Such a Long Journey Page 6

  Gustad’s grandmother, also an ardent wrestling fan, attended the matches with them. Besides being an expert on chickens and butchers, she was very knowledgeable about the sweaty sport. Able to identify the ring personalities as readily as the spices in her kitchen, she had no trouble following the various holds that the wrestlers knotted each other’s bodies into, or the drop-kicks, flying mares, body scissors and airplane spins that whizzed around the arena. She could anticipate falls, escapes, take-downs and reversals better than Gustad or Grandpa, and very often outdid them in predicting the winner.

  And if Grandpa was a strong man, Grandma, in her own way, was a powerful woman. Had it not been for her knowledge of wrestling, she used to tell Gustad laughingly, there would have been no Noble family as he knew it. For Grandpa, timid and shy and indecisive, as men of his size and strength often are in such matters, kept putting off asking the crucial question. Till one day, when he was tying himself in knots as usual, hemming and hawing, she decided to take the initiative with a lightning-quick half-nelson to force him to his knees so he could propose.

  Grandpa denied the entire story, but, she would laugh and say, what started out as discreet and circumspect matchmaking ended in an exciting wrestling match.

  ‘Yes sir,’ said Gustad, ‘one hundred push-ups and squats every morning. Best possible exercise. I said to Darius, my right hand I will cut off and give you if your biceps don’t increase by one inch in six months. And same guarantee I can give you, Dinshawji.’

  ‘No, no, forget it. At my age, only one muscle needs to be strong.’

  Darius laughed knowingly, and Dinshawji said, ‘Naughty boy! I am talking about my brain!’ He reached out and gingerly touched Darius’s right arm. ‘O my God! Solid, yaar! Come on, let’s see it.’

  Darius shook his head modestly and tugged his short sleeves, trying to stretch them towards the elbows. ‘Go ahead, don’t be so shy,’ said Gustad. ‘Look, I’ll show mine first.’ He rolled up his sleeve to flex in the classic fist-against-forehead pose.

  Dinshawji clapped. ‘Like a big mango goteloo! Bravo, bravo! Your turn now, Mr Body-builder. Come on, come on!’

  Darius affected boredom with all this fuss about biceps, but was secretly quite pleased. Body-building was his latest hobby, and the only successful one. Before that, his fascination with living creatures used to take him to the pet shop at Crawford Market. He started with fish. But one evening, just a fortnight after they came home, his guppies, black mollies, kissing gouramis, and neon tetra died following a spell of leaping and thrashing against the glass, very much like the lizard’s tail on Miss Kutpitia’s breakfast table.

  Over the next four years, the fish were succeeded by finches, sparrows, a squirrel, lovebirds, and a Nepali parrot, all of which succumbed to illnesses ranging from chest colds to mysterious growths in their craws that prevented eating and led to starvation. At each demise, Darius wept bitterly and buried his departed friends in the compound beside his father’s vinca bush. He spent long hours meditating on the wisdom of loving living things which invariably ended up dead. There was something patently ungrateful about the transaction, a lack of good taste in whoever was responsible for such a pointless, wasteful finish: beautiful, colourful creatures, full of life and fun, hidden under the drab soil of the compound. What sense did it make?

  Over and over, the external world had let him down. Now it would be foolish, he decided, to invest any more time or energy on such a world, and turned his attention to himself. His physique became his hobby. Soon after he commenced his exercises, however, a severe case of pneumonia confined him to bed. Miss Kutpitia told Dilnavaz she was not surprised. The innocent little fish and birds in his custody had no doubt cursed him with their dying breaths, and here, for all to see, was the result of their curses.

  She taught Dilnavaz how to appease the little creatures and put their spirits at rest. Dilnavaz listened good-naturedly, in one ear and out the other, till one day Miss Kutpitia arrived suddenly with the necessary ingredients to conduct the appeasement procedure. Certain herbs were burnt on hot coals while the patient inhaled the rising vapours.

  Whether the birds and fish decided to forgive Darius, or whether Dr Paymaster’s medicine overcame the illness was uncertain. But Darius resumed his exercise programme and was amply rewarded in muscles, to his father’s delight, and his own relief that finally he had succeeded at something.

  ‘Come on, come on! Show them!’ said Dinshawji.

  ‘Be a sport,’ said Gustad, and Darius displayed his biceps.

  Dinshawji feigned fear and fell back in awe, hands folded over his chest: ‘Ohoho! Look at the size of that. Keep far away, baba. In mistake if you land one on me, I will be completely flattened and battened.’

