Vikram Chandra - Love and Longing in Bombay

The sarpanch opened and closed his mouth. Before long all the women gathered too, with their children, and the whole village listened to Amma.

“The long song of those who drive trucks on the perpetual roads. The black faces of the diggers of coal, and their wives who try ever not to hear the sound of rushing water under their feet. The staggering smell of the birds that clean bones, their drunken walk with its anxious greed. The roofs of the village houses in the morning, seen from the ghats above the river, and the white glimmer of the temple above the trees. The roaring familiarity of the dusty brickmakers with fire. The painful faith of unrequited lovers.”

The villagers listened to her. One of the children noticed it first. He tugged at his mother’s hand, but she was rapt. He held her index finger and pulled it to and fro, and the gold bangles on her wrist jingled, and she looked down. He held up his arm to her, and she saw the cracks were gone. Then others saw it too. No one could see it happening, not one fissure or the other closing, but if they looked and looked away and looked back, they could see the skin becoming whole. And Amma was talking. She praised the sky, the earth, and every woman in the village, and each of the men, even the ones known for sloth, or cruelty. Then they brought her food, and water, and she talked.

When she finished talking the next day the children were well. Much later, the sarpanch , who was sitting on a charpai in her courtyard, said to her, “Well, Amma, your son brought the sickness, and you fixed it.”

“What did you say?” Amma said, and for a moment the sarpanch was afraid that for all his dignity she would throw the teacup she was holding at his head. “My son brought it?”

“You have to admit that he came, and then they were sick.”

But Amma rolled her eyes. “Aji-haan ,” she said, and that was that.

By the time Shanti had finished telling the story, the train was an extra two minutes late, and Rajan came out of his office and looked angrily down the platform. Frankie waved his flag and the bogie began to move. Shiv walked beside the window, and he watched the shadows from the bars move across Shanti’s face. With every step he had to walk a little faster.

“Will you marry me?” he said.

“What?”

“Will you marry me?”

A shudder passed over Shanti’s cheeks, a twist of emotion like a wave, and she turned her face to the side in pain, as if he had hit her. But then she looked up at him, and he could see that her eyes were full. He was running now.

“Yes,” she said.

He raised a hand to the window as she leaned forward, but the train was away, and the platform came suddenly to an end. Shiv stood poised at the drop, one hand raised.

“Is it true?” It was Frankie, eager and open-faced. “Is it true?”

“What?”

“Your story, you stupid man, is it true?”

“Of course it is,” Shiv said, waving his arm in front of Frankie’s face. “It is. Look.”

Frankie was looking past the arm with a deductive frown. “What happened to you? Why are you grinning like that?”

“She’s going to marry me.”

“She is? She? You mean you asked?”

“And she said yes.”

“But where is she going now?”

“I don’t know.”

Frankie raised his arms in the air, clutched at his hair, threw down his red flag and green flag and stomped on them. “God help this country, with lovers like you,” he said finally. Then he took Shiv by the arm, and took him home, to Frankie’s lair, and began to plan.

*

Two months and three days later, in a train to Bombay, Shanti slept with her head on Shiv’s knee. They were in an unreserved third class compartment, and Shiv was thinking about the four hundred and twenty-two rupees in his wallet. Next to the notes he had a folded yellow slip of paper with the address of one Benedicto Fernandes, who was Frankie’s first cousin and an old Bombay hand. In the sleeping dimness of the compartment Shiv could see the nodding heads and swaying shoulders of his fellow travellers, two salesmen on their way back from their territories, a farmer with his feet propped up on a huge cloth bundle, his wife, a muscular mechanic, and others. They had made space on the one berth for the newlyweds.

They had been married in a civil ceremony in Delhi. This after Shiv had written to his father, “My Dear Papa,” and “I must ask your blessing in a momentous decision,” and had received a curt reply telling him to come home, and containing no blessing, or word of affection. He had written again, and this time received two pages of fury, “disobedience” and “disgrace to the family” and “that woman, whoever or whatever she may be.” Meanwhile Anuradha was tremulous, and Rajan had muttered about what one owed to one’s parents, and what a bad influence that Furtado fellow was. But finally Frankie had saved them. He had found Shanti, her letters and Shiv’s had gone to his address, and he had made the arrangements, set up their rendezvous, lent money, and had gone with Shiv to wait for the night bus at the crossroads.

“What if they do something, Frankie? What if you lose your job?”

“All to the good, my friend. I shall be free.” In the moonlight Frankie threw his head back. They stood arm in arm, with fields and bunds stretching away on all sides. Frankie was humming something, a song that faded gently under the chit-tering of the crickets. When the headlights appeared to the east, appeared and disappeared, Shiv said, “Thanks, yaar. ”

“Yaars don’t say thanks,” Frankie said. Then the bus roared up to them, heavingly full of passengers, and luggage, and a half dozen goats. Frankie found a place for Shiv’s suitcase on the roof, and a space for him to squat in the doorwell. Shiv hugged him, hard, and Frankie held him close.

“Go,” Frankie said.

“Frankie, come to Bombay,” Shiv said as the bus pulled away. Frankie raised a hand, and that was the last Shiv saw of him, in a silvery swirl of dust and a fading light.

Now Shiv looked down at the head on his knee, at the rich thickness of the dark hair. It occurred to him that they hadn’t kissed yet. After they had signed the register they had both paused, and then Shiv had thanked the registrar. Then they had gone to the station, awkward in the tonga, each keeping to one side of the cracked leather seat. Shiv had seen kisses in the movies, but he hadn’t ever kissed anyone. He looked around the compartment, and then, with the very tips of his fingers, he touched Shanti’s cheek. It was very soft, and he was overcome by a knowledge of complete unfamiliarity, of wonderment, and complete tenderness. “Shanti,” he whispered under his breath. “Shanti.” How strange it was, how unknown. How unknowable.

Shiv’s fingers moved over her cheekbone, and now she stirred. He watched her come awake, the small stirrings. Then she tried to stretch, and found the hardness of his hip, and the end of the berth, and woke up. He could see memory coming back, shiverings of happiness and loss. She sat up, rubbed her face. He smiled.

“Do you have a photo of yourself?” she said.

“What?”

“A photo. Of yourself.”

“You woke up thinking about this?”

“I went to sleep thinking I don’t have one.”

Shiv leaned back, raised his hip with a curl of pain through his back, and found his wallet. Under the four hundred and twenty-two rupees and behind Frankie’s cousin’s address he found a creased snapshot.

“Here,” he said. “Actually it’s Hari. But it doesn’t matter. We’re identical.”

She was looking down at the photo, smoothing away the ridges. “No, you’re not.”

“Yes, we are.”