Hi guys,
As you might have heard by now, Busy Bee of Round n About fame passed away
recently.
I've wrtten a tribute to him, which the for trhe most part, the Rustam
Baugites amongst us might find more interesting and the rest probably a
little tedious .....to say the least; I could have edited the original into
two, one for the Rustombaugers and the other for the rest of the 'Maryans,
but laze and some exhaustion, on completion (the proportions of which I leave
to you to determine kindly) got the better of me, so attached please find the
tribute, entire.
If any of you in Bombay, after reading it consider it worthy enough to
warrant an effort at its publication in any newspaper, please go right ahead.
I'd appreciate it.
Later,
Zend.
My earliest recollection of Busy - Behram Contractor - Bee is tangential. We were playing in the Motta Maidan, some game or the other, depending on the season and the time of day. We were not indoors otherwise the siren would have been almost impossible to hear and which also meant, for the most part, that it must not have been the rainy season and that there was light enough to play on the grounds without having to return to the Pavillion which we invariably returned to around gloaming. I would deduce four or five, then, in the evening. Six at most.
Fire-engine sirens generated the most excitement in us and were second to none in the unwritten rules of play-breakability. For such a rare intrusion, even the time honoured utterance of the word “Times” denoting a signal to the rest of the players, of a resumable interruption without loss or gain in advantage on either side , became redundant. They were, as I said, rarest. You see, no matter what we were playing or who was winning, sirening fire-engines, silent hearses, bell-clanging ambulances, and (to me at least) Rusi Hakim’s noisy gas-propelled model aeroplane-flying on Sunday mornings bang around Bhanwana Class time, - which I would unfailingly cut to see, even though I was then half convinced that that would render me considerably imbalanced and vulnerable come Chinwad-Pool crossing time; Rusi’s and his non-Parsee co-flier friend’s smoking in the face of all the fire worshippers around, only added to the fear that I was doing something not very kosher at all - were the A list of events warranting penaltyless game suspension.
The Rolls Royce belonging to the eccentric millionaire (I used to wonder idly if he was the same one Busy endeared us to over the years referring to irreverently as “my friend who lives on the 21st. floor”, though I now doubt it, because it was said that he had in his house an alligator - that’s where he got the ‘eccentric’ label, not because he was just a Parsee; Parsee’s were supposed to be merely mad because of their in-breeding, seldom eccentric, although it was not uncommon amongst the more pretentious to pass off their garden-variety neuroses for eccentricisms as a short-cut for being viewed bourgeois, aristocratic even, instead of plebian; and whoever’s heard of having an alligator on the 21st floor anyway?) who used to come in on Wednesdays to drop off his secretary with whom he was supposed to be having an affair. That and the occasional “ghutchky”, short for “ghutchkaran”, (one-horse-drawn Victoria driver) merited some game play suspension but were not in the aforementioned league especially since the Rolls-Roycer had instructed his chauffeur to stop giving us free rides in it while he was, ahem, dictating to his secretary upstairs, ever since Aspi Khan (he will no doubt dispute this) had used some home-grown expletives in the car during one of the rides, in protest against Rumi Gazdar’s or Rayomand Patel’s stepping on his toe.
The ghatchkarans had grown hip (back-flicking us with their long and stinging whips) to our Out-gate closing and resultant joy-riding on the dead-axles of their Victorias, thanks to the goody-two-shoes amongst us, who, not having the kahones to go for the thrill themselves, would go vicariously for the next best thing – squealing on us while we were having the free-ride of our lives, and the welts on our tender backs were getting to be more painful than the rides were worth. The only pain more unbearable, more hateful than a searing whip lashing our as yet unbroken backs was the smug look of satisfaction those holier-than-thou would have on their visages when they’d shout “Pichey Chabook!” all the time believing that they had done their good deed for the day. In any event, the Rolls and the Victorias became lesser distractions and as time went by rarer too. Maturer forms of self-deceptions and flagellations, by some amongst us over others, however, continues unabated.
