Chapter Three

“The reason why certain intuitive minds are not mathematical is that they are quite unable to apply themselves to the principles of mathematics, but the reason why mathematicians are not intuitive is that they cannot see what is in front of them…”

- Blaise Pascal

In the telling of my tale it may seem I am rambling, for all you want to know is why Anna left us to go to Canada. The larger events of sectarian violence, being Catholic in a Catholic neighbourhood—almost a Catholic ghetto—the very fabric of our lives in Billimoria Building, its residents, even its structure—all of these seemingly minor details conspired against us. Trust me when I say it is all important, it all adds up, these seemingly irrelevant larger and smaller issues.

The Mahabharata and the Ramayan were my favourite stories growing up.. It played on TV at a time when all we could see was an occasional Sunday Bollywood movie or a late night Charlie Chaplin, or Here’s Lucy. Programming shut down at 11.00 p.m., only heightening our fascination with the TV. The Mahabharata aired on a Sunday morning; all of us faithfully went to church, listened to the gospel and the readings from the Bible and the homily, secretly waiting for the service to end. We then rushed home to settle down to the Mahabharata—almost ironic, for even the devout, most conservative of Catholics were totally hooked on this Hindu mythology of gods, greater and lesser, and of men, brave and cowardly.

Not just our lives but the very social structure adapted to the Ramayan and Mahabharata. We no longer went next door to talk to our neighbours, nor were we occupied in the special Sunday lunch, a family affair around the dining table. We sat with our plates in front of the television, focused on the screen, with not even a glance at those sitting around us. Some neighbours who did not have a television would come over to the homes that did, to watch. In that sense, sharing did still happen. The cricket matches, the Commonwealth games, the Asian games and the Sunday movies were times when neighbours did sit together, but focused on the television and not on each other.

The Ramayan and Mahabharata, came with the promise of endless stories, of stories within stories, of a hundred thousand verses, of relationships of love, of war, of magic, and a world of India that was within our blood. Our stories were woven around it, our proverbs, phrases, culture, and philosophies fed upon these epics and shaped our narratives. Our world filled with its magic, heroes, love, family; we fashioned our sensibilities around it, engulfed. Matrons of superior reserve broke down in tears, cheered, and laughed along with the story. Many a friendship on the suburban trains sprung up discussing the latest episode.

It was only reasonable that when, in 1990, the festival of Rath Yatra, the procession of Ram’s chariot, was announced by one of the political parties, we were excited. Though I was eighteen at that time, and Anna but thirteen, we, in our almost naïve, cloistered view of all things non-Catholic—viewed in a light of distance, awe, and fairytale-like quality—welcomed this, unaware of its political motivations. We could relive our favourite story. A larger-than-life drama, played on the Nation’s stage and through the streets; its grandeur appealed, its drama excited. Every wall in Bombay displayed graffiti: CHAL AYODHYA--Come to Ayodhya—SHILANYAS LEKE—With Your Brick. Like the posters that announce films or advertisements to everyone who passes, it announced the impending drama.

Our vocabulary did not stretch beyond a smattering of Hindi words, to be understood and spoken only at the Hindi class in school; they were not part of our life of English words, reading, speaking; of Shakespeare, P.G Wodehouse, Charles Dickens, Laurence Oliver. We even dreamt in English. In learning to speak, read, write in English, our thoughts and cultural understanding were imprinted with English thought; our grammar from Wren and Martin had phrases, authors, philosophies of living, loving, and the world as seen through the English authors we read. Just as Alexander’s empire was confronted with Greek assumptions, the Greek way of life, so was our immersion in the British way. A community, to be functional, must have shared expectations. Did we? We lived in a world cut out from a very large part of the country that was impacted differently, lived differently, had different assumptions that we in our bubble had no knowledge of despite being born in Bombay and having lived here our entire lives.

Perhaps you will forgive me here when I admit that “Shilanyas” was not within our comprehension. We thought this was a mela, a large fair. I recall being puzzled at the slogans. Unexplained, no small print, no riders, just a slogan we spent no time thinking about, carrying on with our little misconceptions. People raised their eyes to the constant reminder painted on walls and pillars all over their cities and towns. Reluctantly tearing their gazes away from the television that brought the stories of heroes and gods and family and magic and miracles, they knew that their destiny, their duty, their karma and dharma, in order to be a true Hindu, was to join this movement to restore a temple in Ayodhya, where Lord Ram was born.

My friend of later years, Dr. Apte, a social worker and a very devout Hindu—very chauvinistic about Hinduism, I believe—would religiously go every Sunday in khaki brown shorts to train in the camps of the RSS, a Hindu nationalist organisation, to be a good Hindu and defend the faith and the country. Crusaders defending the faith without armour, wielding sticks, in clothes grown men should never wear; I have never understood how a bunch of bony men with flared khaki shorts, sticks, and some unskilled exercise routines could do a better job than the Indian Army. For in my mind, logically in a country that was democratic and primarily Hindu, did they need to defend Hinduism? Were they under attack? Would I trust them to defend me? Or was I part of the enemy?

