Dahanu Road: A novel (8 page)

“Seth, she started work two weeks ago,” said Ejaz.

“Is this how your husband repays our kindness?” asked Shapur Irani. “We employ you, look after you, and he steals from me? From my own house?”

He raised his voice in an attempt to appear monstrous, so that Vithal’s guilt would rush out of his mouth.

“Seth, I did not steal,” said Vithal again. “Please believe me.”

Ejaz stepped up to thrash Vithal, but Shapur Irani raised his hand, and Ejaz stopped.

“Vithal, I am asking you one last time,” said Shapur Irani. “There were ten rupees kept on the table in my house. Someone has taken the money. Was it you?”

Shapur Irani had asked Banu to put the money under lock and key because he did not like money lying around the house. He did not put the money in the safe himself as it was in the bedroom, and Banu was being checked by Jeroo the midwife. So Shapur Irani told Banu that he had placed the money on the table and then gone for a walk through the farm. By the time Banu and Jeroo emerged from the bedroom, the money had disappeared. Ejaz had seen Vithal walk past the house at around the same time.

It was not the loss of money that upset Shapur Irani. What angered him was the fact that someone had had the guts to enter his house. It was a sign that the Warlis were changing. This made him question his future. A child was about to be born and he lived alone on the farm. What if one of his workers, during a drunken fit, decided to harm his wife? He would kill them all. He would have to buy a gun. He despised weapons
of any kind. True Persians, true men, were wrestlers. They settled disputes with their bare hands. Weapons were for the weak in spirit and the bodily infirm. A Persian pehelvaan would never carry a knife or gun.

He had also thought that Ejaz might have stolen the money, but then he felt it was not possible. Ejaz was a man of honour. Men who were built like walls did not steal. They broke bones, but they did not steal. It would be too humiliating for Ejaz, too lowly, to enter the house and run with the money. It would diminish him in size instantly. No, Ejaz was not the thief. There was no way he could tell for sure if it was Vithal because no money had been found. But the die had been cast. This was a time for discipline, a time to set a strict example. He had never hit any of his men before, but landowners all over Dahanu were doing it. One of his neighbours, a Hindu landlord named Ramesh, had a Warli man’s wrist broken with a shovel because he ate a piece of fish from the dinner table. It wasn’t about the piece of fish. It was about the act.

But Shapur Irani did not want violence.

He was aware that all the farm workers were present too. If he were to let Vithal go, it would send the wrong message. The situation was forcing him to be ruthless. He knew he would not be able to sleep at night. But he was doing this for the safety of his unborn child.

“Did you take the money or not?” he asked again.

If only Vithal would say yes and get it over with.

Shapur Irani’s gaze went to Vithal’s right hand. The thumb was missing. He had known Vithal for a few years now, and this was the first time he had noticed the missing thumb.

“Did you take the money? I am asking you one last time.”

Shapur Irani would have waited a few seconds more, but Ejaz did not.

Ejaz held Vithal’s left arm in a wrestler’s grip. It snapped like one of the branches above Vithal’s head. Vithal’s cry was barely audible. He was in so much pain that if that pain were strength instead, he could have lifted the entire tree with it. His wife threw herself at Shapur Irani’s feet.

“Let him go,” she said. “It wasn’t him. It was me. I stole the money. I needed—”

Ejaz pulled her by the hair and slapped her hard. She spat in his face, and that was when Shapur Irani knew that her next few days would be filled with the most searing pain she had ever known. Ejaz kicked her hard and she fell to the ground. Her teeth were on the earth.

“Stop,” ordered Shapur Irani.

He could not bear to see a woman being hit. This woman was Vithal’s Banu. Shapur Irani’s throat was raw. He could barely breathe. Something was coiled around his lungs and it would not let go.

The workers were mostly silent. Shapur Irani thought he heard one woman sob, but he was not sure because of his own heavy breathing.

He needed to get a hold of himself.

This was what he wanted. To set an example. He could not afford to look concerned. He could not appear weak.

