A Son of the Circus

Not Charlton Heston

For weeks after the unusual foursome had departed from the Government Circuit House in Junagadh, the rabies vaccine and the vial of immune globulin, which Dr. Daruwalla had forgotten, remained in the lobby refrigerator. One night, the Muslim boy who regularly ate the saffron-colored yogurt remembered that the unclaimed package was the doctor’s medicine; everyone was afraid to touch it, but someone mustered the courage and threw it out. As for the one sock and the lone left-footed sandal, which the elephant boy had intentionally left behind, these were donated to the town hospital, although it was improbable that anyone there could use them. At the circus, Ganesh knew, neither the sock nor the sandal would be of any value to him; they weren’t necessary for a cook’s helper, or for a skywalker.

The cripple was a barefoot boy when he limped into the ringmaster’s troupe tent on Sunday morning; it was still before 10:00, and Mr. and Mrs. Das (and at least a dozen child acrobats) were sitting cross-legged on the rugs, watching the Mahabharata on TV. Despite their hike up Girnar Hill, the doctor and the missionary had brought the children to the circus too early. No one greeted them, which made Madhu instantly awkward; she bumped into a bigger girl, who still paid no attention to her. Mrs. Das, without taking her eyes from the television, waved both her arms—a confusing signal. Did she mean for them to go away or should they sit down? The ringmaster cleared up the matter. “Sit—anywhere!” Mr. Das commanded.

Ganesh and Madhu were immediately riveted to the TV; the seriousness of the Mahabharata was obvious to them. Even beggars knew the Sunday-morning routine; they often watched the program through storefront windows. Sometimes people without televisions assembled quietly outside the open windows of those apartments where the TV was on; it didn’t matter if they couldn’t see the screen—they could still hear the battles and the singing. Child prostitutes, too, the doctor assumed, were familiar with the famous show. Only Martin Mills was perplexed by the visible reverence in the troupe tent; the zealot failed to recognize that everyone’s attention had been captured by a religious epic.

“Is this a popular musical?” the Jesuit whispered to Dr. Daruwalla.

“It’s the Mahabharata—be quiet!” Farrokh told him.

“The Mahabharata is on television?” the missionary cried. “The whole thing? It must be ten times as long as the Bible!”

“Ssshhh!” the doctor replied. Mrs. Das waved both her arms again.

There on the screen was Lord Krishna, “the dark one”—an avatar of Vishnu. The child acrobats gaped in awe; Ganesh and Madhu were transfixed. Mrs. Das rocked back and forth; she was quietly humming. Even the ringmaster hung on Krishna’s every word. The sound of weeping was in the background of the scene; apparently Lord Krishna’s speech was emotionally stirring.

“Who’s that guy?” Martin whispered.

“Lord Krishna,” whispered Dr. Daruwalla.

There went both of Mrs. Das’s arms again, but the scholastic was too excited to keep quiet. Just before the show was over, the Jesuit whispered once more in the doctor’s ear; the zealot felt compelled to say that Lord Krishna reminded him of Charlton Heston.

But Sunday morning at the circus was special for more reasons than the Mahabharata. It was the only morning in the week when the child acrobats didn’t practice their acts, or learn new items, or even do their strength and flexibility exercises. They did do their chores; they would sweep and neaten their bed areas, and they swept and cleaned the tiny kitchen in the troupe tent. If there were sequins missing from their costumes, they would get out the old tea tins that were filled with sequins—one color per tin—and sew new sequins on their singlets.

Mrs. Das wasn’t unfriendly as she introduced Madhu to these chores; nor were the other girls in the troupe tent unwelcoming to Madhu. An older girl went through the costume trunks, pulling out the singlets that she thought might fit the child prostitute. Madhu was interested in the costumes; she was even eager to try them on.

Mrs. Das confided to Dr. Daruwalla that she was happy Madhu wasn’t from Kerala. “Kerala girls want too much,” said the ringmaster’s wife. “They expect good food all the time, and coconut hair oil.”

Mr. Das spoke to Dr. Daruwalla in hushed confidentiality; Kerala girls were reputed to be a hot lay, a virtue negated by the fact that these girls would attempt to unionize everyone. The circus was no place for a Communist-party revolt; the ringmaster concurred with his wife—it was a good thing Madhu wasn’t a Kerala girl. This was as close as Mr. and Mrs. Das could come to sounding reassuring—by expressing a common prejudice against people from somewhere else.

The child acrobats were not unkind to Ganesh; they simply ignored him. Martin Mills in his bandages was more interesting to them; they’d all heard about the chimp attack—many of them had seen it. The elaborately bandaged wounds excited them, although they were disappointed that Dr. Daruwalla refused to unwrap the ear; they wanted to see what was missing.

“How much? This much?” one of the acrobats asked the missionary.

“Actually,” Martin replied, “I didn’t see how much was missing.”

This conversation deteriorated into speculation about whether or not Gautam had swallowed the piece of earlobe. Dr. Daruwalla observed that none of the child acrobats appeared to notice how the missionary resembled Inspector Dhar, although Hindi films were a part of their world. Their interest was in the missing piece of Martin’s earlobe, and whether or not the ape had eaten it.

“Chimps aren’t meat eaters,” said an older boy. “If Gautam swallowed it, he’d be sick this morning.” Some of them, those who’d finished their chores, went to see if Gautam was sick; they insisted that the missionary come with them. Dr. Daruwalla realized that he shouldn’t linger; it wouldn’t do Madhu any good.

“I’ll say good-bye now,” the doctor told the child prostitute. “I hope that your new life is happy. Please be careful.”

When she put her arms around his neck, Farrokh flinched; he thought she was going to kiss him, but he was mistaken. All she wanted to do was whisper in his ear. “Take me home,” Madhu whispered. But what was “home”—what could she mean? the doctor wondered. Before he could ask her, she told him. “I want to be with Acid Man,” she whispered. Just that simply, Madhu had adopted Dr. Daruwalla’s name for Mr. Garg. All the screenwriter could do was take her arms from his neck and give her a worried look. Then the older girl distracted Madhu with a brightly sequined singlet—the front was red, the back orange—and Farrokh was able to slip away.

