The Bombay Madness

By Ranjona Banerji

It is well known — at least anyone who lives in Bombay or visits it — that this city is self-obsessed. Bombay has been given this now-almost mythical character, where, as if the minute you land in this city, some mysterious force enters your body and you turn into something else.

It could well be that Bombay changes you, but it is not magic. It is more likely true that all places where you live for a period of time change you and the corollary of that is that each of us, with our various personalities, finds that one place suits us more than the other.

But with Bombay, it’s a constant examination of this Bombayness. In Calcutta, for instance, there is plenty of angst and soul and discussion with lashings of tea and swirls of cigarette smoke — adda, if you will. But in the few years I spent there, the essential Calcuttaness of jhal muri was not the subject of newspaper articles the way vada pau is discussed in Bombay.

I would even put it that food is more important to a Bengali than to anyone else in India and several towns and villages in Bengal are identified only by some typical foodstuff — but that’s as far as it goes. It’s food, not the essence of self that is under discussion.

Delhi, on the other hand, is chock-full of history and has more historical structures per square mm than most places have in their entire range of square km. Yet Delhi does not identify itself in quite the same way with its buildings and the ‘Bunty loves Pinky’ legend gets more currency than ‘restored by so-and-so corporate for so-and-so committee’. The government still controls Delhi. In Bombay, even government buildings are sought to be refurbished with private sector help — as newspapers have recently told us about a plan to add a few floors to Mantralaya and give a builder some free land in exchange for the work done.

We delight in what we are and we delight in agonising over it. This process gives us character. Town versus burbs, North versus South, once obscure satellite towns versus once obscure suburbs. Till even 15 years ago, a person who worked in Borivili would say he had to go to ‘Bombay’ to work. Now a person who lives in Khopar Khairane, in New Bombay, thinks he lives and works in Bombay. But the part of Bombay which is not Khopar Khairane takes issue with this. For that lot, Bombay has to remain within a geographical limit; it has to have common reference points. Can you claim to know Bombay if you did not grow up eating seeng-chana at the Gateway of India? Worse, if you confuse India Gate with the Gateway? If you have no idea that a school picnic means going to Borivili National Park? If you don’t know where the Goldspot factory is, even if it no longer exists and that once iconic orange bottle is lost to liberalisation?

These are very real problems for some and hence the mad scramble to keep the quaintness of Bombay alive. Some of these attempts are simply bogus, to use the modern terminology, artificial constructs to try and create a sense of nostalgia where possibly none exists. The people of Kalbadevi are apparently very happy that their ward has been taken up as a pilot redevelopment project and it is only people who never lived there and never visit except once a year who see beauty in the chaos. The bridge between heritage and contemporary has to be crossed intelligently and harking back to some vague golden age is to ignore the ground realities. The Crawford Market redevelopment is in danger of falling into this trap.

For someone who has lived most of their life in this city— including the formative years, but who has also lived elsewhere — some of the newfound hand-wringing manufactured nostalgia can be amusing. There is some little brouhaha going on over the beautification of the zoo. It cannot be denied that Bombay’s zoo is one of the worst in the country. Animals live pathetically in cages, there is no sense of openness or the wild and its only redeeming features may well be the government nursery and the newly-recreated Bhau Daji Ladd Museum. But yet, our saviours of Bombay find something in this ghastly travesty of a zoo to be preserved. I am surprised that animal activists are not supporting a move to improve the living conditions of the animals. No, apparently it is to be kept as it is — no arguments.

Many of these preservers have not grown up in Bombay so probably did not have to endure the plight of the creatures locked up in zoos in their childhoods. For anyone who has seen the Delhi, Calcutta or Hyderabad zoos, Bombay is a joke. The Central Zoo Authority thinks so too and regularly denies it certification. But the zoo is heritage, and the current flavour is heritage at all costs. Not the condition of the animals, not objections to zoos in general as an ideological stand, but just that whatever was must be preserved.

Perhaps not so strangely, since these ‘new’ saviours have not spent a lot of time on the top of Malabar Hill — Cafe Naaz closed down almost a decade ago — the quite cute uglification of Kamala Nehru Park with its ‘amphitheatre’ done up in what look like bathroom tiles has not bothered anyone much. Malabar Hill has become too remote and so has slipped out of our consciousness.

So we will shop in the malls on the New Link Roads in Andheri and Malad, though 15 years ago that part of Andheri had vast tracts of marshland and Malad was a quiet sleepy suburb, leading on to quiet fishing villages. If you arrive in Bombay circa 2000 AD, you accept the development as an established part of the landscape and fight for the preservation of what is obviously old — the zoo, for instance.

The older inhabitants also want to preserve those parts which they live in and you still meet that endearing tribe for whom Bombay means the island city. Once you cross Mahim Causeway you have entered the badlands, wild territory, where the others live. It is true, if you are old enough. Tigers were spotted there last century. Why go there at all, except to go to the airport?

Then there are those politicians who run this city. Sharad Pawar wants to encourage people to drink more wine. His party member, R R Patil, who is also the state’s deputy chief minister, is a late arrival in this city, so he found dance bars deeply offensive. They were not common in his hometown. They have no magic for him, only an upsurge of morality. The chief minister finds no resonance in Bombay either, so he keeps commissioning flyovers perhaps hoping to escape it easily that way. It’s been years since anyone who runs Bombay loved Bombay. Chhagan Bhujbal was mayor once and wanted to clean it and green it; now he sulks.

