I was keeping very busy with cases. Our law firm, Bharucha, Bulsara and Hindlekar, was doing extremely well. One of my two other partners, Hindleker, had taken a month off. He had heart trouble and was advised rest. Matters regarding trademarks had also started coming to us, mostly from Hong Kong and Singapore. Advocates had hardly heard of intellectual property rights and almost smirked when you mentioned you were dealing with them. Over a drink, rather his fourth, an old, balding Parsee advocate, his nose rum-red, said to me, ‘Deekra, property is concerned with territories, buildings, not intellectual-phintellectual matters.’
Don’t you deekra me, I said with some acerbity, I am in my late forties and I know what I am doing. But he had the last word. ‘You decry my deekraying you, son?’ He cackled, while others around us almost died of laughter. That was the state at the bar. I had just finished with a smart client from Hong Kong, when I was told that two ladies, one a Dutch woman and the other Indian, were waiting to see me. ‘No appointments, sir,’ said my junior colleague rather apologetically. Send them in, I said. My cabin was teak-panelled with a large print of Botticelli’s Birth of Venus hanging behind me. The Dutch lady, in her fifties, wearing a nondescript top and a grey skirt, stepped in alone. I stood up, greeted her and said, ‘I was told there were two of you.’
‘Yes, Mr Bharucha, I will call her in later. Firstly, I can’t thank you enough for seeing us without an appointment. I am Mrs Danique van Altena and I run an NGO here in Maharashtra. My companion, Raquel Lazaro, has been facing considerable calumny from your Indian press. I am sure you are aware of it.’ I shook my head in surprise.
‘She’s from here, Bombay, and I am sure you have heard of her.’
I wasn’t so sure.
‘She has been lately helping my NGO which aids leprosy patients. She has been helping us from time to time in collecting donations—that is, when she can spare time from her own duties.’
‘Which are?’
‘She is a dancer, an entertainer. Lately, she has got into trouble with a so-called holy man, who is trying to not just defame her but also our organization.’
This sure was up my street. I would love to chew up a holy man any day. Regrettably, I hadn’t got hold of one so far. But it was not clear where we, my law firm, Bharucha, Bulsara and Hindlekar, came in. She was sharp, the Dutch usually are, and added, ‘He’s very powerful, this holy man. He can read your mind in a flash and my poor, dumb protégé, if I may call her that, is no match for him, seeing how your press has given her such a bad name.’
‘This is getting nowhere,’ I said, ringing the bell and requesting my junior to send in the other lady. As she was ushered in, I noticed several pairs of feet beneath the hem of the door curtain. My juniors, especially the ladies, were listening in! I shook my head in disbelief and the dancer thought my reaction was in response to her looks. Now it was her eyes widening in disbelief. She walked in on six-inch stilettos. ‘Did you come climbing up on these?’ I asked, knowing well that the elevator was not working.
‘Yes, and along the sidewalk,’ she answered, smiling kindly. I was immediately on the defensive. ‘This is Hamam Street, madam, choked with parked cars. You must have walked past the gram and the groundnut sellers.’
‘And cows eating those laddus!’
‘You know that woman spends a lot of money. It is considered virtuous to feed a cow. So when the poor bring their cows, to eat those linseed-speckled laddus, she actually gives them money. Of course, when the rich send their cows they pay her in hundreds.’ I could still see the feet under the curtain hem and had also noticed the gasp when I had addressed the six-inch stiletto lady as ‘madam’. I asked for the door to be closed, but within five minutes, my partner, Bulsara, walked in. Stretching my left arm, I opened the small fridge in my room where he used to keep his whiskey. He took out the bottle rather sheepishly, gave a sidelong glance to the young girl and left without closing the door. Odd, I thought. He never barged into my cabin when I was with a client.
‘Let’s hear from you, lady, what or who is troubling you and why you’ve come to a law firm? We normally get into the picture after legal proceedings have been launched.’
