Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts
‘Hope I’m not late,’ I said, shaking hands all round.
‘No, I think we’re all early,’ Chandra Mehta joked, his voice booming out across the room.
The girls laughed hysterically. Their names were Reeta and Geeta. They were aspiring actresses on the first rung—a lunch date with key second-tier players—and they gushed it up with a bug-eyed enthusiasm that wasn’t far from panic.
I sat down in the vacant chair between Lisa and Geeta. Lisa wore a thin, lava-red pullover beneath a black silk jacket, and a skirt. Geeta’s silver spandex top and white jeans were tight enough to be anatomically explicit. She was a pretty girl, maybe twenty years old, with her long hair pulled into a high ponytail. Her hands fretted at the table napkin, folding and unfolding a corner of the cloth. Reeta had a neat short hairstyle that suited her small face and gamine features. She wore a yellow blouse with a deep, confrontation neckline, and blue jeans. Cliff and Chandra both wore suits, and it seemed that they were coming from or going to an appointment of some significance.
‘I’m starved,’ Lisa said happily. Her voice was light and confident, but she squeezed my hand under the table so hard that her fingernails pinched their way into my skin. It was an important meeting for her. She knew that Mehta planned to offer us a formal partnership in the casting business we’d been running unofficially. Lisa wanted that contractual agreement. She wanted the approval that only a contract could provide. She wanted her future in writing. ‘Let’s eat!’
‘How about—what do you all think—if I make the order for all of us?’ Chandra suggested.
‘Since you’re paying for it, I don’t mind,’ Cliff said, laughing and winking at the girls.
‘Sure,’ I agreed. ‘Go ahead.’
He summoned the waiter with a glance and waved the menu aside, launching straight into his list of preferences. It began with a white soup entree made with lamb cooked in blanched-almond milk, worked its way through grilled chicken in a cayenne, cumin, and mango marinade, and ended, after many other side platters, with fruit salad, honey kachori balls, and kulfi ice cream.
Listening to Mehta’s lengthy and precise list of dishes, we all knew that it would be a long lunch. I relaxed, and let myself drift in the flow of fine foods and conversation.
‘So, you still haven’t told me what you think,’ Mehta prodded.
‘You’re giving it more attention than it’s worth,’ Cliff De Souza declared, fluttering a hand dismissively.
‘No, man,’ Mehta insisted. ‘It happened right outside my damn office, yaar. If ten thousand people are shouting about killing you, outside your own damn office window, it’s hard not to give it some attention.’
‘They weren’t shouting about you personally, Chandrababu.’
‘Not me personally. But it’s me, and everyone like me, they want to get. Come on, it’s not so bad for you, and you should admit it. Your family is from Goa. You’re Konkani speakers. Konkani and Marathi are very close. You speak Marathi as well as you speak English. But I don’t speak a damn word of it. Still I’m born here, yaar, and my daddy was born here before me. He has his business here in Bombay. We pay taxes here. My kids all go to school here. My whole life is here in Bombay, man. But they’re shouting Maharashtra for the Marathis, and they want to kick us out of the only home we have.’
‘You have to see it from their point of view as well,’ Cliff added softly.
‘See my eviction from their point of view,’ Mehta retorted, with such vehemence that several heads turned toward him from other tables. He continued more quietly but with just as much passion. ‘I should see my murder from their point of view, is that it?’
‘I love you, my friend, like I love my own third brother-in-law,’ Cliff replied, grinning widely. Mehta laughed with him and the girls joined in, clearly relieved to have the tension at the table diluted with the little joke. ‘I don’t want to see anyone hurt, least of all you, Chandrabhai. All I’m saying is, you have to see it from their side if you want to understand why they’re feeling all this. They’re native Marathi speakers. They’re born here in Maharashtra. Their grandfathers, all the way back to … who knows, three thousand years or more, they were all born here. And then they look around in Bombay, and they see all the best jobs, all the businesses, all the companies owned by people from other places in India. It drives them crazy. And I think they have a point.’
