A Son of the Circus Read online

  But Ranjit’s wife had recently died, and he was only a few years away from retirement. He still worked for the surgical associates at the Hospital for Crippled Children, and he always served as Farrokh’s secretary whenever the Canadian was an Honorary Consultant Surgeon in Bombay. And Ranjit had decided that the time for remarrying was ripe. He thought he should do it without delay, for it made him sound younger to describe himself as a working medical secretary than to confess he was retired; just to be sure, in his more recent matrimonial advertisements, he’d attempted to capitalize on both his position and his pending retirement, citing that he was “rewardingly employed” and “anticipating a v. active, early retirement.”

  It was things like “v. active” that Dr. Daruwalla found unseemly about Ranjit’s present matrimonials, and the fact that Ranjit was a shameless liar. Because of a standard policy at The Times of India—the advertising brides and grooms eschewed revealing their names, preferring the confidentiality of a number—it was possible for Ranjit to publish a half-dozen ads in the same Sunday’s matrimonial pages. Ranjit had discovered it was popular to claim that caste was “no bar,” while it was also still popular to declare himself a Hindu Brahmin—“caste-conscious and religion-minded, matching horoscopes a must.” Therefore, Ranjit advertised several versions of himself simultaneously. He told Farrokh that he was seeking the very best wife, with or without caste-consciousness or religion. Why not give himself the benefit of meeting everyone who was available?

  Dr. Daruwalla was embarrassed that he’d been inexorably drawn into the world of Ranjit’s matrimonials. Every Sunday, Farrokh and Julia read through the marriage advertisements in The Times of India. It was a contest, to see which of them could identify all of Ranjit’s ads. But Ranjit’s phone message was not of a matrimonial nature. Once again, the aging secretary had called to complain about “the dwarf’s wife.” This was Ranjit’s condemning reference to Deepa, for whom he harbored a forbidding disapproval—the kind that only Mr. Sethna might have shared. Dr. Daruwalla wondered if medical secretaries were universally cruel and dismissive to anyone seeking a doctor’s attention. Was such hostility engendered only by a heartfelt desire to protect all doctors from wasting their time?

  To be fair to Ranjit, Deepa was exceptionally aggressive in wasting Dr. Daruwalla’s time. She’d called to make a morning appointment for the runaway child prostitute—even before Vinod had persuaded the doctor to examine this new addition to Mr. Garg’s stable of street girls. Ranjit described the patient as “someone allegedly without bones,” for Deepa had doubtless used her circus terminology (“boneless”) with him. Ranjit was communicating his scorn for the vocabulary of the dwarf’s wife. From Deepa’s description, the child prostitute might have been made of pure plastic—“another medical marvel, and no doubt a virgin,” Ranjit concluded his sardonic message.

  The next message was an old one, from Vinod. The dwarf must have called while Farrokh was still sitting in the Ladies’ Garden at the Duckworth Club. The message was really for Inspector Dhar.

  “Our favorite inspector is telling me he is sleeping on your balcony tonight,” the dwarf began. “If he is changing his mind, I am just cruising—just killing time, you know. If the inspector is wanting me, he is already knowing the doormen at the Taj and at the Oberoi—for message-leaving, I am meaning. I am having a late-night picking-up at the Wetness Cabaret,” Vinod admitted, “but this is being while you are sleeping. In the morning, I am picking up you, as usual. By the way, I am reading a magazine with me in it!” the dwarf concluded.

  The only magazines that Vinod read were movie magazines, where he could occasionally glimpse himself in the celebrity snapshots opening the door of one of his Ambassadors for Inspector Dhar. There on the door would be the red circle with the T in it (for taxi) and the name of the dwarf’s company, which was often partially obscured.

  VINOD’S BLUE

  NILE, LTD.

  As opposed to “great,” Farrokh presumed.

  Dhar was the only movie star who rode in Vinod’s cars; and the dwarf relished his occasional appearances with his “favorite inspector” in the film-gossip magazines. Vinod was enduringly hopeful that other movie stars would follow Dhar’s lead, but Dimple Kapadia and Jaya Prada and Pooja Bedi and Pooja Bhatt—not to mention Chunky Pandey and Sunny Deol, or Madhuri Dixit and Moon Moon Sen, to name only a few—had all declined to ride in the dwarf’s “luxury” taxis. Possibly they thought it would damage their reputations to be seen with Dhar’s thug.

