A Matter of Geography Read online

  I crept up to the window after I heard Dad snore and watched for the gentlemen to go by, imagining bootleggers and highwaymen in the small street where we lived. I sat on a little round table waiting, and when I heard the stamp of the horses I ducked down. But were there gentlemen as the poem promised? Oh, never. Only the old cobbler who lived in a little tenement opposite, hammering into leather, his back at right angles to the pavement, making shoes till the first crow of the cock as the faint light of dawn showed in the night sky.

  Anna’s habit of sitting Miss Marple-like, looking at the street and everything around, brought us up to speed on various things that happened in the night. The horses, Ms. Ezekiel’s groceries, lovers in the night from the neighbourhood, she saw it all. She saw the stabbing of Mohamed Farooqui in the thick of the events of December 1992, she saw the old cobbler decapitated as he bent over the shoes he was hammering, a martyr to his work, unconcerned about the events that were sweeping around us at that time—we were not the only insular people on that street. Most people want simplicity. They live for the day, struggle endlessly for the survival of their family, earn for their education and food, and then die, sometimes needlessly, believing they did their duty.

  In January 1993, a month after Mohamed was stabbed, when we thought everything could be left behind and we could pretend it never happened, events once again swept us in an unexpected direction, telling us that we really had no control and that our choices would continue to be redefined by fate or by the larger society we lived in. Nothing could protect us; our shared expectation of life could only make us insular, stratified, cut off from others who had a different ideology; but larger events affect us all. And though the street resumed its regular drum minus the beating of leather, minus the bent figure opposite hammering into it, and though we went on with our lives, our futures were foreshadowed by events that sucked us out of apathy and unwillingly into the country in which we lived.

  Chapter Nine

  “Le Coeur a ses raisons, que la raison ne connait point; on le sait en mille choses (The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing: we know this in countless ways).”

  - Blaise Pascal

  Particles of unknown matter from an unknown universe sailed in through my window, riding on a blinding ray of light from a sun that woke me up to its brilliance. September is a strange month in Bombay. It rains, it doesn’t rain, not being sure whether the monsoon winds rising from the southwest breezes are spent on their way to us, or whether they will pass over in a burst. But this Sunday morning in September was meant for lazing and reading in bed. I sprawled head down—a more restful position than looking at my walls, which often brought to my attention the detail that needed caring. Resting on the Sabbath was as old as the history of God himself.

  But it was not to be. The light, wafts, and sounds of a Chembur morning; the smells from the fertilizer plant clashing into the giddy smells of traffic, cooking, and coffee—they worked my nostrils, triggering the hairs inside to quiver restlessly like the paddy fields in the wind; they shattered my eardrums and fluttered my eyelids to wakefulness, thus pushing my limbs out of bed.

  The church, Our Lady of Perpetual Succour, was not far away. Despite the languor that overtook my Sunday mornings, I often contemplated going to church to pray, embarrassing though it was for me. Spending most of my twenties and early thirties in Bombay’s Irani restaurants, intellectualising about all things, including the existence of God, it was almost shameful to make this visit with intentions and an agenda. My views have bordered between the devout and atheist, settling in my moments of doubt to being an agnostic.

  Here and now, I desperately wanted to believe in the existence of a God created by the Catholics; one that accepted the disbeliever, one that rescued you, and one that granted boons, protected and loved you and above all forgave you these departures from him. A God that would make my hapless desires a reality. Anna would be here a week from today, and I was torn. I did not want to judge by feeling, but by reason. My mathematical training needs the logical reasoning, the principles it conforms to, slow, methodical and not intuitive, getting to the bottom not by sentiment corrupted by our families and the company we choose to keep. I reject ‘feelings’ as a basis of conclusions. I have rejected the heart as a basis of scientific understanding, as the beginning and the basis of personal relationships. I have, in essence, rejected love.