But it ought not to be forgotten — even by those regulars at the city’s ‘pubs’ that the pubs themselves are new: 1992 onwards. Up to the 1970s, there was prohibition in Bombay and it is the Bombay Prohibition Act that controls Gujarat even today. Bombay’s answer to prohibition was typical — and so grew the great Bombay underworld of smugglers and bootleggers. Dawood Ibrahim was a new entrant himself, and he has been made willy-nilly into Bombay’s only don, with scant respect for his ‘illustrious’ predecessors — by filmmakers who have recently come to the city and by television channels which are not headquartered here at all. Yet, didn’t Bombay come to a standstill when Vardarajan Mudaliar died?

When you round it all up, what it amounts to is very little and yet very large. You come to Bombay because it is the city of gold. You hope. Almost 20 years ago, a magazine I worked for did an article on how you could still pan for gold in Pydhonie. Streets paved with gold — get it? But it was a stretch even then and it’s completely lost now. Besides, everything old is not necessarily good. The picking and choosing of what we save has to be judicious and a little higgledy-piggledy is good mental exercise.

Yes, there will also be some of us who know more about Bombay and some who have to prove that they also care by picking up campaigns and some who don’t care at all. But to truly belong, you mustn’t get caught up in stuff; you have to be cool about it. On the trains, on the buses, in your cars and taxies and aeroplanes. Tension kaiko lene ka, magaj kaiko khaneka, aakhadin khalipili boom kaiko marne ka? Ekdum masth rehne ka. The vada pavs and zoos and floods will come and go, but we’ll go on. That’s why we’re all here isn’t it, to be bindaas?

(Ranjona Banerji is a deputy editor with DNA in Bombay.)

Magical Memories

By Vimla Patil

I was born, brought up, educated and married in South Bombay. I have lived in the verdant bylanes of this area all my life. I think I have been very fortunate to see its many avatars — as a hub of the colonial government’s activities, as the karmabhoomi of passionate freedom fighters and as an elite residential area where the rich, khandaani families have striven hard to conserve India’s culture and heritage.

Memories are like bricks —they often help to build the life-graph of a person. As far as I am concerned, I think my memories — indeed a whole life lived in south Mumbai — have shaped my character and more important, my search for that moment of truth that gives direction to my life.

I was born in a nursing home in Opera House, which I am told, was a vast, spacious area around the heritage Opera House Theatre where dance and music shows would take place every weekend. The road further led to the busy Girgaum area where the rich community of Pathare Prabhus owned wadis, where khandaani jewellers created diamond items for the rich of the city, and Goan communities lived in their picturesque village-style cottages.

Further down, along the railway line, was Queen’s Road — running parallel to the dignified Marine Drive — which eventually led to the Fort area with its famous Revival Renaissance-style cluster of 26 utility buildings. There was the University with its landmark Rajabai Tower, the Convocation Hall, the High Court, the Elphinstone College, Kala Ghoda and the art deco theatres called Regal and Strand. The one-major-road then led to the Colaba Cantonment where British officers and army personnel lived in quiet houses with red roofs of Mangalore tiles.

The area where I spent my childhood was not much different. There were tile-roof houses spread all over the Chowpatty sea face and the beach in front was the official playground for all children going to local school and colleges like Queen Mary’s, St. Columba’s, Robert Money, Gokhale Education, Fellowship School and, of course, the Wilson College. In those years, Chowpatty was a real beach — not a muck-topped dirt area as it is today. The sand was pristine, and building castles near the lashing waters was great fun. Our mothers and aunts would sit around talking while we children — from the family and their friends — would run around into the waves and cover ourselves with the clean sand.

Reaching our schools in the area around Chowpatty was easy with a tram or bus ride. The BEST trams jangled from Grant Road Station to the Gowalia Tank Maidan and also had a service from the Tardeo Tram Terminus into the stomach of Bombay to Thakurdwar. But we still avoided the cheap ride to walk along the quiet roads to school so that we could enjoy the familiar sights on the roads. The old temples around the area were our favourite haunts — especially in the rains when they would become pools of water. The Nana Sunkerset Shiva Temple on Tardeo Road fascinated us because of its stone courtyard and the nearby cottage where Lata Mangeshkar and her family lived in the early years of her career. The Gamdevi, Taddevi and Mumbadevi temples gave us a glimpse of the seven islands which formed the city of Mumbai a few hundred years ago.

Around this area, too, grew many music schools — the Maharashtra Sangeet Vidyalaya (where I learnt the nuances of Hindustani classical music from masters like D V Paluskar and Prof Datar), the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, the Deodhar School of Music, the Marwari Hall, the Lakshmi Hall and many others held regular music programmes with the young and painfully handsome Ravi Shankar, Mogubai Kurdikar, Bismillah Khan, Kishen Maharaj, Sitara Devi, Vilayat Khan and the stalwarts of the Agra Gharana like Vilayat Hussain sang or played all night concerts to present the glory of Indian music to huge number of devotees. As a schoolgirl, I tagged along with my father or his friends and thus have great memories of listening to these great masters well into the wee hours of the morning — in fact, until the milk train forced listeners to return home.

As a young girl in South Mumbai, I shared two worlds — my father’s and my mother’s. With my father, who was a book publisher, I worked on history, language and culture. I read many books, learnt music, art and met hordes of people who made news at that time. I travelled a lot with him to get to know Indian culture and history. Watching him, I learnt that the truly rich person is not the one who earns a lot of money but a person who spends it wisely to enrich his or her life. His way of life taught me to enjoy every shade of green that came to the local markets in the monsoon and winter season and every nuance of gold and bronze that came to the trees in the autumn and summer.

