Reshma looked at her wrist, then realized she had stopped wearing a watch a long time ago. She had her iPhone in her lap, but she didn’t really want to know the time. She was just impatient because her driver had stopped the car to use the public urinal, and he hadn’t returned. It wasn’t the waiting; it was the stench. Even though the windows were rolled up and the AC was on, nothing could keep the foulness away.
She regretted leaving the house. She hadn’t left the house in three months. She knew she wasn’t ready, but Bakul had insisted. And when Bakul Gawande insisted, human beings wilted. That was what had attracted her to him in the first place, that he didn’t have to exert his might, or resort to the cartoonish histrionics some of his contemporaries displayed. He was a born overlord; there was something within him, some gene, that made people listen. Men, especially. Women could occasionally drive him batty and make him maudlin. It was he who had insisted she go to the salon today and get her hair done—sitting in the dark wasn’t doing her any good. He had promised to accompany her and stay at the salon the entire time, but had backed out at the last minute because he had to engineer a hit. An opportunity had come up and he needed to oversee the operation. That was his key word: “I have to oversee,” he would always say. “If I don’t oversee, things go wrong.”
Well, they had. For both of them. And no amount of overseeing had made any difference. Just like the red roses that were painted on the walls of the urinal made no difference to the stench. Her husband and she were both red roses.
Reshma’s phone rang. The tune of its ringer filled up the inside of the car like temple bells. She immediately switched it off; she wanted nothing to do with temple bells. They reminded her of how she had begged and prayed, how she had prostrated herself before every god, a sapling begging for water, until her stem broke, and she had collapsed onto the ground.
Even though the phone had stopped ringing, the sound remained in her memory, suffocating her. She reached into her handbag for her anti-anxiety medication. She liked the name: Zapiz. It had a magical feel to it, 0.25 mg of some fairy dust that prevented her from tearing her hair out. It was clear now that her driver had gone for a shit. Not a piss, as he had mentioned; he had lied to her out of embarrassment, perhaps. What did it matter? Piss or shit, he was lucky—it would be out of his system in no time. In her case, loss had found a permanent home inside her. It had immigrated there, crossing the borders and walls of her heart, threatening to remain forever. She hated the feeling of heart-pounding terror that currently occupied her breast, until the Zapiz kicked in. She needed some air. She pressed a button and the window of her black Audi rolled down smoothly, providing the perfect opening for the shameless pungency of the urinal.
Just as she realized her mistake, and was about to roll the window back up, something caught her eye. Pasted on the wall of the urinal, far above the roses, was a cartoon sketch of a penguin. He had a big smile on his face. It unnerved her. Not the smile itself, but there was something about the penguin, some familiarity she could not identify. It was as though he was looking directly at her. She rolled the window up, and then down again, immediately. She kept pressing the button, and up and down the window went, showing her that face, then taking it away, showing it to her, taking it away, and each time it was taken away, she felt a longing for it, and, equally, an immense stupidity. She knew she shouldn’t have gone out of the house.
The door on the driver’s side suddenly opened, and there was Lalit. He seemed relieved, as people do when they have been to the toilet after an unbearable urge; they are like people who have won the lottery. Lalit’s expression signified that he had won more than enough to buy a plush apartment in any part of Bombay. Truly a shitload of cash, she thought. It made her smile. The smile brought her no joy, but at least the shape of her mouth and lips had changed for the first time in three months.
“Sorry, madam,” he said sheepishly.
She did not reply. She was just waiting for the Zapiz to work. She would take a Restyl when she got home. One calmed you down, the other made you sleepy. Together, they made you forget.
She kept the window down as the car moved, not caring that the breeze undid her hairdresser’s hour-and-a-half of work at the salon. In fact she welcomed it, inviting it to tangle her hair up, dishevel it as much as possible, so that she could go home to Bakul that way. She passed by the Byculla vegetable market, and a restaurant that her husband’s rival, Ahmed, owned. It was funny: both Bakul and Ahmed called themselves restaurateurs even though they didn’t know the first thing about food. But they owned so many restaurants in the city—it was one of the best ways to launder money—they had started believing they were arbiters of good taste. Bakul dealt in vegetarian cuisine while Ahmed had a chain of non-veg lounges called Panther Heart. He used a strong animal name to position himself as the true king of Mumbai, unlike his Hindu rival, who took a more spiritual approach to restaurant names: Tantra, Lotus, Blue Sky. Reshma wondered what Ahmed’s wives were like. He had three. But only one showed herself in public, or was perhaps allowed to. Were any of his wives on Zapiz?
The car slowed down, waiting for the handcarts and cycles to get out of the way so that they could turn left on S-Bridge.
Once again, he was there.
A small penguin, smiling at her from his place high atop a lightpole. Reshma squinted to read the print that ran below his feet: Humboldt Penguins at Byculla Zoo. There he was, looking at her, beguiling her. He was utterly stupid, and yet…there was an innocence to him that drew her in. He had a bit of a tummy, just a bit—perhaps that’s where he stashed his joy, where his secret reserves of happiness lay, enabling him to keep smiling like that. She could picture him rubbing his tummy and laughing, sending out a sound way more soothing and truthful than temple bells.
She looked at her wrist again. Once again, she did not need to know the time; it was pure habit. She had nowhere to go, nowhere to be. Only her bedroom beckoned, its darkness and shadows her companions—but they would always be there. She was struck by this thing in front of her, this soft, happy thing in black and white that gave off so much colour. If a picture could do this, a mere sketch, what might the actual being do?
“Lalit,” she said. “Go straight.”
“Madam?”
“Don’t take a left, go straight and make a U-turn from the signal.”
“Did you forget something at the salon?”
That was the problem with Lalit. With all drivers. They all needed to know more than they needed to know.
“Just do as I say,” she said.
