Tales From Firozsha Baag (14 page)

But this smooth course of stamp-collecting was about to end.
Patla Babu
and
Jhaaria Babu
broke their long tradition of silence and complained to the school. Unlike marbles and
supari
, it was not a question of a few paise a day. When Eric and Jehangir struck, their haul could be totalled in rupees reaching double digits; the loss was serious enough to make the
Babus
worry about their survival.

The school assigned the case to the head prefect to investigate. He was an ambitious boy, always snooping around, and was also a member of the school debating team and the Road Safety Patrol. Shortly after the complaint was made he marched into Jehangir’s class one afternoon just after lunch break, before the teacher returned, and made what sounded very much like one of his debating speeches: “Two boys in this class have been stealing stamps from
Patla Babu
and
Jhaaria Babu
for the past several weeks. You may ask: who are those boys? No need for names. They know who they are and I know who they are, and I am asking them to return the stamps to me tomorrow. There will be no punishment if this is done. The
Babus
just want their stamps back. But if the missing stamps are not returned, the names will be reported to the principal and to the police. It is up to the two boys.”

Jehangir tried hard to appear normal. He was racked with trepidation, and looked to the unperturbed Eric for guidance. But Eric ignored him. The head prefect left amidst mock applause from the class.

After school, Eric turned surly. Gone was the tender, cajoling manner he reserved for Jehangir, and he said nastily: “You better bring back all those fucking stamps tomorrow.” Jehangir, of course, agreed. There was no trouble with the prefect or the school after the stamps were returned.

But Jehangir’s collection shrunk pitiably overnight. He slept badly the entire week, worried about explaining to Burjor Uncle the sudden
disappearance of the bulk of his collection. His mother assumed the dark rings around his eyes were due to too much reading and not enough fresh air. The thought of stamps or of
Patla Babu
or
Jhaaria Babu
brought an emptiness to his stomach and a bitter taste to his mouth. A general sense of ill-being took possession of him.

He went to see Burjor Uncle on Sunday, leaving behind his stamp album. Mrs. Mody opened the door and turned away silently. She appeared to be in a black rage, which exacerbated Jehangir’s own feelings of guilt and shame.

He explained to Burjor Uncle that he had not bothered to bring his album because he had acquired no new stamps since last Sunday, and also, he was not well and would not stay for long.

Dr. Mody was concerned about the boy, so nervous and uneasy; he put it down to his feeling unwell. They looked at some stamps Dr. Mody had received last week from his colleagues abroad. Then Jehangir said he’d better leave.

“But you
must
see the Spanish dancing-lady before you go. Maybe she will help you feel better. Ha! ha!” and Dr. Mody rose to go to the cupboard for the stamp. Its viewing at the end of each Sunday’s session had acquired the significance of an esoteric ritual.

From the next room Mrs. Mody screeched: “Burjorji! Come here at once!” He made a wry face at Jehangir and hurried out.

In the next room, all the vehemence of Mrs. Mody’s black rage of that morning poured out upon Dr. Mody: “It has reached the limit now! No time for your own son and Sunday after Sunday sitting with some stranger! What does he have that your own son does not? Are you a
baap
or what? No wonder Pesi has become this way! How can I blame the boy when his own
baap
takes no interest…”

“Shh! The boy is in the next room! What do you want, that all the neighbours hear your screaming?”

“I don’t care! Let them hear! You think they don’t know already? You think you are …”

Mrs. Bulsara next door listened intently. Suddenly, she realized that Jehangir was in there. Listening from one’s own house was one thing – hearing a quarrel from inside the quarrellers’ house was another. It made feigning ignorance very difficult.

She rang the Modys’ doorbell and waited, adjusting her
mathoobanoo
. Dr. Mody came to the door.

“Burjorji, forgive me for disturbing your stamping and collecting work with Jehangir. But I must take him away. Guests have arrived unexpectedly. Jehangir must go to the Irani, we need cold drinks.”

“That’s okay, he can come next Sunday.” Then added, “He
must
come next Sunday,” and noted with satisfaction the frustrated turning away of Mrs. Mody who waited out of sight of the doorway. “Jehangir! Your mother is calling.”

