Such A Long Journey

Such A Long Journey

By Rohinton Mistry

For Freny

eForward

As Christina Nunez wrote in
Atlantic
, “[Mistry] has long been recognized as one of the best Indian writers; he ought to be considered simply one of the best writers, Indian or otherwise, now alive.” Twice short-listed for England’s prestigious Booker Prize, Rohinton Mistry was broadly introduced to American readers when
A Fine Balance
was an Oprah Book Club selection in 2001.

Rohinton Mistry has not lived in his native India for many years; but like many expatriate writers, he continues a relationship with his country in his writings and has enriched his readers’ understanding of it. After emigrating to Toronto in 1975, Rohinton Mistry got a job as a bank clerk and ascended to the supervisor of customer service after a few years.

His dissatisfaction in the job led to his taking classes in English, first at York College, and ultimately pursuing a degree part-time at the University of Toronto.

Rohinton Mistry had no ambitions to be a writer until he got to Canada and began taking classes in literature at the University of Toronto. Encouraged by his wife, he set out to win a university literary contest by writing his first short story. He called in sick from work, devoted several days to the story, entered it, and won the contest.

Such a Long Journey
is set in Bombay in 1971, the year India went to war over what was to become Bangladesh. A hard-working bank clerk, Gustad Noble is a devoted family man who gradually sees his modest life unraveling. His young daughter falls ill; his promising son defies his father’s ambitions for him. He is the one reasonable voice amidst the ongoing dramas of his neighbors. One day, he receives a letter from an old friend, asking him to help in what at first seems like a heroic mission. But he soon finds himself unwittingly drawn into a dangerous network of deception. Compassionate, and rich in details of character and place, this unforgettable novel charts the journey of a moral heart in a turbulent world of change.

The author wishes to thank the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for their assistance.

He assembled the aged priests and put questions to them concerning the kings who had once possessed the world. ‘How did they,’ he inquired, ‘hold the world in the beginning, and why is it that it has been left to us in such a sorry state? And how was it that they were able to live free of care during the days of their heroic labours?’

Firdausi, Shah-Nama

A cold coming we had of it,

Just the worst time of the year

For a journey, and such a long journey…

T. S. Eliot, ‘Journey of the Magi’

And when old words die out on the tongue,

new melodies break from the heart; and

where the old tracks are lost, new country is

revealed with its wonders.

Rabindranath Tagore, Gitanjali

Chapter One

i

The first light of morning barely illumined the sky as Gustad Noble faced eastward to offer his orisons to Ahura Mazda. The hour was approaching six, and up in the compound’s solitary tree the sparrows began to call. Gustad listened to their chirping every morning while reciting his
kusti
prayers. There was something reassuring about it. Always, the sparrows were first; the cawing of crows came later.

From a few flats away, the metallic clatter of pots and pans began nibbling at the edges of stillness. The
bhaiya
sat on his haunches beside the tall aluminium can and dispensed milk into the vessels of housewives. His little measure with its long, hooked handle dipped into the container and emerged, dipped and emerged, rapidly, with scarcely a drip. After each customer was served, he let the dipper hang in the milk can, adjusted his dhoti, and rubbed his bare knees while waiting to be paid. Flakes of dry dead skin fell from his fingers. The women blenched with disgust, but the tranquil hour and early light preserved the peace.

Gustad Noble eased his prayer cap slightly, away from the wide forehead with its numerous lines, until it settled comfortably on his grey-white hair. The black velvet of the cap contrasted starkly with his cinereous sideburns, but his thick, groomed moustache was just as black and velvety. Tall and broad-shouldered, Gustad was the envy and admiration of friends and relatives whenever health or sickness was being discussed. For a man swimming the tidewater of his fifth decade of life, they said, he looked so solid. Especially for one who had suffered a serious accident just a few years ago; and even that left him with nothing graver than a slight limp. His wife hated this kind of talk. Touch wood, Dilnavaz would say to herself, and look around for a suitable table or chair to make surreptitious contact with her fingers. But Gustad did not mind telling about his accident, about the day he had risked his own life to save his eldest.

