The Selected Works of Abdullah the Cossack E-Book

H. M. Naqvi

• Herausgeber: Grove Press UK
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Seitenzahl: 371

Beschreibung

Through the use of a roman-à-clef, the author is able to create compelling caricatures that take on a life of their own. - Guardian ____________ Anarchic, erudite and rollicking, with a septuagenarian protagonist like no other, The Selected Works of Abdullah the Cossack is a joyride of a story set against a kaleidoscopic portrait of one of the world's most vibrant cities. Abdullah, bachelor and scion of a once prominent family, awakes on the morning of his seventieth birthday and considers launching himself over the balcony. Having spent years attempting to compile a 'mythopoetic legacy' of his beloved Karachi, the cosmopolitan heart of Pakistan, Abdullah has lost his zeal. A surprise invitation for a night out from his old friend Felix Pinto snaps Abdullah out of his funk, and saddles him with a ward - Pinto's adolescent grandson Bosco. As Abdullah plays mentor to Bosco, he also attracts the romantic attentions of Jugnu, an enigmatic siren with links to the mob. All the while Abdullah's brothers' plot to evict him from the family estate. Now he must to try to save his home - or face losing his last connection to his familial past.

Leseprobe

Copyright © 2019 by H. M. Naqvi

“Ghazal of the Better-Unbegun”from The Father of the Predicaments © 1999 by Heather McHugh.Published by Wesleyan University Press. Used by permission.

First published in the United States of America and Canada in 2019 by Black Cat, an imprint of Grove Atlantic Inc.

This edition first published in Great Britain in 2019 by Grove Press UK, an imprint of Grove Atlantic Inc.

Copyright © H. M. Naqvi, 2019

The moral right of H. M. Naqvi to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of the book.

Every effort has been made to trace or contact all copyright-holders.The publishers will be pleased to make good any omissions or rectify any mistakes brought to their attention at the earliest opportunity.

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

Hardback ISBN 978 1 61185 630 9E-book ISBN 978 1 61185 915 7

Printed in Great Britain

Grove Press, UKOrmond House26–27 Boswell StreetLondonWC1N 3JZ

www.groveatlantic.com

To Zafar Iqbal and Akbar Naqvi

NB: Dear reader, I’m not a writer or intellectual. I’m a doctor, a medical doctor, an ophthalmologist, not a PhD. But I’m not entirely unschooled in scholarly matters: I can distinguish between a nota bene and an afterword, as I was once a student of literature and intellectual history myself. I have to come clean about my qualifications because I’m the one who has compiled this volume. Some years ago, I received a hefty package in the post, but given my professional commitments and family responsibilities, the project has taken time. Organising the texts into a cogent manuscript, glossary, table and all, has also taken some doing. I don’t think I need to delve into the mechanics of the process here, but I would like to say that I’ve tried my best to honour the work and its author. The reader should understand that there is no manual for such an endeavour, and this is no ordinary opus, so please excuse any editorial errors or lapses of judgment.

—BB

FOREWORD

(AND BACKWARD?)

It is said that cities are founded by gods, kings, heroes, but Currachee1 emerges from nothing, from stories. Indeed, one hears stories about Lord Ram’s sojourn in the verdant cove known since as Aram Bagh, about the fag end of Alexander the Greek’s bloody adventurism,2 about that lad Moriro who saved the coast with steely ingenuity from a monstrous rampaging shark. But the fact of the matter is Currachee, like Calcutta, like Shanghai, was a modest entrepôt when the Britishers happened upon it a couple hundred years ago. Although expelled on several occasions by the hardy denizens, the blighters were intent on seizing the environs by hook or crook for the natural harbour promised great geopolitical potential. The community swelled from a few thousand souls in 1845 (when work began on St. Patrick’s Cathedral) to millions today: you can fit the populations of Norway, New Zealand, Uruguay, Paraguay, and the Republic of Congo (Brazzaville) into the city on a good day and have space left over. Due to the great demand for cotton during the American Civil War, a railway line was laid here and everyone knows that once you lay down tracks, the Train of Change barrels through. By the time our Empress Market became the second largest vegetable market in the world, my grandfather, a dry goods merchant, had set up shop there—tea, tobacco, coir, fibre, secondhand pantaloons—grafting our history onto that of the city.

But I am more phenomenologist than historian, less concerned with Who Did What & What Happened When than with the more discreet, indeed noble investigations—nary the chota chota but the mota mota.3 For instance, the Mythopoetic Legacy of Abdullah Shah Ghazi (RA), the patron saint of my city, is one of the matters hitherto ignored by historians, pundits, and punters alike, suggesting a variety of perversity that eclipses the newsworthy issues that vex the denizens of Our Broad Swath of the World. It is as if in this savage, insensible, this distracted age, we have become obsessed with anecdotal indicators, hermeneutic lint, ignoring What Makes Us What We Are, indeed, What Makes the World What It Is.