  Unseen, two drops of coffee had stained the dark patterned shirt I wore, a reminder of the haste in which I gulped my coffee before I set out down the street. The devout church-going Catholics crowd the small Chembur street I lived on as they walked along dressed in their Sunday best, synchronised by the clock and the chimes of the church bell. A Catholic street, if streets could be religious. I smiled inside my mouth, somewhere around my epiglottis, causing a small cough that I released into my clenched fist.

  “Are you well, Peter?”

  “Ah, getting a cold?”

  “Nice to see you, Peter, nasty cough!”

  Everyone on the street knew each other and I smiled once more, but openly. The land here, which also houses a convent, the school, and the church in addition to the residences, was endowed by The St. Anthony’s Homes Co-operative Society Ltd., whose founders had obtained this land from the government and ensured that the area developed into this Catholic conclave in a once not-so-popular suburb of Bombay. I too, had moved here to be in a Catholic neighbourhood. I wonder if that makes me parochial. But it was comforting to live around people you understand—not necessarily those you like.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Menezes, your roses are in bloom this year.”

  “Peter, how is your mother?”

  “Peter, I would like to introduce you to my friend Ada’s daughter. I think she is just the girl for you.”

  “Nice dress, Yvonne, you look charming.”

  We shared the same ethics, schooling, faith, and resultant expectations. I knew what they expected of me, what they expected of themselves, in a larger sense, and that was comfortable. Yes, it created islands—but what else can take away our fears?

  So here I stood as I always did, outside the very crowded church. Latecomers, mostly men, crowded the doorway. The high ceilings permitted us to feel that we were looking in and joining the service. Most of the men stood there looking bored, preoccupied, observing the women in front, or just distracted. I joined in the prayer and the Mass, but when the congregation sat down to listen to the homily, I walked out, as I have always done from the time I was eighteen. Instead, I sat in the Udipi restaurant not far from the church and asked for a chai, pani kum—less water, more milk. Suddenly the doorway of the church cleared and the laws of physics applied. Matter cannot be destroyed. It moves from one state to another. Or perhaps osmosis, from a higher density to a lower. The restaurant filled up with like-minded men who, avoiding the homily, were either smoking or having a tea. I understand that there have been discussions on whether a loudspeaker from the church should be placed in the restaurant…

  We entered once again when the congregation rose for the prayer that followed. Our timing was perfect. The priests there kept the clock consistent—you know the priest, you know the time…

  “The Lord be with you.”

  “And with you also.”

  “Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.”

  “It is right to give him thanks and praise.”

  I will give you thanks and praise, oh Lord, I added silently, thinking of Anna.

  Back home, I ate the mutton biryani Premibai had cooked. Sundays are for special fattening foods, one would think. Premibai runs through the oil bottle like it is water, even on weekdays. I pinched the rolls of fat around my stomach as I settled down to the meal. Premibai ate her lunch at my home, so the menus were aligned to what her palate desired for the day. I had very little control. I loved my vegetables crunchy but she had problems chewing with a mouthful of dentures, so veggies were really mushy. “She is the maid not your wife,” Mum said, when I co
mplained. “I have asked you a hundred times if not more, if you have not found yourself a wife, I would ask around for you, but you refuse to see women. I don’t know what has bitten you.”

  No, only the heart knows what the heart knows, but you know Mum. Mother knows it all.

  I took the notebook with me to the living room once again, sat myself down with Anna on my lap and let her talk to me.

  Early next morning Mum had left for work. Dad sucked his stomach in to button his trousers. Finally done, he handed Ivan the typed sheet.

  “Ivan, give this notice to all the houses on this floor. Make sure you give it to the parents and not the children. You can give it to the Surves downstairs, and you may leave out Miss Ezekiel.”

  All we knew about Miss Ezekiel was that she had a bright flower-patterned dress that, one unfortunate day, she hung on the clothesline, a tired old rope tied from one pillar to another outside her apartment. Sammy, the eldest of Joe Marchon’s sons, held it against his body, modelling it for us. He had pinched the dress and was on his way to sell it wherever he could.

  Not much later, long, crackling angry sounds from the room below floated on the hot, light air of the day.