‘What about the reserve jobs?’ Mehta protested. ‘The post office, the police, the schools, the state bank, and lots of others, like the transport authority, they all reserve jobs for Marathi speakers. But that’s not enough for these crazy fuckers. They want to kick us all out of Bombay and Maharashtra. But I tell you, if they get their way, if they kick us out, they’ll lose most of the money and the talent and the brains that make this place what it is.’
Cliff De Souza shrugged.
‘Maybe that’s a price they’re prepared to pay—not that I agree with them. I just think that people like your grand-dad, who came here from U.P. with nothing, and built a successful business, owe something to the state. The ones who have it all have to share some of it with the ones who have nothing. The people you call fanatics can only get others to listen because there’s a grain of truth in what they say. People are angry. The ones who came here from outside and made their fortunes are getting the blame. It’s going to get worse, my dear third brother-in-law, and I hate to think where it’s going to end.’
‘What do you think, Lin?’ Chandra Mehta asked me, appealing for support. ‘You speak Marathi. You live here. But you’re an outsider. What do you think?’
‘I learned to speak Marathi in a little village called Sunder,’ I said in answer. ‘The people there are native Marathi speakers. They don’t speak Hindi well, and they don’t speak English at all. They’re pure, shudha Marathi speakers, and Maharashtra has been their home for at least two thousand years. Fifty generations have farmed the land there.’
I paused to give someone else a chance to comment or query what I’d said. They were all eating, and listening intently. I continued.
‘When I came back to Bombay with my guide, Prabaker, I went to live in the slum, where he and twenty-five thousand other people live. There were a lot of people like Prabaker there in that slum. They were Maharashtrians, from villages just like Sunder. They lived in the kind of poverty where every meal cost them a crown of thorns in worry, and slaving work. I think it must break their hearts to see people from other parts of India living in fine homes while they wash in the gutters of their own capital city.’
I took a few mouthfuls of food, waiting for a response from Mehta. After a few moments, he obliged.
‘But, hey, Lin, come on, that’s not all of it,’ he said. ‘There’s a lot more to it than that.’
‘No, you’re right. That’s not all of it,’ I agreed. ‘They’re not just Maharashtrians in that slum. They’re Punjabis and Tamils and Karnatakans and Bengalis and Assamese and Kashmiris. And they’re not just Hindus. They’re Sikhs and Muslims and Christians and Buddhists and Parsis and Jains. The problems here are not just Maharashtrian problems. The poor, like the rich, are from every part of India. But the poor are far too many, and the rich are far too few.’
‘Arrey baap!’ Chandra Mehta puffed. Holy father! ‘You sound like Cliff. He’s a fuckin’ communist. That’s one of his raves, yaar.’
‘I’m not a communist, or a capitalist,’ I said, smiling. ‘I’m more of a leave-me-the-hell-alone-ist.’
‘Don’t believe him,’ Lisa interjected. ‘When you’re in trouble, he’s the right man to call.’
I looked at her. Our eyes held just long enough to feel good and guilty at the same time.
‘Fanaticism is the opposite of love,’ I said, recalling one of Khaderbhai’s lectures. A wise man once told me—he’s a Muslim, by the way—that he has more in common with a rational, reasonable-minded Jew than he does with a fanatic from his own religion. He has more in common with a rational, reasonable-minded Christian or Bud
‘And on that note,’ Lisa laughed, ‘let’s change the subject. Come on, Cliff, I’m relying on you to give me all the gossip about the romance on the set of Kanoon. What’s really going on there?’
‘Yes! Yes!’ Reeta cried out excitedly. ‘And all about the new girl. There’s so much of scandal about her that I can’t even say her name out loud, yaar. And everything, anything at all about Anil Kapoor! I just love him to pieces!’
‘And Sanjay Dutt!’ Geeta added, trembling dramatically at the mention of his name. ‘Is it true that you actually went to his party in Versova? Oh, my God! How I would love to be there! Tell us all about it!’
