Bombay Time (25 page)

Tehmi’s isolation only exaggerated her melancholia. Once, she sobbed for hours after having spotted a crow peck on the remains of a mouse outside her window. Another time, she left Bomanji Pharmacy in tears because another shopper had refused her young daughter money to buy an orange ice-candy stick. At times, she worried that she was losing her ability to distinguish between griefs because every hurt and loss felt the same. But there was no one to confide such thoughts in. In the three years since Cyrus’s death, she and Naju had more or less drifted apart. Naju had finished her B.A. and was now busy planning her wedding to a businessman from Surat. Besides, Naju was too down-to-earth and fun-loving to understand the pathos that Tehmi felt. That was the beauty of Cyrus—he was that rare man who could understand two women as diverse as Naju and Tehmi.

For Cyrus’s sake, she forced herself to participate in the preparations for Naju’s wedding. She owed the Engineers that much, she felt. They had been nothing but decent to her since Cyrus’s death. So she accompanied Mani and Naju to pick out the saris and jewelry to be presented to the groom’s relatives. The years had taught them all that as long as Tehmi looked away slightly when she spoke to them, Mani and Naju could tolerate the odor from her mouth. The salesmen in the shops were a different story. Tehmi was convinced that only the scent of money, even more powerful than the smell of her breath, kept them from asking her to leave.

“Tehmi, it’s all in your head,
yaar.
Nobody was looking at you funny,” Naju attempted. But a look from Tehmi silenced her.

The day before the wedding, she was helping Naju try on her wedding sari, when the latter turned to her, pulled Tehmi toward her in a tight hug, and burst into tears. “I keep wishing Cyrus were here,” Naju sobbed. “God, I miss him so much, I can only imagine what you must go through. I keep thinking of what he would have been like today, older but as handsome as ever. Tehmi, I just want to say I’m sorry for every horrible thing I’ve said to you since Cyrus’s death, about not working and all. And I feel so bad, I mean, about this bad breath problem. No, don’t look away. I’m not meaning to embarrass you or anything. I just see how shy it’s made you and it seems so unfair, on top of everything else you’ve had to go through in the last few years. It’s like a dual tragedy, you know?”

Tehmi blinked. She hadn’t known Naju had ever spared two minutes thinking about her. “You were my friend before I ever met your brother,” she said finally. “I may not see you as much now, you being in Surat and all. But remember, you are more than my sister-in-law. You are my friend first and foremost. All the years that I didn’t get with my Cyloo, I now wish for you, in your marriage. Be happy, Naju. Try to forget about the sad things, if you can. Leave your brother’s memory to me—I’ll guard it well. And don’t you worry about your parents. I’ll take care of them, I promise.”

She was good to her word. Until Dali and Mani Engineer died in a car accident on their way to Pune in 1977, she visited them regularly. Twice a week, she would go over to their flat with a cooked meal. They, in turn, came to rely on her more than ever. “With Naju in Surat, you are the only daughter we still have in Bombay,” Mani would say to her.

On the fifth anniversary of Cyrus’s death, Dali told Tehmi he had a surprise for her. The Engineers had established a trust for Tehmi. Each month for the rest of her life, she would receive a fixed sum of money from the trust. It wasn’t much, Dali mumbled, but it was enough to make it possible for her never to have to work, if she didn’t want to. Tehmi protested vehemently. “But I’m making some money now from my crochet work,” she said, but Dali shushed her. “I’m not doing it for you; this is for my Cyrus,” he said. “Besides, this is your fair share. If my Cyrus had lived, he would’ve inherited this flat and all that, after all. But fate had a different plan for us. My Naju is well settled and so are we, by the grace of God. No sense in making you wait to inherit things until after we kick the bucket. No, use it to enjoy your youth.”

The Engineers watched in dismay as Tehmi’s youth flitted past her. On her twenty-ninth birthday, Mani invited Tehmi and Dinabai to lunch. They had the celebratory
mori daar,
fried fish and
sev.
Mani served her famous
lagan-nu-custard f
or dessert. “An auspicious meal for an auspicious occasion,” Mani said. After lunch, they moved into the living room and Mani called for the servant to put on the tea. Finally, timidly, she broached the subject. “Tehmi, dear, Dali and I are having something to say to you. All we ask is you keep an open mind about the subject. Promise? … Okay. Do you remember our good friend Perin? Well, as you may be knowing, Perin has as a son, Viraf, almost the same age as you. He’s a good boy, no bad habits, doesn’t smoke or drink. Has a good job at Godrej. What we were thinking is, would you like to meet him? Viraf is looking to settle down, and Dali and I are so wanting you to be happy. We appreciate the devotion you have shown to our Cyrus, but, Tehmi, there’s a time and place for everything, including mourning. We have watched Viraf grow up, so we feel like you would be in good hands. And as far as we are concerned, you will always be our daughter.”

