Mid-Night In Mumbai
Erasmus liked to smoke when he traveled. He savored the buzz but it mostly reminded him that he was again on his own. But Erasmus had no cigarettes. It was his first night in Mumbai. He hadn’t bought any after settling into his Air BNB or before going to The Adagio, a small venue that advertised a social night and drag show that evening. Surely someone there would have cigarettes though. Smoking seemed about as popular as cricket among Mumbians. Or, were they Mumbaikars? Bombayites? Whatever it was, one of them at The Adagio were bound to have some Gold Leafs at the very least.
The Adagio was more intimate than he expected, just a one story room with a basement. On the first floor were a couple tables where people sold soaps, handmade wooden jewelry, utensils, scarves, and some small trinkets. A wooden stairway led to the furnished basement where everybody else mingled in waiting until the drag show to begun. Erasmus saw them circled in small groups, some standing and some sitting on the floor. All looking a rather unapproachable to a suddenly self conscious Erasmus. He preferred small gatherings but needed an opening to meet someone. This was another reason he liked to bum cigarettes
He’d met many interesting people in different American cities that way. One late night in Atlantic City, New Jersey he was dragging his feet down the boardwalk after leaving a casino when he saw an odd looking character smoking a Newport. The man had thick black curly hair, wore what looked like gardening gloves with stiff blue rubber on the palms, and a sort of white jumpsuit on his body. The man wouldn’t accept the dollar Erasmus offered to trade for a smoke so instead he gave the man his time and a patient ear.
Like most people once they know you want to listen, the man was eager to talk and did so through two smokes. Erasmus shivered with the brisk Atlantic breeze while the man confessed himself to be a former assassin hired by fishing boat captains, a convicted felon (though he didn’t say if the two were related), and someone familiar with every drug peddler on the boardwalk. This was why Erasmus smoked in new cities. He was gifted many stories over a bummed cigarette.
But Erasmus was inside and afraid to intrude on any of the little groups. Instead he found a seat on a wooden bench in front of a large bookshelf. Above it hung a sign that said “The Library.” He grabbed the first book that caught his eye, The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy, and opened it to his favorite passages. At least twenty minutes snapped by before he was pleasantly interrupted.
“You know Arundhati Roy?” A woman’s voice asked. The question was at once sincere and skeptical. Erasmus raised his head and smiled when he saw the young woman standing before him with her arms crossed and one eyebrow playfully raised. Her hair was jet black and beautiful, and her eyes were the same. They looked down on him with portals so deep they could hold the world and everything in it. Her shirt was loose and red, her feet were bare, and her legs were dressed in denim. Erasmus did not understand how anyone voluntarily donned pants in this city. His ten minute rickshaw ride to The Adagio was enough to make him perspire. And he was in shorts.
“I do,” Erasmus said to her as he closed the book in his lap.
“Are you familiar with her other work too?” She wanted to know.
“Both her novels. Read them twice over.” He raised the book in his hand as evidence. “And a number of her essays too.”
“What do you think of her?” She tilted her head, giving away nothing in her eyes or lips besides unpolluted curiosity, as if she was gathering data to make some empirical judgement. Erasmus said that he’d read too much of her writing for someone who disliked it. But, he wanted to know, what did she think of Roy? The young woman looked at the ceiling for a moment, considering, and said flatly, “I think she’s a communist.”
This was beginning to feel like a game and Erasmus wanted to play.
“She’s certainly no friend of Capitalism,” he began. “Who could blame her? But I can’t say if her prescription is some form of communism or not. But, even if you’re right, even if she is a communist, that doesn’t tell me what you think of her.”
Then she let slip a smirk like a fallen seed, and a smile grew from it.
“I’ve also read too much of her writing to dislike her,” she said. “Can I sit with you?” He slid over to make more room on the bench. She sat next to him and invisible trails of her perfume followed. Jasmine flower, Erasmus recognized. She smelled of Spring and his favorite tea.
She asked where he was from and with exaggerated disbelief Erasmus asked, “You mean you can tell I’m not local? What gave me away?” She laughed sweetly and not a moment longer than was natural. Nothing about her was forced.
“Oh your accent obviously,” she said. “You’re an American. What brings you to Bombay?” Her voice was bright with heavily rolled Rs, and Ts and Ds pronounced from the back of her palate. He’d always liked Indian accents, and hers came from a voice so sweet it could give you a cavity. He told her how he’d been in the Deccan visiting a friend in Hyderabad and decided to spend his last week seeing the famous city of Bombay. Or was it Mumbai, he asked? People had been saying it both ways. She told him that people used both, that Mumbai was the new official, Indianized name of the city but that its spirit was Bombay.