Just then the woman’s cry became louder and louder, and he soon realized it was not a worker who was crying but the midwife Jeroo. She was running towards them, waving her arms, she was about to say something, but when she saw Vithal and his wife on the ground, she stopped.

She immediately turned away and started walking back towards the bungalow.

Shapur Irani caught up with her.

“What is it?” he asked. “Is everything okay?”

“You have a son,” she replied.

“A son!” He beamed. “Is Banu okay?”

“A perfect delivery,” she said. “You should be proud.”

That night, after kissing his newborn Khodi to sleep, Shapur Irani went to Vithal’s hut. He had already instructed Ejaz to provide Vithal and his wife with food and medicine. A doctor had been called to fix the broken arm. Vithal and his wife were told that once they were fit, they could start work again.

When he got to the hut, Vithal’s wife was nursing her infant.

Shapur Irani could not bear to look at her mouth, which was bereft of front teeth. Normally it was the Warlis who were afraid to look the landowners in the eye, but at the moment it was Shapur Irani who was standing with his head down.

“What is the child’s name?” he asked.

“Ganpat,” replied the woman.

ZAIROS PARKED HIS
black motorcycle outside Anna’s, behind a caged rickshaw that was packed with chickens, so overcrowded it would put any peak-hour local train to shame. The cacophony of the chickens, coupled with the muezzin’s call, gave Anna’s an eerie feel. The rickshaw driver reached into the cage and pulled out a bunch of chickens. Tied in fours, they hung upside down like trapezists. He was delivering them to the Janta Chicken Centre. At least fifty chickens were being sent to their mortuary.

Just as Zairos was about to settle down on one of Anna’s green Formica benches, he saw Damu approaching in the tractor. Zairos whistled loudly to get his attention.

“Where are you going?” asked Zairos.

“Ganpat’s funeral, seth.”

“Funeral? I thought they cremated him a week ago.”

“No, seth,” said Damu. “It takes time to collect wood, to buy milk, to make other arrangements …”

Once again, Ganpat had appeared in Zairos’ life.

Even in death, he did not let go, as though he was trying to tell Zairos something. As in fairy tales, Ganpat was leaving a trail, bread crumbs for the lost and lonely. For some reason, Zairos had been thrust into the arc of Ganpat’s life, an arc that had started at his grandfather’s farm, decades ago. Zairos needed to follow it all the way to the end.

He would go to the funeral.

He was not doing it for Kusum; it was for himself. Maybe his grandfather was too proud, or just too old, to care about such things, but Zairos had young blood in him, blood that was bright and hopeful.

“I will follow you on the motorcycle,” Zairos said to Damu.

“No, you won’t,” shouted Aspi Irani from the Mobile Casino. “I need the bike. I got here walking.”

“Don’t worry, Aspi Kaka, I’ll take you home on my reindeer,” said Bumble, patting the leather seat of his red BMW, still in Santa mode from his Christmas party a week ago.

But by then, much to Damu’s surprise, Zairos had climbed into the open box that was attached to the tractor. He used to sit in it as child and have Damu take him around the farm, but he was a grown man now. A seth did not sit in the back of a tractor.

“You’re reclining like the Rani of Jhansi,” said Bumble.

Even Pinky the orphan was amused. But she had eyes only for Bumble. Enchanted by his BMW, she shyly tugged at his loose white shirt. “Bumble,” she said, “I’m hungry.” It always tickled everyone when she called him Bumble.

“Anna, get me a packet of Parle-G,” said Bumble.

“No biscuits,” said Pinky. “I want ice cream.”

“This kid is like Hitler,” said Bumble.

Bumble started his motorcycle and hoisted Pinky onto the tank. He revved the engine, as was his habit, so as to disturb the whole neighbourhood, especially the patients in the nursing home just above Anna’s, who, Bumble had been told repeatedly, woke up with a fright. He made sure he encircled Pinky with his arms so that she would not fall off during the ride.