The other world that I shared with my mother included my extended family with aunts and their children — and all of us had innocent fun with movies, chaat and vadas in Chowpatty and walks along Malabar Hill and Breach Candy or the deserted Worli Sea Face. My mother, afraid to leave a daughter alone at home, also took me to innumerable kirtans in the nearby temples in the bylanes of Gamdevi and thanks to her efforts, I am well versed in the Bhakti literature of India today.

Looking at these areas today, you would never imagine what they looked like in the fifties. Breach Candy was a rocky beach where pools of water would offer great opportunities for gentle fishing after the tide had receded. Sparsely populated, the roads were clear and well lit. A quiet stroll or a game among the rocks was delightful. The climb to the Hanging Gardens from Kemp’s Corner, where there was a real Kemp’s shop, was verdant with all kinds of birds warbling in the late evenings. So these were familiar areas for me and my friends. The Gowalia Tank Maidan and Chowpatty were celebrated venues for the political rallies where I was fortunate to hear leaders like Jawaharlal Nehru, Vallabhbhai Patel and, later, Indira Gandhi. Gowalia Tank Maidan was also the playground where I had my first cycling lessons from my unwilling brother.

Nevertheless, the most wonderful part of my childhood in South Mumbai was the expeditions which I shared with my mother to find medicinal herbs in the wild patches in out localities. My mother believed strongly in herbal medicines — having come to Bombay from her village in the Kanara districts after marriage. Understandably, Malabar Hill and Breach Candy interested her because of the forests of herbs and plants that grew there. My family was as quaint as the city of Bombay in those days. My mother was one of four sisters. The four women, whom marriage had brought to Bombay, were thick as thieves and took all decisions jointly. One of the decisions my mother and aunts took was to use their rich knowledge of simple, wild-growing medicinal plants for curing most ailments, which we children were prone to suffer from. Thus, for colds and coughs we had a kashayam made from lemon grass and ginger or a brew made from aniseed, onion slices and a seed called alsi.

Soon after the four sisters settled down to life in Bombay, they made a wonderful discovery. They found that many parts of South Bombay had patches of greenery where the same wild medicinal plants grew as did in their native village in coastal Karnataka. With their sense of wonder, they often took us children on a voyage of discovery to Breach Candy or Worli to sit among bushes and to look for the plants and leaves which gave them a sense of belonging to their village world and enabled them to cure not only their children’s maladies but also those of their grateful neighbours and friends.

Breach Candy, Worli, the Gowalia Tank Maidan or even the bylanes of Tardeo and Girgaum in those days were not heavily populated as they are today. By evening, silence would reign supreme along these roads and there was little fear of roadside Romeos or pickpockets. We wandered in the far-stretching green patches, learning about herbs and plants, which we would collect with an air of glee which only children could understand. Many of the leaves we collected were used in making gentle coconut curries for health. Other plants were plucked, dried and preserved for medicinal use as and when needed. I remember plucking the tender leaves of tendli creepers in Worli for a curry, which worked as an excellent digestive. I recall squatting down in the grassy undergrowth in Scandal Point to collect bhui awale plants for those who had jaundice. Doodh panki leaves, with their attractive shades of mauve and green, were taken home for making a cooling brew during heat strokes. Ek paani or brahmi leaves were used for making hair oil. The saw-edged leaves of ningri boiled in water made a soothing bath for swollen hands and feet. A neem leaf brew cured all infections. The tubes of the eranda (castor seed) leaves made an excellent brew to cure fevers and the cool leaves were used to cover the head to bring down high temperatures. The jelly-like pulp of cacti, called lolsar, was also used as a cooling agent during fevers. Poultices were wrapped in turmeric leaves to cure cuts and infected wounds.

Somewhere in those years, we also learnt to recognise trees, which offered us rare, unusual food. The tender leaves of the shevga tree (drumsticks) made a wonderful bhaji. So did the young flowers of the same tree make dainty bhajias for teatime. In the monsoon, we went collecting leaves of the taikila plant for making bhajias or a green upkari with shredded coconut.

Today, those halcyon days of my childhood seem to belong to another world. Bombay has become a city of stress, daily challenges and incredible opportunities for millions of dreamers. The plant patches have vanished and rubbish heaps or slums have taken their place.

One of my greatest regrets is that I did not write down the recipes of the brews and delicacies made from wild plants while my mother and aunts lived. Still, even after living a hectic life in Mumbai, I cannot pass by Breach Candy without glancing at the weeds by the roadside to experience those moments of excitement, which were scattered so generously in my childhood years. Even now, I can recognise some of the plants and know how to use them to cure minor maladies. I am happy that I have passed on some of this knowledge to my children, who use it in dealing with their children’s health problems.

Had my mother and aunts been alive today, they might have sagely nodded their heads in approval because their prediction, that these plants would one day make researchers sit up and wonder at their magic, has come true. With new international research on the plants which my mother so lovingly collected, I think my life has come a full circle. I am still a South Bombay addict and I still believe that many magical plants still wait to be discovered in my part of this wonderful, fairyland-like city.

Three Reminders

By Abhinav Maurya

The Oldest Bombay Bitch

‘The very oldest?’

‘Yeah miyan, the very oldest…’

‘How old?’

‘Old enough to be your grandma’s grandma. How do I know how old? She is the oldest. Isn’t that enough for you?’

‘Truly?’

‘Period.’

