Bombay Blues Read online

  —These people are really getting their act together, my mother commented as my father and I gathered our luggage with ease, and the three of us slipped into the nearly ruler-straight lines to exit.

  —All over the world! my father agreed, smiling happily. —Even the obtaining of the visa was so much simpler this time. So very organized; the hours of opening on the sign actually corresponded to the hours of opening of the establishment, isn’t it? Indians are really becoming professional in all areas!

  He didn’t usually say “isn’t it?” but it seemed all those old habits were carouseling back with our arrival. Did I even detect an accent coming on? There was a slight lilt….

  —No No Spitting sign at the visa office this time either, my mother added, nodding her head … oh my gods … side to side. —How shameful I found that in earlier years!

  —Um, the visa department’s been outsourced, I pointed out, recalling the huge proportion of non–South Asians who’d been working the counters. Our own had been womanned by a genial African American with silver-hooped ears and no nose ring. —So Indians are definitely getting the outsourcing act together. Anyway, why do you guys talk about them as if they’re not us?

  My mother gestured to the surrounding crowd, who, by and large, looked like our stunt doubles.

  —All these people we left behind, my father said with emotion, taking them in with his loving gaze. —And now here we come, hoping they will accept us again after such desertion.

  Thankfully, the headphoned, goateed South Asian twenty-something in a Jay-Z tee standing beside me, single-hand-texting on his iPhone, didn’t look like he was holding anything against us. My father always viewed his and my mother’s emigration as if they’d defected from the army. He’d always dreamed of returning to his homeland after a few years in America, to help the hard up and disheartened with his medical knowledge. But life had taken over, with its comforts and habits.

  —I suppose we ourselves are outsourced, my father continued, smiling kindly at me. —But now we have returned to the source, isn’t it?

  I had to smile back. We had, and it seemed to be smooth sailing as first my mother, who made sure to use her Marathi with airport officials, and then my father were waved through the final doorway. But as I coasted along behind them, the very same airport official signaled me to the side for a baggage check. My mother, noting within eyes-in-the-back-of-her-head seconds that baby duck was not imprinting, whipped around with a violent look and began to storm the area.

  —But she’s with us! Maazi mulgi aahe!

  —Madame, you cannot enter again the premises once you have gone through, Airport Official Two declared, barring her way with a burly arm. She and my father hovered there, like ill-dressed clubbers at the velvet rope.

  A couple of other people had been pulled over for the check. I vaguely noted the goateed hip-hopster and a blue suede, brown-banded cowboy hat floating just beyond him, atop a tall man with robustly tanned arms.

  Frisker Dude One unzipped my duffel and pulled out a few items, laying them bare before him. I was rather relieved my Condomania pleasure pack remained tucked away for the moment but a little alarmed when he rather cavalierly dumped my carefully wrapped SLR on the table.

  —Any meat? he asked. I shook my head, tempted to inform him I’d already eaten. But apprehension took over. The pleasure pack winked a lascivious corner out of the camera bag’s inner pocket. But he didn’t seem to notice and was now unrolling my Patti Smith Horses (aka Robert Mapplethorpe) tee to reveal Chica Tikka in all her grand apertured glory.

  —It was a gift from my grandfather many years ago, I explained.

  He nodded, Aaachha.

  —My Dadaji, I added for bonus points.

  —And a very fine specimen at that, a deep voice with twinkling accent of unknown origin commented. I looked up to see the cowboy peering over at me from below his brim. When our eyes met, my entire body swiveled towards him. He covered his own an instant, took a step back, then slowly lowered his hand.

  We spoke simultaneously.

  —… sorry, I …

  —… thought I …

  —… knew you …

  —… were someone else …

  —Maybe it was just the camera, he concluded finally. —Canon AE-1?

  —Yes! I smiled, pleased he recognized my hot-shoed relic. I could barely figure his eyes. They were a curious haze of …? Kind of a greyish bluish brownish … hazel? Khaki? He looked kind of old but young. Rugged? He was also really tall, but it didn’t hurt my neck; it was more like looking at sky than skyscraper.

  Frock. What was happening?