Consequently, I have been attempting to reify certain truths on the page, an endeavour that can keep me up from the onset of whisky twilight to the baleful call to morning prayer that animates the resident cock, the murder of crows, until my piles are damp and sore, my extremities rosy with mosquito bites. When sleep eludes—my GP avers it has to do with the Circadian Rhythms—I observe the local nightlife from my perch, from the transvestite troubadours chanting vulgar odes on the street to the cockroaches pressed together like dried petals by my varicose foot. There have indeed been times when I have sensed daybreak only by the quality of light refracted through the dirty stained-glass windows spring, by the flutter of hummingbird wings, but I am afraid I have also been waylaid by anxiety, lassitude, contretemps, and the intermittent shove of history, here in the bosom of the vast, cluttered, famously custard-yellow enclave known to all and sundry as the Sunset Lodge.4

____________________

1. This orthographic tic can be attributed to my affinity for the sonorous, indeed alliterative quality of the colonial appellation for the city—after all, I came of age during the Raj—but the long and short of it is that it’s my city and I’ll call it what I want. I can, however, mention other variations in passing: Karachal, Khor-e-Ali, Kalachi-Jo-Ghote, Crotchey, Kiranchi. A fisherman once told me that when his people were taking the Brits around the harbour, they kept asking “What’s this place?” viz., Kroch hi tho? but you can choose to call it what you like, disregard the fallibilist imperative, or for that matter, disregard all the postscripta on offer—it doesn’t really matter to me.

2. I have it on good authority from a Poonjabi historian—they are a nation of historians, aren’t they?—that the Greek was mortally wounded by the spear belonging to a mighty kinsman of yore who proclaimed, teeth-gritted, Twadi aysi di taysee. It’s admittedly an apocryphal episode in the Annals of Recorded History. But you never know.

3. I have done some work on the Uses of Mother’s Milk in Musalman Jurisprudence, for instance, the Zoroastrian Intellectual Traditions that Inform the Yazidis of Georgia, and the Leitmotif of Our Swath of the World in Hollywood (from The Man Who Would Be King to Bhowani Junction).

4. The Lodge is situated en route to the zoo in the erstwhile genteel environs of Garden East. If you lose your way, you could end up in one of the largest urban necropolises in the world. There is a discrete, walled Jewish cemetery in the neighbourhood as well, a stone’s throw from the site of the old synagogue. Only I can take you there now but in the old days everyone knew: shuttling past, the bus conductor would holler, Yahoodi Masjid! Yahoodi Masjid! as if it were the most natural thing in the world. One of the best roadside joints is located down the street where they serve that thick haleem that burns your esophageal cavity if you wolf it down too quickly. The other landmark amongst the squat untidy flats that mar the topography is the sprawling police station mainly manned by gruff northern tribes. Once upon a time Garden was populated by a decent breed: recall the Mehtanis off Pedro D’Souza Road, the Souvenir Tobacco people, the Royal House of Khayrpur. Eminent barrister A. K. Brohi took residence in the vicinity afterward, renowned crooner Habib Wali Mohammed & Begum Hamidullah, editor of the Monthly Mirror. Not long ago I would come across the poet Rais Amrohvi taking his evening constitutional but I do not get out often now.

VOLUME I

CRITICAL DIGRESSIONS

(or THIS, THAT, THE OTHER)

My head is like a rubbish heap: you have to sift through the muck to find a working toaster. When I was eleven, I overheard one of my brothers telling another that I am a bastard. They say if you scale the bluff by Shah Noorani (RA), you happen upon the clenched mouth of a cave, and if you manage to crawl in, you are your father’s son. I do not patronize Shah Noorani (RA)—if I am a bastard, I am a bastard—but you might find me at the seaside shrine of Abdullah Shah Ghazi (RA) on a Thursday night, inhaling hashish amongst the malcontents who congregate on the rocky southern slant of the hill. It’s always a carnival, populated by fortune-tellers, bodybuilders, thugs, troubadours, transvestites, women & sweet, rowdy children. I am at home there.

When I enter the cool confines of Agha’s Supermarket to purchase Smoked Gouda, however, shoppers part to give me way.5 Those who once knew me turn to memorize the sodium content in shelved cans of French Onion Soup. The last time I was dragging myself through the aisles, I called out to this busty, sixty-six-year-old Persian cat who had just celebrated her fifty-fifth birthday. Although married to a portly patrician now, she would be at the Olympus in the old days, making eyes at the young men with carnations fixed in their lapels. When I hooted Sweety! she paused for a moment, as if crossing off the loaf of bread on the list in her head, before disappearing around the corner from the shoe polish. Verily, decency is dead or dying.

I have been mulling a project, some permutation of the Mythopoetic Legacy of Abdullah Shah Ghazi (RA), since the fateful day my father asked me to punctuate the following sentence: That that is that is that and that that is not that is not. Naturally, I retorted, “Comma after the sixth word, sir!” Papa could be difficult but I knew then that he had in an indirect way communicated his aspiration for me to be a phenomenologist even if he would deny it vehemently afterward.

