“Of course Gauri’s not here. How can you presume to lead a damn organization when you’re never present?”

  * * *

  —

  News of Alex’s promotion spreads quickly. The lawyers’ reactions are just as hostile as I expected.

  “Why would a firanghi undergraduate be chosen to work on the Chembur file over me?” Kamini wails before disappearing into the latrine.

  “Over any of us,” Utkarsh shouts back.

  Jayshree suggests that Justice For All can’t be in that much trouble if there is money in our budget to pay an intern.

  “Vivek Sir, this has to be a mistake,” Bhavana says. “Will you please talk to Gauri Ma’am for us?”

  Maybe Ma’am’s decision is unfair, but I’m not bothered by it. Not when none of these people ever notice how unfairly she treats me.

  When Ma’am finally returns to the office, it’s already early evening and everyone but Bhavana, Vivek, and I have gone home. She trudges to her desk, slamming the door.

  Eyes wide, Bhavana pokes Vivek on the shoulder. “Go talk to her,” she mouths silently.

  Vivek nods, rising to his feet. He tugs at his collar, then walks over to Ma’am’s office, tapping on the door with his knuckles before entering and shutting the door softly behind him. Bhavana tiptoes to my workspace, pressing her finger to her lips as she crouches beside my desk.

  After some muffled conversation we can’t quite pick up, Gauri Ma’am declares, “I am trying, Vivek. They must learn not to feel entitled to things because of how long they have worked here. If they show me they can do the work, I will reward them. It’s that simple.”

  “They aren’t entitled, Gauri Ma’am,” Vivek pleads. “But this intern? What skills does he have that you need?”

  “Don’t you think I did my due diligence before I hired him? He’s quite smart, and writes crisply, clearly. His research skills are better than anyone’s in this office. And he already has access to online research databases we don’t.”

  “How?”

  “Through Harvard. He has a friend who started the same program last year. They’ve given him use of their accounts.”

  “I suppose that’s good. But the pay? Why should he get a stipend? You’ve never paid an intern before.”

  “Vivek, this is how you invest in the future of an organization. If I give Rubina’s firanghi friend a good experience, she will reward us with her continued support. And who knows, maybe after he’s done at Harvard he’ll be interested in supporting us in some kind of way.”

  “Gauriji, this is wishful thinking. At least try to see this from the staff’s perspective.”

  “You go back and tell them that anyone who doesn’t like it can find a job elsewhere.”

  * * *

  ♦

  At the end of the week, Gauri Ma’am emerges from her office and marches toward the lawyers’ workspace. “Everyone, gather round quick. Alex and Rakhi, you too,” she calls. “Did any of you assign work to the Dutch interns?”

  “Ma’am, I did,” Vivek says.

  “Me too,” Bhavana adds.

  Gauri Ma’am taps her fingers on the shared table. “Anyone else? No? Good. You should all know that they have resigned.”

  Finally.

  Vivek’s eyes pop. “They’ve left their internships?”

  “Yes, they have abandoned their posts and forsaken their work. I received an email this morning from the two of them. They have left us to work for another NGO.”

  Alex raises his eyebrows, as if he’s amused.

  Vivek takes a step toward Gauri Ma’am, touching his palm to the side of his face. “Are they still in Bombay? Did they leave anything behind?”

  “Yes, they are still in the city. Rakhi, go check their desks.”

  Their desks are empty. Only tea stains, notepads, and an unopened pack of Orbit chewing gum. I slip the gum into my pocket, relieved I won’t have to deal with them anymore. “Ma’am, nothing there,” I say.

  “I lent them some books,” Vivek murmurs. “From my own collection.”

  “You call them, then,” Ma’am says. “The rest of you are not to have any contact with them, teek hain?”

  The lawyers all mouth yes, or nod in agreement. As if anyone here was planning on staying in touch with those two after they left.

  After Gauri Ma’am leaves, the lawyers chatter and whisper, throwing stares at Alex, who is back at his desk with his earphones in.

  “Those girls were hopping mad that Alex was getting paid,” Bhavana mutters to Vivek. “Never thought they’d quit, though.”

  “As long as we don’t lose any of the lawyers,” Vivek replies.

