The Blue Taxi Read Online Free PDF

he was not, as his older brothers were, as his parents and their parents
     had once been, and as so many other Jeevanjees were, too, a thundering success.
    Hard jaw working fast, arms spread apart before her, palms turned slightly up, pleased that Nisreen had for once taken time
     to sit and appeared prepared to listen, Bibi had begun: “I know exactly what you’re thinking. ‘Those Jeevanjees have got it
     made. Money in their veins. Jubilees and Garden Parks, import-export, cloves, and newspapers, to boot.’ Oh, and how can I
     forget? You are also thinking, to be sure,‘Railroads in the brain.’ But sometimes”—Bibi leaneda little in and made her voice important—“accidents and luck, my dear, are a stronger thing than blood. Oh, yes, little Nisreen.”
     Here Bibi had smiled especially for her, a crow-smile that had made her eyes glint. “Can change destiny…
Pahp! Pahp!
” Bibi snapped her lips apart, releasing puffs of air. “Right before your eyes.”
    Here’s how. Majid Ghulam Jeevanjee had begun his grown-up-journey in the world with a well-stocked wholesale shop and a respectable
     inheritance from profits made in cloves. Later on, he had run a paper. So far, so good, you say. But no. The businesses, one-two,
     like dominoes, had failed. First: a storm with thunderous fists sent forty kapok mattresses and six new sofa sets (love seat,
     ottoman, and couch) floating down the streets. The wholesale shop was ruined, soaked, then washed thoroughly away. Not one
     wall left standing, not one wet thing returned. Majid Ghulam’s older brothers, who had given him the shop because (they’d
     said) little can go wrong with a Jeevanjee in charge, thought twice. Ghuji had not brought the rain himself, of course, but
     he must have—mustn’t he—done one thing or another to have
his
shop disappear while others stood up tall. Perhaps they’d understood already that he wasn’t made for things like that; perhaps
     the shop was proof Knowing themselves able, the brothers had with considerable daring turned to the illegal acquisition of
     stereos from abroad and to the smuggling of rice. They did not take Ghuji on. But, still, a brother is a brother and so on,
     a load that can’t be shed. They gave him something else. “Stick fast to the paper,” his two brothers said. Hadn’t certain
     Jeevanjees elsewhere done well in publications? “Words can’t float away.”
    Second: the
Kikanga Flash and Times
had seemed a better proposition. Majid Ghulam might not have luck with shops, but he had, as everybody knew, been capable
     in school. Had won some prizes, even, been praised by British masters (kneesocked men andhatted ladies all who, so they said themselves, “could spot artistic temperaments even in
this
dark”). Here, Bibi had reminded Nisreen and the pillows that, though some years before Majid, she
had
been to the same school as he, you see, had grown up on those islands, too, come to Vunjamguu at the same time, and her memory
     was sharp.
She
relied on evidence; she
didn’t
make things up. And so. And so Majid Ghulam, who liked words a fair sight better than mattresses and chairs, had taken up
     the newspaper with a sense of, shall we say,
adventure
. Those who watched him had felt hope: he’d lost the stuff for sure, but here, if anywhere, a poet might make good. Words
     are better for a reader than kapok beds and fans.
    But just because a newspaper is rife with little fictions doesn’t mean that dreams can make it run. A paper is a business.
     This Majid was a poet. A verse, the man could read; a market, he could not. The
Kikanga Flash and Times
, once abrim with hot, delicious news, became the
New Kikanga Times: For Vunja’s Thinking Folk
. Tripling the section kept for poems (a modest dose of which did reassure the readers that they were people of good fiber
     and also guardians of tradition), highlighting the student essays, he squeezed the starlets and the football players out.
     Driven,