  As for the “cruising” back and forth between the Oberoi and the Taj, these were Vinod’s favorite territories for moonlighting. The dwarf was recognized and well treated by the doormen because whenever Dhar was in Bombay, the actor stayed at the Oberoi and at the Taj. By maintaining a suite at both hotels, Dhar was assured of good service; as long as the Oberoi and the Taj knew they were in competition with each other, they outdid themselves to give Dhar the utmost privacy. The house detectives were harsh with autograph seekers or other celebrity hounds; at the reception desk of either hotel, if you didn’t know the given code name, which kept changing, you were told that the movie star was not a guest.

  By “killing time,” Vinod meant he was picking up extra money. The dwarf was good at spotting hapless tourists in the lobbies of both hotels; he would offer to drive the foreigners to a good restaurant, or wherever they wanted to go. Vinod was also gifted at recognizing those tourists who’d had harrowing taxi experiences and were therefore vulnerable to the temptations of his “luxury” service.

  Dr. Daruwalla understood that the dwarf could hardly have supported himself by driving only the doctor and Dhar around. Mr. Garg was a more regular customer. Farrokh was also familiar with the dwarf’s habit of “message-leaving,” for Vinod had taken advantage of Inspector Dhar’s celebrity status with the doormen at the Oberoi and at the Taj. It may have been awkward, but it was Vinod’s only means of putting himself “on call.” There were no cellular phones in Bombay; car phones were unknown—a decided inconvenience in the private-taxi business, which Vinod complained about periodically. There were radio pagers, or “beepers,” but the dwarf wouldn’t use them. “I am preferring to be holding out,” Vinod maintained, by which he meant he was waiting for the day when cellular phones would upgrade his car-driving enterprise.

  Therefore, if Farrokh or John D. wanted the dwarf, they left a message for him with the doormen at the Taj and the Oberoi. But there was another reason for Vinod to call. Vinod didn’t like showing up at Dr. Daruwalla’s apartment building unannounced; there was no phone in the lobby, and Vinod refused to see himself as a “servant”—he refused to climb the stairs. When it came to climbing stairs, his dwarfism was a handicap. Dr. Daruwalla had protested, on Vinod’s behalf, to the Residents’ Society. At first, Farrokh had argued that the dwarf was a cripple—cripples shouldn’t be forced to use the stairs. The Residents’ Society had argued that cripples shouldn’t be servants. Dr. Daruwalla had countered that Vinod was an independent businessman; the dwarf was nobody’s servant. After all, Vinod owned a private-taxi company. A chauffeur was a servant, the Residents’ Society said.

  Regardless of the absurd ruling, Farrokh had told Vinod that if he ever had to come to the Daruwallas’ sixth-floor flat, he was to take the restricted residents’ elevator. But whenever Vinod stood in the lobby and waited for the elevator—regardless of the lateness of the hour—his presence would be detected by the first-floor dogs. The first-floor flats harbored a disproportionate number of dogs; and although the doctor was disinclined to believe Vinod’s interpretation—that all dogs hated all dwarfs—he could offer no scientifically acceptable reason why all the first-floor dogs should suddenly awake and commence their frenzied barking whenever Vinod was waiting for the forbidden lift.

  And so it was tediously necessary for Vinod to arrange an exact time for picking up Farrokh or John D. so that the dwarf could wait in the Ambassador at the curb—or in the nearby alley—and not enter the lobby of the apartm
ent building at all. Besides, it sorely tested the delicate ecosystem of the apartment building to have Vinod attract the late-night, furious attention of the first-floor dogs; and Farrokh was already in hot water with the Residents’ Society—his dissent to their opinion on the elevator issue had offended the building’s other residents.

  Since the doctor was the son of an acknowledged great man—and a famously assassinated great man, too—there was other fuel for resenting Dr. Daruwalla. That he lived abroad and could still afford to have his apartment occupied by his servants—often, for years without a single visit—had certainly made him unpopular, if not openly despised.

  That the dogs appeared guilty of discrimination against dwarfs wasn’t the sole reason that Dr. Daruwalla disliked them. Their insane barking disturbed the doctor because of its total irrationality; any irrationality reminded Farrokh of everything he failed to comprehend about India.

  Only that morning he’d stood on his balcony and overheard his fifth-floor neighbor, Dr. Malik Abdul Aziz—a model “Servant of the Almighty”—praying on the balcony below him. When Dhar slept on the balcony, he often commented to Farrokh on how soothing it was to wake up to the prayers of Dr. Aziz.