So, we put everything down, not that we had much to put down. A Gillidandu or a Patang (harder, because it took longer to get down and also more expensive - heck it could cost us a pretty penny to lose one of those to the great kite-eating tree-by-the-club, you all know which one I refer to – oh, and yes, anyone who denies having his Charlie-Brown moment with it, is lying through his teeth and never to be trusted! If he insists on not having a tangle with that beloved tree because he Never flew a kite, but spent quality time taking Piano tuition or some such [widely seen then as vainly pretentious mainly by those who didn’t care or couldn’t afford] pursuit instead, then there was all the more reason not to trust him) or some Goties (easier - to wrap up that is - just stuff all which are yours and some even which are not, in your pockets and hope they never notice them missing from the triangle when they return; hey, Bhool-Chook-Maaf-Everys! I’ve never figured that one out, but one comes closest to deciphering it when understood with reference to the above context)
So we ran to the Nalla Maidan as fast we could on hearing the unmistakable sound of the truck shouting Boombo awech, boombo awech and quickened our pace and changed our cry to Boombo ayo, boombo ayo when it appeared from around the Ter-number bend. The challenge was to outrun the vehicle to its destination all the while not knowing where it was headed! Talk about exercises in futility!
Ever wonder what it is in disasters or even in the whiffs of imminent ones that morbidly gravitates us? Never would I see my Bapaiji more alive than before going to a funeral. In fact the first column that she’d read in the (now defunct?) Jame at six sharp would be the Martyuk/Paidust! Our society at least less than a generation ago had little to offer itself except Janams, Lagans and Marans. The occasional Ghambar was thrown in to make life seem less of a total waste than it really was. The Muktads, by standards, were a five day carousal of excitement in overdrive. Fire up the Austins, rev up the Morrises (later known as Baby Hindustans - I still can’t decide which sounds more facetious of the two: Baby Hindustan or Maruti, and most think that reverse engineering is Only a recent perversity of third world Viagra counterfeiters) for, (Sung roughly to the tune of “Here we go ‘round the Mulberry bush)
O off we go to meet the dead, feed the dead, greet the dead;
O off we go to meet the dead oh off, oh off we go O.
The mobeds are busy no time to bed, bad time to wed, the mobeds are busy tending t’ live and dead,
the mobeds are busy banking their bread,
Oh of, So off we go.
For we were all old enough to know the portends of a red fire engine, and yet, to the boy, ran faster than we would in the hundred meter dash. Strange that I should mention that because we were running diagonally across the maidan on the hundred meter track but in the opposite direction than when we raced on annual sports day. We were heading from a clearing close to the Club where they now sit and sip – mostly slosh - Scotch (or is it IMFL?) close to the tree in the evenings talking carelessly about this and that. The area whose bereftment of grass was not largely unrelated to our goti and bunta play, that’s then where we commenced the run.
The old roller used to be parked there too; its handle sometimes resting on the main trunk as a hand thrown around a friend’s shoulder or like those of two boxers each propping the other at the end of a match, becoming friendlier for the fight, not in spite of it; weary and seeking comfort after a hard days roll flattening the stubborn pitch; (It seemed as if the moordas lying six feet under were remonstrating against the undignified intrusion of the prim cricketeers by throwing all sorts of obstacles in its [the roller’s] and their ‘proper’ path or pitch rather, mostly by way of spewing forth huge pieces of tombstones as and when they could) and sometimes it (the handle) would be the other way around, the concrete-cored rolled steel drum meeting the tree head on: man-made steel, cold hard and unfeeling, forging against the natural resolution of the warmer wood rooted firmly into the ground, holding it in defiant dignity, still, unflinching, stoic. The rot had set into it some time ago perhaps around the same time it (the rot) was taking its measure of us. The roller may get the tree eventually or the rot will, or more likely it will be a combination of the two, and it ought never be moot what the final proportion was, but even as the tree fights its silent battle swaying but never breaking, from the rot within and the pressure without, it will remain a good tree, and must forever be our “last leaf”.