Encouraged by that febrile curiosity, Cliff De Souza spun out yarns about the Bollywood stars, and Chandra Mehta added titillating ruffles of gossip throughout. It became clear during the lunch that Cliff had an eye for Reeta, and Chandra Mehta directed much of his attention to Geeta. The long lunch was the beginning of a long day and night they’d planned to spend together. Warming to their themes, and with half their minds on the pleasures of the night to come, the movie men gradually shifted their gossip and anecdotes into the area of sex and sexual scandals. They were funny stories, sometimes straying into the bizarre. We were all laughing hard when Kavita Singh entered the restaurant. The laughter was still rippling through us as I introduced Kavita around the table.
‘Excuse me,’ she said, with the kind of frown that climbs out of deep trouble and refuses to leave. ‘I have to speak to you, Lin.’
‘You can talk about the case here, Kavita,’ I offered, still bright with the laughter of a minute before. ‘They’ll find it interesting.’
‘It’s not about the case,’ she insisted firmly. ‘It’s about Abdullah Taheri.’
I stood at once and excused myself, nodding to Lisa that she should stay and wait for me to return. Kavita and I walked to the foyer of the restaurant. When we were alone, she spoke.
‘Your friend Taheri is in deep shit.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean that I heard a whisper from the crime staffer at the Times. He said that Abdullah is on a police hit list. Shoot on sight, he said.’
‘What?’
‘The cops’ orders are to take him alive, if they can, but to take no chances with him. They’re sure he’s armed, and they’re sure he’ll shoot, if they try to arrest him. At the slightest hesitation from him, they’re ordered to shoot him down like a dog.’
‘Why? What’s it all about?’
‘They think he’s this Sapna guy. They’ve had a solid tip-off, with solid evidence. They’re sure it’s him, and they’re going to get him. Today. It might have happened already. You can’t fuck with the cops in Bombay—not with something this serious. I’ve been looking for you for two hours.’
‘Sapna? It doesn’t make sense,’ I said. But it did make sense. It made perfect sense, somehow, and I couldn’t understand why. There were too many pieces missing; too many questions that I hadn’t asked, and should’ve asked, long before.
‘Sensible or not, it’s now a reality,’ she said, her voice trembling in the shudder of a resigned and pitying shrug. ‘I’ve been looking for you everywhere. Didier told me you were here. I know Taheri’s a good friend of yours.’
‘Yeah. He’s a friend,’ I said, suddenly remembering that I was talking to a journalist. I stared at the dark carpet, and tried to find sense or direction in the sandstorm of my thoughts. Then I looked up and met her eyes. ‘Thanks, Kavita. I really appreciate it. Thanks a lot. I’ll have to go.’
‘Listen,’ she said more softly. ‘I filed the story. I phoned it in as soon as I heard it. If it makes the evening news, it might make the cops a little more careful. For the record, I don’t think he did it. I can’t believe it. I always liked him. I had a little crush on him for a while, right after you brought him to Leopold’s the first time. Maybe I’ve still got a crush on him, yaar. Anyway, I don’t think he’s Sapna, and I don’t think he did those … terrible things.’
She left, smiling for me and crying for him at the same time. At the table, I apologised for breaking up the lunch and offered a vague excuse for leaving. Without asking her if she wanted to come, I pulled back Lisa’s chair for her and lifted her handbag from the chair’s high back.
‘Oh, Lin, do you really have to go?’ Chandra complained. ‘We haven’t even talked about the casting-agency deal.’
‘Do you really know Abdullah Taheri?’ Cliff asked, the faintest hint of accusation in his curiosity.
I glared at him.
‘Yes.’
‘And you’re taking the lovely Lisa with you,’ Chandra pouted. ‘That’s a double disappointment.’
‘I’ve heard so much about him, yaar,’ Cliff persisted. ‘How did you meet him?’
