Tales From Firozsha Baag (20 page)

He spoke to Mr. Karani first. Boman had expected more support from him during these difficult months. But each time they met, Mr. Karani, clutching his brief case and leaning on his umbrella, stood in the compound and droned on about the black market or the latest government swindle. The closest he let himself get to Boman’s domestic dilemma was when he politely inquired about Kashmira’s health.

Now Boman confronted him with his proposal.

“There is one principle in my life, Boman
dikra,”
said Mr. Karani, “which I never transgress: the three-monkeys principle.” He mimed, placing his hands over his eyes, ears, and mouth. “Besides,” he said, “the Mrs. would never let me be a witness. Ever since that
tamaasha
in the Baag about Jaakaylee and the ghost they saw, and the rubbish that people were talking about crazy ayah and crazy
bai
, she pinched her ears and swore, and made me do the same, to have nothing to do with these lowbreds and churls in Firozsha Baag.” Realizing what he’d just said, he embarrassedly patted Boman’s shoulder: “She didn’t mean you, of course, but it is a principle, you understand.” He winked and gave him the from-one-man-to-another look: “Always obey the Mrs. My motto is: be cowardly and be happy, try to be brave and you’re soon in the grave.”

Boman was bitterly disappointed. What bloody nonsense about the three-monkeys principle. Where did the monkeys go when he did his income tax, or helped his clients with theirs? Henpecked hypocrite. And selfish. But still a smart man, that Boman could not deny.

Next he tried Rustomji, who gruffly dismissed the suggestion as impossible: “Sorry, but enough time I spend in courtrooms, as it is.”

And Najamai said: “Me, a widow, living all alone, how can I go falling in the middle of a court
lufraa?
. And at my age making unnecessary enemies. No
bawa
, please forgive me, you will have to find someone else.” This refusal hurt the most. She had shown so much concern all along. And now this blunt answer.

It might have tempered Boman’s bitterness had he known that it would not be long now before Najamai would, in fact, become their saviour; that Najamai, with a beckon of her arm, would deliver them from the paying guests, from the fate worse than a brain-devouring
kaankhajuro
.

But in the meantime he spent his days exhausting the list of possible witnesses in the Baag. When he began making petitions to those who were as good as strangers, he realized he was reaching the end of hope. The one man who would have helped him, as surely as there was earth beneath and sky above, who had been worth more than all of B Block put together, and who had more goodness in his dried scabs of psoriasis than in the hearts of all these others, was long dead: the kind and noble Dr. Mody. And Mrs. Mody now lived a cloistered life, spending her days in prayer and seclusion. He had gone to see her a few times, but on each occasion she came to the door with her prayer book in her hands and beckoned him away, making vague sounds from behind tightly shut lips: parting them for profane speech would have rendered everything prayed up to that point useless.

There was someone who would be willing to speak in court, Boman knew: the Muslim who lived in the next flat. But desperate as Boman was, he would not stoop to that, to ask him to testify against a fellow Parsi.

The time for Kashmira’s confinement came. She checked into the Awabai Petit Lying-in Hospital. Khorshedbai continued with her eleven o’clock routine, dancing her dance of disorder to the tinkling of bangles. Now Boman would clean up each night after visiting Kashmira at the hospital, and to see him crouching with broom and dustpan made Khorshedbai wild with delight. She could not hold still at the crack of her door, and kept dragging Ardesar up to make him look, against his will, at how low the mighty had to bend despite tie and jacket.

Poor Ardesar cowered inside, ashamed, and worried for her soul. His happiest moments came when he fed the pigeons at Chaupatty beach. He spent a lot of time there these days, alone: now Khotty refused to go. They waddled around his feet as he moved into their midst. He stopped every now and then, standing perfectly still, to let them pick playfully at his shoelaces. It made him sigh contentedly to see the way their throats trembled when they made their soft cooing sounds. The pigeons were the best part of living in this flat near Chaupatty beach.
In the end, the neighbours were willing to testify against the paying guests. There were so many volunteers that Boman could have picked and chosen. Even Mrs. Karani assured him that she would make Mr. Karani be a witness, whether he wanted to or not, three monkeys or no three monkeys, so outraged was she about what had happened.

