12.15.07
Beginning Our Descent
| Through the airliner’s port window, a sea of tiles surged up and down. The tiles, each a distinct shade of rust, formed a great flowing quilt. “Rust,” he remembered the cowboy’s voice, “is the fire that burns iron.” He could imagine the smoldering fire spreading slowly across northern Bombay, consuming just as respiration consumes, out of control like the respiration of a cancer or a conflagration, devouring the great city; that city of hope and opportunity. A city of tolerance. An Indian city, no doubt, but forever a British city, and a Muslim and Persian city too. Rotting at its core with the foulest poverty. The slum capital of the world in an age of slums, though it still retained its grand old Imperial name Bombay. |  |
Not for long. The Mosques were burning, the Parsis were dying off, and even the Gujaratis weren’t welcome.
He wondered about the mathematics of misery. What is the misery of a million miserable souls? Is it a million fold, or is it the same as one? Is the misery of a million more than a single mother in mourning?
He braced himself, not so much for the landing as the arrival.
“Name.”, the customs agent recited, as he received the passenger’s passport.
“Mehrzad Kariyani” was the reply.
“City of birth.”
“Pasadena, California”.
The traveler sensed suspicion in the agent, or perhaps he imagined it.
“Religion”
“Parsi.”
The agent gave him a second look, and then let him pass.
The traveler unlocked the door to his room and dropped his suitcase on the bed. He snapped it open, and lifted out a dark green outfit. After changing into the long sleeve shirt and pants, he lifted out a black topi and pulled it over his head. He dug into the suitcase and removed a small pill jar. He opened the jar, dumped out a capsule, and put the capsule in his change pocket. He pulled a circular strap and a pair of binoculars out of the suitcase, attached them, put the strap over his head, and adjusted it. He dumped the contents of his rucksack out onto the bed. He then flipped the binoculars down over his eyes, and pulled the headgear off his head and placed it into his pack, emptied it out onto the bed, slung the pack over his shoulders, and left the room.
Walking through the hotel lobby, he turned and approached the front desk. “Excuse me sir. Would you happen to know where I can find a hardware store, say, where I might find screws and such things?” The man at the desk responded, “Certainly, sir. There’s a shop just two or three blocks from here, up Veer Nariman Road.”
When he’d found the shop, he looked around, the finally asked the shopkeeper if he had any cable cutters. The shopkeeper then said something in another language that seemed like an order to a young man, who immediately ran off. “My assistant will return shortly with the item you have requested.” The traveler nodded and continued to browse through the shop. After the assistant returned with the cable cutters, the American purchased them, along with some rope and a pair of gloves. Outside the shop, he stuffed the purchase into his pack, looked up the street, and began walking back toward the Astoria Hotel, but stopped short the Churchgate rail station, where he planned to catch a train to Charni Road. Not quite up to fighting the crowds, he opted to walk instead.
He paused in front of an old fire temple for awhile, then continued down to Chowpatty Beach, bought some bhelpuri, and sat there watching the street performers, dispossessed, and the fun seekers until sunset. He resumed walking, first further down the beach, then he spotted a griffon vulture soaring westward, and followed it toward the towers of Malabar Hill.
After awhile, he came to a place where one side of the street was forested, as it were a park, behind a wall. The traveler strolled in and out of the light, following the barrier as he walked. As he passed out of the reach of a streetlight, he stopped along the wall where a gap in it had been patched with steel fencing, now rusty from the Bombay weather. He reached into his pocket, pulled out the cutters, and snipped two strands of the fencing, then returned the cutters to his pocket and continued walking. He made several right turns, and was soon at the gap again, and quickly pruned the fending a little more. On the forth pass, he walked directly toward the gaps and slipped through it without pausing.
He walked quickly through the forest, then stopped, and moved the cutters from his pocket to his pack, and slipped the capsule out of his dime pocket. He squeezed a green paste out of the capsule and wiped the paste over his face. He pulled out the binocular-cap. He slid the strap over his topi, adjusted it, and pulled the binoculars down over his eyes. He then put on the gloves and proceeded through the forest. The calls of birds still echoed through the forest. He heard the startling call of a peacock. He paused, and followed the growing smell of death among the trees.
His nose led him to what resembled a large petroleum tank, such as might be seen at a refinery, only this tank, perhaps ten meters high and three hundred around, was made of stone. He then began walking from tree to tree, inspecting each tree momentarily, and following a wandering path around the tank. Inspecting the trunk of one tree more thoroughly, he pulled the rope out of his pack, wove it around his torso and each leg, and then around the tree.
He then scaled up the trunk, then wormed out onto one of the main branches toward the stone tank, and removed the night vision glasses. From the branch, he looked down into the roofless tank, seeing the dim contrast of corpses against stone. He lay there against the branch, occasionally adjusting his body for comfort, and saw the silhouette of a vulture in an adjacent tree. He smiled through the green mask, and started to hum pleasantly. He then began to sing in a cracked whisper, “when I think of heaven (deliver me in a black-winged bird) …”
