The Heart Is a Shifting Sea: Love and Marriage in Mumbai

  That winter, several of Shahzad’s aunts and cousins threw a wrench in Shahzad’s plans for Dharavi by accepting checks for the land from the local goon. He was furious. Some money in hand now always seems better than more money later, he thought.

  Afterward, the goon called Farhan, who had begun helping Shahzad protect Dharavi, and said, “Don’t go to Dharavi now. If you do I’ll break your legs.”

  Shahzad knew this was an important moment and that they could not back down. He told Farhan that it would be better to make a show of force than retreat, and Farhan agreed. And so the two men broke open a lock the tannery owner had placed on their property’s entrance, which took almost two hours, plus some greasing oil, and the help of a stocky builder friend. They were surprised to find that no one bothered them, not even the baby-faced security guard.

  Shahzad thought that perhaps it was because of the appearance of his builder friend, who was very fat, with a hard, dark face and thick mustache. The builder wore tight jeans, floral shirts, and gold rings and rode a Royal Enfield motorcycle. He carried a glitter-encrusted phone. In short, he looked like a Bollywood gangster.

  After they finished building a new door, for which they would have the only key, Shahzad and the builder went to go get lunch, ordering plates piled high with chicken, mutton, and gravy. Mid-meal, Shahzad got a call.

  “What are you doing in that property?” a voice said. It took him a minute to realize it was the police.

  “This is our property,” Shahzad said. “That’s why we are here.”

  “You’re making a riot there. You’ve punched the security guard of the tannery and forcibly gone in.”

  “No we haven’t,” said Shahzad. “That is a false story.”

  “Come to the police station right now.”

  Shahzad covered the receiver and told the builder what the police officer had said. “Let the police come here,” the builder said, chewing his meat. “I am eating.”

  But they’ve made a false complaint, Shahzad worried, and hung up the phone. It’s a criminal case now. We are in trouble.

  Shahzad next got a call from Farhan, who had stayed back at the property. “Come quick, the police are coming.” The tannery owner and his men had arrived too. The builder, annoyed, agreed to accompany Shahzad back to the property. In Shahzad’s memory, when they arrived, the police pushed them into the back of a police van, along with the tannery owner and his men. At the station, the police said it was a riot case and charged them all with section 149 of the Indian Penal Code: unlawful assembly. For six hours, they were held in the detention room.

  “We are not goondas, we are builders,” the builder said. “And it’s our property,” Shahzad added. It didn’t matter. Lawyers would have to be hired. Money would have to be spent. Palms would have to be greased. And Shahzad knew who was behind the scenes, pulling all the strings: the local goon.

  But several weeks later, the local goon quit his political party. It came on the evening news. The line was that he resigned because he was unhappy with how the party, which supported Modi, had begun treating Muslims. Shahzad knew better than to believe this. The goon was pushed out. There were many maneuverings within political parties, and even big men sometimes had to fall. This meant the tannery owner no longer had protection. Though they would still have to go to court, Shahzad knew that now fate was on his side.

  * * *

  In April, it was announced on the news that Yakub Memon, an alleged participant in the 1993 bomb blasts, and a Muslim, was to be hanged. Shahzad, and many other Muslims in the city, thought he did not deserve it. Shahzad knew he should have expected this news under Modi. But the excitement over Dharavi must have clouded his vision.

  The story went that Memon had been near Byculla Market when the riots happened. There, it was said he had witnessed violence—women raped, men killed, or shops and houses burned—and that this experience had motivated his involvement in the bombings.

  Shahzad had seen firsthand what happened to men who were on hand for the worst of the riots. They went insane, or killed themselves, or perpetrated other acts of violence. But Memon was different. He was an accountant whose role in the blasts had been only financial, or so he said. He insisted he had masterminded nothing. He had also already served two decades in prison, cooperated with authorities, and surrendered himself to police. How could they hang such a man? Shahzad thought.

