Dahanu Road: A novel (36 page)

In an instant Shapur Irani turned so cold and grey, ash could have fallen from his cheeks.

He did not even remember how he had walked this far because he was near his house again. How did he get here? He stepped all over the book ash and entered the house not knowing what his steps meant. The cup of tea was still on the table. He sat on the chair and took a sip. It was cold.

The boys were still sleeping. All was well.

After tea, what? What was he supposed to do? He opened his wooden cupboard and took out his shotgun. He loaded it, went into the room where his sons were sleeping. They would
not even know. They would not feel a thing. They loved their mother more than they loved him anyway. One, two, three. Three shots and they would be with her again.

Just then, Khodi opened his eyes and stared into the barrel of the gun.

“Papa,” he said, the sleep in his eyes preventing his brain from registering the truth.

The moment Shapur Irani heard his son speak, he left the room. He heard his youngest, Aspi, cry as well. He bolted the main door because he did not want to hear Khodi say “Papa” again. More than anything, he did not want Khodi to see his mother at the bottom of a well. He would lock them in this house for life.

The shotgun was still in his hand.

He had told Ejaz not to walk among the trees early in the morning, but the bastard never listened. He trusted the Pathan and the Pathan had let him down. The Pathan was treacherous because he had not followed instructions regarding walking through the trees.

He was now outside Ejaz’s shack, hoping that the man would deny everything Shapur Irani suspected him of.

“Ejaz!” shouted Shapur Irani. “Ejaz!”

Ejaz stood in the doorway, imposing as ever.

Shapur Irani could not bring himself to ask any questions. Even the thought of it being true was too much to bear.

“I have been waiting for this day,” said Ejaz. “I have waited for this day.”

“What do you mean?” asked Shapur Irani.

His hand was trembling, the finger on the trigger so confused, yet so ready. The need to hurt Ejaz was intense, but
what he hungered for more than anything was to enter that shack and disappear forever, like a child gone missing.

“I am ashamed of what I did,” said Ejaz. “But I had no choice.”

“What do you mean?” asked Shapur Irani again.

That was all he could bring himself to say. The question echoed in his brain:
what do you mean what do you mean what do you mean what do you mean.

“Do you remember that day when landlords went to Dahanu beach and the goons ransacked the villages and raped Warli women?”

Don’t use that word, Ejaz. Have mercy on me, please don’t use that word.

“That day I stayed here to protect your wife and child because I knew that you would do the same for me. When I told you I had a son in Bombay, you said to me, ‘From now on he is my son too,’ and I believed you. That day, when you returned after your meeting with the landlords, I told you that I needed to talk to you about my son. But you called me a servant, you humiliated me. My son needed an operation, he was very sick. But that was not why I did it.”

Did what did what did what did what.

“The day we went to the fair with your wife and sons, the day you beat Gustad seth with his belt, that very morning I had gotten the news that my son had died. I blamed you for his death. If only you had listened. That night I was drunk and angry in the bazaar and that is when Gustad seth approached me. I was cursing you …”

Shapur Irani wondered what that scum landlord had to do with this. He remembered Gustad’s smile.

“Gustad seth heard my story and he promised to give me money if I did this thing, this one thing. But I did not do it for the money, seth. If you had listened to me about my son, none of this would have happened.”

“There was no one to save your son,” said Shapur Irani, finally able to make a pertinent statement. “And now there is no one to save you.”

“I have been waiting for this day,” said Ejaz. “I could have run away after what I did, but I was ashamed. A Pathan had fallen so low. I did not deserve to stand tall.”

Ejaz slowly went down on one knee and lowered the other one as well. But he did not lower his head. He did not even look into the barrel of the gun that was pointed at him. He looked straight at Shapur Irani, and when the bullet entered his brain, his eyes were still wide open.

The sun streamed into the room and illuminated dust, a reminder to Shapur Irani of what he would ultimately become. There were so many cracks in the wall. Each time a line formed on his face, a line appeared on the wall as well. Walls, contrary to what he thought, were not dead things. They absorbed human sorrow, made it their own.

They named her Aban.

It was Aspi Irani who chose the name. “It means ‘Ocean of Magical Beings,’” he told Zairos. But when Mithoo looked up the meaning in a book of Persian baby names, all it said was “Water,” to which Aspi Irani replied, “Those fools know nothing.” And from the look in his daughter’s eyes, Zairos could tell that Aspi Irani was right. They could not see the magical beings
inside
the water. That was all.

At first, Zairos saw his daughter only from afar. Back and forth he had gone to Kusum’s hut, scared at the crying he heard. But he told himself that this little one was a part of Kusum, and if he loved the mother, the child was made of the same substance.

He took a step closer, entered the shade of the hut.

She had her mother’s eyes, no question. Brown enough, deep enough, for him to get lost in them. Everything about her was so small, so fragile. Even her breath seemed like a collection
of whispers. He caressed her forehead, stroked the small tuft of hair on her head. And when he kissed her cheek, he thought his lips were going to melt.

Seeing Zairos that way, squidgy and speechless, Mithoo picked the child up, cradled it in her arms, and uttered sweet heavenly gibberish. Then Aspi Irani followed, but for some reason he whistled to the child a jingle from a TV commercial for Nirma washing powder, a strange choice indeed which no one questioned, and then he started thinking of names, and once she was given a Zoroastrian name, Zairos knew she was his, and he took her straight to Anna’s, where else, and although he had no idea what to say to his daughter, the ones at Anna’s knew exactly what to do.