  “Kek, Kek, Ke.” The angry sounds got louder. To our ears, everything she said sounded like “Kek, Kek, Ke.” So that is what we called her.

  Peter said, Ah, Kek-Kek-Ke is missing her dress, I bet!”

  We all ran onto the balcony that wrapped the building to look at Miss Ezekiel’s first-floor apartment. We hoped we would finally get a glimpse of her. Diiiisappointed! Through the crack of her slightly open door the sounds came in spurts, but we could not see her.

  All the fourteen-year-olds, Conrad and Gordon, the Cabral twins and Carlton Marchon, holding their noses, chorused, “Kek, Kek, Ke.”

  I felt uneasy. Bad enough Sammy had stolen her dress, but here we were, making fun of her. I had gotten over the habit of reporting all this to Mum, but I still worried about the right and wrong of it.

  I walked away along the verandah, silently wondering what to do. Outside Mimosa’s room, in the passage near the stairs, Sammy was trying to sell the dress to Mimosa, holding it up against her body—“it suits you, Mimosa, just your colour.”Mimosa chided him in mild, polite tones. Her silky ponytail shook from side to side and she wagged her finger at him. “No,” she said. “No. And you should be ashamed taking someone’s dress and trying to sell it to me. Besides, I do not wear used clothing.” Sammy put the dress down on the empty drum outside her apartment, put one hand on her shoulders, and with the other, he covered her mouth and ushered her inside, trying to get her to stop.

  Seizing the opportunity, I grabbed the garment and ran downstairs to Miss Ezekiel’s apartment. The angry “Kek, Kek, Ke”was still coming through the slightly open door. I pushed the dress through the door’s crack. Still hidden behind the door, she grabbed it with the hand that showed a ring on it.

  “Sorry, Miss Ezekiel, the wind took your dress off the line and into the compound. I just retrieved it.”

  “Kek, Kek, Ke,”she said softly and closed the door. I could hear three bolts slamming.

  I stood there staring at her door. Up on the door frame at the very top of the left side, a piece of carved wood that looked like a toy rolling pin gazed back at me. Peter, who knows all kinds of things, told us that Jews put it on their doors so that when the angel of the Lord comes to slay the sinners, he will spare those within.

  There must have been more to Miss Ezekiel than met the eye. I feel a bit ashamed at the times we knocked on her door, and the endless irritating things we did to get her to come out into the open, mostly when Anna was not around. She never did, and we never saw Ms. Ezekiel. When Anna was little, she tattled on us to our parents, so we kept her out of all these forays until she finally agreed to keep it to herself. But she always wrote little sorry’ notes, or sometimes cut up old Christmas cards to make her own cards and pushed them under Miss Ezekiel’s door. We laughed at Anna’s niceness, but she just smiled, undeterred. We did not know at that time how significant this little gesture would turn out to be.

  Ms. Ezekiel spoke to no one. She never came out of her apartment. Isolated, avoided, it was hard to tell whether she kept away from us or we from her. I personally think she avoided everyone. Neither Dad nor Mum knew anything about her. She had lived there long before they moved in and had preceded every family living in Billimoria Building during my stay there. Much later, I read about World War II and the Jewish genocide, something that we never felt in India or internalized as part of our history, or perhaps it had happened here too and we had curled up in our bubble. Visions of Ms. Ezekiel suffering and escaping torture, or some such thing, sometimes popped into my head. She lived in fear or was just deranged, damaged, whatever. But our behaviour towards her could only be classified as unkind. Perhaps all children are indeed cruel, or perhaps we as children were, for we could only have exacerbated her fears of “they are coming to get me” when we knocked on her door and ran away. Is that innocence? I mean, children’s lack of awareness when they mete out cruelty to adults…

  One night Anna, who spent most nights at the window suffocating with bouts of asthma, saw the horses stop under Ms. Ezekiel’s window. A basket was lowered down the window by bony hands (Anna swears she saw a ring glisten on the ring finger) and the horseman put a variety of groceries into the basket. The bony hands pulled the basket in, almost frenetically. Needless to say, it set Anna out on a new interest—what did Ms. Ezekiel shop for? Who was she married to? So we made up our own stories. We sat in a circle one idle evening, each of us defining a line in Ms. Ezekiel’s life as we structured her secret existence from the depths of our collective imaginations.