‘An old crone,’ Reddy whispered in awe.

‘An old crone, but her haunches are as sturdy as steel. I tell you Reddy, she does not as much as flinch when I pant atop her.’

‘But Mirza, it’s pathetic. She must smell like a garbage van in bed.’

‘She smells worse. But can’t help it. She’s the cheapest in town — unless you manage to corner one of the younger ones who’re new to the trade, and have reputations befitting neither the day nor night.’

‘Must have one helluva pimp.’

‘No, no… No pimps she has… She is too popular without any pimps…’

‘But doesn’t her old, wrinkled face put you off?’

‘Who cares? As long as she makes you go dhak-dhak with the effort, gasping and sucking air out of her lungs and cursing her for it,’ Mirza chuckled.

‘What the heck!’

‘She’s so hot and feverish and all that people are known to die of extreme concupiscence, hanging on for dear life till their very last breath.’

‘The goddamn bitch!’ Reddy cried out in frenzy, and his excitement made him wring his hands in despair.

‘And she has absolutely no qualms about taking in as many men as she can at a time. Even women Reddy, can you believe that!’

‘Saali, besharam!’

‘All for a few coins… All for the sake of a few measly coins…’ Mirza waved his hands in the air at the inequity of fate.

‘How can you even bear to visit her?’

‘What do you mean? Even the holier-than-thou Mayor Saab from London felt obliged to call upon her when he paid a visit to Bombay.’

Reddy’s eyes, which had until now been growing wide with puzzlement, narrowed in suspicion.

‘Who is this Grand Dame of whores?’

‘You know her well… She is the oldest Bombay bitch ever — the promiscuous Bombay Rail!’

A Lost World

It is dusk in this city Imtiyaz calls his own. He looks at the rouge horizon for a long time as if searching for something, a lost jewel perhaps. The sun that had lent the sea its gentle, liquid refulgence is no more; the Necklace is lit up along its length by a string of pale, sickly streetlights beyond which is the growing blanket of a dark, inky night. His gaze ventures below, onto the thoroughfare that races along the seaface. People are walking ways that lead nowhere, occasionally shooing away shouters-o'-wares who accost them. Abba once told him — the secret of a successful city is that it can stoke desires in the minds of men which it can never satisfy.

Abba… shores apart… in another city… Venice… It holds Imtiyaz’s childhood in the twittering of its birds and the rocking of its gondolas. Nafasat has come with news that abba is ill, but in his mind’s eye, Imtiyaz can still see abbu happy, singing a Khamaj in the dead of the night besides the lapping waters of the lagoons… ni ni sa pa ni sa ga ma ga ma pa ni dha…

‘Brother, brother…say something.’

‘Nafasat, Bombay is as much my city as Venice is abbu’s. Why does abbu not come here once in a while? Or maybe for the rest of his days? This is after all the city of his childhood.’

‘You know very well that he won’t leave Venice. He has been worrying sick for you the last one year, neither able to keep away from, nor able to reconcile himself to the horror of the riots. He has been crying like a baby, seeing Bombay sundered apart thus. This city is not safe for Muslims the way it used to be. Besides do you not have any affection for the place that you grew up in?’

‘Venice was my childhood, but Bombay is the place I have grown up in, the place that peoples my living memory. If Venice is my hazy subconsciousness, then Bombay is the consciousness that shaped it. You know I will not be able to establish myself in Venice the way I am rooted in Bombay. The logjam of rains, the cool breeze of winters, and the sweltering summer sun. Quiet walks on noisy beaches. Boisterous Gujarati theatre. Somnolent Irani cafes. Shaam-e-Gazals. The roaring sea and the verdant arbors. And most important of all, the students’ daily riyaz. Many have kept their children under my tutelage only on my assurances. What will these tiny tots do without me? What will I do without them? You are asking me to give up too much, little sister of mine!’

‘But you are only twenty-five! Look at you… At this age, you banter as if you are the only one who can tutor them. Surely there are other ustads who can do that.’

‘What will abbu think if I leave my disciples like this?’

‘You are bothered about what abbu will think, but do not care for abbu himself or for his health. How are you to know that you will gladden his heart by returning to him!’

‘Who sent me away in the first place? It was abbu who sent me away from him to Bombay. Perhaps he sensed a loss by sending me away, so he didn’t send you here. You were lucky but I was the one who suffered.’

‘It’s not true, brother. We both know that. It was Nadira Aunt — may peace be upon her soul — who dragged you away from abbu to live with her in this wretched city.’

‘But she couldn’t have done that if abbu had willed it otherwise.’

‘How could have abbu willed otherwise? Poor Aunt Nadira (for Nafasat still thought of her stepmother as her aunt), living alone in this city all by herself. Abbu told me he feared for her sanity or he would have never sent you away. Today he needs you more than ever.’

‘But if I leave, I’ll be called a coward who ran for his life.’

‘Staying in the shackles of expectations is bigger cowardice, my brother. Are you not a coward running away from your father when he needs you the most?’

‘Cowardice is of the color of fate, different for each person. We all are running away from something or the other.’

‘Running away doesn’t help things, brother.’

‘Let’s run away from this talk of comings and goings. Tell me more about Venice. Is it the same as when I left it?’

‘Very much. The baker on our canal died and now we have to row farther to get bread. I usually send abbu to fetch bread; along with bread, he brings back some of the good humour of his old times.’ Nafasat was relieved when the memory of abbu’s wittiness brought a smile to Imtiyaz’s face.