  ‘Daddy, please!’ said Roshan. ‘The donkey song!’

  This time, Dinshawji seconded the proposal. He was familiar with Gustad’s fine baritone. Sometimes, they had song sessions with friends in the bank canteen during lunch hour. ‘OK, Gustad,’ he said. ‘Time for “Donkey Serenade”. Let’s have it.’

  Gustad cleared his throat, took a deep breath, and began:

  There’s a song in the air,

  But the fair señorita doesn’t seem to care

  For the song in the air.

  So I’ll sing to the mule,

  If you’re sure she won’t think that I am just a fool

  Serenading a mule …

  When he came to the section that started with ‘Amigo mio, does she not have a dainty bray’, everyone tried to join in. They stayed with him till he reached ‘hee hee haw’, where the last note had to be held for so long that they all ran out of breath, while Roshan burst out laughing with the effort, and Gustad finished the song alone: ‘You’re the one for me! Olé!’

  ‘Encore! Encore!’ said Dinshawji. Everyone clapped, including Dilnavaz, who had appeared silently by the sideboard to listen. She loved to hear Gustad sing. She smiled at him and went back to the kitchen.

  Dinshawji turned to Roshan. ‘Now it’s time for muscles again. How are your muscles today? Let us see, let us see!’ She raised her arm, imitating her father and Darius, then aimed a playful blow at Dinshawji’s shoulder.

  ‘Careful, careful!’ he moaned, ‘or it will be twelve o’clock for me.’ Reaching out with his bony, gangly fingers as though to test her muscle, he began tickling her. ‘Ohohoho! What muscles! Gilly gilly gilly! Here’s another muscle. And another one. Gilly gilly gilly!’ Roshan was out of breath, laughing wildly and rolling over the sofa.

  Dilnavaz emerged from the kitchen and looked disapprovingly at Dinshawji. She said dinner was on the table.

  ii

  The chicken had been successfully divided into nine pieces. The absence of Miss Kutpitia and Dinshawji’s wife, thought Dilnavaz, was fortunate. Even if Dinshawji started by taking two pieces, it would leave something in the dish at the end. She made a polite gesture to the guest to begin.

  ‘Ladies first, ladies first!’ said Dinshawji, and Darius echoed him. ‘Naughty boy!’ Dinshawji pretended to chide him, winking broadly. ‘Slow with that beer, it can climb quickly to the head!’ The two had struck a rapport, and Gustad was pleased. He looked at Sohrab. Such a moody boy – if only he could be more friendly, like Darius.

  The brown sauce, in which the chicken swam, was perfect, as Gustad had predicted. The aroma, said Dinshawji, could make even a corpse at the Tower of Silence sit up with an appetite, it was that wonderful. Whereupon Dilnavaz eyed him distastefully. Did the man have no sense of decency, mentioning such things at the dinner-table, on a birthday?

  Besides chicken, there was a vegetable stew made of carrots, peas, potatoes and yam, liberally spiced with coriander, cumin, ginger, garlic, turmeric and whole green chillies. And there was rice, studded with cloves and cinnamon sticks: fragrant basmati rice that Dilnavaz had obtained from the black-market fellow for this special day, trading one week’s quota of fat, tasteless ration-shop rice for four cups of the slender, delicious grain.

>   They helped themselves to the stew first. There was a tacit understanding that the chicken would provide the climax. Said Gustad to Dinshawji, ‘You see this chicken waiting patiently for us? This morning it was anything but patient. What excitement! It escaped from the kitchen into the compound, and the goaswalla –’

  ‘You mean you brought it home alive from the market?’

  ‘Of course. Makes all the difference in the taste, you know, slaughtering fresh and cooking –’

  ‘Can you please explain to Dinshawji later? After we eat?’ said Dilnavaz sharply. The two men looked up, surprised, and glanced around the table. Her sentiments echoed silently from the other three faces.

  ‘Sorry, sorry,’ said Gustad. He and Dinshawji resumed attacking the stew with gusto, but the others pushed their food back and forth on the plate. Roshan’s countenance had acquired the slightest tinge of green. Gustad realized how seriously he had erred: something had to be done to restore the good appetite. ‘Wait, everybody, wait,’ he announced. ‘We haven’t yet sung “Happy Birthday” for Roshan.’

