Tales From Firozsha Baag (10 page)

Beside the oil lamp Daulat returned to the present. Talking to visitors about such things would not be difficult. But they would be made uncomfortable, not knowing whether to laugh or keep the condolence-visit-grimness upon their faces. The Ostermilk tin would have to remain their secret, hers and Minocher’s. As would the oxtail soup, whose turn it now was to sail silently out of the past, on the golden disc, on the flame-raft of Minocher’s lamp.

At the butcher’s, Daulat and Minocher had always argued about oxtail which neither had ever eaten. Minocher wanted to try it, but she would say with a shudder, “See how they hang like snakes. How can you even think of eating that? It will bring bad luck, I won’t cook it.”

He called her superstitious. Oxtail, however, remained a dream deferred for Minocher. After his illness commenced, Daulat shopped alone, and at the meat market she would remember Minocher’s penchant for trying new things. She picked her way cautiously over the wet, slippery floors, weaving through the narrow aisles between the meat stalls, avoiding the importunating hands that thrust shoulders and legs and chops before her. But she forced herself to stop before the pendent objects of her dread and fix them with a long, hard gaze, as though to stare them down and overcome her aversion.

She was often tempted to buy oxtail and surprise Minocher – something different might revive his now almost-dead appetite. But the thought of evil and misfortune associated with all things serpentine dissuaded her each time. Finally, when Minocher had entered the period of his pseudo-convalescence, he awakened after a peaceful night and said, “Do me a favour?” Daulat nodded, and he smiled wickedly: “Make oxtail soup.” And that day, they dined on what had made her cringe for years, the first hearty meal for both since the illness had commandeered the course of their lives.

Daulat rose from the armchair. It was time now to carry out the plan she had made yesterday, walking past the Old-Age Home For Parsi Men, on her way back from the fire-temple. If Minocher could,
he would want her to. Many were the times he had gone through his wardrobe selecting things he did not need or wear any longer, wrapped them in brown paper and string, and carried them to the Home for distribution.

Beginning with the ordinary items of everyday wear, she started sorting them:
sudras
, underwear, two spare
kustis
, sleeping suits, light cotton shirts for wearing around the house. She decided to make parcels right away – why wait for the prescribed year or six months and deny the need of the old men at the Home if she could (and Minocher certainly could) give today?

When the first heap of clothing took its place upon brown paper spread out on his bed, something wrenched inside her. The way it had wrenched when he had been pronounced dead by the doctor. Then it passed, as it had passed before. She concentrated on the clothes; one of each in every parcel:
sudra
, underpants, sleeping suit, shirt would make it easier to distribute.

Bent over the bed, she worked unaware of her shadow on the wall, cast by the soft light of the oil lamp. Though the curtainless window was open, the room was half-dark because the sun was on the other side of the flat. But half-dark was light enough in this room into which had been concentrated her entire universe for the duration of her and Minocher’s ordeal. Every little detail in this room she knew intimately: the slivered edge of the first compartment of the chest of drawers where a
sudra
could snag, she knew to avoid; the little trick, to ease out the shirt drawer which always stuck, she was familiar with; the special way to jiggle the key in the lock of the Godrej cupboard she had mastered a long time ago.

The Godrej steel cupboard Daulat tackled next. This was the difficult one, containing the “going-out” clothes: suits, ties, silk shirts, fashionable bush shirts, including some foreign ones sent by their Canadian nephew, Sarosh-Sid, and the envy of Minocher’s friends. This cupboard would be the hard one to empty out, with each garment holding memories of parties and New Year’s Eve dances, weddings and
navjotes
. Strung out on the hangers and spread out on the shelves were the chronicles of their life together, beginning with the Parsi formal dress Minocher had worn on the day of their wedding: silk
dugli
, white silk shirt, and the magnificent pugree. And to commence her life with him all she had had to do was move from her parents’ flat in A Block to Minocher’s in C Block. Yes, they were the only childhood sweethearts in Firozsha Baag who had got married, all the others had gone their separate ways.