  His own smile was warm and a touch mischievous as he nodded downward. I followed his gaze to find, laid out on the table before him, his equally chunky (by current standards) single-lens-reflex Sure Shot … beside a pack of condoms. I tried to fix my eyes on his SLR.

  But I was mesmerized by the coincidence. The cameras, not the condoms. Sort of. It felt like it was a sign of amazing things to … come during this trip.

  Had I just cackled aloud? Cowboy was grinning now.

  —Who needs a hipstamatic? he said. —You know what the trouble with the modern-day hipster is?

  —What’s that?

  —They don’t know what’s really cool.

  I burst out laughing. Our airport official gave us the side-to-side head nod that indicated we were in the carry-on clear. Cowboy expertly packed up his camera and slung his bag over his shoulder. I smoothed my Horses tee out on the table and bundled up Chica Tikka.

  He was off, but turned back for one last glance and three little words.

  —Later, Indie Girl.

  I looked up. He nodded down at my rolled-up-around-camera Patti, her minikin horse pin looking like a Lilliput plane on fabric.

  —See you, Cowboy, I said with, for some reason, a goofy grin. As I started walking, it hit me: We were here! In India! Art! Life! Love! Biriyani!

  Though I felt a budding desire to declare all of the above, my customs man cluelessly waved me towards the Nothing to Declare line. When I joined my parents, my mother peered into my eyes.

  —Who was that Western Heston man you were chitchatting with for such an inappropriate amount of time?

  —Another aficionado of film, not digital, I said.

  —I do not know if you should be fraternizing with aficionados.

  She said it like she was saying mafiosos. My father was more on my wavelength.

  —Bacchoodi, it is a sign! he announced. —That you will take many, many wonderful photographs here!

  —Yes! Thanks, Daddy! Anyway, all’s swell with Chica Tikka, so why waste time?

  I unzipped my camera bag. We were about to exit, but I stopped my parents at the threshold, signaling them to hold still.

  My mother tilted her face at the Bollywood-influenced angle she always used for photos: slightly to the left, downcast head, up-peering eyes, tiny smile tugging one upper lip corner. My father gave an unabashed grin, concealing none of the boyish excitement he felt to be here again, nor his newly capped tooth. I snapped them there, flanked by Samsonites, and looking a little worn out but a lot happy.

  As Chica Tikka sucked them in with her knowing wink, it struck me: Perhaps they’d looked then — the day they’d forsaken Bombay’s potholed pavement for America’s orthodontic disco-glow grin — just the way they did now (though back then, my mother’s hair to hips, my father’s a pure inky sea, no silver combers). There they’d been: quivery with optimism and even a sort of grief for discovering what lay ahead … which maybe wasn’t so different from the tremor of joy and longing now to find all that had been left behind.

  —Welcome home, guys! I said, snapping. I packed up Chica Tikka. When I looked up from my camera bag, I was startled to be greeted by my father aiming his own digital cam at me.

  —Don’t move, beta! he said. —Candid, candid!

  —Smile! my mother commanded, stretching her mouth ear to ear as if to demonstrate.

&
nbsp; I was taken aback, and that same goofy grin deluged my face. I was hardly ever in the picture, but as my father clicked, he changed all that.

  —This is your journey, too, my mother said softly.

  —And your homecoming, my father added. He wrapped his arm around me as we three grouped together — not a line but a bundle — and continued on out into the blaring, bleating, bountiful Bombay late day.

  As soon as we exited, Bombay fell over us like a second, warming skin. Or perhaps our American scales shed, clattering childishly round our shadowed ankles, excavating an ancient underlayer.

  Less than a second after we were out, a random brown guy ran over and picked up two of our suitcases. A second and third appeared and squabbled over the rest of our luggage. Numero uno triumphed. There would be many of these randoms; I’d forgotten that aspect of India, where the division of labor was so subsplit that myriads appeared at the whiff of any task, especially one that might result in US bucks for tips. My mother indicated the parking lot to the victor. We’d taken hardly a half dozen steps that way when I heard a joyful holler:

  —Dimple! Shilpatai! Rohitbhai!