Chandra had built a bed for the elephant boy in a wing of the cook’s tent; Ganesh would sleep surrounded by sacks of onions and rice—a wall of tea tins was the makeshift headboard for his bed. So that the boy wouldn’t be homesick, the cook had given him a Maharashtrian calendar; there was Parvati with her elephant-headed son, Ganesh—Lord Ganesha, “the lord of hosts,” the one-tusked deity.

It was hard for Farrokh to say good-bye. He asked the cook’s permission to take a walk with the elephant-footed boy. They went to look at the lions and tigers, but it was well before meat-feeding time; the big cats were either asleep or cranky. Then the doctor and the cripple strolled in the avenue of troupe tents. A dwarf clown was washing his hair in a bucket, another was shaving; Farrokh was relieved that none of the clowns had tried to imitate Ganesh’s limp, although Vinod had warned the boy that this was sure to happen. They paused at Mr. and Mrs. Bhagwan’s tent; in front was a display of the knife thrower’s knives—apparently it was knife-sharpening day for Mr. Bhagwan—and in the doorway Mrs. Bhagwan was unbraiding her long black hair, which reached nearly to her waist.

When the skywalker saw the cripple, she called him to her. Dr. Daruwalla followed shyly. Everyone who limps needs extra protection, Mrs. Bhagwan was telling the elephant boy; therefore, she wanted him to have a Shirdi Sai Baba medallion—Sai Baba, she said, was the patron saint of all people who were afraid of falling. “Now he won’t be afraid,” Mrs. Bhagwan explained to Dr. Daruwalla. She tied the trinket around the boy’s neck; it was a very thin piece of silver on a rawhide thong. Watching her, the doctor could only marvel at how, as an unmarried woman, she’d once suffered the Skywalk while bleeding from her period—before it was proper for her to use a tampon. Now she mechanically submitted to the Skywalk, and to her husband’s knives.

Although Mrs. Bhagwan wasn’t pretty, her hair was shiny and beautiful; yet Ganesh wasn’t looking at her hair—he was staring into her tent. Along the roof was the practice model for the Skywalk, the ladderlike device, complete with exactly 18 loops. Not even Mrs. Bhagwan could skywalk without practice. Also hanging from the roof of the troupe tent was a dental trapeze; it was as shiny as Mrs. Bhagwan’s hair—the doctor imagined that it might still be wet from her mouth.

Mrs. Bhagwan saw where the boy was looking.

“He’s got this foolish idea that he wants to be a skywalker,” Farrokh explained.

Mrs. Bhagwan looked sternly at Ganesh. “That is a foolish idea,” she said to the cripple. She took hold of her gift, the boy’s Sai Baba medallion, and tugged it gently in her gnarled hand. Dr. Daruwalla realized that Mrs. Bhagwan’s hands were as large and powerful-looking as a man’s; the doctor was unpleasantly reminded of his last glimpse of the second Mrs. Dogar’s hands—how they’d restlessly plucked at the tablecloth, how they’d looked like paws. “Not even Shirdi Sai Baba can save a skywalker from falling,” Mrs. Bhagwan told Ganesh.

“What saves you, then?” the boy asked her.

The skywalker showed him her feet; they were bare under the long skirt of her sari, and they were oddly graceful, even delicate, in comparison to her hands. But the tops of her feet and the fronts of her ankles were so roughly chafed that the normal skin was gone; in its place was hardened scar tissue, wrinkled and cracked.

“Feel them,” Mrs. Bhagwan told the boy. “You, too,” she said to the doctor, who obeyed. He’d never touched the skin of an elephant or a rhino before; he’d only imagined their tough, leathery hides. The doctor couldn’t help speculating that there must be an ointment or a lotion that Mrs. Bhagwan could put on her poor feet to help heal the cracks in her hardened skin; then it occurred to him that if the cracks were healed, her skin would be too callused to allow her to feel the loops chafing against her feet. If her cracked skin gave her pain, the pain was also her guide to knowing that her feet were securely in the loops—the right way. Without pain, Mrs. Bhagwan would have to rely on her sense of sight alone; when it came to putting her feet in the loops, two senses (pain and sight) were probably better than one.

Ganesh didn’t appear to be discouraged by the look and feel of Mrs. Bhagwan’s feet. His eyes were healing—they looked clearer every day—and in the cripple’s alert face there was that radiance which reflected his unchanged belief in the future. He knew he could master the Skywalk. One foot was ready to begin; it was merely a matter of bringing the other foot along.

Jesus in the Parking Lot

Meanwhile, the missionary had provoked mayhem in the area of the chimp cages. Gautam was infuriated to see him—the bandages being even whiter than the scholastic’s skin. On the other hand, the flirtatious Mira reached her long arms through the bars of her cage as if she were beseeching Martin for an embrace. Gautam responded by forcefully urinating in the missionary’s direction. Martin believed he should remove himself from the chimpanzees’ view rather than stand there and encourage their apery, but Kunal wanted the missionary to stay. It would be a valuable lesson to Gautam, Kunal reasoned: the more violently the ape reacted to the Jesuit’s presence, the more Kunal beat the ape. To Martin’s mind, the psychology of disciplining Gautam in this fashion seemed flawed; yet the Jesuit obeyed the trainer’s instructions.

In Gautam’s cage, there was an old tire; the tread was bald and the tire swung from a frayed rope. In his anger, Gautam hurled the tire against the bars of his cage; then he seized the tire and sank his teeth into the rubber. Kunal responded by reaching through the bars and jabbing Gautam with a bamboo pole. Mira rolled onto her back.

When Dr. Daruwalla finally found the missionary, Martin Mills was standing helplessly before this apish drama, looking as guilty and as compromised as a prisoner.

“For God’s sake—why are you standing here?” the doctor asked him. “If you just walked away, all this would stop!”