  The year before, a prominent former Hindu politician, a woman convicted of an active role in another city’s riots, which killed nearly one hundred Muslims, had been let out of jail without a murmur of protest. But Shahzad knew consequences were different for Muslims, and especially for Muslims without power.

  A report commissioned by the previous prime minister had confirmed that Muslims were at the bottom of the heap in everything: in literacy, schooling, jobs, earnings, and political power. Shahzad had always known this. He remembered the childhood taunts, and the saying he had learned in adulthood when Muslim groups around the world had begun committing so many acts of terror: All Muslims are not terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslim. Yakub Memon, Muslim accountant, was as good as a dead man.

  After it was announced that Memon would hang, Shahzad felt that there was a kind of invisible gallows hanging over his own neck. For the first time since his father’s death, and since inheriting the Dharavi land, he felt diminished. He was not a big man after all. He was just another powerless Muslim.

  The country heatedly debated Memon’s hanging. There was a final plea to stay the sentence. But the Supreme Court rejected it in the end. When Yakub Memon was hanged, Shahzad sat alone in his room and cried.

  Sabeena tried to comfort her husband. These larger forces could not be controlled, she said. Allah determines everything. She reminded him that he still had Dharavi, and her, and Mahala and Taheem. He had a good family and a good home. And in fact, after decades in the dingy and overcrowded joint family home, they were moving soon, to a bigger and better apartment. Muslims still held land in Mumbai; Modi had not taken that away. And in Mumbai, land was a kind of power.

  A month or so later, Shahzad began talking about buying a big new office space in Colaba, in the tony part of downtown. He would conduct his brokerage business from there and use it to meet with big Dharavi builders. Colaba was at the very tip of Mumbai, on a little finger of the island that curled out into the sea. It was close to the city’s main government buildings, courts, and the Bombay Stock Exchange. It was filled with European-style restaurants, cafés, and bars. It was where all the firangis came to stay. A man who owned land or operated an office there was a man of power and prestige. But Colaba was also prohibitively expensive.

  Shahzad was certain that with the Dharavi money he could someday pay off the office. Sabeena urged him not to be rash and to think of their future. If he bought the office, they’d have very little savings left. Shahzad said she didn’t understand.

  On the day Shahzad was to make a down payment, Sabeena stood, arms crossed, in front of their home safe. “You’re not taking the money,” she said, and told him she’d hidden the key. “Then I’ll just break the cupboard and take everything inside,” Shahzad said, his voice rising. “You go and do that,” said Sabeena. “But nothing is there.”

  Earlier that day, Sabeena had removed all the money, five lakhs of it, along with their gold. Shahzad left the room, stewing, and, when he came back, saw Sabeena was gone. He called her again and again on her cell phone, to no answer.

  As Sabeena sat inside her family apartment in Bhendi Bazaar, she felt calm about her act of sedition. She spent the whole day playing with her brother’s children. Her little niece reminded Sabeena of herself. The girl was not allowed to roam outside, and her father never took her to the movies. She lived a cloistered life, though fewer girls in Mumbai lived like this now. Sabeena tried to keep her entertained by telling her all about her childhood, and what her grandfather had been like.

  Sabeena knew she would not have stolen from the safe years a
go. But the world had changed, and women were different now. They were mazboot; they were strong. They left the house when they wanted. They ate first instead of second. They challenged men when they needed to be challenged—about money, food, in-laws, even sex.

  But after a day, Sabeena was ready to go home. She knew Shahzad would need her for his meals and chai, as would his mother. It was her duty to be there, and she could not abandon them. She wanted Shahzad to learn a lesson so that their future would be secure.

  At home, Shahzad hadn’t been able to sleep without Sabeena. All night, he had been up whispering to himself, “What to do, what to do, what to do?” In the morning, he could not eat. He felt more anxious than he had in a long time and decided not to buy the office in Colaba. What a foolish idea, he thought. There was no way he could afford it. He decided not to act bimar anymore. He told himself that any illness, even madness, could be cured. After a day had passed, he called Sabeena again, and this time she answered.

