Family Matters Read online

  Jehangir woke with a start. He sat up, and the cot gave out a loud creak.

  “What’s wrong?” whispered Nariman.

  “Your crutch, Grandpa, I had a dream it was spoilt …”

  “My crutch is all right. Come, hold my hand and sleep.”

  Jehangir groped across the space between the settee and the cot to take his grandfather’s hand, and was soon sound asleep. He did not dream again that night.

  “Wait,” called Roxana, and ran to the door for the bye-bye kiss, but her husband had already disappeared down the stairs. Yet another morning, she thought, which had failed to work its healing magic on him.

  Yezad reached the second-floor landing, heard the door close, and waited. Now with the sunlight bathing the staircase, he felt he had been very foolish last night. Giving Villie ten rupees to bet on her dream bra size – money as good as thrown in the dustbin.

  Through the stairwell soared Daisy Ichhaporia’s violin music, accompanying his return to the third floor. He knocked, Villie’s eye came to the peephole, he put his finger to his lips. She opened and beckoned him inside. Her housecoated figure was swaying romantically to the violin, which made him thankful that the music was part of a sedate second movement, not something wild and fiery like a czardas.

  Still moving with the melody, she thrust her hand down her front and extracted a roll of notes. Grabbing his wrist, she smacked the money into his palm. “There you are, my dear. Eight hundred and ten rupees. Count it, go on.”

  He stared at it, incredulous. Then he greedily unrolled the notes still warm from her bosom. “This is fantastic. Beginner’s luck, I guess.”

  “What do you mean, beginner?” she was indignant. “I’ve been dreaming since I was a little girl.”

  He walked to the station feeling depressed despite the win, thinking about Villie’s lonely, stunted life. But her size 36C had certainly delivered the Matka. Coincidence? Or had she predicted the future? And if dreams could do that … no more worry and anxiety. The worst news, foreknown, would lose its sting. Of course, the pleasure of any good news would diminish as well. But that was a price he was willing to pay.

  Tonight, he would secretly distribute a hundred rupees in Roxana’s envelopes. Then another hundred the next week, and the next … and if she noticed, he’d say, Surprise! Extra commission from Mr. Kapur.

  On the way to the Irani restaurant for their afternoon tea break, Vilas pointed to Mr. Kapur’s Divali display: “Very dramatic.” Cardboard cutouts of Ram and Sita stood in a circle of oil lamps. Prone at their feet was the ten-headed, twenty-armed demon king Ravan.

  “Looks like Ram and Sita are visiting the raakshas in hospital,” said Yezad.

  “Mr. Kapur didn’t have it last year, did he?”

  “No. But he’s decided to celebrate every festival from now on. He’s looking forward to Christmas. Watch out for even more dramatic windows.”

  “Speaking of drama,” said Vilas, “two chaps from my amateur society are dropping by to say hello.”

  In the restaurant he and Yezad skirted a mess of spills and overturned chairs by the entrance. Behind the counter stood Merwan Irani, huge and rotund at the open till. He was sorting notes into their denominations. His florid countenance, shiny with sweat, turned to greet them.

  “What happened here?” asked Yezad. “Fight?”

  Merwan Irani explained that a scuffle had broken out with a customer: “Saalo maaderchod came in like a king, sat down, and ordered tea with bun-muskaa, extra butter and all. With loud busy teeth, batchar-batchar, the bastard ate everything, happy as a goat in a garbage dump, and gurgled down his tea. When he got the bill he said, Sorry, no money. My waiter thought he was joking. But the bhonsrino kept refusing to pay.”

  That was when the waiter pushed him and the fight began. Eventually, three waiters held the man down while Merwan himself went through the man’s pockets. “But I found nothing except a snot-filled handkerchief. Absolute karko, not one paiso. He said he had no money, but was hungry – just imagine the maaderchod’s courage.”

  “At least he was honest,” said Vilas.

  “Aray, bugger the mother of honesty! Half this country is hungry. If they all behave like this chootiya, how will I survive? I gave him one solid backhand chamaat.”

