The game added to Pesi’s popularity — he called it a howling success. But the parents (except the ground floor) complained to Dr. Mody about his son instigating their children to torment poor dumb and helpless creatures. For a veterinarian’s son to harass animals was shameful, they said.
As might be supposed, Pesi was the despair of his parents. Over the years Dr. Mody had become inured to the initial embarrassment in each new place they moved to. The routine was familiar: first, a spate of complaints from indignant parents claiming their sons bugree nay dhoor thai gaya — were corrupted to become useless as dust; next, the protestations giving way to sympathy when the neighbours saw that Pesi was the worm in the Modys’ mango.
And so it was in Firozsha Baag. After the furor about stoning-the-cats had died down, the people of the Baag liked Dr. Mody more than ever. He earned their respect for the initiative he took in Baag matters, dealing with the management for things like broken lifts, leaking water tanks, crumbling plaster, and faulty wiring. It was at his urging that the massive iron gate, set in the stone wall which ran all around the buildings, compound and backyards, was repaired, and a watchman installed to stop beggars and riff-raff. (And although Dr. Mody would be dead by the time of the Shiv Sena riots, the tenants would remember him for the gate which would keep out the rampaging mobs.) When the Bombay Municipality tried to appropriate a section of Baag property for its road-widening scheme, Dr. Mody was in the forefront of the battle, winning a compromise whereby the Baag only lost half the proposed area. But the Baag’s esteem did nothing to lighten the despair for Pesi that hung around the doctor.
At the birth of his son, Dr. Mody had deliberated long and hard about the naming. Peshotan, in the Persian epic, Shah-Nama, was the brother of the great Asfandyar, and a noble general, lover of art and learning, and man of wise counsel. Dr. Mody had decided his son would play the violin, acquire the best from the cultures of East and West, thrill to the words of Tagore and Shakespeare, appreciate Mozart and Indian ragas; and one day, at the proper moment, he would introduce him to his dearest activity, stamp-collecting.
But the years passed in their own way. Fate denied fruition to all of Dr. Mody’s plans; and when he talked about stamps, Pesi laughed and mocked his beloved hobby. This was the point at which, hurt and confused, he surrendered his son to whatever destiny was in store. A perpetual grief entered to occupy the void left behind after the aspirations for his son were evicted.
The weight of grief was heaviest around Dr. Mody when he returned from work in the evenings. As the car turned into the compound he usually saw Pesi before Pesi saw him, in scenes which made him despair, scenes in which his son was abusing someone, fighting, or making lewd gestures.
But Dr. Mody was careful not to make a public spectacle of his despair. While the car made its way sluggishly over the uneven flagstones of the compound, the boys would stand back and wave him through. With his droll comments and jovial countenance he was welcome to disrupt their play, unlike two other car-owners of Firozsha Baag: the priest in A Block and the chartered accountant in B who habitually berated, from inside their vehicles, the sons of bank clerks and bookkeepers for blocking the driveway with their games. Their well-worn curses had become so predictable and ineffective that sometimes the boys chanted gleefully, in unison with their nemeses: “Worse than saala animals!” or “junglee dogs-cats have more sense!” or “you sataans ever have any lesson-paani to do or not!”
There was one boy who always stayed apart from his peers — the Bulsara boy, from the family next door to the Modys. Jehangir sat on the stone steps every evening while the gentle land breezes, drying and cooling the sweaty skins of the boys at play, blew out to sea. He sat alone through the long dusk, a source of discomfiture to the others. They resented his melancholy, watching presence.
Dr. Mody noticed Jehangir, too, on the stone steps of C Block, the delicate boy with the build much too slight for his age. Next to a hulk like Pesi he was diminutive, but things other than size underlined his frail looks: he had slender hands, and forearms with fine downy hair. And while facial fuzz was incipient in most boys of his age (and Pesi was positively hirsute), Jehangir’s chin and upper lip were smooth as a young woman’s. But it pleased Dr. Mody to see him evening after evening. The quiet contemplation of the boy on the steps and the noise and activity of the others at play came together in the kind of balance that Dr. Mody was always looking for and was quick to appreciate.
Jehangir, in his turn, observed the burly Dr. Mody closely as he walked past him each evening. When he approached the steps after parking his car, Jehangir would say “Sahibji” in greeting, and smile wanly. He saw that despite Dr. Mody’s constant jocularity there was something painfully empty about his eyes. He noticed the peculiar way he scratched the greyish-red patches of psoriasis on his elbows, both elbows simultaneously, by folding his arms across his chest. Sometimes Jehangir would arise from the stone steps and the two would go up together to the third floor. Dr. Mody asked him once, “You don’t like playing with the other boys? You just sit and watch them?” The boy shook his head and blushed, and Dr. Mody did not bring up the matter after that.
Gradually, a friendship of sorts grew between the two. Jehangir touched a chord inside the doctor which had lain silent for much too long. Now affection for the boy developed and started to linger around the region hitherto occupied by grief bearing Pesi’s name.
II
One evening, while Jehangir sat on the stone steps waiting for Dr. Mody’s car to arrive, Pesi was organizing a game of naargolio. He divided the boys into two teams, then discovered he was one short. He beckoned to Jehangir, who said he did not want to play. Scowling, Pesi handed the ball to one of the others and walked over to him. He grabbed his collar with both hands, jerking him to his feet. “Arré choosya!” he yelled, “want a pasting?” and began dragging him by the collar to where the boys had piled up the seven flat stones for naargolio.
At that instant, Dr. Mody’s car turned into the compound, and he spied his son in one of those scenes which could provoke despair. But today the despair was swept aside by rage when he saw that Pesi’s victim was the gentle and quiet Jehangir Bulsara. He left the car in the middle of the compound with the motor running. Anger glinted in his eyes. He kicked over the pile of seven flat stones as he walked blindly towards Pesi who, having seen his father, had released Jehangir. He had been caught by his father often enough to know that it was best to stand and wait. Jehangir, meanwhile, tried to keep back the tears.
Dr. Mody stopped before his son and slapped him hard, once on each cheek, with the front and back of his right hand. He waited, as if debating whether that was enough, then put his arm around Jehangir and led him to the car.
He drove to his parking spot. By now, Jehangir had control of his tears, and they walked to the steps of C Block. The lift was out of order. They climbed the stairs to the third floor and knocked. He waited with Jehangir.
Jehangir’s mother came to the door. “Sahibji, Dr. Mody,” she said, a short, middle-aged woman, very prim, whose hair was always in a bun. Never without a mathoobanoo, she could do wonderful things with that square of fine white cloth which was tied and knotted to sit like a cap on her head, snugly packeting the bun. In the evenings, after the household chores were done, she removed the mathoobanoo and wore it in a more conventional manner, like a scarf.