Tales From Firozsha Baag (3 page)

Mehroo was a little saddened when she thought of her own children, who did not give a second thought to these things; she had to coax them to finish the
chasni
or it would sit for days, unnoticed and untouched.

Even as a child, Mehroo had adored going to the fire-temple. She
loved its smells, its tranquillity, its priests in white performing their elegant, mystical rituals. Best of all she loved the inner sanctuary, the sanctum sanctorum, dark and mysterious, with marble floor and marble walls, which only the officiating priest could enter, to tend to the sacred fire burning in the huge, shining silver
afargaan
on its marble pedestal. She felt she could sit for hours outside the sanctuary, watching the flames in their dance of life, seeing the sparks fly up the enormous dark dome resembling the sky. It was her own private key to the universe, somehow making less frightening the notions of eternity and infinity.

In high school she would visit the fire-temple before exam week. Her offering of a sandalwood stick would be deposited in the silver tray at the door of the inner sanctuary, and she would reverently smear her forehead and throat with the grey ash left in the tray for this purpose.
Dustoor
Dhunjisha, in his flowing white robe, would always be there to greet her with a hug, always addressing her as his dear daughter. The smell of his robe would remind her of mother’s sari fragrant with sandalwood. Serene and fortified, she would go to write her exam.

Dustoor
Dhunjisha was now almost seventy-five, and was not always around when Mehroo went to the fire-temple. Some days, when he did not feel well, he stayed in his room and let a younger priest look after the business of prayer and worship. But today she hoped he would be present; she wanted to see that gentle face from her childhood, the long white beard, the reassuring paunch.

After marrying Rustomji and moving into Firozsha Baag, Mehroo had continued to go to
Dustoor
Dhunjisha for all ceremonies. In this, she risked the ire of the
dustoorji
who lived in their own block on the second floor. The latter believed that he had first claim to the business of Firozsha Baag tenants, that they should all patronize his nearby
agyaari
as long as he could accommodate them. But Mehroo persisted in her loyalty to Dhunjisha. She paid no attention to the high dudgeon the A Block priest directed at her, or to Rustomji’s charges.

Under the priestly garb of Dhunjisha, protested Rustomji, lurked a salacious old man taking advantage of his venerable image: “Loves to touch and feel women, the old goat – the younger and fleshier, the
more fun he has hugging and squeezing them.” Mehroo did not believe it for a moment. She was always pleading with him not to say nasty things about such a holy figure.

But this was not all. Rustomji swore that Dhunjisha and his ilk had been known to exchange lewd remarks between lines of prayer, to slip them in amidst scripture recitals, especially on days of ceremony when sleek nubile women in their colourful finery attended in large numbers. The oft-repeated
Ashem Vahoo
was his favourite example:

This version was a popular joke among the less religious, and Mehroo dismissed it as more of Rustomji’s irreverence. He assured her they did it very skilfully and thus went undetected. Besides, the white kerchief all
dustoors
were required to wear over the nose and mouth, like masked bandits, to keep their breath from polluting the sacred fire, made it difficult to hear their muttering in the first place. Rustomji claimed it took a trained ear to sift through their mumbles and separate the prayers from the obscenities.

The H route bus stopped at Marine Lines. Mehroo alighted and walked down Princess Street, wondering about the heavy traffic. Cars and buses were backed up all the way on the flyover from Princess Street to Marine Drive.

She neared the fire-temple and saw parked outside its locked gates two police cars and a police van. Her step quickened. The last time the gates had been closed, as far as she knew, was during the Hindu-Muslim riots following partition; she was afraid to think what calamity had now come to pass. Parsis and non-Parsis were craning and peering through the bars of the gates; the same human curiosity had touched them all. A policeman was trying to persuade them to disperse.

Mehroo lingered on the periphery of the crowd, irresolute, then plunged into it. She saw
Dustoor
Kotwal leave the temple building and walk purposefully towards the gate. Jostling her way through the milling people, she attempted to get his attention. He was, like
Dustoor
Dhunjisha, a resident temple priest, and knew her well.