  “Praise be to Allah, Lord of Creation”—that much Dr. Daruwalla had understood. And later there was something about “the straight path.” It was a very pure prayer—Farrokh had liked it, and he’d long admired Dr. Aziz for his unswerving faith—but Dr. Daruwalla’s thoughts had veered sharply away from religion, in the direction of politics, because he was reminded of the aggressive billboards he’d seen around the city. The messages on such hoardings were essentially hostile; they merely purported to be religious.

  ISLAM IS THE ONE PATH

  TO HUMANITY FOR ALL

  And that wasn’t as bad as those Shiv Sena slogans, which were all over Bombay. (MAHARASHTRA FOR MAHARASHTRIANS. Or, SAY IT WITH PRIDE: I’M A HINDU.)

  Something evil had corrupted the purity of prayer. Something as dignified and private as Dr. Aziz, with his prayer rug rolled out on his own balcony, had been compromised by proselytizing, had been distorted by politics. And if this madness had a sound, Farrokh knew, it would be the sound of irrationally barking dogs.

  Inoperable

  In the apartment building, Dr. Daruwalla and Dr. Aziz were the most consistent early risers; surgeries for both—Dr. Aziz was a urologist. If he prays every morning, so should I, Farrokh thought. Politely, that morning, he had waited for the Muslim to finish. There followed the shuffling sound of Dr. Aziz’s slippers as he rolled up his prayer rug while Dr. Daruwalla leafed through his Book of Common Prayer; Farrokh was looking for something appropriate, or at least familiar. He was ashamed that his ardor for Christianity seemed to be receding into the past, or had his faith entirely retreated? After all, it had been only a minor sort of miracle that had converted him; perhaps Farrokh needed another small miracle to inspire him now. He realized that most Christians were faithful without the incentive of any miracle, and this realization instantly interfered with his search for a prayer. As a Christian, too, he’d lately begun to wonder if he was a fake.

  In Toronto, Farrokh was an unassimilated Canadian—and an Indian who avoided the Indian community. In Bombay, the doctor was constantly confronted with how little he knew India—and how unlike an Indian he thought himself to be. In truth, Dr. Daruwalla was an orthopedist and a Duckworthian, and—in both cases—he was merely a member of two private clubs. Even his conversion to Christianity felt false; he was merely a holiday churchgoer, Christmas and Easter—he couldn’t remember when he’d last partaken of the innermost pleasure of prayer.

  Although it was quite a mouthful—and it was the whole story of what he was supposed to believe, in a nutshell—Dr. Daruwalla had begun his experiment in prayer with the so-called Apostles’ Creed, the standard Confession of the Faith. “‘I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth …’” Farrokh recited breathlessly, but the capital letters were a distraction to him; he stopped.

  Later, as he had stepped into the elevator, Dr. Daruwalla reflected on how easily his mood for prayer had been lost. He resolved that he would compliment Dr. Aziz on his highly disciplined faith at the first opportunity. But when Dr. Aziz stepped into the elevator at the fifth floor, Farrokh was completely flustered. He scarcely managed to say, “Good morning, Doctor—you’re looking well!”

  “Why, thank you—so are you, Doctor!” said Dr. Aziz, looking somewhat sly and conspiratorial. When the elevator door closed and they were alone together, Dr. Aziz said, “Have you heard about Dr. Dev?”

  Farrokh wondered, Which Dr. Dev? There was a Dr. Dev who was a cardiologist, there was another Dev who was an anesthesiologist—there are a bunch of Devs, he thought. Even Dr. Aziz was known in the medical community as Urology Aziz, which was the only sensible way to distinguish him from a half-dozen other Dr. Azizes.

  “Dr. Dev?” Dr. Daruwalla asked cautiously.

  “Gastroenterology Dev,” said Urology Aziz.

  “Oh, yes, that Dr. Dev,” Farrokh said.

  “But have you heard?” asked Dr. Aziz. “He has AIDS—he caught it from a patient. And I don’t mean from sexual contact.”

  “From examining a patient?” Dr. Daruwalla said.

  “From a colonoscopy, I believe,” said Dr. Aziz. “She was a prostitute.”

  “From a colonoscopy… but how?” Dr. Daruwalla asked.

