“The dhandar-paatiyo is delicious,” said Roxana, and her praise lit up Coomy’s face.
“Quite hot, though,” noted Jal.
“Paatiyo has to be hot, or it doesn’t deserve the name of paatiyo,” said Yezad, his napkin patting away the chili-driven moisture on his brow. He suggested putting on the ceiling fan.
“No, no,” said Coomy. “Pappa will get a cold.”
“In this weather?” said Nariman. “Heat stroke, more likely.”
“Fine. I’m not going to argue.” She rose and turned on the switch.
There were sighs of appreciation as the air began to move. But the fan, unused for months, had collected layers of dust on its blades. Little grey clouds were soon swirling over their heads.
“Look,” pointed Murad, first to notice the impending disaster.
“Quick, protect the food!” said Coomy, shielding her plate by leaning over it.
“Duck for cover!” shouted Jehangir.
“Hit the dirt!” yelled Murad.
“Actually, the dirt is about to hit us,” said Nariman. “What have you two been reading? Cowboy comics?”
Meanwhile, everyone copied Coomy, bending over their plates as Jal sprang to the fan switch.
“Nobody move till the dust settles,” said Roxana.
“How are you managing, chief?”
“Quite well,” said Nariman. “Bent is a natural posture for me. And I’m enjoying a close look at my dinner. The pomfret has a baleful countenance.”
“Maybe some dust fell in its eyes,” said Yezad, and the boys laughed as their grandfather sang to his fish heads, Dust Gets in Your Eyes.
Coomy burst into tears. “Are you happy now with your fan? You ruined the dinner on which I wore out my backbone in the kitchen!”
Roxana said nothing was ruined, everything was perfect, the dust had been foiled by the prompt action. “I can’t wait to eat more of this delicious dhandar-paatiyo.”
Looking up and around, Jal announced that the air was safe again. So they raised their heads and, to comfort Coomy, resumed with busy noises. The clatter of cutlery was the only sound at the table.
Then the whine of a power tool tore through the quiet, and Coomy flung down her napkin. Enough was enough, a little hammering was one thing – this kind of unearthly screeching at night was beyond tolerance.
She stuck her head out the window: “Mr. Munshi! Stop that noise! Hai, Edul Munshi! It’s Pappa’s birthday dinner! Have some consideration and stop your idiotic noise at once!”
The tool ceased, and she returned to the table, frowning at her plate. Jal said that Edul’s wife, Manizeh, was a good woman – it was probably she who made him stop.
“Give credit where credit is due,” said Nariman. “Coomy knows how to get results.”
They finished eating without further interruptions. The cutlery fell silent; no one could be persuaded to another helping. Roxana asked the boys to carry the plates to the kitchen, and before Murad could protest, Jehangir slid off his chair to collect them. He knew Mummy was being nice to Coomy Aunty, and also trying to show off, that her sons were good boys.
Nariman excused himself, something was stuck in his dentures. Jehangir followed him to the bathroom and watched him pop them out for a scrub.
“You know, Grandpa, I wish my teeth could also be removed. Would be easier to brush them, reach all the tricky places.”
Nariman laughed gummily, sniffed the plates to check for odours, then reinserted them in his mouth.
After a dessert of falooda, everyone trooped to the balcony. It had stopped raining, and the air smelled clean. They slapped one another’s backs to dust off their clothes, Jehangir taking the opportunity to thump Murad harder than the dusting warranted. The earlier unpleasantness faded into the background. Edul Munshi’s hammer was thudding again, but softer now in deference to the late hour.
“Chalo, time to go home,” said Roxana. “Tomorrow is a school day.”
“Be that as it may,” said Jehangir, “let’s stay a little longer.” He beamed, thrilled that he’d been able to use the phrase.
Laughing, his grandfather ruffled his hair. “Yes, sit for a while.”
“You don’t know this boy,” said Yezad. “Tomorrow morning he will be glued to his bed – head is aching and stomach is hurting and bum is paining.”
“We’ll come back soon,” said Roxana, and kissed her father’s cheek.
