Tales From Firozsha Baag (30 page)

Jehangir nodded indifferently and returned to the bench. Father said, “Bhagwan Baba did not say much. But it seems to me he did give an answer. He said life is a trap, full of webs. Ask yourself, what does the sensible person do if a trap is facing him? Avoid, get away from it. So I think Bhagwan Baba was saying that Jehangir should stay away from that girl.” He was pleased with his interpretation.

“But if that was what Bhagwan Baba meant, why not say it plainly?” said Mother. “Every other time he has given us plain answers, simple language.”

“I don’t know. There is always a reason for what Bhagwan Baba does. That much I know. To me his words sounded like a warning for Jehangir.”

“But Jehangir is not saying anything. Again you are staying quiet, like you did with Bhagwan Baba. Tell us whatever is on your mind.”

And he was tempted to tell: of the sight which had shocked and embarrassed him one night when he had come home, changed his clothes, and left them on the pile for the
gunga
to wash next morning. A few minutes later he had returned, having forgotten his pen in one of the pockets. But Mother was there, sniffing; scrutinizing the gusset under the light. To find smells of illicit sex? Stains to corroborate her
suspicions of the girl’s sluttishness? Evidence that her boy had been ravished by a flesh-and-blood succubus? She had started counting garments for next day’s washing quota when she saw him.

Trying to conceal the rough edge of resentment that crept into his voice now, he was only partly successful. “You keep saying the girl, the girl, the girl. You know her name is Behroze, why don’t you use it? Do you think if you pronounce her name she will become more real than she is?”

His parents shifted uncomfortably. “You never talk to us these days,” said Mother. “You were not like that in school. How you used to come home and tell me everything. The little butter we could afford I would always save for you, make your tea, help with homework. And how you used to go running to Dr. Mody every Sunday at ten o’clock, do you remember, with your stamps.” Those happy years brought a wistful smile to her face. She reached out as if to stroke his cheek. But the memories also exacerbated the imperfection of the present, and she left the gesture unfinished.

“We never treated you like other parents when you misbehaved. That old Karani woman in B Block, she used to make her boy stand naked out on the steps for punishment, to shame him. A brilliant
CA
he is now, but to this day the poor man has not completely recovered from that cruelty. And Dr. Mody, rest his soul, would slap his son Pesi left-right on the face. Outside in the compound for all Firozsha Baag to see.” Mother paused, remembered the point she was trying to make, and continued.

“Maybe it is because you have changed so much that we fret. You used to care about our problems, worry just like Daddy and me. More and more selfish you seem to be now, so what am I to think? That your new life in college, and your new friends, and that girl – Behroze – have changed you.”

“Again we are starting to argue. No use talking of it now,” said Father, “when we are all so tired.”

“But I want to tell you what I think,” said Jehangir. “Bhagwan Baba talked about a trap. He also said no one can do anything about it. No one means not you or I or Bhagwan Baba himself. So what is the point of a warning no one can act upon?”

“You see what I mean?” asked Mother, turning in despair to Father. “What I mean when I say he has changed? He takes all these logic and philosophy courses in college and gives us smart answers. We begged and borrowed to pay his college fees, and this is the result. Not afraid even to twist the words of Bhagwan Baba. Don’t forget, all your smartness and your ambition to go to America will come to nothing. This girl will change you and keep you here. Then you will finish your days like your father and me, in poverty and filth.”

The suburban local to Bombay Central was announced over the loudspeaker. As the train swept in, Mother realized that the brown paper bag of oranges blessed by Bhagwan Baba was missing. Jehangir raced into the waiting-room and back to the compartment where they had found seats.

“You can eat one every day for the next three days,” Mother said. “It will help you think clearly about your problem.”

Jehangir did not tell Behroze about Bhagwan Baba. She would dismiss him as a fake, lumping him in the same category as the quacks and charlatans of whom there was no dearth in Bombay, who sold their charms and potions and had a thriving trade among the educated and the uneducated alike. It would lead to an argument, and he did not want to have to defend Bhagwan Baba.

