Rohinton Mistry - Such A Long Journey

‘Don’t talk like that!’ she said sharply, then softened again. ‘He is your father. He will always love you and want the best for you.’

‘You know we will start fighting as usual.’

‘No!’ she said, shaking her head. ‘Don’t be stubborn.’ She took his hand. ‘So much has happened since you left. Daddy has changed. It will be different now.’

He continued to gaze out the window, refusing to meet her eyes. Proud and strong-willed, she thought. Another Gustad. ‘Trust me. I did not ask you before. But now it is different.’

‘OK,’ he said, still not looking at her. ‘If it makes you happy.’

As Gustad approached the taxi, he had no doubt. He recognized the man instantly; and then it struck him: he had arranged Jimmy’s funeral!

Overwhelmed, Gustad still had to ask the question, to let him know he knew and was grateful. ‘You…’ he started, pointing behind at the Tower of Silence.

‘Yes,’ said Ghulam Mohammed.

‘Thank you for…thank you, I—’

‘Please.’ Ghulam brushed aside the thanks, gesturing abruptly with his hands. ‘All the prayers are over now?’ His voice seemed to strain and choke.

Gustad nodded. He had seen many sides of the man: jovial, threatening, callous, cajoling, sarcastic. But never like this, never so emotional.

Ghulam raised his face, up towards the hill, up where the vultures were circling. Then he dropped his head and closed his eyes. Gustad waited. When he looked a few seconds later, Ghulam was weeping. Gustad averted his gaze and stood in silence.

Ghulam wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. He said, his voice steady now, ‘Your Parsi priests don’t allow outsiders like me to go inside.’

Gustad nodded guiltily. I feel Jimmy’s loss too, he wanted to say, but I cannot cry. He offered his hand. Ghulam took it, then drew him forward to hug him, kissing both cheeks. ‘Thank you for coming, Mr. Noble,’ he whispered, ‘or Bili Boy would have been alone. Thank you very much.’

‘Nonsense,’ said Gustad. ‘But why didn’t you come and tell me? I would never have known if my wife hadn’t seen the paper.’

‘I had to take a chance. When I gave you the train ticket, I promised it was the last time I would bother you.’

‘That was different. I would never refuse this.’

Ghulam took out his handkerchief and blew his nose, then put on his dark glasses and gestured at the taxi. ‘I can drive you home. No charge.’ He smiled.

‘Thank you.’ Gustad sat in the front with him. Ghulam made a U-turn and waited by the gate for a break in the traffic. ‘So you are driving a taxi again after nine years?’

‘Oh, that’s normal when working in RAW. Sometimes bookseller, sometimes butcher; even gardener. Whatever is necessary to get the job done.’

Gustad heard and accepted the confession. ‘But you are going to continue in RAW? After what they did to Jimmy? And they even tried to kill you, on your Lambretta.’

‘You know about that? Of course, Bili Boy told you. Still, much safer for me to be inside RAW than outside.’ He said softly, ‘Bili Boy was a brother to me. When someone kills my brother, I get very upset. Someone will pay for it.’ He nodded slowly. ‘Yes, definitely. And by staying in RAW my chances are much better of collecting that payment.’ His words were cold fingers tracing shivering lines down Gustad’s spine. It was not empty talk.

‘Timing is important, that’s all. And there’s no hurry. I may collect my payment tomorrow, or next year, or after ten years. From whoever is responsible. If it’s the car manufacturer, he will have to pay. Lots of possibilities — his car might explode, for instance. He also likes to fly aeroplanes, so: bhoom, crash, the end. As I said, whatever is necessary to get the job done.’

Gustad responded by smiling weakly. Ghulam continued: ‘And his Mummy herself has many enemies. Makes more and more every day, from Punjab to Tamil Nadu. Any one of them could do it. I am a patient man. Her life is as easy to snuff out as Bili Boy’s, let me tell you. Like that,’ and he snapped his fingers under Gustad’s nose.

It frightened him to hear Ghulam Mohammed talk this way. He preferred to remember him in his moment of grief, he decided, as the taxi stopped under a policeman’s outstretched arm. The intersection was blocked solidly by traffic, and the policeman was directing cars to alternate routes. ‘It’s OK,’ said Gustad, ‘not far from here. I can walk.’ They shook hands. Gustad knew with certainty that they would never meet again.

The door slammed and the taxi drove away from the traffic jam. He stood watching till it turned the corner.

Malcolm Saldanha, aboard the first lorry to arrive at Khodadad Building, saw the painted wall and realized why the building name had sounded so familiar. Wondering which was Gustad’s flat, he proceeded to display the court order repealing the landlord’s injunction, gluing it over the municipal notice, in tatters now, that he had affixed to the pillar several months ago.

The pavement artist under his little lean-to observed the ominous presence of lorries and men and machines. When Malcolm broke the news to him, he crumpled. He gathered up his paints and brushes, boxes and belongings, and dropped them in the compound. There he sat, cross-legged, unable to summon up even a trace of the resources that had fuelled his wanderings in the old days.

Reluctantly, Malcolm gave orders for the workers to proceed. The flimsy lean-to was knocked out of the way. Theodolites and tripods and levels were set up to demarcate the requisite areas. It was discovered that the neem fell within the municipality’s latest land acquisition, obstructing the project. Two men were dispatched to cut down the tree. More equipment was unloaded; the surveyors squinted through their instruments, pointing here and there; and Malcolm scouted around for an Irani restaurant that could supply tea for the team.

Meantime, the morcha entered the lane with banners and placards. Slogans and cheers began drifting down over the din of city noises, then the marchers came into view, and crowds gathered to watch.

The morcha had almost been denied the opportunity to march with work implements, for the police sub-inspector in charge of crowd control classified these objects as potential weapons. But the morcha directors prevailed: Gandhiji, said Peerbhoy, used to appear in public meetings with his charkha, always spinning khadi. If policemen of the British Raj could permit that, why should a sub-inspector of Free India do otherwise? The tools of the morcha were no more weapons than was the Mahatma’s charkha.

Thereupon, the column was allowed to proceed. One group chanted in unison: ‘ Nahi chalaygi! Nahi chalaygi !’ Will not do! Will not do! Another section responded, on the upbeat: ‘Municipality ki dadagiri nahi chalaygi !’ Municipality’s bullying will not do!

The old staple of every demonstration: gully gully may shor hai, Congress Party chor hai —the cry goes up in every alley, Congress Party is a rogues’ gallery — was also very much in evidence. But there were several originals as well. The Fernandes brothers, twins who ran a small tailoring shop and knew the rhetorical value of repetition, held identical posters: Give Us This Day Our Daily Water Supply. The mechanics, on a more melodramatic note, unfurled a long, wide banner: Havaa-paani laingay, Ya toe yaheen maraingay, an air-and-water variation on ‘give me liberty or give me death’.

The cinema employees had procured an old hoarding advertising the film Jis Deshme Ganga Bahti Hai, and modified it to: The Land Where the Ganga Flows — and the Gutter Overflows. The hero’s face was slightly altered: a clothes pin clung to his nose, pinching both nostrils shut. And the names of the actors, actresses, producer, director, screen-writer, music director were labelled over with names of municipal corporators and leading politicians.