He said he’d gotten an Air BNB in Bandra West for the week and asked where she was staying. Just how local was she? She wasn’t really. Just graduated from college in Bangalore and came to Bombay to stay with her older sister. Here she could enjoy the freedom she’d grown used to at university and then some. Maybe she could find a use for her marketing degree out here, too. It was actually her first night in the city as well. The first night of her second visit, to be more accurate. She found The Adagio for the same reason he did.
They were cut off when someone announced that the drag show was about to begin. They joined a crowd of twenty-odd people at one end of the basement, watching an open space that had been cleared of furniture. It was to be a one woman show, and the star came out introducing herself as Ave Maria. She stood tall, and taller still in four inch heels. She was thin with her hair in a tight bun, wearing a black blouse, a black skirt that swayed whimsically around her thighs, a face that was fully painted, and her right wrist was full of metal bangles that jingled like sleigh bells at Christmastime. She looked to the person manning the stereo and told them, “Hit it baby!”
Ave Maria danced and lip sang to American pop songs from the last fifteen years. Everyone laughed shyly whenever she approached the crowd to pull someone new out to dance with her. Some joined confidently, but Erasmus was not one of them. When she sauntered up to him with outstretched beseeching hands he felt another pair of them on his back pressing him forward. He was forced to accept that he was no more embarrassing than anyone else and let her lead him to the floor. And it was embarrassing, but only a little. He was allowed back to the safety of the crowd within the minute. His new friend was laughing happily at him. “Wasn’t that fun?” she asked, touching his arm. That was all it took for him to agree.
When Ave Maria’s show was over the floor opened up to a general dance party. Erasmus was once again drug onto the floor, this time by both girls, and the whole room danced. When the last song finished, everyone cheered. They could all stay a while longer to mingle and buy things upstairs but Erasmus’ new friend had other plans. She put her hands on his shoulders as if steadying herself from exhaustion and said “my god that was fun wasn’t it? I want a smoke. Do you smoke?”
Thank god she smokes, Erasmus thought. But what he said was, “just when I’m traveling. Wanna go outside?”
Out on the sidewalk she produced a small pack of Gold Flake cigarettes, which was covered by a photo of a grotesque facial tumor and the usual government warning that “Tobacco Causes Painful Death,” and gave one to him. She brought out her lighter but he motioned for her to hand it to him, and then reached out to light hers first.
“Like my best friend says, pretty girls don’t light their own cigarettes.” She rolled her eyes and when it was lit he added, “That’s why he always lights mine.” She laughed so suddenly that she almost choked on the smoke. Asphyxiation aside, he thought she was adorable when she laughed. It was then that he realized he didn’t even know her name.
“Sanika,” she told him. “What’s yours?”
“Erasmus,” he said and lit his own cigarette.
Sanika raised her eyebrows. She’d never heard that name before. He explained that his mom was an evolutionary biologist and his dad taught the history of science at university, focusing on the relationship between British Imperialism and the early historical development of evolutionary theory. His mother admired Charles Darwin’s uncle, Erasmus Darwin, for reasons he couldn’t remember. His dad liked the name because of his eccentric tastes. Now it was his own.
Droplets of sweat began forming on their foreheads while they smoked. It was Erasmus’ first cigarette in months because his friend in Hyderabad didn’t smoke, and he told her so. She asked if he’d heard of chai sutta. He hadn’t. “Its chai and cigarettes,” Sanika explained. In the United States coffee was the natural pairing for a smoke, and the Olympic strength of a dark black coffee helped wake Erasmus up more than chai could, no matter how good it tasted. Sanika had heard of that, had never tried it, but was sure it was just as good. Cigarettes are good with everything she said.
“And after everything,” he added.
“A cigarette after an exam, after a meal, after sex,” she exampled in agreement. Erasmus had never had an after sex cigarette though he had a friend who insisted they were the best smokes she’d ever had.
“Maybe you’ll get to find out,” Sanika said before taking a drag. Erasmus was suddenly frozen with uncertainty. How did he respond to that? He didn’t want to make assumptions and was afraid of how his reply might steer her first impressions of him. Mercifully she relieved him of the responsibility and asked if he’d been to South Bombay. He reminded her he’d only been there for a day. She reminded him that that didn’t answer her question. He said he hadn’t. Neither had she. Did he want to grab a rickshaw and go walk around there? It was perfectly safe. And she heard about bicycle groups that meet at midnight to ride around South Bombay and see the historic buildings from the British era. Erasmus loved the idea, though he thought he would go just about anywhere she suggested. And his watch told him it was quarter to midnight already. Maybe they’d see some of the cyclists. He took out his phone to call them a rickshaw on Uber.
He asked to use her wifi hotspot. His international data plan worked fine in Hyderabad but for some reason wasn’t working in Mumbai. She agreed; she had unlimited data, which was much cheaper in India than the United States. “I’m like a data millionaire,” she boasted. Her battery was down to thirty six percent but this could last her a whole day if she wasn’t using her phone, and she wouldn’t be if he navigated with his. Already aware of some sites he wanted to see in South Bombay Erasmus knew where to begin. “I’ll have the Uber take us to the CST.”
The Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus was the grand castle-esque train station built by the British. It was beautiful by night, partially hidden by trees and illuminated by colorful lights. It was quarter after midnight when they stood next to each other, admiring the architecture and occasionally brushing forearms and shoulders as if by accident.
They had a lot of walking ahead of them so Erasmus suggested they buy drinks and a snack, some of which he could carry in the fanny pack he wore across his chest with copies of his travel documents and identification inside. They crossed the street to a vendor and Erasmus asked for three bags of peanuts. “Aur do panii aur ek Thumbs Up,” added Sanika. Thumbs Up was probably the most popular cola in India. Better than Coke or Pepsi, Erasmus thought. Sweeter and less fizzy. Pepsi was popular too but Coca Cola never caught on as well. Unable to compete in the market with Thumbs Up as Pepsi could, Coca Cola bought the brand in 1993.
Sanika paid with cash and got a five rupee note back in change. It was the last of her cash she realized, but she and Erasmus both had Google Pay, which everyone used. Sometimes she didn’t even carry cash with her.
In the rickshaw ride to the CST they made a list of the places to see and Erasmus used Apple Maps to order them into the most logical walking route. The CST, Bombay High Court (which stayed so named even after the city’s legal name change to Mumbai), and the postcard-famous Gateway To India. It was a lot of walking in a path shaped like a boomerang, moving to the other end toward the tip of the peninsula. Already sweating, they finished the Thumbs Up before walking to the Bombay High Court, agreeing warm water would be more palatable than warm soda.
It’s impossible to miss the Bombay High Court. It’s a massive and imposing Gothic Revival structure that created an air of authority, power, and legal prestige. Like a devotional to the former supremacy of the former British Raj. Neither of them thought it compared to the CST in grandeur and certainly not in beauty, but it sent the message it was supposed to.
Did Erasmus know why the Bombay High Court was famous, Sanika asked? He guessed that a lot of Supreme Court judged came from there. “Well that might be true but I don’t know,” Sanika said. “What I’m thinking of is cooler.”
She explained that the Bombay court was a center of British legal power and many important cases were tried there, including a 1916 sedition trial of the famous Indian nationalist — father of the nationalist movement — named Bal Gangadhar Tilak. “I mean, he wasn’t a great person. His beliefs in the right of men to dominate women was horrendous. And he was a casteist who thought people who fell in love across caste lines should be denied marriage. He was a bastard, but most founding fathers are. Look at yours, sexists and racists relying on the labor of slaves. But Tilak was central to the history of independence, so he’s important for that. And you know who Mohammed Ali Jinnah is right?” Of course he did. When the British made their hasty retreat from India in 1947 they divided the subcontinent into two countries based on religious demographics. Men like Gandhi, Ambedkar, and Nehru were the ideological founders of India and Jinnah was the founding father of Pakistan. “And then God’s carotid burst open on the new border between India and Pakistan and a million people died of hatred,” Erasmus said, quoting Arundhati Roy. Sanika smiled at him.
Then Erasmus would be surprised to know, she informed him, that before partition and independence Jinnah practiced law in Bombay. And that his reputation was very respected. And that sedition case against Tilak? Jinnah was Tilak’s advocate! “Sorry, you call advocates lawyers,” she interjected. “The father of Pakistan defending an Indian nationalist against British persecution for sedition. Jinnah is hated in India today of course, especially by the Hindu Nationalists. But judicially, Jinnah’s reputation is revered. They even put his portrait and original barrister’s certificate — his certificate to practice law — in the Bombay High Court Museum. Which is inside the building.” Erasmus was listening, thoroughly amused.
“And it gets better.” Sanika was snickering now. “Do you know who inaugurated that museum with its display of Jinnah? Prime Minister Modi!” The Hindu Supremacist prime minister. Erasmus laughed because the irony was so thick he could spread it like avocado on toast. Sanika’s tone became serious then, and she added, “his party and their allies, they attack the Muslims all the time you know. They even talk about murdering them by the masses. His party even shared cartoons of Muslims being hung this year. If he gives them nothing else, at least Modi gives the Muslims some irony.”
She watched Erasmus’ expression grow slack, his muscles pulled down by the weight of her words. She was happy he seemed to understand but didn’t want the night to lose its fun. She noticed he was perspiring like a cold glass of water and changed the subject. “Look! I’ve made you so upset you’ve broken into a sweat!” She took his hand and squeezed it with her thumb. “Come on, next is the Gateway To India.”
The walk wasn’t terribly long but Erasmus wished it was longer. When they crossed a street he took a chance and reached for her hand again and neither let go when they reached the other side. He rubbed her hand with his thumb and her smile made him turn away shyly with his own. She didn’t let go until they reached the Gateway and she skipped a few paces ahead with her arms spread wide. “So what do you think?” She yelled.
