Heavenly Hirani's School of Laughing Yoga

  Now, she didn’t even have a clothesline. It had been taken down to make way for a new garden shed years before and never put up again.

  ‘Look,’ Pinto said, pointing behind her, away from the laundry.

  A man approached them along the bridge carrying a huge round ball of laundry on his head. It was almost the same height again as he was. He looked like the stalk of a dandelion.

  ‘This could be the laundries from the Taj Lands End,’ Pinto said. ‘Ma’am, this is very hot outside now, so I would want you to come with me back in the cool cab.’

  As he said the words, Annie realised she was melting.

  ‘You OK, ma’am? You would like water?’

  She would, and off into the madness of the city they lurched, but after less than five minutes Pinto stopped and got out, returning moments later with a cold bottle of water and a mango.

  ‘Mango season,’ he said. ‘You take for later, ma’am. Very good quality. Now I have something else to show that I think you will like even better.’

  As they drove through the city, avoiding the snarl-ups where they could, Pinto explained that the sight she was going to see she would see nowhere else in the world but in Mumbai.

  ‘And not even at Harvard can the peoples work out how it happens!’

  ‘Harvard University?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am. I take you now to Churchgate station to see the dabbawallahs. The laundrymen are dhobi wallahs: they do the laundry. These men are dabbawallahs: they do the lunches. These are uneducated men from the villages, but they are more clever than the smart peoples at Harvard.’

  Pinto parked his taxi under the shade of the trees lining the street opposite the Churchgate railway station and jumped out to open her door. ‘You must cross the road here, but please to look at the traffic because it might not look at you.’

  Annie obliged, the sun instantly soaking through her top and heating her skin, sweat running down her spine by the time she got to the other side of the road.

  ‘Hurry, ma’am, come on, come inside.’

  She didn’t need to be asked twice: being outside was like standing in an oven. But inside the station was not much cooler, nor quieter — the air was alive and it was a grungy squat affair compared to the beautiful booking hall she’d seen earlier.

  Still, trains arrived every two minutes, disgorging thousands of passengers onto the platforms to flow back out onto the street through the entrance Annie had just used. There were so many of them they became a separate entity, a single thing, like a flow of lava.

  Interrupting them every now and then were shoe shiners, sitting on the floor behind little wooden boxes at which they tapped sharply with their brushes, between customers, to attract attention. Annie was amazed at how successful this was and at how many men wanted shiny shoes.

  ‘They make a lot of money,’ Pinto said of the shiners. ‘And don’t pay any taxes.’

  ‘But you’d rather be a taxi driver, right?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am! I would rather be a taxi driver.’

  ‘With A/C.’

  ‘With A/C!’

  ‘The shoe shiners are the ones who are too smart for Harvard?’

  ‘No, ma’am. Not that I know of. Wait one moment and you will see.’

  A dog started howling somewhere inside the station, brakes squeaked outside amid the incessantly honking horns, the shoe shiners clicked their brushes, a man standing behind them gabbled into his cellphone.

  The noise was overwhelming and the heat oppressive, but just as Annie was losing the will to live Pinto leaned closer and whispered, ‘Look, ma’am, coming towards you down the platform. The dabbawallahs.’

  From the midst of the vibrantly coloured throng of streaming passengers appeared a steady streak of white-jacketed men carrying trays on their heads, about the length and width of surfboards, but with squared-off corners.

  On top of these trays sat dozens of round tiffin tins, each one several layers — about a foot and a half high.

  The tiffin-tray bearers swarmed either side of her, like canoes in the rapids, moving impossibly smoothly considering the weights they were bearing.

  ‘Every day, this happens here,’ Pinto said. ‘Now come outside and watch.’

  As the dabbawallahs exited the station and reached the footpath, there were other men in white coats to meet them and help get the trays on the ground, although Annie saw one practically throw his off his head so that one end hit the pedestrian railing while he caught the other end with his hands and lowered it to the pavement.