He accelerated the car as a form of protest, his ego bruised by being barked at, that too by a woman. After all, Lalit had once been Bakul’s driver-cum-bodyguard, feared by all who knew him. But he was now a reformed man, of his own accord. He had told Bakul that he would no longer stab anyone or even hit them, except in self-defence; but he would gladly take a bullet for Bakul. Of this, there was no doubt. Bakul inspired that kind of loyalty. He looked after his people, and their families. If only he had been able to look after his own.
Even though the car was stopped at the red light, Lalit kept pressing and releasing the accelerator. The Audi felt like the sizzling black body of a creature in the afternoon heat. A creature ready to slide away from the rest of humanity. Once again, Reshma’s heart thudded: she had spotted three large penguins underneath the Byculla bridge, right opposite the Zoroastrian fire temple. Huge plastic bodies with curving beaks. How had she not noticed them before? Perhaps they had just sprung up during the past three months of her self-imposed exile. She wondered when penguins had first wandered the Earth. Had anyone noticed them? Was there anyone to notice? Unlike the baby penguin on the poster for the zoo, these plastic penguins did not soothe her; there was something sinister about them. Was it the fact that they were adults? No, no, it was the way they looked, their posture, the defiant manner in which they leaned their heads towards the sky, as if incanting something in a language unknown to her, the same way the Zoroastrian priests chanted their prayers in a tongue that was foreign to her ears, and to the ears of anyone belonging to another religion.
Lalit took a very sharp U-turn. Reshma decided to give in. She would give him the coordinates he so desperately sought.
“I want to go to the zoo,” she said.
“The zoo?”
There it was again. The redundant, idiotic retort of a man who knew how to use a knife but not his brain.
“Yes, the zoo,” she said. “The Byculla zoo.”
More coordinates. More specificity. More fodder for the male ego. Lalit seemed pleased with the information. Before he could ask why she wanted to go to the zoo, she told him.
“I need to take some pictures of the garden. They have done it up very well. I saw a photograph in the paper a few days ago.”
“Oh,” said Lalit. “I think I did too.”
No, you did not, she wanted to say. Because there was no photograph.
“Wasn’t it lovely?” she asked.
“Yes, madam.”
“I want to do something like that for my Khandala property.”
“Okay, madam,” he said.
When the Audi approached the zoo gate, the security guard immediately saluted the car. He shooed away a bunch of school kids who were in the way.
“Park here,” she said to Lalit. “And go have some lunch.”
“I should go with you.”
“No, I need to be alone.”
“But Dada will—”
“He will nothing,” said Reshma. “And don’t bother calling him, because he’s in the middle of something.”
Lalit nodded. Reshma figured he knew about the hit. He was still part of the “setting” committee, the ones who orchestrated the hit. Logistics, timings, shooting or stabbing, disposal of the body, et cetera—all of it had to be engineered with precision, and the members of the committee had to devise a plan, a blueprint they then handed over to the men on the assembly line. Lalit was reformed; therefore, he did not execute. But he still orchestrated.
Before the car came to a complete standstill, Reshma grabbed her purse, opened the door, and walked to the ticket counter. She had not felt this energized since forever. And it wasn’t really energy; it was a gasp of air, a sudden inhalation that confirmed that perhaps she was still alive. Fifty rupees was all she had to pay. To feel again, something, anything, she would have paid a crore.
“Does this entry include the penguins?” she asked.
“Just follow the signs,” said the man at the counter, without looking at her. He was busy arranging the currency into neat stacks.
It occurred to Reshma that she had been doing this anyway. Following the signs. The penguin on the urinal, then the same face next to Panther Heart, then the adult plastic penguins underneath the bridge, their mouths open, shaman-like. What did it all mean? Where were they leading her?
She could feel a quiver in her thighs, which could be interpreted as a sign too, a sign that she was heading in the wrong direction, that no good could come from all this. But what else did she have? She was a pathetic moron. Only morons followed impulses, she reckoned. The wires in her brain had received a terrible shock, and they were trying to reconfigure themselves. She should give them time before she ventured out into the world again. As she passed through the metal detectors to enter the main zoo, she could feel a current hum within her, signalling an impasse of sorts. She was being given a chance to turn back. She waited, not caring that she held up the line.
“Please move ahead,” said the guard on duty.
Reshma just stood there, feeling the hum. Then she decided to keep going.
It had been years since she had been to the zoo. Decades. The last time she’d been here was with her father. He would bring her to listen to the birds and to see the crocodiles. Birds and crocodiles. Both God’s creations, he used to say. But so, so different. One airborne, celebratory. The other a crawling advertisement for all that is decayed—an angry, ruthless being, whose only aim is to end things. A crocodile is a full stop, a bird is a continuation. Now she understood what her father had meant.
She soon found herself right in front of the statues of a young Shivaji and his mother, Veermata Jijamata Bhosale, whom the zoo was named after. What had once been Rani Baug—the Queen’s Gardens—was now named, rightly so, after the Maratha warrior’s mother. Even in stone, she looked so graceful. Shivaji, as a boy, was in the process of drawing his sword, while she gently placed her hands on his shoulders, protecting him, nurturing him.
Why did Reshma’s hands have no power? Why had her prayers, so real and desperate, had no effect on her son’s health? All Jijamata had done was place her hands on her son and it had inspired him to form the Maratha Empire, become a warrior unlike any India had ever seen. All of this because of his mother’s blessing. Reshma too had tried to bless her son; day and night she had placed her hand on his forehead, cursing the fever, then begging it, then threatening it, then pleading again, but nothing had worked.
She felt sick. This zoo visit was a terrible idea. All it had done was pinpoint her shortcomings as a mother. The rage started rising within her. She needed to hurt herself. She reached into her handbag and took out her nail cutter and began to make cuts on her forearm, like someone who desperately wanted to satisfy an itch, except that the itch was total evisceration. She felt some relief as the blood trickled, tiny streams of justice. She kept at it until she felt the pain deeply, until it made her eyes well up.
“Mummy,” she heard someone say.
A young girl was staring at her. She was pointing Reshma out to her mother, who was looking at Reshma, aghast.