Jehangir was relieved at being rescued from the turbulent waters of the Mody household. They left without further conversation, his mother tugging in embarrassment at the knots of her
mathoobanoo
.

As a result of this unfortunate outburst, a period of awkwardness between the women was unavoidable. Mrs. Mody, though far from garrulous, had never let her domestic sorrows and disappointments interfere with the civilities of neighbourly relations, which she respected and observed at all times. Now for the first time since the arrival of the Modys in Firozsha Baag these civilities experienced a hiatus.

When the
muchhiwalla
arrived next morning, instead of striking a joint deal with him as they usually did, Mrs. Mody waited till Mrs. Bulsara had finished. She stationed an eye at her peephole as he emphasized the freshness of his catch. “Look
bat
, it is
saféd paani
,” he said, holding out the pomfret and squeezing it near the gills till white fluid oozed out. After Mrs. Bulsara had paid and gone, Mrs. Mody emerged, while the former took her turn at the peephole. And so it went for a few days till the awkwardness had run its course and things returned to normal.

But not so for Jehangir; on Sunday, he once again had to leave behind his sadly depleted album. To add to his uneasiness, Mrs. Mody invited him in with a greeting of “Come
bawa
come,” and there was something malignant about her smile.

Dr. Mody sat at his desk, shoulders sagging, his hands dangling over the arms of the chair. The desk was bare – not a single stamp anywhere in sight, and the cupboard in the corner locked. The absence of his habitual, comfortable clutter made the room cold and cheerless.
He was in low spirits; instead of the crow’s-feet at the corners of his eyes were lines of distress and dejection.

“No album again?”

“No. Haven’t got any new stamps yet,” Jehangir smiled nervously.

Dr. Mody scratched the psoriasis on his elbows. He watched Jehangir carefully as he spoke. “Something very bad has happened to the Spanish dancing-lady stamp. Look,” and he displayed the satin-covered box minus its treasure. “It is missing.” Half-fearfully, he looked at Jehangir, afraid he would see what he did not want to. But it was inevitable. His last sentence evoked the head prefect’s thundering debating-style speech of a few days ago, and the ugliness of the entire episode revisited Jehangir’s features – a final ignominious postscript to Dr. Mody’s loss and disillusion.

Dr. Mody shut the box. The boy’s reaction, his silence, the absence of his album, confirmed his worst suspicions. More humiliatingly, it seemed his wife was right. With great sadness he rose from his chair. “I have to leave now, something urgent at the College.” They parted without a word about next Sunday.

Jehangir never went back. He thought for a few days about the missing stamp and wondered what could have happened to it. Burjor Uncle was too careful to have misplaced it; besides, he never removed it from its special box. And the box was still there. But he did not resent him for concluding he had stolen it. His guilt about
Patla Babu
and
Jhaaria Babu
, about Eric and the stamps was so intense, and the punishment deriving from it so inconsequential, almost non-existent, that he did not mind this undeserved blame. In fact, it served to equilibrate his scales of justice.

His mother questioned him the first few Sundays he stayed home. Feeble excuses about homework, and Burjor Uncle not having new stamps, and it being boring to look at the same stuff every Sunday did not satisfy her. She finally attributed his abnegation of stamps to sensitivity and a regard for the unfortunate state of the Modys’ domestic affairs. It pleased her that her son was capable of such concern. She did not press him after that.

Pesi was no longer to be seen in Firozsha Baag. His absence brought relief to most of the parents at first, and then curiosity. Gradually, it became known that he had been sent away to a boarding-school in Poona.

The boys of the Baag continued to play their games in the compound. For better or worse, the spark was lacking that lent unpredictability to those languid coastal evenings of Bombay; evenings which could so easily trap the unwary, adult or child, within a circle of lassitude and depression in which time hung heavy and suffocating.

Jehangir no longer sat on the stone steps of C Block in the evenings. He found it difficult to confront Dr. Mody day after day. Besides, the boys he used to watch at play suspected some kind of connection between Pesi’s being sent away to boarding-school, Jehangir’s former friendship with Dr. Mody, and the emerging of Dr. Mody’s constant sorrow and despair (which he had tried so hard to keep private all along, and had succeeded, but was now visible for all to see). And the boys resented Jehangir for whatever his part was in it – they bore him open antagonism.