By this time we had neared the fence rimming the maidan at the corner of B and 12. The fleeter of foot amongst us had hurdled the manicured shrubbery, the less so had half straddled half hop-skipped over it and the athletically challenged had obviated it completely by walking through the designated opening to where the Inspector’s prize Triumph used to stand. A short run on the road flanked by the hydrant at the back of 12 (which had a small patch of rough-grassed lawn, where we used to sing songs for Vispi Kapadia’s mom and others in the building but mainly her, who’d be looking down from the pachelni agasi na kateras, listening patiently to our hoarse (our voices were always hoarse – chor police required strong vocal chords for proper coordination amongst the players in the rival teams – on my last visit the kids had cell-phones. Progress is giving the ol’ chords a break, right?) renditions of House of Bamboo and when we’d finish it she’d throw sweets for us.
We reached the Nalla Maidan and the intrusion into their territory which would otherwise be noticed and resented by the Nalla-maidan-wallas and the customary tension and fear mutual, were, at such times, overshadowed by the larger intrusion of the boombo. The intrusion was larger in more than the obvious dimension. It was an intrusion from the outside, not just from the motta maidan but from outside of the safe precincts of our baug, delineated by the Art Metal wrought iron fence. The fence that, some amongst us, in whom the aforementioned rot was in a proportion and advancement way too unhealthy, not only for own selves, but also for the unwary and as yet untainted in their midst, tried to tear down for the lure of lucre. A shame mitigated only by others who became the allegorically stoic trees to their ruthless rollers – as Busy Bee or more precisely Talyarkhan would ask rhetorically at the end of his diatribe, “Get it Steve?”
And so instinctively the motta and nalla-maidaners commingled, their animus buried albeit temporarily in the frenzy of the crowd which was beginning to form under and around E block.
Kabootar had died. He was an old miser or so the story went, who lived on the third in E.
I used to spot him sometimes when standing on my balcony in # 1 on the third, either taking a break from studies or the folks or just lazily dream-watching the kites in season cutting each other’s lifelines - sometimes bhar sadi, at others, by their Kunnies. You could tell a great deal about the flyier by the way he flew and fought kites. There were some who would steer theirs away from imminent danger of an approaching kite, merely content to fly them in their own nook in the sky. There were others who would come close to a fight and then disengage when it became imminent. Some would know no better and be cut sooner or later. There were the swoopers from above and the sharks which made their move from below, rending the air asunder with the fast flutter of the butter-paper flanks under the bootara-stick bow on either wing between tip and tail, with fast furious pulls on the ghaslety. Their kunnies configured with the two-up-one-down knot for precisely such upward sallies. Some, on being cut by the glass-powder glued manja, would refly. They were the persistent; or perhaps they simply had money enough to fly more than one kite an evening. Some, being cut, would not. They were the once-bitten-twice-shys; or maybe they did not have money for the next apav. The adept would try to cut your manja closer from your hand and having successfully done that, try to rope your kite in. Some would cut only for the Shikar. The Jhatkamasters and the Hallalers. If you must cut, which is the better, more humane? Or isn’t there no such thing as a painless cut? The only lessening (of the pain) comes by our reinforced semantic legerdemain. The more I think, the less sure I become about Patangs in this sky.
Or just looking down at old man ChandraVijay in his eponymous tea house making bhajias kachories and masala tea; and let me tell you straight off - it does not get any better. Kabooter would be standing outside the hotel in a gray Daglaa and white cuffed-trousers and a Sola hat, all of which had seen better days. He used to eat some kachories and drink hot tea in the time honored tradition of pouring it in the saucer, all the while standing outside the hotel. There were some hotels, which were okay to buy or eat from but were never considered proper enough to sit in. And Parsees are nothing if not proper and so it was that he’d stand and eat what I presumed was his supper – he was a bachelor, another proper way of Parse life – and I knew that the poor old codger had no one to cook him a hot meal and sit by his side while he unloaded the day’s happenings to his love as the more fortunate amongst us so often carelessly fail to do. On the few times that I’d seen him from up close I’d held my breath; after all he did look dirty and his nails were long to the point of becoming gnarled and filthy. He would eat some of the farsan and the rest he’d stash into his gray coat’s pocket perhaps to eat later in his pigeon infested home (hence the name, although Kabootars are considered nehse by parsees and are believed to bring misfortune to those close to them. So the name fit in more ways than one) while he checked his fortunes ebb and tide - mostly ebb I thought - in the Times of India’s stock quote page. He used to be a Dalal Street stag, or so I was told.
