A Son of the Circus Read online

  “Not one but two!” And Vera took only one with her.

  To Farrokh and Jamshed, their parents were already elderly. Even Lowji and Meher might have agreed that the most vigorous of their child-raising abilities were behind them; they’d do their best with the little boy, but after Jamshed married Josefine Zilk, it made sense for the younger couple to take over the responsibility. Theirs was a mixed marriage, anyway; and Zürich, where they would settle, was an international city—a dark-haired boy of strictly white parentage would easily fit in. By then he knew Hindi in addition to English; in Zürich he would learn German, although Jamshed and Josefine would start him in an English-speaking school. After a time, the senior Daruwallas became like grandparents to the boy; from the beginning, Lowji had legally adopted him.

  And after Jamshed and Josefine had children of their own—and there came that inevitable passage through adolescence, wherein the orphaned twin expressed a disgruntled alienation from them all—it was only natural that Farrokh would emerge as a kind of big brother to the boy. The 20-year difference between them made Farrokh something of another father to the child, too. By then, Farrokh was married to the former Julia Zilk, and they’d started a family of their own. Wherever he went, the adopted boy appeared to belong, but Farrokh and Julia were his favorites.

  One shouldn’t feel sorry for Vera’s abandoned child. He was always part of a large family, even if there was something dislocating in the geographical upheavals in the young man’s life—between Toronto, Zürich and Bombay—and even if, at an early age, there could be detected in him a certain detachment. And later there was in his language—in his German, in his English, in his Hindi—something decidedly odd, if not exactly a speech impediment. He spoke very slowly, as if he were composing a written sentence, complete with punctuation, in his mind’s eye. If he had an accent, it was nothing traceable; it was more a matter of his enunciation, which was so very deliberate, as if he were in the habit of speaking to children, or addressing crowds.

  And the issue that naturally intrigued them all, which was whether he was the offspring of Neville Eden or of Danny Mills, would not be easily decided. In the medical records of One Day We’ll Go to India, Darling—which are, to this day, the only enduring records that the film was ever made—it was clearly noted that Neville and Danny were of the same common blood group, and the very same type that the twins would share.

  Various Daruwallas argued that their twin was too good-looking, and too disinclined toward strong drink, to be a conceivable creation of Danny’s, Furthermore, the boy showed little interest in reading, much less in writing—he didn’t even keep a diary—whereas he was quite a gifted and highly disciplined young actor, even in grammar school. (This pointed the finger at the late Neville.) But, of course, the Daruwallas knew very little about the other twin. If one is determined to feel sorry for either of these twins, perhaps one should indulge such a feeling for the child Vera kept.

  As for the little boy who was abandoned in India, his first days were marked by the necessity of giving him a name. He would be a Daruwalla, but in concession to his all-white appearance, it was agreed he should have an English first name. The family concurred that his name should be John, which was the Christian name of none other than Lord Duckworth himself; even Lowji conceded that the Duckworth Club was the source of the responsibility he bore for Veronica Rose’s cast-off child. Needless to say, no one would have been so stupid as to name a boy Duckworth Daruwalla. John Daruwalla, on the other hand, had a friendly Anglo-Indian ring.

  Everyone could more or less pronounce this name. Indians are familiar with the letter J; even German-speaking Swiss don’t badly maul the name John, although they tend to Frenchify the name as “Jean.” Daruwalla is as phonetic as most names come, although German-speaking Swiss pronounce the W as V, hence the young man was known in Zürich as Jean Daruvalla; this was close enough. His Swiss passport was issued in the name of John Daruwalla—plain but distinctive.

  Not for 39 years did there awaken in Farrokh that first stirring of the creative process, which old Lowji would never experience. Now, nearly 40 years after the birth of Vera’s twins, Farrokh found himself wishing that he’d never experienced the creative process, either. For it was by the interference of Farrokh’s imagination that little John Daruwalla had become Inspector Dhar, the man Bombay most loved to hate—and Bombay was a city of many passionate hatreds.

  Farrokh had conceived Inspector Dhar in the spirit of satire—of quality satire. Why were there so many easily offended people? Why had they reacted to Inspector Dhar so humorlessly? Had they no appreciation for comedy? Only now, when he was almost 60, did it occur to Farrokh that he was his father’s son in this respect: he’d uncovered a natural talent for pissing people off. If Lowji had long been perceived as an assassination-in-progress, why had Farrokh been blind to this possible result in the case of Inspector Dhar? And he’d thought he was being so careful!