  ‘He must have thirty tiffins on that tray!’

  ‘Yes, ma’am, and each one is maybe half a kilo.’

  ‘What’s in them?’

  ‘Curry, rice, chapatti, a vegetarian dish, like that.’

  ‘And where do they go?’

  ‘This is the secret of the dabbawallahs’ system, ma’am. They go to the people who order the tiffin.’

  Behind them, a heavily laden tray was turning the corner on the head of a stocky young man. He stepped across the sidewalk and out into the traffic, ignoring the oncoming buses and taxis and bikes, and crossed to the other side of the street, near Pinto’s taxi.

  ‘Why is he going over there?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am, on this side of the street the tiffins go to this side of the city and on that side of the street, to the rest of the city. There are one hundred and fifty thousand tiffins delivered every day.’

  ‘How?’

  The men on the sidewalk were busy swapping the tiffins around, switching trays and grouping the tins together in different lots, directing the dabbawallahs here and there.

  An old man with a weathered face and a silver walrus moustache was stacking his on a wooden handcart.

  ‘Like that,’ said Pinto pointing at him, as another dabbawallah passed with his tiffins hanging from his shoulders. ‘And like that. Look he is carrying maybe forty of them, ma’am.’

  Another tall, thin young man was tying tiffins to his brightly decorated bicycle. Pinto exchanged a few words in Hindi.

  ‘He has fifty tiffins, ma’am.’

  ‘But how does he know where they’re going?’

  More words were exchanged and Annie moved closer to the bike, where Pinto pointed out the markings on each tin, or each bag the tin was kept in. They looked like scribbles.

  ‘That first number is for the street,’ Pinto said, pointing, ‘and that second mark there is the building. And this third one is maybe for the mans’s name. Like a code.’

  The tiffins would be delivered to the registered customers, and the dabbawallahs would pick up the empty tins from the day before, bring those back to the station and be on the train back to the village by four, he explained.

  Most were completely uneducated, illiterate, yet studies had shown they made fewer than one mistake every six million deliveries.

  ‘Where does the food come from?’

  ‘Sometimes from the customer’s own house, ma’am, but sometimes from the caterers. Beyond the city, ma’am. Because the dabbawallahs have to fit on the train and so they must get on it when there are lesser other peoples.’

  As the local wallahs collected their tiffins and started filtering out into the city on foot, by bike, pushing a cart, the street reclaimed its regular chaos.

  ‘Pinto, each thing you show me is more amazing than the last,’ Annie said as she climbed, soaked in sweat but enthralled, into the taxi. ‘I don’t know how you do it.’

  ‘I do not do anything, ma’am. This is India, that is all. This is Mumbai.’

  Chapter Eighteen

  The news of Preeti was worse, not better.

  Her father and the railway company were arguing over who should be paying the hospital bills, while the federal police and the railway company were arguing over who should be dealing with the investigation.

  The railway police had arrested a former boyfriend of Preeti’s in Delhi, but her father was saying that it could not possibly have been him because not only was he a good
boy, from a respectable family, but he had not been in Mumbai when the acid attack took place.

  The federal police were asking for the CCTV tapes from Bandra station, but the railway officials were stalling them, saying there was no need now they had their culprit.

  In the meantime, Preeti had been too distressed to continue writing and her doctors had once again increased her medication to sedate her.

  There were burns to her entire face, it was revealed, and forty per cent of her upper body, including the whole of one arm. The navy hospital where she had been due to start work was being non-committal about what it could offer her should she recover.

  My daughter’s life is ruined and no one is doing anything about it except bickering, her father said. My heart is broken.

  Annie was still upset about Preeti when Hugh got back to the hotel, although at least he was in time for them to make a reservation at Masala Bay for dinner.

  She showed him the story after he’d taken a shower and dressed, and he read it but was distracted, or at least not visibly affected by it.

  ‘Things like that happen here all the time,’ he said. ‘Are you ready? I’m starving.’

