Altaf Tyrewala - Mumbai Noir

I tried Shaghufta’s number a couple of times from both my SIM cards. She cut the call each time.

Under the sun, steadily steeping Mumbai sweat, I acquired a philosophical perspective on Osama. After all, why would his actions be above the level of his sleazy brain? “Ladies watch maximum adull films,” he would say, standing tipsy on top of the Caves some nights, like a spare part in a gangster movie. “Because they are restricted to the house, they are pent up, so what should they do?”

“Abbe, shut up, you little rat. It’s not adull , it’s adult films. Hurry, we’ll miss the last bus.”

“Arrey, what does it matter how you say it? Thing is the same, is it not? Haan? Ha-ha-ha — haaan?” And he would hurtle down the slope without brakes.

When I thought of him a lot the other day, I didn’t question it too much.

I went to visit him. He lives in Mograwadi too, in the backmost lane, where the later, poorer people built their leantos, close to the train tracks. I took along some DVDs. Adull films, of course. And some Romantic Customer whiskey.

He was really happy to see me. “I’m mending well,” he said. But it didn’t look like it to me. He looked awful.

“You go out if you want, khala,” I said to his mother. “I’ll stay with him till you come.” She looked reluctant but I knew she’d have many errands that needed doing.

We drank a bit and talked of this and that. Osama asked, “So how’s everything at the cybercafé?”

“It’s fine.” No need to tell him more than this.

“Accha. All is okay between you and Haider bhai?”

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

He looked troubled. I watched him, trying to fathom his drift.

“Look, yaar, you’re the only one from the lot who has come to see me since … you know …” He looked away, his eyes wet. “So I feel I can’t lie to you. That day of the raid, Haider bhai called me over. He had been asking about RC before in the cybercafé and I … I got nervous, and I told him about you and her.”

It took me aback, I admit it. I stared at him. “But why?”

He avoided my eyes. “Yaar, you know me, I don’t think straight sometimes. I panicked. I thought if Haider bhai knew that I knew about you and RC and didn’t tell him, then he’d have my ass. It’s been eating at me since then … and I … I’m so glad nothing’s happened. I’m sorry, yaar, forgive me.”

Ah, Mr. Ghulfam. I wondered whether to tell him I knew his other little secret to really make him squirm. I felt tired at the thought.

I laughed. “Yeah, forget it.” Haider bhai hadn’t known me seventeen years for nothing, I thought. He knew whom to settle where, that’s what made him a man of the moment.

I poured us both a little bit — well, a lot — of RC.

“I’m so happy you came, yaar,” Osama said. “It’s nice to know you have someone of your own from time to time.”

I smiled and nodded. We are not alone, from time to time, that’s true.

Versova

Rahim

Rahim liked the night shift. He tilted his head back and filled his lungs with the black sooty air, as his bladder quickly emptied below. He could piss into the sea, even spit his paan into it, and no one would mind. Because at night Mumbai was a brutalized, heaving whore. She didn’t give a fuck who pissed in her seas. It was during the day that Mumbai creaked and rattled like a desperate machine. And you dare not piss in a machine. It gets pissed off. And then it crunches your balls between its tooth-gear wheels. Rahim remembered telling Rahman that over dinner one day, gesticulating so wildly that the daal and rice sprayed out of his mouth, the same way that the shit had burst out of their rickshaw’s exhaust pipe during the surprise PUC inspection. Rahman had looked at Rahim sternly and said, “Don’t talk that way, this city is our mecca, it feeds you and me despite the lies we tell. Don’t offend it. It could as well turn into our jehennum.”

Rahim tired of his brother’s fear of hell. Take Langdi out at night once , he’d gestured to Rahman, and you’ll know. By daylight even a murderer looks like he could do with a hug . Rahman never took his advice. He grimaced each time Rahim referred to their auto-rickshaw as Langdi, the lame one. But Rahim needed to remind himself. What self-respecting man would ride a beast with three legs? A beast that doesn’t gallop, instead sneaks and swerves slyly to survive. A goonga, perhaps, would. A handicapped vehicle deserves a handicapped rider.

Langdi, like Rahim, was made to survive Mumbai. She was an old machine, the kind that had the engine in the front, one that wouldn’t pull it up an incline but vibrated like an electric drill. Rahim didn’t mind the vibration. When he was waiting for a passenger to show up he’d keep the engine on, enjoying the tremors running up the insides of his legs like a cheap champi tel massage. Also, Langdi had a large gassy behind, just like Ammi’s. If Rahim wasn’t wrong, he felt in his heart that Rahman thought so too.

Rahim turned away from the oily edge of the Versova Sea and plodded through the sodden sand, not caring to check if it was the masticated remnants of the evening high tide he’d stepped into or someone’s pasty turds. In the darkness it was one and the same. Rahim heaved his slight self over some rocks to get to the main road, where Langdi stood, her insides throbbing with a Himesh Reshammiya song. Rahim slid into the ghostly blue-lit interior of his rickshaw, turned the music down, grabbed the starting lever near his feet, and jerked it upward. Langdi coughed and shuddered to life. That shudder always made Rahim hard. It reminded him of the way he shuddered in the sandaas some mornings when he grabbed and tugged at himself.

“Made up for the lack of rain out there, did you?” a voice from the passenger seat barked at him. Rahim grinned into the rearview mirror — it hung out from the side of the windscreen the way a footboard traveler does out of an overpacked BEST bus. “Chhee, those teeth need a PUC test of their own,” the voice squealed. Rahim now gesticulated into the mirror, Where to ? The woman in the back leaned her powdered face out into the whipping breeze, her small blouse battling to keep her breasts inside it. “Infiniti,” she told him.

The further out of the speeding auto Ramdulari swung, the further down the driver’s seat Rahim slid, as if to maintain the precarious balance of the rickshaw, but in truth he did so to keep her ample reflection from slipping out of the little round window of the rearview mirror. She was his most consistent passenger. On good nights he made more money than Rahman made in a week. But he never let on how. Or Rahman would slap his own forehead so hard it would kick a Lahaul-willa-quwat out of his God-fearing lips. Jehennum, he would say, we’ll go to jehennum for this.

Rahim hated to admit that Rahman was not entirely wrong.

They had come to Mumbai from Akbarpur, a small filth-heap of a town that sprang up along the railway tracks soon after the East India Company ran the first train across the nation’s breasts. It was a town forever in transit. A quick-halt junction for mostly goods trains. As a result, all the businesses in Akbarpur centered around food, the only commodity people passing through really needed. Their father was a kasaai, a butcher with the dirtiest mouth in the town square. So dirty that he used to cuss his first wife even as he exploded inside her, cursing her for not being able to bear him any children. And then he cussed his second when she bore him not one, but two, simultaneously! So dirty was his mouth that word was he never threw away the shit that came out of the intestines of the goats he cut open; he ate it all.