“Can you tell me where the penguins are?” Reshma asked the woman. She put the nail cutter back into her handbag, casually, so as not to alarm the girl any further. This was not something the little girl should have seen. But why was the child staring at humans? Why wasn’t she looking at the animals?
The woman pointed into the distance. “Thank you,” was all Reshma said.
Once she was a fair distance away, she stopped and called Lalit. Screw the penguins. Screw those black-and-white miserable plumpy fuckheads. But Lalit wasn’t answering his phone. She called him again, and again. He was out to lunch and so was his damn phone. She had told Bakul not to assign Lalit to her, but did Bakul listen? To anything? There was no use going back to the car. She would probably take a small rock and smash the window of the Audi if Lalit wasn’t around. It was best to march on.
It wasn’t hard to find the penguin enclosure. The path towards it was lined with plastic facsimiles, like little watchmen grinning away, still as a moment, still as life in shock. These plastic birds led her to a blue building.
The sign was huge. The penguins were the star attraction of the zoo, no doubt. There was a substantial crowd in front of the enclosure, and the lineup was long and winding, like the rest of Reshma’s life. She stood, waiting her turn. She wiped the blood on her wrist with her handkerchief, and then dabbed her lips with the cloth as well.
Lalit was phoning her back. She didn’t answer. Let him worry.
When at last she entered the building, she felt a change in temperature. It was much colder inside, like her room at home, which was always colder than the rest of the house. Around her were scores of children, and mothers, and fathers, all expectant, all so eager.
Her excitement had died, and had been replaced with a low, grumbling feeling of confusion. She felt disoriented amidst the pitter-patter of small feet. The sound would have been sweet if it were not for the fact that none of those feet had any connection to her. Her head drooped, and she nudged the man in front of her with her handbag. He was walking too slowly. The attendant checked her ticket again, and asked the woman behind her to put her cellphone away.
“No photo allowed,” he said.
She could now see the glass enclosure, one-fourth of it filled with clear water.
The air was thick with oohs and aahs and mummies pointing this way and that, and daddies holding toddlers, kissing them, extra…extra kisses in this air-conditioned room. When the penguins came into Reshma’s line of sight, she felt momentarily dizzy. They were swimming from one end to the next in a flurry. Some of them were sliding along the glass, their bellies rubbing against it, releasing small bubbles as they travelled.
How many were there? She counted four.
The cop on duty kept blowing a whistle, to keep the line moving, and this irritated her. She spotted two more penguins standing on the rock surface, facing the audience. They reminded her of the adult, plastic ones she had seen earlier near the fire temple, and suddenly everything made sense. The penguin parents were sending out a chant from underneath the bridge, a call to action, and their kids were responding in a frenzy, swimming up and down like battery dolls. If the enclosure had been more silent, she would have been able to hear their incantation, but the crowd was so noisy, so enthralled by this circus, they missed hearing the chant completely. Now the two penguins that had been standing jumped into the water and joined the other four. The six of them were swimming from one end to the other. The cop blew his whistle, asking people to move along in a single file; there were others waiting to get in. For once, Reshma was grateful for a cop. She wanted to get the hell out.
She was a few feet away from the exit when she saw something red flash before her eyes. The source of the flash was hiding behind a boulder. He was wearing a red T-shirt. He was taking a peek at the crowd, like a child playing hide-and-seek. So human he was. She froze when she saw his face. That familiarity again…it was the penguin on the poster, no doubt about it. Suddenly, she felt a serenity, a quiet thank you, but…for what? Was it from him to her, or from her to him?
A shrill whistle disturbed her reverie. The cop was looking at her and blowing it, and a female cop came forward and held Reshma’s hand.
“Madam, please move,” she said.
“But…I’m not done.”
“Please move,” the female cop said again, firmly this time. “You can rejoin the line and come back from outside.”
Reshma was furious. Not because she cared about being asked to move but because the penguin had disappeared. She wanted to slap the cop. Could the cop not see what had been transpiring? That a moment had been born, between her and that little boy?
She stomped her way round the building and got in line again. But this time she did not wait. She strode ahead of everyone else with an intent so fierce that no one dared question her. When the attendant opened his mouth to protest, she told him, “Someone stole my wallet.”
He looked at the handbag she was holding.
“This is a handbag,” she said. “My purse is missing.”
Not wanting to argue, sensing that this woman was moneyed and therefore important, the attendant let her pass.
“Who is the one in the red T-shirt?” Reshma asked him.
“Oh, that’s Mr. Molt,” said the attendant.
“Who?”
“Mr. Molt. That’s his name. It’s his birthday today, so he was made to wear a T-shirt.”
The six penguins were all in the water, and the little one could not be seen. The others were now in a complete tizzy; Reshma was sure that the shamans from underneath the bridge were controlling these penguins. But to what end? Couldn’t they see that they were driving their own children up the wall, literally? The penguins were almost banging into the glass, as if they were trying to slide up, against the glass, into the crowd, into freedom. But the crowd was not freedom, she wanted to tell them. Anything but. Crowds were cold and insensitive. Or overbearing. But this was not her business. She was only interested in Mr. Molt. No, she would not call him that. It was too cold a name.
She stood in the middle of the line and refused to budge. She got a few dirty stares, but her stare was dirtier. Soon, all stares dissolved. When the cop blew his whistle again, she blew back. She pointed to a sign that had been posted by the authorities on the glass: No loud noises. They disturb the Humboldt penguins.
“You’re scaring them!” she said. “Can’t you follow your own rule?”
The crowd moved away from her like ripples from a stone that has just been tossed into the water. Reshma looked for the little one again.
“Please,” she whispered. “Don’t be scared…”
But he didn’t come. He could not hear her.
“It’s me,” she said.
She could hear herself. She knew how she sounded, knew exactly what she was saying. She felt herself sinking into the ground—because maybe that was the only thing left to do, to sink into the ground and emerge in the penguin enclosure, and rise to the surface through the water to reach him.
She felt the world spin, and held tight to the railing.
Once again, red revealed itself, a bright flash against a different pillar. The little one was scared.
“Come out,” she said. “Show yourself to me.”
