City Happenings

What would you call the characters in these encounters? The media had names. They had invented a terminology, comfortable shorthand serving as a lazy guide. One paragraph of such stereotypes would be found in the “City Happenings” column of the newspaper every other day: A was either a gang member called Altaf or a cop called Athavle. B was a gang member called Bhansali or a cop called Bhosale. C stood for a term that was never used on paper but was practiced: Choreography. D was a Company, and the D Company was an infamous gang. E was for Encounter. And F was for Funnily Enough.

Most encounters took place in the suburbs, at night, and in lonely places. (There are many lonely places in Mumbai, it seems.) Officially, the hoods always fired first, and the cops only retaliated. Bullets came and went as fusillades and cartridges scattered themselves on the scene, providing evidence. Those who died were criminals and they conveniently carried IDs indicating their name, age, and gang affiliation. Funnily enough, people couldn’t get enough of these reports. These cut-and-pastes were the literature of the underworld.

One reason Karan stuck to this occupation was Ranvir Pratap, his boss and a stellar officer from the Indian Police Service who wore his disdain on his forehead. People from the city of Allahabad, at least those of a certain vintage, were learned and would look down once they were out of the state of Uttar Pradesh. Looking down in UP was inadvisable because its gentry had poor habits. If dirt had a retinue it was Uttar Pradesh, said Ranvir. Now comfortably outside UP, when Ranvir glanced down he would find a bloated corpuscle named Tiwari, a man who wasn’t even an IPS officer but who instead came up the ranks and was thus naturally inferior. Tiwari outwardly resembles a lamb, donning this camouflage to hide his devious occupation. He is a sneak, a gatherer of information.

As a khabari, some people decry his being in the police force. Not that he cares what anyone thinks. Opinions are so tedious, he would say. Up there in his cranium deviance reigned and he let loose his manners. In Mumbai, Tiwari was the crude outpost of this new world, this Navjeevan society we call middle class.

By bringing two such people to loggerheads, Mumbai reinforced the view that the city is bipolar. In a strange way they exist because of each other. Their differences are many and yet they both serve the only altar in Mumbai that affords any respect: nateeja. Meaning: results.