The Heart Is a Shifting Sea Read online

  When he heard this, Shahzad began to cry. He didn’t know what he felt. He couldn’t say that he was happy or sad. It was a strange mix of emotions he did not recognize.

  People offered words of comfort: “He was in bad pain,” “His soul will be blessed,” and “He will be at peace.” These platitudes helped a little.

  For forty days after that, the family sat in mourning. Shahzad did not go to work, and no one went out except for the necessary shopping. There was a big marriage in the extended family, but they did not attend.

  Sabeena felt lighter the moment Shahzad’s father stopped breathing. At long last, they were free of the Dictator.

  * * *

  The change in Shahzad was just as dramatic. After his motorbike accident, his balance had worsened and his gait became more uneven. But after his father’s death, his posture corrected itself. He grew his mustache into a manicured goatee, like some Westerners did, and even went to the salon to maintain it. His hair was now always hennaed, and he wore better-fitting and more expensive clothes. All of this made him look younger, and even the women in the family commented that he had grown more handsome.

  After his father died, Shahzad had realized the obvious. At long last, he could adopt a child. A child would no longer be considered an outsider.

  When Shahzad approached his mother after the mourning period, she insisted he still adopt within the family, a baby that could take his name. But Sabeena now said she wasn’t sure she wanted a child at all. She felt old—they were both past forty now—and it seemed to her too late. Shahzad dismissed this, saying he was as full of energy as the day they met.

  Shahzad’s mother presented another idea. They had distant relatives who lived in a hut on a hill in Kalyan, a faraway suburb at the end of the Central Railway line. A woman had given birth to a baby boy, but she was sick and did not have the money to care for him. “She’s got TB and must be dying, so you can go adopt that child,” Shahzad’s mother said.

  And so Shahzad took the long train ride to Kalyan. When he entered the hut, it was obvious the baby boy was also sick. He seemed to have a fever. Perhaps he had already caught his mother’s TB. But Shahzad still thought the baby was good-looking. He could even sense a trace of mischief in him. He prayed with the baby as the boy fell into a twitchy sleep on the floor.

  The woman was very thin, and the bones on her face were sharp. There was no food in the hut, and she said she couldn’t afford a doctor. Kalyan, a popular resting place for new migrants to the city, had few doctors anyway. The woman and her husband and father had come from a fort city several hours east, but now the husband was gone.

  Shahzad felt uneasy. His manicured, hennaed beard, shaded glasses, and city clothes stood out amid the harsh poverty. No one else in the area spoke English. The woman was making him tea, even though she was ill, and had no idea why he’d come.

  The woman’s cell phone rang. It was Shahzad’s mother, calling to do the telling for him. After the woman hung up, she faced Shahzad. “I understand what you want,” she said. “But first you have to ask my father.”

  Shahzad knew just a little about the woman’s father—that he owned a mutton shop but never seemed to have any money. Later, he learned that the man was a gambler, which was illegal but common, and that the man lost his money playing cards.

  When the old man appeared inside the hut, the woman told him about Shahzad’s plan to take her baby. “No,” the old man said, without hesitation. “I have only one grandson, and he is the last. I cannot live without him.”

  Shahzad nodded and turned to go. He wasn’t going to fight an old man. But the woman’s father stopped him, motioning to his lower body. He lifted up a pant leg and showed Shahzad that his skin was raw and peeling. Whatever the affliction was, it looked as if it had never been treated. The man also pulled out a broken cell phone. He said the phone was more important than his leg. He did not mention his daughter’s illness. Shahzad took the man to the repair shop and pushed two hundred rupees into his hands. “Give me one hundred rupees more, I need it,” the man said, and Shahzad did. He could not wait to get on the train back home.

  “We don’t want it,” Shahzad’s mother said, after he told her what happened. “He’s a gambler, he will always be out for money.” Shahzad knew she was right. Even if the old man gave them the boy, he was certain to appear regularly—on the boy’s birthday or during Ramadan or Eid, along with the other poor people—to ask for money for every ailment and problem. He might even demand the boy back when he was grown.