  Anna began:

  “Once upon a time was born a very beautiful Jewish princess…”

  “American Jewish princess,” said Francis. This sparked a small argument.

  America does not have royalty.

  What do you know?

  More than you, you fool.

  You’re a fool.

  No you are the big fool.

  Anna shooed them and ordered in gentle tones: “Just continue.”

  “She had long tresses, golden hair and fair.”

  “Her tresses curled down her back, and she laughed like a brook over smooth pebbles.”

  Brooks don’t laugh.

  Oh don’t be literal.

  “One day an evil toad disguised as a handsome Jewish banker asked her to marry him.”

  “She fell in love the instant she saw his false moustache and slick suit.”

  “‘Yes,’ she said, ‘yes, yes, yes.’”

  “So she married the evil toady banker, and went to live in the middle of his pond.”

  “One stormy night he was gone…”

  “And she screamed so loud that her hair fell off, and only the few wisps were left, grey and dowdy.”

  “She could not face her family and friends, snobs them all…” “So she came to India, and found Billimoria Building…”

  “Where she lived happily ever after.”

  “With a bunch of kids,” I ended, trying even then to redeem us, “her especially never being able to have one with the toad.”

  Chapter Ten

  “All men should strive to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why.”

  - James Thurber

  First day after the weekend, college has been hectic—Mondays are always trying. It is not just about the weekend or about the work. It is about acclimatization: Stepping out of one bubble into the next, or moving between lifetimes. As I looked at the columns of the courtyard with students buzzing around, ignoring its stone pillars, granite floors and the lush plants strategically growing to add man’s version of nature’s touch, I wished I taught something as frivolous as literature or psychology. Students of mathematics are so serious about the subject that they hang around seeking to ask questions both inside and outside of the lecture halls. Sure, they are so like m
e, but that is the problem, isn’t it? I hate to see someone like myself. Oh! That came out wrong… Maybe I want the unknown, the incomprehensible; the predictable does not challenge; it makes life purposeless; dulls the senses and makes us happy…there is something very fashionable and attractive in seeming discontent…

  Ms. Raikar sat in a corner of the teachers’ common room, talking to her phone. I suspect there was nobody at the other end—she was so antisocial. I hate cell phones and almost unreasonably I extended that feeling to her.

  I felt uncomfortable here amidst these people I have worked with over the years. I ask the eternal question a man who finds himself alone in his ideology asks—Is it me or is it them? I was restless, waiting to solve that differential equation…or discover that unknown variable which made the equation more complex.

  I got away early and walked down the road to Victoria Terminus to take the train. Just outside the court, a legal advocate rushed up to me bowed in an almost a subservient tilt. For a moment I thought he wanted a handout but he asked me how he could help me—An affidavit? Domicile? Certification of true copies? This is what they call ‘education by the wayside.’ Lawyers who have gone through school, college, graduated and then done their law training are not much different from the man who sits outside Madame Cama hospital with a weighing scale, asking for fifty paise to weigh you. And those ear cleaners on the pavement across…people actually sit in front of them on the street and have their ears cleaned. From trimmed feathers to needles, their tools of trade would put off even those less fussy than me, but they seemed not to ever want for customers. What people do for a living never ceased to surprise me. And more surprising, and inexplicable, were their smiling faces and their focus; a functional equation to solve.

  Pushing through this sandbox of people to cross the street to the terminus; stepping onto the train—the unwelcome closeness of wet, sweaty bodies, the stale smell of synthetic clothes that do not breathe, stale breath, hair that you can be reasonably sure doesn’t belong to you escaping into your nostrils, tickling your ears; the reversal of the big bang, matter imploding on itself, swallowing into its black singularity all that is compressed within.