But as it turned out, there was no need. The paying guests went quietly: Khorshedbai first, by ambulance, everyone knew where; then Ardesar, no one knew where, by taxi.

It happened soon after Kashmira returned from her confinement, determined not to spend her days behind locked doors with the new baby. Parturition had endowed her with fresh courage and strength. So she strolled out on the veranda whenever her legs felt like stretching or her lungs longed for fresh air. Even at eleven o’clock she emerged undaunted.

Khorshedbai was not impressed by this new show of defiance. She continued to scatter and toss and sprinkle; the veranda, after all, was for common use as per the sub-tenancy agreement. But she was careful to skirt Kashmira’s immediate vicinity.

One morning, after Boman had left for work, Kashmira heard the soft, single flap of envelopes alighting on the veranda. The postman. She went to pick up the letters and stood scanning them: the ones for the paying guests landed back on the floor.

Then Najamai passed by in the compound and beckoned her out.

It was this gesture of Najamai’s, innocent and friendly, that was responsible for changing the tide of the neighbours’ apathy. Hers was the credit for the events now to follow, which would make them all eager to bear witness, but for which there would be no need because that single beckon in itself would get rid of the paying guests.

The gesture, potent as it turned out to be, would have been useless if Kashmira had elected not to go outside. Or if she had gone outside but returned quickly. Or if she had gone outside with the baby. Fortunately, none of these things happened.

Was there any little item, Najamai asked, that she could get for her while she was out shopping? Kashmira said thanks, but Boman usually got all they needed on his way home from work in the evening. What a good husband, said Najamai, then inquired about the new
baby, and if there was any change in the madwoman’s behaviour because of the baby. None, said Kashmira, and she would rather die than let the lunatic’s shadow even fall upon the little one.

They stood by the steps of B Block, talking thus for some minutes: the precise number of minutes, as it turned out, that were required for the events (triggered by the beckoning arm) to gather momentum.

When Kashmira returned inside, the first thing she saw was the baby’s cot: empty. A vague fear of this sort of thing always used to lurk inside her. But she had managed to keep it bottled away under control in a remote part of her mind.

Now it escaped its bounds and pounded in her head, pumped through her veins and arteries, filled her lungs and the pit of her stomach. It felt ice-cold as it made its way. Call Boman, call the police, call for help, the fear screamed inside her, while the place where it used to be bottled up said stay calm, think clearly, take a deep breath. She rushed out to the veranda, willing to consider absurd possibilities: maybe the baby was precocious, already knew how to crawl, had crawled away, swaddling clothes and all, and was hiding somewhere.

While she dashed from room to veranda and veranda to room, a soft whimpering penetrated her panic. It came from Khorshedbai’s quarters. The door was ajar, and she peered inside. Uncertain of what she was seeing, she opened the door to let in more light from the veranda, then screamed, just once: a loud piercing scream. Behind it was gathered the combined force of the ice-cold fear and the place where the fear used to be bottled up.

Unaware of what her beckoning arm had precipitated, Najamai was almost at the end of the compound. She heard the scream and retrieved her steps. By then, Kashmira was yelling for assistance to any kind soul who could hear to come and save her child. Najamai repeated the cry for help outside C Block as she hurried towards B.

And help arrived within seconds. Later, Najamai would go over the list with Kashmira; from this day forward, in Najamai’s eyes the Baag had only two kinds of Parsis: the ones who had been shameless enough to ignore the call for help and the ones who had responded. Among the latter were retired Nariman Hansotia who was just stepping out to drive to the library, his wife Hirabai, Mrs. Karani from
upstairs with Jaakaylee in tow, Mrs. Bulsara wearing her
mathoobanoo
, Mrs. Boyce, the spinster Tehmina in slippers and duster-coat, the watchman from his post at the compound gate – Najamai would remember them all, what they said, how they behaved, what they were wearing.