  Annie was floored. ‘That’s it? Things like this happen? Are you serious?’

  Her husband looked surprised. ‘I’m sorry, Annie. I didn’t mean to upset you.’

  ‘Upset me? We’re talking about a promising young woman our daughter’s age whose future has been snatched away from her by some completely evil random attacker whom nobody’s even trying that hard to find and you’re not horrified?’

  ‘I’m sorry, darling. Yes, it is terrible, you’re right. I’m just preoccupied by work. Please, let’s go to the restaurant. I haven’t eaten all day and I’m sure I’m just hungry.’

  Annie and Hugh were not arguers, they never had been. Annie was sometimes annoyed, but had learned many years before that there was no point venting her fury at Hugh because that just made him clam up even more. On the odd occasion she’d been furious enough to give him the silent treatment, he hadn’t even noticed.

  Now, she did not feel like giving him the silent treatment; she felt like slapping him, clawing at his face, pulling his hair, demanding some sort of reaction, any sort of a reaction. She could not remember ever having felt so angry. But if she threw a hissy fit and refused to go to dinner, she knew Hugh would be completely mystified. He would probably think she was sick and call the doctor.

  There was no point in even attempting to tell him what was wrong. Besides, it wasn’t really about Preeti. It was about Daisy. And how could she be angry at their own daughter, whom she loved so much?

  So she swallowed her feelings — they seemed so misplaced, after all — and followed him down to the restaurant for dinner. She drank two glasses of the expensive wine and sat patiently while he took three work phone calls in a row, even smiling as he mouthed his apologies.

  But her anger didn’t go away. It hid.

  Back in the hotel room later that night she texted Pinto that she wanted to go the next day, Sunday, to the monks’ caves in the national park. It was Heavenly Hirani’s day off, so there was no laughing yoga, but Hugh would once more be setting out to track down his missing banana-picker and Annie wanted to go somewhere, to do something, where she would feel better than she did right now in that hotel room, her husband snoring next to her.

  I see you then, Pinto texted back. Thunk u. I am heppy to do some.

  THE SANJAY GANDHI NATIONAL PARK was yet another surprise, not the least because the entrance to it was straight off a major highway along which they had sped for the better part of an hour.

  Pinto literally made a turn in the middle of the freeway, crossing a lane of oncoming traffic, and there between the high-rise apartment buildings and a string of make-do shops were the rather scraggy-looking gates to the park.

  It seemed unlikely that through them would be anything parklike, let alone a spectacular collection of caves, but if there was one thing Annie had learned since she had arrived in Mumbai it was to be prepared for a surprise.

  Pinto parked his taxi and they walked to the ticket office, where he seemed to haggle for her ticket. As they moved on he explained that he was not allowed to drive in there, but had negotiated for another taxi to take them to the caves, unless they wanted to walk seven kilometres in the claustrophobic heat to get to the heart of the park.

  ‘That’s the only option?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am, so this taxi is not a good price and it is not a good taxi, but to walk is a long time and also there could be a tiger but only if you pay some more.’

  ‘For a tiger?’

  ‘For the chance of a tiger.’

  ‘Is that very expensive?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘And am I likely to see a tiger?’

  ‘No, ma’am. The money is just for the chance.’

  ‘Right, well, I think it is my cup of tea but perhaps not right now.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’ He grinned as he led her to a small clapped-out van with a serious lean to one side. She climbed in the back, where three people were already sitting, sweating and waiting, while Pinto got in the front and continued bargaining with the driver, although he had already paid the fare.

  The van then proceeded to hurtle up the unpaved road through the national park as though they were racing every other taxi in Mumbai, although theirs was the only car on the road.

  Annie clutched at the musty moth-eaten curtains hanging in the window beside her, too terrified to look out the front, her head touching the ceiling every time the van bounced over another pot-hole or speed hump.

  Bits of the city were still clearly evident as they sped through the outskirts of the park — pylons sprouted out of weed patches, satellite slum buildings grew like mushrooms between the massive trunks of big gnarled trees.

