I sleep: deep, interrupted sleep. The Astoria is my home. I’ve caught myself saying twice to Ramu, ‘Well, I should head home.’ I’ve heard others say the same thing in the evening when they’ve come to a city. Occasionally – not always – they correct themselves. This is what ‘home’ is: a place to return to at night.
Book tours have their bonuses, which don’t necessarily have to do with the event itself. Mine is the fact that I’m about to fall asleep in Churchgate. I can’t hear a thing. The lack of sound is extraordinary. Tomorrow I will wake and walk to the Asiatic Stores. I need some antacid.
I’m a family man – I don’t want to be single. But, hypothetically, if I’d been single, I’d have liked to live in a hotel room rather than in a flat or house. That is a fantasy. The predictability of living in a given space in the centre of a city. The thought will occur to me sometimes. To live in the Astoria. I could do it, I think. It was possible once. On a stay with my wife at the Yacht Club ten years ago, we could hear music being played next door on a gramophone. An attendant told us a man lived there – had done so, for years. Some sort of arrangement. I remember wondering what it would be like to lead his life – pure fantasy, of course, but I am a fantasist – and realizing that, with a few tweaks, it might be all right to be him. I never saw him. This is what’s beautiful about staying in a club or hotel: you’re invisible, as is your neighbour. Before that there was Bipul mama. He lived in Buckley Court. A bed and breakfast on Wodehouse Road. Even as a child I sensed that I would have gladly graduated to being him on the basis of the accommodation alone. Also the outhouse I could see from the twelfth-floor balcony in Malabar Hill. Unlike Buckley Court and Bipul mama, both gone now, it’s still there. It met the criteria.
*
My talk’s at four o’clock. ‘A Critique of Specialization’. At one o’clock I must go to the top floor of a building behind Rhythm House to be in a Twitter ‘chat’ to promote the event. I end up wasting forty-five minutes ‘chatting’ with two organizers sitting next to me, talking rapidly to each other, and hiding behind their Twitter handles. I get up before the chat ends. They’re a bit shocked by my abruptness. At half past three, I find one person in the library where I’m giving the talk: Ramu. We look for coffee. Collect two paper cups full of a sugary liquid and stand next to the statue of David Sassoon. It is as timeless and exquisite as a tree-trunk. He resembles an Arab prophet more than a Jewish merchant. People in Nehru jackets and jeans begin to gather. One or two finish a cigarette before they head to the garden. Resplendent, my chairperson walks in. I’ve never met her before. Her sari is simple and arresting, like a Rothko. At an unspecified moment, we exchange a nod and ascend the stage. She introduces me to the people in chairs, then leaves me. I expound with whatever ironical distance I can muster on my hatred of specialization. The audience is encircled by ferns. I think I spot Ramu. I’m not sure if that’s him behind two women. He’s in shadow. After the talk, he reappears – patient, like a family member at a wedding. I’m on a swift turnaround and have a panel discussion in an hour. The chairperson, her niece, Ramu, and I agree it would be best to pop across to Kala Ghoda for tea, notwithstanding the surge of humanity. We cross the street and plunge into the mad crowd and then materialize again in the narrow alleys near Trishna. We slip into a chic café-boulangerie, and, scouring the furniture for a free table, find Ramu’s missing. Where is he? I look around me and step out on to the street. He’s vanished, but I expect he’ll turn up. I drink mint tea and we share a single muffin. Only in the evening do Ramu and I get to talk. ‘I felt tired,’ he says. There’s no reproach in the voice, just sleepiness. Was he physically tired – or was it the company? Not that it matters. ‘She’s very beautiful,’ he adds. ‘Who?’ ‘The lady who was talking to you.’ ‘Which one?’ ‘Arrey, the one who spoke on the stage. Really beautiful. Speaks very well too.’ I conjure her up. Already, the afternoon is long behind us. In Bombay, evening comes later than elsewhere, but it’s so bright it annuls the day.