  “Come home, baba,” he said, “and see that everything is right.”

  * * *

  On a blistering hot day in June, Shahzad, Sabeena, and the entire joint family moved into their new flat, leaving behind the old apartment that three generations had inhabited.

  They were all relieved to leave the apartment, which over the years had become dingy. The paint on all the walls was peeling. The shelves in the bedrooms were cluttered with old medicines, used beauty products, and broken electronics. And the furniture was tattered and worn. All twelve people had shared one Indian-style toilet.

  The move, though, had not been their idea. A developer had approached them, asking if they would be willing to leave their home for a new luxury tower around the corner. The terms were favorable: they’d pay two lakhs for a property expected to be worth five crore soon. Because Shahzad was a broker, he knew deals like this were happening all over Mumbai. Developers were moving rent-controlled tenants in low-rise, British-era buildings into new luxury towers, razing the beautiful old buildings—many of which were up for a heritage designation—and building more luxury towers in their place. Both the tenants and developers walked away happy.

  The new apartment promised a new life. The luxury tower, with its ornamental moldings and accents, signaled wealth and prestige. Inside, the apartment had shiny white floors, granite countertops, and fresh plumbing. They purchased all new furniture and threw away the shabby beds, tables, and chairs of their past. They bought elaborate wall hangings—including a few of the six kalimas, reminding them of the fundamentals of Islam—to decorate the smoothly painted walls. The toilets were all Western. One family member even bought an AC.

  Moving was an ordeal for Sabeena, who spent an entire twenty-four hours packing. She kept their clothes, their wedding album, and some essentials, but she threw away much of what they owned. It was also difficult for Shahzad’s mother, who had not left the apartment in years. After moving, she spent an entire day in the hospital recovering from the stress. Once all twelve members stood inside the new apartments—they had not one but two flats in the new building—they agreed it had been worth it.

  The evening of the move, the family called several boys from a nearby madrasa to read verses from the Quran to bless their new home. Shahzad and Sabeena distributed sweets to everyone who came. As they did, it felt a little like the day they had agreed to marry.

  The new house also shifted certain feelings in them. Maybe it was the new furniture, which was clean and plush. Maybe it was the clear sound of namaaz that they could hear from their window. Or maybe it was just the change in scenery, to an apartment that did not carry memories of the hurt that came before.

  Sabeena liked one part of the new house best: the bedroom window, which served as kind of a gallery to the city. In the distance, she could see the railway tracks that led to the train station, the nearby chawls where people hung clothes on the line, and the cranes lined up behind them for new construction. She still had a view of the Haj House, where pilgrims stayed en route to Mecca, with its shiny marble terrace where crows liked to land. Close to her window, she could see a cluster of trees that bent toward the earth. On one branch two green parrots often came to sit and sing or talk to each other, urgent hums followed by softer ones.

  To Sabeena, the window contained the whole city in one shot: humans, animals, traffic, trains, industry, and religion. And she almost always spotted something new as she sat in her favorite peacock blue salwar kameez, letting her hair down and taking in the view. As the sun dropped in the sky, she loved watching the city go dark.

  Now, Sabeena went out as she pleased, because Shahzad’s mother was bedridden and could not stop her. In the new house, Sabeena no longer spoke of marriage as a laddoo or heavy sweet but instead of the sweet dish she was excited to make for the family. She tried to look her best, trading her faded brown kurtas for her best salwar kameez, even when it wasn’t a holiday. She dyed her hair with henna, so often that she caught cold. She applied French cream beneath her eyes to get rid of her dark circles and wore gold heart-shaped earrings every day. And she became obsessed with Pakistani serials, especially one called Humsafar, which meant “soul mate,” about the life of a young married couple.

