Chapter Six

Mornings were easy for Bu. Mr Dutta, one of her father’s friends and work colleagues always arrived at their flat early to help him bathe, dress and take him to Nariman Point, where he still had a job but only for three days a week. Bu had been at hockey practice the day that her father had his accident. Mr Dutta and another man had been arguing in the hallway outside their offices. The fight was in full swing, punches were hurled and Mr Khosler, according to Mr Dutta later, was trying so hard to make peace that he forgot about his own safety, ‘sadly he got kicked, slipped and fell down two flights of stairs.’

By the time Bu arrived her father was laid out on a stretcher and the ambulance doors were open waiting to receive him. There was hardly any blood. But three years later her father was still imprisoned by his dead legs. He could stand if he really tried, if he pressed down onto Bu’s shoulders with all his thirteen stones but the legs, they did not move, or at least Bu never saw them move. What people from the Maya Building had said at the time became cememted in the back gullies of Bu’s mind.

‘You have to accept it, being a cripple is his karma, his debt that has to be paid from the previous life,’ Mr Mudhvani had said. And Mrs Pravin, ‘lost mother and now half of father. Who will marry her coming from such a family, with so much bad luck?’ and Mr Pravin, ‘shut the door now, she might bring some of her bad luck into my home, rub it onto our children.’ But what had Vivek said? He had pushed a knotted piece of paper into her hand, his mobile number scribbled on it. It was still zipped up in the inner pocket of her bag. The tone of his voice that day had been like a thin waft of Jasmine through the sewage stretch of Mumbai’s beach at Worli, ‘don’t think you’re alone, Bu, because you’re not. You never will be.’

Mr Khosler was woken by the banging of the door bolt by Mr Dutta. He drove his torso up by anchoring his arms to his bed and forced his lips to smile for his friend. It was a new day after all. A new opportunity to work, to make more money, hoard it in his green, metal cupboard and wait for Ajit Yadav to help himself to it.

Gopal lived on top of a Muslim embroidery shop that stayed open at nine o’clock on a weekday. The smell of imprint ink, the type used to wash a pattern onto a piece of cloth, was particularly rich when it mixed with the fumes of the crowded lanes of Lower Parel. It was where his father had lived and where he would most probably die, close enough to the railway station but not close enough to see the sea. His mother eighty two, his wife a lot younger, and his two bubbly daughters were the only reason he went to work at the police station opposite Bhatia Hospital. His little finger still hurt but Ajit’s obsession with the Police toilet and the way he looked down at Gopal like he was a piece of cow dung lying in the gutter, hurt even more. At dinner, Gopal tore a piece of chapatti. It hurt. He dipped it into steaming yellow dhal, it hurt. He bit into curry leaves, roasted cumin seeds and essence of mango but it still hurt. Later that night when the moon was too bright he turned to sleep alongside the unpainted wall of his bedroom, put his little finger in his mouth and sucked himself to sleep. At seven fifteen the next morning the ‘G’ was still there. It had sunk below the surface layer his skin and was now surely poisoning his blood stream.

Ajit left his flat in Mahim, central Mumbai at seven forty five. All night he had tried for the bathroom but because of his incontinent Uncle, his two brothers, their beauty Queen wives and their six soft drink addicted children that he lived with, he never got the chance.

All he needed was space enough for the body of a man and light to see if all the notes from Mr Khosler were hundreds or some were twenties or even tens. He caught the eight o’clock train to Borivili, north west of the city. He waded through thickets of people, some looked and nodded, some looked at their shoes but they made a path for him. If he had to he would create a raid to clear the train. He would invent a story - a jewel thief was among the passengers, that usually got everyone’s attention or a snake, King Cobra of course, was loose among the luggage.

He found the Gents toilets at the back of the third class carriage. At last. He locked the door. A cloudy mirror with a lime green frame caught his attention first. He took the two wads out while looking at himself. Not handsome, not anymore. When he had been a boy his face was the colour of pistachio shells but now it was turning black by the sun and his skin was pitted with holes. He looked over, a breeze was blowing. The tiny window was shut. The train was picking up speed. The breeze came up again moving his oiled hair. He looked to the door, it was locked tight. At last. The rubber band snapped as he took it off the first doubled over bunch of notes. Two thick staples held the whole lot together at one end. He held half of one wad in each hand and pulled the notes apart. The wire twisted open, the money was free. His first bribe. The first time he had asked anyone, he had got. There was a God after all. He caressed them between finger and thumb, feeling for their thickness. Each note was still stiff, the grease of human hands had not worn them down. Each with M.K. Gandhi’s face and name written in Hindi and English underneath. Both wads were all hundreds, and two hundred hundreds was twenty thousand rupees. Ajit laughed. He brought the notes up to his face, admiring all three in the mirror. A sudden gust blew up from between his feet. Ajit looked down. There was no toilet in that toilet but a hole in the floorboards of the train instead. Ajit could see two tracks running beneath him, the hole was big enough for his leg to slip into, he loosened his grip. Notes flew around the cubicle like bird wings. Ajit hit his arms against the door trying to grab at them, to stab at them with his fists and claim them back but it was too late. A hundred and ninety six notes had gone under him and were flapping along the sides of the train towards the sky.