  ‘Arré, not allowed to delay “Happy Birthday”. Chaalo, chaalo! Right now!’ Dinshawji clapped his hands, having taken the cue. ‘But food will get cold,’ said Dilnavaz.

  ‘How long does “Happy Birthday” take?’ said Gustad. ‘Ready: one, two, three,’ and with a wave of his hand he led the singing. Once he had started, everyone joined in enthusiastically, and as they came to ‘Happy Birthday, dear Roshan’, and Roshan smiled with pleasure at the mention of her name, Dinshawji reached over to tickle her again, ‘Gilly gilly gilly!’ catching her completely by surprise. She almost fell off her chair with laughing.

  Then Gustad raised his beer glass: ‘God bless you, Roshan. May you live to be an old, old woman in good health – learn a lot, live a lot, see a lot.’

  ‘Hear, hear!’ said Dinshawji, and everyone sipped from their glasses. Roshan had Raspberry in hers. Dilnavaz had only water, but she swallowed a little beer from Darius’s glass. ‘For good luck,’ she said, shutting tight her eyes as it went down bitterly, then opened them and beamed at everyone, looking slightly surprised.

  ‘Wait, wait,’ said Dinshawji, and Darius at once said, ‘Hundred and twenty pounds.’ ‘Naughty boy!’ parried Dinshawji, then continued, ‘Hold on to your glasses, everybody.’ He cleared his throat and placed his right hand over his heart. Unmindful of his tongue’s perpetual difficulties with the ‘sh’ sound, he began reciting to Roshan:

  I wiss you health, I wiss you wealth,

  I wiss you gold in store;

  I wiss you heaven on earth,

  What can I wiss you more?

  There was more clapping, and sips were taken from glasses round the table. ‘Bravo!’ said Darius, ‘bravo!’ and then the flat was plunged into darkness.

  For a moment there was that surprised silence touched with fear which clutches the heart on such occasions. Almost immediately, however, the sound of breathing and other normal noises resumed. ‘Everybody stay seated,’ said Gustad. ‘First, I will get my torch from the black desk. Check what’s wrong.’ He groped his way slowly. ‘Probably a fuse or something.’ He switched on the torch but the light was dim. The beam gathered strength after he thumped the bottom.

  ‘Take me to the kitchen,’ said Dilnavaz. ‘Candles and the kerosene lamp will at least let us finish eating.’

  While she busied herself, Gustad went to the window. He spied a figure in the compound whose walk was unmistakable. ‘Tehmul! Tehmul! Over here, ground floor.’

  ‘GustadGustadGustadalldarkandblack.’

  ‘Yes, Tehmul. The whole building is dark?’

  ‘Yesyeswholebuildingdarkeverythingdark. Blackroadlights. Dark-everythingdarkGustad. Darkdarkdarkdark.’

  Dinshawji came to the window, trying to follow the exchange. ‘OK, Tehmul,’ said Gustad. ‘Be careful, don’t fall.’

  Dilnavaz lit the kerosene lamp, which was not enough to brighten the entire room. But the table looked very warm and inviting. ‘With the black paper everywhere, even starlight and moonlight is blocked out,’ she said, to no one in particular.

  ‘Was that a mouth or the Deccan Express?’ asked Dinshawji. ‘You understood anything?’

  Gustad laughed. ‘That’s our one and only Tehmul-Lungraa. Takes a little practice to understand. Anyway, we don’t have to check the fuse. Whole neighbourhood is blacked out, nothing to do but wait.’

  ‘Do not wait,’ said Dinshawji. ‘Or you’ll be late, just fill your plate.’

  ‘One poem after another! You are in good form tonight, Dinshawji,’ said Gustad. ‘We will have to call you Poet Laureate from now on.’

  ‘Laureate-baureate nothing, I am a son of Mother India. Call me Kavi Kamaal, the Indian Tennyson!’ He grabbed the torch from Gustad and held it under his chin. The light cast an eerie glow over his sallow complexion. He hunched up his shoulders and began to prowl like a spectre around the table, reciting in an unearthly voice that emerged from a death mask:

  Gho-o-osts to right of them,

  Gho-o-osts to left of them,

  Gho-o-osts in front of them,

  Hungry and thirsty!

  Everyone cheered and clapped except Dilnavaz who was now frantic about the food getting cold. Dinshawji took a bow and handed the torch back to Gustad. Flushed with success and inspiration, he declaimed, ‘Though dark is the night, please take no fright, we shall eat by candlelight. Or kerosene light.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ said Gustad. ‘But light or no light, I have one more wish to make. For Sohrab, my son, my eldest: to you, good luck, good health, and may you do brilliantly at IIT. Make us all very proud of you.’