There is no doubt in my mind that my mother, an aristocrat hailing from an erstwhile martial state in the North, would have encouraged the project. When she entered a room, people squinted as if she were wrought of light. If I close my eyes I can recall hers: sunny and blue like the sea at Sonmiani. Married to a cousin at seventeen, the Khan of This or That Khanate, she ran away when she realized that he was only keen on hunting partridge. She met Papa at the Olympus in ’29 when visiting an aunt twice removed for high tea. She had five sons with rhyming names: Hidayatullah, Bakaullah, Abdullah, Fazlullah, a.k.a. Tony & Rahimullah, a.k.a. Babu.6

When Mummy passed, the family, the House of K., became fundamentally unglued. After retiring from the army as a major, Hidayatullah moved to a palatial residence in the suburbs featuring a diamond-shaped pool whilst Bakaullah, once a card-carrying Communist, immigrated to some dusty corner of the Near East where he reportedly runs a transportation & logistics concern. Tony,7 my boon companion, left for university in the United States of America before squatting on our estate in Scinde where he cultivates dames & produces wine—our very own vinos de la tierra.

I am certain I was Mummy’s favourite. She raised me to be myself. I am not a bad man but not good for much anymore. I am a fat man, and an anxious one. The insides of my thighs chafe when I climb down the stairs from my quarters; I avoid loitering below because my youngest brother, Babu, occupies the mezzanine with his twin boys and plain, moon-faced wife, Nargis—a lass with the charm of an opossum. The arrangement poses a bit of a problem because I love the children, those two crazy little Childoos.

When they manage to break free, they sneak up on me like those Ninja Warriors8 and clamber atop my domed belly. We sing, cavort, creep up to the roof to observe the silently sundering clouds, the odd meteor. We startle the nesting crows and put the fear of God in their black hearts. When their rasping protests ring through the still of the evening, Nargis the Opossum comes bounding up the stairs. She does not approve and changes the rules all the time:

1.   No Taking the Children to the Roof at Night (or During the Day, the Afternoon, or at Sunset)

2.   No Feeding the Children Walnuts (or Custard Apples, Chilli Chips, Sugar Wafers)

3.   No Singing Tom Jones to the Children (or Cliff Richard,9 Boney M., the Benjamin Sisters)

And even though I cradled him in my arms, carried him on my shoulders, even though I taught him how to whistle, how to say thank you—thunku, he said—the aforementioned Babu is not an ally. Many years ago, he laughed when told I was a bastard. Like many, like most, he quietly judged me then, quietly judges me now. I don’t care. A fortune-teller named Sarbuland once told me, “Tum lambi race kay ghoray ho,” viz., You are the horse of the long race.

But I am not the same man I was yesterday.

____________________

5. Of course, in the old days, one frequented Ghulam Mohammed Brothers for bread and butter, and Bliss & Co. for tonics and balms. Long after the proprietors, Mr. and Mrs. Black, sold the business and moved to the UK, they wintered yearly at the Olympus. You still might be able to pick up a bottle of Bliss Carbonate or Calamine at pharmacies in the city, presumably even at Agha’s.

6. I once drew up a Sociocultural Genealogical Table that elucidates who we are, where we have been. I have it somewhere in my papers. You’ll have to find it.

7. I christened Tony Tony because as a child he could not pronounce his own name—like all our names, it is a mouthful—and because he resembled Tony Curtis circa The Prince Who Was a Thief.

8. You might recall that that Lee Van Cleef chap—a peer by age, perhaps, if not by distinction—played a Ninja Warrior in the serial in the early eighties. I am no Lee Van Cleef. I cannot scale walls or walk between raindrops. I would be happy if I could scratch my back without risking a herniated disk.

9. Who remembers today that Cliff Richard was a native of Our Swath of the World, a neighbour, a Lucknavi. Who remembers old Peter Sarstedt for that matter, a Delhi-wallah, who wrote, “Where Do You Go To (My Lovely)?” And Pete Best, the Beatle from Madras? I ask you: why doesn’t discourse acknowledge that we pioneered rock & roll?

ON NEGOTIATING ONTOLOGICAL PANIC

(or DOWN & OUT)

Iwake feeling fraught and delicate like a soft-boiled egg for I have transformed into that dwindling subspecies homo septuagenari overnight, and there are few conjunctures that stupefy, that unsettle the soul more than the thought of a fallow life. Lying amid fading canvases, steamer trunks, rolled Turkish rugs, Mummy’s cut-glass perfume bottle collection, Papa’s clockwork gramophone, china and a brass candelabra from the Olympus, several dusty Betamax recorders, and the cadaver of an exercise bicycle, I stare at the whirring fan with one open cataract-swept eye, dimly pitting reasons for & against remaining prone: Nobody would care if you stayed in bed, I tell myself. You’re a sad man, long in the tooth, an animal: you drool, soil your knickers. It is a downpour of self-pity, a veritable monsoon of misery, but then the urge to relieve myself compels me to the commode. There is no doubt that there is reprieve if not respite in ritual, in diurnal bowel movements (even if the exercise has become trying on account of my piles) & the pages of The New Golden Treasury of English Verse.10 Oh, that golden crowd! What jocund company!

