Chapter Forty-Eight
The path was rough: dusty earth and stones. To the right, a long wire fence cordoned off the gleaming windows of showcased goods in the World Trade Centre. To the left was a wide field where women and children found a place to relieve themselves among the weeds, and shrubs, and piles of other people’s relief.
A woman was squatting in the darkness, obscured by scrubby plants. Some kids were squatting in the stony grass beside the path. As Diva passed, the kids smiled, and said, Hello! What is your name?
When the path began to descend toward the sea we caught our first glimpse of the slum: a tattered cloak, thrown over a fragment of coast beside the gleaming towers of the rich, across the little bay.
‘Holy fuck,’ Diva said.
The slum, at night, was its own dark age. The light in the houses came from kerosene wick-lamps. There was no electricity, and no running water. Rats swept through the lanes in black waves every night, devouring piles of garbage left like dark offerings.
That smell of kerosene, and mustard oil almost-burnt, and incense, and salt-wind from the sea close by, and the soap of desperate cleanliness, and honest sweat, and the scent of horses, goats, dogs, cats, monkeys and snakes: all those aromas assaulted Diva as we wound our way by torchlight to Johnny Cigar’s house.
Her eyes were wide, but her lips were pressed into a determined frown. She held Naveen’s arm, but her high-heeled shoes staked out a sure path on the uneven ground.
Johnny Cigar was waiting for us, dressed in his temple best.
‘Welcome, Aanu,’ he said, pressing his palms together, and bowing to Diva. ‘My name is Johnny Cigar. I hope you don’t mind it, that I’m calling you Aanu. I have told everyone that you are my cousin Aanu, visiting from London.’
‘Okay,’ Diva said uncertainly.
‘To help you settle in peacefully here,’ Johnny added, ‘I told them that you are a little bit mad. That should explain your angry temperament.’
‘My angry temperament?’
‘Well, Shantaram said . . . ’
‘Shantaram, huh?’
‘I have also told everyone that some people are searching for you, because you stole something from them, so we must keep your stay with us a secret.’
‘Okay . . . I guess.’
‘Oh, yes. This is the safest place for thieves outside the parliament building.’
‘That’s reassuring,’ Diva replied, smiling. ‘I think.’
‘You may be surprised how many famous people hide in the slum with us. We had a cricket player hiding here, once. I can’t tell you his name, but when we played together, he told me –’
‘Shut up, Johnny!’
Johnny’s wife, Sita, emerged from the house, her red and gold sari whirling sails around her slim figure.
‘You don’t even know what I was talking about,’ Johnny said, his feelings hurt.
‘Shut up anyway,’ Sita snapped. ‘And leave the poor girl alone.’
Two other women joined her, and they led Diva to the hut reserved for her, a few paces away. Naveen and Didier followed. I looked at Johnny.
‘Coming along, Johnny?’
‘I’m . . . I’m going to give Sita a minute,’ he said.
‘Trouble in paradise?’ I asked, opening my big mouth.
‘You don’t know the half of it,’ he said, wiping a hand through his thick, brown hair. ‘Sita is driving me nuts.’
‘Listen, I’m gonna roll some joints. For Diva. I think she’ll need them more than blankets, if she sleeps here tonight. Why don’t we sit inside, and I’ll get to work, while you talk.’
He talked. I learned more about Sita, in half an hour, than any man should know about another man’s wife. I tried to take her side, once, in fairness, but he cried, so I had to stop.
It was all Johnny, after that. His suffering was measured in Stations of the Cross Wife, each one with a scolding image. In the end, it came down to one thing.
‘Contraception,’ I said, rolling joints for Diva’s slum orientation.
‘What are you saying?’
‘She wants another kid, and you don’t. Contraception.’
‘I’m practising contraception, at the moment,’ he pleaded, shifting uncomfortably on his seat. ‘We haven’t had sex in six months.’
‘That’s not contraception, Johnny, that’s disconception. No wonder she’s cranky.’
‘Sita believes that sex is for making children. I think sex is for making children, and for making love, sometimes. She won’t accept any birth control. When I tried to talk to her about condoms, she called me a pervert.’
‘That’s a little harsh.’
‘What am I going to do? You see how beautiful she is, na?’
Sita was named after a kindly, self-sacrificing Goddess, and for the most part she lived up to the name. But she also had a temper, and a tongue that whipped it into shape. We thought about it, for a while, as Diva’s joints accumulated.
‘You could do the girl thing,’ I suggested, ‘and talk it out.’
‘Not . . . safe,’ he said. ‘Or?’
‘Or you could do the guy thing.’
‘The guy thing?’ he asked, his eyes squinting suspiciously.
‘The guy thing is to ignore it, and hope she gives in before you do.’
‘I’m going with the guy thing,’ Johnny said, punching his palm. ‘It’s so much safer than the truth.’