“That’s what I think,” the Jesuit replied. “But the trainer told me to stay.”

“Is he your trainer or the chimps’ trainer?” Farrokh asked Martin.

Thus the missionary’s good-byes to Ganesh were conducted with the racist ape’s shrieks and howls in the background; it was hard to imagine this as a learning experience for Gautam. The two men followed Ramu to the Land Rover. The last cages they passed were those of the sleepy, disgruntled lions; the tigers looked equally listless and out of humor. The reckless driver ran his fingers along the bars of the big cats’ cages; occasionally a paw (claws extended) flicked out, but Ramu confidently withdrew his hand in time.

“One more hour until meat-feeding time,” Ramu sang to the lions and tigers. “One whole hour.”

It was unfortunate that such a note of mockery, if not an underlying cruelty, described their departure from the Great Blue Nile. Dr. Daruwalla looked only once at the elephant boy’s retreating figure. Ganesh was limping back to the cook’s tent. In the cripple’s unsteady gait, his right heel appeared to bear the weight of two or three boys; like a dewclaw on a dog or a cat, the ball of the boy’s right foot (and his toes) never touched the ground. No wonder he wanted to walk on the sky.

As for Farrokh and Martin, their lives were once again in Ramu’s hands. Their drive to the airport in Rajkot was in daylight. Both the highway’s carnage and the Land Rover’s near misses could be clearly seen. Once again, Dr. Daruwalla sought to be distracted from Ramu’s driving, but the doctor found himself up front in the passenger seat this time, and there was no seat belt. Martin clung to the back of the front seat, his head over Farrokh’s shoulder, which probably blocked whatever view Ramu might have had in the rearview mirror—not that Ramu would even glance at what might be coming up behind him, or that anything could be fast enough to be coming up from behind.

Because Junagadh was the jumping-off point for visits to the Gir Forest, which was the last habitat of the Asian lion, Ramu wanted to know if they’d seen the forest—they hadn’t—and Martin Mills wanted to know what Ramu had said. This would be a long trip, the doctor imagined—Ramu speaking Marathi and Hindi, Farrokh struggling to translate. The missionary was sorry that they hadn’t seen the Gir lions. Maybe when they returned to visit the children, they could see the forest. By then, the doctor suspected, the Great Blue Nile would be playing in another town. There were a few Asian lions in the town zoo, Ramu told them; they could have a quick look at the lions and still manage to catch their plane in Rajkot. But Farrokh wisely vetoed this idea; he knew that any delay in their departure from Junagadh would make Ramu drive to Rajkot all the faster.

Nor was a discussion of Graham Greene as distracting as Farrokh had hoped. The Jesuit’s “Catholic interpretation” of The Heart of the Matter wasn’t at all what the doctor was looking for; it was infuriating. Not even a novel as profoundly about faith as The Power and the Glory could or should be discussed in strictly “Catholic” terms, Dr. Daruwalla argued; the doctor quoted, from memory, that passage which he loved. “‘There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.’

“Perhaps you’ll tell me what is especially Catholic about that,” the doctor challenged the scholastic, but Martin skillfully changed the subject.

“Let us pray that this door opens and lets the future in for our children at the circus,” the Jesuit said. What a sneaky mind he had!

Farrokh didn’t dare ask him anything more about his mother; not even Ramu’s driving was as daunting as the possibility of another story about Vera. What Farrokh desired to hear was more about the homosexual inclinations of Dhar’s twin; the doctor was chiefly curious to learn whether or not John D. was so inclined, but Dr. Daruwalla felt uncertain of how to inspire such a subject of conversation with John D.’s twin. However, it would be an easier subject to broach with Martin than with John D.

“You say you were in love with a man, and that your feelings for him finally lessened,” the doctor began.

“That’s correct,” the scholastic said stiffly.

“But can you point to any moment or to any single episode that marked the end of your infatuation?” Farrokh asked. “Did anything happen—was there an incident that convinced you? What made you decide you could resist such an attraction and become a priest?” This was beating around the bush, Dr. Daruwalla knew, but the doctor had to begin somewhere.

“I saw how Christ existed for me. I saw that Jesus had never abandoned me,” the zealot said.

“Do you mean you had a vision?” Farrokh asked.

“In a way,” the Jesuit said mysteriously. “I was at a low point in my relationship with Jesus. And I’d reached a very cynical decision. There is no lack of resistance that is as great a giving-up as fatalism—I’m ashamed to say I was totally fatalistic.”

“Did you actually see Christ or didn’t you?” the doctor asked him.

“Actually, it was only a statue of Christ,” the missionary admitted.

“You mean it was real?” Farrokh asked.

“Of course it was real—it was at the end of a parking lot, at the school where I taught. I used to see it every day—twice a day, in fact,” Martin said. “It was just a white stone statue of Christ in a typical pose.” And there, in the back seat of the speeding Land Rover, the zealot rotated both his palms toward heaven, apparently to demonstrate the pose of the supplicant.

“It sounds truly tasteless—Christ in a parking lot!” Dr. Daruwalla remarked.

“It wasn’t very artistic,” the Jesuit replied. “Occasionally, as I recall, the statue was vandalized.”

“I can’t imagine why,” Farrokh muttered.

“Well, anyway, I had stayed at the school quite late one night—I was directing a school play, another musical… I can’t remember which one. And this man who’d been such an obsession for me… he was also staying late. But his car wouldn’t start—he had an awful car—and he asked me for a ride home.”

“Uh-oh,” said Dr. Daruwalla.

“My feelings for him had already lessened, as I’ve said, but I was still not immune to his attractiveness,” the missionary admitted. “Here was such a sudden opportunity—the availability of him was painfully apparent. Do you know what I mean?”

Dr. Daruwalla, who was remembering his disturbing night with Madhu, said, “Yes—of course I know. What happened?”

“This is what I mean by how cynical I was,” the scholastic said. “I was so totally fatalistic, I decided that if he made the slightest advance toward me, I would respond. I wouldn’t initiate such an advance, but I knew I would respond.”

