Vikram Chandra - Love and Longing in Bombay

“Don’t say anything,” she said. “It’s very important to Anubhav. It’s Mahatre-ji’s birthday.”

“Mahatre-ji?”

“He’s the Times of India critic, you know. Anubhav’s already told him and invited some people.”

“How many people?”

“Forty-fifty he said. For dinner.”

Forty, or maybe fifty, for dinner, in two days meant that I could have said a lot about Anubhav, a full day or two of dissection, but I wasn’t in the mood. My pleasures were gone from me. “I’ll get it done,” I said.

“Thanks, Iqbal,” Sandhya said. She turned and walked down the corridor towards the office, stretching her shoulders.

“Sandhya,” I said, and she stopped. “I never saw any Picasso book around here,” I said.

“Anubhav has it at his parents’ house, I think,” she said.

We looked at each other, down the dark hall, and we were both too tired for my customary shake of the head and her embarrassed little smile. I took the Amarson’s shopping bag from the kitchen and got to work on Anubhav’s party. The main dishes I would get catered from Bhaktawar’s down the street, but between Ma-ji and myself and Amba bai we would manage the snacks, and also the rice and chappatis and the sweet-dish, I went through the usual scrimping and saving out of habit. I started on the customary trek out to Abdullah’s in Mahim for the Scotch, mainly because I wanted the comfort of their reassurance that it was all actually real foreign whisky, not rebottled local stuff. I wanted to hear them say it again, as before, before the world changed. I must tell you that the city was for me full of Rajesh. This is I suppose commonplace, but for me it was astonishing that I saw him behind the pillar near the autorickshaw-queue at Mahim station, that he was in the car stuck in the traffic next to me at Mori Road. I thought I heard his voice in front of a stationery store and I whirled, violently, and two schoolboys in grey shorts watched me, their mouths open and red from the ice -golas they were eating. It was noon, and I shut my eyes and turned slowly through the heat. When I opened my eyes I felt as if I were looking at the road from a cavern deep inside my body, from a small place of shade far away. I thought, then, I cannot tell you why, that I would take an hour and go to Rajesh’s bhaiyya gym. I knew Dilip had been there, and everywhere else already‚ with all the proper questions, and I had no hope of finding out anything, but I remembered Rajesh whirling the huge joris behind his back, his grip on the wooden handles, his whistling breath and the sweat, the shiny colour of his skin under the tubelight.

What I thought of as a gym was actually an akhara, the Akhara Pratap Singh as I now saw, in the sunlight, from the board on the wall that ran around it. It was a small plot of land between two buildings, an open shed with a tin roof on bamboo poles, a pit of fine soil under a broad spreading neem tree. There were the joris to one side, and some other equipment I didn’t know, and a small shrine at the top of the plot. The man who met me at the gate said Guru-ji was eating, which I could see, Guru-ji was sitting crosslegged on the ground and eating from a thali. His student, who was a boy really, went and whispered into his ear as he drank from a tall brass tumbler, and I could see the teacher’s eyes watching me gravely. He waved me over. I started, and then had to stop when the student pointed at my feet. I bent, took my shoes off, and walked across the yard. I could feel the earth under my toes, clean and grainy.

“Rajesh you’re looking for also?” he said. Guru-ji’s Hindi was difficult for me, accented and turned in a strange Northern way. “Sit.”

There was nowhere but the ground to sit on, so I bent awkwardly and sat next to him, my knees high.

“I remember you,” he said. “You came once with him.” He had bright little eyes in a round face, a smooth bald head, and grey in his stubble. His stomach, which he rested a hand on as he spoke, looked round and hard under his kurta. “Yes.” He sat at ease on the ground, as if he had been planted in it.

“I did,” I said. “Once. It was a long time ago. My name is Iqbal.”

“Yes, what was your name? Iq-bal? I was surprised to see Rajesh then. Since then I haven’t seen him. I told his brother that.”

“What do you mean? I thought he came here every other day.”

He laughed. “Oh, not here. When he was a boy he did. Then he came every day. But now he only goes to that bodybuilding club.” He said the word in English, as “badi-beelding.”

