending his fury on a mute animal? Chacha tugged at the Arab’s leg from below. The Arab kicked him viciously and turned the whip on him. It stung Chacha across his face and made him cry out in pain. Badshah saw this and broke. Lashes, humiliation, pain—all this he could take in his stride. But how dare anyone hurt his master? He rose, gathering all the strength in his legs. He rose and neighed, and the victoria tilted. Its occupants screamed, and the man with the whip—the enemy—was thrown off guard.