There was only him and her now. Slowly, inch by inch, he came forward.
“There’s the birthday boy!” said someone from the crowd.
The man next to her was singing, “Happy birthday, happy birthday.” The little one now showed himself fully, and she felt something enlarge within her, as if she was being stretched, given new cells. He stood stationary, right opposite her.
Once again that beautiful familiarity, as if she was listening to a song she had heard a long time ago but forgotten.
He was unlike his brothers and sisters—and Reshma suddenly felt certain he wasn’t their sibling, just as the penguins under the bridge weren’t his mother and father. That’s why he was not responding to their call. He was responding to Reshma’s.
Still, she had to be sure.
She looked at him now, with a promise so solid, a promise that said, If it is you, then this time I won’t let anything happen to you. You have my word.
What would his response be? How could he possibly show her that it might be him? That it was him?
And then, he did the unthinkable.
He turned around and revealed his bum to the audience.
“It is you,” Reshma gasped. “Oh my God, it is you.”
He used to do the same thing when he faced a crowd. When scores of relatives came over to see him, to wish him a happy birthday—but not out of affection; out of fear and respect, and the need to be in Bakul Gawande’s good books—he had, out of sheer contrariness, showed his butt to them all. The situation had been exactly the same:
A crowd was singing “Happy Birthday.”
A crowd was staring at him.
No photographs were allowed then, either, because Bakul did not allow photographs to be taken inside his home.
And he had worn a red T-shirt.
Reshma would go to him, whisk him up in her arms, and carry him back to his room. How he had smiled. How he had gurgled and laughed, like a fountain.
There was no doubt now. This was her Keshu.
And Keshu wanted her to rescue him.
She blew him a kiss through the glass. “I will be with you soon,” she said. “Don’t you worry, Mummy has found you.”
BAKUL GAWANDE HAD NEVER BEEN this worried. Not even when he had stabbed a man for the first time. It was the expression on the man’s face that had scared him, the man’s realization that these were the last few seconds of his life. Moreover, the man had been an acquaintance, so Gawande had wanted to say something to him while the knife was inside him, something to the effect of, “It’s not personal,” or “This will be over soon.” Something like that. But before he could say anything, the knife had done its job. Then he’d had to run.
But when it came to Reshma, he couldn’t run. He had plenty of time to say things to her, to reason with her, but nothing made a difference. It was the expression on her face that terrified him. Unlike the man he had killed, Reshma grew stronger by the minute. Stronger and calmer. So resolute in her intention, a general at war. Now was the time to strike, she seemed to say. Keshu needs us. Before now, she had stopped uttering his name. Even when she had sobbed at night, there were just cries, yells, directed at the skies and the pillows. If he’d tried to soothe her, she screamed more. But now she mentioned her son’s name with disturbing calm.
Bakul was seated in the living room, his purohit opposite him. He sipped his single malt, but all it did was hurt his throat. The purohit was in his white dhoti and bare-chested, with his sacred thread around him, but he too looked perplexed.
“Tell me what to do,” asked Bakul.
“I…I don’t know,” said the purohit.
You don’t know? Bakul wanted to throw the single malt across the man’s tiny face. The purohit was the one who had started all this. “Your son will come back to you,” he had said to Reshma. “Love like that always finds its way back.”
And now he didn’t know what to do?
“My suggestion is that you play along,” said the purohit.
“She came back with cuts on her wrist!” Bakul lowered his voice. Reshma was in the bedroom, and the door was closed, but he did not want her to hear him.
“It has given her hope. It would be dangerous to take it away.”
“Why can’t you people think before you speak? Why would you tell her that our son will come back?”
“Sir, we believe in reincarnation…”
“So do I. But every time I have someone killed, I don’t tell him, ‘Listen, it’s okay, you’ll come back.’ Do I?”
The purohit decided it was best to stay silent.
“Is there anything in your scriptures that speaks of how animals will remain animals and not ever become human?”
“Sir, at this point, no matter what I say, your wife will believe only what she wants to believe. She was not very religious anyway, if you remember. It’s just that she’s now choosing to…” The purohit trailed off. He did not want to judge the woman. She was in the throes of grief, so animalistic it mauled you and left you reeling forever. He had seen people cope in different ways. Some clung to God, some to holy books, others to drink, some took their own lives, others sang devotional songs and claimed they saw colours, and some became humbled by the experience and entered into service for their fellow human beings. This, however, was new.
“It’s unknown how she will react if you don’t follow through,” he said. “It is my suggestion that you do whatever you can.”
“I’d like you to speak with her.”
“Sir, what can I—”
“You started this. You end it. Tell her it’s all bakwaas.”
“Sir, I…I can’t. This is a kind of devotion. An unusual love from an unusual person.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“It might seem like rubbish. But there is a purity in it…she is reaching a state that very few souls experience.”
Bakul reflected that he badly wanted the priest to experience an altered state too. One created by smashing his head with a cricket bat. But he told himself to calm down.
How quickly the day had turned. It was meant to be a day of exultation.
By successfully eliminating Ahmed, owner of Panther Heart, Bakul was now the undisputed don of the city, and yet here he was, sitting in his living room, cowering before his wife’s whims and fancies. He missed his son too. But this—this was beyond the human heart. This was debauchery.
He got up from the sofa with a jerk that made the purohit nervous.
“Come,” he said. “You will come with me. We will go to the bedroom and we will reason with her.”
He placed his hand on the purohit’s shoulder and was surprised by how cold it was. Why the guy didn’t wear a shirt, even in an air-conditioned room, was something Bakul could never understand. Maybe he should have offered the purohit a shawl. Hell, he would give him ten shawls, all pashminas, if he could put some sense into his wife. He would import ten sheep from New Zealand and the purohit could make the wool himself if he so wished.
Bakul knocked on the door and waited for a response. No answer.