Dr. Mody was no more the jovial figure the boys had grown to love. When his car turned into the compound in the evenings, he still waved, but no crow’s-feet appeared at his eyes, no smile, no jokes.

Two years passed since the Mody family’s arrival in Firozsha Baag.

In school, Jehangir was as isolated as in the Baag. Most of his effeminateness had, of late, transformed into vigorous signs of impending manhood. Eric D’Souza had been expelled for attempting to sodomize a junior boy. Jehangir had not been involved in this affair, but most of his classmates related it to the furtive activities of their callow days and the stamp-flicking.
Patla Babu
and
Jhaaria Babu
had disappeared from the pavement outside St. Xavier’s. The Bombay police, in a misinterpretation of the nation’s mandate:
garibi hatao –
eradicate poverty, conducted periodic round-ups of pavement dwellers, sweeping into their vans beggars and street-vendors, cripples and alcoholics, the homeless and the hungry, and dumped them somewhere outside the city limits; when the human detritus made its way back into the city, another clean-up was scheduled.
Patla
and
Jhaaria
were snared in one of these raids, and never found their way back. Eyewitnesses said their stalls were smashed up and
Patla Babu
received a
lathi
across his forehead for trying to salvage some of his inventory. They were not seen again.

Two years passed since Jehangir’s visits to Dr. Mody had ceased.

It was getting close to the time for another transfer for Dr. Mody. When the inevitable orders were received, he went to Ahmedabad to make arrangements. Mrs. Mody was to join her husband after a few days. Pesi was still in boarding-school, and would stay there.

So when news arrived from Ahmedabad of Dr. Mody’s death of heart failure, Mrs. Mody was alone in the flat. She went next door with the telegram and broke down.

The Bulsaras helped with all the arrangements. The body was brought to Bombay by car for a proper Parsi funeral. Pesi came from Poona for the funeral, then went back to boarding-school.

The events were talked about for days afterwards, the stories spreading first in C Block, then through A and B. Commiseration for Mrs. Mody was general. The ordeal of the body during the two-day car journey from Ahmedabad was particularly horrifying, and was discussed endlessly. Embalming was not allowed according to Parsi rituals, and the body in the trunk, although packed with ice, had started to smell horribly in the heat of the Deccan Plateau which the car had had to traverse. Some hinted that this torment suffered by Dr. Mody’s earthly remains was the Almighty’s punishment for neglecting his duties as a father and making Mrs. Mody so unhappy. Poor Dr. Mody, they said, who never went a day without a bath and talcum powder in life, to undergo this in death. Someone even had, on good authority, a count of the number of eau de cologne bottles used by Mrs. Mody and the three occupants of the car over the course of the journey – it was the only way they could draw breath, through cologne-watered handkerchiefs. And it was also said that ever after, these four could never tolerate eau de cologne – opening a bottle was like opening the car trunk with Dr. Mody’s decomposing corpse.

A year after the funeral, Mrs. Mody was still living in Firozsha Baag. Time and grief had softened her looks, and she was no longer the harsh and dour-faced woman Jehangir had seen during his first
Sunday visit. She had decided to make the flat her permanent home now, and the trustees of the Baag granted her request “in view of the unfortunate circumstances.”

There were some protests about this, particularly from those whose sons or daughters had been postponing marriages and families till flats became available. But the majority, out of respect for Dr. Mody’s memory, agreed with the trustees’ decision. Pesi continued to attend boarding-school.

One day, shortly after her application had been approved by the trustees, Mrs. Mody visited Mrs. Bulsara. They sat and talked of old times, when they had first moved in, and about how pleased Dr. Mody had been to live in a Parsi colony like Firozsha Baag after years of travelling, and then the disagreements she had had with her husband over Pesi and Pesi’s future; tears came to her eyes, and also to Mrs. Bulsara’s, who tugged at a corner of her
mathoobanoo
to reach it to her eyes and dry them. Mrs. Mody confessed how she had hated Jehangir’s Sunday visits although he was such a fine boy, because she was worried about the way poor Burjorji was neglecting Pesi: “But he could not help it. That was the way he was. Sometimes he would wish
Khoedai
had given him a daughter instead of a son. Pesi disappointed him in everything, in all his plans, and …” and here she burst into uncontrollable sobs.