“And did you? Did he?” the doctor asked.

“Then I couldn’t find my car—it was a huge parking lot,” Martin said. “But I remembered that I always tried to park near Christ …”

“The statue, you mean…” Farrokh interrupted.

“Yes, the statue, of course—I had parked right in front of it,” the Jesuit explained. “When I finally found my car, it was so dark I couldn’t see the statue, not even when I was sitting inside my car. But I knew exactly where Christ was. It was a funny moment. I was waiting for this man to touch me, but all the while I was looking into the darkness at that exact spot where Jesus was.”

“Did the guy touch you?” Farrokh asked.

“I turned on the headlights before he had a chance,” Martin Mills replied. “And there was Christ—he stood out very brightly in the headlights. He was exactly where I knew he would be.”

“Where else would a statue be?” Dr. Daruwalla cried. “Do statues move around in your country?”

“You belittle the experience to focus on the statue,” the Jesuit said. “The statue was just the vehicle. What I felt was the presence of God. I felt a oneness with Jesus, too—not with the statue. I felt I’d been shown what believing in Christ was like—for me. Even in the darkness—even as I sat expecting something horrible to happen to me—there was a certainty that he was there. Christ was there for me; he’d not abandoned me. I could still see him.”

“I guess I’m not making the necessary leap,” said Dr. Daruwalla. “I mean, your belief in Christ is one thing. But wanting to be a priest… how did you get from Jesus in the parking lot to wanting to be a priest?”

“Well, that’s different,” Martin confessed.

“That’s the part I don’t get,” Farrokh replied. Then he said it: “And was that the end of all such desires? I mean, was your homosexuality ever again engaged… so to speak …”

“Homosexuality?” said the Jesuit. “That’s not the point. I’m not a homosexual, nor am I a heterosexual. I am simply not a sexual entity—not anymore.”

“Come on,” the doctor said. “If you were to be sexually attracted, it would be a homosexual attraction, wouldn’t it?”

“That’s not a relevant question,” the scholastic replied. “It isn’t that I’m without sexual feelings, but I have resisted sexual attraction. I will have no problem continuing to resist it.”

“But what you’re resisting is a homosexual inclination, isn’t it?” Farrokh asked. “I mean, let us speculate—you can speculate, can’t you?”

“I don’t speculate on the subject of my vows,” the Jesuit said.

“But, please indulge me, if something happened—if for any reason you decided not to be a priest—then wouldn’t you be a homosexual?” Dr. Daruwalla asked.

“Mercy! You are the most stubborn person!” Martin Mills cried out good-naturedly.

“I am stubborn?” the doctor shouted.

“I am neither a homosexual nor a heterosexual,” the Jesuit calmly stated. “The terms don’t necessarily apply to inclinations, or do they? I had a passing inclination.”

“It has passed? Completely? Is that what you’re saying?” Dr. Daruwalla asked.

“Mercy,” Martin repeated.

“You become a person of no identifiable sexuality on the basis of an encounter with a statue in a parking lot; yet you deny the possibility that I was bitten by a ghost!” Dr. Daruwalla cried. “Am I following your reasoning correctly?”

“I don’t believe in ghosts, per se,” the Jesuit replied.

“But you believe you experienced a oneness with Jesus. You felt the presence of God—in a parking lot!” Farrokh shouted.

“I believe that our conversation—that is, if you continue to raise your voice—is a distraction to our driver,” said Martin Mills. “Perhaps we should resume discussion of this subject after we’ve safely arrived at the airport.”

They were still nearly an hour from Rajkot, with Ramu dodging death every few miles; then there would be the wait at the airport, not to mention a likely delay, and finally the flight itself. On a Sunday afternoon or evening, the taxi from Santa Cruz into Bombay could take another 45 minutes or an hour. Worse, it was a special Sunday; it was December 31, 1989, but neither the doctor nor the missionary knew it was New Year’s Eve—or if they knew, they’d forgotten.

At St. Ignatius, the jubilee celebration was planned for New Year’s Day, which Martin Mills had also forgotten, and the New Year’s Eve party at the Duckworth Sports Club was a black-tie occasion of uncharacteristic merriment; there would be dancing to a live band and a splendid midnight supper—not to mention the unusual, once-a-year quality of the champagne. No Duckworthian in Bombay would willingly miss the New Year’s Eve party.

John D. and Deputy Commissioner Patel were sure that Rahul would be there—Mr. Sethna had already informed them. They’d spent much of the day rehearsing what Inspector Dhar would say when he and the second Mrs. Dogar danced. Julia had pressed Farrokh’s tuxedo, which needed a lengthy airing on the balcony to rid it of its mothball aroma. But both New Year’s Eve and the Duckworth Club were far from Farrokh’s mind. The doctor was focused on what remained of his journey to Rajkot, after which he still had to travel to Bombay. If Farrokh couldn’t endure another minute of Martin’s arguments, he had to initiate a different conversation.

“Perhaps we should change the subject,” Dr. Daruwalla suggested. “And keep our voices down.”

“As you wish. I promise to keep mine down,” the missionary said with satisfaction.

Farrokh was at a loss to know what to talk about. He tried to think of a long personal story, something which would allow him to talk and talk, and which would render the missionary speechless—powerless to interrupt. The doctor could begin, “I know your twin”; that would lead to quite a long personal story. That would shut Martin Mills up! But, as before, Farrokh felt it wasn’t his place to tell this story; that was John D.’s decision.

“Well, I can think of something to say,” the scholastic said; he’d been politely waiting for Dr. Daruwalla to begin, but he hadn’t waited long.

“Very well—go ahead,” the doctor replied.

“I think that you shouldn’t go witch-hunting for homosexuals,” the Jesuit began. “Not these days. Not when there is understandable sensitivity toward anything remotely homophobic. What do you have against homosexuals, anyway?”

“I have nothing against homosexuals. I’m not homophobic,” Dr. Daruwalla snapped. “And you haven’t exactly changed the subject!”