“But Mani. Tehmi is a widow. You know how people feel about that,” Dinabai interrupted.

“Not these people, Dina. These are good, modern people. They know about Tehmi’s situation and have no problem with it.”

Tehmi could feel three sets of eyes staring hopefully at her. She turned to face her in-laws. “Thank you, both of you,” she said simply. “But I can’t even consider what you said. I’m still married to Cyrus, you see. It would be cheating to marry someone else. Also, there is the other problem. Or have you all forgotten?” she said with a grim smile. “I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy.”

Dali cleared his throat. “Ah, yes. About that problem. Tehmi, I still believe there’s probably a simple cure for that. We, after all, never really pursued a cure. Earlier, what with the shock of Cyrus’s death and all, I could understand. But enough years have gone by now. Why suffer unnecessarily? Let us make an appointment to go see Dr. Udwa-dia.”

Tehmi got up abruptly. “Nothing can be done about that. Not even the best doctors in England or America can help with that.
Bas,
that’s in my
naseeb
to live with, just like Cyrus’s death was in my
naseeb.”
She stared at Dali. “Don’t ask me to take my bad luck to some poor man. I’ll destroy him, too.”

“What nonsense, what nonsense,” Dali said, shaking his head vigorously. “You are an educated, smart girl. How can you think like some illiterate villager?” But Tehmi could tell that the fight had gone out of him.

Within her neighborhood, she achieved a kind of mythic status as she grew older. By the time she was in her forties, she became a figure of derision and pity, mystery and awe. Residents who had moved to Wadia Baug since Cyrus’s death and only knew Tehmi as an elusive, shadowy figure cautioned their children to stay away from the strange lady on the first floor. Teenagers nicknamed her “Killer Breath” Tehmi. The older residents, dimly remembering those three magical years when Cyrus had shot through their lives like a bolt of sunlight, halfheartedly scolded the teenagers and appealed for empathy. But the truth was that they blamed Tehmi for their frightening inability to help her with either one of the two misfortunes that had so swiftly befallen her. People like Amy Gazdar, whose attempts to help had been so brutally rebuffed, soon forgot the sequence of things, so that they now believed that Tehmi had stopped speaking to them at Cyrus’s funeral and that fate had punished her for her arrogance, that her foul breath was merely a symptom of her foulness of temper. “Pride,” Dosamai intoned to her gallery of housewives. “God does not like proud people. See how swiftly He punished Tehmi, with breath worse than a stray dog’s. I’ve seen chickens with their throats slit who smelled better.”

It was only after Dinabai’s death, when Tehmi was fifty-seven, that the enormity of her isolation hit her. The three years she took care of her bedridden mother gave her the perfect excuse for socializing even less than before. Caring for Dinabai took up all her time, so that whereas earlier Tehmi would attend the occasional funeral and pay the rare hospital visit, now even those interactions fell by the wayside. Dinabai’s funeral was well attended. People Tehmi hadn’t seen in years showed up at the Tower of Silence. She was shocked to see how much older everyone looked—children whom she remembered as seven-year-olds were now self-consciously introducing their young husbands and wives to her; men whom she remembered as middle-aged were now bent with osteoporosis. She realized that it had been years since she’d had a conversation with Soli or Rusi, that she had never really spoken to Bomi Mistry’s wife, Sheroo.

A few days after Dinabai’s funeral, Tehmi made two shocking discoveries. The first was that Cyrus had left her around the same time that her mother had. The second was that she missed her mother more than she did Cyrus. So many decades had passed since she had touched Cyrus’s taut flesh, kissed those soft lips. By contrast, she could still feel the roughness of Dinabai’s parchment skin, could still recall the outline of the bedsore on her back, which she cleaned several times a day with Johnson’s baby oil and Cuticura talcum powder. She had taken good care of her mother. She was proud of that. Tehmi tried to remember whether she had been a good wife to Cyrus, whether she had cared for him as lovingly as she had cared for her mother. And she came smack up against a harsh fact: She did not remember. Too many years had gone by and too little of that time had been shared with Cyrus. She realized that what she had been holding on to for all these years had been the memory of a memory. The shadow of a shadow. “Cyloo, forgive me,” she cried. “I cannot even remember what your sweet face looked like. Forgive me, my darling. You see, there are so few people left that I can talk to about you, what with your dear parents gone. And Naju comes to Bombay so rarely now because of her diabetes and all. No one left to remind me of you, Cyloo. With Mamma dead, the last person who knew you is also gone.”

