Bombay Time (10 page)

In a sense, that’s what Zarin had done for him, too. Told him not to take his anger out on his clients, but on his opponents. In the courtroom, Jimmy’s thundering oratory, his deliberate pacing of the floor, his exaggerated mannerisms were legendary. The older judges smiled knowingly at Jimmy’s trademark lines and gestures—the clenched teeth, the long, thoughtful pauses, the elucidating of various points on all five fingers—but lawyers facing him for the first time were petrified. But Zarin had taught him to be compassionate toward his clients. Although most of his clients were big corporations, on the rare occasions when he represented an individual, Jimmy made sure that he did not intimidate him or her.

What a difference a good marriage makes, Jimmy thought. Zarin had brought him nothing but good luck. And with Mehernosh now working beside him, his joy was complete. Hard to believe that his only son had given up the lures of America to come home to practice law with his dad. Hard to believe that his only son was now a married man. It seemed only yesterday that Mehernosh was running around the playground near Wadia Baug in his khaki shorts and that cute yellow Bugs Bunny T-shirt. Although they became best friends only a few years later, Binny Bilimoria and Mehernosh had hated each other then. Every evening, Binny would go up to Mehernosh and greet him with an innocent “Hey, Georgie Porgie. How are you today?” As Mehernosh would stomp his foot, Binny would solemnly recite:

“Georgie Porgie pudding and pie

Kissed the girls and made them cry.

When the girls came out to play,

Georgie Porgie ran away.”

Mehernosh hated that nursery rhyme, hated that nickname. Every evening, he would come screaming into the house, tears running down his cheeks, while Binny continued to play outside, looking like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. The Bilimorias and Kangas tried hard to repress their smiles as Coomi chided Binny and Zarin consoled Mehernosh.

Jimmy could remember it all so clearly—attending Mehernosh’s kindergarten play and laughing at the sight of his son dressed as a red lollipop; attending his son’s sixth-grade awards ceremony, where Me-hernosh won more prizes than any boy in the history of the school; sitting up with his boy all night, after his son broke his arm playing hockey; traveling through Germany with Mehernosh and watching the local girls fawn over his handsome teenaged son.

Thinking back on Mehernosh’s youth made Jimmy think fondly of the old Wadia Baug gang. Jimmy had come to Wadia Baug as a stranger; his son ran around it as if it were his private kingdom. Mehernosh had the run of the building, going in and out of the houses of most of his neighbors. In those days, many of the neighbors kept their front doors open all day long. Jimmy and Zarin never had to worry about attending one of Jimmy’s many business parties—they knew Mehernosh could sleep over at a neighbor’s house. Whenever Sheroo Mistry made the bread pudding that Mehernosh loved, she would nab the boy and insist that he have dinner with them. Knowing full well that Mehernosh would beat him, Soli Contractor still agreed to one-on-one games of basketball with the young boy. And after Binny and Mehernosh stopped being mortal enemies and became good friends, Mehernosh practically lived in the Bilimoria apartment, refusing to come home even for dinner. “Leave him, leave him,” Rusi would say. “He can just eat with us.”

During the summer holidays, Rusi occasionally took Mehernosh and Binny to the Bilimoria paper factory for a few hours. An excited Mehernosh would return from those trips singing the praises of the “big-big” machines that Rusi owned. “Hey, Daddy, Rusi Uncle promised me a job at his factory when I grow up,” he told his father importantly. “He said I can start as the night watchman.”

“And I will be the foreman, so I can dismiss you if you don’t do a good job,” Binny added.

Jimmy still regretted the move to Cuffe Parade when Mehernosh was eleven. Looking back, he wondered what on earth he had been thinking. Truth of the matter was, Jimmy had gotten a little puffy with pride. He was at the peak of his powers; his practice was booming. He had just argued and won his first case before the Supreme Court, which had resulted in a landmark decision about corporate liability. The case made him the darling of the business community.
The Illustrated Weekly of India
did a short piece on him. He was turning away more clients than he was accepting. Money came pouring in like the rains during the monsoon season. Some of it, he gave away. Twice a year, Jimmy and Zarin went to Udwada and fed a lavish dinner to the impoverished Parsi families living there. He established a Parsi Pan-chayat scholarship that each year paid for a deserving Parsi student to study law or engineering in America. A lot of the money, he spent on his family. He remodeled the apartment, bought a new car, got Zarin a membership at the Taj Health Club. And still there was plenty of money left over.