“You’re not exactly keeping your voice down,” Martin said.

Little India

At the airport in Rajkot, the loudspeaker system had progressed to a new test; more advanced counting skills were being demonstrated. “Eleven, twenty-two, thirty-three, forty-four, fifty-five,” said the tireless voice. There was no telling where this would lead; it hinted at infinity. The voice was without emotion; the counting was so mechanical that Dr. Daruwalla thought he might go mad. Instead of listening to the numbers or enduring the Jesuitical provocations of Martin Mills, Farrokh chose to tell a story. Although it was a true story—and, as the doctor would soon discover, painful to tell—it suffered from the disadvantage that the storyteller had never told it before; even true stories are improved by revision. But the doctor hoped that his tale would illustrate how the missionary’s allegations of homophobia were false, for Dr. Daruwalla’s favorite colleague in Toronto was a homosexual. Gordon Macfarlane was also Farrokh’s best friend.

Unfortunately, the screenwriter began the story in the wrong place. Dr. Daruwalla should have started with his earliest acquaintance of Dr. Macfarlane, including how the two had concurred on the misuse of the word “gay”; that they’d generally agreed with the findings of Mac’s boyfriend, the gay geneticist—regarding the biology of homosexuality—was also interesting. Had Dr. Daruwalla started with a discussion of this subject, he might not have prejudiced Martin Mills against him. But, at the airport in Rajkot, he’d made the mistake of inserting Dr. Macfarlane in the form of a flashback—as if Mac were only a minor character and not a friend who was often foremost on Farrokh’s mind.

He’d begun with the wrong story, about the time he’d been abducted by a crazed cab driver, for Farrokh’s training as a writer of action films had preconditioned him to begin any story with the most violent action he could imagine (or, in this case, remember). But to begin with an episode of racial abuse was misleading to the missionary, who concluded that Farrokh’s friendship with Gordon Macfarlane was secondary to the doctor’s outrage at his own mistreatment as an Indian in Toronto. This was inept storytelling, for Farrokh had meant only to convey how his mistreatment as an obvious immigrant of color in Canada had further solidified his friendship with a homosexual, who was no stranger to discrimination of another kind.

It was a Friday in the spring; many of Farrokh’s colleagues left their offices early on Friday afternoons because they were cottagers, but the Daruwallas enjoyed their weekends in Toronto—their second home was in Bombay. Farrokh had had a cancellation; hence he was free to leave early—otherwise, he would have asked Macfarlane for a ride home or called a cab. Mac also spent his weekends in Toronto and kept late office hours on Friday.

Since it wasn’t yet rush hour, Farrokh thought he’d walk for a while and then hail a taxi from the street, probably in front of the museum. For some years he’d avoided the subway; an uncomfortable racial incident had happened there. Oh, there’d been shouts from the occasional passing car—no one had ever called him a Parsi; in Toronto, few people knew what a Parsi was. What they called out was “Paki bastard!” or “Wog!” or “Babu!” or “Go home!” His pale-brown coloring and jet-black hair made it difficult for them; he wasn’t as identifiable as many Indians. Sometimes they called him an Arab—twice he’d been called a Jew. It was his Persian ancestry; he could pass for a Middle Easterner. But whoever the shouters were, they knew he was foreign—racially different.

Once he’d even been called a Wop! At the time, he’d wondered what sort of idiot could mistake him for an Italian. Now he knew that it wasn’t what he was that bothered the shouters; it was only that he wasn’t one of them. But most often the theme of the slurs subscribed to that view of him which can only clumsily be expressed as “an immigrant of color.” In Canada, it seemed, the prejudice against the immigrant composition of his features was as strong as whatever prejudice existed of the of-color kind.

He stopped taking the subway after an episode with three teenage boys. At first, they hadn’t seemed so threatening—more mischievous. There was a hint of menace only because they sat so deliberately close to him; there were many other places for them to sit. One sat on either side of him, the third across the aisle. The boy to the doctor’s left nudged his arm. “We’ve got a bet going,” the boy said. “What are you?”

Dr. Daruwalla realized later that the only reason he’d found them unthreatening was that they wore their school blazers and ties. After the incident, he could have called their school; he never did.

“I said what are you?” the boy repeated. That was the first moment Farrokh felt threatened.

“I’m a doctor,” Dr. Daruwalla replied.

The boys on either side of him looked decidedly hostile; it was the boy across the aisle who saved him. “My dad’s a doctor,” the boy stupidly remarked.

“Are you going to be a doctor, too?” Farrokh asked him.

The other two got up; they pulled the third boy along with them.

“Fuck you,” the first boy said to Farrokh, but the doctor knew this was a harmless bomb—already defused.

He never took the subway again. But after his worst episode, the subway incident seemed mild. After his worst episode, Farrokh was so upset, he couldn’t remember whether the taxi driver had pulled over before or after the intersection of University and Gerrard; either way, he’d just left the hospital and he was daydreaming. What was odd, he remembered, was that the driver already had a passenger, and that the passenger was riding in the front seat. The driver said, “Don’t mind him. He’s just a friend with nothing to do.”

“I’m not a fare,” the driver’s friend said.

Later, Farrokh remembered only that it wasn’t one of Metro’s taxis or one of Beck’s—the two companies he most often called. It was probably what they call a gypsy cab.

“I said where are you going?” the driver asked Dr. Daruwalla.

“Home,” Farrokh replied. (It struck him as pointless to add that he’d intended to walk for a while. Here was a taxi. Why not take it?)

“Where’s ‘home’?” the friend in the front seat asked.

“Russell Hill Road, north of St. Clair—just north of Lonsdale,” the doctor answered; he’d stopped walking—the taxi had stopped, too. “Actually, I was going to stop at the beer store—and then go home,” Farrokh added.

“Get in, if you want,” the driver said.