Slipping into Mummy’s jungle-print robe de chambre after, I take tea and insulin on the balcony. The sky is cloudless and blue, the air smoky and trilling with crickets; an old crow perches on the ledge above, cawing hoarsely, damnably, like the Angel Israfil. I know I won’t get any work done today—I have the feeling that it will be a very long day, or a very short one. Draining the acrid lees, I hoist myself from the cane armchair, dentures rattling in my pocket, and teeter purposefully towards the wrought-iron railing. As I consider the diagonally inclined potted cacti, the pansy bed below, I notice a pair of eyes peering at me over the horizon of the boundary wall as if I am on display, a primate shelling nuts. “Stop, Kookaburra, stop,” I chunter, returning the gaze through the interstices of the evergreens, “That’s not a monkey, it’s me.” Then I apprehend the manifest drama: I am brandishing my member, flush and bulbous and overrun with wild reddish hair, and as usual, have nothing to show for myself.

Uncannily, the eyes, fantastic obsidian eyes, follow me as I collect my genitalia in the teacup & nearly trip down the stairs. It’s not just my biscuit-box feet; no, I am curious, titillated, mortified—imagine a seraph, siren, a sphinx! But God knows mythology has long ceded to the mundane: I suspect a tarrying transvestite, or the maid’s good-for-nothing locksmith husband, or that swine Chambu,11 the manager of my piddling garment-dyeing operation who fleeces me every quarter and demands Other Sundry Expenses. Sundry, my foot!

By the time I fasten my robe and cross the lawn, the eyes vanish like fireflies taking flight. There is the wonted activity outside: lurching busses, rattling rickshaws, the odd donkey cart laden with galvanized steel pipes, and down the road, the street-side dentist sits on his haunches, administering what might be a root canal. Barefoot & breathless, I stand unsteadily on the toasty asphalt, considering the gaze that bored into my soul—Who did it belong to? Why was I being watched? Why today?—but then I hear the distinct voices of the Childoos over the clamour of traffic.

“Chachajaan!” they cry, “Cha! Cha! Jaan!” they chant. They are single-pasli, suffer from unfortunate bowl cuts & wear white button-down half sleeves, navy blue knickers, white socks pulled up to their scratched knees. They waddle as they run, run as they waddle, backpacks flapping, maid straggling behind. I pick them up, peck them on the cheek, and break into song: “There lived a certain man in Russia long ago!”

“He was bigs and strong,” they chime, “and eyes flaming gold!”

And together we bellow: “RA-RA-RASPUTIN / Lover of the Russian queen / There was a cat that really was gone / RA-RA-RASPUTIN / Russia’s greatest love machine / It was a shame how he carried on!”

We make a spectacle of ourselves—several passersby gather and gape—and why shouldn’t we? We are loud and gay—the von Trapps of Currachee! We might have broken into “Do-Re-Mi” next (an admittedly more apropos number) if it were not for the jaundiced attention of the authorities: I feel the quick teardrop eyes of my dear sister-in-law on my back. Not one for song and spectacle, Nargis the Opossum is undoubtedly leaning against the gate, wrist on hip, shaking her draped head from side to side like a broken doll. “Chalo, chalain, bachon,” she bids. “Lunchtime!”

Setting the children down, I surreptitiously fit my dentures into my mouth, then turn to greet Nargis, but she has already marched in, trailed by the Childoos. As they wave shyly, I wonder when I will see them again, wonder if they know it is my platinum jubilee. Not even my pal Tony has called. But then who remembers sad old men? We die, rot, without acknowledgement, without ceremony.

I swear I could stand curbside all day, watching the world go by, waiting for those haunting eyes to gaze upon my hairless, roly-poly, chicken-flesh chest—what else is there to do?—but the day has become hot and brackish like a belch. Shutting the gate behind me, I return unceremoniously to my perch, and certain ontological panic. But as I consider launching myself over the balcony for the second time, my man mercifully shambles in with my daily jug of bitter gourd juice, sporting a red-and-white baseball cap and matching joggers.

Barbarossa, former majordomo, has been yanked from de facto retirement since the couple who cooked & cleaned for us failed to return from annual leave (because Nargis is a difficult customer), despite the fact that the old hand hears voices12 & spends most of his time in the backyard rearing cockerels for the cockpits. Whilst he has become as weathered as a banyan, it was once said he possessed “the jib of Clark Gable.”

“I will not abide this poison!” I protest. I have been protesting for a quarter century—bitter gourd tastes like vegetal diesel—but Barbarossa insists it mitigates blood sugar, and I am beholden to him; he oft saves me from myself.

“Juice especial,” he says in English. He is known to speak English on occasion—he picked it up buttling at the Olympus—but in recent history, he is only wont to mutter gibberish such as Yessur, nossur, cocklediddledosur.