The pugree was in its glass case in the living-room where Daulat had left it earlier. She went to it now and opened the case. It gleamed the way it had forty years ago. How grand he had looked then, with the pugree splendidly seated on his head! There was only one other occasion when he had worn it since, on the wedding of Sarosh-Sid, who had been to them the son they never had. Sarosh’s papers had arrived from the Canadian High Commission in New Delhi, and three months after the wedding he had emigrated with his brand new wife. They divorced a year later because she did not like it in Canada. For the wedding, Minocher had wanted Sarosh to wear the pugree, but he had insisted (like the modern young man that he was) on an English styled double-breasted suit. So Minocher had worn it instead. Pugree-making had become a lost art due to modern young men like Sarosh, but Minocher had known how to take care of his. Hence its mint condition.

Daulat took the pugree and case back into the bedroom as she went looking for the advertisement she had clipped out of the
Jam-E-Jamshed
. It had appeared six days ago, on the morning after she had returned from the Towers Of Silence: “Wanted – a pugree in good condition. Phone no. ____.” Yesterday, Daulat had dialled the number; the advertiser was still looking. He was coming today to inspect Minocher’s pugree.

The doorbell rang. It was Najamai. Again. In her wake followed Ramchandra, lugging four chairs of the stackable type. The idea of a full-time servant who would live under her roof had always been disagreeable to Najamai, but she had finally heeded the advice of the many who said that a full-time servant was safer than an odd-job man, he became like one of the family, responsible and loyal. Thus Najamai had taken the plunge; now the two were inseparable.

They walked in, her
rancid-fat-dhansaak-masala
smell embroidered by the attar of Ramchandra’s hair oil. The combination made Daulat wince.

“Forgive me for disturbing you again, I was just now leaving with Ramu, many-many things to do today, and I thought, what if poor Daulat needs chairs? So I brought them now only, before we left. That way you will…”

Daulat stopped listening. Good thing the bedroom door was shut, or Najamai would have started another oil lamp exegesis. Would this garrulous busybody never leave her alone? There were extra chairs in the dining-room she could bring out.

With Sarosh’s cassette recorder, she could have made a tape for Najamai too. It would be a simple one to make, with many pauses during which Najamai did all the talking. Neighbour Najamai Take One – “Hullo, come in” – (long pause) – “hmm, right” – (short pause) – “yes yes, that’s okay” – (long pause) – “right, right.” It would be easy, compared to the tape for condolence visitors.

“ … you are listening, no? So chairs you can keep as long as you like, don’t worry, Ramchandra can bring them back after a month, two months, after friends and relatives stop visiting. Come on Ramu, come on, we’re getting late.”

Daulat shut the door and withdrew into her flat. Into the silence of the flat. Where moments of life past and forgotten, moments lost, misplaced, hidden away, were all waiting to be recovered. They were like the stubs of cinema tickets she came across in Minocher’s trouser pockets or jackets, wrung through the laundry, crumpled and worn thin but still decipherable. Or like the old program for a concert at Scot’s Kirk by the Max Mueller Society of Bombay, found in a purse fallen, like Scot’s Kirk, into desuetude. On the evening of the concert Minocher, with a touch of sarcasm, had quipped: Indian audience listens to German musicians inside a church built by skirted men – truly Bombay is cosmopolitan. The encore had been
Für Elise
. The music passed through her mind now, in the silent flat, by the light of the oil lamp: the beginning in A minor, full of sadness and nostalgia and an unbearable yearning for times gone by; then the modulation into C major, with its offer of hope and strength and understanding. This music, felt Daulat, was like a person remembering – if you could hear the sound of the working of remembrance, the mechanism of memory,
Für Elise
was what it would sound like.

Suddenly, remembering was extremely important, a deep-seated need surfacing, manifesting itself in Daulat’s flat. All her life those closest to her had reminisced about events from their lives; she, the audience, had listened, sometimes rapt, sometimes impatient. Grandmother would sit her down and tell stories from years gone by; the favourite one was about her marriage and the elaborate matchmaking that preceded it. Mother would talk about her Girl Guide days, with a faraway look in her eyes; she still had her dark blue Girl Guide satchel, faded and frayed.