  “At least forty percent of the prostitutes must be infected with the virus,” Dr. Aziz said. “Among my patients, the ones who see prostitutes test HIV-positive twenty percent of the time!”

  “But from a colonoscopy. I don’t understand how” Farrokh insisted, but Dr. Aziz was too excited to listen.

  “I have patients telling me—a urologist—that they have cured themselves of AIDS by drinking their own urine!” Dr. Aziz said.

  “Ah, yes, urine therapy,” said Dr. Daruwalla. “Very popular, but—”

  “But here is the problem!” cried Dr. Aziz. He pulled a folded piece of paper from his pocket; some words were scrawled on the paper in longhand. “Do you know what the Kama Sutra says?” Dr. Aziz asked Farrokh. Here was a Muslim asking a Parsi (and a convert to Christianity) about a Hindu collection of aphorisms concerning sexual exploits—some would say “love.” Dr. Daruwalla thought it wise to be careful; he said nothing.

  As for urine therapy, it was also wise to say nothing. Moraji Desai, the former prime minister, was a practitioner of urine therapy—and wasn’t there something called the Water of Life Foundation? Best to say nothing about that, too, Farrokh concluded. Besides, Urology Aziz wanted to read something from the Kama Sutra. It would be best to listen.

  “Among the many situations where adultery is allowed,” Dr. Aziz said, “just listen to this: ‘When such clandestine relations are safe and a sure method of earning money.’” Dr. Aziz refolded the often-folded piece of paper and returned this evidence to his pocket. “Well, do you see?” he said.

  “What do you mean?” Farrokh asked.

  “Well, that’s the problem—obviously!” Dr. Aziz said.

  Farrokh was still trying to figure out how Dr. Dev had caught AIDS while performing a colonoscopy; meanwhile, Dr. Aziz had concluded that AIDS among prostitutes was caused directly by the bad advice given in the Kama Sutra. (Farrokh doubted that most prostitutes could read.) This was another example of the first-floor dogs—they were barking again. Dr. Daruwalla smiled nervously all the way to the entrance to the alley, where Urology Aziz had parked his car.

  There’d been some brief confusion, because Vinod’s Ambassador had momentarily blocked the alley, but Dr. Aziz was soon on his way. Farrokh had waited in the alley for the dwarf to turn his car around. It was a close, narrow alley—briny-smelling, because of the proximity of the sea, and as warm and steamy as a blocked drain. The alley was a haven for the beggars who frequented the small seaside hotels along Marine Drive. Dr. Daruwalla supposed that these beggars were especially interested in the Arab clientele;
they were reputed to give more money. But the beggar who suddenly emerged from the alley wasn’t one of these.

  He was a badly limping boy who could occasionally be seen standing on his head at Chowpatty Beach. The doctor knew that this wasn’t a trick of sufficient promise for Vinod and Deepa to offer the urchin a home at the circus. The boy had slept on the beach—his hair was caked with sand—and the first sunlight had driven him into the alley for a few more hours’ sleep. The two automobiles, arriving and departing, had probably attracted his attention. When Vinod backed the Ambassador into the alley, the beggar blocked the doctor’s way to the car. The boy stood with both arms extended, palms up; there was a veil of mucous over his eyes and a whitish paste marked the corners of his mouth.

  The eyes of the orthopedic surgeon were drawn to the boy’s limp. The beggar’s right foot was rigidly locked in a right-angle position, as if the foot and ankle were permanently fused—a deformity called ankylosis, which was familiar to Dr. Daruwalla from the common congenital condition of clubfoot. Yet both the foot and ankle were unusually flattened—a crush injury, the doctor guessed—and the boy bore his weight on his heel alone. Also, the bad foot was considerably smaller than the good one; this led the doctor to imagine that the injury had damaged the epiphyseal plates, which is the region in bones where growth takes place. It wasn’t only that the boy’s foot had fused with his ankle; his foot had also stopped growing. Farrokh felt certain that the boy was inoperable.

  Just then, Vinod opened the driver’s-side door. The beggar was wary of the dwarf, but Vinod wasn’t brandishing his squash-racquet handles. The dwarf was nevertheless determined to open the rear door for Dr. Daruwalla, who observed that the beggar was taller but frailer than Vinod—Vinod simply pushed the boy out of the way. Farrokh saw the beggar stumble; his mashed foot was as stiff as a hammer. Once inside the Ambassador, the doctor lowered the window only enough so that the boy could hear him.