Dahanu Road: A novel Read online




  ALSO BY ANOSH IRANI

  NOVELS

  The Cripple and His Talismans (2004)

  The Song of Kahunsha (2006)

  PLAYS

  The Bombay Plays: The Matka King & Bombay Black

  For my father, Adi,

  &

  for all the Iranis of Dahanu Road

  PROLOGUE

  Iran, 1920

  THE NIGHT BEFORE he was to leave for Yazd, young Shapur was unable to sleep. Thoughts of butter and cream melting in his mouth filled him with delight. After all, his father had promised to take him to the most famed confectioner in all of Persia—Aflatoon of Esfahan. Customers compared his sweets to the poetry of Rumi and Hafez.

  Shapur sat up all night dreaming—biting, crunching, savouring, letting chunks of cotton candy remain in his mouth for eternity.

  At the slightest hint of light, he was ready.

  “You are a true Marco Polo,” said his father, stroking the long beard that hung from his chin in an inverted triangle.

  Vamog offered his son almonds, but Shapur did not want any.

  “We have a long journey ahead of us,” said Vamog. “You need to eat.”

  Shapur gobbled the almonds down, hoping they would not occupy too much space in his belly. He was only ten, and even though he had the appetite of a man, he was still physically small. He wanted to reserve every inch in his stomach for the creations of Aflatoon.

  After trudging through red desert sands and then hitching a ride from a caravan of silk weavers, father and son finally reached Yazd.

  They stopped outside a Zoroastrian fire temple. Vamog longed to see the fire that burned in an inner chamber, in a large copper vase, a fire that had been kept alive for over a thousand years. Lovingly tended by a grand priest, it was a symbol of purity and goodness for all members of the Zoroastrian faith.

  A bearded angel adorned the yellow entrance, a golden disc in its hand.

  “Do you know what that is?” Vamog asked his son.

  “A fravashi,” replied Shapur. “It will protect me wherever I go, day and night, in this life and the next.”

  When Shapur had first learned of the fravashis, he imagined a pair of strong golden wings enveloping the domed roof of his house, and it immediately made him feel safe and warm, even on chilly winter nights when wolf howls mixed with the whoosh of the wind to make things so eerie.

  Instead of taking his son into the temple, Vamog led Shapur to a well that was outside the temple gates. The old bucket creaked as it rose up the narrow walls, causing the sparrows that stood on the parapet to fly away. Vamog took a mug full of water and held it to his son’s lips. Just as Shapur opened his mouth to drink, Vamog emptied the water on his son’s head.

  A surprised Shapur went into a fit of laughter.

  “That’s what I wanted,” said Vamog. “The prophet Zarathushtra came out of his mother’s womb laughing. So one must always be cheerful when standing in front of this place of worship.”

  Shapur had never heard his father talk about their beloved prophet in this manner. Vamog always spoke of Zarathushtra with such reverence, but now there was an element of mischief in him. Even his long moustache twirled so high it almost reached his cheekbones, as though it were the handiwork of a tiny goblin that had crept into their house the night before.

  But Shapur did not want to go inside the fire temple. At least not right now. The fravashi was no doubt close to his heart, but something else was even closer, more alluring.

  Vamog detected the eagerness in his son. “Let’s go,” he said. “Before the great Aflatoon retires for the day.”

  He soaked his white handkerchief in the mug of water and placed the handkerchief on his neck to soothe the skin that had been burned by the sun. Shapur took one of his slippers off and was about to overturn it.

  “Not yet,” said Vamog. “The sand must be emptied only when we are inside Yazd. That way we are helping the desert claim the city.”

  Vamog told his son how Yazd was caught between two deserts, the Dasht-é Kavir and the Dasht-é Lut. No matter which desert one crossed to reach the city, a strange magic took place: the moment a man stood still, sand moved towards him and covered his feet, filled his sandals to the brim, in the hope that every grain would be spread throughout the bazaars and courtyards of the city. It seemed that both deserts were fighting for the city’s affection, but in the end neither could claim her, and she had to be shared. “It is for this reason,” said Vamog, “that Yazd is known all over Iran as ‘The Bride of the Desert.’”

