Happy Birthday! And Other Stories Part 1

Happy Birthday! and Other Stories.

Meghna Pant.

For making this gravity called life something to laugh with. Thanks, Papa.

We love and lose in China, we weep on England's moors, and laugh and moan in Guinea, and thrive on Spanish sh.o.r.es.

We seek success in Finland, are born and die in Maine.

In minor ways we differ, in major we're the same.

aMaya Angelou.

THE GOLA MASTER.

It's been twenty-eight years, but I know instantly that it's Kaka at the corner of the sidewalk. He's shrivelled now, older than the man in my memory, who is still standing at the gola stall with his ice pick and coloured bottles. The man whose face s.h.i.+nes as he lifts me up in the air and I sit strong upon his shoulders.

I want to go up to him and ask how he is. Where are Venkat and Sita-his children-who were always wrapped around his legs? But will he even recognize me? After all, I've changed as much as this street, as this city. And I'm old now, or-to be kind to myself-a man at the cusp of old age, a father whose son is going to be married in three weeks.

In any case, this is not the time for a reunion. Sanjay's fiancee Devna and her father are stepping out of their chauffeur-driven Mercedes. I met them only a few days ago and they've brought Sanjay and me here for a surprise.

I look around to see what the surprise could be.

My eyes fall on my old school, an ochre one-storeyed building that's been converted into a nine-storeyed brown monstrosity. Guarded by a sombre watchman who looks better suited to patrol a prison, the school bears the insignia of a hawk. I should be happier chancing upon my school like this, but it no longer feels like a familiar place.

Anyway, this cannot be the surprise; my own son doesn't know what school I went to and I cannot tell him now-not in front of these fancy new people.

Across the road, the street vendors and textile mills have been replaced by a mult.i.tude of upscale cafes and restaurants, and a s.h.i.+ny gallery selling contemporary art. Is the surprise a nice meal or a viewing of paintings? Then why would the car stop on the opposite side of the road?

I turn around and in front of me is a construction site where work on a building is in full swing. The place has at least fifty workers, most of them dressed in loose trousers and torn brown vests, which at some point must have been white. Some of them are swinging from flimsy bamboo scaffoldings tied together by jute ropes, while others are pouring water into mounds of grey cement, which they shove into half-moon metal pots and carry on top of their heads, up the stairs, to slap onto bricks to build walls.

Next to the compound wall, near the nali, are makes.h.i.+ft huts outside which dirty-looking children with snotty noses are not attending school. A few women are drying clothes on the terylene sheet roofs, and some are boiling ragi kali in clay pots over gas cylinders.

I feel a hand on my shoulder and turn to see my son's soon-to-be father-in-law, Ravi Mirchandani. His mouth is open in an apparent attempt to smile, giving me an inside view of the gold-plated cavities lining his teeth. His lips are brown from an addiction to the gutka he carries in his pudgy gold-, diamond- and ruby-ringencrusted hand.

*Vora, follow me,' he declares. His voice, its authority, remind me of his wealth from the stock market, his business trips around the world, and his Aston Martin with a made-to-order number plate 008 (like my figure, he jokes). He's one of Mumbai's most renowned stockbrokers. And my son will soon be joining his business.

I follow him to the construction site, with Sanjay and Devna behind me. At the gate, a security guard salutes Mirchandani smartly, and immediately another man appears carrying four yellow helmets and a large smile that doesn't crinkle his eyes.

*Welcome, sir. Welcome,' he says to Mirchandani, licking his chapped lips and folding his hands in a namaste. He bends down so low that I worry for his back. *Myself, Mr V. Bhaskar. We are very much honoured by your presence.'

*Oberoi is an old friend. I can't give his building a miss.' Mirchandani says. His eyes become narrow. *Even though Lakhandwala is offering more FSI.'

I have no idea what FSI means, but Mr V. Bhaskar clearly does.

