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Going to Chowpatty Beach has become agony for me.
Dad often takes us to the food booths that line the beach, where we
eat bhel and mango kulfi and drink lassi or sugarcane juice.

We are inevitably followed by a procession of
half-naked children with distended bellies and snot-filled noses and
young women with wild, uncombed hair, with a baby hoisted on one hip
and another child at their side. Arms extended and palms turned
upward for the coins of charity, the procession follows us from booth
to booth, stares at us hungrily as we open our mouths to insert a
puri, drowns out our conversation with a non-stop chorus of ‘Arré,
sahib. Child is hungry. No food for two days, sahib. Show some
heart.' When the chorus gets too loud or aggressive, the
irritated bhaiya who runs the booth steps out toward the mob, his
hand raised in a menacing way.

‘Chalo, move,' he yells. ‘Let
the poor people eat in peace.

Shameless animals, making a nuisance of yourself.'
As in a time-agreed ritual, the small crowd scatters but moves only a
few feet away and within minutes they are back, one wary eye on the
bhaiya, their mouths still curled downward in a piteous expression,
their right hands (or the left hand, if there is no right hand)
stretched outward. The older children sometimes kick the sand with
feet made swift with impatience and desperation but are subdued by a
quick look from the adults. Some of the bolder ones inch forward and
touch us, pull on our sleeves with their dirty fingers and we cringe
and take a step back, like in those horror movies when the monster
approaches the virginal, golden-haired damsel in distress. If we
linger at a particular booth for too long, with dad ordering a second
round of kulfi say, some of the younger children sit down on the
sand, bending their legs and turning their cracked, hardened bare
feet toward their faces and pulling out splints or small pieces of
glass or other debris from them. The middle-class people who flock to
these food booths—the ones who vow to do a special pooja if
Baby or Baba gets into Bombay Scottish or Cathedral school and who
attend cocktail parties at Juhu and Breach Candy where they lament
that the country is going down the toilet—watch these children
and then look away.

I cannot eat at Chowpatty any more. The
contradictions, the inequities that I live with everyday in Bombay,
are too much in my face at Chowpatty. At home it is easy to ignore
them but here, out in the open, there is no turning away from these
dark and hungry eyes and from the questions about the accidents of
birth and the randomness of privilege that they arouse in me. Guilt
rises in me like bile, so that I lose my appetite and would like
nothing better than to take my lassi and puris and kulfi and hand it
to the children staring greedily at them. But I know that such a
gesture will surely backfire, will arouse the lioness-like
protectiveness that mummy feels for me when it comes to food, so that
she will insist that I finish her dish of whatever it is she is
eating, which in turn will compel dad to insist on buying something
else for her and which gesture will make me feel even more guilty. So
I make myself swallow whatever it is I am eating, trying to
alternately ignore and smile at the children staring back at me. I
somehow want to distinguish myself from the world that I belong to,
want to silently plead my case to the ragged group that stands like a
jury around me, want them to understand that I am not like my
parents, that I understand their hunger and the resentment and fury
that it must arouse in them. So I smile at the women carrying the
dazed-looking children on their hips and sometimes they smile back at
me, a quick, silver flash of startlingly white teeth and sometimes
they stare back at me blankly, their faces a nylon mask that hide an
entire world.

Part of the reason I so want to distinguish
myself—and God, this is hard to admit—is because
sometimes I feel the same cheated fury towards the beggars that my
parents do. Sometimes I feel a wave of self-pity sweep over
me:
Dammit, all wewant to do is have an outdoor family outing at
Chowpatty, have somefun and some food and how can we do that with
these people circlingus like vultures? It's so unfair, we can't
ever go anywhere withouthaving to think about the poor and dealing
with the guilt their verypresence elicits. I wish I was in London or
somewhere, where I couldwalk down the street eating an ice-cream cone
without someonewanting to snatch it away from me
. And then I
hear myself and feel angry and embarrassed at how shallow my
complaining self-pity seems when measured against the weight of their
hunger and suffering. And so, as penance, I smile at the women and
children.