  Outside the city gates, an old man rubbed his hands together. Shapur thought maybe there was a lamp stuck between them and he was in dire need of a wish. But he soon realized from the man’s outstretched palm that it was his way of asking for a tip from travellers.

  Around Shapur, tall arched wind-catchers stood erect on domed roofs.

  Everyone in Yazd, from the tailor who laid down the most perfect embroidery on silk to the wrinkly grandmother who shared proverbs with her brood, was grateful to the windcatchers for the way they swallowed the breeze and funnelled it into their homes to keep them cool.

  Shapur soon arrived at Persia’s sweetest spot.

  “Aflatoon’s Candy Bazaar.” The words shimmered on a green banner. Shapur marvelled at the winding line outside the sweet shop. It coiled just like a candy stick. There was a fragrance in the air, not just the sweetness of pastries but the happiness of customers as well; the fact that they were buying sweets meant they had reason to celebrate. Shapur took in as much as he could, and if there was a special compartment in his nostrils that stored scents, he would store this one for life and take it with him wherever he went.

  No one cared about the heat. It was mean and dry, yet people waited with a jovial air. The sun blazed down on everyone, but all it could do was cast shadows on the ground. That was the only darkness in all of Yazd.

  “Papa, what do you think Aflatoon’s secret recipe is?” asked Shapur.

  “No one knows,” said Vamog. “When the oldest member of the Esfahan family is on his deathbed, he reveals the secret to his successor, whispers it into his ear so softly that even the wind cannot hear it.”

  Shapur was impressed. He didn’t think anything could stay hidden from the wind.

  He wondered if Aflatoon had a son. One day the magic ingredients would be whispered into his ear and he would become Persia’s most admired confectioner.

  “But if you ask me, I think it’s just a ruse to hide the truth,” said Vamog. “The real secret is simple. It’s the sweetness in Aflatoon’s heart. It oozes into everything he touches.”

  It would soon be their turn to enter the shop, and Shapur could now see the delicacies in a glass case, and samples on the counter, in bright yellows, pinks, and greens, which customers had dipped toothpicks into to show their appreciation, a rating system of sorts.

  His father put his hand in his pocket and took out a coin, but he dropped it, and it rolled on the ground, teased him by making a circle. It amused Shapur to see his hulk of a father chase a coin like an eager child whose mother would scold him if it was lost.

  His father almost had the coin in his hand.

  Almost.

  In bending down, Vamog’s body cast a shadow on the ground. Part of that shadow touched a Muslim royal.

  Shapur saw his father falling. The Muslim royal’s henchmen, three of them, kicked Vamog. Shapur ran towards his father, but a hard push from one of the henchmen was enough to send him reeling back.

  “You lowly Zoroastrian,” they said to Vamog. “You unclean infidel. You have tainted a Muslim royal.”

  They ripped his shirt open, took the sacred thread that was tied around his waist and noosed it around his neck. Then they paraded him
alongside a donkey, calling the donkey the more handsome of the two.

  Shapur went numb.

  No one from the long, winding line at the sweet shop had moved. There was silence, then a murmur, like the noise of insects flying in groups, and Shapur wanted to move away from them all.

  When the henchmen finally left, Shapur watched as his father removed, with shaking hands, the sacred kusti from his neck. For years, his father had kept the soft sheepskin thread completely spotless, and now it was covered in dust.

  Shapur could not look into his father’s eyes, so with his hands he brushed his father’s back, tried to clean the dirt off it. He spotted the coin still on the ground. Shapur went to retrieve it, but his father stopped him.

  Vamog just shook his head.

  The journey back to their village was solemn.

  Sand collected in their slippers, making them heavy.

  Shapur wanted to know where his fravashi was and why he did not fly to the bazaar. All he had to do was swoop down from in between the blue minarets that seemed to reach the clouds and help his father.

  When they reached home a day later, Vamog told his son that they were leaving Iran for good. But Shapur did not understand. This was the home of the Zoroastrians. “For over three thousand years, we have lived here,” his father had once said. A man should not have to leave his own home.

