At Home in Mumbai: Stories from the City's Living Spaces by Chandrima Pal

Author:Chandrima Pal
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: null
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers India
Published: 2017-10-10T00:00:00+00:00

II

Within minutes, hammers struck at the heart of Shah’s short-lived triumph over his destiny. The wall, the new sliding windows, the symbol of all that was slowly going right for him and his family, came down. A crowd had gathered outside his house.

Jigar Shah always had trouble moving around. Especially after the afternoon nap when his girth came in the way of everything. The massive folds of his belly wobbled with every laboured step towards the bathroom. But that afternoon, unlike other days, every movement seemed more painful than ever. He rolled to the edge of the bed, dangled his legs for a bit, reached out for his walking stick. His head was throbbing badly and, as he tried to heave himself up, he felt a sharp shooting pain in his right leg. He crashed to the floor, dragging the table, the stick and the bed cover with him.

When Shah regained consciousness, he was still on the floor. He had no idea how much time had lapsed. The bed cover was still on his face; he could not feel the rest of his body. He tried to move the cloth away but could not raise his hand. He shook his head vigorously, letting it slip away so that he could breathe. He remembered his wife was away on errands. He was alone. Trapped in his own room, immobile and in excruciating pain. All he could do is call out for help.

Shah used the last dregs of strength in his body to shout – all that came out was a grunt. He knew that was his best and only chance of staying alive and he kept groaning – as loud as he could so that his voice carried over the roar of traffic on the main street, to someone who would put aside the months of bitterness, foul face-offs and endless skirmishes to get him out of there.

It was a while before he heard a familiar voice. Aryan, the dimpled, green-eyed, ten-year-old son of the former starlet who lived on the top floor. The boy had come downstairs to dribble his football and practise a few kicks as always, when he heard Shah’s grunts of despair. He peeped in through the gaps in the windows of ground floor apartment and saw him on the floor. The boy alerted the security guard and a few other members of the house, who broke open the door and rescued him.

It was not always like this.

In 1989, when Jigar Shah bought a two-bedroom flat in this seven-storeyed building, in Lokhandwala, he was on to something big, he knew it in his heart. His stockbroking business was doing well as was his garment store near the railway station. His son was handling the business while he looked after the shop.

The flat, in a stand-alone building, was on the top floor, overlooking a municipality park. It had all the fancy trappings that his one-room tenement in D.N. Nagar, a dusty, chaotic Andheri neighbourhood, did not have. He

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