“You garnished it with hemlock?”

Stroking his freshly hennaed beard, Barbarossa announces, “Is the haypy-baday-juice!”

Kissing him on the head, I slip my man a note folded in the pocket of my robe, a tip for the wishes, the welcome watery wine, but since the old fox is not always compos mentis, I ask him how he remembered. “You friend calling,” he replies.

“I have no friends!” I cry.

“Pinto phone.”

By Jove! Pinto, good old Felix Pinto, the Last Trumpeter of Currachee! When Barbarossa informs me that I have been summoned to the Goan Association, I doff my robe and proclaim, “Prepare my bath! Dust off my smoking jacket! Iron my kerchief!”

In all the excitement, I forget the obsidian eyes, and nearly tumble over the balcony yet again, not unlike Adam before the fall.

____________________

10. A cursory survey of my lavatory library would reveal back issues of She, Mag, the Civil & Military Gazette, as well as The Ornithologist’s Field Guide, Justine, Not Without My Daughter, Freedom at Midnight. The most entertaining of the lot, the lot that belongs in the loo, is Maulana Thanvi’s Heavenly Ornaments. Did he not expire on the pot?

12. The story goes that Nargis’ preacher instructed her to say salam before entering a room. When she entered the garret one afternoon, a voice replied & she yelled bloody murder & Barbarossa came to the rescue. He reported that the djinn bore no ill intent; he was just being polite. I don’t mind; decorum is a lost virtue.

ON THE JAZZ AGE OF CURRACHEE—AN ANECDOTAL HISTORY

According to my friend and former colleague, B. Avari, proprietor of the world-famous Beach Luxury, jazz came to Currachee in ’53. He told me that when his parents were away in Beirut or Mauritius or someplace like that, he “booked this Dutch quartet, called several hundred people, many of them friends. They played all night. There was a traffic jam in the parking lot.” When jazz came to the city, it caused traffic jams.

Old Goan rockers, however, will tell you that they were grooving to jazz even earlier. They will tell you that their forefathers had started trickling into Bombay, Calcutta, and Currachee by the middle of the nineteenth century to escape the Portuguese, a dashed scourge in the Annals of the Colonial Enterprise. They were D’Souzas, Fernandeses, Rodrigueses, Lobos, Nazareths, erecting St. Patrick’s Cathedral13 with the Irish Fusiliers and the Currachee Goan Association not long after, organising choirs at the former, staging Gilbert and Sullivan operettas at the latter. Music, they will say, is in their blood.

Whilst the Anglos congregated at the Burt Institute and the gentry waltzed across the floors of the Gymkhana and Scinde Clubs, the Goans were doing the Lindy Hop or Cha-cha-cha to numbers strummed by the Carvalho Trio or the Janu Vaz Band14 at jam sessions at each other’s houses, in the backyards of Cincinnatus Town: somebody would bring a guitar, somebody else the drums, and horns became de rigueur by and by. And of course, everyone would bring liquor—Murree, caju feni, or Goan hooch, and if they could afford it, the foreign sauce: Dimple, Black & White, Vat 69.15 Before long, the legendary Eddie Carapiet began hosting the weekly radio show “The Hit Parade,” injecting jazzy riffs into the bloodstream of the city. And one fine day Dizzy Gillespie rolled into town, cohort in tow, selling out the garden at the Metropole.

Although there was not much demand for what came to be known as Three Star Accommodation in the old days, there was the Killarney run by Mr. Wyse, North Western, Marina, the Bristol on Sunny Side Lane,16 and the Olympus. Then the Parsees, consummate visionaries, entered the frame: C.Framji Minwalla, for instance, transformed his guesthouse in Malir into the Hotel Grand, the only establishment that boasted a swimming pool. And when the city became the regional entrepôt—all flights, East to West, West to East, flew in & out of the city—the Dutch set up Midway House, and there was the Hostellerie de France, and with the advent of cabarets, the Taj, Lido, the hospitality landscape began to change. We had to compete.

Run by my father, a Khoja,17 the Shadow Lounge at the Olympus was naturally tamer than establishments such as the Excelsior where Gul Pari bared all, or Roma Shabana, where you would attend cabarets featuring the likes of the Stambuli Sisters, or “Carmen & Anita in French Can-Can.” What you got at the Shadow Lounge were musicians who knew their Bird from their Beiderbecke. The stage was elevated and so spacious that you could fit a chamber orchestra on it. It faced a round, oak dance floor surrounded by tables draped with crimson tablecloths. There was a solid oak bar at the entrance and ferns everywhere and on a good night, there would be close to a hundred aficionados, sipping cocktails, smoking 555s, nodding and snapping their fingers emphatically.

I knew all the musicians of the time because they were all regulars at the Olympus. They wore thin black ties and their black hair swept back: recall the Ay Jays, Bluebirds, Thunders, Keynotes. One night I came across this crazy, trumpet-playing cat, Felix Pinto, known to his audiences by his nom de tune: the Caliph of Cool. He possessed the shiniest trumpet this side of Saddar, or, for that matter, the Suez.

