Tales From Firozsha Baag (17 page)

The car stopped at the far end of the compound. Dr. Sidhwa heaved out, he was a portly man, and reached in for his bag. It must be an emergency in A Block, I decided, for someone to call him on Sunday. He slammed the door, then opened and slammed it again, harder now. The impact rocked the old car a little, but the door shut properly this time. Viraf emerged from the steps of A Block. I waved to him to let him know I was waiting.

Viraf was my best friend. Together we learned bicycling, on a rented contraption of bent spokes and patchwork tyres from Cecil Cycles of Tar Gully: Fifty Paise Per Hour. Daddy used to take us to practise at Chaupatty on the wide pavements by the beach. They were deserted in the early morning – pavement dwellers preferred the narrow side streets – except for pigeons gathering in anticipation of the pigeon-man, who arrived when the streets stirred to life. We took turns, and Daddy ran behind, holding the seat to keep us steady. Daddy also taught the two of us to play cricket. Mummy had been angry when he brought home the bat and ball, asking where the money had come from. His specialty on his own school team had been bowling, and he taught us the leg break and off break, and told us about the legendary Jasu Patel, born with a defective wrist which turned out to be perfect for spin bowling, and how Jasu had mastered the dreaded curl spin which was eventually feared by all the great international batsmen.

Cricket on Sunday mornings became a regular event for the boys in Firozsha Baag. Between us we almost had a complete kit; all that
was missing was a pair of bails, and wicket-keeping gloves. Daddy took anyone who wanted to play to the Marine Drive
maidaan
, and organized us into teams, captaining one team himself. We went early, before the sun got too hot and the
maidaan
overcrowded. But then one Sunday, halfway through the game, Daddy said he was going to rest for a while. Sitting on the grass a little distance away, he seemed so much older than he did when he was batting, or bowling leg breaks. He watched us with a faraway expression on his face. Sadly, as if he had just realized something and wished he hadn’t.

There was no cricket at the
maidaan
after that day. Since we were not allowed to go alone, our games were now confined to the Firozsha Baag compound. Its flagstoned surface would not accept the points of stumps, and we chalked three white lines on the compound’s black stone wall. But the compound was too cramped for cricket. Besides, the uneven ground made the ball bounce and rear erratically. After a few shattered panes of glass and several complaints from neighbours, the games ceased.

I waved again to Viraf and gave our private signal, “OO ooo OO ooo,” which was like a yodel. He waved back, then took the doctor’s bag and accompanied him into A Block. His polite demeanor made me smile. That Viraf. Shrewd fellow, he knew the things to do to make grownups approve of him, and was always welcome at all the homes in Firozsha Baag. He would be back soon.

I waited for at least half an hour. I cracked all my fingers and knuckles, even the thumbs. Then I went to the other end of the compound. After sitting on the steps there for a few minutes, I got impatient and climbed upstairs to find out why Viraf was buttering up the doctor.

But Dr. Sidhwa was on his way down, carrying his black bag. I said,
“Sahibji
, doctor,” and he smiled at me as I raced up to the third floor. Viraf was standing at the balcony outside his flat. “What’s all the
muskaa-paalis
for the doctor?”

He turned away without answering. He looked upset but I did not ask what the matter was. Words to show concern were always beyond me. I spoke again, in that easygoing debonair style which all of us tried to perfect, right arm akimbo and head tilted ever so slightly, “Come on
yaar
, what are your plans for today?”

He shrugged his shoulders, and I persisted, “Half the morning’s over, man, don’t be such a cry-baby.”

“Fish off,” he said, but his voice shook. His eyes were red, and he rubbed one as if there was something in it. I stood quietly for a while, looking out over the balcony. His third-floor balcony was my favourite spot, you could see the road beyond Firozsha Baag, and sometimes, on a sunny day, even a corner of Chaupatty beach with the sun gleaming on the waves. From my ground floor veranda the compound’s black stone wall was all that was visible.

