A CLOWN ON STILTS

On consideration, the flyover had not been the best place to get out. J.J. was a dual carriageway with a concrete ledge on the outside of each lane. This ledge was so narrow that I had to place one foot in front of the other in order to walk.

 

The overhead bridge ran through the middle of a wide thoroughfare at an elevation of twenty meters. The street below was lined with six storey apartment buildings on each side. For the better part of two centuries, residents here had observed the world from the equity of their private windows. With the construction of the flyover, those private windows had become as public as an open beehive. Commuters could count the cushions on the living room sofas as they passed. The traffic flow did abate at night, but never did it stop.

 

For the odd pedestrian like myself, the experience was like walking through a historic installation in an amusement park. Animated wax models slowly and deliberately clicked through their programmed movements. An old man scanned the linen on the washing line, turning his head from side to side; a woman cradled her face in folded arms as her eyes moved down the road. Walking here felt both surreal and impertinent. I had no right to be witnessing these scenes up close.

​

The furnishings inside the houses were spartan and threadbare. They hinted at priorities that had left little behind but erosion. Here lived the survivors, their bodies delicate and crisp as the newspapers between their fingers, living on the flip side of their own pages. Going by the look in their eyes, they seemed to know all about it.

​​

I turned toward the famous Bhendi Bazaar and opened my camera. This walk looked like it might clear my head for at least a while. Fifty yards in the other direction stood a colossal green mosque. If there were any such thing as Islamic Art Deco, this would have to be it. I crossed the road towards the Mumbadevi Temple. I walked back and forth in search of an angle that would fit the honey coloured tower into the frame along with the rectangular base.

From where I stood this evening, Mumbai told a classic two-city tale. The eclectic old jumble of stores and markets was being pushed under by a vertical new construct of sky plazas. Both versions resented the other for occupying the same terrain. Only in the ruby twilight did the two appear to be at peace.

​​

I was just about to cross the road again when a scooter slowed down and stopped. Both the driver and the passenger were in uniform. The cop in the front seat motioned me over.

“Sir. What were you doing there?”​

“I was walking over the flyover and taking some photos. It’s beautiful here,” I said warmly, as if I was exchanging tips with genial neighbour. The cop shook his head.

“We received a call. A call that there was a man on the flyover taking photographs.”

“I’m a visitor. This is just a camera I use for travel.”

“What is your name?”

I hesitated for a moment but decided that lying might backfire on me. “Simon Brix.”

“And you stay where?”

“In South Mumbai, in Fort.”​ 

This was not the moment to supply any surplus information. “You will have to come with us.”

None of this made any sense to me. Come with whom to where? If I was not supposed to be on this bridge, why was there not a sign that said ‘no pedestrians’ or ‘motor vehicles only’? If I would go with these men, the only sensible reason I could think of was for them to get me off the bridge and put me back on street level, where I could carry on with whatever it was that I was doing. But alas, the brain knows more than the mouth, and as these thoughts crossed my mind, all I did was stare.​​

“You sit,” he said as he tapped the seat behind him.

“What about your colleague?”

“He’s okay, we will pick him up. It’s not far.”

I searched for further remonstrations, but none came to mind. I watched my leg swing over the back seat of the scooter.

​​

The cop was right, the police station was close by. The building; an off-road two storey construct in a bustling neighbourhood, looked like it had been standing there for a hundred years. The officer walked me in through an arch and pointed me straight ahead into a doorless waiting room. ‘Sit down there, they will call you.’

​​

I was glad to be alone for a moment. So someone had alerted the police. And the police had responded to the call. All this because a person had taken a picture. In a public place. Of a public building. I could not begin to speculate who had been alarmed by my presence on the flyover. How long had I been there? Maybe twenty minutes? I had made progress towards the end of the bridge, but my progress had been slow. Now I was all the way back at the start of the bridge, on the North side. Me and my bright ideas.