  But maybe he wouldn’t. For a brief moment, Shahzad considered stealing the baby. He could take him to a doctor. The boy could have a better future. And the chances of repercussions were small. Poor people almost never went to the police or to court against the rich, because the outcome rarely worked in their favor.

  No, Shahzad thought. This is not the way to become a father.

  With regret, he gave up the idea, and on future Ramadans and Eids, when the boy came to their house with the other poor children to ask for money, Shahzad noted with relief that he had survived, but also that he hadn’t grown up to be good-looking.

  * * *

  The Dictator’s death set other events in motion: most important, the inheritance of an enormous tract of family property in Dharavi, a half-hour train ride north of home. It was the slum land where Shahzad used to bring the firangis—some twenty thousand square feet of it—and he inherited it along with more than a dozen other family members. Dharavi had one million inhabitants per square mile and a churning economy all its own. It was part dumping ground, part living space, and part swamp. It had countless satellite dishes and cell phones but few toilets. Shahzad’s cousins took a survey of the land and immediately declared it a headache.

  For one, the property was not in good shape. At the entrance there was a dirt-filled field, which doubled as a rough cricket maidan where young boys liked to play. Beyond that sat hundreds of makeshift dwellings. A narrow lane, which ran between the dwellings, was filled with hanging laundry, running children, squatting women doing wash, and men hanging out in dhotis. These slum dwellers had not paid rent in years, and it would be difficult for Shahzad’s family to collect it now. Surrounding the living spaces were heaps of rotting trash, dirty water running from pipes, squawking chickens, tied goats, three-legged dogs, and tiny kittens pawing at the remains of food. Big-beaked crows sat on Dumpsters eating pilfered meat. And at the very end of the property sat the remains of a burnt-out tannery.

  The second, and much bigger, problem, was that when Shahzad’s cousins went to visit the land again, they found a goon had moved to take control of the property. The goon was associated with a local but powerful right-wing political party that had previously led attacks against the city’s migrants. Shahzad’s family worried that he would hurt anyone who tried to reclaim the land.

  But Shahzad was not afraid. Instead, he saw an opportunity. This was his chance to prove himself a hero. And if he could keep the land and then sell or rent it to a builder, they’d all be rich. Though in bad shape, the property was valuable—as the goon and his party recognized—because Dharavi occupied five hundred acres at the center of Mumbai, and Mumbai was running out of space. If Shahzad got rich from the builder, he could also afford to adopt a child. He’d be so rich no one would dare stop him.

  Through his brokerage business, Shahzad met with several builders and found one willing to pay twenty-eight crores—an incredible 280 million—rupees to build on the land. The builder said he would do all the construction legally, through the city’s major project to clear and redevelop slum land. The project promised slum dwellers free apartments in exchange for their shanties so that luxury towers could be built in their place.

  It was possible that when it came time to build, some of the slum dwellers would be obstinate about moving. Shahzad had heard stories of slum people who were ungrateful for their brand-new apartments, objecting to the isolation, lack of community, and Western toilets in the new fla
ts. Some slum dwellers even begged to go back home—to homes that no longer existed. The builder promised Shahzad he knew how to handle this. But first Shahzad would have to get rid of the goon.

  As Shahzad plotted his next steps, his perspective of himself began to change. He began to see himself as a big shot in Dharavi, a would-be slumlord with lots of land. He concocted wild plans for a show of force against the goon. In the meantime, he visited the property and put up a giant sign with his name on it, warning: “Trespassers will be prosecuted.” He told himself he wasn’t afraid.

  Over the course of his visits to Dharavi, Shahzad grew close with the people who lived there. He got to know them and their stories—the girl who spoke English and worked in marketing but lived in a decrepit hut to save money for more schooling; the fat, lazy men in undershirts who roasted chicken tikka and hung out on plastic chairs all day; and a hunched-over man named Pinya, who was once a big man in Dharavi before he got hooked on moonshine and drank all his money away. Out of all of the slum dwellers, Shahzad liked Pinya best. He often gave him money to do small tasks, such as fetch chai or share information he’d learned about the goon, though he knew how Pinya would spend the money. Every so often, slum moonshine was made wrong and killed dozens of people. But Pinya was hooked and drank it anyway.