Hushed voices came from the flat, the door was open. I looked into the dining-room where some A Block neighbours had gathered around Viraf’s mother. “How about Ludo or Snakes-and-Ladders?” I tried. If he shrugged again I planned to leave. What else could I do?

“Okay,” he said, “but stay quiet. If
Mumma
sees us she’ll send us out.”

No one saw as we tiptoed inside, they were absorbed in whatever the discussion was about.
“Puppa
is very sick,” whispered Viraf, as we passed the sickroom. I stopped and looked inside. It was dark. The smell of sickness and medicines made it stink like the waiting room of Dr. Sidhwa’s dispensary. Viraf’s father was in bed, lying on his back, with a tube through his nose. There was a long needle stuck into his right arm, and it glinted cruelly in a thin shaft of sunlight that had suddenly slunk inside the darkened room. I shivered. The needle was connected by a tube to a large bottle which hung upside down from a dark metal stand towering over the bed.

Viraf’s mother was talking softly to the neighbours in the dining-room. “ … in his chest got worse when he came home last night. So many times I’ve told him, three floors to climb is not easy at your age with your big body, climb one, take rest for a few minutes, then climb again. But he won’t listen, does not want people to think it is too much for him. Now this is the result, and what I will do I don’t know. Poor little Viraf, being so brave when the doctor…”

Supine, his rotundity had spread into a flatness denying the huge bulk. I remembered calling Viraf a cry-baby, and my face flushed with shame. I swore I would apologize. Daddy was slim and wiry, although there were the beginnings of a small pot, as Mummy called it. He used
to run and field with us at cricket. Viraf’s father had sat on the grass the one time he took us. The breath came loud and rasping. His mouth was a bit open. It resembled a person snoring, but was uneven, and the sound suggested pain. I noticed the lines on his brow, like Daddy’s, only Daddy’s were less deep.

Over the rasp of his breath came the voice of Viraf’s mother. “ … to exchange with someone on the ground floor, but that also is no. Says I won’t give up my third-floor paradise for all the smell and noise of a ground-floor flat. Which is true, up here even B.E.S.T. bus rattle and rumble does not come. But what use of paradise if you are not alive in good health to enjoy it? Now doctor says intensive care but Parsi General Hospital has no place. Better to stay here than other hospitals, only…”

My eyes fixed on the stone-grey face of Viraf’s father, I backed out of the sickroom, unseen. The hallway was empty. Viraf was waiting for me in the back room with the boards for Ludo and Snakes-and-Ladders. But I sneaked through the veranda and down the stairs without a word.

The compound was flooded in sunshine as I returned to the other end. On the way I passed the three white stumps we had once chalked on the compound wall’s black stone. The lines were very faint, and could barely be seen, lost amongst more recent scribbles and abandoned games of noughts and crosses.

Mummy was in the kitchen, I could hear the roaring of the Primus stove.
Mamaiji
, sinister in her dark glasses, sat by the veranda window, sunlight reflecting off the thick, black lenses with leather blinders at the sides; after her cataract operation the doctor had told her to wear these for a few months.

Daddy was still reading the
Times
at the dining-table. Through the gloom of the light bulb I saw the Murphy Baby’s innocent and joyous smile. I wondered what he looked like now. When I was two years old, there was a Murphy Baby Contest, and according to Mummy and Daddy my photograph, which had been entered, should have won. They said that in those days my smile had been just as, if not more, innocent and joyous.

The tweezers were lying on the table. I picked them up. They glinted pitilessly, like that long needle in Viraf’s father. I dropped them with a shudder, and they clattered against the table.

Daddy looked up questioningly. His hair was dishevelled as I had left it, and I waited, hoping he would ask me to continue. To offer to do it was beyond me, but I wanted desperately that he should ask me now. I glanced at his face discreetly, from the corner of my eye. The lines on his forehead stood out all too clearly, and the stubble flecked with white, which by this hour should have disappeared down the drain with the shaving water. I swore to myself that never again would I begrudge him my help; I would get all the white hairs, one by one, if he would only ask me; I would concentrate on the tweezers as never before, I would do it as if all our lives were riding on the efficacy of the tweezers, yes, I would continue to do it Sunday after Sunday, no matter how long it took.