“Kind of awkward honestly,” he said laughing. It was a marvelous monument he assured her, but its placement seemed unframed. There was so much open space in the world around it that it seemed silly to call it a gateway. There was no reason for anyone to actually pass through it, he said. A gateway was a passage through a barrier, like a wall or a gate. But it was just an archway before the Arabian Sea. “At least Indians needn’t take credit for this British aesthetic,” he added.
“God save the Queen,” said Sanika.
They passed the next thirty minutes sitting on the pavement by the Gateway talking and finishing the last of their water and peanuts. Erasmus was tiring out after sitting so long and he saw Sanika’s eyes begin to flutter closed now and again. His watch said it was nearly three in the morning. Sanika suggested they call a ride soon and head back. He agreed, but back to where? There had been no hint of what they’d do after exploring South Bombay and he was afraid of seeming presumptuous. But he also knew ending the night without her felt like finishing a book without the last chapter. So he asked her directly. Did she want to catch a ride to her place and he could go to his Air BNB from there? Or did she want to spend the night with him, he asked, emphasizing that he had no expectations.
“You have air conditioning?” She asked. He did. “Then I’d love to spend the night with you. Maybe the morning too.” His chest lifted by inches and with a smile he took out his phone to order a ride.
But the app wasn’t working. He didn’t have any data. Was Sanika’s hotspot still on? She checked her phone and found it was dead. She’d never had her hotspot on for so long and it drained her battery. With her phone dead, his was useless. They had practically no money, they couldn’t pay with their phones, and they were out of food and water. They looked at each other for a moment, deadpan. “Fuck,” said Erasmus.
Then he had an idea. He took off his watch and explained that it was a Citizen and operated on solar power. He bought it for $120 some years ago so it was probably worth at least $70 now. That was more than he spent on rickshaws during his entire week in Hyderabad. Add the five rupee note and surely someone would be willing to take that in exchange for a ride to his loft, right? Probably, she said. And what choice did they have? They just had to find a cab with a willing driver at this time of night.
There weren’t any. There wasn’t just an absence of willing drivers, there were no cabs at all. Sanika knew there would be some up at Churchgate Station, but that was a thirty minute walk away. If they were lucky they would find someone along the way. But they weren’t lucky. Only one cab went by and he refused to take anything but money for payment. When he started to drive away Sanika screamed after him, “Chutya!” He wasn’t persuaded. “Cunt,” she said to Erasmus in explanation.
They trudged their way north through the humid mid-night streets and arrived at Churchgate Station as sopping wet and exhausted as a pair of spawning salmon. But they found the cabbies. The first two drivers refused their offer but the third accepted the watch and five rupee note for a ride up to Bandra West. He knew someone who could sell it for him, and even half the alleged value was worth the thirty five minute drive. They snuggled damply in the backseat, Sanika gave Erasmus her hand, and he rubbed it gently while he watched the city and the sea pass by like a reel of film. Sanika’s head was on his shoulder and Erasmus gave into the urge to lean forward and kiss it. She looked up, returned it to his cheek, then closed her eyes for the rest of the ride.
Neither checked what time they arrived at Erasmus’ third story loft. They sluggishly plugged in their phones, Erasmus turned on the air conditioning, and Sanika found two bottles of water in the refrigerator. They shared the first and Erasmus brought the second to the bedroom as a spare. Sanika didn’t wait to sprawl out on the bed with an exaggerated moan. He laughed and laid beside her, touching nothing but elbows until they were dry enough to move. Then he turned to his side and admired her for a good long time, until she turned to face him too.
“What are you thinking?” She asked.
“I’m not,” He said. “My chest is welling up with appreciation.”
Sanika smiled coyly and scooted toward him. He leaned forward to meet her, and they kissed. At first gently, and then intently. Then again, and again, until their intentions wandered and dragged their lips with them. First to cheeks, then their ears. They traveled eachother like cartographers mapping the terrain of every lobe and ridge, every lash and lip. They tasted of salt and didn’t care. Through saline kisses they drank each other in like cups of honeyed tea until eventually Erasmus held her cheek and urged her, “Make love with me.”
When they were done the sky was awash in baby blue. Mid-night turned to morning in Mumbai as they laid beneath a thin sheet fighting sleep. Finally Erasmus found the words for what was in his chest. “You are the best night I could have had and never imagined.”
Sanika glanced out the window and the brightening sky. “I think you’re the best morning I never imagined,” she said. Erasmus wondered aloud how it could have been any better. Sanika looked at the ceiling thoughtfully and seemed to have an idea. She reached for the floor in the pocket of her jeans and handed him her pack of gold Leafs. “Let’s have that cigarette,” she answered.