Dr. Daruwalla didn’t feel anxious until he was settled in the back seat and the taxi began to move. The friend in the front seat belched once, sharply, and the driver laughed. The windshield visor in front of the driver’s friend was pushed flat against the windshield, and the glove-compartment door was missing. Farrokh couldn’t remember if these were the places where the driver’s certification was posted—or was it usually on the Plexiglas divider between the front and back seats? (The Plexiglas divider itself was unusual; in Toronto, most taxis didn’t have these dividers.) Anyway, there was no visible driver’s certification inside the cab, and the taxi was already moving too fast for Dr. Daruwalla to get out—maybe at a red light, the doctor thought. But there were no red lights for a while and the taxi ran the first red light it came to; that was when the driver’s friend in the front seat turned around and faced Farrokh.

“So where’s your real home?” the friend asked.

“Russell Hill Road,” Dr. Daruwalla repeated.

“Before that, asshole,” the driver said.

“I was born in Bombay, but I left India when I was a teenager. I’m a Canadian citizen,” Farrokh said.

“Didn’t I tell you?” the driver said to his friend.

“Let’s take him home,” the friend said.

The driver glanced in the rearview mirror and made a sudden U-turn. Farrokh was thrown against the door.

“We’ll show you where your home is, babu,” the driver said.

At no time could Dr. Daruwalla have escaped. When they crawled slowly ahead in the traffic, or when they were stopped at a red light, the doctor was too afraid to attempt it. They were moving fairly fast when the driver slammed on the brakes. The doctor’s head bounced off the Plexiglas shield. Dr. Daruwalla was pressed back into the seat when the driver accelerated. Farrokh felt the tightness of the instant swelling; by the time he gently touched his puffy eyebrow, blood was already running into his eye. Four stitches, maybe six, the doctor’s fingers told him.

The area of Little India is not extensive; it stretches along Gerrard from Coxwell to Hiawatha—some would say as far as Woodfield. Everyone would agree that by the time you get to Greenwood, Little India is over; and even in Little India, the Chinese community is interspersed. The taxi stopped in front of the Ahmad Grocers on Gerrard, at Coxwell; it was probably no coincidence that the grocer was diagonally across the street from the offices of the Canadian Ethnic Immigration Services—this was where the driver’s friend dragged Farrokh out of the back seat. “You’re home now—better stay here,” the friend told Dr. Daruwalla.

“Better yet, babu—go back to Bombay,” the driver added.

As the taxi pulled away, the doctor could see it clearly out of only one eye; he was so relieved to be free of the thugs that he paid scant attention to the identifying marks of the car. It was red—maybe red and white. If Farrokh saw any printed names or numbers, he wouldn’t remember them.

Little India appeared to be mostly closed on Friday. Apparently, no one had seen the doctor roughly pulled out of the taxi; no one approached him, although he was dazed and bleeding—clearly disoriented. A small, potbellied man in a dark suit—his white shirt was ruined from the blood that flowed from his split eyebrow—he clutched his doctor’s bag in one hand. He began to walk. On the sidewalk, dancing in the spring air, kaftans were hanging on a clothes rack. Later, Farrokh struggled to remember the names of the places. Pindi Embroidery? Nirma Fashions? There was another grocery with fresh fruits and vegetables—maybe the Singh Farm? At the United Church, there was a sign saying that the church also served as the Shri Ram Hindu Temple on Sunday evenings. At the corner of Craven and Gerrard, a restaurant claimed to be “Indian Cuisine Specialists.” There was also the familiar advertisement for Kingfisher lager—INSTILLED WITH INNER STRENGTH. A poster, promising an ASIA SUPERSTARS NITE, displayed the usual faces: Dimple Kapadia, Sunny Deol, Jaya Prada—with music by Bappi Lahiri.

Dr. Daruwalla never came to Little India. In the storefront windows, the mannequins in their saris seemed to rebuke him. Farrokh saw few Indians in Toronto; he had no close Indian friends there. Parsi parents would bring him their sick children—on the evidence of his name in the telephone directory, Dr. Daruwalla supposed. Among the mannequins, a blonde in her sari struck Farrokh as sharing his own disorientation.

At Raja Jewellers, someone was staring out the window at him, probably noticing that the doctor was bleeding. There was a South Indian “Pure Vegetarian Restaurant” near Ashdale and Gerrard. At the Chaat Hut, they advertised “all kinds of kulfi, faluda and paan.” At the Bombay Bhel, the sign said FOR TRUE AUTHENTIC GOL GUPPA … ALOO TIKKI … ETC. They served Thunderbolt beer, SUPER STRONG LAGER… THE SPIRIT OF EXCITEMENT. More saris were in a window at Hiawatha and Gerrard. And at the Shree Groceries, a pile of ginger root overflowed the store, extending onto the sidewalk. The doctor gazed at the India Theater… at the Silk Den.

At J. S. Addison Plumbing, at the corner of Woodfield and Gerrard, Farrokh saw a fabulous copper bathtub with ornate faucets; the handles were tiger heads, the tigers roaring—it was like the tub he’d bathed in as a boy on old Ridge Road, Malabar Hill. Dr. Daruwalla began to cry. Staring at the display of copper sinks and drains and other bathroom Victoriana, he was suddenly aware of a man’s concerned face staring back at him. The man came out on the sidewalk.

“You’ve been hurt—may I help you?” the man asked; he wasn’t an Indian.

“I’m a doctor,” said Dr. Daruwalla. “Please just call me a taxi—I know where to go.” He had the taxi take him back to the Hospital for Sick Children.

“You sure you want Sick Kids, mon?” the driver asked; he was a West Indian, a black man—very black. “You don’t look like a sick kid to me.”

“I’m a doctor,” Farrokh said. “I work there.”

“Who done that to you, mon?” the driver asked.

“Two guys who don’t like people like me—or like you,” the doctor told him.

“I know them—they everywhere, mon,” the driver said.

Dr. Daruwalla was relieved that his secretary and his nurse had gone home. He kept a change of clothes in his office; after he was stitched up, he would throw the shirt away… he’d ask his secretary to have the suit dry-cleaned.