  Materializing before us was my uncle, Dilip Kaka. I didn’t recognize him at first; it had been a handful of years, but he seemed tinier, a scanter person than the last time around — or was it my chubby NR eyes playing tricks on me, the perspective of the NRI: Non Resident (Not Really) Indian?

  A symphony of a smile lit his countenance; it was catching, and when I looked to my parents, I could see they, too, emitted this glow. Dilip Kaka’s arms opened first for me.

  —Beta! Home at last.

  He pulled his face back, pinched both my cheeks with delight.

  —You have all packed on! You look wonderful!

  I’d forgotten fat was a compliment in our family.

  —And Shilpatai, so well preserved! Come — we better get a move on or I’m in for quite a scolding. The girls are all anxious to see you.

  It turned out that the first random guy wasn’t random at all but Arvind, the family’s occasional driver.

  —How is Meeratai weathering all the premarital stress? my mother asked now about her sister.

  —Let’s just say it’s been pleasant to get out of the house for a bit.

  My mother and her sister had a checkered relationship. On some level, it felt Meera Maasi had never forgiven her for leaving India. In my childhood, my aunt had once chided me, in my OshKosh B’goshes, for not wearing a proper “frock,” leading to my continued use of that F-word as an expletive. In fact, everything American about me — or perhaps it was America itself — seemed to irk her.

  My impression of her narrow viewpoint only solidified when Kavita had confided to me in New York that she was queer, a fact she’d at the time felt she’d never be able to share at home, even though she was in love with her then-girlfriend, Sabina Patel. Though she and Sabz were now history, Kavita had made a vow to herself to fill her family in on her sexuality during this trip. At least one positive thing should come of all we went through, she’d told me.

  As Kaka guided us towards the sky-blue car, my parents chattered with him animatedly in Marathi. I smiled at them blankly.

  —Still no Marathi? No Hindi, beta? my uncle asked kindly, as if I were supposed to eventually grow into these lingos, like a bra. I shook my head, a little regretfully, decided not to mention I was, however, studying French. We got in the car, which played a stream of “Happy Birthday to You” during Arvind’s brief reversing maneuver. —Well, no issues. Here, we speak Hindi English, Gujarati English, Marathi English, England English, and American English!

  Exiting into the suburb of Andheri felt like catapulting into the dyspeptic but determined gut of a jeopardous roller coaster.

  —Bahut busy flyover! my mother was exclaiming now, indicating an overpass whizzing above. —Baapray, so much construction? Still?

  My uncle nodded.

  —What is new in Bombay since you were last here? Well, that bridge across the ocean, linking Bandra to Worli, the suburbs to the south. They were building it last time you came, na? It is complete now, though unfinished. The Sea Link …

  —Can we see it from here? I asked, intrigued.

  —Aaray, no, beta. Not from Andheri.

  —I guess not, I agreed (as an entire family, complete with sidesaddling saried mother, zipped by on a single motorbike, helmetless). —Looks like in Andheri all you can see’s cars and humans!

  Out the window, everyone looked purposefully if precariously swept up on destiny’s course. Lanes? A high-stakes exercise in the suspension of disbelief. Traffic appeared to obey only the rule of Who Honks Loudest Wins; pedestrians had no rights but seemed endowed with startling bravery, stepping nonchalantly between all manner of mad-dashing vehicles.

  In chappals. Rickshaws rattled devil-may-care close, looking like endearing chunks of interplanetary auto shrapnel. A tuk-tuk seemed to be a hunk of a bigger, bolder gas guzzler that’d clunked off and managed to take steering wheel, three tires, and half the windshield with it (but somehow lose the doors, seat belts, and driver’s shoes in the process); they yawed buggishly about, just missing toes, Tata trucks, cows, and each other by a hair.

  In fact, other than the driver being on the right, it wasn’t even so apparent we were driving on the other side of the road.

  —There’s a reason fatalism was invented in India, my mother commented now. My mother was convinced everything was invented in India, even the bagel (resembling the zero, which had been invented in India). But I could see her point, and even why reincarnation may have been as well (or you wouldn’t dare cross the street!). She pressed her face to the pane. —Ah, Dimple. Out my window is the life I left behind….