  He raised his hand to demonstrate, and they glanced at the beefy palm, the pudgy fingers like sausages, and felt pity for the poor victim.

  “No point calling police,” continued Merwan. “They would just thrash him and let him go.” But he had had a word of advice for the man before sending him on his way: it would be wiser to steal an apple or banana in the bazaar and run away.

  The man said that was what he usually did, but today being the tenth anniversary of his college graduation, he’d felt a yearning for tea and bun-muskaa, which he and his friends used to enjoy in those happy days. Then he tucked his shirt neatly back into his pants, combed his hair, tied his shoelaces, and shook hands with Merwan. They had parted quite amicably.

  “What makes me sad is that a college graduate cannot find a job,” said Merwan.

  “Very common,” said Vilas. “Ordinary B.A. or B.Sc. is no good,” said Vilas. “Only ones making money are computer people.”

  “I’ve heard about highway robbery, home invasion, break-and-enter,” said Merwan. “Never seen a tea and bun-muskaa burglary. What times have come.”

  They laughed and went to their table in the rear. At the kitchen door the waiter held up two fingers to confirm their usual two cups; they nodded. Just then, Vilas’s friends appeared at the entrance. He waved them over, and raised four fingers for the waiter as he introduced Gautam and Bhaskar to Yezad.

  They shook hands and pulled up chairs. Bhaskar wore round, steel-rimmed Gandhi glasses, and both had khadi satchels slung over their shoulders. The satchels were as voguishly patched as their jeans, and gashes in the homespun revealed tantalizing glimpses of the books and magazines within, while scrupulous rips in the denim exposed selected areas of skin.

  The tea arrived. “My treat today,” said Yezad, and turned to the waiter, “Suno, bhai, four mutton patties and one plate wafers.”

  Vilas brought his face closer to whisper, “Why are you spending? You’ve got money problems, with your father-in-law.”

  “It’s okay, I won some cash in Matka today.”

  “Really? I didn’t know you played Matka.”

  “My first time. This Matka Queen lives next door, she is a powerful dreamer. She put the bet for me.”

  “Beginner’s luck,” said Vilas. “Save the money and don’t play any more.”

  Gautam said for most people Matka was a harmless bit of fun, like buying a lottery ticket. “Basically, however, it’s a criminal scourge that has Bombay helpless in its grip.”

  The waiter returned with the order of patties and wafers. Yezad chuckled. “Come on. You make it sound like the Cosa Nostra is running Bombay.”

  “Basically, Cosa Nostra are babes in the wood, compared with these Bombay gangs,” said Gautam. “With all due respect, you have no idea what you are talking about.”

  “Excuse me,” said Yezad, taken aback by this fusillade from someone he’d just met.

  Bhaskar intervened, “You see, we’re journalists, and Gautam did a story recently about Matka. An in-depth analysis about the politician-criminal-police nexus. Shiv Sena was also mentioned in his article, and they didn’t like it. Last week, some of their goondas caught him outside the office.”

  “They blackened my face,” said Gautam matter-of-factly, biting into one of the mutton patties.

  “What did they do, abuse and threaten?” asked Vilas.

  “I was not speaking in metaphor.”

  “You mean they actually …?”

  “Yes.” Gautam described how a dozen of them had accosted him, screaming that journalists who maligned the Shiv Sena and blackened its good name by printing lies would receive the same treatment. The men twisted his arms behind him and grabbed his hair to keep him still
. They had a tin of Cherry Blossom black shoe polish, and applied it to his face and ears and neck, even ruining his shirt in the process.

  “Gautam looked like Al Jolson when they finished,” said Bhaskar, and Yezad and Vilas laughed.

  “It’s not a laughing matter,” glared the journalist. “My eyes and skin were burning, I had to rush to a doctor. And to remove all the polish took so much scrubbing, my face is still sore.”

  “Those people are absolutely lawless,” said Yezad. He thought he could see a black spot beside the Adam’s apple, and wondered if it was a bit of leftover Cherry Blossom or just a skin blemish.

  “I bet you,” said Vilas, “whichever shakha those Shiv Sainiks came from, the police chowki in their neighbourhood knows exactly who they are.”