He examined the split wound on his eyebrow; using the mirror, he shaved around the gash. This was easy, but he was used to shaving in a mirror; then he contemplated the procaine injection and the sutures—to do these properly in the mirror was baffling to him, especially the sewing. Farrokh called Dr. Macfarlane’s office and asked the secretary to have Mac stop by when he was ready to go home.

Farrokh first tried to tell Macfarlane that he’d hit his head in a taxi because of a reckless driver, the brakes throwing him forward into the Plexiglas divider. Although it was the truth, or only a lie of omission, his voice trailed off; his fear, the insult, his anger—these things were still reflected in his eyes.

“Who did this to you, Farrokh?” Mac asked.

Dr. Daruwalla told Dr. Macfarlane the whole story—beginning with the three teenagers on the subway and including the shouts from the passing cars. By the time Mac had stitched him up—it required five sutures to close the wound—Farrokh had used the expression “an immigrant of color” more times than he’d ever uttered it aloud before, even to Julia. He would never tell Julia about Little India, either; that Mac knew was comfort enough.

Dr. Macfarlane had his own stories. He’d never been beaten up, but he’d been threatened and intimidated. There were phone calls late at night; he’d changed his number three times. There were also phone calls to his office; two of his former secretaries had resigned, and one of his former nurses. Sometimes letters or notes were shoved under his office door; perhaps these were from the parents of former patients, or from his fellow doctors, or from other people who worked at Sick Kids.

Mac helped Farrokh rehearse how he would describe his “accident” to Julia. It sounded more plausible if it wasn’t the taxi driver’s fault. They decided that an idiot woman had pulled out from the curb without looking; the driver had had no choice but to hit the brakes. (A blameless woman driver had been blamed again.) As soon as he realized he was cut and bleeding, Farrokh had asked the driver to take him back to the hospital; fortunately, Macfarlane was still there and had stitched him up. Just five sutures. His white shirt was a total loss, and he wouldn’t know about the suit until it came back from the cleaner’s.

“Why not just tell Julia what happened?” Mac asked.

“She’ll be disappointed in me—because I didn’t do anything,” Farrokh told him.

“I doubt that,” Macfarlane said.

“I’m disappointed that I didn’t do anything,” Dr. Daruwalla admitted.

“That can’t be helped,” Mac said.

On the way home to Russell Hill Road, Farrokh asked Mac about his work at the AIDS hospice—there was a good one in Toronto.

“I’m just a volunteer,” Macfarlane explained.

“But you’re a doctor,” Dr. Daruwalla said. “I mean, it must be interesting there. But exactly what can an orthopedist do?”

“Nothing,” Mac said. “I’m not a doctor there.”

“But of course you’re a doctor—you’re a doctor anywhere!” Farrokh cried. “There must be patients with bedsores. We know what to do with bedsores. And what about pain control?” Dr. Daruwalla was thinking of morphine, a wonderful drug; it disconnects the lungs from the brain. Wouldn’t many of the deaths in an AIDS hospice be respiratory deaths? Wouldn’t morphine be especially useful there? The respiratory distress is unchanged, but the patient is unaware of it. “And what about muscular wasting, from being bedridden?” Farrokh added. “Surely you could instruct families in passive range-of-motion exercises, or dispense tennis balls for the patients to squeeze …”

Dr. Macfarlane laughed. “The hospice has its own doctors. They’re AIDS doctors,” Macfarlane said. “I’m absolutely not a doctor there. That’s something I like about it—I’m just a volunteer.”

“What about the catheters?” Farrokh asked. “They must get blocked, the skin tunnels get inflamed …” His voice fell away; he was wondering if you could unplug them by flushing them with an anticoagulant, but Macfarlane wouldn’t let him finish the thought.

“I don’t do anything medical there,” Mac told him.

“Then what do you do?” Dr. Daruwalla asked.

“One night I did all the laundry,” Macfarlane replied. “Another night I answered the phone.”

“But anyone could do that!” Farrokh cried.

“Yes—any volunteer,” Mac agreed.

“Listen. There’s a seizure, a patient seizes from uncontrolled infection,” Dr. Daruwalla began. “What do you do? Do you give intravenous Valium?”

“I call the doctor,” Dr. Macfarlane said.

“You’re kidding me!” said Dr. Daruwalla. “And what about the feeding tubes? They slip out. Then what? Do you have your own X ray facilities or do you have to take them to a hospital?”

“I call the doctor,” Macfarlane repeated. “It’s a hospice—they’re not there to get well. One night I read aloud to someone who couldn’t sleep. Lately, I’ve been writing letters for a man who wants to contact his family and his friends—he wants to say good-bye, but he never learned how to write.”

“Incredible!” Dr. Daruwalla said.

“They come there to die, Farrokh. We try to help them control it. We can’t help them like we’re used to helping most of our patients,” Macfarlane explained.

“So you just go there, you show up,” Farrokh began. “You check in… tell someone you’ve arrived. Then what?”

“Usually a nurse tells me what to do,” Mac said.

“A nurse tells the doctor what to do!” cried Dr. Daruwalla.

“Now you’re getting it,” Dr. Macfarlane told him.

There was his home on Russell Hill Road. It was a long way from Bombay; it was a long way from Little India, too.

“Honestly, if you want to know what I think,” said Martin Mills, who’d interrupted Farrokh’s story only a half-dozen times, “I think you must drive your poor friend Macfarlane crazy. Obviously, you like him, but on whose terms? On your terms—on your heterosexual doctor terms.”

“But that’s what I am!” Dr. Daruwalla shouted. “I’m a heterosexual doctor!” Several people in the Rajkot airport looked mildly surprised.

“Three thousand, eight hundred and ninety-four,” the voice on the loudspeaker said.

“The point is, could you empathize with a raving gay man?” the missionary asked. “Not a doctor, and someone not even in the least sympathetic to your problems—someone who couldn’t care less about racism, or what happens to immigrants of color, as you say? You think you’re not homophobic, but how much could you care about someone like that?”

