Tales From Firozsha Baag by Rohinton Mistry

Author:Rohinton Mistry [Mistry, Rohinton]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Contemporary
ISBN: 9781551994413
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 1987-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

When the doctor said yes, Kashmira was pregnant, Boman thought it was time to use the whole flat again. With two children they would need both rooms.

One day, soon after the glad tidings, he stopped Mr. Karani in the compound. More out of habit than anything else, he wanted to discuss the best way of making the paying guests leave.

“Boman dikra, what shall I tell you?” said Mr. Karani, shaking his head sorrowfully, “whatever advice can I give? If there was a kaankhajuro inside your skull, gnawing through your brain, I could say: hold a smelly chunk of mutton beside your ear, that will tempt it to come racing out on its one hundred legs. But what can I tell you about paying guests? To get rid of that problem there is no remedy except death.”

Mr. Karani went on in this way for a while, and when he felt that Boman had suffered enough, suggested he go to see the trustees of Firozsha Baag.

But there was to be no help from that quarter.

Boman sought out the one to whom he had slipped an expensive envelope one and a half years ago for the favour of turning the trustees’ collective blind eye (a delicate organ, but nurtured to operate without hindrance of ruth or compassion) upon the arrival of paying guests in the ground floor of B Block. Impossible, the oily man said. He spoke without relinquishing the look of grave concern (practised for several years) that proclaimed: here I stand, a pillar of the community, ready to help the poor and the needy at any hour of the day or night. Impossible, he repeated, there could not be paying guests living in any flat of Firozsha Baag, it was against the policy, Boman had to be mistaken; either that, or Boman had broken the rules.

Boman left. He turned to his brother-in-law Rustomji in A Block. Rustomji was a lawyer, he would have something sensible to say for sure. Boman had always sized up Kashmira’s brother as a tough, no-nonsense kind of person, and surely that was the individual to talk to in this tricky situation.

“Saala ghéla!” vociferated Rustomji. “Worst bloody thing you have done, taking paying guests. Where had your brain gone, committing such foolishness? You should have asked me before taking them in, now what is the use. First you are setting a fire, then running to dig the well.” Boman waited meekly, murmuring: “That’s true, that’s true.” The impassioned outburst had to be suffered patiently when you wanted tough, no-nonsense advice for free.

Then Boman told him about his meeting with the trustee. It gave Rustomji the appropriate opportunity for some harmless spleen-venting. “Arre, those rascals won’t give a glass of water to a thirsty man. In their office, their chairs don’t need cushions because they have piles of trust money squeezed under their arses.” Rustomji thrust his hands behind and upwards, and Boman, laughing appreciatively, said: “That’s too good, yaar, too good!”

Rustomji enjoyed compliments; he continued.

“Four years ago when my WC was leaking, saala thieves took five weeks to repair it.

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