*Chaa!' he says. *Lakhandwala is too big cheat, sir. I swear to my mother. He try to sell carpet area as super built-up area. How he can do that, sir? But we, we are honest people. More G.o.d-fearing person than Mr Oberoi you will not find in whole of the earth.'

*We'll see about that,' Mirchandani says dismissively, his gaze now focused on the red light blinking on his BlackBerry. *Take us to the flat.'

Flat? I turn around to ask Sanjay what we're being put up to, but instead find myself watching as he fastens a helmet on to the head of a giggling Devna.

I put on my yellow helmet, which is too flimsy to protect me from even pigeon s.h.i.+t, and cover my nose as backhoes send swirls of cement dust into the air. The metallic sound of a drill lends urgency to the site, wrenches and hammers fly in and out of wall-less apartments, as naked wires spiral out of the ground like poisonous snakes. I look up at the men dangling from several feet above. An overhead crane carrying a stack of steel sheets rises above them, looming over the building; one slip and we will all be instantly crushed.

*Please come,' Bhaskar says over the construction noises.

Mirchandani walks past me, without putting on the helmet, while Sanjay and Devna follow him, oblivious to the dangers around us. I start chanting the Gayatri Mantra. I look left, right and above me, before sprinting to the unfinished building that has to be safer inside than on the outside. But there are no solid floors or walls to hold on to for safety. Instead, there's an open-air lift with a liftman holding the doors apart.

*Are we going up in this thing?' I ask Bhaskar when he reaches my side.

*Yes, sir. But lift only go till twenty floor. Then we walk to thirty floor, if you be so kind,' Bhaskar says, his anxious eyes begging me not to make a fuss. His job probably depends on Mirchandani liking this building.

I study the electric motor over which the liftman has placed one hand and the flimsy panel beneath his feet. I look up at the single rope attached to this so-called *lift'. There are no guide rails along the sides of the lift shaft.

I cannot risk my life for this man's commission.

*Certainly, this cannot be safe.'

*It is too safe place, sir. We follow all safety rules,' Bhaskar says, his eyes falling on Mirchandani who has caught up with us.

*Is there a problem, Vora?' Mirchandani asks, entering the lift without a pause. He takes a handkerchief out from his Valentino suit and dabs the beads of sweat dropping from his forehead.

*Sir was worried about life. But I guarantee this is best lift in India.'

I glare at Bhaskar, who smiles in return.

*Why are we going up?' I ask.

*You'll see,' Mirchandani says. He comes over to me and slaps my back. *You Americans worry too much. G.o.d has been so kind to us, why will he stop now?'

I look at Sanjay for support, but he hasn't taken his eyes off Devna, as though he's won her at some fair. They go into the lift as if entering the gates of heaven.

I see that I have no choice. I enter the treacherous contraption.

Mirchandani turns to the liftman. *What are you waiting for? My baraat?'

The liftman shuts the doors and starts the motor. The lift begins to rise, wheezing and jerking, shuddering ever so slightly. I stand frozen at the far end of the lift car, clutching a metal bar with both my hands.

Mirchandani looks at me in amus.e.m.e.nt, revelling in my fear.

*Isn't this shaking a lot?' I ask.

*Really, you Americans,' Mirchandani says with a grotesque smile, stressing the word *Americans' as if he's just invented it.

*It is just little windy today, sir. No need for worry,' Bhaskar replies. His eyes fix on Mirchandani's as if they've finally understood each other.

I look down.

The day is the colour of mustard.

The lift sways back and forth.

I clutch the metal bar tighter.

My body floats above my old school.

As we rise higher, I spot Kaka, still sitting at that corner. I concentrate on him, watching as he becomes a minute object, fades into oblivion. I feel a little less fear.

I should tell my son that this is my old school and there is my old friend, show him where I'm from so he understands how far I've come. But I see my bygone days reflected in Mirchandani's gold-filled cavities, in Devna's diamond pendant, and lose my courage. These are not the kind of people who will take fondly to a shabby past.