He slowly opened the door, and led them both into the dimness of the room. But it wasn’t as dark as usual. His wife wasn’t lying in bed, either. She was sitting in a chair, her back upright, with a table lamp next to her, and she was doing something with her hands. He followed his wife’s gaze to the wall above their bed. Shadows were in play there, forming, thanks to the movements of his wife’s hands, what looked like a duck. There was a distinct beak, no doubt. Then she got the shape right, and it made his skin crawl. A baby penguin was walking on the wall.
THE PUPPETRY CONTINUED FOR an hour more, and Bakul had no choice but to send the purohit home. Sick of seeing nonsensical shapes on the wall, he quietly slunk into bed and waited patiently for his wife to end the show. She eventually did, and even wished him good night, and he responded with a strained good night of his own.
Now, as Bakul lay sleepless, he thought of how the grief had not punished him the way it had his wife. Then again, she had wanted a child with more ferocity than him. She had fucked him with the hunger of someone who needed air and water. And she had waited for Keshu for years, and had consulted the same purohit, who had said to her, “He will come.” And the boy did. The purohit got the gender right too. But now, for Reshma to latch on to something he’d said to console her…this was unholy.
Suddenly, Reshma sprang up like a spring.
“I want to show you something,” she said. She reached for her iPad, and its screen lit up the room with a phosphorescence that made Bakul think of caves. What this light would discover, or illuminate, was going to be eerie.
She clicked on a link that led to the Times of India:
PENGUIN AT MUMBAI’S BYCULLA ZOO DIES.
“Reshma…” Bakul reached his hand out, very slowly, to touch his wife. But she blocked his hand with hers.
“Bakul, please. If you love me, just see what it says.”
Bakul put the iPad in his lap. He felt as though he was holding something poisonous, something so pernicious that its bearer was doomed the minute he stared into its light. There had been eight Humboldt penguins at one point. Imports from Seoul. Last year, one of them had died. Before they even went on display, the penguins had lost a sister.
“That’s sad,” he said, “but I—”
“Greenish stools, Bakul.”
“What?”
“She had greenish stools.”
“So?”
“Before Keshu got sick, before the fever went berserk, his stools were green.”
Bakul sighed.
Reshma did not expect him to understand. She had hoped he would, but she did not expect him to. A mother’s love is always deeper than a father’s. A mother will go to any length to save her child, to bring him back. Men were weak; they did not go the distance. If they could, nature would have endowed them with the ability to bear life, to carry it within the womb like a small planet. What did Bakul know of love, of how Keshu had orbited in her belly for months? What did he know of the feeling it gave her, a sense of purpose so clear, devotion had a whole new meaning?
“Bakul,” she said. “A mosquito got the better of you.”
“Reshma, please.”
“I’m not blaming you,” she said. “All I’m saying is that the dengue was due to a mosquito. Doesn’t that tell you something?”
How well his wife knew him, Bakul thought. Even though he had given his son the best treatment, dengue was unpredictable. It took away and spared, spared and took away, depending on its mood. Reshma sensed exactly what he thought and how he felt, even though he never voiced it. She knew that he, the indomitable Bakul Gawande, ruthless disposer of destinies, was dealt the severest blow by a mere mosquito.
Bakul looked into the light again. He was not reading the article but trying to find something in the beams emanating from the iPad, some respite, some grain of truth or common sense that he could impart to his wife. He got nothing, so he just slid his finger along the screen and kept reading. There was a comment from one Jignesh Shah: “What was the need to rob these beautiful creatures of their natural habitat in the first place? To entertain our Mumbaikars?!?!” How right this man is, thought Bakul. Why couldn’t the zoo stick with lions and elephants? Where had this sudden urge for penguins come from?
“Reshma…I miss him too, you know,” he said.
“I know…”
But Reshma longed to tell him so much more. How, after reading about one penguin’s death, she was now certain that the other penguins beneath the bridge were sending a signal to their children because they did not want them to die as well. How penguins in the water were called a raft, while on land they were a waddle. Keshu had never entered the water; he hated having a bath, and he cried when water touched his skin. This proved that the raft of six penguins had nothing to do with the seventh! The seventh was waiting to waddle his way back into Reshma’s life. Would Bakul understand? Was he open enough?
“After Keshu, I felt I could not even breathe. I felt there was a rope around my neck and it was choking me. Now he wants to come back to us. Don’t let there be one more death,” she said. “Please, Bakul. I beg you.”
IT WAS UP TO LALIT to get the guns inside the zoo.
The recent arrival of the penguins had meant beefed-up security, and this was going to make it extremely challenging, but the solution to Lalit’s problem lay in the beautification plans for the zoo gardens. Just before one passed through the metal detectors, there was a display of animals—all of them plastic—owl, tiger, parrot, eagle, and monkey, perched on a wall and arranged in a semicircle facing the public. Below them, there were replicas of the Humboldt penguins. A man was painting them, adding big splashes of white to their bellies. Lalit saw him enter the zoo with his bag of brushes and paint—and without passing through the metal detectors. With cash and threats, Lalit convinced this man to place the guns at the feet of a giant mouse in the zoo. The mouse was covered in fake grass and zebra flowers, and he instructed the man to dig a hole directly underneath the mouse’s ass and cover it up with more fake flowers. Easy for the hit men to find.
But first, the hit men, Mohan and Tapas, needed to survey the penguin enclosure. The two of them were relatively new to the Gawande gang, but they had accomplished a lot in five short years and had it not been for the fact that Gawande himself had briefed them on their task, they would have felt deeply insulted at the ridiculousness of the undertaking. When they saw their boss hem and haw, almost at a loss for words, as he described the assignment, they had realized how important it must be.
Tapas, the younger of the two, was always being scolded by Mohan—something Tapas resented. Just because he was younger did not mean he could be chided day in and day out. Tapas did not have a formal education, but he was convinced that his ideas were superior. Mohan and he were the founding members of the Fatka gang. As twenty-somethings, they had run alongside railway tracks with the speed of cheetahs and administered “fatkas” with sticks—sharp, electric hits on a commuter’s hand, the one holding the mobile phone—thereby making the commuter drop the phone onto the tracks, which the gang members then picked up and sold on the black market. Their start-up was thriving until one day Mohan and Tapas made the mistake of giving a fatka to one of Gawande’s men. He hunted them down over the next few days, and administered some grand whacks in return, but eventually “all’s well that ends well”—or at least, that’s what Gawande told the boys when he recruited them. He liked their enterprising nature, he said, and their ability to take a severe beating.