‘Don’t be too sure,’ I said, gathering up the rolled joints. ‘Women have a psychic witchy spooky talking-to-the-dead way of knowing everything you think. So, sooner or later, you’ve gotta do it their way anyway.’
‘Of course,’ he hissed. ‘That’s how women get back at men.’
‘How’s that?’
‘By making men become women, for a while. It’s cruel, what they do, making us talk to them, Lin. It’s scary, and men have difficulty with scary. It makes them want to fight.’
‘Speaking of scary, let’s go find out how Diva’s doing.’
Diva was surrounded by young girls up past their bedtimes, asking her about everything she wore, and everything that spilled from Naveen’s pack.
Johnny and Sita had covered the earthen floor with a blue plastic sheet, and they’d covered that with patchwork quilts. There was a clay matka water pot in the corner, with an aluminium plate on top, and an upturned glass.
That pot was all of Diva’s water for a day: all she had for drinking, cooking and doing the dishes. There was a kerosene pressure cooker in a corner, with two burners. A metal cabinet on high legs held two metal saucepans, some foodstuffs and a carton of milk. Another metal cabinet with three shelves was for her clothes.
A kerosene lantern rested on that cabinet. The low light seemed to hover on faces and in corners. Apart from a decorative swirl of artificial flowers, hanging from one of the bamboo support poles, there was nothing else in the hut.
The walls were made from woven reed matting, the gaps and chinks stuffed with sheets of newspaper. The roof was a bare plastic sheet, draped over the bamboo framework of the hut.
The black plastic roof was so low that I had to stoop a little. I’d spent a lot of time in the humid swelter of a hut just like hers. I knew that an unpleasantly hot day on the city’s streets became an inferno in a small hut, each breath a struggle, and sweat dripping like rain from drooping leaves.
I looked at her, the Bombay Diva, sitting on the patchwork blankets and talking with the girls.
I hadn’t lied: it did get better, when I lived in the slum, but only after it got so bad that I thought I couldn’t stand another minute of teeming crowds, constant noise, lack of water, roaming cohorts of rats, and the constant background hum of hunger and fatally wounded hope.
I couldn’t tell her that the better days only ever began after the worst day. And I couldn’t know that the worst day, for Diva, was only twenty-four hours away.
‘I brought you some supplies,’ I said, leaning over to hand her the little pile of rolled joints, and a quarter-bottle of local rum.
‘A man of taste and distinction,’ she smiled, accepting the gifts. ‘Sit down, Shantaram, and join us. The girls were just about to explain whose ass you have to kiss, just to take a shit around here.’
‘I’ll take a raincheck, Diva,’ I smiled, ‘but I’m gonna stick around for a bit with Naveen and Didier, until you sleep, so I won’t be far. Is there anything else I can get you?’
‘No, man,’ she said. ‘Not unless you can bring my dad here.’
‘That would be kinda defeating the purpose,’ I smiled again. ‘But as soon as this situation with your dad settles down, I’m sure Naveen will put you together again.’
‘I hope so,’ she said. ‘When I first looked at these skinny girls, I thought they could sell their slimming diet for millions, to my friends alone. But then I realised that they’re hungry. What the hell is going on here?’
‘Welcome to the other side.’
‘Well, if I stay here for a week, that’s more than enough time to change all that,’ Diva said.
One of the girls translated her English words into Hindi, as she spoke. The girls all applauded and cheered. Diva was triumphant.
‘You see? The revolution has already started.’
The impish rebel fire was still in her eyes, but her face couldn’t hide the fear that crouched in her heart.
She was an intelligent girl. She knew that Naveen, Didier and I wouldn’t insist on something as drastic as a week in the slum, if we didn’t fear something more drastic on the open street.
I was sure she missed the cosseting luxury of the family mansion, the only home she’d ever known. Naveen said it was always well stocked with friends, food, drink, entertainment and servants. And maybe, in part, she felt that her father had deserted her, by banishing her to Naveen’s care.
I watched her smiling that stiff, unflinching smile, and talking with the girls. She was afraid for her father, that much was clear: perhaps more than for herself. And she was alone, and in a different world: a foreign tourist in the city where she was born.
I went to the hut next door, and settled down on a well-worn blue carpet beside Didier and Naveen. They were playing poker.
‘Will you play a hand, Lin?’ Didier asked.
‘I don’t think so, Didier. I’m kind of scattered tonight. Can’t think straight enough to play in your class.’
‘Very well,’ Didier smiled good-naturedly. ‘Then I shall continue the lesson. I am teaching Naveen how to cheat with honour.’
‘Honourable cheating?’
‘Cheating honourably,’ Didier corrected.
‘How to spot a cheat, as well,’ Naveen added. ‘Did you know there’s exactly one hundred and four ways to cheat? Two for every card in the deck. It’s fascinating stuff. Didier could teach a university course in this.’