‘Sir, I am apprehending trouble from this unholy samy. He is very powerful. Politicians touch his feet, so does the police. I need someone of your stature to defend me against any lawsuit he may bring against me. To put it very mildly, sir, he is an absolute son of a bitch.’ I heard a collective giggle from the lady juniors outside my cabin door. I sure was appalled, not at the expletive but that the juniors should be listening in!
‘I know the fellow, it is that Three-Dimensional Swami, isn’t it, fat guy who has shlokas written in sandal-paste on his wide forehead?’
‘Sir, I was told how sharp you were, they said he, meaning you, will know what I have to say before I open my mouth.’
The collective giggles outside the door went viral at this compliment. I would deal later with the bitches, I thought. But to her I said, sedately enough, ‘I am no mind-reader, if that’s what you mean.’
‘But the samy is.’
‘Samy?’ I asked. To my horror, Betty Noronah shouted from behind the curtain, ‘She means swami.’ The girl nodded and then looked towards the Dutch lady, van Altena, who immediately opened her purse.
‘Mr Bharucha, while we were waiting in the hall till your Hong Kong client left, we heard from your attorneys that you are often swindled by clients who don’t pay their bills once the case is done and dusted. We would like to pay upfront.’
She took out a huge wad of bills—US dollars, if you please. I called my accounts man in and he said we take money only by cheque but will make an exception. He took the notes away and returned after five minutes and nodded. As they got up, Danique van Altena said, ‘You will take up our case, won’t you, Mr Bharucha? We depend on you.’ I just nodded, and they left. As soon as they were out of the main office—we had a large hall with glass cabins on the side—the juniors trooped into my rather large cabin, the women almost squealing with excitement. How was it? What was her pitch? Come on, I shot back, you listened to every bloody word exchanged between me and the lady in stilettos. Was that all you noticed of her, her feet, sir, what is wrong with you? We had a Parsee junior, Kurush—brash bugger, had flunked his solicitor’s exam twice—who said, ‘Didn’t you notice her boobs?’
‘You’ll get thrown out one day if you use that kind of language again!’
But no one was taking me seriously. The girls almost squealed when Kurush mentioned her boobs. I was wondering if Bulsara was hovering in the background, but he wasn’t. Now it struck me why he had entered my cabin. Betty Noronah, a go-getter, we were lucky to get a junior like her, spoke up.
‘She is Castanet Kitty—do you know who that is? Don’t shake your head, sir, you notice everyone here is giggling at you, every man jack in Bombay knows who she is. You must read something apart from case files!’
‘Such as?’
‘Tabloids, scandal sheets, why not? She is the most famous bar dancer in Bombay, also the most notorious. She it was who first brought castanets into bar dancing and cabaret. She was very thick with that swami they were talking about. We all were relieved that you knew about him. He is Trikal-Darshi Maharaj, yes, you got one thing right, sir, the Three-Dimensional Swami. He’s the one who is pressurising the minister, a disciple, to ban bar dancing. The lady in stilettos is Raquel Lazaro, the Castanet Kitty. She was very thick with the swami till they fell out. To be blunt, people think she slept with him for months.’
‘And he is very rich,’ continued Betty Noronah. ‘Politicians stash their money with him. And he manufactures an anti-chooran.’ That left me puzzled. I knew chooran was a spicy powder. ‘Anti-chooran?’ I asked.
‘Yes, sir. You know chooran is that spicy powder which relieves stomach aches and helps you to break wind? This swami calls his powder anti-chooran, which stops the formation of gas. And he has hoodlums selling the stuff—wags call them The Anti-Farting Brigade!’
