Mumbai Noir by Altaf Tyrewala Read Free Book Online

He tilted his head back and filled his lungs with the black sooty air, as his bladder quickly emptied below. He could piss into the sea, even spit his paan into it, and no one would mind. Because at night Mumbai was a brutalized, heaving whore. She didn’t give a fuck who pissed in her seas. It was during the day that Mumbai creaked and rattled like a desperate machine. And you dare not piss in a machine. It gets pissed off. And then it crunches your balls between its tooth-gear wheels. Rahim remembered telling Rahman that over dinner one day, gesticulating so wildly that the daal and rice sprayed out of his mouth, the same way that the shit had burst out of their rickshaw’s exhaust pipe during the surprise PUC inspection. Rahman had looked at Rahim sternly and said, “Don’t talk that way, this city is our mecca, it feeds you and me despite the lies we tell. Don’t offend it. It could as well turn into our jehennum.”
    Rahim tired of his brother’s fear of hell. Take Langdi out at night once , he’d gestured to Rahman, and you’ll know. By daylight even a murderer looks like he could do with a hug . Rahman never took his advice. He grimaced each time Rahim referred to their auto-rickshaw as Langdi, the lame one. But Rahim needed to remind himself. What self-respecting man would ride a beast with three legs? A beast that doesn’t gallop, instead sneaks and swerves slyly to survive. A goonga, perhaps, would. A handicapped vehicle deserves a handicapped rider.
    Langdi, like Rahim, was made to survive Mumbai. She was an old machine, the kind that had the engine in the front, one that wouldn’t pull it up an incline but vibrated like an electric drill. Rahim didn’t mind the vibration. When he was waiting for a passenger to show up he’d keep the engine on, enjoying the tremors running up the insides of his legs like a cheap champi tel massage. Also, Langdi had a large gassy behind, just like Ammi’s. If Rahim wasn’t wrong, he felt in his heart that Rahman thought so too.
    Rahim turned away from the oily edge of the Versova Sea and plodded through the sodden sand, not caring to check if it was the masticated remnants of the evening high tide he’d stepped into or someone’s pasty turds. In the darkness it was one and the same. Rahim heaved his slight self over some rocks to get to the main road, where Langdi stood, her insides throbbing with a Himesh Reshammiya song. Rahim slid into the ghostly blue-lit interior of his rickshaw, turned the music down, grabbed the starting lever near his feet, and jerked it upward. Langdi coughed and shuddered to life. That shudder always made Rahim hard. It reminded him of the way he shuddered in the sandaas some mornings when he grabbed and tugged at himself.
    “Made up for the lack of rain out there, did you?” a voice from the passenger seat barked at him. Rahim grinned into the rearview mirror—it hung out from the side of the windscreen the way a footboard traveler does out of an overpacked BEST bus. “Chhee, those teeth need a PUC test of their own,” the voice squealed. Rahim now gesticulated into the mirror, Where to ? The woman in the back leaned her powdered face out into the whipping breeze, her small blouse battling to keep her breasts inside it. “Infiniti,” she told him.
    The further out of the speeding auto Ramdulari swung, the further down the driver’s seat Rahim slid, as if to maintain the precarious balance of the rickshaw, but in truth he did so to keep her ample reflection from slipping out of the little round window of the rearview mirror. She was his most consistent passenger. On good nights he made more money than Rahman made in a week. But he never let on how. Or Rahman would slap his own forehead so hard it would kick a Lahaul-willa-quwat out of his God-fearing lips. Jehennum, he would say, we’ll go to jehennum for this.
    Rahim hated to admit that Rahman was not entirely wrong.
    They had come to Mumbai from Akbarpur, a small filth-heap of a