The sad look of loneliness returned to Nariman’s face, as Jal fetched the raincoats and umbrellas from the bathroom.
Securing the front door against the night, Coomy said that each time the Chenoy family visited, she felt exhausted, as though a whirlwind or a vantolio had passed through.
“That’s strange,” said Nariman. “To me it feels like a fresh breeze has stirred the stale air.”
“You never miss a chance to snub me, do you?”
“It’s not a snub, Coomy,” said Jal wearily, “just a difference of opinion.”
They were the only ones at the bus stop, where a large puddle had collected on the broken pavement. The wet road was glossy black in the street light, shimmering and hissing under the wheels of passing traffic.
“Pappa talked very little tonight,” said Roxana.
“Except when he wanted to bug Coomy,” chuckled Yezad. Lowering his voice, he added that Dr. Tarapore had warned them about the symptom.
Jehangir asked who Lucy was, and his mother said she used to be a friend of Grandpas.
“Girlfriend,” said Murad, smirking, and she told him not to be silly. But Jehangir persisted with the topic, wanting to know why Coomy Aunty was so angry about Lucy.
“You’ll know when you’re older.”
“There’s nothing to hide,” objected Yezad. “Might as well tell him.”
Reluctantly, Roxana explained that Grandpa had wanted to marry Lucy, but couldn’t, because she was not a Parsi. So he married Uncle and Aunty’s mother. “Who was also my mother, I was born to her.”
For Jehangir, the answer did not explain his aunt’s anger. He asked if there was a law against marrying someone who wasn’t a Parsi. His father said yes, the law of bigotry, and his mother said exasperatedly that he was confusing the child.
Then Yezad helped to change the subject, teasing Roxana that if she hadn’t married him, she’d still be playing with toys in her father’s house. The boys pretended to wind each other up. They mimicked the robotic drinking and drumming of the monkeys.
“Poor Jal and Coomy,” she said. “So sad.”
“Why?” asked Jehangir.
“Because they never got married, they don’t have a family like us.”
“And it always feels gloomy in their house,” said Murad.
Two men unsteady on their feet approached the bus stop and stood behind the Chenoys. Laughing and continuing their noisy argument, their breath heavy with liquor, one gave the other a shove, making him stagger against Roxana.
“Sorry, sorry, sorry!” he giggled.
Yezad began edging towards the drunks to interpose himself between their boisterousness and his family. But when his manoeuvre was complete, they noticed the change.
“Bhaisahab, I already said sorry to your wife!”
“Yes, it’s okay.”
“Don’t be scared, let her stand next to us!”
“It’s fine,” murmured Yezad.
“Aray, bavaji, we are not bad people! Little bit of bevda we drank, now we are feeling happy, so happy, so happy!”
“Good,” said Yezad. “Happiness is good.”
Ignore them, Roxana mouthed the words silently.
Then one of the men began singing “Choli Kay Peechhay Kya Hai.” He sang it with an exaggerated leer, and the crude question in the song, directed at Roxana, made her stiffen, fearful about Yezad’s reaction.
She said, with silent lips again, Just ignore them, Yezdaa.
Murad and Jehangir, who understood the popular lyric’s double entendre, took their mother’s hand in a confus
ion of shame and anger.
Their father waited a little, then turned to the drunks. “Shut up,” he said quietly.
“Don’t threaten us, bhaisahab, don’t spoil our happy mood! What’s wrong, you don’t like Hindi film songs?”
“Not that one.” He kept his tone even, to contrast with their intoxicated braying. “You want to know what’s behind the blouse? I’ll show you what’s behind my fist.”
“Stop it, Yezad!”
“Stop it, Yezad!” they shrieked in falsetto, and stumbled about, hysterical with laughter, clutching each other for balance. “Don’t tingle-tangle with us, bavaji! We are Shiv Sena people, we are invincible!”
To Roxana’s relief a bus rattled into view, route number 132: theirs. The drunks did not get on.
“Bye-bye, bye-bye!” they waved, as the bus carried the Chenoys away. Another shriek of “Stop it, Yezad!” was followed by drunken laughter floating in the dark.