  “One thing is certain,” said Bhaskar, “the article hit a nerve. People think it’s not so bad when Shiv Sena extorts money from rich businessmen – ‘donations’ for their ‘charity’ work. But Matka also finances Shiv Sena machinery. And Matka money paid for the plastic explosives with which the terrorists blew up the stock exchange. You see the paradox? The enemies of the nation, and political parties that claim to be defenders of the nation, all rely on the same source.”

  “Problem is,” said Vilas, “so do millions of ordinary people. The numbers they bet each night give them reason to wake up next morning. In some ways Matka is Bombay and Bombay is Matka.”

  “Sounds profound but makes no sense,” said Gautam. “Those who play it should know they’re supporting a criminal enterprise.”

  “I guess this was my first and last time,” said Yezad.

  As Gautam nodded approval, raising his patty for another bite, Vilas arrested his wrist: “Matka money is paying for that.”

  “I know. But wasting it won’t prevent illegal activity. In fact, throwing away something so delicious will compound the felony.”

  They laughed, and munched the crisp wafers. Then Bhaskar said it had been a long time since Vilas had written for their amateur drama society, and surely there was plenty of raw material collected in the course of his scribal work.

  “Actually, I read a letter this morning which could be a full-length tragedy,” said Vilas. “Came from the man’s village in Uttar Pradesh. It was regarding his younger brother.”

  He summarized the contents penned by the village scribe: the younger brother had been spending time with a girl from a higher caste, and this had annoyed people in the village, especially the girl’s relatives. Both had been told to stop. As a warning, some men from the girl’s family had assaulted the young man, which only made the couple more defiant.

  One evening the two were found in each other’s arms. The men tore the lovers apart, beat them, pulled out their hair, ripped their clothes off. An urgent meeting of the village panchayat was called. The couple, bruised and bleeding, was brought before them.

  The boy’s family said if their son had committed a crime, the police could register a complaint. The girl’s family argued it was a village matter, requiring the traditional punishment. The panchayat agreed. A decision was rendered in minutes: hanging, for both, after slicing off their ears and noses.

  The boy’s father went on his knees before the panchayat and wept for mercy, suggesting a compromise: remove the ears and nose, but let his son live. They said no, the offence was too serious, leniency would only encourage more bad behaviour from youngsters.

  In the eyes of the panchayat, both families were aggrieved parties. Thus, the girl’s father had the privilege of hacking off the boy’s ears and nose; the boy’s father was offered the girl’s face to disfigure. He refused, so the girl’s father performed his daughter’s amputations as well, prior to the hanging.

  “A very sad story,” said Gautam. “But it wouldn’t be suitable for us.”

  “Why not?”

  “We need urban themes. Basically, our mandate is to awaken the urban poor to their plight.”

  “And there are problems with this story,” said Bhaskar. “If it’s a tragedy, who is the tragic hero, what is his fatal flaw, his hamartia? And what about the audience, what form will their catharsis take? These questions have to be considered.”

  Vilas rolled his eyes at Yezad. “Look, the audience will feel compassion for the two young people, and outrage towards the barbarians and the caste system. Isn’t that enough?”

  The journalists shook their heads with wise smiles.

  “Wouldn’t work, trust me,” said Bhaskar. “We want you to write something about Shiv Sena. They are our greatest urban menace.”

  “But don’t mention them directly,” said Gautam. “Or they’ll burn down the hall where we meet.”

  “Try an allegorical style,” said Bhaskar. “Perhaps write in the form of a fable.”

  Yezad played with the salt-cellar, sliding it about the table. “What about the boy’s parents? They must have gone to the police.”

  Already irritated by the two journalists, Vilas pounced upon Yezad: “You sound like a foreign tourist talking about law and order, and democracy. You know perfectly well in this country how things —”

  “You’re right,” said Yezad, feeling foolish. “It’s just that when you hear such terrible things …”

  “Yes,” said Vilas. “When people feel helpless, they say things to make themselves feel better. Or they deny the injustice.”

