Dahanu Road: A novel (24 page)

That evening, Zairos was at the beach shielding his eyes from the sand. He had dropped Kusum off, and they were in
different worlds again. She in a hut without windows, and he facing the vast unconquerable sea.

He had done his duty.

He had bought her combs, a mirror, and three grey cloths— enough protection against Laxman.

In any case, he was at the beach now, where the salty breeze healed the day’s tiredness, and people in countries on the other side of the Arabian Sea experienced a similar healing. Even the weary heads of prisoners as they rested against stone walls were touched by the sea breeze, and women in burkhas lifted their veils just an inch to let it sneak in. Sand and wind worked magic in ways even God never intended.

The beach was an Irani ritual. After the men had finished their afternoon siestas and made obligatory rounds of the farms, all Iranis went to the beach. It was their outing for the evening. Decades ago, they clip-clopped to the beach in their tongas; now the horses had been replaced by cars, but certain things never changed, like the straw mats and whiskey bottles.

Aspi Irani sat on a straw mat with Mithoo, an ice bucket between them. Mithoo was studying for her Montessori exam, and Aspi Irani was studying ice cubes, deciding which ones to put in his whiskey glass. When he spotted one to his liking, he put his hand in the ice bucket and plucked it out. “Use the tongs, Aspi,” said Mithoo. So Aspi Irani took the tongs and used them to scratch his feet. He took his first sip of whiskey and then pointed the tongs towards an abandoned boat on the shore. “These tongs are useful,” he told his wife.

A few feet away from him, women, mostly unmarried, huddled together on one mat. They all had dreams of escaping from Dahanu Road and having lives in France or Switzerland,
or at least Bombay, and some of their friends had escaped, but sadly not to Paris or Geneva but to Halifax or New Jersey, only to freeze and yearn for the warmth of Dahanu Road again. Some were naturally beautiful, with names such as Navaz and Farzeen; others were dolled up, red lipstick so loud they could pass as mob molls.

“Je suis un homme!” Aspi Irani shouted out to them.

“Very good, dear,” said Mithoo. That was all the French he knew.

While the women dreamt of flying to far-off countries, high above their heads Xerxes the dentist soared over the pine trees in his blue and red glider. Years ago, when people saw him at the beach constructing his airplane using the modified engine of a Java motorcycle, they thought him insane. But up he went one day, no doors to enclose him, just vast sky on either side, a mad dentist gritting his teeth, red helmet stuck to his head like a velvet prayer cap, offering rides to anyone who dared make the journey.

As Xerxes clipped the tops of pine trees, below, whiskey filled the bellies of Iranis, and Zairos heard a cry from a ten-year-old boy whose father, Tehmuras the Lame, had slapped him in full view of everyone.

“This dumb bastard keeps failing in his exams,” fumed Tehmuras.

Frenny, a silver-haired schoolteacher, got up from her mat and said, “Tehmuras, I’ve told you, your son is dyslexic. He has a learning disability. Show some compassion.”

“Iranis are not known for their compassion,” said a gleeful Aspi Irani. “We would make great Nazis. Except that were are too lazy to kill, and we have such a low intelligence quotient
that instead of gassing the Jews, we would gas
ourselves
to death.”

As if on cue, Marzi Psycho appeared in his jeep with his pale skin and shifty eyes. Each evening, he would bolt the main door of his house with a heavy Godrej lock, which in itself was unusual, but what took the cake, the pudding, the entire bakery in fact, was that his wife was still inside. She was not allowed to step out of the house in the evenings.

“Marzi!” shouted Aspi Irani. “The Taliban called. They got your résumé and are sending you a work permit!”

One by one, the beach was filled with these obscene marvels, men without aim or purpose, men who allowed themselves to be ravaged by time. They were at the beach every single evening.