It has been said that the Caliph had a hand in the composition of the National Anthem though the stories were apocryphal even then.18 When asked, Pinto would just grin mysteriously and raise a toast to the well-being of the country—a wooly, wily strategy. Some attribute the commission to the Caliph’s doppelganger, old Dominic Gonsalves, but I believe that it belongs to Tollentine, or Tolly, Fonseca, the celebrated bandmaster known for original compositions that include the “Barcelona Waltz,” “Officer’s March,” and “Diwan-e-Khaas.” I never had the opportunity to meet the man—he expired soon after the anthem was completed19—but have come across his nieces at the Currachee Goan Association. Whatever the story, this much is certain: the Caliph of Cool was a legend in his time.

Although the Shadow Lounge was leafy, smoky, and dim, you could always spot Felix Pinto: he sported a slick bouffant, a boxer’s jaw, and thick-rimmed, shaded glasses, whether it was three in the afternoon at Café Grand or three on a moonless morning at Clifton Beach. Verily, he was a dandy in a way that was only possible in Currachee in the Sixties. I would wager that he wore his glasses in the bath and to bed, sleeping or making love. Because they were glued to his nose, you would have never noticed his sunken blue vertiginous eyes. Ask me then: how do I know?

Pinto’s trademark frames were knocked off his face once and only once, one night at Le Gourmet circa ’59, when he was boffed in the face during a bar brawl with a young landowner known for his two-toned patent leather shoes. There was a dame involved, a sexy Anglo named Eleanor or something like that, and a spilt glass of wine. Although Pinto sported a black eye that night, he got his opponent in the bird’s nest. When the arriviste crumpled, I whisked the Caliph out via the kitchen. Otherwise he would have had to contend with the landowner’s thuggish entourage.

When said landowner was elected Prime Minister some years later, I helped Pinto escape to Australia.20 My friend knocked about down under during the Disco Era before returning to Currachee but by then, the Prime Minister had imposed prohibition in a gutless attempt to gain currency with the excitable religious rabble. The clubs, bars, and cabarets were shut down soon after. Many Goans left. It was the end of an age.

____________________

13. Who knows now or acknowledges the fact that the city as we know it is actually arranged around churches?

14. Lynette Dias-Gouveia reminds me that the band comprised Alex Rodrigues & Dominic Gonsalves on saxophone; John Fernandes on trumpet; double-bassist David William; and Basil and Rudy D’Souza on the drums.

15. Three Parsee brothers—technically speaking two brothers and a cousin—had a virtual monopoly on distribution in the country by the middle of the century. They ran the Quetta Distillery Ltd., which along with the Murree Brewery remains the premier producer of liquor in the country. One ought to avoid the former’s Peach Vodka and also the whisky of the newer distillery in the Interior. It tastes like paint thinner.

16. The Bristol was built in 1910 by two Hindoo brothers & run by my drinking buddy, the honourable Mr. Rizvi.

17. For those not in the know, Khojas, known once upon a time as Lohanas, are a metropolitan mercantile community who revere the Mighty Ali (AS), cousin & right-hand man of the Prophet (PBUH). Although an intellectual, Ali (AS) could break you in two if you crossed him. Since the Prophet (PBUH) was a businessman, since business is Sunnah, we follow in his footsteps, pursuing commerce from Calcutta to Zanzibar to Canada. In fact, this country was fashioned by a Khoja. But I get ahead of myself.

18. The words, of course, were penned by the renowned poet, Hafiz Jalandhari, and the orchestra, reportedly a navy band, was conducted by one Ahmed Chagla.

19. Although he was known to frequent the Olympus, I was not allowed into the bar before I was eighteen. Of course, I didn’t drink until my turn as the Cossack. It should be noted here, however, that since Mummy treated my childhood colds with brandy (to Papa’s chagrin), I was, in a way, weaned on spirit.

20. I suppose he could have fled to Canada or the United States of America—if I were compelled to leave I would escape to San Remo like the White Russians—but the Australian Consul General at the time, a certain His Excellency Darling, was known to us, so I leaned on him to help a man out.

ON RITESAND RESPONSIBILITY

(or TAKE FIVE)

The Goan Association is housed in an imposing double-storied stone edifice featuring arched windows and cornices and pilasters flanking the entrance. There is a library and wine shop downstairs, typically manned by a ruddy tubby chap whose mouth is permanently fixed in a golden grin, and a vast hall upstairs where concerts and plays and marriages are staged with great foon fan—not to mention the annual Valentine’s & Independence Day balls. It’s always cool inside because the walls are thick and the ceiling is high and the doors open out to a shaded alcove featuring a fountain. As you enter you pass sequential portraits of past presidents whose solemn expressions suggest a tale that is best not to broach with the members of the storied institution.

