Chapter 18 - The Homecoming

Spots of brightness glittered through the dark sky. Much closer than the glittering stars, these were the skyscrapers draped in darkness, teeth flashing through their insidious smiles. These were the beacons that never went out. After all, the city had a reputation to protect. Mumbai never sleeps. As Maan sat with his desk bathed in a pool of light and pondered the events from the morning (the fat constable who spat at the mossy wall and the grim inspector Khan who spoke with a drone), in a different corner of the city a phantom did his nightly rounds. He huffed his way up Malabar hills and secretly admired the beautiful cityscape and the posh neighborhood. Two night guards were chatting about the state of affairs, the corruption, the law and order situation and the upcoming movie releases. They were placed in opposite buildings and they often spoke to one another at this hour in a bid to keep each other awake. One of them carried a flask of tea and he always had plenty of tea for both of them. Sometimes in the middle of the night, the other would walk across the road to fill his cup of tea. But mostly they sat behind the grilled gates of each other’s buildings and spoke through the gaps. That night too, they sat facing each other and saw the phantom walk right through their line of vision. One of them even blew his whistle but the phantom walked away and huffed his way up the hill. He had worn a shawl that night and his tall figure in the moonlight startled the student who happened to peak from his window tired of studying for his exams. In a nearby balcony, a teenage girl looked down at the street waiting for her boyfriend to come and pick her up in his new motorcycle. Her heart skipped a beat at the strange sight of this phantom wrapped in a shawl. Her boyfriend coming in a motorcycle almost ran over the phantom as he tried to balance his bike down hill but the phantom deftly avoided him and kept walking up the hill. The motorcyclist came to halt and exchanged a worried glance with his girl friend at the balcony. She merely shrugged her shoulders.

The phantom walked up to the house with whitewashed walls and red bougainvillea flowers and sat on an abandoned wooden handcart at the opposite end of the street. The guard with bushy moustache sat at his chair looking at the road that went up and curled around a bend. The back legs of his chair withstood immense pressure but didn’t tumble down. He had his arms folded behind his head and kept glancing at the sky. He thought about his family and Rajasthan and wondered when he would get leave to go meet his 6 year old daughter, 4 year old son and his loving wife who was expecting another child. Above the whitewashed walls, a solitary tooth flashed through the crooked smile of the house. This was the window of Mr. Mehta’s daughter. She didn’t have classes the following day so she was going to stay awake late. The TV in her room blared some popular music but failed to grab her attention. The pink curtains of her room fluttered with the wind and the creeping branches of the bougainvillea tree knocked lightly at her glass window. Stuffed toys of various shapes and sizes adorned the walls of the room. A poster of a movie star struck an appropriate pose and vied for her attention. Yet she didn’t look up from the suspense novel in her hand. As she turned a page of the novel, sounds of snoring wafted from the other side of Mehta Mansion. This was Mr. Mehta, who would complain next morning to his buddies during morning walk that he didn’t get a wink of sleep that night. A few hours ago he had tossed and turned in bed and imagined the face of the man who had walked up to his cabin and threatened him to his face. He had had him thrown out of his office. To think of it he had once thought well of this man. He had known him as a boy for years. Of course he wasn’t going to pay the man for the orders, at least not at such a high rate. He could go to court if he wanted. Mr. Mehta’s lawyers would brand him an arsonist and lock him up. But the gall of the man. Slimy slum dweller. Can’t trust these people. How did he dare to set the factory on fire? He needs to be taught a lesson for this. Mr. Mehta turned to the life-sized marble idol of Goddess Lakshmi that stared so benevolently from the other side of the room and folded his hands in prayer. Then he tossed and turned a couple more times before finally succumbing to sleep. He dreamt of rows and rows of machines and smiled to himself.

The phantom on the wooden cart looked steadfastly at the window behind which Mr. Mehta lay dreaming of machines. A cat jumped from the ceiling and settled at the window. It licked its paws and looked at the familiar figure of the phantom. A while later it jumped across the whitewashed walls, landed on the jeep parked outside and casually walked up to the phantom. It purred and rubbed its back against the trouser legs of the phantom. The phantom reached out his hands and patted the cat. The shawl that was wrapped around his head fell off and exposed a sharp profile that stood out in the moonlight. He too thought about the events at Mr. Mehta’s office and how he had been shown the door. He felt himself shiver in rage and his limbs became taut with tension. But he did not move from the wooden cart for a long time. How strange that this was the man he had secretly idolized in his boyhood. How long ago as a gawky teenager he had followed him one night straight to his home. And what prompted Mr. Mehta to offer him a job that night? How he had worked for years, toiled everyday at his service, grateful for the one chance that he had been offered in life. How could it all have turned out this way? He got up from the cart and began to turn back and leave. Did a voice just call out his name? It was the guard with the bushy moustache. Tall and stout, with the moon behind him, Sunil could make out his dark outline like a cardboard with a missing cutout. In the darkness one couldn’t make out his expression. Sunil walked up the familiar road all the way up to the man with the bushy moustache. The guard walked slowly towards him too, with steady steps. With his huge hands he suddenly grabbed Sunil’s arm and embraced him. Sunil felt tears in his eyes yet couldn’t help a smile. The guard patted him on his back. Sunil shook his hands and they stood there for a while before Sunil left the tall guard with the bushy moustache and went on his way farther up hill.