Dustoor
Kotwal had an announcement for the Parsis: “All prayers and ceremonies scheduled for today have been cancelled, except the prayers for the dead.” He was gone before Mehroo could reach the gate.

She now began to pick up alarming words in the crowd: “ … murdered last night … stabbed in the back … police and
CID
 ….” Her spirits faltered. All this on
Behram roje
which she had done everything to make perfect? Why were things being so cruelly wrenched out of her control? She made up her mind to stay till she could speak to someone who knew what had happened.

Rustomji finished his cup of tea as Mehroo left. He decided to wait awhile before his bath, to give his obdurate bowels one more chance.

But after another ten minutes of the
Times of India
and not a murmur from his depths, he gave up. Getting things ready for the bath, he arched his back till his bottom stuck out, then raised one foot slightly and tensed. Nothing happened. Not even a little fart. He inspected his
dugli
and trousers: the starch was just right – not too limp, not too stiff. He rubbed his stomach and hoped he would not have to go later at the fire-temple; the
WC
there was horrid, with urine usually spattered outside the toilet bowl or excrement not flushed away. To look at it, it was not Parsis who used the
WC
, he felt, but uneducated, filthy, ignorant barbarians.

Rustomji performed his ablutions, trying to forget the disgusting leak from above while he had squatted below. Fortunately, with every mugful of hot water he scooped from the bucket and poured down his back, splashed on his face, and felt trickle down his crotch and thighs, that foul leak was reduced to a memory growing dimmer by the moment; the cleansing water which flowed down the drain swept away what remained of that memory to a distant remove; and once he had dried himself, it was blotted out completely. Rustomji was whole again.

Now all that lingered was the fresh refreshing scent, as the advertisement proclaimed, of lifegiving Lifebuoy Soap. Lifebuoy Soap and Johnnie Walker Scotch were the only two items which endured in the
sumptuary laws passed down to Rustomji through three generations, and he relished them both. The one change wrought by the passing years was that Johnnie Walker Scotch, freely available under the British, could now be obtained only on the black market, and was responsible for Rustomji’s continuing grief over the British departure.

Emerging from the bathroom, he was pleased to discover his bowels no longer bothered him. The desultoriness plaguing his morning hours had fled, and a new alacrity took charge of his actions. The bows on the
dugli
gave him some trouble as he dressed, usually it was Mehroo who tied these. But in his present mood he was more than a match for them. With a last brush to his brilliantined hair he perched the
pheytoe
on it, gave a final tug of encouragement to the bows and surveyed himself in the mirror. Pleased with what he saw, he was ready for the fire-temple.

The H route bus stop was his destination as he stepped out buoyantly. The compound was deserted, the boys were all at school. In the evening, their noisy games would fill it with rowdiness and nuisance that he would have to combat if he was to enjoy peace and quiet. Confident of his control over them, he decided to pass the H route bus stop and walk further, to the A-1 Express, past Tar Gully and its menacing mouth. His starchy whiteness aroused in him feelings of resplendence and invincibility, and he had no objection to the viewing of his progress by the street.

There was a long queue at the A-1 bus stop. Rustomji disregarded the entire twisting, curving length and stationed himself at the head. He stared benignly into space, deaf to the protests of the queue’s serpentine windings, and pondered the options of upper deck and lower deck. He decided on the lower – it might prove difficult to negotiate the steep flight of steps to the upper with as much poise as befitted his attire.

The bus arrived and the conductor was yelling out, even before it came to a standstill, “Upper deck upper deck! Everybody upper deck!” Rustomji, of course, had already settled the question. Ignoring the conductor, he grasped the overhead railing and stood jauntily on the lower deck. The usually belligerent conductor said nothing.

The bus approached Marine Lines, and Rustomji moved towards
the door to prepare for his descent. He managed quite well despite the rough and bumpy passage of the bus. Without bruising his mien or his attire, he reached the door and waited.

But unbeknownst to Rustomji, on the upper deck sat fate in the form of a mouth chewing tobacco and betel nut, a mouth with a surfeit of juice and aching jaws crying for relief. And when the bus halted at Marine Lines, fate leaned out the window to release a generous quantity of sticky, viscous, dark red stuff.