After he bought their tickets, she chided him about his two Scotches, they had clouded his judgement. And he was setting a bad example for the children, they would also be tempted to fight in school.
“Daddy and Murad and I could have given them a solid pasting,” said Jehangir.
“See what I mean? You shouldn’t react to such loafers. Especially two together.”
“Two drunks are two half-men. Besides, when I’m angry I get very strong.” Then, in her ear, “And when I’m aroused I become very long.”
“Yezad!” she blushed.
“I’d have straightened them out with my karate chop. I used to break bricks with it.”
She knew he could, she’d witnessed it a long time ago, when they were still unmarried. They had been strolling near the Hanging Gardens late one evening, past a deserted construction site, where the watchman dozed in a secluded corner. There was a stack of fresh bricks awaiting the mason. Let me show you something, said Yezad with all the confidence of youth out courting. He formed a trestle of two bricks, placed a third across them, and broke it with a blow of his hand. Show-off, she exclaimed, then was sceptical: You must have picked a cracked one. Okay, you select. She did, and he broke that one too.
She looked at him, smiling at the memory. “You were young then. Your hand has become soft now.”
“Still hard enough to break their necks.”
Murad said he had never seen Daddy chop a brick in two, and his brother said, Yes, Daddy, yes, please show us, which annoyed their mother. “Are there any bricks in this bus?” To Yezad she repeated, “Ignoring low-class drunkards is the only way.”
“Some things can’t be ignored. Maybe Jal is right, Bombay is an uncivilized jungle now.”
“You should try again for Canada, Daddy,” said Jehangir.
“No. They don’t need a sporting goods salesman. You try, when you’re older. Study useful things – computers, M.B.A., and they’ll welcome you. Not useless things like me, history and literature and philosophy.”
As the bus approached the Sandhurst Bridge turn to Hughes Road, the boys pushed their faces closer to the window. They were about to pass their father’s childhood home.
“There it is,” said Jehangir, “my building!” as Jehangir Mansion came into view.
They laughed, and the boys stared at the ground-floor flat where their father had spent his youth. They tried hard to get a glimpse through its windows, as if that would tell them more about their father, about his life before he was Daddy. But some of the rooms were dark, and curtains on the others concealed the secrets of the flat.
“Can we go in one day?”
He shook his head. “You know it was sold. There are strangers living in my house now.”
The bus completed the turn, and the boys craned their necks to keep Jehangir Mansion in sight. The ensuing silence was touched with sadness.
“I wish you had kept on living there after marrying Mummy,” said Jehangir. “Then Murad and I could also be there now.”
“Don’t you like Pleasant Villa? Such a nice home?”
“This looks nicer,” said Murad. “It has a private compound where we could play.”
“Yes,” said Yezad. A wistful look passed over his face as he remembered childhood years, and friends, and cricket in the compound. “But there wasn’t room for everyone in that house.”
“And Daddy’s three sisters didn’t like me,” added Roxana.
“Now,” protested Yezad, then let her continue, for he was the one always saying no need to keep secrets from the children.
Youngest among the four, Yezad had been the recipient of his sisters’ unrelenting adoration. It was a fierce and jealous love, the three doting on their baby brother with a zeal that verged on the maniacal. In childhood, such a love posed few problems; it was considered cute and charming. During the teenage years, he was their guardian, their knight-at-arms. Many were the fights he got into when schoolboy teasing and off-colour remarks happened to include his sisters. In college, it was more serious; during his first year he thrashed two louts who were harassing his youngest sister in a part of the back field.
Then other girls became part of his circle of friends at college, and his sisters’ fierce love turned oppressive, the first hint of trouble ahead. That women who were nothing but strangers should presume to share their brother’s attention was unthinkable. Their reactions ranged from indignation to anger to bitterness; Yezad often had to choose between peace at home and an evening out with friends.