  ‘Hear, hear!’ cried Dinshawji. ‘For he’s a jolly good fellow! For he’s a jolly good fellow!’ Everyone joined in, and the singing got louder and louder. They did not hear Sohrab saying ‘Stop it’ till he repeated with a shout, over the singing, ‘STOP IT!’

  The voices ceased abruptly, in mid-melody. Their features frozen, everyone looked at Sohrab. He sat staring angrily at his plate. The candles cast nervous shadows that shivered or yawed wildly when the flames were disturbed by breathing.

  ‘Food is getting really cold,’ said Dilnavaz, although it was the last thing she cared about now.

  ‘Yes, we will eat,’ said Gustad, ‘but,’ to Sohrab, ‘what is the matter suddenly?’

  ‘It’s not suddenly. I’m sick and tired of IIT, IIT, IIT all the time. I’m not interested in it, I’m not a jolly good fellow about it, and I’m not going there.’

  Gustad sighed. ‘I told you not to drink the rum. It has upset you.’

  Sohrab looked up scornfully. ‘Fool yourself if you want to. I’m not going to IIT anyway.’

  ‘Such brainless talk from such a brainy boy. How is it possible, I ask you,’ he said, turning to Dinshawji. ‘And why, after studying so hard for it?’ Dilnavaz moved the dishes around, picked up serving spoons and set them down again. But the comforting clatter of crockery and cutlery was powerless to restore normalcy. Gustad silenced her with a wave of his hand. ‘Say why. Becoming mute helps nothing.’ He paused, more bewildered than angry. ‘OK, I understand your silence. This is a birthday dinner, not the right time for discussion. Tomorrow we will talk.’

  ‘Why can’t you just accept it? IIT does not interest me. It was never my idea, you made all the plans. I told you I am going to change to the arts programme, I like my college, and all my friends here.’

  Gustad could contain himself no longer. ‘Friends? Friends? Don’t talk to me of friends! If you have good reasons, I will listen. But don’t say friends! You must be blind if you cannot see my own example and learn from it.’ He stopped and stroked Roshan’s hair as though to reassure her about something. ‘What happened to the great friend Jimmy Bilimoria? Our Major Uncle? Where is he now, who used to come here all the time? Who used to eat with us and drink with us? Who I treated like my brother? Gone! Disappeared! Without saying a word to us. That’s friendship. Worthless and meaningless!’
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br />   Dinshawji squirmed uncomfortably, and Gustad added gruffly, ‘Present company excepted, of course. Chaalo, the stew was very tasty. Chicken is next. Come on, Dinshawji. Come on, Roshan.’

  ‘Gentlemen first! This time gentlemen first!’ said Dinshawji, doing his best to dispel the gloom. ‘Let’s play fair, fair ladies.’ But no one laughed, not even Darius. Silence, for the most part, governed the remainder of the meal.

  Dinshawji found the wishbone and offered to break it with someone, but there were no volunteers. Embarrassed, Gustad took hold of one end. They pulled and wrenched and fumbled with the greasy bone till it snapped. Gustad’s was the shorter piece.

  FOUR

  i

  The solitary guest departed, and Gustad locked the door for the night. Of the nine chicken portions, six remained in the dish. ‘Now you are satisfied,’ he said, ‘ruining your sister’s birthday. No one even felt like eating anything.’

  ‘You brought the live chicken home and killed it and made us feel sick at the table,’ said Sohrab. ‘Don’t blame me for your stupidity.’

  ‘Stupidity? Bay-sharam! You are speaking to your father!’

  ‘No quarrels on a birthday,’ said Dilnavaz, half-cajoling, half-warning. ‘That’s a strict rule in our house.’

  ‘I know I am speaking to my father. But my father does not want to know the truth when he hears it.’

  ‘Truth? First suffer like your parents have, then talk about truth! I never had my college fees paid for me, I had to earn them. And study late at night with an oil lamp like that one, with the wick very low, to save –’

  ‘You’ve told us that story a hundred times,’ said Sohrab.

  ‘Roshan!’ Gustad’s hands were shaking. ‘Bring my belt! The thick brown leather one! I will teach this brother of yours a lesson in respect! He thinks he is all grown up now! His chaamray-chaamra I will peel off! Till not one inch of skin is left on him!’