‘And you remember the concert hall a few lanes off; it has been converted into a local museum. The details might have changed, but the fabric of the city is the same.’

‘Can’t say the same about Bombay though. It is a scarred city. Before the riots, parents of many of my Muslim students would be attired traditionally when they would come to pick up their children after the classes. Now, nobody wears even a skullcap. All shave their long beards of which they were so proud until yesterday. They are even frightened of being called abbu or ammi in public. When I asked one of my students why he had remained absent for a long time after the riots, he told me that that his father had promised to cane him ten times if he dared utter abbu or ammi in public. The punishment went up — from twenty to fifty, then a hundred canings, can you believe that – until the poor boy finally acquired the faculty to forget the word when he ventured outside home. After the riots, Bombay never seemed to go back to her same old self again. It seemed as if she were in a perpetual mourning for the loss of her hauteur.’

A wry smile crept across Nafasat’s lips.

‘What are you smiling at? I’m talking about Bombay burning in the riots. What’s so funny about that?’

‘No, nothing… It was just that you said she… as if the city were a living person.’

At this, Imtiyaz said nothing but waved his hand about in the air as if it were an inconsequential flourish of the tongue.

‘Why don’t you come with me to Venice, Imtiyaz?’ He notices the use of his name by his little half-sister, for she rarely does so.

‘Abbu wrote in his letter that you are engaged to be married.’

‘Yes.’ She shows him her ring, an answer cast in pale Welsh gold. Small answers for big questions, as if the answers were not important at all, at least nowhere as important as the questions.

‘Rich groom for my darling sister. Who is he?’

‘You remember the young cellist who came to dine the last time you visited us.’

‘Musician! You had said you will never marry a musician.’

‘His name is Frederi Modigliani. He would often come by in a gondola to listen to abbu solmizing in the night. Abbu tried teaching him some pieces, but he sings real bad. Now he just carries an Indian violin which abbu gifted and taught him, and accompanies abbu in his riyaz.’

‘Is he abbu’s choice or yours? Nafa, don’t lose out on yourself.’

‘Abbu considers him like a son. After losing you, he does not want to lose another.’

‘What are you saying? He has not lost me!’

‘Yes, we have lost you. We are losing you to this wretched city which has a way of justifying itself and its rights and wrongs. We are losing you to the murky depths which made abbu leave this city thirty years ago. And we don’t know what to do.’

‘It was not Bombay that drove abbu crazy. It was having two wives in the same city that did him in.’ Imtiyaz smiles a wry smile, a smile without reason or joy, indeed without any feeling — the way a Bombayite may smile when confronted with the grim reality of truth.

Nafasat looks at Imtiyaz with incredulity — it pains her to hear her brother make such a sardonic comment, her brother who has always been so gentle and kind and soft-spoken. Imtiyaz realizes that he has trespassed the unspoken limits to their conversation, and he makes a swift detour.

‘You don’t have to do anything. I’ll not shift to Venice.’

It is late in the evening and the breeze blows wildly, like the harmless anger of an old crone. The raucous call of the brainfever bird cuts through the cold air like knives through ice.

It occurs to Imtiyaz that time has been a cruel fiend. Bound by their singular love of music amidst a sea of differences; hadn’t he and Nafa lived through the arduous journey of impressions, losses and realization together, no questions asked? How many times had they looked for meaning and found it in the turbulence of each other’s hearts? How many times had one’s mind been troubled only to find succor in the silence of the other? How many times had they searched for solace only to find it in the loss that their eyes held? Now it seems to Imtiyaz that they no more understand each other the way they used to when they were small.

He looks unperturbed, fatalistic, dangerously teetering on the brink of indifference. Nafasat gets up, and takes his face in her hands, holding his gaze in an ultimate act of defiance. He thinks her eyes will bore into him like an auger, but they are filled with stern compassion, the way ammi’s eyes used to be when she silently mourned the loss of her husband by talking of him for hours on end and vainly singing the thumries that spoke with greater leisure of her parting and longing than speech would have permitted. Sometimes when Imtiyaz saw his ammi singing in a poorly attended concert at one of the seedy crumbling concert halls of old Bombay, it occurred to him that her face was contorted with a grief much beyond the ecstasy of the music that she was singing. He of course never found out what it was, never had a way of finding out… But he knew it had something to do with abbu, and he never forgave abbu for that.

‘Listen Nafa, I have stayed too long here to think of moving anyplace else.’

‘I understand. But think about abbu. He is dying, Imtiyaz.’

Startled, Imtiyaz turns around to face his sister. ‘What do you mean? You told me he was just ill.’

‘He is ailing, Imtiyaz. He did not want me to tell you this, but I have no other way. Come away Imtiyaz. Don’t hold such a long grudge against your own father. He has not been able to live in peace. Let him die in peace by forgiving him.’

‘If this is what you want, I will come.’

‘I’ll call abbu and tell him. He will be very happy… very very happy.’ Before he can begin protesting, Nafasat goes away to make the call.

Imtiyaz is surprised at his quick assent, at the weakness of his resolve to never leave the city that gave him his first guru after abbu and his first small recognitions as a Sitar exponent before he was even known outside India. He understands his despondency and the cause of it, but fails to comprehend the agility with which it takes hold of everything inside him, even his memories of living by the sea in a city called Bombay. He just watches the bleak horizon for a long time. That is all he can do right now.

Perched on the high bough of a nearby acacia, the brainfever bird looks down upon Imtiyaz with haughty smugness and a beady eye and flies to another bough, another abode, and another story.