  Shahzad also got to know a security guard the goon had hired, a boy so young he couldn’t grow a mustache. The boy had come to Mumbai from up north after suffering a bad breakup. If this was the goon’s security guard, Shahzad thought he didn’t need to be afraid. Emboldened, Shahzad set up shop in an old office in the center of the property and taped a picture to the door of him standing with members of another local political party. He hoped it would scare away the goon and any other interlopers.

  After several months, Shahzad and his family met the goon in person. They gathered twice in fancy flats—the goon’s choice—to negotiate over the family land. Both times, Shahzad and his family rejected the unfair terms the goon offered, though they worried that violence would follow.

  The more often Shahzad visited Dharavi, the more the slum dwellers grew to like and admire him. Even Binky, the floppy-eared slum dog, perked up when he came around. Shahzad took the time to ask after their families, gave them small amounts of money, and never collected rent. They greeted him in obsequious tones, commenting on how bindaas his Western-style blue jeans and fake Gucci belt were or inviting him into their shanties for dinner. As Shahzad waved at them, he sometimes imagined that he was royalty, a real shahzad, and that this was his fiefdom. Which, in a way, it was. Here was a property that bore his name. A property worth twenty-eight crores. And here were people that owed him something and whose futures were in his hands.

  With his new swagger, Shahzad began to respond differently to strangers when they asked if he had children. He no longer hung his head and said “Nahi, nahi,” in a small voice. Instead, he began to play pretend.

  This did not work with his neighbors or the people in Byculla Market, Crawford Market, or Bhendi Bazaar. These people all knew better. But if he and Sabeena went to a wedding or birthday party with guests they did not know, there Shahzad could lie. Sabeena had been the one to suggest this. “Who’s going to question you?” she said.

  Shahzad lied with confidence and gusto. “How many children do you have?” a wedding guest would ask. “Two children, one boy, one girl,” Shahzad often replied, “and they’re very good-looking.” The wedding guest would nod in approval or say, “Allah ki marzi.” “It’s God’s will.” This always made Shahzad feel good.

  Sometimes, Shahzad got confused. At the last wedding he attended, he told a guest his daughter was six years old after first saying she was seven. “Oh? I thought you said seven?” the keen-eared guest asked. Shahzad saved himself by telling the biography of his niece Mahala and nephew Taheem as if they were his own children. He told the guest in detail about their hobbies, friends, and high-quality Catholic primary school.

  “Ah, good school, a convent school,” the wedding guest said appraisingly, and Shahzad smiled with relief, and let the conversation move on.

  Mahala and Taheem had still been small when the Dictator died. In the years since, they had grown up to be bright-eyed, bucktoothed, and full of energy. They were so close in age people thought they were twins, a ball of energy split into two humming parts. They made the joint family home younger, louder, less predictable and staid. After they started school, they’d become even livelier.

  In the evenings, the kids would run from one room to another, finding Sabeena to ask what she was cooking for dinner or tracking down Shahzad to tell him what they learned in school that day. Mahala was the more talkative and mature of the two, while Taheem often got scolded for his mischief. They had reedy voices and expansive laughs, and they were almost always playing.

  Shahzad had gone to see Taheem when he was born, which was at Ramadan time. He had looked thin and small and perfect in the hospital bed. Shahzad had also visited the hospital after the birth of Mahala, whose skin had been very black, like a poor laborer’s child, but he had still found her beautiful. At last I’ll have some company, he thought when they were born. But it was only now that they were older—old enough to hold conversation—that Shahzad realized how much they’d changed in him.

  They called Shahzad “buddhi baba”—big father—and Sabeena “buddhi ma.” Though Taheem was often naughty with his father, he would mostly listen to Shahzad. If Taheem told Shahzad he got into a disagreement with a Hindu boy at school, Shahzad would admonish him: “Chup! Pagal hai tu. Hindu-Muslim differences are very bad for children.” On weekdays, after finishing his homework, Taheem would come into the living room in the morning and call out, “Buddhi baba, put on the TV.” Every night, they’d watch Maharana Pratap together, a show about a Hindu Rajput king who fought against the conquests of the Muslim Mughal emperors, including Emperor Akbar of Mughal-e-Azam, who had been a real-life king. After watching their epic battles, Taheem would sleepily shuffle off to bed.