Cyrus had disappeared. Perversely, the bad breath remained. The tiny Wadia Baug flat now felt empty and big. Tehmi had never realized how much she relied on her mother for socialization and company. Even when the stroke rendered Dinabai speechless, she communicated with her daughter with the squeeze of a hand or the blink of an eye. And when she couldn’t do even that, there was still the fact of her presence, the fact of a physical body that had to be bathed, cleaned, fed. Tehmi did all this without complaining. A servant helped her with the daily sponge baths and the bedpans, but Tehmi still planned and cooked their daily meals, tended to Dinabai’s bedsores, prayed every evening at Dinabai’s bedside in the hopes that the old lady could hear her. In those days, she didn’t have too much time to talk to Cyrus. So that when he ignored her when she eventually turned to him again, she thought he was merely angry with her. But a few days after Dinabai’s funeral, she realized, Cyrus has left me for good.

At Dinabai’s funeral, Jimmy Kanga had offered to have Zarin stay at Tehmi’s flat her first night home alone. Tehmi had refused the offer, but then the silence in the house felt oppressive to her. Swallowing her pride, she dialed Zarin’s number and requested her to spend a night or two at her place. She could picture the look of startled surprise on Zarin’s face, but to her credit, Zarin agreed immediately. Tehmi was amazed at how wonderful it felt to have a companion in the flat, even one who was a virtual stranger to her. The enormity of her loss hit her then. How abruptly my life changed, she thought, her mind going back to the day of the explosion at the factory. That night, as Zarin slept on the couch, Tehmi permitted herself to do something she never did—ask herself, What if? What if she had refused to marry Cyrus until he finished his law degree? He would have been safe when the chemical factory exploded on that fateful day. What if she had listened to her dream and begged Cyrus not to go to work that day? She was sure he would have agreed, because Cyrus had never refused her anything. What if she had listened to her mother and not insisted on identifying Cyrus’s remains? She would not have breathed in that horrible smell of death, a smell that had haunted her ever since and made her an outcast among her neighbors.

Toward morning, Zarin was awakened by a strange noise. Sitting up on the couch, she listened in silence. Tehmi was tossing and turning in her sleep, talking to herself. She was making a whimpering sound that made Zarin’s hair stand on end. She thought it was quite possibly the most heartbreaking sound she had ever heard.

Zarin never went back to Tehmi’s flat after that night. But from that day on, she never said a bad word about Tehmi. And every year on Mehernosh’s birthday, she had a large box of
jelabis
delivered to Tehmi’s home.

Standing by herself at Mehernosh Kanga’s wedding, Tehmi idly wondered if Zarin would continue to distribute
jelabis
among the neighbors now that Mehernosh was married and moving to the Cuffe Parade flat that the Kangas owned. She wagered that the tradition would continue. The Kangas were generous people. It was not even that Tehmi cared
for jelabis.
Usually, she’d taste a piece or two of the sticky orange sweet and then cut the rest of it into tiny pieces for the crows to eat. But receiving the box of
jelabis
once a year made Tehmi feel part of the neighborhood, proud of the fact that there was at least one neighborhood ritual that she was part of. That was the main reason she had attended Mehernosh’s wedding. Tehmi had never forgotten Zarin’s one-night stay at her apartment in the days following Dinabai’s death. She also had a warm spot for Jimmy because of how he had adored her Cyrus. Still, she was surprised—and moved—by the invitation. She suspected that the Kangas liked her, though she had no idea why they would. She had certainly not made any overtures toward them in the years since Cyrus’s death. Despite herself, she was flattered by the affection that she suspected was behind the invitation. She was also amazed at how excited she had been in the days leading up to the wedding. She actually went out and bought a new sari for the occasion. Since Dinabai’s death six years earlier, even the rare wedding and Navjote invitations had stopped. It was as if the neighbors expected to see Tehmi only at sad occasions such as funerals.