That week, he missed choir practice and went to the Hanging Gardens. He walked, taking the short cut up the hill as he had done so many times with her. He mulled over the words of Bhagwan Baba. Not that it matters one way or the other what he meant, he kept assuring himself. A trap, he had said. Did he mean Behroze trapped me? That was absurd. Why would she want to? If anything, he had trapped Behroze, luring her with his melancholy looks and the sad and gentle air which so became him and his shyness. Or had Bhagwan Baba meant trap in a larger – sort of cosmic – sense, so that he and his parents and Behroze were all trapped, and must work out their lives within its confines? This interpretation at least had some metaphysical appeal to it.

The sun was on the verge of setting when he arrived at the Gardens. There was yet another possibility: that he could not break with Behroze even if he wanted because these things were out of man’s control. Ludicrous, the thought that he was seeing her impelled by some higher force.

On weekdays the Gardens were empty except for ayahs with their charges and the elderly out for a constitutional. They left when it got dark. Then couples arrived to seek privacy behind bushes and trees. But shortly after dusk a gang of men roamed through the Gardens, flushing out twosomes in their sanctuaries. They would stand around and snicker, or yell out obscene encouragement punctuated by lewd flourishes of hands and fingers, till the couples took flight in frustration and embarrassment.

Jehangir walked till the sun went down. The ayahs and the little children departed with their prams and toys, and across the greying skies a flock of sparrows ushered them to the exits, chirping urgently. He could go on seeing Behroze as if nothing had changed. But then the squabbles, the scenes verging on hysteria, the bitter taunting would continue to fester. In one way Bhagwan Baba’s words made sense; life is a trap – I cannot solve both problems. How long could such terrible discord persist without rupturing something vital? He never understood that so much unhappiness could come upon the happy, loving family they used to be. A horrible end would come of it, some awful mess, if things continued in their clamorous, disturbed manner.

He emerged from the Gardens through the gate opposite the one he had entered by. Where the
shik-kababwalla
sat. Fanning his coals, and the skewers ready in his basket, loaded with bits of beef and liver. Nodding at Jehangir in recognition. Then across the road and into Kamala Nehru Park, with its hedges sculpted into the shapes of animals and birds. In bright sunlight, when freshly trimmed, the figures were delightful to look at. But now the hour was passing through the final moments of dusk, and the shapes were indefinable. Looming in a strange, unearthly manner. Possessing neither the randomness of nature nor the manicured discipline imposed by man.

He left quickly. Something eerie about the place. Back into the Hanging Gardens, to retrace his steps homeward, down the hill.

And then a slight detour occurred to him, through the children’s playground. His heart raced a little as he approached, wondering if the exercisers would be there.

He heard their panting before he saw them, and hurried to turn the bend in the hedge and position himself at his old place. Unnoticed, he watched their sweating bodies perform. The old fascination returned at the sight of their rippling, bulging muscles. In their rhythm and symmetry, in the sureness of their pulse, in the obedient responses of their limbs he rediscovered what he had always found strangely enticing, and remembered the days in the gym at St. Xavier’s: the smell of sweat, the camaraderie that flowed, the slapping of flesh, the search for the hairiest chest, bushiest armpit, longest pubic hair, the grabbing and jostling, all the fun which he was never a part of, always ignored by the boys, always isolated.

And now, regarding these fellows building bodies by night, a wild urge came over him. To step out of his concealed spot and touch their muscles, feel the hardness, make his body join theirs in the exercises. To engage in good-hearted physical competition, to see who could do the most push-ups, to arm-wrestle, to grunt and heave together.

But it was only momentary. I was never good at such things, I’ll look foolish. He laughed at himself and left, feeling better now. As if the straining, exerting muscles of these men at exercise had kneaded away the disquietude and anxiety he had been feeling about Behroze, about Bhagwan Baba, about his parents. Nothing is a trap, I exercise control over my own destiny.

To discover where he had been, Mother began some skilful questioning. She stalked around, observing his face for suspicious-looking marks or blemishes, his shirt and collar for questionable discolouration. Instead of ignoring this customary examination he said, “You won’t see anything. Behroze never puts on makeup when we go out for
kissie-koatie.”

