A Son of the Circus

Daruwalla from more than a partial reading of this review had been a blessing; it was a form of foolish self- punishment for the doctor to read the entire thing. The first sentence was bad enough: “The problem with Inspector Dhar is his tenacious umbilical bindings with his first few creations.” Farrokh felt that this sentence alone would provide him with the desired fury to write all night.

“Umbilical bindings!” Dr. Daruwalla cried aloud. Then he cautioned himself not to wake up Julia; she was already angry with him. He made further use of The Times of India by putting it under his typewriter; the newspaper would keep the typewriter from rattling against the glass-topped table. He had set up his writing materials in the dining room; his writing desk, which was in the bedroom, was out of the question at this late hour.

But he’d never tried to write in the dining room before. The glass-topped table was too low. It had never been a satisfactory dining-room table; it was more like a coffee table—to eat at it, one sat on cushions on the floor. Now, in an effort to make himself more comfortable, Farrokh tried sitting on two cushions; he rested his elbows on either side of the typewriter. As an orthopedist, Dr. Daruwalla was aware that this position was unwise for his back; also, it was distracting to peer through the glass-topped table at his own crossed legs and bare feet. For a while, the doctor was additionally distracted by what he thought was the unfairness of Julia’s being angry with him.

Their dinner at the Ripon Club had been hasty and quarrelsome. It was a difficult day to summarize, and Julia was of the opinion that her husband was condensing too much interesting material in his recitation of the day; she was ready to speculate all night on the subject of Rahul Rai as a serial killer. Moreover, she was perturbed with Farrokh that he thought her presence at the Duckworth Club lunch with Detective Patel and Nancy would be “inappropriate”; after all, John D. was going to be there.

“I’m asking him to be present because of his memory,” Dr. Daruwalla had claimed.

“I suppose I don’t have a memory,” Julia had replied.

Even more frustrating was that Farrokh had not been successful in reaching John D. He’d left messages at both the Taj and the Oberoi concerning an important lunch at the Duckworth Club, but Dhar hadn’t returned his calls; probably the actor was still miffed about the unannounced-twin business, not that he would deign to admit it.

As for the efforts now under way to send poor Madhu and the elephant-footed Ganesh to the Great Blue Nile Circus, Julia had questioned the wisdom of Farrokh involving himself in “such dramatic intervention,” as she called it; she wondered why he’d never so directly undertaken the dubious rescue of maimed beggars and child prostitutes before. Dr. Daruwalla was irritated because he already suffered from similar misgivings. As for the screenplay that the doctor was dying to begin, Julia expressed further criticism: she was surprised that Farrokh could be so self- centered at such a time—implying that it was selfish of him to be thinking of his own writing when so much that was violent and traumatic was happening in the lives of others.

They’d even had a spat about what to listen to on the radio. Julia chose those channels with programs that made her sleepy; “song miscellany” and “regional light music” were her favorites. But Dr. Daruwalla became caught up in the last stages of an interview with some complaining writer who was incensed that there was “no follow- through” in India. “Everything is left incomplete!” the writer was complaining. “We get to the bottom of nothing!” he cried. “As soon as we poke our noses into something interesting, we take our noses away again!” The writer’s anger interested Farrokh, but Julia flipped to a channel featuring “instrumental music”; by the time Dr. Daruwalla found the complaining writer again, the writer’s anger was being directed at a news story he’d heard today. A rape and murder had been reported at the Alexandria Girls’ English Institution. The account that the writer had heard went as follows: “There was no rape and no murder, as previously and erroneously reported, at the Alexandria Girls’ English Institution today.” This was the kind of thing that drove the writer crazy; Farrokh guessed it was what he meant by “no follow-through.”

“It’s truly ridiculous to listen to this!” Julia had said, and so he’d left her with her “instrumental music.”

Now Dr. Daruwalla put all this behind him. He thought about limps—all the different kinds he’d seen. He wouldn’t use Madhu’s name; he would call the girl in his screenplay Pinky, because Pinky was a real star. He would also make the girl much younger than Madhu; that way, nothing sexual could threaten her—not in Dr. Daruwalla’s story.

Ganesh was the right name for the boy, but in the movie the boy would be older than the girl. Farrokh would simply reverse the ages of the real children. He would give his Ganesh a bad limp, too, but not nearly so grotesquely crushed a foot as the real Ganesh had; it would be too hard to find a child actor with such a nasty deformity. And the children should have a mother, because the screenwriter had already planned how he would take their mother away. Storytelling was a ruthless business.

Briefly Dr. Daruwalla considered that he’d not only failed to understand the country of his origin; he’d also failed to love it. He realized he was about to invent an India he could both comprehend and love—a simplified version. But his self-doubt passed—as self-doubt must, in order to begin a story.

It was a story set in motion by the Virgin Mary, Farrokh believed. He meant the stone statue of the unnamed saint in St. Ignatius Church—the one that needed to be restrained with a chain and a steel grommet. She wasn’t really the Blessed Mother, but she had nevertheless become the Virgin Mary to Dr. Daruwalla. He liked the phrase well enough to write it down—“a story set in motion by the Virgin Mary.” It was a pity that it wouldn’t work as a title. For a title, he would need to find something shorter; but the simple repetition of this phrase enabled him to begin. He wrote it down again, and then again—“a story set in motion by the Virgin Mary.” Then he crossed out every trace of this phrase, so that not even he could read it. Instead, he said it aloud—repeatedly.

Thus, in the dead of night, while almost five million residents of Bombay were fast asleep on the sidewalks of the city, these two men were wide awake and mumbling. One spoke only to himself—“a story set in motion by the Virgin Mary”—and this allowed him to get started. The other spoke not only to himself but to God; understandably, his mumbles were a little louder. He was saying, “I’ll take the turkey,” and his repetitions—he hoped—would prevent him from being consumed by that past which everywhere surrounded him. It was the past that had given him his tenacious will, which he believed was the will of God within him; yet how he feared the past.

“I’ll take the turkey,” said Martin Mills. By now his knees were throbbing. “I’ll take the turkey, I’ll take the turkey, I’ll take the turkey.”

18. A STORY SET IN MOTION BY THE VIRGIN MARY

Limo Roulette

In the morning, Julia found Farrokh slumped over the glass-topped table as if he’d fallen asleep while looking through the glass at the big toe of his right foot. Julia knew this was the same toe that had been bitten by a monkey, for which the family had suffered some religious disruption; she was thankful that the effects of the monkey bite had been neither fanatical nor long-lasting, but to observe her husband in the apparent position of praying to this same toe was disconcerting.

Julia was relieved to see the pages of the screenplay-in-progress, which she realized had been the true object of Farrokh’s scrutiny—not his toe. The typewriter had been pushed aside; the typed pages had many penciled corrections written on them, and the doctor still held the pencil in his right hand. It appeared to Julia that her husband’s own writing had served him as a soporific. She assumed she was a witness to the genesis of yet another Inspector Dhar disaster, but she saw at a glance that Dhar was not the voice-over character; after reading the first five pages, she wondered if Dhar was even in the movie. How odd! she thought. Altogether, there were about 25 pages. She took them into the kitchen with her; there she made coffee for herself and tea for Farrokh.

The voice-over was that of a 12-year-old boy who’d been crippled by an elephant. Oh, no—it’s Ganesh! Julia thought. She knew the beggar. Whenever she left the apartment building, he was there to follow her; she’d bought him many things, most of which he’d sold, but his unusually good English