  It didn’t take long to see the India of childhood memory thrown into sharp relief against scaffolded sky: a side lane down which a throng of garlanded people song-and-danced, beating drums. A wedding? STD stands with old-style spiral-corded phones on rickety tabletops (Subscriber Trunk Dialing booths, not open-air help centers for those with the clap). Men walked arm in arm, even held hands. Women and girls also. Paanwallahs rolled thandak in betel pepper leaves at roadside stalls, phoolwallahs strung garlands, chaiwallahs pushed carts cut-glassed with steaming tea, and other inexplicablewallahs minded storefronts bursting a firework of saris, chunnis, bangles, spices, buckets, baskets, fruits, and veg.

  And every wallah, voilà: brown! Whenever I was brown among the brown in New York I was at some kind of edgy desi underground event. Either that or in a Mexican cantina full of Dominicanas and Puerto Ricanos.

  Or on the A train to 200th and Dyckman.

  But for some reason being brown among the brown here … almost made me feel white.

  Beige, at least.

  I caught sight of something that seemed the nexus of all that glittered, all that golded: like a hallucination in the traffic’s rotary heart, a saried creature, giddily swirling her own razored rainbow roundabout like some kind of Indo goddess Iris, mirrored fabric sending light spinning saber-like amidst the smoking, choking cars.

  —Roll up your window! my mother cried urgently as the vision approached us, jangling earrings near audible. —Toh hijra aahe!

  This I understood: a eunuch, a transvestite.

  —She is here every day, my uncle said. —Our local hijra.

  —They are very pushy about money, banging on the car, refusing to take no for an answer, my mother insisted. —I was terrified of them as a girl!

  Too late. The roundabout hijra was plunging her palm into my cracked pane. I waited for the bossy begging to begin, but she simply laid her hand upon my own, gazing into my eyes.

  I met her gaze. She grinned, withdrew her hand, did that side-to-side nod, and waved us on.

  I grinned back; our eyes remained locked as the car moved away.

  —It was as if she knew you? my father observed now. My mind turned to New York City, and how Zara Thrustra lit up the HotPot dance floor in much the same way this hijra se
emed to be stopping Andheri traffic. Zara, whose photos I’d taken as she turned from man to woman — an act of creation, re-creation, reincarnation, that had intimated to me how much of one’s identity is in one’s own hands.

  Was this her Bombay avatar?

  We turned off and wound up the entryway of the Ramzarukha complex, exiting into the courtyard between buildings. Kids skittered about, playing kabbadi — a mythical sparrowlike sound I recalled from dozing off jet lag, head in Dadaji’s lap, on childhood visits.

  In a shaded area off the parking space, a small group of men and women in white sat in a circle, singing softly, hands bedded with flowers.

  Dilip Kaka laid a hand gently on the shoulder of one of the older women, murmuring a few words to her before we continued on. In their midst, I caught a glimpse of a supine figure, cloaked in white as well.

  —Someone has passed on, my uncle informed me quietly. Nearby, the watchman dozed in a plastic chair, as if he’d seen enough life and death to be saturated into a stupor. Asleep for the wake. —Last night. Raman-ji, one of the oldest tenants in the building.

  My father nodded, moved, as we approached the elevator bank.

  —The cycle of life. A funeral today. And in just over two weeks, Sangita’s wedding.

  —Yes. One must focus on the positive, my uncle agreed. —It’s Shivratri soon, the festival of Lord Shiva, god of destruction. My heart goes out to those who are grieving. But fortunately, destruction is always followed by creation.

  Above the elevator, a pulsing image of a cherubic Ganesha — remover of obstacles, son of this same Shiva — bloomed with the motto THE ONLY WAY IS UP.

  I paused to photograph it. My uncle followed my eyes, smiling.

  —See? The god of new beginnings.

  Dadaji’s favorite. Here’s to no end. I took a breath, pulled open the grille.

  —And so let us begin, I said.

  Although the only way was up, the ascent to the third floor was so slow as to feel quite similar to going down. As my parents and uncle chatted, I felt like a kid again, elders creating a protective halo. We were such a tiny familial trio in America, it was reassuring to see a larger context, clan, did exist, albeit eight thousand miles away.