The Mountain Shadow

I looked at the young forger, who’d been kicked unconscious the night before but was already thinking of kicking someone else. It wasn’t cruelty or callousness: Farzad’s violent fantasy of brotherhood and blood was a boy’s bravado. He was no gangster. After just a few hours in the cells, he was already breaking down. He was a good kid, in a bad Company.

‘If you ever go with them, and I come to hear about it,’ I said, ‘I’ll kick your ass myself.’

He thought about it for a moment.

‘Are you still coming to breakfast, please?’

‘Count on it,’ I said, putting an arm around his shoulder, and leading him to my bike.

Chapter Fifteen

Bombay, even now, is a city of words. Everyone talks, everywhere, and all the time. Drivers ask other drivers for directions, strangers talk to strangers, cops talk to criminals, Left talks to Right, and if you want a letter or parcel delivered, you have to include a few words about a landmark in the address: opposite the Heera Panna, or nearby to Copper Chimney. And words in Bombay, even little words like please, please come, still have adventures attached, like sails.

Farzad rode pillion with me for the short trip to the Colaba Back Bay, near Cuffe Parade, pointing out his favourite places. He liked to talk, that kid, and started three stories inspired by places we passed, but didn’t finish any of them.

When we parked outside his parents’ home I looked up at a huge house, at least three storeys high, with gabled attics. The impressive, triple-fronted house was one of three between streets on either side, forming a small inner-city block.

Joined to the similar homes on either side, the Daruwalla mansion presented a façade that we South Bombay partisans love: the architectural flourishes inherited from the British Raj, cast in local granite and sandstone by Indian artists.

The windows boasted stained-glass embellishments, decorative stone arches, and wrought-iron security spirals, sprouting elegant metal vine leaf traceries. A flowering hedge gave privacy and shaded the morning sun.

The wide, wooden door, flanked by Rajasthan pillars and adorned with complex geometric carvings, swung open silently as Farzad used his key and led me into the vestibule.

The high, marble-walled entry hall was decorated with garlands of flowers trailing from urns set into scalloped alcoves. Incense filled the air with the scent of sandalwood. Directly ahead of us, opposite the main door, was a ceiling-high curtain made of red velvet.

‘Are you ready?’ Farzad asked theatrically, his hand on the partition of the curtains.

‘I’m armed,’ I smiled. ‘If that’s what you mean.’

Farzad pulled one half of the curtains aside, holding it back for me to pass. We walked on through a dark passageway and arrived at a set of folding doors. Farzad slid the panels back. I stepped through.

The vast space beyond the corridor was so high that I could only vaguely make out the detail of its sunlit uppermost reaches, and the width clearly encompassed a far greater space than Farzad’s home alone.

At ground level, two long tables had been set for breakfast, with perhaps fifteen place settings at each table. Several men, women and children were sitting there.

What appeared to be two fully equipped kitchens, open to view, formed the left and right boundaries of the ground floor. Beyond them, doors at the back and sides of the vast chamber led to other closed rooms.

My eyes roved to the upper floors. Ladders led to head-height walkways. Ladders from those wooden pathways led to still higher boardwalks, supported on bamboo scaffolding. Several men and women chipped or scraped at the walls serenely, here and there on the walkways.

A parting in the monsoon cloud sent sunlight spilling from high turret windows. The whole space was suddenly a topaz-yellow lucency. It was like a cathedral, without the fear.

‘Farzad!’ a woman screamed, and every head turned.

‘Hi, Mom!’ Farzad said, his hand on my shoulder.

‘Hi, Mom?’ she yelled. ‘I’ll take your Hi, Mom, and beat you black and blue with it. Where have you been?’

Others came to join us.

‘I’ve brought Lin,’ Farzad said, hoping it might help his cause.

‘Oh, Farzad, my son,’ she sobbed, pulling him to her in a suffocating embrace.

Just as swiftly she pushed him away and slapped his face.

‘Ow! Mom!’ Farzad pleaded, rubbing his face.

Farzad’s Mother was in her fifties. She was short, with a shapely figure and a neat, gamine haircut that suited her soft features. She wore a floral apron over her striped dress, and a string of well-matched pearls at her neck.

‘What are you doing, you wicked boy?’ she demanded. ‘Are you working for the hospitals now, drumming up trade for those doctors by giving everybody a this-thing?’

‘Heart attack,’ a grey-haired man I guessed to be her husband helped her.

‘Yes, giving everybody a this-thing,’ she said.

‘Mom, it wasn’t my –’