  He’d written that first screenplay slowly and with great attention to detail. This was the surgeon in him; he hadn’t learned such carefulness or authenticity from Danny Mills, and certainly not from his attendance at those three-hour spectacles in the shabby downtown cinema palaces of Bombay—those art-deco ruins where the air-conditioning was always “undergoing repair” and the urine frequently overflowed the lavatories.

  More than the movies, he’d watched the audience eating their snacks. In the 1950s and ’60s, the masala recipe was working—not only in Bombay but throughout South and Southeast Asia and the Middle East, and even in the Soviet Union. There was music mixed with murder, sob stories intercut with slapstick, mayhem in tandem with the most maudlin sentimentality—and, above all, the satisfying violence that occurs whenever the forces of good confront and punish the forces of evil. There were gods, too; they helped the heroes. But Dr. Daruwalla didn’t believe in the usual gods; when he started writing, he’d just recently become a convert to Christianity. To that Hindi hodgepodge which was the Bombay cinema, the doctor added his tough-guy voice-over and Dhar’s antiheroic sneer. Farrokh would wisely leave his newfound Christianity out of the picture.

  He’d followed Danny Mills’s recommendations to the letter. He selected a director he liked. Balraj Gupta was a young man with a less heavy hand than most—he had an almost self-mocking manner—and more important, he was not such a well-known director that Dr. Daruwalla couldn’t bully him a little. The deal was as Danny Mills had said a deal should be, including the doctor’s choice of the young, unknown actor who would play Inspector Dhar. John Daruwalla was 22.

  Farrokh’s first effort to pass off the young man as an Anglo-Indian wasn’t at all convincing to Balraj Gupta. “He looks like some kind of European to me,” the director complained, “but his Hindi is the real thing, I guess.” And after the success of the first Inspector Dhar movie, Balraj Gupta would never dream of interfering with the orthopedist (from Canada!) who’d given Bombay its most hated antihero.

  The first movie was called Inspector Dhar and the Hanging Mali. This was more than 20 years after a real gardener had been found hanging from a neem tree on old Ridge Road in Malabar Hill, a posh part of town for anyone to be hanged in. The mali was a Muslim who’d just been dismissed from tending the gardens of several Malabar Hill residents; he’d been accused of stealing, but the charge had never been proven and there were those who claimed that the real-life gardener had been fired because of his extremist views. The mali was said to be furious about the closing of the Mosque of Babar.

  Although Farrokh fictionalized the mail’s story 20 years after the little-known facts of the case, Inspector Dhar and the Hanging Mali wasn’t viewed as a period piece. For one thing, the 16th-century Babri mosque was still in dispute. The Hindus still wanted their idols to remain in the mosque in honor of the birthplace of Rama. The Muslims still wanted the idols removed. In the late 1960s, very much in keeping with the language of that time, the Muslims said they wanted to “liberate” the Mosque of Babar—whereas it was t
he birthplace of Rama that the Hindus said they wanted to liberate.

  In the movie, Inspector Dhar sought to keep the peace. And, of course, this was impossible. The essence of an Inspector Dhar movie was that violence could be relied upon to erupt around him. Among the earliest of the victims was Inspector Dhar’s wife! Yes, he was married in the first movie, albeit briefly; the car-bomb death of his wife apparently justified his sexual licentiousness for the rest of the movie—and for all the other Inspector Dhar movies to come. And everyone was supposed to believe that this all-white Dhar was a Hindu. He’s seen lighting his wife’s cremation fire; he’s seen wearing the traditional dhoti, with his head traditionally shaved. All during the course of the first movie, his hair is growing back. Other women rub the stubble, as if in the most profound respect for his late wife. His status as a widower gains him great sympathy and lots of women—a very Western idea, and very offensive.

  To begin with, both Hindus and Muslims were offended. Widowers were offended, not to mention widows and gardeners. And from the very first Inspector Dhar movie, policemen were offended. The misfortune of the real-life hanging mali had never been explained. The crime—that is, if it was a crime, if the gardener hadn’t hanged himself—was never solved.