​​

I had a look around the waiting room. To my left sat a big woman with two young children; She looked towards the floor over her hijab, seemingly oblivious to her kids, both of whom were pulling on her limbs like her body was a bounty. In the next seat sat a self effacing man in his forties. Maybe late thirties. He had taken both of his shoes off and placed them sideways in front of his feet.

​​

How natural it was for me to start to categorise people in a place like this. What box would they put me into if they were to judge by appearances? Tourist without travel papers? International fugitive? Assailant? Assault victim? Was this a general waiting area, or one for people who had been picked up? I decided that it had to be the former. Opposite of me sat a disheveled young man. There were bits of straw in his hair. He was kicking down on the tiles with the balls of his bare feet in a pattern. He seemed to be sending a message with that morse rhythm, even if it was just to himself. Or maybe he was obscuring a message. Ten minutes passed. Another guy came in. He swung himself into the white plastic chair by the door with an air that said ‘Here we go again’. For some reason, I felt the two would know each other. I looked from one to the other for any signs of exchange. There were none. If I would be called inside now, who knows what would happen. They could not possibly keep my camera. Would they have a right to retain it? I glanced at the clock. My focus narrowed to the open doorway. I walked back over the events of the last hour and settled on one thing: this whole situation was bizarre. And wrong. I had committed no crime. This was self-evident. Even to the police. There were no handcuffs around my wrists, nobody was guarding me, I was not under arrest. I had voluntarily decided to accompany the police to the station. And in theory, I could voluntarily undecide to be at the station. Coming along to this place had been a mistake, I could already see. I doubted that anyone was even aware of me being here. My day was being whittled away for no good reason.

​​

I breathed in deeply and breathed out deeper still. My inner strategist was attempting to negotiate with reason, and reason was willing to hear. At least I owed it to myself to find out what was happening in the lobby outside. If I was to make any change in my position, it was imperative that I move naturally. Twenty minutes had passed by now. Twenty-three minutes to be precise. If I would move, I would have to move as if I owned this station and had paid for it. I would need to move as if I acted at the very behest of the authorities themselves. Languidly, mater-of-factly. The best way was just to count off from seven to zero, just like Gaya had done years ago. I surprised myself by standing up. Slowly, I moved to the open doorway that led out to the lobby. Nobody in the waiting room paid any attention to me. The older man briefly flicked his eyes up before looking down again.

​

From here, I could only see half of the lobby, the middle section. All was quiet, from what I could tell. See? There really was no problem; there could not be any problem. Even if I walked out. In case I would be noticed, I would simply say that I wanted to check when my turn would be. I had caught myself doing what I’d done so many times before: I over-estimated the severity of situations. There were two arched doorways leading out into the road. They both looked beautiful to me. I turned around, walked back to my seat and sat down again. I closed my eyes for long seconds. I now had an actionable plan. I would wait until a full half hour had passed before I would have a little browse outside. I had already navigated this territory. The next time I stood up, things would even be easier.

​

An officer stuck his head around the corner and murmured a name. The first young man gave a startled shake of the head and stood up out of his chair. He went out through the doorway and followed the cop towards the left. This now changed everything. There was a process, there was an order. And there was movement, as in most waiting rooms. They were keeping tabs. Of course, how would they not? If I had felt restricted before, I now felt trapped. I checked the clock. I had been here for thirty-two minutes. There was no way I would get up right now. I had missed my half-hour cue; it was that stupid idiot that had to get himself called out of here. Thirty-three minutes. No way. Not now. Jesus lived for thirty-three years and then got himself crucified. There was a right time to do this. Either forty minutes, forty-five or fifty. Forty-five it is, boom. Another ten minutes then. They could come get me now, or miss their chance, thanks to their insane waiting times. How was it to feel no anxiety? It felt fine, thank you very much.

​

At the forty minute mark I stood up. I can’t explain why. My legs decided for me. My compatriots in the waiting room were falling asleep. There had been no further additions. The same man looked up at me again, this time keeping his eyes on me for several beats.