Hemlata, another junior, added, ‘She’s been arrested twice for vulgar dancing and, according to gossip, she was the swami’s keep.’ They were unhappy I had taken up her case. Nothing of note happened for some days, till Kurush brought the news that Raquel had left for London. He had got this titbit from a friend who worked for BOAC. A week later, all hell broke loose. There were two Parsee tabloids, both rivals, both churning out political news along with exposés, true or false. One of them came out with the news that Trikal-Darshi Maharaj had filed a report with the police that ‘a woman of ill-repute’ called Ms Raquel Lazaro had run away with his money. The case had been handed over to the CID. They would soon approach the Interpol, we were told. Castanet Kitty had it coming, said the paper, splashing a photograph of hers, skimpily-clad, cavorting on her platform heels. An editorial said that ‘It was a matter of considerable satisfaction that cankers plaguing Bombay society like cancerous tumours had been diagnosed and would soon be surgically removed because of the righteous stand taken by the well-known spiritualist, Trikal-Darshi Maharaj, who has established a hundred ashrams all over the country.’
We filed a defamation suit against the swami for calling our client ‘a woman of ill-repute’. Meanwhile, the other Parsee tabloid dealing with current affairs was not idle, and came out with an exposé of the swami, his jaunts on a yacht in the Caspian Sea, his lady loves, his women disciples, how he had swindled a billionaire from Brunei, and so on. The banner headline stated, ‘Rogue Elephant in the Woods’. His photograph carried the caption: ‘Swami or Swindler?’ Life is going to be fun, I heard Kurush say. The firm was agog with a hot debate on whether we should have ever put our hand in this dirty till. But I was clear. I would relish taking off the dhoti of a ‘swami’ in court.
Then the swami appeared on the front pages. He had left for England to hold a maha yagna at a new temple built in Surrey. Sandalwood had been airlifted from Bangalore to Heathrow. A special correspondent wrote, ‘rumours are afloat that The Beatles may attend the ceremony. The flower-power detritus from France and the Netherlands was already flooding the town.’
Then came the bombshell. My client, Raquel Lazaro, told the press in London that ‘this man ain’t no samy (sic). This holy cow is actually an unholy bull.’ What exactly do you mean, Ms Lazaro, asked Fleet Street. ‘Well, for one thing, he ain’t paid me my bedroom tax!’ And when the press asked what may that be, she replied, ‘I am done. I’ve said what I said and I ain’t gonna renege like these goddamned god-men and shitty politicos do.’
The moment I heard this over the radio, I knew there would be an action for slander, and despatched Kurush to London to do the groundwork. I would follow later. No developments the next few days. The swami went into a silent fast the moment the press sought his reply to Raquel Lazaro’s outburst. The press was insistent and you couldn’t buy Fleet Street with bottles of whiskey, the way you could some of the Indian yellow press. The British yellow press was so rich, it could gift you a distillery in Scotland in return for a juicy story. Meanwhile, I got an SOS from Danique van Altena saying that a suit had been filed against Raquel Lazaro by the swami and his disciples in the city courts. I took a flight to London.
The first mistake that Kurush made was putting me up at the Waldorf, which was bang opposite the Indian High Commission, who were in cahoots with the Three-Dimensional Bum. Every move of mine was being watched and the tabloids were being fed with lots of rubbish. The Southall Times, which the Indian community dubbed as ‘The Southall Sewer’, carried an item that said: ‘An Indian bar dancer, who seems to have hit the jackpot, was a star in sleazy Bombay cabarets. She would dance semi-nude with nothing but a chastity belt below her midriff and would open it with a click for a second or two before clicking it back to the accompaniment of ahs and oohs from the depraved voyeurs.’
I went and met Castanet Kitty. The ubiquitous Danique van Altena was present. They had moved in with Raquel’s brother, Horace Lazaro, in Dulwich, a bit away from the gaze of the tabloids. It was quite a house, large garden ringed with maple trees, their leaves turning amber. In the room where we met, I saw a huge antique Chinese vase, an old clock, a large-sized silver crucifix hanging from the ceiling. Horace was there, a nice looking guy with a nonchalant air about him. Why did you say what you did? I asked Raquel after the pleasantries. ‘Mr Bharucha, I don’t hide anything. We were together for over three months. My charges are ten thousand a night. The man owes me over ten lakhs. And when I mentioned the bedroom tax to him, he laughed and said but you are in my bedroom. So you owe me bedroom tax. Then he pulled out a gold chain and placed it round my neck. I took it off and threw it in his face. Must have hurt him, I threw it with such force.’