Daddy put down the newspaper and removed his glasses. He rubbed his eyes, then went to the bathroom. How tired he looked, and how his shoulders drooped; his gait lacked confidence, and I’d never noticed that before. He did not speak to me even though I was praying hard that he would. Something inside me grew very heavy, and I tried to swallow, to dissolve that heaviness in saliva, but swallowing wasn’t easy either, the heaviness was blocking my throat.

I heard the sound of running water. Daddy was preparing to shave. I wanted to go and watch him, talk to him, laugh with him at the funny faces he made to get at all the tricky places with the razor, especially the cleft in his chin.

Instead, I threw myself on the bed. I felt like crying, and buried my face in the pillow. I wanted to cry for the way I had treated Viraf, and for his sick father with the long, cold needle in his arm and his rasping breath; for
Mamaiji
and her tired, darkened eyes spinning thread for our
kustis
, and for Mummy growing old in the dingy kitchen smelling of kerosene, where the Primus roared and her dreams were extinguished; I wanted to weep for myself, for not being able to hug Daddy when I wanted to, and for not ever saying thank you for cricket in the morning, and pigeons and bicycles and dreams; and for all the white hairs that I was powerless to stop.

K
horshedbai emerged from her room with a loosely newspapered package cradled in her arms. Then, as she had been doing every morning at eleven o’clock for the past four weeks, she began strewing its smelly contents over the veranda.

The veranda sat in the L of the flat’s two rooms. She was careful to let nothing fall by the door to her room. That she was on the ground floor of B Block, exposed to curious eyes passing in the compound, had not discouraged her for four weeks and did not discourage her now. None of the neighbours would interfere. Why, she did not know for certain. Perhaps out of respect for her grey hair. She also had the vague notion that praying every day at the
agyaari
had something to do with it.

Her work was methodical and thorough. She commenced with the window and its parapet, tossing onion skin, coconut husk, egg shells trailing gluey white, potato peelings, one strip of a banana skin, cauliflower leaves, and orange rind, all along the inside ledge. An eggshell rolled off. She picked it up and cracked it – there, that would keep it from falling – and replaced it on the parapet, between the coconut husk and potato peelings.

Pleased with her arrangement, Khorshedbai stepped to the door leading to the other room. Locked from the inside, as usual. The cowards. She draped the balance of the banana skin over the door handle, hung an elongated shred of fatty gristle from the knob, and scattered the remaining assorted peels and skins over the doorstep. The several bangles on her bony wrists tinkled softly: a delicate accompaniment while she worked over the veranda. Gentle though the sound was, it always annoyed her, announcing her presence like a cowbell. She pushed the bangles higher. Tight, around the forearms. To get rid of them without offending Ardesar would be such a comfort. The gold wedding bangle, encircling her wrist for forty years now, was the only one she cared for.

Khorshedbai reversed three paces and regarded her handiwork with satisfaction. Especially the length of gristle, which was pendulating gently with the weight of the bone at its extremity. Only one thing remained now. Collected from the pavement as an afterthought while returning from the
agyaari
, she hurled it against the locked door.

Dog faeces spattered the lower panel with a smack. Bits of it clung, the rest fell on the step. Behind the locked door Kashmira puzzled over the soft thud. She was alone with little Adil. The sound was quite different from the rustle and tinkle of the past four weeks, but she stayed where she was, behind the safety of the locked door. She could wait to find out what it was till Boman came home from work. Four weeks of calm and restrained littering had still not alleviated her fear that Khorshedbai would one day explode into an uncontrollable, shrieking madwoman. Or she could collapse into a whimpering mass of helplessness. If it did happen, Kashmira hoped it would be the latter.