‘Cheating at cards is simply magic,’ Didier said modestly. ‘And magic is simply cheating at cards.’
I let them play, sitting beside them and sipping one of Didier’s emergency flasks. It was a difficult night for me, too, although not the mind-shock that it was for Diva.
I felt the dome of the slum community beginning to close over me with sounds, smells and a swirl of defiant memories. I was back in the womb of mankind. I heard a cough nearby, a man crying out in sleep, a child waking, and a husband talking softly to his wife about their debts in Marathi. I could smell incense, burning in a dozen houses around us.
My heartbeat was trying to find its synchrony with twenty-five thousand others, fireflies, uneven until they learn to flash and fade in the same waves of light. But I couldn’t connect. Something in my life or my heart had changed. The part of me that had settled so willingly in the lake of consciousness that was the slum, years before, was missing.
When I escaped from prison I searched for a home, wandering from country to city, hoping that I’d recognise it when I found it. When I met Karla, I found love, instead. I didn’t know then that the search for one always leads to the other.
I said goodnight to Didier and Naveen, checked on Diva, already asleep in the arms of new Diva girls, and walked those lanes feeling sadder than I could understand.
A small pariah dog joined me, skipping ahead and then running back to collide with my legs. When I left the slum and started my bike, she joined a pack of street dogs, howling provocatively.
I headed to the Amritsar hotel to do some writing. As I cruised along the empty causeway I noticed Arshan, Farzad’s father, the nominal head of the three families that were looking for treasure.
Arshan wasn’t treasure hunting: he was staring fixedly at the Colaba police station, across the road from where he stood. I wheeled the bike around in a circle, and pulled up beside him.
‘Hi, Arshan. How’s it going?’
‘Oh, fine, fine,’ he said absently.
‘It’s kinda late,’ I observed. ‘And this is a rough neighbourhood. There’s a bank, a police station and a fashion brand store, all within twenty metres.’
He smiled softly, but his eyes never wavered from the police station.
‘I’m . . . I’m waiting for someone,’ he said vaguely.
‘Maybe he isn’t coming. Can I offer you a lift home?’
‘I’m fine,’ he said again. ‘I’m fine, Lin. You go on.’
He was so distracted that his hands were twitching, reflexes driven by violent thoughts, and his expression had unconsciously settled into a grimace of pain.
‘I’m gonna have to insist, Arshan,’ I said. ‘You don’t look good, man.’
He gradually brought himself back to the moment, shook his head, blinked the stare from his eyes, and accepted the ride.
He didn’t say a word on the way home, and only muttered thanks and farewell abstractedly, as he walked toward the door of his home.
Farzad opened for us, gasping in concern for his dad.
‘What is it, Pop? Are you okay?’
‘I’m fine, boy,’ he replied, resting on his son’s shoulder.
‘Lin, will you come in?’ Farzad asked.
It was a brave offer, because the kid was still in the Company, and we both knew Sanjay wouldn’t approve of him hosting me.
‘I’m good, Farzad,’ I said. ‘Let’s catch up, one of these days.’
At the Amritsar I threw everything off and took a long shower. Diva, who must’ve enjoyed baths foaming with scented oils in her father’s mansion, would have to wash in a small dish of water in the slum, and like the other girls, she’d have to wash fully clothed.
Poor kid, I thought, as I dressed again, but reminded myself that Naveen was never more than a call for help away. And I wondered how long it would take the Indian-Irish detective to admit that he was in love with her.
I made a no-bread sandwich of tuna fish, tomato and onion between slices of Parmesan cheese, drank two beers, and looked over Didier’s black market scams for a while.
He’d made pages of notes, with profiles on the key players, profit margins per month, salaries, and bribery payoffs. When I’d read them, I shoved the papers to the end of the bed, and picked up my journal.
There was that new short story I’d been trying to write, about happy, loving people doing happy, loving things. A love story. A fable. I tried to put a few more lines into the stream of words I’d already composed. I reread the first paragraph.
When it comes to the truth, there are two kinds of lovers: those who find truth in love, and those who find love in truth. Cleon Winters never sought the truth in anything, or anyone, because he didn’t believe in truth. But then, when he fell in love with Shanassa, truth found him, and all the lies he’d told himself became locusts, feeding on fields of doubt. When Shanassa kissed him, he fell into a coma, and was unconscious for six months, submerged in a lake of pure truth.
I persisted with the story for a while, but the characters began to change, following their own morphology, and became people I knew: Karla, Concannon, Diva.
The faces blurred, my eyes drooped, and every return to a line was another wave of will. I began to float on the sea of them, real faces and imagined.
The journal fell beside the bed. Loose pages from the notebook swirled free. The overhead fan scattered pages of my happy, loving story into Didier’s crime synopses. His pages settled on mine and mine joined his, and the wind wrote crime as love, and love as crime, as I slept.