The women on the straw mat suddenly turned around and looked at Zairos. The young ones giggled and the older ones showed some sort of disdain. Zairos knew why. TG was among them. All he had done was comfort Kusum by giving her the warmth of his palm, but TG’s fondness for poison would turn it into something more salable. Soon his name would be on the lips of all Irani women, how vile he was, how demeaning, how this, how that.

Somehow, he wanted this. He wanted people to know.

Zairos stared at the abandoned boat on the shore. The way it slanted was almost pitiful, in dire need of human touch. The drone of Xerxes’ airplane softened, he was as far away as he could be from gums and root canals, and Zairos wanted to be far away too, far away from it all, and he felt neither happy nor unhappy, neither at peace nor at conflict, just a person who was afraid to look at the beasts around him because that was exactly what he was destined to turn into.

ZAIROS SAT BY
his grandfather’s side late into the night. He had just watched a petty human drama unfold. When he had gone to his grandfather’s house a couple of hours before, the rocking chair was empty. The main door was open, and when Zairos entered, his grandfather was on the floor. Shapur Irani was trying to get up. He was on his way to the bathroom. He had soiled himself.

Get out of here. That was Zairos’ first thought.

Shapur Irani, the proud general that he was, would never allow anyone close to him when he was sick. Only his servant Lakhu was allowed to help him, but Lakhu had gone to a wedding. Zairos wanted to flee, but when he saw his grandfather on all fours, trying to get up again, he just picked the man up and helped him to the bathroom. Neither of them said a word.

Shit stains. The slow degradation that comes with old age.

Shapur Irani now sat in his easy chair an ashamed, exhausted skeleton. This once upon a time tall man, this
once upon a time muscular man, was panting. He was running in his mind. His skin was waiting to leave his skeleton, but was not getting permission because the degradation was not complete.

“Banu,” he said.

Zairos wished he had a clear picture of what his grandmother looked like, but there were no photographs of her once she met Shapur Irani. The man did not take any, not even on their wedding. “When you live with someone for so many years, you don’t need to,” he had told Zairos. A photograph was such a cheap imitation anyway, looking at the truth from one side only. Banu still moved in his mind, danced in and out of his life. But when he uttered her name, Zairos could not tell what emotion was behind it.

“I want to go,” said Shapur Irani.

Zairos reached out, placed his hands under his grandfather’s armpits to lift him up.

“No,” said Shapur Irani. “Not to the bathroom.”

Zairos understood.

“The more I want to go, the more my body keeps me here. Remember that, Zairos. The man who is eager to die shall live the longest.”

Zairos fetched his grandfather a glass of water. He did not know what else to do. It had been the same glass for years, with a pink plastic plate that covered the mouth to prevent flies from falling in. When Shapur Irani drank the water, he did so hesitatingly, knowing that by drinking water he was giving life to himself, and that was the last thing he wanted.

“I did not understand Banu,” he said. “I should have understood her dreams.”

This was one of the things his grandfather said unconsciously and it would have been wrong for Zairos to pursue it. One night, after he fell asleep in his rocking chair, just as Zairos was about to leave, his grandfather said, “Don’t drink from that cup. It was Khodi’s last cup of tea. I have put a label on the bottom.”

Shapur Irani held his stomach and grimaced.

“Should I call the doctor?” asked Zairos.

“You go home, Zairos. Go to sleep.”

“I’ll sleep here today, Pa.”

“Go home. I’m fine.”

“I want to talk to you about something. Will you listen?”

Shapur Irani nodded his head slowly, the white bristles of his eyebrows pointing upwards. Zairos told his grandfather about Kusum and about what he had done to Laxman.

Shapur Irani did not say a word. He listened.

At the end of it all, there was heaviness in the air like the silence that came after cannons had blasted.

For a second night in a row, Shapur Irani was being taught humility by his bowels. He was in a trance again, that deathlike state that birds are in when they lose a wing.

“From the time I found out her name, I knew she had to be mine,” said Shapur Irani. “She was truly my Banu-Pars, my Lady of Persia.”

His love was one deep wound, bullet after bullet. It was the price a man paid for giving himself to one woman with such abandon.