She clutched at her throat with both hands. “When a son speaks so shamelessly to his mother it is the end.” And Father scolded in his mild way: “It is a disgrace when you talk like that.”

Next evening he was drawn again to the Hanging Gardens. Lack of rain was obvious in the fading lushness of the lawns, but what green
remained was still soothing. All the fountains were dry, their coloured lights switched off, and the little waterfall was a slope of grey sun-dried rock. After a few minutes of aimless strolling he went down to the overhang. It was the most secluded spot in the Gardens, at the edge overlooking the sea. Thick with bushes and trees on all three sides, and two wooden benches affording a spectacular view of Chaupatty beach, from the Queen’s Necklace along Marine Drive to the modern skyscrapers mushrooming at Nariman Point.

Behroze and he had come here once when both benches were unoccupied, on a slightly cool December evening. There was a gentle breeze. They sat down, his arm around her, watching the sky till the first star appeared. The gang of voyeurs was nowhere in sight, and Jehangir had a plan: to turn her head and kiss her when it was darker. A few moments later she reached her hands up to his face – she must have had a plan, too. But there were footsteps. He froze, then tore away from her hands.

The newcomers, a man and woman, occupied the other bench and began kissing desperately. The man’s hands seemed to be everywhere, down her blouse, up her skirt. Jehangir and Behroze did not need to look; they could feel the heat of the feverish activity.

When Jehangir finally snatched a glance, the man was supine on the bench, his fly undone. The woman’s face buried in his lap. Moans of pleasure. And a vague memory was transported from a great distance, pitting his intense desire to watch against an urgent need to leave, to cover up his eyes, to blot it all out: it was an evening on the veranda of their flat; the little boy stood with Mother at the window, taking the evening air and looking out beyond the compound wall. A boisterous group of men approached from the direction of Tar Gully, and down the main road three young women. As they closed the distance between them, one of the men suddenly cupped his hands around his crotch and said something the little boy could not hear, something about suck and mouth and money. There was giggling among the girls. The little boy tried hard to see what happened next’. But Mother dragged him away, saying he shouldn’t be looking at the filthy behaviour of wicked
mavaalis
and evil women; he should forget what he saw and heard or God would punish him and their whole house.

The evening had been spoilt. As they got up to leave, the night-watchman who patrolled the Gardens appeared. The fellating couple remained oblivious to the banging of his nightstick and other diversionary tactics. Finally, without going closer, in stentorian
Pathani
tones he called out,
“Arré bhaisahib
, lying on the benches is prohibited, please sit up straight,” and the couple broke apart.

The night-watchman left; Jehangir and Behroze followed. Jehangir cast one backward glance: the couple was down again upon the bench, her mouth upon his lap. And fleeing the overhang, he recalled the panicked tearing of his own face from Behroze’s hands. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I just couldn’t help it.” He bundled up his frustrated desires into a tight, aching package and descended the hill in silence. Images of the couple on the bench abandoning themselves to their wild and desperate lust had danced unendingly before his eyes.

Jehangir sat on the grass now, under a lamp just outside the overhang. The overhang and its benches. Benches everywhere.
Paan-
stained ones in the train were third-class seats. Bhagwan Baba’s veranda bench – sit on it and he told you a riddle. The one in the waiting-room was for drinking lukewarm Limca. And the overhang bench – reserved for sucking lessons, and wet dreams that trickled down your thighs to make embarrassing starched pyjama legs, which the
gunga
probably examined with interest when she washed the clothes.

A shower of gravel descended upon him, striking his head and neck and back. He jumped up. Saw three boys sprinting away. Started to give chase, then stopped. What will I do even if I manage to catch the urchins?

He was trembling and could not sit down again. Breathing hard. Quick short breaths. Hands shaking. Armpits damp. He decided to walk. To the children’s playground. The gym-by-night. Where children’s game equipment became the parallel bars of the poor; where the stone-broke used the see-saw to bench-press, with flagstones for weights. Yes, they would build their muscles, one way or another.