“Look,” said Mohan. “There’s the mouse.”
“Is that Mickey Mouse?”
“No,” said Mohan. “It’s just some unknown mouse.”
Tapas looked at the mouse again, but the fake grass and flowers that ran up and over its face made it difficult to discern its features.
“I think it’s Mickey,” he said.
“Who cares?”
A young couple was taking a picture of themselves with the mouse using a selfie stick. This spot had been designated as a “Selfie Point” by the zoo authorities.
“Why would you want a photo with a mouse?” asked Tapas.
“Why would you want a penguin in your house?” asked Mohan.
Tapas had no answer to that. Neither he nor Mohan had dared question Gawande about the strangeness of his order. “Get Mr. Molt,” was all he had said. Tapas wondered if it had anything to do with the fact that Valentine’s Day was just around the corner. Maybe Gawande wanted to do something unique for his wife. Maybe Mrs. Gawande—Didi, as the men called her—was tired of receiving Gucci handbags and perfume. There was no doubt that Mr. Molt would be unlike anything she had ever received.
Mr. Molt.
When Tapas thought about a penguin with that name, the image of a short, strict man wearing a tuxedo and bow tie came to mind. There would be something regal about the chap, like a butler in an English film. What did butlers do if, whilst serving dinner, their underwear got stuck in the cracks of their arses?
“So many cops around,” remarked Mohan.
But Tapas wasn’t looking at the cops. He was staring at a couple who were smooching. The man had his hands around the woman’s waist, which was lusciously exposed by the gap in her violet sari.
“Are you listening?” asked Mohan. “Focus.”
“When we reach America, I will get a woman from all nationalities. I mean, a woman each from each nationality—”
“I get it.”
“German, Brazil, France, Ugandan…”
“Yes, yes. First, let’s make it out of this alive.”
Mohan was not yet ready to daydream about their life abroad. Gawande had already organized their American visas and booked them on a flight to Vegas, where his associates would set them up in the business of their choice: either a convenience store on the Strip or a shawarma place, it was up to them. After the penguin job, Gawande had told them, they’d best be out of the country. The man who had bumped off Gawande’s rival had already been shipped to Vegas that very evening. This penguin gig would get the cops involved, plus animal rights activists, and those activists were irritating creatures, and dangerous—they had nothing better to do than worry about the plight of lions, hippos, moths, and mosquitoes. They would go on and on until Molt got justice.
Waiting in the lineup to see the enclosure, like upstanding citizens, was making Tapas edgy. He shuffled his feet and sang, his song felt more like a complaint—it was so off-key he might as well have been singing about not wanting to pay an electricity bill.
“Shut up,” said Mohan.
Tapas shut up.
He and Mohan smiled at the attendant, trying and failing to look normal. Tapas turned his attention to the white tiles, noticing how they sparkled like the bathroom of a five-star hotel. As he and Mohan shuffled a few steps further, they were hit by the sudden blast of the AC.
“They are giving us a 3-D experience,” Tapas said. “North Pole type.”
“Maa ki aankh,” said Mohan. “Just look at those birds. They’re torpedoes.”
And indeed, the penguins were jetting through the water at top speed, leaving a trail of bubbles. They were having so much fun, it made Tapas think of his childhood with his brothers, how they had chased each other for no reason at all. There was nothing to be gained, and yet the thrill was so real and true.
“There’s an elevator that goes up to the office,” said Mohan, nudging Mohan, and pointing with a discreet finger.
“Hah?”
“You’re not here to enjoy these mutts. Think of how we’ll capture one instead.”
Tapas examined the elevator. It led to a room right above the penguin glass tank. He knew what Mohan was thinking. Go up there, get someone to let them into the glass tank. Simple. Clean. Effective. No human being, especially an underpaid zoo employee, was going to risk his life for a penguin. Even though, Tapas had to admit, they were damn cute.
“Look,” he said, pointing to the monitor that flashed happy Humboldt penguin images to the public. “There are three males and four females. Donald, Popeye, and Mr. Molt. And Daisy, Olive, Flipper, and Bubble.”
“We want Molt,” said Mohan. “No one else.”
“You think Gawande’s wife will know the difference?”
“No, but in the paper they will report the name, won’t they? What if the papers say that we took Daisy instead? Then we’re…”
Mohan abruptly stopped talking. A female cop was moving towards him and Tapas. She had been eyeing them for a while now. Mohan was concerned about Tapas. He got super-edgy and idiotic around cops; he hated them with genuine passion. They scared him too, and his fear made him ferocious.
“Just relax and say nothing,” said Mohan. “If she asks questions, I will answer.”
“But we are just watching these pandas. Is that a crime?”
“Penguins.”
“Hah?”
“These are not pandas.”
“They’re both black-and-white animals!”
Just as the cop was about to ask them something, Tapas did the exact opposite of what Mohan had told him to do. “Mohan,” he said, “do penguins have a penis?”
Mohan did not answer. So, it was Tapas’s idiocy that would shine today, not his ferocity.
“They don’t have any knees,” Tapas continued. “Therefore, it would be impossible for them to do it doggie-style.”
The cop had heard Tapas, and repugnance showed on her face. But Tapas didn’t notice. He was laughing nervously and mimicking a penguin on its knees, trying to go on all fours but unable to, just staying on its stomach instead. Mohan thought it best to get out of there. He placed his arm around Tapas’s shoulder, yanking the younger man’s neck so hard that Tapas could hardly breathe.
“Not another word,” Mohan said. “You hear?”