And at around this time, as if this is part of the
script, an old man and woman—he, leaning on a thick stick and
wearing a long, white beard, she, with eyes grey and milky with age
(or is it blindness?) and teeth red-brown with paan stains—walk
slowly toward us. ‘Arré baba, some change,' they
say to my father in a pathetic sing-song voice. ‘God will bless
you, my son, some change for the poor.' The old man begins to
cough but he needn't have bothered because my father has
already dug his hand in his pant pocket and pulled out a handful of
coins. ‘God bless you, seth,' the couple sings, surprised
and gratified at how easy the exchange is. They move away and one of
the children—a boy of ten—chases after them, angry at
their intrusion and their unexpected success at wheedling some coins
out of my father.

The old man picks up his stick threateningly at
him and he backs away. But now the crowd of young mothers and
children is tense and excited, knowing that their instincts are
right, that this Parsi gentleman who has spent the last twenty
minutes ignoring them, is a soft touch after all. They do not know
what I know: that for whatever reason—perhaps because he lost
his mother when he was four, perhaps because he loved and respected
his father—dad can never turn away without giving alms to the
elderly. The young mothers he will give money to unwillingly, the
children he will adamantly refuse to give money to, instead keeping
packets of Glucose biscuits in his car for distribution. ‘Cannot
spoil the next generation. They should be encouraged to work, not to
beg,' he says, blithely ignoring the fact that there are Ph.D.s
in this country who work as peons in small offices because there are
no jobs. But the old men and women, he cannot say no to. To them, he
feels a certain responsibility that borders on reverence. In his car,
he keeps a stack of silver coins and if, while sitting in a traffic
jam, he spots an old beggar a couple of cars down, he actually rolls
down his window and calls her to his car.

Now our private processional is stirring, knowing
that our food expedition is drawing to an end and having already seen
proof of my father's generosity. Their cries for alms get
louder and more dramatic. My stomach muscles clench and I feel my
toes curl with guilt and embarrassment. ‘Please, seth,
memsahib,' one of the women cries. ‘Children have not
eaten in several days. Some money for food tonight.' She pushes
forward one of the more pathetic looking children, a four-year-old
boy with tousled hair and the liquidy, grey eyes that spell
blindness. Having been thrust in the spotlight, the boy goes through
his lines: ‘Please, baba,' he says.

‘Stomach is empty. God will grant all your
wishes, seth. Please, something.' His small hand thrusts
forward, and accidentally hits the bottom of my glass, spilling a bit
of my lassi.

The bhaiya stirs, twirling his handlebar moustache
angrily.

‘Saala, badmaash. Sisterfuckers. Parasites.
Get going all of you before I give you a good pasting. Harassing my
best-of-best good customers.' This time the bhaiya looks
serious and gauging this, the crowd makes to run. But just then, dad
speaks up.

‘Okay, you are hungry? No money from me. I
don't believe in encouraging beggary. But Dilbar,' he
says turning to the bhaiya. ‘Give each of them a plate of bhel.
I'll pay for the lot.'

A murmur goes through the crowd, as the women try
quickly to calculate whether they should hold out for money or accept
the offer. The offer for food is irresistible but accepting it would
mean taking home less money to pay the local dada who owns them. But
before they can act, Dilbar speaks, his mouth twisted in distaste.
‘Please, saar,' he says. ‘You are my good customer
but these people are a nuisance. Bad for business, saar, if other
customer sees them eating at my stall. Hope you understand, saar.'

Dilbar has made up their minds for them. The
beggars turn on him, several of them speaking together.

‘You heard what the seth said. Give us our
bhel.'

‘God will bless seth for his generosity but
He will curse you for your pride, you evil man. Treating us like we
are animals.'

But Dilbar is adamant. He folds his hands across
his hefty chest and shakes his head no.

The commotion has attracted the attention of the
man who runs the bhelpuri booth two spaces down from Dilbar. He is a
thin, ingratiating man with red, paan-streaked lips.