When grandmother had died no music was allowed in the house for three months. Even the neighbours, in all three blocks, had silenced their radios and gramophones for ten days. No one was permitted to play in the compound for a month. In those old days, the compound was not flagstoned, and clouds of dust were raised by the boys of Firozsha Baag as they tore about playing their games. The greatest nuisance was, of course, to the ground floor: furniture dusted and cleaned in the morning was recoated by nightfall. The thirty-day interdiction against games was a temporary reprieve for those tenants. That month, membership in the Cawasji Framji Memorial Library rose, and grandmother’s death converted several boys in the Baag to reading. During that time, Daulat’s mother introduced her to kitchen and cooking – there was now room for one more in that part of the flat.

Daulat had become strangers with her radio shortly after Minocher’s illness started. But the childhood proscription against music racked her with guilt whenever a strand of melody strayed into her room from the outside world. Minocher’s favourite song was “At the Balalaika.” He had taken her to see
Balalaika
starring Nelson Eddy at a morning show. It was playing at the Eros Cinema, it was his fourth time, and he was surprised that she had never seen the film before. How did the song … she hummed it, out of tune: At the Balalaika, one summer night a table laid for two, was just a private heaven made for two …

The wick of the oil lamp crackled. It did this when the oil was low. She fetched the bottle and filled the glass, shaking out the last drop, then placed the bottle on the windowsill: a reminder to replenish the oil.

Outside, the peripatetic vendors started to arrive, which meant it was past three o’clock. Between one and three was nap time, and the
watchman at the gate of Firozsha Baag kept out all hawkers, according to the instructions of the management. The potato-and-onion man got louder as he approached now, “Onions rupee a kilo, potatoes two rupees,” faded after he went past, to the creaky obligato of his thirsty-for-lubrication cart as it jounced through the compound. He was followed by the fishwalli, the eggman, the biscuitwalla; and the ragman who sang with a sonorous vibrato:

From time to time, B.E.S.T. buses thundered past and all sounds were drowned out. Finally came the one Daulat was waiting for. She waved the empty bottle at the oilwalla, purchased a quarter litre, and arranged with him to knock at her door every alternate day. She was not yet sure when she would be ready to let the lamp go out.

The clock showed half past four when she went in with the bottle. Minocher’s things lay in neat brown paper packages, ready for the Old-Age Home. She shut the doors of the cupboards now almost empty; the clothes it took a man a lifetime to wear and enjoy, she thought, could be parcelled away in hours.

The man would soon arrive to see Minocher’s pugree. She wondered what it was that had made him go to the trouble of advertising. Perhaps she should never have telephoned. Unless he had a good reason, she was not going to part with it. Definitely not if he was just some sort of collector.

The doorbell. Must be him, she thought, and looked through the peephole.

But standing outside were second cousin Moti and her two grandsons. Moti had not been at the funeral. Daulat did not open the door immediately. She could hear her admonishing the two little boys: “Now you better behave properly or I will not take you anywhere ever again. And if she serves Goldspot or Vimto or something, be polite, leave some in the glass. Drink it all and you’ll get a pasting when you get home.”

Daulat had heard enough. She opened the door and Moti, laden with eau de cologne, fell on her neck with properly woeful utterances
and tragic tones. “O Daulat, Daulat! What an unfortunate thing to happen to you! O very wrong thing has come to pass! Poor Minocher gone! Forgive me for not coming to the funeral, but my Gustadji’s gout was so painful that day. Completely impossible. I said to Gustadji, least I can do now is visit you soon as possible after
dusmoo!’

Daulat nodded, trying to look grateful for the sympathy Moti was so desperate to offer to fulfil her duties. It was almost time to reach for her imaginary cassette player.

“Before you start thinking what a stupid woman I am to bring two little boys to a condolence visit, I must tell you that there was no one at home they could stay with. And we never leave them alone. It is so dangerous. You heard about that vegetablewalla in Bandra? Broke into a flat, strangled a child, stole everything. Cleaned it out completely.
Parvar Daegar!
Save us from such wicked madmen!”

Daulat led the way into the living-room, and Moti sat on the sofa. The boys occupied Najamai’s loaned chairs. The bedroom door was open just a crack, revealing the oil lamp with its steady unwavering flame. Daulat shut it quickly lest Moti should notice and comment about the unorthodoxy of her source of comfort.