  In the movie, the audience is offered three versions of the hanging, each one a perfect solution. Thus the unfortunate mali is hanged three times, and each hanging offended some group. Muslims were angry that Muslim fanatics were blamed for hanging the gardener. Hindus were outraged that Hindu fundamentalists were blamed for hanging the gardener; and Sikhs were incensed that Sikh extremists were blamed for hanging the gardener, as a means of setting Muslims and Hindus against each other. The Sikhs were also offended because every time there’s a taxi in the movie, it’s driven wildly and aggressively by someone who’s perceived to be a crazed Sikh.

  But the film was terribly funny! Dr. Daruwalla had thought.

  In the darkness of the Ladies’ Garden, Farrokh reconsidered. Inspector Dhar and the Hanging Mali might have been terribly funny to Canadians, he imagined—with the notable exception of Canadian gardeners. But Canadians had never seen the film, except those former Bombayites who lived in Toronto; they’d watched all the Inspector Dhar movies on videocassettes, and even they were offended. Inspector Dhar himself had never found his films especially funny. And when Dr. Daruwalla had questioned Balraj Gupta concerning the comic (or at least satiric) nature of the Inspector Dhar movies, the director had responded in a most offhand manner. “They make lots of lakhs!” the director had said. “Now that’s funny!”

  But it was no longer funny to Farrokh.

  What if Mrs. Dogar Was a Hijra?

  In the first darkness of the evening, the Duckworthians with small children had begun to occupy the tables in the Ladies’ Garden. The children enjoyed eating outdoors, but not even their enthusiastic high-pitched voices disturbed Farrokh’s journey into the past. Mr. Sethna disapproved of all small children—he especially disapproved of eating with them—but he nevertheless considered it his duty to oversee Dr. Daruwalla’s state of mind in the Ladies’ Garden.

  Mr. Sethna had seen Dhar leave with the dwarf, but when Vinod returned to the Duckworth Club—the steward assumed that the nasty-looking midget was simply making his taxi available to Dr. Daruwalla, too—the dwarf hadn’t waddled in and out of the foyer, as usual; Vinod had gone into the Sports Shop, where the dwarf was on friendly terms with the ball boys and the racquet stringers. Vinod had become their favorite scavenger. Mr. Sethna disapproved of scavenging and of dwarfs; the steward thought dwarfs were disgusting. As for the ball boys and the racquet stringers, they thought Vinod was cute.

  If the film press was at first being facetious when they referred to Vinod as “Inspector Dhar’s dwarf bodyguard”—they also called the dwarf “Dhar’s thug chauffeur”—Vinod took his reputation seriously. The dwarf was always well armed, and his weapons of choice were both legal and easily concealed in his taxi. Vinod collected squash-racquet handles from the racquet stringers at the Duckworth Sports Shop. When a racquet head was broken, a stringer sawed the head off and sanded down the stump until it was smooth; the remaining squash-racquet handle was of the right length and weight for a dwarf, and the wood was very hard. Vinod wanted only wooden racquet handles, which were becoming scarce. But the dwarf hoarded them; and the way he used them, he rarely broke one. He would jab or strike with only one racquet handle—he would go for the balls or the knees, or both—while he held the other handle out of reach. Invariably, the man under attack would grab hold of the offending racquet handle; thereupon Vinod would bring the other handle down on the man’s wrist.

  It had been an unbeatable tactic. Invite the man to grab one racquet handle, then break his wrist with the other handle. The hell with a man’s head—Vinod often couldn’t reach a man’s head, anyway. A broken wrist usually stopped a fight; if a fool wanted to keep fighting, he would be fighting with one hand against two squash-racquet handles. If the film press had turned the dwarf into a bodyguard and a thug, Vinod didn’t mind. He was genuinely protective of Inspector Dhar.

  Mr. Sethna disapproved of such violence, and of the Sport Shop racquet stringers who happily provided Vinod with his arsenal of squash-racquet handles. The ball boys also gave the dwarf dozens of discarded tennis balls. In the car-driving business, as Vinod described it, there was a lot of “just waiting” in his car. The former clown and acrobat liked to keep busy. By squeezing the dead tennis balls, Vinod strengthened his hands; the dwarf also claimed that this exercise relieved his arthritis, although Dr. Daruwalla believed that aspirin was probably a more reliable source of relief.