“I was unable to talk to my Banu,” said Shapur Irani. “But Dickens, he was able to reach her. Dickens, he understood Banu better than I did, and she felt he cared about her. But I promise you no one loved your grandmother more than I did. No man has loved a woman so … so … what’s the word, give me a good word, my son.”

If only he could transfer that feeling he had to his grandson. If only he could take one of those thick black pipes that ran through the farm, attach one end of it to his heart and let it all flow through, towards Zairos, there would be an outpouring so strong, a rumble so loud, it would cause the chimney of the thermal power plant to shake.

“I loved her but I did not understand her,” he said. “And Dickens was giving her a chance to escape.”

“From what?” asked Zairos.

“I wish I knew.”

“Then maybe it’s not about escape.”

“How would you know?” said Shapur Irani.

There was anger in his voice. It was not directed at Zairos. It was put out there, in the air, and it had enough poison in it to kill an insect.

“Do you even know what I did? Let me tell you what I did. You must know.”

Zairos had never heard his grandfather speak like that. Confession was universes away from the nature of this man. Confession was a failure, an act of cowardice, something leprous. But his bowels had temporarily destabilized him.

“One night, when she was reading, I said to her, ‘Banu, come to bed.’ She did not answer me. The boys were asleep. I said again, ‘Banu, please, I am not well.’ She replied, ‘I am
coming in a minute. I am at the end of this book.’ The book’s cover was blue. She said to me, ‘This book is very interesting, Shapur. There’s this man, and his wife has committed suicide, and he is in so much grief that he is unable to speak. Then at night he dreams of her and asks her why she killed herself. She tells him that she left because he did not understand her. It was
he
who had killed her because of his lack of understanding. It is the most beautiful thing I have ever read, Shapur. You should read it.’ I don’t know what happened to me, but when she said, ‘You should read it,’ I went into a rage. I got up and gathered all her books from the floor and threw them in a heap outside the house. She started shouting at me and I had never heard Banu shout before, so I got even more scared. I felt the books were evil because they were making her mad, so I hurried even more. Then I went to the kitchen, took some cooking oil and a box of matches and went outside. When she saw the box of matches, she started screaming even more. I put my hand over her mouth to shut her up, and just then Khodi came into the room. I went out and bolted the door. I poured oil all over Dickens and the fairy tales and started praying. I prayed and prayed and poured oil and set the books on fire. It was a burning, mangled train of books. And I continued to pray and Banu watched through the window and after a while she stopped screaming. I will live very long, Zairos. Very long.”

IN THE SUMMER AFTERNOONS
, Dahanu was a pot of boiling water. So hot that flesh melted, slid off arms and legs like loose clothes falling to the floor. In the olden days, before ceiling fans, the Iranis ate watermelons and placed the overturned shells on their heads to cool down. That was what Zairos felt like doing as he saw his sweat drip to the floor at Anna’s.

Running from the same heat, a white stray dog had housed itself in an overturned auto rickshaw. The rickshaw was missing its tires. Five other strays, all brown, ate crushed glucose biscuits that Zairos was feeding them as they strolled about the place or lay like queens in their mud holes. The clashing of metal could be heard from Manu’s mechanic shop. Sparks flew from his welding gun as workers at the adjoining petrol pump walked about in brown uniforms with grease on their faces.

Once the regulars arrived with their sagging chins, perspiring foreheads, handlebar moustaches, and silver reading glasses, Merwan Mota opened his little blue diabetes pouch
and lifted his white shirt until the pink balloon of his stomach rested on Anna’s table. Then he injected himself in the stomach with a needle and let the needle remain there for a while. “Look,” he said. “No hands.”

Aspi Irani kept glaring at the book Keki the Italian was reading. Camus had been replaced by Hamsun, and when Aspi Irani read the title,
Hunger,
he pointed to Merwan Mota, who had gobbled up twelve lychees by then, and said, “Merwan can write that book better. He has first-hand experience.”