Had she run away with his money? If so, how much—these thoughts troubled me, but I came away without asking. News came in that Trikal-Darshi would let the press meet him at five. Kurush said he knew someone who would smuggle him in. When he came back in the evening, he gave me a full account. The swindler swami sat cross-legged on a stage, with the press seated below. He still pretended to be on his silent fast. When questions were asked, he made guttural sounds and scribbled something on a slate. His flunky, also clad in saffron, would relay the answer to the audience. The mealy-mouthed Indian press asked about the yagna, yoga, and if abstinence from liquor and sex was essential for the ‘wayfarer on the road to spiritualism’. He nodded. The British tabloids went straight for the crotch and asked him about the bedroom tax that he hadn’t paid. He took full five minutes to record his answer on the slate. She was a fallen woman and came to him as a repentant. He had wiped away her tears and her guilt. But I must have failed, filth will remain filth, said his companion with a sigh. That seemed good enough. I counter-sued the swami and his flunky, bringing an action for slander against them, told Kurush to be careful, ‘the complaint must contain the words complained of’ and the innuendoes had to be elaborated on, and a copy of the suit had to be handed over to the Three-Dimensional Bum.
It was going to be sleaze all the way. Why didn’t I listen to my juniors?
I rang up Claire. She laughed hearing my voice. ‘You’re all over the tabloids, Sam! What have you got into? And where are you putting up?’ I told her I was at the Waldorf. ‘Waldorf! You’ll get broke Sam, or your client will. Not fair on the girl.’
‘Yes, I paid five pounds for my suit to be ironed.’
‘I will do it for four, Sam. Why on earth don’t you move in at Highgate?’
What tabloids are you talking of, I asked. She said, come over and we’ll talk. We would be meeting after a decade or so, and she was just as frank and friendly. She looked the same, no freckles, no wrinkles—how do women manage that? We hugged and she noticed my eyes were wet. She laughed as I dabbed my eyes with a kerchief. ‘Sam, d’you think this was the right case for you? You figure in the Sun and Daily Mirror and, of course, the scandal sheets.’
‘What sheets are you talking of?’
‘Sam, you must know the British tabloids will rake up a lot of mud. They’ll tap your phones, purloin letters, documents. And the local Indian scandal sheets are worse. Look at this one. It is the Gravesend Grapevine, but people know it as the “Gravesend Gravedigger”. It declared that the bar dancer had filed a defamation suit against a “scandal sheet” from Southall for mentioning that she ever danced “semi-nude, with only a chastity belt on her”. “The Southall Sewer” responded by saying that a defamation suit had been filed by the dancer, true, but on the grounds that by mentioning the word “chastity”, the paper intended to drive away her clientele and thus affected her means of livelihood. Do you really want to be involved in all this?’
I had no answer.
You could be talking to others and yet, a voice within you suddenly surfaces. This monologue within doesn’t know how to stop. What was I doing here meddling in this case? I would have to hire an attorney from London, must engage an Indian. She waved her hand in front of my eyes. ‘Where are you, Sam?’
Right here, I answered. That exchange sent the monologue skittering underground. But it would surface again. It did. Throat and voice changed. It’s not a lone voice, it’s a bloody orchestra down there, in that cave of voices within you. Why am I not here oftener—with Claire? What am I doing away from her? Why must one keep feelings bottled up? Ten years, is it?
She got me a drink. ‘No soda, I am afraid Sam. Have it on the rocks.’
I nodded thanks. Love capped and sealed … neither here nor there. How has this sudden unbecoming landed on me? In which closet did I seal this longing—never thought of sitting on a balcony facing the sea and having a drink with Claire, watching the Bombay sun go down, briefly lighting up the windows facing the sea on the Napean Sea Road.
