Rohinton Mistry - Such A Long Journey

‘Solid fellows,’ said Gustad. ‘What a smart salute they give when the big shots pass by.’

‘Yes, but because of the Pathans and their guns, all those Sakarams and Dattarams and Tukarams only stood outside, screaming like fishwives. If they came close, one of the Pathans stamped his foot and at once they went in reverse gear.’ Dinshawji demonstrated with his size twelve Naughty Boys from Bata, making the beer bottles vibrate on the teapoy. He had enormous feet for a man on the short side. ‘Bhum! That’s all, and the Maratha brigade ran like cockroaches.’ He took a long draught and set down the glass. ‘Lucky for us that just as the bloody cockroaches were getting braver, the police came. What a day it was, yaar. ’

Dinshawji wiped his forehead once more, then neatly folded the handkerchief and put it away, content with the ceiling fan. ‘One question may I ask?’

‘Sure, speak.’

‘Why is this black paper covering all the windows?’

‘You remember the war with China,’ said Gustad, but was spared from explaining further because the two boys and Roshan entered the room and said ‘Sahibji’ to Dinshawji.

‘Hallo, hallo, hallo!’ he said, delighted to see them. ‘My God, how tall they’ve grown. Arré Roshan, you were this big — only one billus —when I last saw you,’ and he extended a hand with the thumb and little finger outstretched. ‘Hard to believe, no? Happy birthday to the birthday girl! And congratulations for Sohrab. The IIT genius!’

Sohrab ignored him and glared at his father. ‘Have you told the whole world about it already?’

‘Behave yourself,’ said Gustad under his breath, facing the sideboard where he was opening a beer bottle. His voice could be heard plainly, but turning away provided the opportunity to pretend otherwise.

Sohrab persisted. ‘You keep boasting to everyone about IIT. As if you were going there yourself. I’m not interested in it, I’ve already told you.’

‘Don’t give me any idiotic-lunatic talk. God knows what has happened to you in the last few days.’

Dinshawji, sensing the necessity, tried a diversion. ‘Gustad, I think your Darius wants to make an oollu out of me. Says he can do fifty push-ups and fifty squats.’

Roshan also did her bit. ‘Daddy, sing the song about the donkey! For my birthday, please, please, please!’

Sohrab interrupted: ‘I’m going to drink the rum if no one wants it.’

Gustad paused. ‘Are you sure? You never liked it before.’

‘So what?’

Gustad swallowed and made a dismissive gesture with his hands, a gesture of acquiescence, resignation and rejection rolled into one. He turned to Dinshawji and Darius. ‘It’s true, fifty push-ups and fifty squats, every morning. And he will keep increasing till he reaches hundred, like me.’

‘Hundred?’ Dinshawji dramatically fell back in his chair.

‘Daddy, the donkey song,’ reminded Roshan.

‘Later, later,’ said Gustad. ‘Yes, absolutely, one hundred push-ups and one hundred squats. Every morning till my accident, just like my grandfather taught me when I was a little boy.’

Gustad’s grandfather, the furniture-maker, had been a powerful man, standing well over six feet, with tremendous strength in his arms and shoulders. Some of that strength had passed on to his grandson. Grandpa often said to his son, discussing Gustad’s upbringing and welfare: ‘With your bookstore and your books, you develop his mind. I won’t interfere. But I will take care of the body.’ On mornings when the little Gustad was still rubbing his sleepy eyes, reluctant to perform his exercises, Grandpa would fire him up with the exploits of wrestlers and strong men who did a thousand push-ups every morning: Rustom Pahelwan, who could lie flat and allow a truck to pass over him; or Joraaver Jal, supporting on his back a large platform with a symphony orchestra for the duration of Beethoven’s Fifth. From time to time Grandpa took him to wrestling matches so he could see, in person, titans like Dara Singh, the Terrible Turk, King Kong, Son of Kong, and the Masked Marauder.

Gustad’s grandmother, also an ardent wrestling fan, attended the matches with them. Besides being an expert on chickens and butchers, she was very knowledgeable about the sweaty sport. Able to identify the ring personalities as readily as the spices in her kitchen, she had no trouble following the various holds that the wrestlers knotted each other’s bodies into, or the drop-kicks, flying mares, body scissors and airplane spins that whizzed around the arena. She could anticipate falls, escapes, take-downs and reversals better than Gustad or Grandpa, and very often outdid them in predicting the winner.

And if Grandpa was a strong man, Grandma, in her own way, was a powerful woman. Had it not been for her knowledge of wrestling, she used to tell Gustad laughingly, there would have been no Noble family as he knew it. For Grandpa, timid and shy and indecisive, as men of his size and strength often are in such matters, kept putting off asking the crucial question. Till one day, when he was tying himself in knots as usual, hemming and hawing, she decided to take the initiative with a lightning-quick half-nelson to force him to his knees so he could propose.

Grandpa denied the entire story, but, she would laugh and say, what started out as discreet and circumspect matchmaking ended in an exciting wrestling match.

‘Yes sir,’ said Gustad, ‘one hundred push-ups and squats every morning. Best possible exercise. I said to Darius, my right hand I will cut off and give you if your biceps don’t increase by one inch in six months. And same guarantee I can give you, Dinshawji.’

‘No, no, forget it. At my age, only one muscle needs to be strong.’

Darius laughed knowingly, and Dinshawji said, ‘Naughty boy! I am talking about my brain!’ He reached out and gingerly touched Darius’s right arm. ‘O my God! Solid, yaar ! Come on, let’s see it.’

Darius shook his head modestly and tugged his short sleeves, trying to stretch them towards the elbows. ‘Go ahead, don’t be so shy,’ said Gustad. ‘Look, I’ll show mine first.’ He rolled up his sleeve to flex in the classic fist-against-forehead pose.

Dinshawji clapped. ‘Like a big mango goteloo ! Bravo, bravo! Your turn now, Mr. Body-builder. Come on, come on!’

Darius affected boredom with all this fuss about biceps, but was secretly quite pleased. Body-building was his latest hobby, and the only successful one. Before that, his fascination with living creatures used to take him to the pet shop at Crawford Market. He started with fish. But one evening, just a fortnight after they came home, his guppies, black mollies, kissing gouramis, and neon tetra died following a spell of leaping and thrashing against the glass, very much like the lizard’s tail on Miss Kutpitia’s breakfast table.

Over the next four years, the fish were succeeded by finches, sparrows, a squirrel, lovebirds, and a Nepali parrot, all of which succumbed to illnesses ranging from chest colds to mysterious growths in their craws that prevented eating and led to starvation. At each demise, Darius wept bitterly and buried his departed friends in the compound beside his father’s vinca bush. He spent long hours meditating on the wisdom of loving living things which invariably ended up dead. There was something patently ungrateful about the transaction, a lack of good taste in whoever was responsible for such a pointless, wasteful finish: beautiful, colourful creatures, full of life and fun, hidden under the drab soil of the compound. What sense did it make?

Over and over, the external world had let him down. Now it would be foolish, he decided, to invest any more time or energy on such a world, and turned his attention to himself. His physique became his hobby. Soon after he commenced his exercises, however, a severe case of pneumonia confined him to bed. Miss Kutpitia told Dilnavaz she was not surprised. The innocent little fish and birds in his custody had no doubt cursed him with their dying breaths, and here, for all to see, was the result of their curses.