Bombay

Bombay was muggy and dark; it was not the best of places anyway. The people did not care nor did they guide Ravindran to the correct address. After several hours of loitering around the Victoria Terminus and almost getting run over by the several taxis, he finally was put onto a bus with the strictest of instructions to the bus conductor that he was to see that the boy would get off at Haji Ali. The name was funny for a place thought Ravindran, his village had a wizened old man by the name and why was the place named after him was something he could not fathom. He was told in curt marathi that Haji Ali stop had arrived, he clambered off the bus and waved the conductor who shook his head.

The sheer beauty of the place struck Ravindran, there was a mosque in the middle of the sea and the road was wide like the football ground of the college he was supposed to attend. He wondered if the people back home searched for him. He knew that his step mother would realize that he had escaped to Bombay and try to get in touch with Chandran. Only if he could find Chandran. The address had said Ayyapan Tyre Works and he searched for a building or a shop that had the name. Finally he proffered the slip to a taxi driver. The man smiled and told him in Hindi to go to the Madrasi ka dukaan in the next galli.

Ravindran walked to where the taxi driver had pointed out, he turned the corner and expected to see some form of an office with the name of the tyre company. The corner had a cigarette shop with a garish yellow Panama hoarding and next to it was a pile of filth that buzzed with happy flies of all kinds. Just beyond the cigarette shop was a small box made of packing wood and covered with a tin sheet which had some things in strange garbled English splattered all over. A pile of old worn out tyres were stacked sky high and two black hose pipes snaked from under the box to under a van where dark oil stained hands checked the pressure and filled air. Just as Ravindran turned around the van, the hands applied saliva on the valves and waited for any bubbles to rise. The standard practice to check if there were any leaks from the valve. The young man with the dual pipes rose and squinted at Ravindran. He was wearing a shirt whose original colours could not be recognized, and trousers with large patches in various colours. Chandran smiled weakly.

Ravindran sat on a truck tyre and listened to Chandran, his mind was reeling with the shock of the facts and he was trying to digest the fact that the Ayyapan Tyre Works, which he had come in search of, was a shack, a small insignificant shack on a second rate road. Chandran apologized a thousand times for telling lies and for tempting Ravindran, but the fact was that now that he was in Bombay, it was better that he stayed on, return to Trivandrum was out of question. The day passed in a frenzy of tyres and punctures and air filling. Ravindran tried to be helpful, he wanted to bathe and change, but after the shock of the tyre companies’ reality he was hesitant to ask where Chandran stayed. Night fall turned the roads into a necklace of lights and sounds. There was an omlette seller who brought Chandran a packet and two tumblers of tea. Chandran pointed out Ravindran and indicated another packet, the vendor smiled and walked away, to return later with a browned omelet and two pavs. Chandran ate with relish and then sat down to count the day’s earnings. He would keep ten percent and the rest would be returned to the owner of the shack.

Ravindran ate and then numbly washed his hands in the half of a drum filled with murky water. The oil from the omelet drained off his hand and formed a slick shimmering on the surface. The moon reflected on the water and a bead of sweat trickled off his back. Chandran had kept a constant conversation. He had justified his lies by saying that his father and mother were happy, he would send fifty rupees every month home and go there once a year with lots of clothes and foreign soap bought on Lamington road. They were happy and how did it matter if he was a mere tyre repair mechanic. He asked Ravindran if he remembered the blow from the choora stick that they had received a few years ago. Ravindran smiled and showed Chandran his matriculation marksheet.

At nine in the night Chandran started to collect his tools and carefully stacked them in the grimy wooden box. He turned to Ravindran and told him that it was time for them to hit the largest bedroom in Bombay. They walk along the inner roads skipping over pools of sewage water and accumulated dirt, the burden of an over crowded city. Ravindran followed him like a lamb not knowing what to expect. They walked for over an hour and reached the Churchgate Railway Station. Chandran lost him for a minute when the milling crowds suddenly appeared from nowhere and vanished into the vast streets. Like a flash flood the mass of humanity surged and pushed him, as an angry stream would toss a twig around. He was on the verge of tears when he was suddenly pulled to the side by a familiar hand. Chandran smiled showing his beedi stained teeth and let Ravindran walk ahead. He then stepped into the local train and sprawled on the wooden bench. Ravindran sat opposite him and looked at him in a mixture of apprehension and amusement. Chandran then told him that the local would make one last trip and then be shunted to the yard until four in the morning and that’s where they would be spending the night. He said that he had tried sleeping on the platform but had been chased off by people who had claimed their spots for years and had found refuge in the local train. The corner seats were theirs and eventually by the time the local had started on its last trip both had been sleeping curled on the seats, occasionally relieved from the humidity by the breeze when the train crossed small patches of yet to be claimed land in the vast city next to the Arabian Sea.

Just before Ravindran dozed off he thought about the land he had abandoned a few days ago. Both the places were by the sea and yet both were a world apart. Chandran looked like a small mongrel in his dirty shirt and patched trousers and when Ravindran asked him about the bath, he had smiled again and had asked him to wait for the morning.