Dahanu Road: A novel (31 page)

What did Zairos’ fravashi want him to do?

It was the first time he had spoken to his fravashi. He had carried him around his neck since he was a child, but that was not enough. It was up to Zairos to look up to the skies and ask. And if his soul truly longed for a conversation, only then would the fravashi’s wings unfold and with them the wisdom he longed to impart to the man or woman he was in charge of.

When Kusum started coming down the tree, Zairos looked away, afraid that she might fall. But even if she did lose her grip, her own fravashi existed. She had her own set of wings just as soft and loyal as his. If Zarathushtra spoke of One God, then irrespective of religion, one was born with a fravashi, and
fravashis did not care about land or status, they believed in ethical value. They would weigh Kusum’s thoughts, words, and deeds, and if that were the case then there was every chance that she was just as rich as he was.

So the weeks passed quickly for Zairos, maybe five, maybe more, and the egrets in the tree near the Big Boss Hair Salon continued to clean themselves with their beaks, prepare themselves for aerial lovemaking, while on the ground Zairos and Kusum did the same, chattered like birds when no one was looking, the rosy banks of their lips clashing against each other, but always fitting in.

And late one evening, just after dusk, Kusum became the first female customer of the Big Boss Hair Salon. Much to Sharmaji’s credit, he did not say a word about treating a tribal. In fact, the moment he let down Kusum’s hair, after much embarrassment and deliberation on her part, Sharmaji’s eyes lit up, magnified times ten through his thick eyeglasses, and he took his scissors out. But Zairos stopped him.

“Only a head massage, Sharmaji,” said Zairos. “Go slow.”

He did not want to change her hairstyle or her clothing. That would be too brash. All he wanted was for her to meet the yellowed walls of the salon, the absurd photographs of bob cuts on the wall, to taste chai in small steel cups that the boy Munna made, a magic potion that could leave its imprint on any heart.

Kusum stared dead ahead at the mirror, afraid to move, unable to relax.

Zairos was enjoying every moment, locking eyes with her in the mirror, while Hosi and Bumble locked eyes with each other, convinced that their cousin had lost his mind. Hosi was seated in his blue swivel chair as usual, the foam inside now completely depleted so the seat was almost as hard as a plank of wood.

“You’re worse than Mother Teresa,” he said. “A little nun on a motorcycle who will one day hit a speed breaker and lose his halo.”

“You’ve become a fairy,” said Bumble. “Get a white dress and a wand so you can fly in Xerxes’ glider and sprinkle tinsel all over Dahanu.”

But no matter what anyone said, Zairos kept coming closer to Kusum.

Perhaps it was inevitable because the two of them had something in common from the time of their birth. When a Warli child was born, she told him, a few drops of liquor were fed to it as lullabies were sung. And he revealed how his father gave him whiskey when he was a baby. Aspi Irani used to dip his finger into a bottle of Black Label and let Zairos suck on it, so he would be man enough to hold his booze when he grew up. When Mithoo protested, Aspi Irani said, “Black Label is my breast milk.”

“What is all this going to achieve?” Hosi asked Zairos. He scratched his beard, let out a few grunts to show his disapproval, swivelled in his blue chair, enjoying the distinct squeaks that it made. “I can understand your attraction to her,” said Hosi. “But at the end of the day, it’s just simple, lethal cleavage.”

What he meant to say was that any contact beyond the physical was unnecessary, perhaps impossible.

And maybe Zairos was showing that it was neither.

Or maybe he was just waiting to hear from his fravashi.

Until then, the woman could have a head massage.

There was nothing wrong with that. There was nothing wrong with waiting. Nothing needed to happen. Nothing needed to be achieved. This was enough.

He looked at her in the mirror again.

With each day that passed, he saw her through the eyes of a sniper. She was all there was. She could take her long black hair, coil it around his neck, and choke him if she wished. She could do anything and he would rejoice in it.

After weeks of searching for a lover’s nest, a hideout for two bandits whose only real booty was each other, Zairos had found a spot. An old burnt-down shed outside the Cottage Hospital.

He had been bringing Kusum here lately, not knowing where else to take her. He had bribed the watchman and had placed a small mat on the ground. The watchman would get them wafers and Pepsi and go away, leaving them alone to their sweating.

The year 1954 was embossed on the faded white hospital wall just above the entrance, and Zairos thought of a dying man with his date of birth printed on his forehead. He could see the lone ambulance from a hole in the shed wall, parked under a tree, the glass of the siren cracked, waiting to transport the sick and the dead. The white walls had black streaks on them that gave the place an ashen look, the look so many of its patients had in their last days. The tall dry grass in front of the hospital moved like the feelers of cockroaches, alert, ready for anything.