Now, he comes running up to us. ‘What's
the problem, what's the problem?' he says, in a thin,
high-pitched voice. ‘Dilbar, how can you send the Parsi seth
away like this, unhappy in his heart? For shame, for shame. Tell you
what, sir, I'll feed these poor, unhappy folks for you. Just
move to my stall, sir, two steps away, sir, closeby only.'

Dilbar grunts. Dad is now anxious to be done with
the whole scene. We move to the new booth, the urchins following us
like a wedding procession. Dad pulls out his wallet and takes out
some bills. ‘There. This should be enough,' he says.

The thin man smiles a thin smile. ‘Just a
minute, saar, if you please. Er, need some extra baksheesh, saar.'
He lowers his voice. ‘Doing this as a favour to you, saar. You
know how these people are, dirty and all. Will have to wash the
dishes extra well, which is costing extra water, saar.' He
points to the dirty metal bucket in which he washes the glass bowls.

Dad looks disgusted though I'm not sure if
it's at the sight of the filthy water bucket or the man's
avarice. He takes out another two rupees. ‘There. And if that's
not enough, we'll take our business somewhere else.' He
turns on his heels and begins to leave, with mummy and I following.
Mummy says something about wanting to stay long enough to see that
the man actually feeds the crowd but dad has had enough. ‘Coming
to Chowpatty is no longer a pleasure,' he says to no one in
particular. ‘Fewer and fewer places in Bombay that one can go.'

I leave on that day, full of good will and
affection for my dad. He is idiosyncratic in his beliefs, yes, but he
tries to do the right thing.

But as I get older, I notice how my father's
middle-class values rise to the surface at the oddest of times. By
the time I am thirteen, we are both encased in our own ideologies and
my simplistic dreams of feeding and housing the city's entire
homeless population have hardened into a bitter contempt for
well-meaning middle-class people who pretend to know what is in the
best interest of a people they encounter daily but know nothing
about. People like my father. Actually, people like myself, though I
would've jumped into a vat of boiling oil before admitting this
to myself.

We are in the old, bulky Ambassador, just him and
me in the huge front seat, making our way home from a business
meeting that I had accompanied him to. The meeting has gone well and
dad is in a cheerful, expansive mood. We are at Bori Bunder and the
bumper-to-bumper traffic has crawled to a halt. Normally, this would
bother him but today he sits patiently, not even getting angry when
the cab driver behind us blows his horn for no apparent reason since
there is nowhere else we can go. We roll down the windows, knowing we
will be assaul-ted by the exhaust fumes of the old B.E.S.T buses but
needing some air to combat the muggy, humid mid-afternoon heat.

Just then, a healthy-looking, bright-eyed boy of
about eight races to the car and swiftly approaches my dad. His hair
is cropped close, his face is long and thin and this makes his toothy
smile seem even more wide and infectious. ‘Eh, seth,'

he begins. ‘Some money, please. Sister and
mother are both sick at home. Please, kind seth. Bhagwan will bless
you.'

Dad looks at the boy and then looks at me. ‘See
this?' he says to me, as if the boy cannot hear him. ‘This
is what is keeping our country backward. An able-bodied, active boy,
begging for a living.'

Traffic moves a bit and the boy holds on to the
window, trotting beside the car. He has heard my dad talk about him
and maybe this makes him hopeful because as every beggar knows, the
worst customers are the ones who ignore your presence, who stare
through you as if you are made of air. At least this Parsi seth has
acknowledged his existence.

Dad moves so swiftly that the boy jumps back a
foot.

Twisting in his seat, he reaches for the handle of
the car's back door and opens it a few inches. The car to our
right lets out a startled beep to make sure the ajar door doesn't
hit it but dad has already calculated the distance and ignores the
driver.

‘C'mon,' he says to the
bewildered boy. ‘Get in. You can come to our house and work
there. We are looking for a nice servant boy. You will get three
square meals a day, decent clothes to wear. I will even send you to
school. You can make something of yourself. C'mon, what do you
say?'

The boy takes another step back, staring intently
at my father. ‘Daddy, please, for heaven's sake,' I
say but he is still talking to the beggar boy.