“And when Daddy and I got engaged, it was too much for them,” said Roxana. “They treated me so rudely, they wouldn’t take part in any of the wedding ceremonies. I was stealing their baby. No matter who Daddy married, they would have treated her the same. Isn’t that right, Daddy?” She patted Yezad’s hand, and he nodded.
“Maybe if you had stayed, they would have become friendlier,” said Murad.
Yezad shook his head. “You don’t know your aunties, it would have meant years of fights and quarrels. When Grandpa gave us Pleasant Villa, that was the best thing for us.”
Jehangir said he always wondered why they had only Jal Uncle and Coomy Aunty, whereas his friends had so many uncles and aunties. “We never go to see the others.”
Then Yezad said they had learned enough family history for one evening, what with all the things Coomy Aunty was upset about, and now this discussion about his sisters. And Jehangir said he was going to write a big fat book when he grew up, called The Complete History of the Chenoy and Vakeel Families.
“As long as you say only nice things about us,” said his mother.
“No,” said Yezad. “As long as he tells the truth.”
THERE WAS NO KNOCKING, no doorbell, only a muffled thud, making the hairs on the back of Coomy’s neck stand on end. She kept her head inside her newspaper, but racing through her mind were recent reports of daylight robbery, thieves forcing their way into homes, killing occupants, looting flats.
She and Jal were alone. Nariman, taking the opportunity of a lull in the rain, had ventured out for a short walk. The monsoon had been unrelenting for the last fortnight, and he had refused to pass up this fine evening.
The sound came again, louder, so that Jal heard it too. “Shall I go?” he asked.
“Wait by the window – in case you have to shout for help.”
She approached the door on tiptoe to look through the peephole. Anything suspicious and she could withdraw, pretend no one Was home. There was urgent shouting in Hindi to open quickly. First one voice, then another: “Darvaja kholo! Jaldi kholo! Koi gharmay hai kya?”
She retreated, gathered her courage, went forward again. Dreading she might see what she saw in bad dreams, she looked. And she knew, in that instant, that it was the other nightmare, the one concerning her stepfather, upon which the curtain was rising.
From the arms of two men hung Nariman, a helpless dead weight. One was carrying him at the knees; the other had passed his arms under the shoulders, fingers interlaced over Nariman’s chest. The man gripping the knees was
hitting the door with his bare foot, producing that muffled thud.
When Coomy flung the door open in mid-kick, he almost lost his balance. Nariman’s birthday gift was hooked onto the man’s shirt-front. Its weight made the button strain at the hole.
“Jal! Jal, come quick!”
The two men were panting, and sweat poured off their faces. They smelled terrible, thought Coomy, recognizing them from the ration shop, where they carried bags of grain home for customers, their muscles for hire. Mustn’t be strong ghatis, she felt, if the weight of one medium-built old man tired them.
“What are you waiting for?” said Jal, frantic. “Chalo, bring him in! Nahin, don’t put him on the floor! Sofa ki ooper rakho! Wait, maybe inside on the palung is better.” He led them to Nariman’s room. “Theek hai, gently, that’s good.”
The four of them stood around the bed and looked at Nariman. His eyes remained closed, his breathing laborious.
“What happened?”
“He fell into a khadda and we pulled him out,” said the man with the walking stick dangling at his chest. Exhaustion made him succinct. He lifted his shirt-tail and wiped his face.
“The stick, Jal, the stick,” whispered Coomy. Her brother understood her concern – the sweat would soil it – and plucked it off the shirt.
“It was a khadda dug by the telephone company,” said the second man. “The old sahab’s leg is hurt.”
Nariman groaned, “My ankle … it may be broken.”
They were relieved that he had regained consciousness. The sound of his voice made Coomy feel it was all right now to scold a little. “Every day we warned you about the danger, Pappa. Are you pleased with yourself?”
“Sorry,” said Nariman feebly. “Wasn’t on purpose.”
“These fellows are waiting,” whispered Jal. “We should give them something.”
She consulted her stepfather: how far had the ghatis carried him? She wanted to calculate the amount by applying the ration-shop standard of payment. But hovering on the edge of consciousness, Nariman was not precise.