​

What did he want from me?

​

I was getting up from a chair. It’s been known to happen. I walked noiselessly towards the doorway, my heart beating out a little motif like a tin drum. Let it do its thing. My left leg was now shaking. I shifted my weight onto my right side. I mentally snapped my fingers. And I was out. Like a clown on stilts. Like a pelican crossing the beach. Tap, tap, tap. I felt a pull to check on the left. No use looking; there was nothing to see. Within a second, I was at the arch that led to the pavement in front of the office. I could feel it, though I barely saw it; there were two policemen to my right, engaged in a conversation. Nothing to do with me. Go go go. Left turn from the gate, away from this dungeon. The moment I joined the street, the adrenaline went off like gun powder in the back of my skull. I would lift up this slab of asphalt and put it on my back. Everything out here was moving at half speed. Speed was not even the word. I had to avoid shoving people, but inevitably I ended up pushing into one person after another. I began to zigzag through the crowd. The muscles in my neck stood strung out and fixed. With every step, the air was being zipped up behind me. This was already done. I redoubled my pace, still resisting the urge to look back. My job was to create as much distance between myself and the police station in as little time as possible. Off this main drag. My eyes clawed the facades for a suitable side road to dive into. Something not too narrow. Up forty yards ahead was a turn. Brooms and buckets and mops and aluminium pans spilling out on the corner. Faster. I turned right and found myself in a little street with one and two storey houses, half of them standing open. Breaking into a run, I jumped to avoid crashing into a woman who was in mid-turn from a blue water drum. She muttered something. Wherever this tailpipe would spit me out would be just fine with me. Rusty ladders and tangled wires. Washing lines over manholes. And a concrete wall right up ahead. A dead-end street. Of all the flying bastards. No one had bothered to even put a sign up. My heart skipped into a canter. I turned around and hurried back to the main drag. Even if nobody was looking for me, I should not be walking here at this point. I ought to be folded inside of a rickshaw, firmly out of sight. I turned right onto the main road again. I could not fault my luck so far. A shutter closed in the back of my brain. And again. And again. In front of me stood a khaki uniform, black name tag to the left. The man inside the uniform raised his right hand up in the air, and pointed straight down. At me. It could not be. I turned my head to the left and felt a jolt. Not a soft touch. Not a casual touch. A decisive touch. A sizzle crept from my toes up to my knees, like a sick dose of carbon dioxide. My body was divorcing me.

​

The cop almost whispered in my ear. “Stop”. A short man with a police cap that looked three sizes too big. I expected the edge of steel rings and a click, but there was nothing. I looked up and down the road. My chest hammered in double time. Both cops put a hand around each of my wrists and began to walk me back, like a child. The effect on the busy street was as if we were a spell in motion. Not only did people stop, although every single person in the entire road certainly did that. They also began to follow us. Follow me, to be precise, because I could not imagine public devotion to the police force to have reached the level of spontaneous street processions. At first, four or five children walked behind us. Next, several people came out of a store and tagged on. They were talking and laughing. I did not want to guess at what they were saying. People walking in the opposite direction did a u-turn and joined alongside. Within a space of two minutes there were over a forty people behind us. The police acted as if they were air.

What was the expectation?

Did they wait for me to mount up in the air and recite Lord Byron?

​

The hard thing was to see the kids crane their necks and try to catch the look on my face. No doubt they all decided I must be a thief. Wasn’t it always thieves that got marched down like this in public? We turned into the police station as one of the cops barked at crowd to disperse. “America”, someone shouted. “Tony Blair! Tony Blair!”.