  It had occurred to Mr. Sethna that Dr. Daruwalla’s longstanding relationship with Vinod was probably the reason the doctor didn’t drive a car; it had been years since Farrokh had even owned a car in Bombay. The dwarf’s reputation as Dhar’s driver tended to obscure, for most observers, the fact that Vinod also drove for Dr. Daruwalla. It spooked Mr. Sethna how the doctor and the dwarf seemed so aware of each other-even as the dwarf loaded up his car with squash-racquet handles and old tennis balls, even as the doctor went on sitting in the Ladies’ Garden. It was as if Farrokh always knew that Vinod was available—as if the dwarf were waiting only for him. Well, either for him or for Dhar.

  It now occurred to Mr. Sethna that Dr. Daruwalla was intending to occupy his luncheon table through the dinner hours; perhaps the doctor was expecting dinner guests and had decided it was the simplest way to hold the table. But when the old steward inquired of Dr. Daruwalla about the number of place settings, Mr. Sethna was informed that the doctor was going home for “supper.” Promptly, as if he’d been awakened from a dream, Farrokh got up to leave.

  Mr. Sethna observed and overheard him calling his wife from the telephone in the foyer.

  “Nein, Liebchen,” said Dr. Daruwalla. “I have not told him—there wasn’t a good moment to tell him.” Then Mr. Sethna listened to Dr. Daruwalla on the subject of the murder of Mr. Lal. So it is a murder! Mr. Sethna thought. Bonked by his own putter! And when he heard the part about the two-rupee note in Mr. Lal’s mouth, and specifically the intriguing threat that was connected to Inspector Dhar—MORE MEMBERS DIE IF DHAR REMAINS A MEMBER—Mr. Sethna felt that his eavesdropping efforts had been rewarded, at least for this day.

  Then something mildly remarkable happened. Dr. Daruwalla hung up the phone and turned into the foyer without first looking-where he was going, and who should he run smack into but the second Mrs. Dogar. The doctor bumped into her so hard, Mr. Sethna was excited by the possibility that the vulgar woman would be knocked down. But instead it was Farrokh who fell. More astonishing, upon the collision, Mrs. Dogar was shoved backward into Mr. Dogar—and he fell down, too. What a fool for marrying such a younger, stronger woman! Mr. Sethna thought. Then there was the usual bowing and apologizing, and everyone assured everyone else that he or she was absolutely fine. Sometimes the absurdities of good manners, which were demonstrated in such profu
sion at the Duckworth Club, gave Mr. Sethna gas.

  Thus, finally, Farrokh escaped from the old steward’s overseeing eye. But while he waited for Vinod to fetch the car, Dr. Daruwalla—unobserved by Mr. Sethna—touched the sore spot in his ribs, where there would surely be a bruise, and he marveled at the hardness and sturdiness of the second Mrs. Dogar. It was like running into a stone wall!

  It crossed the doctor’s mind that Mrs. Dogar was sufficiently masculine to be a hijra—not a hijra prostitute, of course, but just an ordinary eunuch-transvestite. In which case Mrs. Dogar might not have been eyeballing Inspector Dhar for the purpose of seducing him; instead, she might have had it in her mind to castrate him!

  Farrokh felt ashamed of himself for thinking like a screenwriter again. How many Kingfishers have I had? he wondered; it relieved him to hold the beer accountable for his far-fetched fantasizing. In truth, he knew nothing about Mrs. Dogar—where she’d come from—but hijras occupied such a marginal position in Indian society; the doctor was aware that most of them came from the lower classes. Whoever she was, the second Mrs. Dogar was an upper-class woman. And Mr. Dogar—although he was a foolish old fart, in Farrokh’s opinion—was a Malabar Hill man; he came from old money, and lots of it. Nor was Mr. Dogar such a fool that he wouldn’t know the difference between a vagina and a burn scar from the famous hijra hot-oil treatment.

  While he waited for Vinod, Dr. Daruwalla watched the second Mrs. Dogar help Mr. Dogar into their car. She towered over the poor parking-lot attendant, who sheepishly opened the driver’s-side door for her. Farrokh was unsurprised to see that Mrs. Dogar was the driver in the family. He’d heard all about her fitness training, which he knew included weight lifting and other unfeminine pursuits. Perhaps she takes testosterone, too, the doctor imagined, for the second Mrs. Dogar looked as if her sex hormones were raging—her male sex hormones, Dr. Daruwalla speculated. He’d heard that such women sometimes develop a clitoris as large as a finger, as long as a young boy’s penis!