So he bought a flat in Cuffe Parade in a skyscraper owned by one of his clients. He told Zarin it was a good investment, that his client was selling it to him at a price he would be foolish to refuse. And the view of the water from the sixteenth floor couldn’t be beat. They would be far removed from the nasty pollution, from the noise of the Bombay traffic. The move would be good for their health and their sanity.

But the truth was, Jimmy had grown a little too big for Wadia Baug. He felt much more comfortable among his associates from Breach Candy and Marine Drive and Cuffe Parade because, among them, his wealth and success did not make him stick out. Especially after the
Illustrated Weekly
article appeared, his old neighbors seemed unsure of how to act in his presence. Some of them fawned over him, and their ingratiating manner annoyed him. Others acted nonchalant, and their refusal to acknowledge his success irritated him. He also became sensitive to the sting of their envy. Before, he could brush off their poison darts with a breezy, careless flick of his hand, but now they burned him for days. Once again, he began to feel like a stranger at Wadia Baug. The final straw came when he overheard Dosamai lecturing his son one evening. “Now that your daddy has become a big shot, don’t you be all stuck-up around us,” she told the teary boy. “Never forget where you come from, understand? Remember, what Ahura Mazda gives, Ahura Mazda also takes away.” Jimmy flew up the remaining steps and pulled his son away from the venomous old woman. “Please, Dosamai,” he said, choking on his anger. “Nobody has become a big shot. Whatever little I have, it’s through the sweat of my brow. Everyone here is free to work that hard, if they like. Anyway, I don’t like to involve my son in adult matters. I would wish that you wouldn’t, either, ever again.” Like a roach under the glare of a flashlight, Dosamai scuttled wordlessly into her dark apartment.

“I want to move,” he said to Zarin that night. “I don’t want my son growing up feeling like he can’t enjoy the fruits of his father’s labor. I can have the Cuffe Parade flat in move-in condition in two months.” Zarin tried to talk him out of it, but Jimmy’s mind was made up.

“Promise me this much at least,” she said, when she knew that she had lost. “Let’s keep this flat also. After all, it’s paid for and we don’t need the money. This way, we can come back occasionally to visit our friends and still have a place to stay.”

He was so relieved at her assent that he readily agreed.

Good thing, too, Jimmy now thought. The year they had spent in Cuffe Parade was the worst period in their marriage. Mehernosh was miserable. He pined for his old neighborhood friends and hated his new school. “Such snobs, they are,” he told Jimmy vehemently. “I told them where we used to live and that boy Ramesh said, ‘Where is that? Out of Bombay?’ I was ready to give him one big whack on his back-side.” Zarin, too, was silent around her neighbors and reluctant to get involved in neighborhood projects. Jimmy fumed about it to himself, convinced that Zarin was punishing him for making her move. But when he confronted her about not making an effort to get to know her neighbors, Zarin looked at him sadly. “I’m really trying, Jimmy,” she said. “It’s just hard. The people here are so different. They don’t welcome Mehernosh into their homes, and everybody keeps their doors locked. The building association does not even allow the
pauwala
and the
doodhwala
to deliver groceries to the door. I just miss Wadia Baug. I can’t believe it myself, but I even miss Perin and Villo fighting with the milkman every morning. Even the constant ringing of the doorbell. Here, you could go for days without anybody stopping by.”

He turned away angrily from her. The truth was that Jimmy felt the same way, but he was loathe to admit it. Returning to Wadia Baug would be much too embarrassing. He had hoped that Zarin was not missing the old gang as fiercely as he was. “Maybe it’s an adjustment period,” he told her. “After all, we didn’t make our Wadia Baug friends in one day, either. As newcomers, it’s up to us to be more friendly. Maybe we should throw a party or something.”

And so they did—the first of many parties. Their neighbors came, admired their flat, ate their food, said hello to them the next time they saw them in the elevator, invited them to their own parties. But somehow, it didn’t take. Jimmy realized what the problem was one day: The people who lived around him were too much like the people he worked with. They had the same interests, the same ambitions. Compared to the eccentric zaniness, the melodramatic passions, the free-ranging diversity of the Wadia Baug crowd, these people seemed too narrowly focused, too bloodless. Too intent on holding on to what they had. This is exactly how I felt in Oxford toward the end, he realized with a start.