What exactly had happened to all that between the two of us? She again waved her hand near my eyes, and this time, I kissed her hand. ‘You’re lost somewhere, like those ice cubes in your drink. What’s troubling you?’
‘You.’
‘Oh? What about me, Sam?’
I just shook my head. How could I put in words what had been brewing for years within me, a truant feeling I may have been too afraid to face?
‘You’ve nothing to say, have you?’
‘Anything I may have to say would sound so banal, Claire.’ As I was leaving, I said, ‘You haven’t given me a tight hug, like the old days, Claire.’
‘You never asked.’
I moved in with Claire for the weekend. The weekend got extended to Monday, then Tuesday. It couldn’t go on like this. I couldn’t get to Dulwich easily. I couldn’t hang on here, and so, I shifted into a Bed and Breakfast joint, near Orpington, even if it meant taking the British Rail from Victoria. I wanted the best attorney. The few Indians I consulted said try Arvind Waslekar, he is the best; then they would add, ‘He has a beautiful wife.’ I briefed Arvind thoroughly; including the bit about the suit we had filed against the swami in Bombay, introduced him to the Castanet Kitty and thought I was done.
Events often overtake you, and from the wrong side at that, in a no-honking zone. The swami, in cahoots with the Indian High Commission and Bombay Police, who had informed Interpol about the theft registered with them, had Raquel and her brother raided in Dulwich. They were actually trying for a blue-corner notice.
Luck is not one-sided. Firstly, Raquel had handed over a locked briefcase to Kurush, hours before the raid. We later learnt that it contained a major part of the unpaid bedroom tax, which she had levied on the swami. In other words, the money she had filched. Secondly, the swami’s flunkies were far too smart. They had a TV team in tow which put the dollar bills recovered, few as they were, just a few thousand, under the camera. The next day, a German paper came out with the numbers of the notes paid by an arms firm as a bribe, which was to find its sinuous way through various agents and god-men to an Indian minister. The numbers tallied—they often do when business is crooked. The bills mentioned by the German paper and the dollars recovered from Castanet Kitty were from the same series. The minister and swami were in trouble.
Now the high commission did a summersault worthy of a kalabaz nut, tribal acrobats, and turned hostile towards the swami. The Indian Foreign Office, behind him till then, now denounced Trikal-Darshi Maharaj. The squeaky clean Indian government had specifically banned the ‘employment’ of agents. The great Indian lawyer, Krishan Sethmalani, self-styled leader of the anti-corruption brigade, excoriated the swami as only he could, meaning in the vilest terms. The Three-Dimensional Swami scurried for cover.
I live with regrets. The swami would have been in jail if Raquel’s brother had not fallen in love with attorney Arvind Waslekar’s wife and eloped with her. But that is a long story. Raquel was satisfied and Kurush, of course, returned the briefcase loaned to him. Sometime in the future, a deal between her and the swami would have to be struck, with both withdrawing their charges. But that could wait.
He sought me out at Orpington, came in his robes and wooden sandals, keeper of kept women and sleaze money, non-payer of bedroom taxes, reader of minds and the future, florid-faced, warts hanging from his cheekbones like shards of dry moss from a rock. Yes? I said, offering him a chair. He said, ‘Namaste,’ and folded his hands. I greeted him in return, folding my hands. He tried to bless me. I dodged out of the shadow of his huge palms. I haven’t come to talk about the case, he said. What else is there to talk about, I asked.
‘Your stars and your wife’s.’
‘I don’t have a wife, am divorced.’
‘Look after her well, especially on Saturdays. Her stars are not speaking a good language. I have nothing against you. Ask her to wear this ring.’ It was made of iron, with a red stone, nothing of value. He left, leaving some apples behind. They couldn’t be poisoned, I reflected and ate them. I booked a flight and returned to Bombay.