Dr. Apte lived a distance from my home, but I met him on the train one afternoon when, after leaving the college early, I found a seat next to this very bony, ascetic-looking man. He sat calmly looking at the world, in direct contrast with my disgusted state of mind after having taken part in a heated discussion started by a very obnoxious colleague, Ms. Raikar, in what was ironically called the Teachers Rest Room, and stomping out. Having a good way to go before reaching our destinations makes friends of the most unlikely of men. Dr. Apte spoke English, enunciating every syllable very strongly but always correctly. A very interesting chap, self assured; even when he did disgusting things like dig in his nose, he acted like it was the most pleasurable, socially acceptable activity that nature demanded. Almost like pushing one’s hair from one’s eyes or loosening one’s collar. In many ways, though I did not know it at that time, he would assume an oracle-like quality in my life.

Our train had stopped midway between stations because of an accident on the track ahead—generally the reason for many a lasting friendship among co-travellers on the suburban trains. Dr. Apte and I refused to do the undignified thing that most of the passengers had resorted to—jumping onto the track and walking along it to destinations unknown. Both of us knew that joining the desperate march would save us very little time. We decided our time could be better spent with a book till they had cleared the tracks. I opened L. E. Dicksons’ History of the Theory of Numbers and all at once was absorbed in a world of definition, certainty, and comfort. Dr. Apte, leaning under to better to see the title of the book I was engrossed in, spoke from somewhere down below. “Ah! You are reading Mathematics?”

This is the marvel of the Marathi language or perhaps just of Dr. Apte. Most of his questions were rhetorical. Jevtos ka? Are you eating? That’s when he saw me eating. Or Padtos ka? Are you reading? if he chanced on me doing so. There have been times he has entered my bedroom as I slept, shaken my foot peeping out from below my sheet, waking me up and asking, Zoplas ka? Are you sleeping?

I answered, “Yes, I teach Mathematics. And you? I mean, what do you do?”

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I had planned to sit in with my other teaching colleagues in the staff room, but found myself suddenly sucked into conversations I wanted no part of… The most annoying Ms. Raikar, a colleague I took pains to avoid, had once again steered us into the “Amche Mumbai—Get the outsiders out” debate.

Somehow these debates triggered the worst in me. On this day my mind was already reeling with Mother’s announcement of Anna’s arrival. Provoked as I was at the least hint of the events that had separated us, this conversation had brought up feelings I thought I had no time for.

My annoyance rising, my own tolerance tested to the utmost by now, I escaped the staff room to go home and rest amid the anonymity of the city. I stopped on the way to buy a sandwich.

“How do you want it?”

“Very hot, and put a piece of cheese too.”

The sandwich stall was a small glass case atop a stand that folded at the end of the day—or perhaps at the end of the proprietor’s cucumbers and bread—and accompanied him home, pushing and jostling to enter an already swelling train.

Finding myself outside the railway terminus, sandwich in hand, I looked up at this marvel of architecture, Victoria Terminus—newly named Chatrapathi Shivaji Terminus. The spinal cord of Bombay, its tracks run up the long back of the city, its stations, set vertebrae-like every few kilometres as it heads North, carrying to and fro the millions of faceless, nameless flesh. In this robotic city there’s no time to look up at the sky, yet up there on the top of its dome, the statue of Progress reaches for the heavens. Somewhere in the foundations of its Gothic grandeur is hidden the remains of what was once a temple of the local fisher folk, dedicated to the Goddess Mumbra Devi. Commerce stamping out the spiritual. Mumbra Devi, the goddess after whom they reportedly want the city to be named…Mumbai. Not even the gods can stop the wheels of this city turning.

Moments later, as if a tsunami, the crowds swelled out of the terminus, stopping all lanes of traffic as they pushed their way across the street. I moved against this tide of bodies without noticing the sweat and grime that rubbed against me: my space ending somewhere between my dermis and epidermis. I entered Platform No. 1 and into the 5.30 Chembur train; my body taking its direction from its own involuntary movement of habit, my mind dazed. Chatrapati Shivaji Terminus it was now called, but Victoria Terminus it stayed…and Mumbai? Bombay it shall remain for me! Do not the names of our streets and railways and our hills and valleys reflect and place our history? Would we have located the Garden of Eden long ago, had not a stream of vain ancient politicians wasted useless moments renaming it?

Amche Mumbai, indeed! These name changers… Throwing out the name Bombay in the need to supposedly throw out all that is British. It was in essence throwing out the very basis on which this city was built—tolerance. These activists, perhaps not even born in this city, want to lay claim like every acquisitive man in history, finding new and modern ways to do it! Take that repulsive Ms. Raikar… she was born in Ratnagiri.

Every now and again are born men who must leave their mark on the world, conquer it. Alexandrian, but rendered impotent by the democratic regimes they find themselves in, they set about raising enemies and bogeys among men of religious and ethnic differences, spurring hatred. History is rife with them, and it is on the histories of their own minds that they lean for validation as they change names and lay claims on land and building.