An Elegy For Bombay

There is no other place quite like Bombay, the city of poised extremes — of comic hatreds and tragic love, of sad lives and joyous deaths, of shallow delights and imagined sorrows — and everything en route.

A city of unending chaos that fills your ears like a thousand bees droning at once; of wide, impassable roads which grow ever so convoluted that playing chess a hundred moves ahead is easier than finding your way out of the labyrinth; and of the unending quagmire that ensues when one thinks of making home of a city where even the rooftops of the trains get squatted upon. A city that holds alcohol scarcer than bread and bread scarcer than goodwill and goodwill the scarcest of all. And in the end, simply India’s only truly cosmopolitan city.

That’s Bombay for the uninitiated. Because it’s victims need no introductions of the city to which their fates are as inextricably and irredeemably tied as flame to the wick of a lamp.

This City

By Reshma Ghosh

This city, with its shifting shapes and sliding dreams, which harbours the hearty, the weary, the optimist and the pessimist with equal generosity.

Whose commercial carapace hides its softer underbelly of tenderness and soulful humanity.
Whose lanes and bylanes I have explored with curiosity when younger and with confidence when older and never failed to marvel at the tenacity of its people.
This city.
I have walked under its neon lights, on broken pavements, on dented streets, under a curdled sky.
I have breathed in its toxic fumes, in crowded rooms, in stuffy cabs and loved its spirit of ‘never say die’.
I have watched bandicoots scooting, heard rickshaw-drivers hooting and seen eunuchs hitching up their skirts.
In this city.
I have smiled at bone-setters, shoe-menders, flower-sellers and rag-pickers.
I have looked down on rash-drivers, social climbers, wrongdoers and gold-diggers.
I have exulted at the sight of the first grey monsoon clouds over the sea.
I have hungered, I have loved, I have pined.
In this city.
I have seen the small man rise, the big man fall and the middleman grin and the city continue in its ceaseless way.
I have seen men and women hang up their despair and lose themselves in a family drama on the telly.
I have seen people after bomb blasts, riots, stock market crashes, pick up the pieces of their broken lives and pretend that nothing happened anyway.
In this city.
This city, that has let me slip in and out of identities like a chameleon.
That has let me laugh at Prithvi, romance at Marine Drive and cry at Bandstand.
That has not questioned me when I have eaten a vada pao at a roadside stall or batted an eyelid when I’ve shucked down oysters with vodka at a fancy restaurant and run up a bill I don’t wish to recall.
This city whose smells I cannot forget.
The smell of pungent Bombay Duck that hangs in lines on Carter Road under the sun.
The acid smell of steel of the local train that lingers, long after the journey is done.
The smell of smoky pubs and sizzlers that crawls shamelessly into my hair and the lining of my underwear.
The smell of corn roasting on a summer day.
This city, which I sometimes hesitate to call my own because it doesn’t afford me a square inch of land or sky to bear testimony that it is indeed my home.
This city that I love, anyway.

City Musings

By Pratik Chowdhury

Impressions

Your echoing fragrance

windborne

quietly wafts in

with every pore

pulsating

I resonate

into an ensemble of

consciousness.

Dreams

Dreams have a way of sprouting

tender green leaves like

in spring shine time

they rustle down

autumn soft shadows slithering

down branches

in the warm

afterglow of evening sun

in the backyards of my

dreamscape

some lie low

like butterflies

broken bruised and crumpled

making little pools

of shadows…

Ecstasy

In the cool shades

of your aanchal

bedewed petals

shower

desire blossoms

caress my being

as mist kissed

rhododendrons

in eventide

like fireflies at night

I erupt into

a thousand ecstasies.

Evening

An ember glow sun

on the forehead

with bedewed eyes

robed in silky sheets

of mists hesitant

bridal eve

yearns

the embrace of night.

A Prickly Solution

By Dilip Raote

Geetika was tired of her parents. They were a bore. They were a nuisance. They were the pits. What’s the fun of having your own room if you can’t lock the door?

Knock, knock. “What are doing in there, darling? Why have you locked the door? Come and see what I’ve made for you. Open up, will you?” And mother would bring in some snacks that she’d just made. Hot hot or cold cold.

Why didn’t mother take up a job? She’d done microbiology. She should be looking at microbes through microscopes. Perhaps the microbes would be as annoyed as she was. It’s a hard life when you are under constant watch.

Mother didn’t take up a job because father made too much money. Mother liked to show off how much money father made. She made him change the car every year. She was already tired of the new Toyota. She wanted a BMW. Geetika never got a chance to travel in taxis and buses, not even the school bus. She was taken from their Napeansea Road residence to JB Petit School near Hutatma Chowk by driver Chandu in their old Honda. And she was never allowed to go on class picnics.

Chandu was entertaining. He told Geetika exciting stories about his childhood in a village near Ratnagiri. He walked to school barefoot. He climbed trees. He swam in wells and in the sea. And he stole fruits from orchards. He told her ghost stories. The Konkan has lots of ghosts. Geetika wondered often if she could persuade her parents to go to a haunted house in the Konkan. A ghost might cure mother.

But then it might not. Mother would get a conversation topic for the parties she threw. And she’d ask Geetika to tell the story after she’d already told it. “Geetika, tell them what you saw. It was so frightening, no? But Geetika wasn’t scared at all, you know. My darling is a very brave girl.” Yakyakyakyakyakyakyak.