‘He saved my life, Cliff,’ I said, a little more harshly than I’d intended. ‘The first time I met him, he saved my life, at the hash den run by the Standing Babas.’
I held open the door of the brasserie for Lisa, and looked back at the table. Cliff and Chandra had their heads close together, their whispers excluding the bewildered girls.
On the bike, outside the hotel, I told Lisa everything that I knew. Her healthy tan faded suddenly and her face was pale, but she pulled herself together quickly. She agreed with me that a trip to Leopold’s was logical, as a first step. Abdullah might be there, or he might’ve left a message with someone. She was afraid, and I felt that fear twisting in the muscles of her arms as she clung to my back. We hurtled through the ponderously slow traffic, riding on luck and instinct just as Abdullah might’ve done. At Leopold’s we found Didier drinking himself into the liquid abyss.
‘It’s over,’ he slurred, pouring himself another whisky from a large bottle. ‘It’s all over. They shot him dead almost an hour ago. Everyone is talking about it. The mosques in Dongri are calling the prayers for the dead.’
‘How do you know?’ I demanded. ‘Who told you?’
‘The prayers for the dead,’ he mumbled, his head lolling forward. ‘What a ridiculous and redundant phrase! There are no other kinds of prayers. Every prayer is a prayer for the dead.’
I grabbed the front of his shirt and shook him. The waiters, who all liked Didier as much as I did, watched me and calculated how far they would let me go.
‘Didier! Listen to me! How do you know? Who told you about it? Where did it happen?’
‘The police were here,’ he said, suddenly lucid. His pale blue eyes looked into mine as if he was looking for something at the bottom of a pond. ‘They were boasting about it to Mehmet, one of the owners. You know Mehmet. He’s also Iranian, like Abdullah. Some of the police from the Colaba station, across the road, were in the ambush. They said that he was surrounded in a little street near Crawford Market. They called on him to surrender himself to them. They said he stood perfectly still. They said his long hair was streaming behind him in the wind, and his black clothes. They talked about that for quite some time. It is strange, don’t you think, Lin, that they were talking about his clothes … and his hair? What does it mean? Then they … they said he took two guns from his jacket, and began to shoot at them. They all returned the fire at once. He was shot so many times that his body was mutilated, they said. It was torn apart by the fusillade.’
Lisa began to cry. She sat down next to Didier, and he wrapped an arm around her in the automatism of grief and shock. He didn’t look at her or acknowledge her. He patted at her shoulder and rocked from side to side, but his sorrow-struck expression would’ve been the same if he were alone and wrapping his arms about himself.
‘There was a big crowd,’ he continued. ‘They were very upset. The p
Crawford Market police station. I had to go there. I had to see the body. I had to see him. Maybe he was alive …
‘Wait here,’ I told Lisa. ‘Wait with Didier, or get a cab home. I’ll be back.’
A spear rammed into my side, up beside my heart, and out through the top of my chest. The spear of Abdullah’s death, the spear of thinking about his dead, dead body. I rode to Crawford Market, and every breath pushed the rough spear up against my heart.
Near the market police station I was forced to abandon the bike because a milling crowd mobbed the road. Striking out on foot, I soon found myself in a wild, aimlessly rambling frenzy of people. Most of them were Muslims. What I could make out from the many chants and shouted slogans indicated that they weren’t simply mourners. Abdullah’s death had touched off a prairie fire of discontent and long-nursed grievances in the neglected acres of the poor around the market area. Men were shouting a confusing collection of complaints, and clamouring for their own causes. I could hear prayers ringing out from several places.
Inside the legions of screaming men it was chaos, and every step toward the police station was won with a wrestling, shoving effort of force and will. Men came in waves that swept me sideways and then forward and then back. They pushed and punched and kicked out with their legs. More than once I almost went under those trampling feet, reaching out at the last moment to save myself by grappling my fingers into a shirt or a beard or a shawl. I finally caught sight of the police station and the police. Wearing helmets and carrying shields, they were three or four deep across the whole width of the building.