Rohinton Mistry - Tales From Firozsha Baag

Mr. Karani went on in this way for a while, and when he felt that Boman had suffered enough, suggested he go to see the trustees of Firozsha Baag.

But there was to be no help from that quarter.

Boman sought out the one to whom he had slipped an expensive envelope one and a half years ago for the favour of turning the trustees’ collective blind eye (a delicate organ, but nurtured to operate without hindrance of ruth or compassion) upon the arrival of paying guests in the ground floor of B Block. Impossible, the oily man said. He spoke without relinquishing the look of grave concern (practised for several years) that proclaimed: here I stand, a pillar of the community, ready to help the poor and the needy at any hour of the day or night. Impossible, he repeated, there could not be paying guests living in any flat of Firozsha Baag, it was against the policy, Boman had to be mistaken; either that, or Boman had broken the rules.

Boman left. He turned to his brother-in-law Rustomji in A Block. Rustomji was a lawyer, he would have something sensible to say for sure. Boman had always sized up Kashmira’s brother as a tough, no-nonsense kind of person, and surely that was the individual to talk to in this tricky situation.

“Saala ghéla!” vociferated Rustomji. “Worst bloody thing you have done, taking paying guests. Where had your brain gone, committing such foolishness? You should have asked me before taking them in, now what is the use. First you are setting a fire, then running to dig the well.” Boman waited meekly, murmuring: “That’s true, that’s true.” The impassioned outburst had to be suffered patiently when you wanted tough, no-nonsense advice for free.

Then Boman told him about his meeting with the trustee. It gave Rustomji the appropriate opportunity for some harmless spleen-venting. “Arre, those rascals won’t give a glass of water to a thirsty man. In their office, their chairs don’t need cushions because they have piles of trust money squeezed under their arses.” Rustomji thrust his hands behind and upwards, and Boman, laughing appreciatively, said: “That’s too good, yaar , too good!”

Rustomji enjoyed compliments; he continued.

“Four years ago when my WC was leaking, saala thieves took five weeks to repair it. Every day my poor Mehroo would phone, and some bloody bugger would say, today or tomorrow, for sure. For five weeks I had to go next door to Hirabai Hansotia every morning. Finally I sent them such a stiff letter, it must have sizzled their arses. Repairing was done double-quick.” Boman gave him one of his awe-and-admiration looks.

It paid off. Rustomji now came to what Boman was waiting for. “Legal channels are what you should follow, make the court work for you,” said he. “It will not be easy, mark my words, tenancy laws are such. But if you are lucky it will not get that far. A lawyer’s letter might be enough to scare them out. Sometimes a lawyer’s letter gives the best laxative.” He wrote down the name of one who specialized in tenancy law.

When Kashmira learned of the procedure they would follow, she did not like it at all. She wanted to invite the paying guests for tea, announce the good news, then discuss the room. The baby would not be here for another seven months. She could look in the Jam-E-Jamshed columns and help them find another place. As Boman himself had said, between the two they must have easily scored more than a century. It would be hard moving again at their age, they could use her assistance.

Once, Kashmira’s devout ambition was to do some kind of social work. Rustomji had been able to indulge a similar desire years ago by joining the Social Service League at St. Xavier’s College, and had eventually worked it out of his system. In recent times he had laboured hard to build up his reputation for hard-heartedness and apathy which, he made no bones about expressing, were essential for survival. But when her time came, Kashmira was not allowed to join the SSL because boys and girls went on work-camps together, and all kinds of stories were told about what went on there between the sexes. She had to repeatedly listen to her parents and her brother say things like: charity begins at home, or: self-help is the best help, which made no sense to her then or now.

Boman said inviting the paying guests to tea was out of the question. These days human nature was such that courtesy was usually misinterpreted as weakness. Better to do it firmly and officially, through proper channels, with a lawyer’s letter telling them to vacate in two months.

When the paying guests received the notice, Khorshedbai immediately and emphatically declared that no one would peck her to pieces. Then she told Ardesar that it was no surprise, she knew it was coming. Pestonji had recently appeared in a dream, and his cage had been nowhere in sight. Frantically beating his clipped wings, he had flopped around the veranda from corner to corner, squawking pitifully, and it had taken a long time to comfort him.

Ardesar wanted to tell Boman there was no need for lawyers and notices. They just needed a little time. But Khorshedbai forbade him. She saw beaks getting ready to peck, and was going to give them a fight, that was all. Standing before the cage, she set the swing going with her finger. “Prayerful people like us have nothing to fear,” she said, and swayed with the to-and-fro rocking of the swing.

Six months of futile and wearying procedures then began. The lawyer Rustomji had recommended was a sadistic little tub of a fellow who dug his nose insolently in the presence of his clients. It delighted him to see Boman writhe in anxiety as he told him about the laws regarding tenancy and sub-tenancy, and how difficult it was to prove extreme hardship and evict someone.

“There are laws to protect the poor,” Boman said bitterly after he got home, “and laws to protect the rich. But middle-class people like us get the bamboo, all the way.”

“Chhee! Don’t talk like that!” said Kashmira, intolerant of dirty speech. Clothes and language were two things in which she insisted on cleanliness. In other matters she let Boman have his way. During happier times, she had allowed him to do things which would have horrified her had they been described in words. How Boman yearned for those nights again. When he would reach out his hand in the darkness after little Adil had fallen asleep, and she would turn her soft, warm body towards him, and know exactly what to do. Darkness was all she required, and silence: silence of words — other sounds, such as moans and whimpers, she did not mind, in fact they even excited her, of that he was certain.

Kashmira continued with bitterness: “If you had let me get a job instead, none of this would ever have happened.” Boman, turning over those night-time moments of ecstasy within his memory, smiled wistfully, and she did not understand why.

The weeks during which Khorshedbai littered in the morning and Kashmira swept in the evening commenced following the day of the final courthouse appearance. That day saw Kashmira enter the eighth month of her pregnancy. It saw Pestonji flutter his way again into Khorshedbai’s dreams. And it saw the end of Boman’s futile and wearying procedures to secure the eviction.

Boman had not foreseen a complete defeat. At most, on grounds of compassion, a longer notice period. He had spent the last few weeks returning utmost courtesy for Khorshedbai’s daily vituperation, displaying the grace and generosity only the victor can afford, and which, in his mind, he already was.

When the verdict came it crushed him. And to see Boman humbled emboldened Khorshedbai. A brave front might have kept her vengeance within reasonable limits of decency, but brave fronts were now beyond Boman.