Father was no help. He was proud of his wife. He liked to see her dolled up. She stank of an unbearable perfume. Father also used perfume, but it wasn’t so bad. He also agreed with everything mother said. “Do as your mama tells you,” he’d say. “She knows what is best for you.”

He wouldn’t buy Geetika a cycle. It wasn’t safe outside, he said. Even in the building’s compound? Not even there. All kinds of low-class children come there. Not good for our baby.

He got Geetika a pair of roller-skates, though. Along with them he got protective pads for the knees and elbows and a helmet. Geetika was to skate only in the house. Or on the building’s terrace. But not alone. Mother had to be present.

Father took the skates along once when they went to the club. He insisted Geetika wear them and show off to the guest at their table. And she had to wear the protective gear. Was he nuts? What would other kids think? Worse than a sissy, whatever that is.

Geetika refused. “Don't be difficult, baby,” father said. “These skates are the best in the market. Are you afraid? Daddy will hold your hand.” Geetika wanted to hurl the skates into the swimming pool near by. Hold her hand, indeed! Fine sight that would make.

Father tied on the elbow pads and hit the edge of the marble table hard with the elbows. “See! Real tough! All children’s games should have safety measures. Play should not end in injury. Yakyakyakyak…” Geetika looked up at the evening sky. The moon looked like a ball of cement. She imagined it dropping down on father’s head.

“Your problem is that you are an only child,” her class monitor Sangeeta had told her once. “You are lucky but you don’t know it. You can get anything you want. I have a sister and two brothers. Our parents have no time to even look at us. Think about it, kid. Don’t curse your good fortune.”

So, Geetika buried herself in her studies or played on her computer. She’d once made the mistake of asking mother’s help with some homework. It was an awful experience. Mother took over. She did all the homework for that day. Geetika sat around and twiddled her thumbs. Then she played Free Cell on the computer until mother finished.

Geetika heard about that homework for several weeks afterwards. Every visitor was told about it. So Geetika worked hard at her studies. She did all her homework. She never again asked for mother’s help. And she made sure she usually topped class. If she’d got a lower rank, mother would have wanted to help with the homework.

Geetika’s classmates thought she was nuts. What are parents for if you can’t get them to do your homework, they said. Parents must be involved with their children’s education, Sangeeta said. Homework is a continuation of school work and parents are the teachers there. Blah-blah. Sangeeta mimicked the headmistress well.

So, Geetika thought and thought. She caught herself staring at her parents often. When father caught her looking at him, he did a thumbs-up. He saw love and admiration in that look. When mother caught her looking, she’d say, “Need anything, darling?” Geetika would shake her head and go back to her book or computer. But no plan was taking shape in her head.

One evening father and mother left together for a business party. Kanchan, the maid, had to do overtime. She was left in charge with full instructions about dinner and sleeping times for Geetika. “And don’t be difficult, baby,” mother said. “Don’t wait for us. We may be late. Bye, darling.”

Geetika went to her bedroom and shut the door. She pulled out all the Roald Dahl books from the shelf. Nasty things happened to adults in Dahl’s children’s books. Geetika flipped through the books. Nah, there was nothing in them that she could try out. The stories were fantasies. They were not real.

Kanchan pushed open the door and came in. She sat on the floor near Geetika. She wanted company. Geetika switched on the computer. She shoved in a CD of the Hindi film Lagaan. She told Kanchan to sit in the chair. Kanchan protested that she couldn’t. Geetika grabbed her arm and pulled her up. “Sit there!” she said firmly and pointed to the chair. Kanchan settled into the chair. She was pleased. Then she lost interest in Geetika. The movie had begun.

Geetika walked out of the room. She was in deep thought. She wandered into the guest bedroom. She took in all the items one by one. She peeped into the wall cupboards. Nothing exciting.

She wanted into the kitchen. She considered all the electrical appliances. She opened cupboards. Chilli powder in the pillows? No, that was a short-term thing. So were ice-cubes under the bed sheet. She opened the cutlery drawers and stared long at the knives and forks. No, that was an extreme solution.

She went to her parents’ bedroom. She peeped in the wardrobes. She hadn’t realised that her parents had so many clothes. She shut the cupboards and stared at the huge bed. The bedcover was a large M F Husain canvas of a Madhuri Dixit portrait. Father had got it specially printed. All the bedcovers in the linen cupboard were art works. There was Picasso, Dali, Raza and many more. Whenever father acquired a new bedcover, he’d hang it on a wall and show Geetika a photograph of the original for comparison. And he’d laugh at his own ingenuity. He said he was an art lover and winked at mother.

Geetika walked over to the bedside table on mother’s side of the bed. The drawers were filled with bangles, hair bands, a can of some spray, and other such things. Geetika’s eyes settled on a packet. She picked it up and flicked it open. She smiled. Here was the solution to all her problems.

She carried the packet to her room. Kanchan was staring at the screen and laughing. She didn’t even notice Geetika. Geetika went to her study table and dug out her pencil-compass box. After a while, she went back to her parents’ room and put back the packet in the bedside drawer. She smiled, like a wicked witch.

Geetika warmed the food in the microwave and had dinner. She brushed, changed into nightclothes and lay down in the guest room. She dozed off.

She woke up in her own room in the morning. Another boring day lay ahead. She decided she’d pretend to be sick and bunk school. Then the memories of the previous night stirred. She jumped up. She ran out. She pushed open the door of her parents’ room and rushed in.

“Hi, Dad! Hi, Mom!” she said. They were still sleeping. Father turned over and groaned. Mother opened her eyes and was annoyed. But Geetika bent over and gave her a hug. Mother smiled.