The crowd had really gathered by now and the bit about the miser came from someone in the crowd who claimed that he had stashed “Be lakh rupiya, nai, nai, chaar” in his mattress.
As is usual in the deaths of the lonely, they are discovered not by the family, which arrives as fast or slow as there is or isn’t money to scavenge, and which did incidentally happen in Kabootar’s case, but by the doodhwalla or the pawwalla. The stench of the body comes later or sometimes around the same time, and wafts away with time’s passing. The stench of the scavengers lingers longer and is of a variety more odious.
I was not old enough to ascertain with any degree of certainty about who lived where and so asked someone about which flat it was exactly that Kabootar stayed in.
“Daulat ne Mehli (Patel) ni Bajooma” someone responded, another, “Busy ni ooper”
“nai Busy peli side a rehch”
“Busy?” I queried “Who’s Busy?” What an unusual and interesting Parsee name! I’d heard some rum ones in my then short life but Busy? What DID it mean? Was it a first name or last name? Was it merely a homonym which had a non -anglican meaning different from what “busy,” meant in English? Or was it an extreme length that he or more likely one of his forbears had gone to, to remain unassimilated amongst the Indians especially when that (the refusal to do so) was smiled upon by the British and in any case amply rewarded for its obvious wedge value? Maybe it wasn’t so. I hoped it wasn’t so. I loved to see ourselves in the best light there was. I was young you see, and I didn’t know any better.
“Who’s Busy? Why Busy Bee of course, you know the guy who writes the Round and About column in The Evening News’ back page”, some one said impatiently not wanting to be too distracted from the rapidly ascending firemen on the extendable wooden ladder (the simon-snorkels came later) which, when at rest, used to protrude from between two huge cartwrighten wheels in back, all the way over and past the brass-roped bell on the left, and cab-windshield in front. They entered the agasi easily and opened the front door to let the firemen who’d climbed the stairs in the meanwhile, in. It was a matter of time before the silver and black Parsee Punchayat hearse arrived and it did not take much coaxing from the elders for us to keep a safe enough distance to survey only vaguely the grim goings on of the white shroud-wrapped body’s transference into the hearse for its last ride.
Up Byculla Bridge then down angling into Clare Road, hanging a left at the Alexandra talkies, then thru the underbelly of the beast which was Kamathipura, on towards Tardeo, then past August Kranti maidan and past the Kemp’s Corner signal, - red or green mattering very little to Kabootar at this point - then taking a final left into DoongarWadi and meandering upwards on one of the short steep ghats of Malabar hill arguably the most beautiful spot on all of Bombay used by us now to consign Kabootar’s carcass to one of the smaller Towers of Silence. The rich had the bigger better Bungalees for their last repose, the not so, in which category he fell, never did. For it was not enough to be merely rich in the monetory sense, which he was, but you had to be connected and influenced enough to ensure that you never slipped through the cracks like he obviously had. This ensuring of a better Bungalee (figuratively, of course) oftentimes consumes one’s entire lifetime and necessitates many a Faustian contract between the like, either in the Lodges or the Gymkhanas or the Panchayat offices and meeting rooms or wherever such weak and vile Seths (established and craven wannabes alike) gravitate. And it is widely believed by the practitioners and foisted upon the ‘proles’ that this (the recompense of such unholy contracts) too can be circumvented if the Right Prayers (too unintelligible) are prayed by the Right Priests (too sanctimonious) for the Right number of years (too many) and for the Right price (too high)
Needles to say, on returning home that eventful night, I grabbed the Evening News which Rane, our Victoria Wine Mart manager, used to bring home together with the day’s proceeds and the shops keys, and breathlessly flipped it and scanned it till I found it in the lower left hand corner! What delight! From a purely selfish perspective, the day wasn’t a total loss. Kabootar hadn’t died in vain after all! He’d introduced me, in a Round and About way to BusyBee! Oh joy……..oh sorrow. For it was in these literary vignettes which were unerringly read and reread to sqeeze the last drops of wit and wisdom, that I first understood irony and sarcasm and cynicism and tongue in cheek humor and beguiling gallimaufry. Busy was the first to reveal to me the intrinsic value of the dictum: Better a Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And for that alone he shall ever have a place in my heart.