He turned around the old house of the Parsi merchant of yesteryears and saw how the great banyan tree had grown with time and spread its roots wherever it found space. An owl hooted from the top of the tree and noted the passing of the phantom to other nocturnal animals in the vicinity. The dog of the old house let out a shrill howl and soon all neighborhood dogs began to howl, till one of the irritated Parsi ladies of the neighborhood got up reluctantly from her bed and bid her dog to shut up. The phantom now was almost out of posh precincts of Malabar hills. He made out the well lit main roads in the distance and advanced towards them. The streets were not deserted of course. There was car that was bleating out club music rather loudly, like an animal in distress. The four people inside the car were rather drunk but were in no mood to go home just yet. At the signal on the main road a hawker was selling tea. Two cars had parked next to him. Sunil could see an arm extended from one of the windows of one of the cars (a black Ford model). It was the hand of woman. The bangles of her left hand shone in the street lights. She had a cigarette between her fingers. She was in the back seat of the car. A man emerged from the front seat of the car and spoke loudly to the hawker. He took out what looked like a big fat note and gave it to the hawker who beamed. The hoarding behind them advertised butter. Another one in the background vaunted a popular television series. A cop car pulled over next to the Ford car. The cigarette touting hand of the lady promptly disappeared into the car. After a while the Ford car drove away followed by the cop car. Sunil had crossed the main road and was now standing right next to the hawker. He took one of the side alleys lined by old houses that had been around for so many years. As he went deeper into the alley, he could see a few people sleeping on the pavement. Then there were about half a dozen small shanties made out of plastic sheets and were staying inside. Some of these people were migrant workers from other parts of the country. There were a few new building that were coming up in the vicinity, and these people worked for low wages during the day time and sometimes even at night. The street light had been turned out by some ingenious shanty dwellers and every seemed asleep at the moment. Yet the moonlight was so bright that Sunil could make out all the shapes.

At the end of the street was a small temple. Near the gates of the temple, upon the steps that led up to the prayer chamber, there lay two dogs. As Sunil walked by them one of them raised its ears and took note of Sunil. It wagged its tail slowly, stretched its legs and yawned. Next to the temple was a restaurant that sold Chinese food. It was a very run down establishment. A couple of unstable tables were laid outside. On one of the tables a fat man was asleep. He had a huge belly that expanded and contracted as he snored. The roof was made of corrugated sheets and an old rusty sign hung from the sheet that said “Chinese Garden” with a beautiful red Chinese dragon painted across the sign. The restaurant had been around for many years now. There was a time back in the 70s and the 80s when the restaurant was quite well know. Office goers would come over for a quick lunch. Nowadays the neighborhood had many other alternatives for the office goers. Fast food centers, posh restaurants serving different kinds of cuisines, food courts, counters that served pure vegetarian buffet meals; there was every sort of place to have lunch. The office goers had long forgotten the Chinese Garden. The place now sold cheap liquor with Chinese food and mainly catered to the migrant workers in the neighborhood. At night there would be the occasional ruckus with drunkards shouting at each other. Sometimes cars would stop near Chinese Garden to pick up liquor and take away Chinese food. The menu was displayed on a tin sheet but it was too dark to read. It hung desolately from a tree and swayed in the breeze. Behind the tree there was dark a pathway that seemed to lead nowhere. Sunil slipped into the restaurant and made for the dark pathway. In the moonlight he could make out a door some distance away that was left slightly ajar. He quietly walked into the door.

It was only a small room inside. With the light coming in from the window one could make out the shape of a lady sleeping on a rug on the floor. Next to her was a little girl who held on to the lady in her sleep. A fan whirred next to the lady – it rotated from side to side. There was an old, cast iron table next to the rug on which was a kept a small TV set and a little, plastic doll. There was a small stool next to it. Above the table was a clothes line that ran the length of the room, on which were hung some clothes. There was a stove at the end of the room and around it were kept pots and pans. Sunil tiptoed into the room and walked towards the table. He sat on the stool and took of his shoes. The sleeping lady seemed to have heard him for she raised her head and looked up towards him. She loosened herself from the clutches of the sleeping child and sat up. She supported herself on her elbows at first and made sure with her free hand that the little girl was wrapped nicely in a blanket, and then she gradually sat up straight and placed her arms around her knees. Sunil could see that the right side of her face and body was lit up with the light coming in from the window on her side. The ends of her saree had fallen off her shoulders and her dark, bare shoulders glistened in the moonlight. Her loose hair fell upon her shoulders. For sometime they sat looking at each other in the darkness. She only saw him at night these days she thought. He came in like a zombie and slept next to her. And then before day break he was gone. Moti the portly restaurant owner told her he was in some trouble with his creditors. Sunil hardly spoke to anybody about it. She had warned him about the risks hadn’t she? But this one was a dreamer. He wouldn’t be sitting content. He dreamt of his own factory, his own sprawling business. She rubbed her eyes and let out a yawn and stretched out her arms. Sunil got up swiftly and in a moment. He held her face in his hands and pushed her head into the rug. Had he been listening to her thoughts? His mouth opened as though he was trying to say something to her. His lips were moving but the words were stuck somewhere in his throat. His eyes screamed at her. It seemed as though that he would scream any moment and wake up the neighborhood with his outcry. His body trembled with rage that it brought tears to her eyes. How she echoed his emotions. How he would make her laugh like no other. How he could make her cry. How the world tormented him, she wondered. She put his arms around him and ran her fingers through his thick, matted hair. He broke down into sobs. Now she had another baby to console she thought. She ran her fingers down his spine and he began to respond. His face was wet with tears, his brows were creased and he made love to her with such anguish. Then she ran her fingers upon his chest and he looked calmly at the moon staring at him through the window. His eyes closed and he dreamt of whitewashed walls and gardens.