“Why are you up so early, baby?” she said. Then she looked at the wall clock. “My god! It's eight!” She threw off her cover and got up. “Go and get ready, baby. You’ll be late for school.” She rushed off to the bathroom.

Geetika smiled and laughed on the way to school. Driver Chandu was infected by her mood and told her jokes and atrocious stories of his childhood days when the kids played nasty tricks on adults. He laughed a lot. His eyes were more on Geetika in the back seat than on the road ahead. He was surprised by the chirpiness of the girl this morning. She never laughed like this even on her birthday or on results day when she got a first rank. He wondered.

And so days and weeks passed. Geetika kept a surreptitious watch on her parents. When was it going to happen? When? When?

One morning she noticed that her mother was silent. She was brooding. Anxiety showed on her face. She didn’t make a fuss with Geetika’s preparations for school and breakfast. Geetika asked her if anything was wrong. “Feeling a little sick, baby,” she said. “But don’t worry. I’ll see the doctor in the evening.”

Geetika was pulled up by four teachers for not paying attention. She smiled when she was scolded. During recess she laughed and ran around and wanted to take part in all the games on the playground. Her classmates were puzzled. “She looks like she’s in love,” said Sangeeta, the class monitor. “But it can’t be. The only man she’s allowed to meet without her parents’ supervision is driver Chandu.”

When Sangeeta inquired, Geetika said, “I’ll tell you tomorrow. Then we’ll have a party.” She refused to say more.

The house was quiet in the evening when she returned from school and ballet class. Only Kanchan was at home. Father and mother returned after Geetika had had dinner. Father looked grim. Mother’s eyes were red. She had cried. They nodded at Geetika and went to their room. The door was shut with a bang. Soon voices rose inside.

Geetika tiptoed to the door and put an ear to it. Father and mother were both speaking too fast. Mother was wailing during the pauses. There was the sound of a drawer being opened. Then after a long silence, father’s words came through sharp and clear.

“I’ll sue those condom manufacturers. I’ll take them up to the Supreme Court. I’ll teach those bastards a lesson.”

Geetika tiptoed back. She went to her room and locked the door. She did a wild dance on the bed. She changed into her nightclothes and climbed into bed and stared happily at the ceiling. She pulled the pillow from under her head and stuffed it under her nightie. She stood in front of the mirror and looked approvingly at her big belly.

There was knocking on the door. She ignored it. The knocking grew louder. “Good night, Mom. Good night, Dad! I am sleeping.”

“Good night, dear,” said mother from the other side of the door. It sounded like a sob.

Geetika got into bed and put the pillow back under her head. She tried to imagine the look on Sangeeta’s face tomorrow when she told her that her mother was pregnant.

Some day Geetika would tell her the true story. But not now. Not now. After the baby came, perhaps.

Two Pearls

By Dan Husain

These Days...

I

These days

I find everything staged:

the words of comfort you plant,

the concern that I fake,

the platitudes that we toss,

twirl, throw into each other’s face.

How brittle is our truth

that we wrap it with pretexts

believing love holds good

only in certain contexts.

II

The other day

at Carter Road,

when the Sun was

a speck of orange in your eye

and the world

a soot-covered portrait,

I felt I had a poem for you

but then, these days, I don’t write poems.

I look for words instead,

words that would miff the silence

you puncture our conversations with.

III

In the quietness of the night

when you twirl next to me

I hear shrill screams

of our unsaid thoughts.

I then strain, strain

to hear your silence...

Salim Joshua at a Soirée…

I

So we must end the conversation now.

It has hung long

From the Rembrandts and the Rousseaus

(cheap imitations

mounted on dreams

sundry & parvenu)

That your silent walls adorn.

But you wish to speak

About the trivialities that tweak

Your propriety, your idea

Of what the world is, of what it should be.

I feign interest

(how may I tell you

I am part of the world that you hate).

II

We sit at the bar.

Everyone has assumed a role,

Everyone is a character.

London is no more a fad,

New York may still pass.

“So I was at this glistening

Office of glass walls

On the 67th floor of Chrysler

At Lexington Avenue”

And then throw in the punch

Of how you spent the weekend

Scuba-diving in Aruba,

Lounging, smoking pot

At Luna Lodge in Costa Rica.

The boys are agog.

They’re too eager to fill you in

About their training stints in Düsseldorf.

(I sigh! The farthest is

Karachi in the west)

III

We sneak into a quiet corner.

The evening trails as a wispy fragrance

On your wine laden lips.

I wish to drink the moistness,

Feel your heat against my breath.

My hands rustling against your breasts

But suddenly you break free —

Coquettishly —

“Wait! Let me see

Where my darling husband is?”

(Bitch!)

IV

We sit with our bellies full,

Courgette and prawn dolloped with soufflé,

And break into idle chatter, pitter-patter

Sprinkling names —

(The conversation strains — someone coughs!)

The stiff upper-lipped editors at Knopf,

The haute couture,

The avant-garde,

The ‘here’ and ‘now’,

The ‘whys’ and ‘how’,

The ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’,

The ‘must do’ and ‘have musts’

Discerning eyebrows,

Dancing flamenco

With waspish tongues:

Shreds of half-understood conversations

Heard at someplace else —

That may ease this evening of discontent.

(But in our hearts, as the evening stretches,

Dreams fizzle like smoke

From a gun's nozzle.)

And then…whimper!

(Note: Salim Joshua... was inspired from a passage from Suketu Mehta’s Maximum City.)