Tapas let Mohan drag him towards the exit, but as he left he turned his head and caught sight of one of the penguins sliding and pressing its belly against the glass. He wondered if she might be pregnant. The thought of holding one of these slippery beings and taking it out of its cage reminded him of so many things—of his days in prison as a teenager, when he was wrongfully locked up, way before he started the Fatka gang; of his disbelief at being inside even though he had done nothing, he’d just been taking a walk with his friends, one of whom had a gun, which Tapas had not known of; how volunteer groups came to him in prison and tried to counsel him, talk him out of a life of crime, which he wasn’t into to begin with, and of how he kept telling them he was good at painting, and if they would just give him some brushes and colouring pencils he would draw the world for them and prove it; and of how once a kid younger than him had vomited and shat at the same time, right next to him, and it was all black, blacker than the arms of Mr. Molt, or Daisy, or whichever penguin this was, and he’d screamed for help until the prison guard came, and all the guard did when he saw the boy was click his tongue, and that was that, the boy was gone, a click of the tongue the final send-off—and what was the use of staying in a country where these things happened, what did India mean, what was Bharat, what was this desh of his, and America was great, and he would sell cigarettes in Vegas, and Red Bull and chips and lottery tickets, and condoms, no problem, and if it meant taking Mr. Molt away from his family, it was okay, it was fine, because Mr. Molt was just like Tapas. They had both been imprisoned for a crime they did not commit.
THAT NIGHT, BAKUL GAWANDE almost could not bear to look at his wife’s face. She had never been so beautiful. He watched as she stood in front of the mirror with a blow-dryer. She had just emerged from the shower and her hair was wet, wet with promise the way it had been when he had first laid eyes on her, all those years ago, at the temple. He had asked the purohit who she was, and that was that. It had taken him a while to get her to say yes, because of his reputation—not a don yet, just a goon with a dream—but he was good-looking and quite the conversationalist, and a simple man at heart. It had worked.
Tonight, she looked just as striking as she had then, and as the hair dryer howled at her, blowing a stream of hot air her way, Bakul wished its nozzle could suck in instead of blow out, suck in all the demented thoughts of her brain. In front of him now was a false beauty, a fake prettiness, and the dahi and chapatis he had eaten only an hour ago gurgled in his stomach, a sign that his and Reshma’s future together was curdling. His wife was gorging on grief, and it was making her look more and more attractive even as she was more and more repulsive, and he had a hand in feeding the beast, no doubt; how he regretted giving the order to capture Mr. Molt.
For her part, Reshma wondered if Keshu would recognize her. After all, it had been three months. More than anything, she could not let her son see her as a mess. She applied a bit of kajal underneath her eyes and, lo and behold, the dark circles seemed like distant memories, dark clouds that had already poured down their rain a while ago. She marvelled at how quickly she had recovered. Wasn’t that the nature of love itself? It had taken the skeletal remains of a human being, the remnants of grief that could not be called human, to make her alive again. Just the thought of a reunion, and her tissues were rejoicing.
She could tell that Bakul saw new life in her too, as he watched her get ready. She could feel the relief that he felt, and he also felt a small surge of pride that she was the one who was fixing things for a change. She had entered the world again, and—could she say it? should she dare use the word? yes—there was a dance inside her.
She threw the blow-dryer on the bed like a girl who was late for a night out clubbing with her friends, and turned to her husband. “I’m ready,” she said.
Bakul wanted to say something, but instead he followed his wife out of their bedroom. All the lights were on, and there were no shadows, but the room felt darker than ever.
TAPAS RAN LIKE HE HAD NEVER run before. Of course, he could not run fast, considering the bundle he held in his arms, but he was doing his best. The thing he carried was howling, making formidable sounds. He tried not to look at it, but part of its head kept jutting out of the white bedsheet wrapped around it.
Mohan followed close behind Tapas, facing the penguin enclosure, gun in hand, keeping watch. They had managed to pull it off. It had been ugly and clumsy, but clean at the same time. No lives were lost; no one was hit. No one had expected two men to emerge at midnight, six hours after closing time, and demand a penguin. There was only a single cop on duty; he’d been slumped in his chair as if he was on Baga Beach nursing a cold beer. By the time this cop realized what was going on, Tapas had confiscated his phone and locked him up in a room. Tapas had enjoyed that part. He’d even given the cop a tapli on the head, the kind schoolmasters gave impertinent kids.
It would be a while before the police were alerted, but Lalit was anxious to get away. The penguin enclosure was right next to a side entrance, far away from the main entrance of the zoo, one that gave them access to Mustafa Bazaar. Into its bylanes they would disappear, and take the highway towards Chembur. Lalit had punched the man guarding the entrance—a pudgy weakling whose sole function was to sit in a plastic chair all day—and took his place. He’d assumed an air of lazy indifference while the abduction was happening, but inside he was quivering. This whole caper was like walking barefoot on rotten eggs.
When he saw Tapas and Mohan running towards him with the package in hand, he rushed to the van that was parked right outside the side gate and slid open its door. Mustafa Bazaar was sleepy at night. Most of the timber shops were now closed, except for a few that had small fires on the footpath, where the labourers were preparing their dinners; and the Parsi colony opposite the zoo was always tranquil, no matter what time of day it was. An old woman emerged from its gates and tried to hail a taxi, but none would stop for her. Their shifts done, all the drivers wanted to go home with the same urgency with which Tapas wanted to get to Vegas.
The cry of the creature in Tapas’s arms was unbearable—something like a sheep wailing, a broken baa that ricocheted inside the van.
Lalit pointed to the container on the back seat—it was one of those things used to transport dogs on planes. Tapas placed Mr. Molt inside, let go of him as though he was contaminated, and bolted the steel door.
Mohan sat next to Lalit in the front, just in case there was trouble.
“Calm the bastard down,” said Lalit.
Not only was the sound excruciating, now the thing was thrashing about in its white sheet. Its flippers hit the walls of the box again and again, and this rattled Lalit to such a degree that he kept trying to start the van even though he had already done so. Mohan gently tapped him on the elbow. Out of the three, Mohan was the only one who’d remained relatively calm. With Tapas and Lalit in a state, he’d had no option.