Over the busy clatter of the milk container, he heard a screech: ‘
Muà
thief! In the hands of the police only we should put you! When they break your arms we will see how you add water!’ The voice was Miss Kutpitia’s, and the peace of dawn reluctantly made way for a frenetic new day.

Miss Kutpitia’s threats lacked any real conviction. She never bought the
bhaiya
’s milk herself but firmly believed that periodic berating kept him in line, and was in the interest of the others. Somebody had to let these crooks know that there were no fools living here, in Khodadad Building. She was a wizened woman of seventy, and seldom went out these days, she said, since her bones got stiffer day by day.

But there were not many in the building she could talk to about her bones, or anything else, for that matter, because of the reputation she had acquired over the years, of being mean and cranky and abusive. To children, Miss Kutpitia was the ubiquitous witch of their fairy stories come to life. They would flee past her door, screaming, ‘Run from the
daaken
! Run from the
daaken
!’ as much from fear as to provoke her to mutter and curse, and shake her fist. Stiff bones or not, she could be seen moving with astonishing alacrity when she wanted to, darting from window to balcony to stairs if there were events taking place in the outside world that she wished to observe.

The
bhaiya
was accustomed to hearing that faceless voice. He mumbled for the benefit of his customers: ‘As if I make the milk. Cow does that. The
malik
says go, sell the milk, and that is all I do. What good comes from harassing a poor man like me?’

The women’s resigned and weary faces, in the undecided early light, were transformed fleetingly into visages of gentle dignity. They were anxious to purchase the sickly, watered-down white fluid and return to their chores. Dilnavaz also waited, aluminium pan in one hand and money in the other. A slight woman, she had had her dark brown hair bobbed for their daughter Roshan’s first birthday party, eight years ago, and still wore it that way. She was not sure if it suited her now, although Gustad said it certainly did. She never could trust his taste. When mini-skirts came into fashion, just for a joke she had hiked up her dress and sashayed across the room, making little Roshan burst into laughter. But he thought she should seriously consider it—imagine, a woman of forty-four, mini-skirted. ‘Fashions are for the young,’ she had said, a little flustered. Then he began singing that Nat King Cole song, in his deep voice:

You will never grow old,

While there’s love in your heart,

Time may silver your dark brown hair,

As you dream in an old rocking chair…

She loved it when Gustad changed the song’s words from ‘golden hair’, always breaking into a big smile at the third line.

Traces of yesterday’s milk lingered in the pan she was holding. The last drops had just been used by Gustad and herself in their tea, and she had not had time to wash it out. There would have been time enough, she felt, if she hadn’t sat for so long, listening to Gustad read to her from the newspaper. And before that, talking about their eldest, and how he would soon be studying at the Indian Institute of Technology. ‘Sohrab will make a name for himself, you see if he doesn’t,’ Gustad had said with a father’s just pride. ‘At last our sacrifices will prove worthwhile.’ What had come over her this morning, she could not say, sitting and chatting away, wasting time like that. But then, it wasn’t every day such good news arrived for their son.

Dilnavaz edged forward as some women left, her turn was approaching. Like the others, the Nobles were endlessly awaiting a milk ration card from the government office. In the meantime she had to patronize the
bhaiya,
whose thin, short tail of hair growing from the centre of his otherwise perfectly shaven head never ceased to amuse her. She knew it was a Hindu custom in some particular caste, she was not exactly sure, but couldn’t help thinking that it resembled a grey rat’s tail. On mornings when he oiled his scalp, the tail glistened.

She purchased his milk and remembered the days when ration cards were only for the poor or the servants, the days when she and Gustad could afford to buy the fine creamy product of Parsi Dairy Farm (for Miss Kutpitia it was still affordable), before the prices started to go up, up, up, and never came down. She wished Miss Kutpitia would stop screaming at the
bhaiya.
It did no good, only made him resent them more. God knows what he might do to the milk—as it was, these poor people in slum shacks and
jhopadpattis
in and around Bombay looked at you sometimes as if they wanted to throw you out of your home and move in with their own families.