I find Felix in his tatty tuxedo and dark glasses towards the far end of the hall, leaning for effect, nursing one of those deadly bottles of feni. “I looked at him,” he is saying, “he looked at me, then I said, ‘Why don’t you sit on the trumpet, mister!’” There is a roar of laughter from the audience, a cast of pirates arranged in a circle: the barkeep, magnificently named Titus Gomes, and two others, a walnut of a fellow with bushy whiskers, and a ponytailed character in a Hawaiian shirt who elbows Pinto upon my advent.

As if parting a stage curtain, Felix proclaims, “Ah, the Cossack cometh! Happy birthday, you rascal!” Turning to the trio, he adds, “He might be a Musalman, but he’s all right!” They hoot and toot and raise empty glasses. “Get the birthday boy a chair, and some hooch.” Although I rarely partake in libation anymore on account of sugar and gout, I cannot refuse my old friend. I down a Patiala peg21 and wince. It feels warm going down; it feels like the old days.

“I was going to hold a party for you, man,” Felix begins, “but you don’t have any friends anymore and mine are dead or in Australia—it’s the same thing. You know, I’ve been everywhere in that penal colony of a country—Perth, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, I’ve even been to that big rock in the Outback—and I tell you I’m happier in this godforsaken place any day of the week. How ya goin? they ask. What tribe ya from? ‘Goan, man,’ I’d say, ‘Pakistani,’ and they think I’m saying Papua New Guinea. G’day, mate, good on ya. Sure, I played gigs there, good gigs, or good enough, but here I’ve got a name, a place—”

“Context—”

“You have a way with words, Cossack.”

“That’s what I do.”

“I walk into any hotel in this city and somebody comes running, Good afternoon, sir, good evening, sir, because they know I’m an old-timer. I’ve survived, banjo. The other day, I was at the Intercon, and who do I see? Do you remember that bacha, Yusuf? He’d ask me to call him Joe, and I’d say, ‘Joe, help me carry the equipment back to the Foxy.’ Now he’s a big seth—he’s got buildings on the beachfront. Anything you need, he said, you call me. But what do I need? I need a drink, my trumpet—I need people to know that I am the best bloody trumpet player in the country.”

“They need to know you knocked out a prime minister—”

“Exactly, man, exactly!”

“Aun-houn,” Titus Gomes chimes in in pidgin.

“Enough jib-jab!” Pinto proclaims, biting his trumpet. “Time to jam!” As the others conjure a double bass, an accordion, and a dhol because the snare drum is torn, Pinto says, “I know what you want to hear, Cossack.” Tapping his foot, he adds, “Happy birthday, old friend.”

What follows is an awesome rendition of “Take Five,” more Puente than Brubeck, more marching band perhaps than jazz: Titus beats the edge of the dhol tentatively with a bamboo stick, reproducing the sensation of the introductory movement of the number, that peculiarly syncopated 5/4 beat—duddud-dudda-da-da-da, duddud-dudda-da-dada—whilst the walnut strums the double bass as if this is the moment he has been preparing for since the Dawn of Time. When the trumpet enters the medley, I shut my eyes. You have to shut your eyes.

“Take Five” is like you are flying, arms extended, inhaling the beach at Seaview on a cool December evening, dud-dud-duddud-da-da-da, duddud-duddud-da-da-da. You see floodlights lighting up loping camels, and miniature families huddled around miniature stalls preparing corn on charcoal. If you are lucky, you see a woman dancing in the surf, her wispy aquamarine dupatta fluttering in the breeze. If you are luckier still, you see the silver-grey fin of a dolphin cutting the silver-grey waves, duddud-daada-da-da-da, duddud-daada-da-da-da.

The Felix Pinto Quartet play into the night. They play Armstrong and Getz, selections from the ragtime canon, and even a couple of Bollywood numbers.22 They play until they are tired and sottish and can play no more. When they are done, the walnut dozes in a corner, squeaking through his nose, then Pinto, clutching his drooling trumpet, puts an arm around me and burbles, “I need a favour, Cossack.”

There was a time when I could extend favours, when I had resources, succor. I was a different man then, a known man, a scion of a respected family. Whilst I have nothing, am nothing, the Caliph of Cool still believes I can help. “Of course, old friend,” I slur. I do not want to disappoint, or disappoint immediately.

“Is my grandson, Bosco. My daughter’s in a pickle and her husband’s a doper so you need to put him up for some time. You know things. Teach him something—character building and all that jazz.”

When I say I do not believe I have had the pleasure of meeting said Bosco, a dark, gangly lad of twelve or thirteen emerges from the shadows, wearing a parenthetical moustache and a checkered shirt too big for his frame. For all I know, he might have been standing there all night. “Say hello to Uncle Cossack,” instructs Pinto.

“Hello, Uncle Cossack.”

Lo and behold, a ward is thrust upon me. It is the damndest development.

____________________

21. The story goes that the Maharaja of the Princely State of Patiala invented the measurement to beat the team of visiting Irishmen on the cricket field. They, of course, fell for it.