Lalit zoomed off, his hands still unsteady. Noise was filling the van in the way the same reflections fill up a hall of mirrors—with sudden violence.
Mohan turned the radio on, and a Hindi song with drumbeats and Afro-inspired chants added a new layer of sound. He knew this song; it was a remix of a nineties hit. He turned the volume to maximum until the speakers wobbled, but he did not care. Anything to not hear the life in the box.
He glanced over at Tapas, who was scratching his arms and elbows like one possessed. After taking the guns from the mouse, the two of them had hidden in the bushes, until the security guards had finished surveying the zoo. Something must have bitten him there. Or maybe he was having an allergic reaction. Mohan noticed there was a thick rash around Tapas’s neck. Perhaps he needed some air, but the windows had to be up or Mr. Molt would spray the buildings of Mustafa Bazaar with his signature sound.
“Call the boss,” said Mohan. “Tell him we’re on the way.”
But Tapas wasn’t listening. He could only hear the drumbeats that were pumping in sync with his beating heart.
“Tapas!”
Tapas looked up at Mohan. He took his phone out and dialled. The name on the display said “Purohit.” If there ever was a time when divine intervention was needed, it was now. Anything to calm Mr. Molt. A prayer, a song, even a bullet to the chest.
BAKUL WATCHED AS RESHMA SNATCHED the phone from the purohit’s hand. Tapas had been asked to call the purohit because Bakul did not want any calls on his own phone. The aftermath of this escapade would be worrisome, no doubt, and what the fuck was he supposed to do with the penguin once it was delivered to his home? How would he eventually separate it from Reshma?
“Where are you?” Reshma asked.
Tapas hadn’t been expecting Reshma to answer the phone. “Didi,” he said. “We are—”
“Is he safe?”
“Yes, he—”
As if on cue, the bugger sent out his worst cry yet—a genuine yelp that also sounded fake, as if Mr. Molt was a squidgy toy for a dog, the kind of toy that let out a sound when squeezed extremely hard. Was Mr. Molt aware of what was happening to him, Tapas wondered? Did he know that he was being separated from his brothers and sisters? Did he think of them, feel for them? Did he know their names as Daisy and Flipper, or were they sounds to him, or faces and bodies, or smells?
“Is he crying?” Reshma asked.
“Yes,” said Tapas. “I think so.” They were on the highway now, zooming along. “We will be there in ten minutes,” he said.
“Do you have FaceTime?” asked Reshma.
“What?”
“FaceTime! Do you—”
“No, Didi, sorry…”
“Put me on speakerphone.”
“Why do you—”
“Just do as I say!” she shouted. “And put the phone near his ear.”
Tapas looked at Mohan for guidance; all he received was a nod. So Tapas placed the phone near the grille of the box. Molt was thrashing about, still entangled in the white cloth.
But Reshma had started singing. It was a nursery song, a song about a fairy who puts little children to sleep by sprinkling dewdrops on them. Reshma had a lovely voice, she was a true singer, but Molt was far from soothed. He was singing now too, but about what Tapas could only guess. Perhaps it was a song about ice, about freezing water, about happiness in groups, in the wild, about the chilly sensation that crawled over his skin right now as the van hit a bump on the road.
RESHMA COULD NOT SIT STILL. She could not stand, she could not lie down, she could not stop herself from pacing back and forth in the living room. Keshu was entering the elevator, he was coming up, thirty floors, towards her. What would he say to her? What should she say to him? Would it be a wordless exchange, a surge of love so strong between the two that it would create a magnetic force, and no thought would be needed?
She looked at Bakul, who seemed equally excited, equally eager for the reunion. She had never seen him this way before and she took pleasure in his blossoming. The universe worked in the most mysterious ways indeed, she thought. Perhaps, after witnessing this miracle, Bakul would give up a life of crime. But what would he do? Maybe they could have one more child, son or daughter it did not matter. As long as her Keshu had someone to play with, to share with. Bakul was an only child, and it had made him cold and selfish at times. She had sisters, and she wanted Keshu to experience that feeling of warmth she had known growing up, sleeping alongside her sisters, all of them crafted from the same loving cells.
“Bakul, quick,” she said. “We need to go to Keshu’s room.”
“But we need to open the front door.”
“Leave it open. They’re on the way anyway. I want him to walk into a familiar environment. He loves his room.”
She went into her own bedroom and came back with three toques. She had last used them on the trip she and Bakul had taken to Simla. She also put on a puffy winter jacket, and gave Bakul his. To the purohit, she offered a gold shawl.
She led the purohit and Bakul into Keshu’s room. Apart from a split AC, there were ten portable air conditioners blasting cold air into the room, ready for Keshu’s arrival. His toy train had been arranged in the middle of the room, and his cars and cycles were lined against the wall. She did not want too much clutter, so she had not yet unpacked his books and colouring pencils. She was so glad she had not thrown anything away. She just hadn’t had the strength to do it. But now she realized this had been a mother’s instinct. She had always known he was coming back.
A thunderbolt went through her rejoicing heart when she heard the sound of the main door shutting. They were in. He was here.
Bakul was joyous, she knew, even though he couldn’t handle the cold; he was behaving like a scared bird, his teeth chattering. She went over to the small alcove near the bookshelf and lit an oil lamp. She gave the purohit a glance and he began to chant his prayers. She wanted Keshu to enter his room with a sense of peace. The purohit also held a garland of marigolds and lilies in his hand, but this was for later. Too much too soon would unsettle the little one. There were yellow laddus too, in case he was hungry.
Lalit opened the door to the room.
Tapas and Mohan placed the box on the ground.
Sounds came from the box, but they were the raspy sounds of tiredness. Bakul had his head down. Never before had his men seen him like this, staring at his feet. The priest sang his song with greater volume now, as though he wanted it to break through the ceiling, split the house in two, and shoot straight to the cosmos, where it would find forgiveness.
Reshma positioned herself right in front of the grille.
When Keshu waddled out of his cage, she burst into tears.
