A Son of the Circus

“From his pictures, I always thought he looked a little like Lee Marvin … the Lee Marvin of Maharashtra,” Farrokh said.

“Lee Marvin! Not Shirdi Sai Baba …” the missionary protested.

And here, in an effort to interrupt the zealot’s upcoming lecture on the parallels between Christianity and the cult of Sai Baba worship, the doctor launched into a description of the terrible teeterboard item that bore responsibility for Vinod’s aerial assault of the surprised audience at the less-than-great Blue Nile Circus. Dr. Daruwalla made it clear that such careless elephant-stamping acts would likely be in store for the less-than-innocent Madhu and the elephant-footed Ganesh. But the doctor’s calculated pessimism failed to bait the missionary into repeating his claim that the perils of the circus—of any circus—paled in comparison to the hardships facing a prostitute or a beggar in Bombay. As swiftly as he’d dropped Gandhi for Sai Baba, Martin Mills now abandoned the Jesus of Maharashtra, too.

The missionary’s new and sudden interest was prompted by a billboard they were passing, an advertisement for Close-Up.

DO YOU MOUTHWASH WHEN YOU TOOTHPASTE?

“Look at that!” cried Martin Mills. Their taxi’s startled driver barely avoided being broadsided by a Thums Up cola truck; it was as big and bright red as a fire engine. “English usage is so important,” the scholastic declared. “What worries me about those children is that their English will deteriorate in the circus. Perhaps we could insist that someone in the circus tutor them!”

“How will speaking English serve them in the circus?” Farrokh asked. He knew it was nonsense to think that Madhu possessed enough English for her grasp of the language to “deteriorate.” It was still a mystery to Dr. Daruwalla that the elephant boy’s spoken English and his apparent understanding of the language were as good as they were; perhaps someone had already tutored him. Maybe the missionary would suggest that Ganesh tutor Madhu! But Martin Mills didn’t wait for the doctor to elaborate on his thesis that English would never provide these children with any advantage—not in the circus.

“Speaking English serves anyone well,” said the English teacher. “One day, English will be the language of the world.”

“Bad English is already the language of the world,” said Dr. Daruwalla despairingly. That the children might be mashed by elephants was not the missionary’s concern, but the moron wished proper English usage on them!

Passing Dr. Vora’s Gynecological and Maternity Hospital, Farrokh realized that their decrepit driver was lost; the wretch made a sudden turn and was almost sideswiped by a careening olive-drab van belonging to the Spastics’ Society of India. Only a moment later—or so it seemed; it was longer—the doctor realized that his own sense of direction had deserted him, for they were passing the Times of India Building when Martin Mills announced, “We could give the children a subscription to The Times of India and have it sent to them at the circus. We’d have to insist that they give it at least an hour a day of their attention, of course.”

“Of course …” said Dr. Daruwalla. The doctor thought he might faint with frustration, for their troubled driver had missed the turn he should have taken—there went Sir J. J. Road.

“I’m planning to read the newspaper myself, daily,” the missionary went on. “When you’re a foreigner, there’s nothing like a local newspaper to orient you.” The thought of anyone becoming oriented by The Times of India made Farrokh feel that a head-on collision with an approaching double-decker bus might be an improvement on the scholastic’s continued conversation. Then, in the next instant, they’d plunged into Mazagaon—St. Ignatius was now very near—and the doctor, for no calculated reason, instructed their driver to take a slight detour through the slum on Sophia Zuber Road.

“A part of this slum was once a movie set,” Dr. Daruwalla explained to Martin Mills. “It was in this very slum that your mother fainted when she was sneezed on, and then licked, by a cow. Of course, she was pregnant with you at the time—I suppose you’ve heard the story …”

“Please stop the car!” the missionary cried.

When their driver braked, but before the taxi came to a complete halt, Martin Mills opened the rear door and vomited into the moving street. Because nothing in a slum goes unseen, this episode attracted the attention of several slum dwellers, who began to jog beside the slowing car. Their frightened driver speeded up in order to get away from them.

“After your mother fainted, there was a riot,” Farrokh continued. “Apparently, there was massive confusion concerning who licked whom … your mother or the cow.”

“Please stop—not the car. Please don’t mention my mother,” Martin said.

“I’m sorry,” said Dr. Daruwalla, who was secretly excited. At last Farrokh had found a subject that gave him the upper hand.