At first Kusum liked their secret spot. It was a chasm they both fell into, the nuts and bolts of hearts fitting into each other, with dust and spiders, moonlight seeping in through the roof, offering a courteous glow, the mark of flames on the shed walls, and the occasional wildflower, its small yellow petals like laughter in the face of all that rust and mildew. In this shed, even the stories they shared were brighter. Behind the landlords’ stubbles and gold chains, she was discovering a whisper, of wanting to reach out, to mend … and it was something she discovered in the form of an elderly woman who had showed up at her hamlet a few days before.

Dressed in expensive clothes, yet possessing an earthy humility as she walked towards a hut, her eyes wet with remembrance, possible only if the hut she was walking towards had once sheltered her, kept the rain and wind away, allowed her to rest in her mother’s lap.

She was a Warli who once sold key chains at a bus stand as a child, and her life changed when an Irani couple noticed her. Smitten by the curls around her forehead, they bought all the key chains she was selling, which were in the shape of tiny slippers. They asked her if she would come live with them, forever, and so the little girl took the Irani couple to her hut, got her mother’s permission to leave, and sat in their car with a small bundle in her hand that contained, among other things, a collection of herbs given by her mother, who was sick herself, a lone parent unable to care for her daughter. The Irani couple then brought her up on their farm along with their two children, sent her to school in Bombay, taught her English, found a husband for her, and she now lived far, far away, in a land whose name Kusum could not pronounce, but
this woman was living proof that some landlords had goodness hidden inside them like secrets.

And as she thought of that elderly woman taking photographs of what once used to be her hut, Kusum hoped for an ounce of similar luck because throughout the time she had spent with Zairos, throughout the many suns and moons that had now come and gone, something else had been forming besides an alliance between her and a landlord.

Kusum had told her father’s story to Zairos. But now there was another one brewing, another one she wanted to tell, that was running alongside Ganpat’s story like a desperate passenger trying to catch a train blazing along the tracks, screaming and yelling, begging for someone to notice. There was another story, and it was not just a story, it was something that was about to come into this world, alive and screaming, and it could be his. And it was there in her voice, it was there in the shiver of her eyes, this seed that was growing, this sapling that would develop arms and legs and eat and suck, and it was sad that she could speak of her father’s death far more easily than the birth of her own child.

She had no idea how he would take the news.

She chose not to take the trembling of her body as an answer. There were other signs, encouraging ones—the fact that they were outside a hospital, the number of times he had kept her close to his body, so tight that upon releasing her, he held her tight again, the way he cut pieces of fruit for her, pears and apples, in odd clumsy shapes that only heightened their taste.

Those were the moments she would pull from.

Zairos had fallen asleep on the straw mat in the shed. She shook him awake.

She was very close to him. She had to be.

She did not know what to call him: Seth or Jairos. Did she have to offer the news with respect, or celebrate it with a lover?

Ultimately, she chose neither title nor name. She chose touch.

She pushed Zairos’ hair off his face. She did not want anything to obstruct his vision, so he could see that if she was shivering it was not because she was lying. She pressed her body against his but not sexually. It was just a need to not be separate.

She let it out like a tree lets out fruit.

His grip on the handlebars turned weak. The engine revved, his heart racing at a million rpm. His stomach churned, intestines madly twisting around one another.

“It could be Laxman’s child,” he said.

Out it came like a great gob of phlegm. He was suddenly very aware of the fact that Kusum’s body was touching his. She was leaning into him. His back arched in response.

“It could be,” said Kusum.

But it could be his too.

He cursed himself for not using protection, but he hated those fucking raincoats. And he had been careful, he had not come inside her, except once, or maybe twice, and that was beyond his control, to withdraw would have been inhuman, it would have been throwing sand in the eyes of the sublime.

She did not hold his waist as they rode along the beach.
Her hands were on the metal carrier. But even if she had held his waist she would have felt the same coldness.

When he saw her at work after that, the deer, the viper—the souls of both were in her. She had tricked him. Inside, she was laughing. She had not tricked him. He had been careless. He had gotten carried away. She was so strong now, walking about
his
farm.

The terrain might be hers, but the farm was his, he told himself.

Just the sheer possibility of it had given her power. And her pain seemed to have melted away, like wax from a candle, and she had conveniently left it on his table, for him to clean.

She even had the audacity to ask him for ginger marmalade.

“That sweet yellow thing,” she said to him. “Please get me that sweet yellow …”

He brought it for her one day, and she marvelled at the wiggly yellow pieces through the glass. Zairos had to open the jar and offer her some. “Put your finger in,” he said. She dug in, licked the marmalade off her finger. The look in her eyes made him think she had seen an angel, or, even better, eaten one.

“I know what you are thinking,” she said.

“I’m not thinking anything,” he said. “I’m not ready to be a father. It could be Laxman’s. When was the time you last had sex with him?”