 

After what felt like more than a three hour wait, the door opened from the inside and I was ushered into a rank smelling office. Someone had forgotten to open a window, or this was part of the game plan. The room was lit by two white tube lights on the ceiling. A traditional brown plywood desk stood in the far left corner. I sat down on a warm plastic chair. If there was anything I resented, it was sitting down on a warm chair. Especially when the chair was warm from the bottom of a complete stranger. It was like having an intimacy proffered that you were in no position to refuse. I tried to think of something else. Something on the far side of this window frame. The policeman with the large cap who had walked in with me now sat down to my left. On the other side of the desk, opposite of me, sat a middle aged man in uniform. I found myself muttering silently. I recognised my action as the reflex of emergency prayer. How very interesting. The man facing me did not have many strands of hair left on his head. Rather than combing what he had left over to the side, he had brushed it straight back, leaving large parts of his bald skull exposed. I liked this; I took it as an atomic sized omen of hope.

​

“Name?”   

“Simon Brix.”

“From England?”

​

The man’s voice reminded me of my grandfather’s cigars. I nodded.

In front of me, on the table, were my phone and my camera. So the phone had been taken from me along with the camera. I had no recollection of this. Yet here it was. I regarded the two items on the table, inches away from the police inspector’s right hand. So close and so out of bounds.

​

“Papers?”

I shook my head. “No. Not here.”

“That can wait.”

​

My heart sunk by a degree. There was a ‘now’ and ‘later’. They regarded this as a project. I tried to slow down my heart by stalling my breath.

The inspector faced up at me for the first time. “Why did you run away from here?”

“I don’t know, sir. No special reason. It was an impulse.”

​

“An impulse of running from the police?”

My eyes dropped down to the name badge on the inspector’ shirt. I stopped myself. Now was not the time to start reading names.

​

“I think I panicked.”

The man glanced over at his colleague toward his right. Still leaning forward, he tented his fingers.

“I caution you to tell us the truth. That will be the very best thing for you. If you don’t, we will uncover the facts anyway. Understood?”

“Yes.”

“When did you come here to this country?”

“At the start of the year. I’d have to check the date.”

“And the purpose of your visit?”

Already the worst question. I would try to keep Sugar Bean Farm out of this. The last thing I wanted to do was to saddle the charity with visits and questions because of a picture on a stupid bridge. Long before I had finished formulating any of that, I had already said it.

“I’m just a visitor.”

“A vacation.” The inspector mockingly pressed on the second syllable of the word.

“A vacation, yes.”

I was hanging myself in slow motion. One step at a time.

“Is this your first time in India?”

“No. I’ve been coming here. For a few years.”

The inspector lifted his eyebrows and made a note. I glanced up at his name tag. Arjun Kothari.

“And where have you been on this visit?”

“Just Japoli. Mumbai and Japoli.”

“Japoli. Why Japoli?”

“I know people there. I have friends there.”

“Friends. Ok.” The inspector put his pen down on the desk, and tilted his head. “You were on the JJ Flyover, down the road from here. Where had you come from?”

“Just now?”

“Yes, just now.”

“From Dadar.”

“By road?”

“I took a taxi, yes.”

“Now please tell me what happened on JJ Flyover.”

“As I was on the flyover, I noticed that the meter was off. The taxi driver told me that the meter was broken. So I exited the cab.”

The inspector bit down on a smile and shook his head.

“I am aware that you’re a visitor here, you’re not native to this country. I am aware. But please don’t take me for a fool, young man. Straight off there are two things that are impossible about your story. And I’ll tell you what they are. You are telling me you are sitting there in the taxi looking right at that meter for twenty minutes and yet the meter is turned off. And you never noticed?”

“No, I”

“Don’t interrupt me. You will get a time to respond. So that’s number one. I don’t hold you for uneducated. Even if you don’t check at the start of your journey at the very least you will check five minutes into it. You have taxis where you are from?”

“Yes.”