“Why should I care about someone like that?” Farrokh screamed.

“That’s my point about you. Do you see what I mean?” the missionary asked. “You’re a typical homophobe.”

“Three thousand, nine hundred and forty-nine,” the voice on the loudspeaker droned.

“You can’t even listen to a story,” Dr. Daruwalla told the Jesuit.

“Mercy!” said Martin Mills.

They were delayed in boarding the plane because the authorities again confiscated the scholastic’s dangerous Swiss Army knife.

“Couldn’t you have remembered to pack the damn knife in your bag?” Dr. Daruwalla asked the scholastic.

“Given the mood you’re in, I’d be foolish to answer questions of that kind,” Martin replied. When they were finally on board the aircraft, Martin said, “Look. We’re both worried about the children—I know that. But we’ve done the best we can for them.”

“Short of adopting them,” Dr. Daruwalla remarked.

“Well, we weren’t in a position to do that, were we?” the Jesuit asked. “My point is, we’ve put them in a position where at least they can help themselves.”

“Don’t make me throw up,” Farrokh said.

“They’re safer in the circus than where they were,” the zealot insisted. “In how many weeks or months would the boy have been blind? How long would it have taken the girl to contract some horrible disease—even the worst? Not to mention what she would have endured before that. Of course you’re worried. So am I. But there’s nothing more we can do.”

“Is this fatalism I hear?” Farrokh asked.

“Mercy, no!” the missionary replied. “Those children are in God’s hands—that’s what I mean.”

“I guess that’s why I’m worried,” Dr. Daruwalla replied.

“You weren’t bitten by a monkey!” Martin Mills shouted.

“I told you I wasn’t,” Farrokh said.

“You must have been bitten by a snake—a poisonous snake,” the missionary said. “Or else the Devil himself bit you.”

After almost two hours of silence—their plane had landed and Vinod’s taxi was navigating the Sunday traffic from Santa Cruz to Bombay—Martin Mills thought of something to add. “Furthermore,” the Jesuit said, “I get the feeling you’re keeping something from me. It’s as if you’re always stopping yourself—you’re always biting your tongue.”

I’m not telling you half! the doctor almost hollered. But Farrokh bit his tongue again. In the slanting light of the late afternoon, the lurid movie posters displayed the confident image of Martin Mills’s twin. Many of the posters for Inspector Dhar and the Towers of Silence were already defaced; yet through the tatters and the muck flung from the street, Dhar’s sneer seemed to be assessing them.

In reality, John D. had been rehearsing a different role, for the seduction of the second Mrs. Dogar was out of Inspector Dhar’s genre. Rahul wasn’t the usual cinema bimbo. If Dr. Daruwalla had known who’d bitten him in his hammock at the Hotel Bardez, the doctor would have agreed with Martin Mills, for Farrokh truly had been bitten by the Devil himself… by the Devil herself, the second Mrs. Dogar would prefer.

As the dwarf’s taxi came into Bombay, it was momentarily stalled near an Iranian restaurant—of a kind not quite in a class with Lucky New Moon or Light of Asia, Dr. Daruwalla was thinking. The doctor was hungry. Towering over the restaurant was a nearly destroyed Inspector Dhar poster; the movie star was ripped open from his cheek to his waist, but his sneer was undamaged. Beside the mutilated Dhar was a poster of Lord Ganesha; the elephant-headed deity might have been advertising an upcoming religious festival, but the traffic began to move before Farrokh could translate the announcement.

The god was short and fat, but surpassingly beautiful to his believers; Lord Ganesha’s elephant face was as red as a China rose and he sported the lotus smile of a perpetual daydreamer. His four human arms swarmed with bees—doubtless attracted by the perfume of the ichor flowing in his godly veins—and his three all-seeing eyes looked down upon Bombay with a benevolence that challenged Dhar’s sneer. Lord Ganesha’s potbelly hung almost to his human feet; his toenails were as long and brightly painted as a woman’s. In the sharply angled light, his one unbroken tusk gleamed.

“That elephant is everywhere!” exclaimed the Jesuit. “What happened to its other tusk?”

The myth that Farrokh had loved best as a child was that Lord Ganesha broke off his own tusk and threw it at the moon; the moon had mocked the elephant-headed god for his portliness and for being clumsy. Old Lowji had liked this story; he’d told it to Farrokh and Jamshed when they were small boys. Only now did Dr. Daruwalla wonder if this was a real myth, or if it was only Lowji’s myth; the old man wasn’t above making up a myth of his own.

There were other myths; there was more than one story about Ganesh’s birth, too. In a South Indian version, Parvati saw the sacred syllable “Om,” and her mere glance transformed it into two coupling elephants, who gave birth to Lord Ganesha and then resumed the form of the sacred syllable. But in a darker version, which attests to the reputed sexual antagonism between Parvati and her husband, Lord Shiva, a considerable jealousy attended Shiva’s feelings for Parvati’s son, who—not unlike the baby Jesus—was never described as being born from Parvati in the “natural” manner.

In the darker myth, it was Shiva’s evil eye that beheaded the newborn Ganesh, who wasn’t born with an elephant’s head. The only way the child could live was if someone else’s head—someone facing north—was found and attached to the headless boy. What was found, after a great battle, was an unfortunate elephant, and in the violent course of the elephant’s beheading, one tusk was broken.

But because he’d first heard it as a boy, Farrokh preferred the myth of the moon.

“Excuse me—did you hear me?” Martin asked the doctor. “I was inquiring what happened to that elephant’s other tusk.”

“He broke it himself,” Dr. Daruwalla replied. “He got pissed off and threw it at the moon.” In the rearview mirror, the dwarf gave the doctor the evil eye; a good Hindu, Vinod wasn’t amused by Dr. Daruwalla’s blasphemy. Surely Lord Ganesha was never “pissed off,” which was strictly a mortal weakness.

The missionary’s sigh was intended to convey his long-suffering patience with whatever vexatious mood the doctor was in. “There you go again,” the Jesuit said. “Still keeping something from me.”