  “We are treated like dogs. No, we are worse off than dogs.”

  Vamog told his son what the Arabs had done to his friend Bizhan, who lived next door to them before Shapur was born. To punish Bizhan, he was tied to a dog, and both were severely beaten, so that the dog, scared and in pain, pounced on Bizhan, shredding his arm, while the Arabs made a sport of it.

  “There was a time when if a Zoroastrian was murdered by an Arab,” Vamog continued, “the punishment was a mere fine, equivalent in value to the price of a camel.”

  That was what their life was worth.

  “Things may never change,” he said. “Our days in Yazd are over. Let us see what India has in store.”

  They left two days later, on a donkey with a bundle of clothes, oranges, almonds and water, and when Vamog looked back at his home for the last time, he waved out to it, but it was not the mud-brick walls he was waving to—it was his wife, who had died when Shapur was seven.

  After an exhausting journey, after the donkey died not even halfway through, after they begged and stole and got rides any way they could for weeks, they reached Karachi, and from there made their way to Bombay, a far cry from the cypress trees and arched streets of Yazd. They found shelter in the fruit orchard of a famous Zoroastrian philanthropist. There, under the shade of a fruit tree, Vamog lay on the ground.

  Young Shapur saw the dying light in his father’s eyes.

  “Ahura Mazda has led us here,” Vamog comforted his son. “Ahura Mazda will provide.”

  Vamog’s eyes closed, and Shapur stayed by his father’s side for a long time, hoping that Ahura Mazda would show Himself. But there was no sign of the One God.

  As Shapur bent to kiss his father’s forehead, he saw a small brown fruit near Vamog’s hand.

  ONE

  India, 2000

  THE SMELL OF mosquito repellent pervaded Zairos’ small room, but he was used to it. Each night his father, Aspi Irani, would come into the room, shut the door and windows, and spray the repellent with great flourish as only an artist would. His father was obsessed with mosquito repellents and owned every brand on the market, from Baygon to Killer. He treated his array of repellents with the kind of passion usually reserved for record collections.

  Zairos scratched his thigh and realized that he had been bitten by a monster. A few mosquitoes lay on the ground, some flat on their backs, some sideways, giving the impression that the place had been bombed. But these mosquitoes were part of the everyday death toll in the coastal town of Dahanu. In Dahanu, old-timers high on snuff reminisced about their childhood days in Iran and spoke to themselves in Farsi and Dari; tribal fishermen drowned in the sea, possessing neither the strength nor the will to prevent their boats from capsizing; retired schoolteachers drank country liquor until their livers understood their plea and put them out of their misery: and the young women who worked in balloon factories became balloons themselves, puffed up, bloated with the air of disappointment.

  The bed creaked as Zairos rose from it. He crossed to the porch door and swung it open. His room was on the first floor of his family’s home, Aspi Villa, and the branch of a coconut tree reached for him, as it did every morning. The higher branches caressed the red tiled roof, and their leaves always made Zairos think of large eyelashes, as though the tree and the tiled roof were lovers.

  Zairos put on jeans and a blue T-shirt and went down the stairs to the living room. His father was seated at the table, cutting an apple, his belly protruding from underneath his white sudreh. The sacred vest had a red blotch, most probably ketchup, on the small pouch at the V that stored the good deeds of the wearer. Zairos smiled at how devout a Zoroastrian his father was—instead of good deeds shining through, there was a blaring ketchup stain.

  Knife in hand, Aspi Irani was painfully systematic in the cutting of the apple, accurate in the size of each piece, and not once did he even look at the fruit. An unlit cigarette dangled from his mouth. He used to be a chain-smoker, but when Zairos was a year old, Aspi Irani had dozed off while smoking his last Capstan of the night, and in a stupor flicked his burning cigarette into Zairos’ cot, and the horror of the flames was enough to make him quit forever. Zairos was told this little detail when he was ten with the lightness of a fairy tale. “Thank God it happened,” said his father. “Otherwise I would be smoking till today.” Although he had given up smoking, Aspi Irani had been unable to stop holding a cigarette. That and constantly running his fingers through his salt and pepper hair.