Flicky told me some days later that he’d met Busy and had asked him to devote a day’s column to his neighbor the departed Kabooter and right enough a few days later he’d obliged. I cannot for the life of me remember what exactly it was that he’d written but I’m sure anyone familiar with his column, will get the idea. All I know was that it made me smile, and cry and feel angry and brighten up all within the brief time it took to feel Busy go Round and About Kabootar.
I would see him walking home late in the evenings. We’d be sitting on the #3 Seree taking a break from Ice-Spice (I Spy), Langry, Hitti-Kitti or Huttu-tuttu (the long garden along #s 2 and 3 was ideal for these games; the trees provided the hiding places for the first, the shrubs and smaller bushes the obstacles for the second, the trunk the anchor for the third and the soft soil, safety for the fourth. He was a tall, (or so it seemed to me then) bespectacled, gaunt, slightly stooped, thin legged individual whose walk was slow and gait downtrodden. “Busy” “Hey Busybee” someone would carelessly shout. Taunting people was an approach used by us to feel one out, to reach out even and it was defensive in that if rebuffed, we could still seem to be one up………sort of. He’d glance at us sideways, grimmacing; not from the taunt but from the effort it takes one to pay attention to a lesser. I wonder which corrupt politico’s putrifying garden the bee might have been buzzing in, extracting the turgid pollen from, when he was interrepted thus, only to sting from it pure honey on the pages the next day.
Indira G. had declared emergency and I was really too young to understand the horrific implications of that low-point in the dynastic rule of a country we still euphemistically call ‘The Largest Democracy in theWorld.” All in all, the popular buzz was that it was a good thing, the corruption, goondaism would now be dealt with effectively and with an iron fist, etc. We didn’t know then, but by the time it was over we’d have been innured by such innanities, banalities and egregious lies. What really started to scare me after I’d gotten used to the the few ‘positive’ side - effects of the clampdown (no municipal worker’s strike, hence empty - read relatively odorless - dumpsters outside the Ration-ni-gali) were the state made disciplinary slogans that started to appear on BEST buses and the local trains. Work More Talk Less. A Good Society is a Disciplined Society, etc., etc. I had an inkling of what communism was and this instinctively felt like that. The Parsees, (at least most I knew) never ones for cutting the ghatis any slack, were singing high praise of our rulers for restoring law and order in the country. I was re-reading a book recently and absently wondered which ones Orwell would’ve had us be on the farm.
It was during this setting that I got the full measure of the Man that was Behram Contractor. Someone at the club had pointed out to me an innocuous looking obituary in the eveninger. I began to read it. It read thus (more or less): Died Today: D.M. O’Cracy, Father of F.R’dom, Brother of L. B. Erty, and J.U. Stice.
This was during very frightening times, not for us Parsees, sidelined for the most part from mainstream existence insulated in our cozy Baugs and banks, but for the intrepid frontliners in the opposition and the media which then was predominantly synonimous with journalism. And Busy was a frontliner. The indispensibly dispensable grunt down there in the trenches taking ‘em on, day and night returning fire, click-clacking staccatto bursts from his trusty Underwood as fast as it would let him before jamming. He did not have to fight it, after all it was not His Hindustan. It was Theirs as we so often think (when convenient.) And nor was he a soldier of fortune or mercenary, for I do not think that he had money on his mind when he took on the good fight. No, he was a freelancer, in the truest and widest understanding of the term. A happy warrior no less.
He was risking his life and limb taking on the government at its vilest. Alone taking on this Leviathan for nothing more and nothing less than his principles – and can worthier principles be found to take up cudgels for? To die for them unsung, unpraised, unappreciated at least not by his ilk – not that I know of anyway – that is, I think, his true epitaph. That was his essence, his raison de etre.