The minute the lift stops I jump out, onto the blessed solidity of the concrete floor, with a new resolve to go back down by the stairs. But while catching my breath, I realize that there are still dangers all around us. There are doorless apartments everywhere, without walls or railings, simply hanging over the edge of emptiness. In place of the lifts are gaping voids, uncovered, and to look down their hollow shafts is a dizzying experience. The stairs too are only partially built, grey with cement and treacherous with no banisters. There's a huge cavity between them-with one misstep, a person can plummet straight down twenty floors to the bottom. Yet, we climb up these stairs, me following the rest of the group quietly, concentrating on placing each foot solidly in the middle of each step, not daring to even glance at the death trap below.

Finally, huffing and puffing, we reach the thirtieth floor-despite myself, I pause with the others to admire the view. Seeing Mumbai like this, with bells of clouds hanging over it, the indigo sea at its doorstep and frenzied lines of activity at the foot of its ebbing and rising buildings, a mad, jumbled, beautiful place, makes me nostalgic for this city I've left behind.

*Very nice, no, sir?' Bhaskar says.

*Yes, yes,' Mirchandani acknowledges gruffly. *Praise later, show the place first.'

Bhaskar points to the cement walls and starts triumphantly. *This is apartment, sir. It is the only one on this floor and it open into lift, very much like having your very own private house.'

*Nice,' Sanjay says, smiling brightly at his soon-to-be father-in-law.

I look at my son, fawning, becoming the type of man I can't recognize. Ever since he was a child, Sanjay has been proud and correct about things, responsible, an excellent student who studied software engineering at Georgia Tech and worked at the Google headquarters in San Francisco. He never faced the crisis of second-generation immigrants and mingled unselfconsciously with everyone, making both American and Indian friends, girlfriends even, his mother Pam told me. He met Devna through a common friend when she'd come to visit California, and after driving around Napa Valley, the Golden Gate Bridge and Lombard Street, they decided to get married. That would not have mattered to Pam or me. But then our son told us that Devna was the only child of a leading stockbroker in India, who wanted Sanjay to take over the family business. *The money that's to be made in India-it's unbelievable,' Sanjay said on his weekly phone call to us. Pam and I looked at each other; Sanjay had never spoken like this before.

*India is the place to be right now,' he added. *America is dead.'

I didn't think that America was dead or India so alive, finding it difficult to accept that I'd left my place of birth, worked hard to achieve a foreign dream so that my child, my son, could have a better life, only to have him forsake it all and go back to what I'd left behind. What was the point of my sacrifices, my successes, my hopes?

But Pam and I didn't fight Sanjay's decision. Things had deteriorated between us after Sanjay had left home for college. Pam had an affair with another professor from Baruch College, where she taught industrial psychology, and-even though I was willing to look past her *slip'-she didn't want to stay married any more. She let Sanjay proceed with his plans to get married, work for his father-in-law and settle in India, so that when she told him what she wanted from her life, her son wouldn't be able to refuse.

Either way, it was not like Sanjay had asked for our permission.

Sanjay has been in Mumbai for six months now, living in a rented one-bedroom apartment paid for by his father-in-law under the guise of *corporate housing'. Like Mirchandani, my son wears only suits now, even if we're going out for a family dinner. He speaks endlessly about the stock market-which share to short, long, strangle and straddle in a zero-sum game-and money-how to invest it, save it, take it from an undeserving nincomp.o.o.p.

But it isn't just my son; I wish my daughter-in-law-to-be would behave more appropriately. G.o.d knows Pam is no traditional Indian woman, dropping her name (Parminder) the minute we reached America, and wearing saris only during family functions. But Devna clings to Sanjay like the hair on his back, her hand in his, not allowing father and son a moment alone. On meeting me for the first time she didn't touch my feet, something that even Pam wouldn't have dared to do with her elders, nor did she enquire after her future mother-in-law, who will be here next week. Pam is jeopardizing her job-and Devna knows this-by leaving in the middle of the college semester. Moreover, though I'll never be able to speak of this to anyone, Devna wears only short dresses and skirts, even when she knows she's meeting me, and even here in this windy open-air construction site.