  But as they got further away from the entrance, the city disappeared, leaving only the dusty dry forest bed and gently sloping tree-covered hills. They wound their way up, hurtling around the corners with squealing tyres, the driver never changing gear, never slowing down, never noticing that his passengers were being flung around behind him like coconuts in a sack.

  Finally, he screeched to a halt and the sweating occupants of the van clambered gratefully out.

  Pinto pointed up behind Annie as she shook off the dust that had collected on her during the drive. ‘Look, ma’am, right there!’

  The closest tree had monkeys hanging from it like mangoes. One had a tiny baby clinging to her so tightly that it was all but indistinguishable from its mother, who looked like she had extra hands and feet and a tiny head sprouting from her torso.

  ‘Oh, they’re so sweet!’

  ‘All the tourists madams like the monkeys,’ Pinto agreed. ‘Look at the very small babies. Twins, I think ma’am, up there — look!’

  At the top of the tree one monkey sat on an outer branch with two identical babies on either side, each pulling at different bits of her but trying to keep their balance, a battle one of them lost.

  Annie gasped as the baby monkey, hardly bigger than a piece of fruit, fell, but swung onto the branch below and then scampered back up for a cuddle with its mother: so like a human child.

  Pinto’s smile had dropped off his face, and Annie wondered if he was thinking of his own children back home in Jammu. What must it be like being separated from them for so much of the time?

  They walked up to yet another ticket office, where he had to negotiate yet another fee — another time-consuming exercise, but Annie didn’t mind. She was happy to sit and watch the monkeys playing in the trees.

  ‘I think each tree has its own monkeys,’ Pinto said when he finally got the tickets and returned. ‘And its own boss. See this one: I think he is in charge.’ He pointed to a branch above them where a big monkey was stretched out on a branch, sleeping. Leaning on him, also sleeping, was a smaller monkey, his lady friend, Annie assumed, and leaning on her was a little one.

  They were pe
rched on a single branch, clipped to each other like toys, and their three tails hung down parallel to each other but in different sizes. She took a photo with her phone, and the big monkey opened his eyes and looked at her, scratched his belly, then closed his eyes again.

  She would have been happy to go home right then, it was such a wonderful thing to see, but Pinto was having none of that.

  ‘There are many caves and a view at the top that is some big thing special,’ he said. He seemed more excited than usual.

  ‘You don’t come here very often, Pinto?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am. But usually the peoples I bring here is very, very old or very, very fat and they cannot do the walking, but today we can do the walking.’

  She was pleased he didn’t consider her very, very old, because she knew from an earlier idle chat that his benchmark for this was fifty-eight and she wasn’t far enough away from there to assume she didn’t fall into the category.

  They walked up a steep path cut into the rock and turned up a hand-carved set of steps. At the top, built into the basalt, were three dwellings, each with a pillared entrance, three interior rooms and the remains of what looked like shrines built into the walls.

  ‘People lived here?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am, I think it is the crazy Janians. For some thousand years.’

  ‘What’s a crazy Janian?’

  ‘Like a Buddhist but with different karma, ma’am. I’m not sure more.’

  What he was sure of was that whatever sort of Buddhists they were they had lived in the Kanheri rock caves for hundreds of years. It was like a university for monks, he said, with more than one hundred hollows scattered across the hills.

  ‘Come up, ma’am, because the caves get more better up higher, and also empty because the old fat peoples never go.’

  They climbed higher, passing more cave homes, with Pinto stopping to point out various touches, such as the channels carved into the rock that had delivered water to the monks as far back, he thought, as the third century.

  A vast temple halfway up with huge stone pillars carved into its interior took Annie’s breath away. It wasn’t just the beautiful simplicity of the large phallic shrine at the far end of the carved-out cavern that transfixed her: the light coming in through the entrance cast a spectacular glow on the pillars’ intricate gargoyles, the floor’s carefully pocked texture, the shrine’s smooth curves.