Dugli
gleaming in the midday sun, Rustomji emerged and stepped to the pavement. The squirt of tobacco juice caught him between the shoulder blades: blood red on sparkling white.

Rustomji felt it and whirled around. Looking up, he saw a face with crimson lips trickling juice, mouth chewing contentedly, and in an instant knew what had happened. He roared in agony, helpless, screaming as painfully as though it was a knife in the back, while the bus slowly pulled away.

“Saala gandoo!
Filthy son of a whore! Shameless animal – spitting
paan
from the bus! Smash your face I will, you pimp …”

A small crowd gathered around Rustomji. Some were curious, a few sympathetic; but most were enjoying themselves.

“What happened? Who hurt the…

“Tch tch, someone spat
paan
on his
dugli…

“Heh heh heh!
Bawaji
got
paan pichkari
right on his white
dugli…

“Bawaji bawaji, dugli
looks very nice now, red and white, just like in technicolor…”

The taunting and teasing added to the outrage of tobacco juice made Rustomji do something dangerously foolish. He diverted his anger from the harmlessly receding bus to the crowd, overlooking the fact that unlike the bus, it was close enough to answer his vituperation with fury of its own.

“Arré you sisterfucking
ghatis
, what are you laughing for? Have you no shame?
Saala chootia spat paan
on my
dugli
and you think that is fun?”

A ripple of tension went through the crowd. It displaced the former lighthearted teasing they were indulging in at the spectacle of the paan-drenched
bawaji
.

“Arré
who does he think he is, abusing us, giving such bad-bad
ghali?”
Someone pushed Rustomji from behind.

“Bawaji
, we’ll break all your bones.
Maaro saala bawajiko!”
Beat up the bloody
bawaji
.

“Arré
your arse we’ll tear to shreds!” People were jostling him from every side. The
pheytoe
was plucked from his head, and they tugged at the bows of the
dugli
.

All anger forgotten, Rustomji feared for his person. He knew he was in serious trouble. Not one friendly face in this group which was now looking for fun of a different sort. In panic he tried to undo the hostility: “Arré please
yaar
, why harass an old man?
Jaané dé, yaar
. Let me go, friends.”

Then his desperate search for a way out was rewarded – a sudden inspiration which just might work. He reached his fingers into his mouth, dislodged the dentures, and spat them out onto his palm. Two filaments of saliva, sparkling in the midday sun, momentarily connected the dentures to his gums. They finally broke and dribbled down his chin. With much effort and spittle, he sputtered: “Look, such an old man, no teeth even,” and held out his hand for viewing.

The collapsed mouth and flapping lips appeased everyone. A general tittering spread through the assembly. Rustomji the clown was triumphant. He had restored to himself the harmlessness of the original entertaining spectacle,
pheytoe
back on head, teeth back in mouth.

Then, under the amused gaze of the crowd, Rustomji undid the bows of the
dugli
and removed it. Going to the fire-temple was out of the question. Tears of shame and rage welled in his eyes, and through the mist he saw the blood-red blotch. With the
dugli
off he still felt a little damp on the back – the juice had penetrated his shirt and
sudra
as well. For the second time that day he had been soiled in a most repulsive way.

Someone handed him a newspaper to wrap the
dugli
in; another picked up the packet of sandalwood he had dropped. At that moment, when Rustomji looked most helpless, a bus arrived and the crowd departed.

He was left alone, holding the newspapered
dugli
and the sandalwood in brown paper. The angle
of his pheytoe
had shifted, and he no longer looked or felt unassailable. Feebly, he hailed a taxi. It was a small Morris, and he had to stoop low to get in, to keep the
pheytoe
from being knocked off his head.

The horror of what Mehroo had found out at the fire-temple abated on the way home. Her thoughts turned to Rustomji; surely he should have finished his bath and arrived at the fire-temple, she had waited there for over two hours, first outside the gates, then inside. Maybe Rustomji has already found out, she hoped, maybe he knows the prayers were cancelled.