  As soon as Zairos was downstairs, Aspi Irani started singing. His songs were a strange concoction indeed, a blend of three languages, Hindi, English, and Gujarati. Zairos always compared his father’s songs to country liquor: Use anything you can find—orange peels, battery acid, even leather slippers. Then squeeze hard and let its juice make your head spin. This morning, Aspi Irani’s song included two main ingredients—tennis and his old Morris. The two rhymed, and as he sang, the cigarette fell out of his mouth. Then he stopped abruptly and said to Zairos, “I think your mother is having an affair.” He said this every other day, whenever Mithoo went to the bazaar.

  Theirs was an odd pairing. Mithoo was calm and soft spoken, with a perpetual smile on her face. She spent her time looking after stray dogs and teaching English to just about any child who wanted to learn. As a result, books were strewn all over Aspi Villa, from Wren and Martin’s thick dossier on English grammar to books for five-year-olds such as The ABC of English. There were times when Aspi Irani would come home and find strange children in his living room, sitting at the dinner table with colouring pencils in their hand and chocolate milk on their lips. “Is this an orphanage?” he would ask his wife. “Can we please give them back, my dear?” Mithoo would pout and wink at her husband, and Aspi Irani would melt, but only for a bit. The moment it got dark outside, he would turn off the lights in the living room, bring out an old rubber skeleton, and shine a flashlight on it, thus ensuring that his wife’s students would be terrified of English for the rest of their lives.

  Aspi Irani loved the idea of sabotage. He yearned for a situation to ruin, as long as there was no permanent damage. No matter where he went, be it marketplace or wedding hall, he was an imp straight from the underworld, full of guile and mischief. Of course, with his thick forearms and massive calves, he was too large to be an imp, but he had an imp’s demeanour, from the sleazy to the sublime. When he was in action, his eyebrows arched like a piece of Mughal architecture; it was the arch of knowing that came upon the countenance of only those who knew secrets, of men who found beauty in the orchestration of disaster.

  And it was the arch of his eyebrow, he claimed, t
hat had made Mithoo fall in love with him. Mithoo’s parents had died in a car accident when she was fourteen, and she had responded with a bout of silence that lasted four years, until the moment she met Aspi Irani at Café Military in Bombay. “I was so handsome that your mother just had to open her mouth and say something,” Aspi Irani told Zairos. But then one day at a party, while his father was telling this story for the hundredth time, Mithoo whispered to her son, “I did open my mouth, but only because I was in pain. Your father had worn pointy boots and he stepped on my toe and I howled. But he prefers his version.” In any case, they were married six months later. At eighteen, Mithoo was a radiant bride, and Aspi Irani, seven years her senior, continued wearing pointy boots.

  In later years, the boots gave way to moccasins. Whenever Aspi Irani went abroad, he came back with five pairs of brown moccasins, “One for each year, until our next holiday in five years’ time.” At the moment, the moccasins were neatly tucked away in a corner of the living room, while his face was buried in The Times of India. “The rupee has hit an all-time low against the U.S. dollar,” he grumbled. “What a wonderful way to start the new millennium.”

  Then he looked up at the silver-framed portrait of Zarathushtra on the wall. “You should become finance minister,” he said. “Only a miracle can save us.” But the prophet remained unmoved. In his soft and luxuriant beard, a burst of light around his head, palms facing upward, Zarathushtra seemed preoccupied with matters celestial; the plummeting rupee or a foray into Indian politics failed to rouse him.

  Aspi Irani turned his affections to the apple he was cutting.

  “This apple is raped,” he said, pointing to a tiny, almost invisible rotten patch.

  The word rape was a staple in Aspi Irani’s vocabulary. If his wife did not make the scrambled eggs soft enough, he would say, “Mithoo, these eggs are raped.” If his back hurt from the long hours of shuttling by train between Dahanu and Bombay, he would say, “My back is raped.” Everything was raped. The trees were raped, the walls were raped, the curtains were raped, the shower was raped, the whiskey was raped, the wedding was raped, and finally, if some unfortunate soul made the mistake of asking Aspi Irani for a loan: “Do I look like I want to be raped?”