Read Online Bombay Time by Thrity Umrigar - Free Book Online Page A

and his heart swelled with tenderness and pity. “Dosa, my Dosa. You are my wife as well as my life. The others were … paper. Understand? Paper. Whereas you are velvet—rich, heavy, dark. Something a man can hold in his hand and
feel
satisfied with.”
    Two days before Zubin’s tenth birthday, Sorab decided to stop at Best Cake Shop to buy for his son and wife the chocolate eclairs they both loved so much. Since Zubin’s birth, it had become a ritual that every payday, Sorab would come home with a small surprise for his family. Before he left the shop, Sorab placed an order for Zubin’s birthday party. “Make sure it’s freshum-fresh,” he instructed the clerk. “I want the cake to melt in my son’s mouth. See you day after tomorrow.”
    It was dark when he left the shop, and Sorab was filled with a longing to get home quickly to be with his wife and child. He decided to take a different route home. Balancing the small cake box on the front of his scooter, he cut in front of a motorist, who panicked and stepped on the gas pedal instead of the brake. It was a fatal mistake. The car hit the small scooter with an impact that lifted Sorab’s slight body like a kite and threw him over two lanes of traffic. Passersby who saw the broken, twisted body instinctively prayed for his death. Two minutes later, their prayers were granted. Sorab’s eyes fluttered for a moment, his mouth shaped into a wordless O, and then he was dead. Other witnesses shooed away the street urchins who had crawled under the flattened scooter in hopes of rescuing the enticing cake box.
    Dosa refused to believe the news when it reached her. She could not accept that her life had taken yet another unexpected turn and that this time there was no ready target to blame for yet another betrayal, yet another delinquent promise. All the bitterness that Sorab’s steadfast love and decency had drained from Dosa’s heart now came pouring back, as did Dosa’s sense of persecution, of injustice. She shocked her mother by reciting the names of all the people she wished had died in her Sorab’s place. Her old mother, already guilt-ridden from a past mistake, tried desperately to help her bereaved daughter cope with this latest twist of fate, but Dosa was inconsolable. All three of her sisters rallied around her, including the youngest, Banu, who was in law school, and estranged from the eldest sister, who never let Banu forget that she was standing on the ashes of Dosa’s dreams. Two years prior to Sorab’s death, Banu had had it out with this eldest sister, whose grief had followed her like a shadow throughout her life. Dosa and Sorab had invited the entire family over to dinner, and, as was her habit, Dosa had made some barb about the “cushy” life her younger siblings led. But this time, Banu did not remain silent.
“Bas,
Dosa, enough is enough. Daddy’s dead; you are having a sweet little son and a good husband. Still it’s not enough. What happened to you is ancient history.
Baap re,
at this rate, the Hindus and Muslims will be friends before you forgive and forget. The rest of the family can keep saying, ‘Poor Dosa,’ but personally, I’m sick and tired of your
nakhras
and your caustic remarks. Don’t ever invite me to your house again, because I won’t be coming.”
    Seeing Banu at her husband’s funeral made grief rise like bile in Dosa. She was on the verge of lashing out, of somehow blaming Sorab’s death on Banu, but Shenaz Framrose restrained her.
“Deekra,
don’t defile the memory of your saintly husband,” she murmured. “This is a time for family to be together. You are suffering enough
dookh.
No need to spread it further.”
    After Sorab’s death, Dosa became obsessed with her son. “You are now my son and my sun, the only light in my life,” she would say to the bewildered boy, who was torn between wishing to protect his mother and wanting to run from her omnipresence.
    Until Sorab’s death, Dosa had showered her son