A Half Dozen Cobras

It would be no less long a day for Deputy Commissioner Patel than it would be for Dr. Daruwalla, but the level of confusion in the detective’s day would be slightly less overwhelming. The deputy commissioner easily revised the first botched report that awaited his attention—a suspected murder at the Suba Guest House. It turned out to be a suicide. The report had to be rewritten because the duty officer had misinterpreted the young man’s

suicide note as a clue left behind by the presumed murderer. Later, the victim’s mother had identified her son’s handwriting. The deputy commissioner could sympathize with the duty officer’s mistake, for it wasn’t much of a suicide note.

Had sex with a woman who smelled like meat Not very pure.

As for the second report in need of rewriting, the deputy commissioner was less sympathetic with the subinspector who’d been summoned to the Alexandria Girls’ English Institution. A young student had been discovered in the lavatory, presumably raped and murdered. But when the subinspector arrived at the school, he found the girl to be very much alive; she was totally recovered from her own murder and indignant at the suggestion that she’d been raped. It turned out she’d suffered her first period, and—withdrawing to the lavatory to look more closely at what was happening to her—she’d fainted at the sight of her own blood. There a hysterical teacher had found her, mistaking the blood as proof of the rape of a virgin. The teacher also assumed that the girl was dead.

The reason the report had to be rewritten was that the subinspector couldn’t bring himself to mention that the poor girl had suffered her “period”; it was, he said upon interrogation, as morally impossible for him to write this word as it would be for him to write the word “menstruation,” which (he added) was very nearly a morally impossible word for him even to say. And so the erroneously reported rape and murder was called, in writing, “a case of first female bleeding.” Detective Patel needed to remind himself that his 20 years with Nancy had made it easy for him to recognize the tortured morality of many of his colleagues; he restrained himself from too harsh a judgment of the subinspector.

The third report that needed to be revised was Dhar-related; it had never been reported as a crime at all. There’d been a perplexing brouhaha on Falkland Road in the wee hours. Dhar’s dwarf bodyguard—that cocky thug!—had beaten up a half-dozen hijras. Two were still hospitalized, and one of the four who’d been released was wearing a cast on a broken wrist. Two of the transvestite prostitutes had been persuaded not to press charges against Dhar’s dwarf, whom the investigating officer referred to by the name many policemen used for Vinod: “the half-bodyguard.” But the report was stupidly written because the part about Inspector Dhar being under attack, and Vinod coming to his rescue, was merely a footnote; there was no mention of what Dhar had been doing in the neighborhood in the first place—the report was too unfinished for submission.

The deputy commissioner made a note to inquire of Dhar what had possessed the actor to approach the hijra prostitutes. If the fool wanted to fuck a prostitute, surely an expensive call girl would be within his financial reach—and safer. The incident struck the detective as highly out of character for the circumspect celebrity. Wouldn’t it be funny if Inspector Dhar was a homosexual? the deputy commissioner thought.

There was at least some humor in the deputy commissioner’s day. The fourth report had come to Crime Branch Headquarters from the Tardeo Police Station. At least six snakes were loose near the Mahalaxmi temple, but there were no reported bitings—meaning, none yet. The duty officer from the Tardeo Station had taken photographs. Detective Patel recognized the broad expanse of stairs leading to the Mahalaxmi. At the top of the steps, where the temple loomed, there was a wide pavilion where the worshipers bought coconut and flowers for their offerings; this was also where the worshipers left their sandals and shoes. But, in the photos, the deputy commissioner could see that the stairs leading to the temple were dotted with stray sandals and shoes—indicating that a panicked crowd had only recently fled up or down the steps. In the aftermath of riots, the ground was always strewn with sandals and shoes; people had run right out of them or up the backs of other people’s heels.

The temple steps were usually crowded; now they were deserted—the flower stalls and the coconut shops were empty of people, too. Everywhere there were only scattered sandals and shoes! At the bottom of the temple stairs, Detective Patel noted the tall woven baskets where the cobras were kept; the baskets were overturned, presumably empty. The snake charmers had fled with everyone else. But where had the cobras gone?

It must have been quite a scene, the deputy commissioner imagined. The worshipers running and screaming, the snakes slithering away. Detective Patel thought that most of the cobras belonging to snake charmers had no venom, although they could still bite.

The puzzle in the photographs was what was missing from the pictures. What had been the crime? Had one snake charmer thrown his cobra at another snake charmer? Had a tourist tripped over one of the cobra baskets? In one second the snakes were loose, in another second people were running out of their shoes. But what was the crime?