I say none of this to Sanjay, and my son, he too says nothing.

Bhaskar is walking us through the many empty rooms, the five bathrooms that will be further fitted, he says, with 54-nozzle spray heads, a kitchen with chrome-plated shelves covered with plastic sheets and a vintage gla.s.s sink wrapped in newspapers. The apartment has five bedrooms and covers the entire floor, but it still feels small, with its low ceilings and several pillars, like the kind of apartments in New York City, a city I begrudge for all its media-led romanticization that masks its gritty realities. I like my s.p.a.cious house on Mill Hill Road in Southport, Connecticut, with its high pre-war ceilings, rusty sinks and the large garden, which deer often visit in the early morning. I haven't lived in an apartment in over twenty years and can't imagine doing it again.

Mirchandani is inspecting the unfinished apartment. He runs his fingers around a pipe's wet seams, smells the air for a hint of mould, flushes the toilet in every bathroom, holds his hand under the full torrent of each tap, searches the cabinets for c.o.c.kroaches.

*So,' he turns to me suddenly and asks, *Like the place?'

*It's nice, I suppose,' I say.

*Nice? Just nice? Well, why should we old people decide when the children are here?' He turns to Sanjay and Devna. *Do you both like it?'

Sanjay and Devna look at each other and, like echoes, say *yes'.

*Good, because you are the ones who have to live here,' Mirchandani says. *It's yours, kids. A gift from me to Sanjay.'

The two of them stare at each other in shock and suddenly they are upon Mirchandani, hugging him, kissing him. Sanjay even lifts him up.

Sanjay has never lifted me up.

*Mirchandani, this is too much,' I say. *I don't think Sanjay should accept such a gift.'

Mirchandani looks at me evenly. *I dare say, Vora, you said not to give any dowry and I listened to you. But I have to give my damaad something or what face will I show to people?'

*This is instead of a dowry?' I ask in a disbelieving voice.

*Don't call it that. It's just a small wedding gift.'

My wedding gift is a five-thousand-dollar trust fund I've set up for the couple. And I thought I was being generous.

*Shouldn't we gift them something together?' I blurt out.

Mirchandani eyes me for a moment. Then he wraps his right arm around my shoulder and shouts, *That is a good idea, Vora. We can both gift this apartment to the newlyweds.'

He thrusts a sheet of paper into my hand. *Read this, we got a special rate, good discount.' I turn it over-it's the property brochure with the cost of the apartment. Thirteen crores! How can an apartment cost so much? I must have added a zero by mistake. I count again. No, there are seven zeroes after the thirteen. Thirteen crores? That's almost three million dollars. And this is after a discount?

Do you think I'm made of money, I almost exclaim in fright.

*Good price we are getting. Best deal. But you rich NRIs will not have a problem even without the discount.' Mirchandani laughs and winks at Sanjay and Devna.

Already the wedding expenses are mounting. I'd insisted on splitting the cost for the six-day-long festivities at the Taj Mahal Hotel, but Mirchandani had protested, and finally, thankfully, told me to pay only for the wedding reception. Still, it's a big sum. This wedding would've been cheaper in the States but Mirchandani vetoed this idea, saying that he went to America only on business, to take money from the Americans, not to give them his.

*I,' I stammer. Pam wants alimony. I'll have to break my 401 (k), my savings account and-I realize with horror-sell my house. Even after that, I'll be left short, bankrupt.

I'm a banker, I want to shout, not a bank.

Sanjay is looking at me for the first time that day.

He says, *Thank you, to both of you, for being so generous and kind. But I think we've taken enough from you guys. We cannot accept this gift. But thank you, really.'

*Where will you stay then, bacche?' Mirchandani asks. *My daughter can't live anywhere but in South Bombay. She has good but expensive taste, you know that. Even with your salary, which is a lot I a.s.sure you, it will take years for you to save up and afford an apartment of your own.'

They all look at each other.