Bombay Time Read Online Free PDF Page A

a public vehicle. He stared out of the window in mute frustration.
    Last year, he had decided to sell his car. He was getting too old and irritable to drive in a city where thousands of snarling, noisy vehicles attacked one another daily. The sweat, the grime, the black exhaust fumes of the double-decker BEST buses, the bleeping horns, the constant stream of people who darted in front of traffic—all were too much for him. The end of his driving life came on a Monday morning as he sat stuck in a traffic jam at Bori Bunder. The chaotic scene before him hit him with all the power of a blow to the head. “This is like hell,” he said out loud. “No. This
is
hell.” He sold his car the next week.
    Still, there were times when he missed the exhilaration of driving—those heavenly nights when traffic moved briskly down the wide lanes of Worli Sea Face and he felt the spray of the sea across three lanes of traffic; his first glimpse of the setting sun as he flew down the flyover bridge at Kemp’s Corner; the dexterous weaving in and out of traffic that he did on his way to an important meeting.
    When they finally got to Cama Baug at 8:30 P.M., after having dodged the bony outstretched arms of the beggars in the alley, they were both already sweating from the Bombay heat. Rusi felt nauseous. To divert his mind, he thought of Binny, happily married in London. Rusi had visited her once and had fallen in love with the city—its broad, clean roads, its green parks, even the damp and chilly weather that everyone else detested. I may have been a flop as a husband and an unsuccessful businessman, but one thing I did successfully, he now thought. I got Binny out of this city that’s going to hell. At the thought of his daughter, he felt a familiar ache in his heart. He knew that in her own way, Coomi missed Binny as much as he did. Now, he wondered whether she, too, was haunted by those dreams in which Binny was back at home and he was hugging and kissing her—sweet dreams that were invariably encroached upon by the thudding footsteps of reality. He wondered if Coomi, too, experienced the loneliness of waking up from those dreams and staring at the long black night that lay like a lonely, deserted alley before him. His heart wobbled from its usual hardened stance when he thought of Coomi missing Binny as ferociously as he did. In some ways, Binny was now his only way home to Coomi, not the stern-faced woman at his side, but the warm, impulsive dark-haired woman he had married. He longed to say something to his wife but was reluctant to break the silence that had engulfed them since they had left home.
    Besides, he knew that Coomi blamed him for Binny’s leaving. On the way home from the airport years ago, Coomi had turned to Rusi and said fiercely, “You chased my daughter away from me. Filling her head with all these big dreams. As if this city wasn’t good enough for her. You stole my only child away from me, don’t forget.” For once, he was not hurt by her words, because he heard the loneliness behind them. Coomi’s heart was breaking, he knew, just as his was. This was simply her way of dealing with her pain.
    There was nobody at the front gate to welcome them. Rusi was both relieved and embarrassed. Obviously, the Kangas were not expecting any more visitors. A woman with waist-length black hair was crooning some song. “How deep is your love?” the singer asked. Rusi vaguely recognized the song as something Binny used to play when she lived at home. Behind the singer stood three overweight middle-aged musicians in tight dark suits, men who had abandoned all stabs at youth-fulness. The husky-voiced woman singer was their sole concession to ornamentation.
    Still no sign of Jimmy and Zarin Kanga. Rusi glanced at Coomi to see if she looked as embarrassed as he felt. But Coomi’s face was impassive as she looked straight ahead, her eyes searching for a familiar face in the brightly clad crowd the Bilimorias were walking