22. Recall the lyrics of “Shadmani”: “Aaj to nasha aisa charha, pucho na yaron / Mein to aasman pe hoon, mujhay neechay utaro” or Don’t ask me how drunk I am tonight, friend / Can you help me get down from the clouds? The number was de rigueur at weddings once. Now it’s all just dances I don’t dance and dish-dish boom-boom.

ON RECONSTRUCTINGMEMORY AND MAN

Verily, memory is a tricky wench.23 It catalogues images, episodes, reifies yesterday today, but recent research cited in Reader’s Digest suggests yesterday might change tomorrow, or the day after, in the mind. It’s all murky, molecular, but makes you what you are. I can attest to the fact that when I rake through the soil of my memory, there are certain episodes impressed in it like pebbles: I remember a fearsome cat with a severed tail stalking me in the garden, remember waddling inside the Lodge, teary, and my grandfather setting me on his bony lap, cooing in Gujarati, “Tamay kaim cho?” viz., You okay? Although he never completed school (he dropped out in the seventh form) he could negotiate the Queen’s English because he had to: like his contemporaries—Messrs Merchant, Mistry, old Ebrahimji Sulemanji—he had business with the Britishers. When I would shove my foot in his soft shoes, for instance, he would chide, “No naughty pun!” I was six when he passed. I bawled when I beheld his shrouded corpse, bawled louder when I was told that he was going to Heaven. There are rivers of milk there! “But he didn’t drink milk,” I sobbed. “He took tea only!”

My father spoke English to me (so I have little Gujarati), and generally cultivated an English air: he sported trilby hats and used the word “pardon” as a threat. One of my earliest memories features a smart young man in seersucker,24 pulling into the driveway in a cool blue Impala, the staff standing at attention. Whenever somebody invokes him—Your father used to say, or, If only your father were alive—some other incarnation materializes, though the canonical Papa, rendered in oil by a family friend, resides in the parlour downstairs:25 Jinnah cap perched on head, charcoal sherwani extending to the knees, he stares back, stands tall, fist on hip, commanding, indifferent. We all aspired to be that figure. Perhaps that’s why we all fell short.

When one thinks about it, my eldest brother Hidayatullah looked most like him, down to the Roman nose, though he was a breed apart—loud and bolshie, even as a boy. Next in line, the fair and lean Bakaullah looked more like Mummy, and though temperamentally sober, he would become severe with age. Neither took interest in our flagship business, the Olympus. Hidayatullah did spend time in other hotels carousing with the scions of established families, whilst Bakaullah, Comrade Bakaullah, fraternized with the local Communists, or Soorkhas, who populated Zelin’s and Café George on Preedy Street. He organised discussions on rooftops and street corners (attended by the likes of S. Sibt-e-Hassan) and rallies in support of farmers and the labour movement, but his career as an activist came to an abrupt end when he was nabbed by the authorities outside the Volk’s House, the Soviet “cultural centre,” for “subversive and suspicious activities.” After spending four months in Central Jail—Hidayatullah, a major in the army by then, lobbied the Inspector General (IG) of police for an early release—Comrade Bakaullah left for points West, or rather, the Near or Middle West, to become a dyed-in-the-wool capitalist. In his new incarnation, he hounded me for running the family into the ground. That is slander, libel, bovine fecal matter.

It is a fact that, unlike the Major or Comrade Bakaullah, I was not a sportsman or academically accomplished.26 I was a sensitive child, a curious soul; I lolled in the garden, talked to myself. When the neighbourhood children congregated to play tennikoit or gulli danda in the vacant plot adjacent to Apollo House, I made figurines in the flowerbed recalling the local sphinxes featured at fairs and mud-men recalling the Priest King of Mohenjo-Daro. Although the zoo was around the corner—you could hear the lions roaring at night—I had a fetish for ants, beetles, dragonflies, creatures that comported themselves with quiet resolve. And whilst the others awaited the tun-tun-wallah, I awaited the cycling librarian’s delivery of National Geographic. Mummy called me “Anokhay Mian,” viz., Master Unusual.

Papa attempted to draw me out, taking me on excursions, mano a mano:27 there were jaunts to Empress Market and Gandhi Garden and a memorable trip to the shabby shrine of Mungho Pir—patron saint of the Sheedis, the Afro-Pakistani community.28 Gawking at the crocodiles lazing in a murky pool, I remember Papa telling me that the frightful reptiles were just big lizards, said to have been the lice shaken loose from the saint’s head. “A giant, he was?” I asked. (“Primusinterpares,” he remarked cryptically.) When Papa narrated a story of how the mighty Sheedi general fought the British, losing ten thousand men to the machine gun, a leathery old man within earshot invited me to bang on a sheepskin drum—dhug-dhug, dhuga-dhug—a rare honour. I can also remember quarterly pilgrimages to the Toy Trading Agency where I once picked up a locomotive labeled “Made in Occupied Japan,” but as I grew older, Papa bid me to put away childish things. Circa nineteen hundred & fifty-four, he took it upon himself to make a man out of me.

During oppressive Currachee summers,29