  “Isolated incidents, they call them,” said Gautam.

  “Exactly,” said Bhaskar. “They say that our nation has made so much progress – satellite TV, they say, Internet, e-mail, best software designers in the world.”

  Gautam chuckled. “Hamaara Bharat Mahaan, they repeat like that government slogan,” and they laughed.

  “Let me give you an example,” said Vilas. “A while back, I read a novel about the Emergency. A big book, full of horrors, real as life. But also full of life, and the laughter and dignity of ordinary people. One hundred per cent honest – made me laugh and cry as I read it. But some reviewers said no, no, things were not that bad. Especially foreign critics. You know how they come here for two weeks and become experts. One poor woman whose name I can’t remember made such a hash of it, she had to be a bit pagal, defending Indira, defending the Sanjay sterilization scheme, defending the entire Emergency – you felt sorry for her even though she was a big professor at some big university in England. What to do? People are afraid to accept the truth. As T. S. Eliot wrote, ‘Human kind cannot bear very much reality.’ ”

  He looked at his watch, started at the time, and gulped down his tea. He and Yezad rose to return to work.

  “Nice meeting you, Yezad,” said the two young men. “Keep in touch, Vilas, write something for us, promise?”

  While Yezad was settling the bill, from the kitchen came a loud crash of crockery. Voices began yelling in a cacophony of blame. Merwan Irani flung the change at him, locked the till, and scampered to the rear as fast as his bulk would permit, his massive hands and forearms hanging motionless at his side.

  Like a moving mutton stall, thought Yezad.

  “Poor fellow,” said Vilas. “He’s not having a happy day.” Outside, he continued, “You see what I mean about these actors? Too pseudo for me. They become blind to real life with their intellectualizing. Stanislavsky-this and Strasberg-that, and Brechtian alienation is all they talk about.”

  Still unsettled by the story of the hanged couple, Yezad asked if he had written a reply for the client. Vilas shook his head, the poor man was in shock. “I tried to return the reading fee he had paid in advance. How could I take money and give such news? But he did not want to cheapen his brother’s death, he said, by hearing it for free. He wanted to go back to his village, avenge his brother. Poor fellow. How to tell him life is not an Amitabh Bachchan movie? That justice is a mirage?”

  “What did you advise?”

  “To write to his family, to share his grief and anger. What else?” Vilas sighed. “It’s one thing to read about this type of incident in a newspaper, but can you ima
gine the man sitting next to me, both of us unsuspecting, and I open the letter containing the murder of his younger brother?”

  “Like a doctor whose patient is terminal,” said Yezad.

  “Worse. The doctor can at least prepare his patient and the family. But when I am handed a letter, I don’t know what is in it. My eyes see the words, my mouth utters them, and there is nothing I can do except keep reading.”

  “You could pause and first offer some comfort: sorry, it’s bad news, please brace yourself. Warn him like a doctor.”

  “There’s a big difference, Yezad. When a doctor does it, he is not violating the Hippocratic oath. In fact, kindness and compassion is a good doctor’s obligation. But were I to soften the news, break it gradually, it would be a betrayal of trust.”

  “Oh, come on – kindness is betrayal?”

  Trying to make him understand, Vilas spoke with great fervour: “When a client places a letter in my hands, it’s a sacred trust. I pledge to read the words for him in the way they would be consumed by his own eyes – if he could read. That’s the inviolable contract: not one word added or omitted or delayed.”

  “You’re taking it too seriously. At most, it’s like a little white lie.”

  “Some things can only be taken seriously!” Vilas’s voice rose, and people passing assumed the two were quarrelling. “Little white lies are as pernicious as big black lies. When they mix together, a great greyness of ambiguity descends, society is cast adrift in an amoral sea, and corruption and rot and decay start to flourish. Such is the time we are now passing through. Everything is disintegrating because details are neglected and nothing is regarded seriously.”

  Out of breath, Vilas realized he was overwrought. “Sorry, Yezad, you must think I’m obsessed with my letters. You have enough problems of your own without listening to my extended family tragedies.”

  “It’s okay, they make my problems small by contrast.”