  On the weekends, while Taheem’s father worked and his mother cooked, he and Shahzad watched cricket and made bets against each other. “Thirty rupees,” Shahzad would call out, as India played New Zealand, Sri Lanka, or, most important, Pakistan. If he lost, he’d joke with his nephew, “I won’t leave you, I’ll get you in the night.” Taheem would always run away giggling. Or they played cricket outside, and Shahzad would bowl for his lanky nephew. He threw the ball over and over until Taheem connected, hitting it all the way into the lanes of Crawford Market.

  Mahala and Taheem’s parents had had a love marriage. Farhan, who was nearly forty, had been teaching classes in the trendy suburb of Bandra when he met Nadine, his much-younger student. Nadine had a tiny frame, a baby face, and deep dimples. He was immediately smitten. Farhan told his family, “I will marry this girl only, or I won’t marry anyone.” Though Nadine was much younger, she and Farhan were from the same community, and so her father had given in. At first, even after marriage, Nadine had been enamored with Farhan, who was a learned and well-spoken man. He had read the entire Quran and many of the Islamic scholars and poets. He could even quote Rumi, the Sufi mystic and poet, offhand. But as time went on, Nadine saw that Farhan was not making much money. He stopped teaching and took up a job as a mobile phone technician. It was an unglamorous and low-paid position. They rarely went on vacation or out to eat in hotels.

  Sometimes, Nadine complained to Sabeena, telling her older and wiser in-law that what she had expected and what she got were not the same. But Sabeena had heard all of this before; she had also gone through some of it herself, in her own way. Once, Nadine complained to her sister that Farhan did not buy her jewels, but Nadine’s sister had not been sympathetic. “It was your choice only, according to your choice you have done,” her sister said, and Sabeena privately agreed. She felt that Nadine was behaving foolishly.

  But Sabeena also knew that when a woman chose a spouse on her own, she was often young and didn’t know her own mind.
And then she became upset later, because her husband did not meet her expectations. Love marriages seemed to be built on expectations. Even Sabeena had come to marriage with expectations, but she had also known she would have to adjust. It was something Nadine didn’t understand. Because of this, Nadine had bhadaas, or what Sabeena called “fire in the heart”—which could only be quenched by acting out, shouting, gossiping, or crying. Nadine got out the fire by talking about her marriage with Sabeena. Shahzad, who maybe also had bhadaas, got it out by taking action at Dharavi.

  * * *

  Shahzad was spending more and more time at the family property. With each day that passed, he felt closer to securing it and becoming the family hero he’d always wanted to be.

  There had been some complications. The old owners of the burnt-out tannery on the land had started a legal battle with Shahzad’s family. They were being helped by the local goon and, improbably, by members of Shahzad’s own extended family. The goon was now going around offering checks to Shahzad’s cousins and aunts to buy out their shares, for far lower than what the property was worth. Shahzad had to keep calling his relatives and warning them not to accept the scam money. He assured them that they would make not lakhs but whole crores of money from a builder in a legal deal, if they could just wait a little while.

  Shahzad was now fighting the tannery owner in the Mumbai Court of Small Causes. Long ago, it had been the court where Gandhi and Jinnah, the founding fathers of India and Pakistan, famously started their practice in law. Now, it was where sticky matters of tax and property were adjudicated. In the courthouse, a great, old colonial-era building, the cases moved lackadaisically, as if in an earlier time. In some rooms, documents were stacked to the ceiling. Court peons pasted decisions on paper using toothbrushes and sticky glue. It was no surprise to anyone that the general backlog of court cases in Mumbai numbered in the hundreds of thousands. But Shahzad was confident he would win the suit, because of how the tannery owner had let the land go. Today, the property was a thick jungle of grass, a crumbling stone wall, and a buzzing of fat, malarial mosquitoes. Downy ducks paddled in a small pond. Nature had long ago won the battle.