“That’s one. Then, about the taxi driver.” Kothari paused for several seconds. “There is no taxi driver in this whole city that will stop in the middle of JJ Flyover. You can pull over almost anywhere in Mumbai except on JJ Flyover. It is a non stop zone. There is no place to park, to pull up. They will not stop and let you out on top of the flyover. Am i correct?” The question was not for me, but for the third person at the table. The officer shook his head. “In all my years in this area I have not seen a taxi stop on that flyover. Yes it may break down. Fair. But a driver won’t stop and let passengers off. He would be causing an accident. So your statement is not only a lie, it’s a dumb lie.“

I nodded, trying to collect myself.

“May I?”

“No, you may not. Take ten taxis over the flyover and tell ten of them to stop in the middle and all ten of them won’t do it. It’s as simple as that. They are not allowed to. So feel free to tell me what really happened. You are not happy, for whatever reason, to tell me that you walked up the flyover to take those photos. So your version is that you were dropped there against your will.”

“No, not against my will. The meter was off and I opened the door.”

“You opened the door? Of a moving vehicle?”

“Yes.”

“Now that is the second version of the story. You said nothing about an open door.” Inspector Kothari slammed his right arm down on the desk with such force that I jumped in my seat. I heard the ceramic cup land on its saucer. When I looked to check, I noticed that it now stood crookedly. Kothari pointed at me with the index finger of his right hand. ‘Do not play games with me. Do not play games. I will make you regret it for the rest of your life. Many have come into this room and regretted their playing of games.” Kothari held my eyes. The insides of his upper eyelids were pink, like the cut flesh of a sweet water fish. There were no bags underneath, but the strips of skin beneath his eyes were semi-circles of dusky grey, like worn tarmac. I wondered within myself when all that had started. Anything that could distract my mind from this conversation right now would suffice.

“Anyhow. You reached the flyover. Then what did you do there?”

“I just took some photos.”

​

The inspector pointed sideways and said “Please open this camera.” He slid the device over the desk towards me, got up out of his chair and joined me on the other side of the desk. I noted a tremor in my hand and scolded my nerves into compliance. I touched the power switch and went to the replay button. The pixelated image of the green Minara Mosque popped up, outshining the tube light overhead.

“Keep going.”

​

I clicked back through the exposures. The next photographs showed the Mumbadevi Temple from various angles. There were fourteen of them. Most were horizontal, three were vertical. A few of the shots looked to be identical to each other. After this series came a photo of a crack in the surface of a water tank on a roof terrace in Janawadi. I clicked to the next. Up came a cricket game in the field behind our kitchen. Kothari made a gesture of dismissal and walked back to his seat. I closed the camera and put it back on the table.

“Actually, turn it back on. I want to show you something.” I switched the camera on.

“Just click though those images and then on from there. These are your personal photos, so it’s up to you. I just want to point something out.”

​

I went through another ten photos as the inspector looked on. Another cricket photo, Hazel’s dog nosing around in the storage room, the Mandeshwar hills, an image of a local train in motion.

​

“Alright. What I want you to see there is how you take your photos. There is only one group of photos there. And that group is of the Minara Masjid. You photographed nothing else in Mumbai. You did not come here to take some photos of the scenery.” Kothari raised the volume of his voice by one notch. Clearly they had gone though the contents of the camera before this interview. “There is nothing taken on the journey, not one thing. But you take twenty photos of this mosque. You climb the overhead bridge, and take twenty photos just of that particular building; from every angle. That is what I wanted you to see.”

​

I shook my head in protest. “What?”

“I always take series of photos. I always do. Then afterwards I go through them and keep the best one.”

​

“Why? You have an 8GB data card in there. There is space for thousands of photos. You needed this one building from every single angle. And you were not done.” Kothari’s finger was back in my face. “You were only in the middle of your job.”

 

“I was done.”

“You were not done. We stopped you. Why is there no photo of anything else? If it’s scenery you were interested in, why did you not take any other photos?”

​

“I was looking around. The temple was the most eye-catching building. I wanted to get it right.”

​

“Get it right for what purpose?”

​

“No purpose. I’m not the first person to take a photo of this building.”

“You are the first to stand on that bridge and take twenty photos.”

“Excuse me, fourteen.”