Damn you, Anna.

Stepping out of the train is as involuntary as boarding was—out of one’s hands, so to say. Pushed out by the crowds alighting at the station, I find myself inadvertently at Dockyard station and with a robotic mindlessness walking down the slope to the road, taking the left turn towards Mazagaon and St Mary’s Road where we lived, Anna’s family and mine, for many years of our younger days.

Proportions are relative to one’s own size: big, small, tall, short, nothing definitive. Walking down these streets at this moment as an adult, what had seemed like a huge avenue when we were still sucking lollipops had now miraculously diminished to a one-lane road. Since those days, I’d shot up to just an inch or two above six feet. Everything has dwarfed around me, everything but the events of our youth, which had, like the fluttering wings of a butterfly that creates tidal waves across oceans, loomed large in our life, engulfing who we were and designing our histories.

I looked at the small lane, Gangabowdi, which had fired the imagination of our young minds during the endless summers we spent listening to the stories Joe, our neighbour, told us: the street where ghosts and spirits abided and lost souls wandered in search of whatever lost souls search for. Walking past the road that led up to Mazagaon Hill, Bombay’s reservoir, and the gardens on it, I passed the old tram terminus and turned down St. Mary’s Road—walking down history…our history, like the history of the world, written in blood.

Somewhere down this road, Billimoria Building, the home I could never leave behind, stood innocent-like, common, dilapidated, its paint worn out, its shadow filling the small, now overcrowded street. Within its crevices still lingered the best memories of my life, making the worst memories in its folds take an unforgettable place in my experience. Cheap wooden barriers now replaced the formerly wrought-iron, intricately designed balustrade that had framed the verandah that wrapped the tenements and linked them together in a designed embrace, joining lives like one giant, affectionate arm.

I headed to the second floor, tracing my way up the wooden stairs, each worn in the center, outlining our footsteps, sometimes light, sometimes heavy, but always overlapping as we trampled up and down, occupied with daily living.

The building was unchanged otherwise, as though time had stood still, except it was more worn out, more silent, no children’s laughter. The same Shahabad stone that paved Bombay’s footpaths—wherever there was space for a footpath—still paved the floor of the first-storey passage. It was still the same wood, over a hundred years old, the same wooden banister, polished, not with any artificial lamination, but with the many hands that clutched it to walk up and down, the seats of children sliding down in playful excitement.

I stepped onto the second floor, where we’d lived for more than twenty years of my life. The second floor was the superior floor—not just in height, but also in flooring, the size of apartments, and the people. We lived there—or I should say we had lived there, because most of us who lived there once were now scattered. The second floor was now predominantly Muslim. Our little Catholic universe swallowed by a black hole, disappearing only to surface in splinters in places unknown, separate, reborn, recreated.

I walked through the door of the passage on the right that led to the verandah and the apartment where I’d lived with Mum and Dad, the side of the building where Anna and her family had lived. The wall at the head of the stairs separated the passage from the common toilets. To keep the accountability and maintenance manageable we had divided the families between the toilets. Three families shared a toilet, locked it and held a key, to prevent those who did not maintain it from using it. Ironically, the doors to our apartments were kept wide open most of the day and latched from the inside only at night when we slept. A narrow passage, enough for one person to stand in, insulated the toilets from the main passage wall. Its design seemed indifferent. Why would anyone design three families to one toilet? The building’s alleys and passages must have been a designer’s nightmare after a bilious night of hot food and opium. Yet, in its forgotten folds you could find memories of love, sacrifice, and blood.

To our little childish minds the main passage at the head of the stairs had seemed large; sometimes it doubled as a basketball court, cricket field, handball field, soccer field, and everything in between. It was our dance floor, our party room, our conference room, our life. Now, as I stood surveying it, it could be not more than 15 feet in length and 8 feet in breadth.

The verandah faced out to St. Mary’s Road and the building opposite. All that happened out there happened in full view of the residents of the building in front and those on the street who, perhaps taking leisurely strolls to the church, glanced upwards in our direction. However, what happened in the passage between the toilet and the wall, and in the main passage, was private as private could be in a neighbourhood where everyone knew everything about everyone else.

I walked along the verandah and stopped outside no.18; I looked out at the road, recalling those ominous events of December 1992 when our lives changed. I watched the children in the building across play badminton in the yard and felt a lump climb in my throat and stick in my Adam’s apple. The three coconut trees in the dirt-packed ground of Billimoria Building swayed in the breeze of that quiet evening, the events they had witnessed all those years ago seemingly forgotten.

Epimetheus, forgetting the warning of Prometheus to accept no gifts from Zeus, married Pandora. Would that the world been different—would the history of man have been different? Would mine have stayed in some forgotten abyss never to surface? I cannot answer, for the deed was done. Mother’s announcement had moved me to open Anna’s notebook, which, akin to Pandora’s box, had let loose these butterflies in my heart and the groundswell in my head, leaving it throbbing and painful.

Do grown men cry?