But it wasn’t until Zarin’s breakdown that Jimmy decided that his family’s happiness was more important than his bruised pride. He came home late one evening to an astonishing sight. Zarin was sitting on the sofa, sobbing softly to herself. Her hair was uncombed and her dress stained with tears. He was stunned. “Where’s Mehernosh?” he asked reflexively. “Is he okay?”

“He’s out. I paid the ayah to take him to a movie. I just needed some time by myself. And I couldn’t bear for him to see me like this.”

“But darling, what’s wrong?” he said, taking a step toward her. “Is it bad news about your mummy or daddy? Why didn’t you call me at the office?”

“No. Nothing like that. Everybody’s okay. Except me. I’m just slowly-slowly going out of my mind. Cracking up.”

“But … what?” he spluttered. He felt breathless, as if he had taken a hard blow to the stomach.

“Jimmy, I can’t take it anymore. I’m going. I’m taking Mehernosh and going back to Wadia Baug. You can come visit us there on week-ends, if you like. I’m sorry,
janu.
I tried, I really did. But I can’t live here anymore. You don’t know what it’s like during the day. The quiet. When the wind blows from over the sea, it moans, like an old woman crying. I just miss the hustle-bustle of our old building. I miss our friends, all the joking around. I miss the smell of Parsi food being cooked next door to us. No, those people weren’t perfect, but at least they cared about things other than the price of gold and the share bazaar.”

“Zarin. What are you saying? Leaving our marriage, leaving me over a lousy flat? You are obviously under a lot of strain. I’m sorry, darling. I’ve left you alone at home far too much, I think. Come sit with me. We’ll deal with this problem, I promise.”

They went to bed that night without the issue being resolved. But lying in bed that night, Jimmy had a revelation. Even the strongest of marriages were made up of more than just the two people involved, he realized. He had foolishly thought that Zarin and he were married only to each other. In reality, they were married to an entire group of people, a neighborhood, a way of life. Despite his love for her, he alone could not save Zarin. She needed all those others, their friends and relatives, in order to be whole and happy. Tears rolled down Jimmy’s checks and onto his pillow. He suddenly felt incredibly lucky. All these years, he had been surrounded by a wealth of people, and he hadn’t even known it. Had taken them for granted. Oh sure, they were irritating at times—Dosamai, with her penchant for gossip; Bomi and Sheroo, with their
koila
jokes; Rusi, with his ill-concealed competitiveness. But they were his community. His people. They had befriended him when he hadn’t had two nickels to rub together, cared for his only son, sheltered his wife, held up his marriage. And he had left them behind like yesterday’s newspaper. He had pulled his son out of a school he loved and his wife out of a community she cared about, all so that they could go and live among people who didn’t care if they were alive or dead, as long as they paid their association fees on time. He had sacrificed a year out of their lives to the altar of his ambitions. He rolled over to face Zarin. “Sweetie, wake up,” he whispered. “I’ve something to say to you.”

When he casually told a client the next morning that he had decided to return to his old neighborhood, the man understood at once. “Of course, of course, Jimmy,” he said. “You are a Parsi, born and raised among Parsis. Here at Cuffe Parade, you are forced to live among Gujus, Punjabis, Sikhs. Very hard adjustment to make, I’m sure.”

Jimmy was shocked. Like many post-independence Bombayites, he was wedded to the idea of a secular, nonsectarian city. He resented his client’s casual assumption that his discomfort with Cuffe Parade had to do with religion. After all, he was always telling his Parsi friends to think of themselves as Indians first, to divest themselves of their superiority and smugness. But driving home that evening, he forced himself to confront his own prejudices. He decided that he could not be certain that religious difference had played no role in his disenchantment with Cuffe Parade. So often, he had come home in the evenings and involuntarily screwed up his nose at the smell of unfamiliar food being cooked next door. Was that religious insularity? Or merely a cultural difference? Was he splitting hairs? What distinguished one from the other? And while he was on the subject, he dissected the guiding principle behind his philanthropy: Charity begins at home. This is how he had justified donating money exclusively to Parsi causes. Was that chauvinism? Or merely looking out for an incredibly small ethnic minority? He was only one man, after all, with a finite amount of money. And there was nothing wrong with helping your own. That’s what the Marwadis and the Gujus did, and look at how those communities were prospering. Bombay was fast slipping into the gutter, and he could not pull it up by himself. What was wrong with trying to save just a tiny bit of it? And if he had to choose, why not save the ones he loved? And yet … If everyone felt that way, who would take care of those who needed the most help? By the time he got home, Jimmy had a ferocious headache.