Re: [nukkad] Thanks and Bye--all good things must come to an end. we cannot party for ever!

["homi kaikobad" <>]

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The measure of a man's real character is what he would do if he knew he would 
never be found out. -Thomas Babington Macaulay, author and statesman (1800-1859)
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[Wrote this long ago, sending it in today]

OLD BOMBAY IS DYING

There was a time when no one locked the doors, they stood ajar even through
the night, and no one dreamed of stealing anything in the "pada."

You could walk at night on Marine Drive, and take a cup of freshly brewed
tea on Grant Road in Khodu's restaurant, which specialized in late hour foot
traffic, when the cinema goers in the last show came by, and later in early
dawn, when the mill workers filed by for work, with their little bundles of
"bhojan" which the wife had cooked the night before.

Cops walked in pairs and were on first name basis with the night people, who
respected the law, and expected it to respect their tiny little lives, eked
out walking the pavement, in traffic which never ended, and in the hovels by
the wayside.

I knew this old couple, I believe they were Hindu Mumbaiites, in their
sixties,
the man sedate with white hair, prim pants and a pressed shirt, the woman in
her sari and slippers, and a shawl to keep away the night dew. I walked by
them a million times, they always were out for a stroll by night, always arm
in arm, engrossed in each other's company.

Why they frequented the night streets one will never know. I always noticed
them,
they brought a warmth to my heart. I don't believe they knew I existed.

The key to the whole experience was safety. No one ever messed with you,
stole anything, pushed you around. These were not gentle souls, just people
who lived in a city, by traditions which held fast inspite of changes which
the recent partition brought.

Khodu was a wide set man of an obvious Irani descent, you could make out the
tendency to widen at the hips, they sat all day long at the "galla". He had
cropped hair because he loved Tony Curtis, who had sported such a cut in
some film of his. Khodu's wife had much to say on this matter, but the man
had learned the priceless aptitude, of becoming deaf on demand.

I would often end up in his restaurant around 2 AM, when my walks were
done for the night. At that time I was in what could be classed, the
Wanderer
mode, always moving about, never still, always looking for something I could
not define for the life of me, which would one day take me so far away
from these night haunts, that I would lose all perspective and prospect of
ever
returning.

You want laconic, make friends with an Irani "chai ki dukan wala", if the
breed still exists, so many of them have educated their children and have
followed them to Houston and Melbourne.

Now Khodu had a well hidden trait he took care to never have come to
surface.
He was a Poet.

He had never fallen in love, and had the luxury to try out the pathos of the
state in a literary, and therefore a safe way. Most of his work, which he
wrote in a grubby little diary he guarded with his life, was painstakingly
torturesome to hear. Because I was young and therefore wise, I took care to
tell him this, and he announced his displeasure, and said I did not
understand, and likened me to an appendage on the posterior of a mule,
and simultaneously, valued me greatly. When you grow older and
wiser, people never tell you the truth, and you in turn, follow suit, and
are polite, and prevaricative.

Some of his work had the overtones of his mother country, Persia, and of
Yazd, the terrible province into which the Moslem rulers had cast all
Zoroastrians after looting their lands and businesses, over centuries. They
called them, "Ga 'Bar," low born, or mongrel, or untouchable, and this
haunted,
hunted trait lingered even onto the shores of docile Hind.

One night it had been especially humid, and there were fewer people in his
place, some stragglers in the shadows. I had just walked in, and had caught
a glint in his eye so you could hardly recognize the man, and knew something
was afoot.

He comes over to my table, agitated, orders a cup of tea for us, a sort of
honor. I know when people behave oddly something worthwhile is about
to happen. Normal people will behave predictably, which is safe, but
unproductive of neither surprises nor art.

Without preamble, he leafs through to a page and settles his thick rimmed
glasses, and reads out the first verse, not in his usual jerky, penny-novel
style,
but in exquisitely metered Farsi of the sort Firdausi of Tus wrote in his
Shah Nameh, the Book of Kings, centuries ago, or the kind Khayyam
the Tent Maker, scribed his fierce, fatal Rubayyats in.

I was stunned at the rare beauty, the pain, the measure, the balance, the
challenge, the flow, the meter, the content, and the fearsome implications!

This came from Khodu's hand, but the aroma came from ancient hearts
long faded away.

What in the world was going on, this strange, darkenly night?

[to be continued ...]

Dr. Holmes Keikobad
MB BS DPH Ret. DIP AC NCCAOM LIC AC CO & AZ
www.acu-free.com - 15 CEUS by video.
NCCAOM reviewed. Approved in CA & most states.



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