The hastily marshalled column entered the veranda with Najamai at its head, and stopped at the paying guests’ door. The screaming had emptied Kashmira of all words. She pointed within, propping herself up against the doorjamb.

Inside, Khorshedbai was leaning over the locked parrot cage. She seemed to have noticed no part of the commotion. The neighbours looked with curiosity that turned to horror as soon as their eyes adjusted to Khorshedbai’s dim room. There was a lull in the noise and confusion, a stunned silence for moments, during which the bangles on Khorshedbai’s wrists could be heard tinkling.

Ardesar sat on a chair with his face hidden in his hands. He was shaking visibly. The baby, liberated from the swaddling clothes, was inside the cage. Intermittent whistling came from Khorshedbai, mixed with soft kissing sounds or a series of rapid little clicks with tongue against palate. From her fingers she teasingly dangled two green peppers, long and thin, over the baby’s face.

W
henever Nariman Hansotia returned in the evening from the Cawasji Framji Memorial Library in a good mood the signs were plainly evident.

First, he parked his 1932 Mercedes-Benz (he called it the apple of his eye) outside A Block, directly in front of his ground-floor veranda window, and beeped the horn three long times. It annoyed Rustomji who also had a ground-floor flat in A Block. Ever since he had defied Nariman in the matter of painting the exterior of the building, Rustomji was convinced that nothing the old coot did was untainted by the thought of vengeance and harassment, his retirement pastime.

But the beeping was merely Nariman’s signal to let Hirabai inside know that though he was back he would not step indoors for a while. Then he raised the hood, whistling “Rose Marie,” and leaned his tall frame over the engine. He checked the oil, wiped here and there with a rag, tightened the radiator cap, and lowered the hood. Finally, he polished the Mercedes star and let the whistling modulate into the march from
The Bridge On The River Kwai
. The boys playing in the compound knew that Nariman was ready now to tell a story. They started to gather round.

“Sahibji
, Nariman Uncle,” someone said tentatively and Nariman nodded, careful not to lose his whistle, his bulbous nose flaring slightly. The pursed lips had temporarily raised and reshaped his Clark Gable moustache. More boys walked up. One called out, “How about a story, Nariman Uncle?” at which point Nariman’s eyes began to twinkle, and he imparted increased energy to the polishing. The cry was taken up by others, “Yes, yes, Nariman Uncle, a story!” He swung into a final verse of the march. Then the lips relinquished the whistle, the Clark Gable moustache descended. The rag was put away, and he began.

“You boys know the great cricketers: Contractor, Polly Umrigar, and recently, the young chap, Farokh Engineer. Cricket
aficionados
, that’s what you all are.” Nariman liked to use new words, especially big ones, in the stories he told, believing it was his duty to expose young minds to as shimmering and varied a vocabulary as possible; if they could not spend their days at the Cawasji Framji Memorial Library then he, at least, could carry bits of the library out to them.

The boys nodded; the names of the cricketers were familiar.

“But does anyone know about Savukshaw, the greatest of them all?” They shook their heads in unison.

“This, then, is the story about Savukshaw, how he saved the Indian team from a humiliating defeat when they were touring in England.” Nariman sat on the steps of A Block. The few diehards who had continued with their games could not resist any longer when they saw the gathering circle, and ran up to listen. They asked their neighbours in whispers what the story was about, and were told: Savukshaw the greatest cricketer. The whispering died down and Nariman began.

“The Indian team was to play the indomitable
MCC
as part of its tour of England. Contractor was our captain. Now the
MCC
being the strongest team they had to face, Contractor was almost certain of defeat. To add to Contractor’s troubles, one of his star batsmen, Nadkarni, had caught influenza early in the tour, and would definitely not be well enough to play against the
MCC
. By the way, does anyone know what those letters stand for? You, Kersi, you wanted to be a cricketer once.”