“What bodybuilding club?”

“At the corner of Atreya Lane. Many of them go there now, and to other ones. To become big with the machines. Here, I ask too much of them. I ask them to be pure. I am an old man. I’ve heard them say it, Kaniya Pahalwan is an old man and he asks too much. I do. But to have a body of one colour, you must drink a bitter cup.”

He said, sharir ek rang ka. A body of one colour. “I don’t understand,” I said.

“Sharir ek rang ka. Not huge slabs of meat hung together on a wire. Like parts on a car. Pieces and pieces. No. All this, this, this, this,” he said, touching his stomach, his heart, his head, “all one. To be all one you must sacrifice. You must be pure. You must eat pure. You must think pure. But they pay money over there to become big. I charge no money I ask them to pay of themselves.”

“Do you know if Rajesh was, was involved in anything bad? Bad people?”

“Rajesh was a good boy. But I hear anything can happen at these clubs. All kinds of people go to become big.” He looked down at his thali , which was empty, wiped clean. “Rajesh was a good boy,” he said. “And I am an old man. Do you know, when I first opened this akhara here, forty years ago, this was all an open maidan ?” The sweep of his arm took in the akhara, the lane, the buildings, and what lay beyond. “My buffaloes grazed right there. Now everything is built up. Even this land they want.”

“Who?”

“They who own that building, and that. They have asked me many times. Perhaps the next time there is trouble in the city, and there will be trouble in the city, I’ll find all this gone, burnt down. If I’m here when it happens, maybe my wrestlers will find me here, two holes in my head.” He pointed at his head with two stiff fingers. “One more poor victim of unfortunate Hindu-Muslim riots. Maybe I should go back to my village. Retire.” He used the English word, “retire,” and he laughed. “It is a village called Rudragaon, near Benares. Have you been to Benares?”

“No.”

“Sometimes I cannot remember if I’ve been to Benares.” He laughed again, with his cheeks full and round, and the shadows from the neem moved like a web over his head and shoulders. He didn’t look very frightened.

“I must go,” I said. “Back to work.”

“I hope you find Rajesh.”

“He was a good friend.”

He nodded his head from side to side. I got up with a click in my knees, and he reached out and rested a palm on my shin. “Come back and do some bethaks with us, Iq-bal. This akhara is open to all. No money.”

I smiled at him and walked past the wrestling pit, and I left him there under his neem tree. All that afternoon, as I bought soda and Scotch and extra glasses, I thought of Rajesh doing bethaks , squatting and rising in a ceaseless rhythm, his arms swinging forward and back, going to the balls of his feet and then back to his heels as he rose. I counted the first three hundred and then just watched him, the shining dark skin, his eyes radiant and calm, the brown earth rich with sweat, his face as if in prayer. Sharir ek rang ka. When all my buying was done, on the way back, I stopped the taxi on Atreya Lane, and looked in the door of the bodybuilding club, which was one dark room at the back of the ground floor of a commercial building. It was full of long rusty bars, dumbbells, and mirrors, and there was a tower with pulleys on it. There was a two-in-one on a windowsill, and some very loud music, and the room was empty. Then the taxi had to move because a truck was trying to get around the compound, and I ran back, and we went on. I held the carton full of bottles steady with one hand and wondered why Rajesh had taken me to the akhara and not this other place. When we had left the akhara, that night, after he had touched Guru-ji’s feet, he said as we walked down the lane, “That’s a neem tree.” I nodded, silenced by desire. “It’s a good place,” he said. I nodded again, fast. “A really good place,” he said. “I feel at peace here.” I had agreed, too blinded by love, and longing, to know what he really meant. Later that night, with the sea pounding in my ears, I had run my tongue over his stomach hungrily. I felt the small soft prickling of the hair against my lips, my nose. And the tenderness of the skin. He held my head delicately in his arms. I had felt a desperation to know him, to hold something essential. Sharir ek rang ka . I sat in the taxi and wondered what it was that I had kissed. I thought of my own body, and asked, had he found peace in me? And the bottles rattled against each other with tiny bell-like sounds, and I felt an ache in my wrist.