  One night after moving in, Sabeena surprised Shahzad by climbing on top of him. They were lying side by side in their new twenty-thousand-rupee bed, with fresh sheets printed with bright flowers. She spent most nights in the new apartment sleeping on a mat on the floor, despite the expensive new bed, saying it was cooler underneath the fan. But tonight she got into bed, straddled Shahzad, and took her pleasure, or so he remembered it. In the new house it was like they were newlyweds or reacquainting after a long time. To Sabeena, it did not feel like the same old thing. Shahzad, who could not finish, did not know whether to be surprised and grateful at the change in his wife or embarrassed at how he, as usual, fell short.

  * * *

  In the new home, the two apartments were divided this way: one for Sabeena, Shahzad, his mother, and his brother, for when he came to visit from Qatar; and one for Farhan, Nadine, Mahala, Taheem, and a few other family members. There were also two maids, one for each apartment, both of whom were good-natured and hardworking. One maid was pale-skinned and one was dark; this was sometimes how they were distinguished, instead of by name. The pale maid worked in Sabeena’s home, and as she worked she told Sabeena all about her home life. She said she had been forced to marry a mute and deaf man, with whom she had six children, and that she had to work doubly hard because he couldn’t get a job. The darker maid told Nadine about how her two sons were at home in a faraway village, because blue films were shot in her neighborhood in Mumbai—not a suitable place to bring up children. She said her husband had come from the village and secured a job but quit because he said he didn’t like to travel in the city. Now that he had gone back home to their village, she was living here alone.

  It was a truism in Mumbai that all maids had their sob stories, working hard to support big families and degenerate husbands. Still, their stories had an impact on Sabeena. Listening to them, she felt a kind of pride in Shahzad she hadn’t felt before. She knew that he never stopped working. Instead he ran from Dharavi to court to neighborhoods across the city to show flats, and back to Dharavi again.

  Like the old apartment, the new flat was near Crawford Market, which Sabeena could now visit regularly. If she wanted, she could also stock up for the month ahead, buying chicken, mutton, bitter gourd, and okra, because the new apartment had a big fridge and fancy elevator. Today Crawford Market offered far more variety than when Shahzad’s mother had shopped there, and it had a new emphasis on presentation: pomegranates were lined up like pool balls, peaches stacked in perfect pyramids, and apples lined up in rectangular boxes padded in soft foam. The market now was also filled with the fruits of economic liberalization and what came after: German chocolates, American diapers, French shampoos, fake designer perfumes, Kashmiri walnuts, imitation purses made in China, even foreign lingerie.
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  But vestiges remained of the old Crawford Market: the “shee shee shee” of a man trying to push his cart through, the shopkeeper shouting “aao, aao” as he called the stray cats for crabs and shaggy dogs for leftover chicken legs, the vendor yelling “gandu” at another man unloading his wares incorrectly, the many women in burqas shouting to negotiate for bras and hankies, and the dirt-stained children juggling rocks until they were shooed from the market. There was still the pungent smell of body odor, raw chicken, curry, and must. And there were still birds for sale, and not just pigeons. Now, the market sold owls, peacocks, parakeets, weaverbirds, and starlings.

  Mahala and Taheem did not usually go inside Crawford Market, but since moving into the new apartment they loved to frequent the lane beside it, where cars and motorcycles rarely drove. After school, the neighborhood children gathered in the lane to ride bikes, play cricket, and talk in clusters: girls on one side, boys on the other. They’d play for hours, until it was dinnertime, and then they’d run upstairs, stopping at Shahzad and Sabeena’s apartment first to call out: “Hi, buddhi baba. Buddhi ma, what are you having for dinner?”

  * * *

  The bill passed in March of that year, but it wasn’t until the summer that the impact of the Maharashtra Animal Preservation amendment became clear. Effectively, a ban on beef. Far-right Hindus had been trying to pass the bill for years, and now, under Modi, it became a reality. Shahzad knew that many Muslims who sold beef would lose their jobs. Muslims who ate beef because it was inexpensive would have to find something else to eat. Perhaps they’d eat mutton, but then the prices of mutton would rise. Some Muslims might actively protest the ban, but that would inspire Hindus to fight back. If the city was unlucky, it would lead to violence.