​

“The inspector looked at me knowingly. “Maybe you deleted some. As is your habit.”

I pretended not to hear.

​

“One of the priests saw you standing there. Walking up and down, looking, taking snaps. Five minutes later he checked and you were still there. And he became troubled. He called another priest over. And then they rang us up.”

“You can have all these images. Or you can delete them. I don’t need them.”

​

“And then we brought you in. And what did you do?”

“I came with you.”

Kothari sat back in his chair and laughed. It was his first sign of joy. “No, no, no. You did not.” The inspector sprung back forward and slapped the desk, his signet ring mixing a steely kick into the thud.

“No, you fled. You fled. Everything I suspected about this incident, you have just confirmed. You just confirmed it. Is it possible that a person who runs from the police has something to hide? Could that just be possible?” Kothari leaned back in his chair again and drew a breath. “

What was next on your program, after the JJ Flyover?”

“Just dinner. I’m meeting a friend tomorrow.”

 

The inspector whispered something to his colleague. The man stood up, left the room, and came back less than a minute later.

“You’re seeing a friend. This reminds me of something. Do you know a Mr. Jahan Somani?”

“No, I don’t.”

 

A young boy entered the room with three plastic mini cups filled to the rim with tea. The kid put them down on the table without meeting anyone’s eyes, and went without saying a word.

“You know what that is?” Said Mr Kothari, pointing at the three plastic cups standing in a clover.

“Tea.”

 

“That’s opportunity.” The inspector stared at me intently. “It’s another chance for you. That there in front of you is the taste of normality, one of the simple things in life. You choose. You choose either plain water, or plain thirst for that matter, or tea. So this is not a refreshment. For me it may be, but not for you.” Kothari took his index and middle finger and pushed one of the three cups in my direction by several inches. “This is freedom saying hello or bye bye to you”, he concluded, as if the point had not yet been made.

“So again, are you acquainted with someone called Mr Jahan Somani?”

​

I shook my head. “No. I don’t know who that is.”

​

“Okay, I take your word for it. But how can I take your word for it, when we have a record on your phone right here that you rang Mr Somali’s home number two days ago? And furthermore that you texted this individual three times today!?’ On the vowel of the last syllable, Kothari smashed his elbow into the desk as if he had been appointed to halve it. I caught the echo of the sound at the back of my neck and held down a shiver.

​

“I texted only one person this afternoon. A person named Sonny.”

“You texted Jahan Somani’s number. Did this Mr Sonny tell you his surname?”

“No. I did not ask.”

“And what happened? You had a meeting with him?”

“Yes I did.”

​

Arjun Kothari folded both hands under his chin, and stared at me intently. “And what was it that you went to discuss with Mr Somani?”

“He’s a friend of a friend. I went to have lunch with him.” I became aware of cold drops running from my arm pits down my side, from my neck between my shoulder blades down my back. The shadow of Sahana’s story stood aside like a menacing jinx. Hazel and Yom had contacted the authorities, yes, but I had not. I had come to Mumbai to sleuthe around by myself.

​

“Did you know Mr Somani before today?”

“No.”

“And you just thought you needed to see him. To discuss what? For two whole hours? Oyster fishing? Pole dancing?”

​

“There’s a runaway girl that may have come to Mumbai.”

“A runaway girl. Okay. Your Mr Somani is a known insurgent.”

​

“A known insurgent”. I repeated the words back to the inspector at half volume. “A known insurgent of what?”

​

“And you sat down with him” Kothari raised his eyebrows meaningfully, “for two whole hours.”

​

“I did not. It was a short meeting. Under forty-five minutes.”

​

“Mr Simon” Kothari checked his paper. “Brix. We are hereby placing you under arrest for violating Section 120b of the India Penal Code and we are lodging an FIR against you. Tonight. Whatever you say from here on can be used in evidence against you.

​

Do you understand what I am telling you?”

​

I shook my head and said “No”.