I’ve often, sadly, been a crowd filler in the badminton court or the maidan, for want of better things to do and for not knowing any better, listening to this pretender to the throne or that, or some other equally pretentious counterfeits talking about the redeeming value of some arcane aspect of the religion or the other. Of how he or she has the prescription to treat the malaise of the degenerating Parsee body. And I wonder where the real Tom Joad is and why Jim Casey was never called? And I lament at their exclusion. It is a shame and we do our young an irrepairable injustice. The club doesn’t need to be shifted for the temple my friends, it never has. What’s always been crying plaintively for a shift is the light we shine, and on what we choose to shine it on. We do have the light, of that there is no doubt, its just that we do not have its proper shiner/s. Why was Behram Contractor never once called to speak to us, of life, of times, of government, of corrupt politicos, of malaises systemic, of journalism, of the state of our country, of near anything he chose to speak of really? Kare poryu ne gaame sodhyu. Please forgive me if he has been (called to speak) more recently, as I for one have never heard an uttered word escape his lips. Joyce once lamented that the Irish always martyrised their heroes; I think we kill ours with our indifference, and I know both treatments to be tragic, but only leave to you to conclude which is the worse.
At the club or while taking walks around the baug, I once heard one of Busy’s detractors talk of how his column so closely followed Art Buchwald’s, thus begging the question about whether he was a Phony. I felt that the only appropriate response then would’ve been a kattoos on his head, but demurred as I was then his protégé and felt that that would not be conducive to my feeding on the faux-intellectual bones he’d throw my way from time to time. If Busy was the stuff phonies are made, may the world be buzzing with ’em Bees – god knows it will be better off than if it were crowded by the likes of the Real drone of an armchair-analyst who’d made the sour observation. We’d really be in big trouble then.
And besides, isn’t originality really nothing more than the art of concealing one’s source?
I want to end this Paen in a Round and About way, and no, its not meant to be original, and no, I’ll not be concealing its source of inspiration and perchance I deliver a sting or two…..or three, in my apostrophe to The Bee, all the better. So here goes nothing:
And for yet another Saturday, a Few Stray Thoughts, some General Observations, and some Points of View (all my own work):
Like I made an exit yesterday from which they say there is never a return, but am still stuck in the evening traffic. Much like Clinton said at the airport before taking his last flight aboard Airforce One, “Hey, I’m going nowhere, I’m still here!”
Like I wonder if there are typewriters any longer in Heaven or have been replaced by word-processors already?
Like I wish they’d do away with the untouchable Khandia system and if they still insist (by ‘they’ I mean the powerful policy makers Not the pitiable Khandias though there is little difference betwixt the two, and both deserve our pity, only for very different reasons), why not let the friends and family members do the final lift and shift instead?
Like I hear that there is a real Gidhra shortage in town and so is it too late for me to do a volte-face and ask for a dignified cremation instead?
Like what are the odds that My Friend on the 21st. floor overlooking the sea near Malabar Hill would be eating a spare rib for dinner tonight? And,
Like what are the odds that the rib would be mine?
Like what are the odds that the meal might be a fly-by-delivery?
Like I wonder how many of the Pols who have assembled here to pay their last respects to me are eyeing the Doongarwady sprawl covetitiously?
Like how many of them are breathing a sigh of relief now that I’m finally dead?
Like there was nothing like the TCL hooch to get the spirits up after a hard days work. Nothing.
And finally, farewell my friends, and remember ….. ‘death is just a dirty trick.’
Farewell Dear Busy, may you rest in your heavenly hive, wherever that is, (if there be a heaven) though I’d much rather your hive be nestled in that tree in the maidan, on a bough close to the Roller and you sting from time to time those who would push the cold steel too hard into our good tree.
For, the rot had set into it some time ago; perhaps around the same time it (the rot) was taking its measure of you. The roller may get you eventually or the rot will or more likely it will be a combination of the two, and it ought never be moot what the final proportion was, but even as you fought your valient battle, swaying but never breaking from the rot within and the pressure without, you will remain a Good Bee in a Good Tree, and your spirit must forever be our “last leaf”.
Adieu.
Zend Lakdavala.