Both tractor and BMW took off from Anna’s at the same time, and Pinky could not contain her excitement as she wiped her nose on Bumble’s shirt sleeve, and Bumble scolded her and went faster, and soon it was only Zairos in the tractor, feeling the jerks of the road, every pebble, every stone, eating dust, sneezing, as blue and pink plastic bags from the street flew into his face.

In other words, it was a day just like any other at Anna’s.

Too bad that Zairos was on his way to a funeral.

Each time the tractor hit a bump, a current went up Zairos’ spine. He had underestimated the treachery of Dahanu roads— the holes, the sharp stones, the thick roots of banyan trees that served as speed breakers, the sudden dips.

He felt ashamed for complaining. He could barely imagine what his grandfather must have gone through as a boy, when he came down the hills of Iran on a mule. “There were days along the way,” Shapur Irani told Zairos, “when just the smell of someone’s cooking made me faint. I was so hungry. After three or four days of nothing, all we’d get was a piece of naan with some onions.”

And now the naan remained, but with it came lamb, chicken, fish, pork, anything the stomach desired. Shapur Irani’s mule had been replaced by BMWs, Kawasakis, Hondas, and Yamahas. Whereas Shapur Irani had had to fight for sheer life, his sons Aspi and Sohrab sat in the back of their Mobile Casino, chirping to the rhythm of hearts, clubs, diamonds, and spades.

However, there was no doubt that Aspi Irani was aware of the sacrifices his father had made. But pain had made Shapur Irani serious. He had forgotten that in life a gambler’s touch was needed. Shapur Irani had been a valiant gladiator, but the light in him had gone, light that only a clown could resurrect. That was why Aspi Irani was an irreverent prankster. He wanted to impart that lightness to Zairos, something his own father had failed to give him. What was the use of survival if the hardships of the past had so savagely ripped out the smile from one’s heart?

That was why, at age twelve, when Zairos had asked his father to tell him where the Zoroastrians came from, Aspi Irani said, “Do you want the religious, historical version, or do you want the truth?”

And by truth he meant, What is history without a little pinch on the bottom?

Zairos was seated at Anna’s, as Aspi Irani surveyed his audience. “Put that silly book down,” he told Keki the Italian, whose pronounced jaw seemed to be growing in size each day.

“This is
literature,”
replied Keki through yellow teeth. “This is Camus.”

“By just looking at your face,” said Aspi Irani, “the dumb stupor of a retarded person staring at a colourful balloon, I can gather that Camus has not taught you anything.”

“Camus is a giant of French literature,” said Keki. “He—”

“He’s an elf in my book. Now pay attention. I’m talking about the time the Arabs treated us like camel shit.”

Then he thumped Keki on the back. This was Aspi Irani’s let-me-enlighten-you thump.

“The Muslims had started forcing the Zoroastrians to convert to Islam,” said Aspi Irani. “So in 716
AD,
many of our ancestors—bless their persecuted souls—fled to India to seek asylum. Quite frankly, I wish they’d gone the other way, to Italy or Spain, but they chose this shithole of a country instead and so be it.”

These early settlers were called Parsis because they came from the province of Pars in Persia. The Parsis first landed in Sanjan, in the coastal state of Gujarat: “The state next door to us, son, currently full of moneylenders and men who have black and white chessboard tiles in their living rooms.”

The Hindu king of Sanjan, Jadi Rana, was not pleased with this unexpected arrival on his shores, as India was full even back then. So Jadi Rana asked his servant to bring him a jar of milk. Holding the jar of milk in his hand, Jadi Rana said to the head priest of the Parsis, “This jar of milk is filled to the brim.”

The Parsi priest replied, “Mohan, I understand what you are saying.”

“Why are you calling me Mohan?” asked Jadi Rana.

“Because I had friend in Iran, a Hindu, whose name was also Mohan.”

At this point, the Parsis worried that their head priest’s faux pas had ruined their chances of getting immigration, and, what’s worse, the look on Jadi Rana’s face implied that they would be tortured for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

But then, with the suaveness of a magician, as though he were conjuring red roses out of thin air, the Parsi priest added sugar into the jar of milk.