She knew Miss Kutpitia’s intentions were good, despite the bizarre stories about the old woman that had circulated for years in the building. Gustad wanted to have as little as possible to do with Miss Kutpitia. He said her crazy rubbish could make even a sane brain somersault permanently. Dilnavaz was perhaps the only friend Miss Kutpitia had. Her childhood training to show unconditional respect for elders made it easy for her to accept Miss Kutpitia’s idiosyncrasies. She found nothing repugnant or irritating about them—sometimes amusing, sometimes tiresome, yes. But never offensive. After all, for the most part Miss Kutpitia only wanted to offer help and advice on matters unexplainable by the laws of nature. She claimed to know about curses and spells: both to cast and remove; about magic: black and white; about omens and auguries; about dreams and their interpretation. Most important of all, according to Miss Kutpitia, was the ability to understand the hidden meaning of mundane events and chance occurrences; and her fanciful, fantastical imagination could be entertaining at times.

Dilnavaz made sure never to unduly encourage her. But she realized that at Miss Kutpitia’s age, a patient ear was more important than anything else. Besides, was there a person anywhere who, at one time or another, had not found it difficult to disbelieve completely in things supernatural?

The clatter and chatter around the milkman seemed remote to Gustad Noble while he softly murmured his prayers under the neem tree, his handsome white-clad figure favoured by the morning light. He recited the appropriate sections and unknotted the
kusti
from around his waist. When he had unwound all nine feet of its slim, sacred, hand-woven length, he cracked it, whip-like: once, twice, thrice. And thus was Ahriman, the evil one, driven away—with that expert flip of the wrist, possessed only by those who performed their
kusti
regularly.

This part of the prayers Gustad enjoyed most, even as a child, when he used to imagine himself a mighty hunter plunging fearlessly into unexplored jungles, deep in uncharted lands, armed with nothing except his powerfully holy
kusti.
Lashing that sacred cord through the air, he would slice off the heads of behemoths, disembowel sabre-toothed tigers, lay waste to savage cannibal armies. One day, while exploring the shelves in his father’s bookstore, he found the story of England’s beloved dragon-slayer. From then on, whenever he said his prayers, Gustad was a Parsi Saint George, cleaving dragons with his trusty
kusti
wherever he found them: under the dining-table, in the cupboard, below his bed, even hiding behind the clothes-horse. From everywhere there tumbled the gory, dissevered heads of fire-breathing monsters.

Doors opened and slammed shut, money jingled, a voice called out with special instructions for the
bhaiya
’s next delivery. Someone joked with the man: ‘
Arré bhaiya,
why not sell the milk and water separately? Better for the customer, easier for you also—no mixing to do.’ This was followed by the
bhaiya
’s usual impassioned denial.

The early morning news on government-controlled All-India Radio emerged softly, cautiously, from an open window. The clear mellifluence of its Hindi vocables tested the morning air, and presently offered a confident counterpoint to the BBC World Service that brashly cut in from another flat, bristling with short-wave crackle and hiss.

Gustad’s prayers were not disturbed by the banter nor distracted by the radio. Today the news was powerless to tempt him into irreverence, for he had already seen
The Times of India.
Unable to sleep, he had risen earlier than usual. When he turned on the tap to gargle and brush his teeth, the water burst through in a loud wet explosion. It caught him by surprise. He jumped back, snatching away his hand. Air, he told himself, being discharged from the pipes empty since seven a.m. yesterday, when the municipality had ended the daily water quota. He felt foolish. Scared by a noisy tap. He turned off the water, then rotated the handle slowly, just a little. It continued to gurgle threateningly.

For Dilnavaz, that familiar hissing, spitting, blustering was a summons to waken. She sensed the empty bed beside her and smiled to herself, for she had expected Gustad to be up first today. She stared sleepily at the clock till it yielded the time, then turned over on to her stomach and closed her eyes.