One by one they came up to her and said the most heartfelt— but ludicrous—things. “I feel like eating her,” said Merwan Mota, and someone said, “Anna, give this beast an omelette fast!” and Behrooz took a spanner from his spare-parts shop and twirled it above Aban’s head as though he were spinning a small cluster of stars. Sohrab Irani announced that Aban would be the only non-gambler ever to be allowed inside the Mobile Casino, and he blew the buffalo horn several times to herald her membership. From his sweltering kitchen, Anna sang a lullaby in Tulu, complete with rooster crows and dog woofs, and Bumble did a wheelie on his BMW for her, which made her cry of course. Hosi, thrilled that the racing season had resumed again, let Aban tug his beard as much as she wanted. Then he passed her on to Anna’s dusky, steamy wife, and, in the transfer of baby, he managed to feel Anna’s wife’s breasts, and the coy look from Anna’s wife sent Hosi high as Mount Kanchenjunga.

Thus Aban travelled, away from Anna’s, all over Dahanu, to
the giant hands of Chambal the dacoit, who thumped Zairos on the back and called him a mard, a real man, and Aban smelled Sharmaji’s homemade massage oils and sneezed repeatedly. At the beach, TG turned away from Aban, still not approving, still viewing the child as a disgrace, and as Xerxes rose in his blue and red glider, Mithoo’s excitement rose too, Mithoo gave her stray dogs extra treats because she realized she could finally use her Montessori method of teaching on one of her own, and Aspi Irani, after much heartbreak, decided to throw away his collection of mosquito repellents so as to not harm Aban, but he continued to repel with his own hybrids, duets between Belafonte and Irani, and Aban seemed to love them, and on and on she went from the arms of one to the arms of another, until she finally rested in the lap that had started it all.

Shapur Irani looked at her in amazement and Zairos could feel the iron in this man slowly dissolving. When Shapur Irani let Aban’s head rest against his chest, her small fingers uncurled and she caught a clump of his silver chest hair, and, in that moment, on a rocking chair that never rocked, she became Shapur Irani’s Juliet, and even though the age gap of over ninety years was a bit vast, neither of them seemed to care, and when she gave a toothless grin and fell asleep, something wonderful occurred: Shapur Irani slept too. For the first time in his life, he wanted to stay on earth, he chose to stay.

With Aban safe in Shapur Irani’s arms, Zairos stood at the foot of the Bahrot hills, only thirty minutes away from Anna’s. He had parked his motorcycle at the base of a dam, the water
spreading out before him, flat and motionless. He walked along the dam wall, a long stretch of grey asphalt that looked like a highway, towards the same hills in which his Zoroastrian ancestors had taken refuge in the fifteenth century.

It was Aspi Irani who suggested he come here.

“Seven hundred years after the first Zoroastrians fled from Iran to the shores of Sanjan, the Muslims hunted us again, when they invaded India,” said Aspi Irani. “We seem to have a sweet scent about us that drives them nutty. But this time we did not run. A Parsi commander named Ardeshir gathered a troop of fighters and joined forces with the Hindu king of the region. But they were all slain in battle.”

Aspi Irani picked his teeth with a toothpick, as though he was trying to free some truth that was stuck in there.

“The survivors took our Holy Fire, which had been brought from Iran and kept burning for centuries, and fled Sanjan to the Bahrot hills. They hid in its caves for twelve years, tending to the fire, which they called the Iranshah, the Fire of Victory. Son, I thought someday we would climb the hills together, but perhaps it’s better if you make this journey alone.”

It was a rare serious moment from Aspi Irani.

When Zairos looked at his father, he decided that he would never reveal to him the truth about Banumai. Zairos’ stomach churned as he wondered how Aspi Irani might feel ifhe found out that his own father had once pointed a gun at him. Or that the fever that had claimed Banumai’s life was the fevered hand of her own husband, a hand that still shook in horrid recollection of what it had done.

Zairos had also asked his grandfather, hesitatingly, fearfully, if it were possible that Aspi Irani was the son of Ejaz the Pathan.

“No,” Shapur Irani had said. “Aspi is mine.” Zairos knew that to be the truth.

It was not only the fairer skin, the full head of salt and pepper hair, and the likeness in jaw structure. There was no doubt about Aspi Irani’s lineage because only an Irani would spend his time shooting people with slingshots and blowing buffalo horns outside a nursing home.

As Zairos started the climb, he closed his eyes to the spikes of light and offered thanks to Ahura Mazda for bringing Aban into his life. Since his last meeting with Kusum—the day he discovered the real meaning of Ganpat’s story—she had refused to see him. All those months she had carried Aban inside her with Laxman by her side.

During that time Zairos tried hard to forget Kusum, but his longing for her kept on increasing. One night he stood a distance away from her hut, unseen in the dark. All he wanted was a glimpse of her. He waited among some bushes, amid the frenzy of night crickets. He smoked, not caring if she caught the light. She would never think it was him. It could be anyone, or anything—a bug flying into a tree trunk, exploding like a star.

When she appeared, he wanted to tell her how he missed the way she parted her thighs, the way she received him, with lips and curves made of joy, waking up to him in ways he would remember for life. He thought of stepping out of those bushes, into the open for just a moment, to see if she would remain outside upon seeing him. But the moment he tried to do that he felt like an asp, something poisonous coming out of the darkness and disappearing again.