  * * *

  —

  Later that afternoon, Alex asks me if I know of a Muslim neighbourhood near the office. “I saw it featured on some TV show in Canada. The hosts went around eating kababs at different food stalls.”

  Bohri Mohalla, he means. He suggests we go there tonight.

  “After all lawyers leaving,” I reply.

  It’s almost seven by the time everyone clears out. I follow Alex out the door, checking behind me every couple of seconds to make sure Gauri Ma’am doesn’t emerge from her office and see us. Halfway down the steps, I pause. What if there are people from Behrampada in Bohri Mohalla? Someone could tell Tazim. And then? Would she piece together that her memsahib’s nephew and I are spending time together?

  Alex stares up at me from the bottom of the stairs. “Coming?”

  There are millions of people in this city. Seeing the kid who picked up roti at Tazim’s at the Oval Maidan was a one-time thing, surely. I tighten my fists and march down the stairs before I can change my mind. “Yes, coming.”

  The tinny sound of the azaan from nearby Minara Masjid fills the air, almost loud enough to drown out the caw-caw of hungry crows. Alex and I wait a few minutes on the street, as people stream into the mosque to offer evening prayers before eating. When the sun dips behind the buildings on Mohammad Ali Road, the naked yellow bulbs hanging over the stalls light up, and the food vendors in their crocheted white skullcaps and hennaed beards start to cook up endless pieces of meat on charcoal grills. The blare of car and motorbike horns and the usual market shouting punctuate the crackle and sizzle of the food stalls. Above us, hawks circle high in the sky.

  “Bhaiyya, we’ll have two of those,” Alex says, pointing to dangling skewers of kababs and chicken legs. He insists on calling all the food vendors “bhaiyya,” because he believes it will get us quicker service. I want to tell him we’re already getting quick service because he’s a firanghi.

  Perched on small red plastic stools in front of the food stalls, we balance our steel plates on our laps, the glare of motorcycle headlights shining bright in our faces. A group of women in black floor-length burqas sweep past us and Alex shoves his stool back to let them pass.

  “I still can’t believe Merel and Saskia quit,” he says. “You think it’s because of me?”

  I peer up from my chicken leg. “Yes,” I mutter. “Of course.” Is this thought only occurring to him now?

  Alex tears a rumali roti apart with both hands. “It’s kind of sad how people don’t seem to want to ask Gauri for anything. I mean, I asked for all the things she gave me. You can’t just sit back and wait for things to happen.”

  I opt not to tell him that if he had asked for even another cup of tea without his Rubina connection, Gauri Ma’am would have sent him packing.

  “People in India are so deferential to authority.”

  “Means?”

  “They don’t stand up for themselves. Don’t worry—I can say that because I’m Indian.”

  “You are Indian?” I laugh so hard I cough on a coriander leaf that gets caught at the back of my throat.

  “Okay, okay,” Alex says, handing me his bottle of Bisleri. “Fair enough.” He sits back on his stool and starts mopping up his bheja fry with the rest of his roti. “What is this, anyway?”

  I point to a large metal platter near the hot tawa, piled high with uncooked organ meat. His eyes scan the hearts and kidneys, and then his face falls. “Brains?” He stares at his plate and then at me. “What animal?”

  “Goat.”

  His eyes briefly bulge at the food on his plate, before a smile creeps across his face. “You know, I wouldn’t eat bananas until I was sixteen. I couldn’t even touch them with my fingers. Thought they were the grossest thing in the world.” He pops the last bit of bheja fry into his mouth, beaming like he’s won an award. “And look at me now.”

  “You are proper Mumbaikar now,” I tease.

  “Maybe I am,” he says, unaware that I’m making fun of him. “What if I get a job here after I’m done at Harvard? We can keep coming back here until I’ve tasted every last organ there is to try.”

  “You coming back?” I ask, my cheeks warming at how pleased I am by this prospect.

  “Why not? I’ll swing by the fancy hotel where you work at the end of your shift, and we’ll come down here together. You’ll pay, of course, since you’ll be making more money than me…”

  “Arre,” I chuckle, elbowing him. In what world would I make more money than someone like Alex?

  “Think about it,” he says, springing up to order more chicken kababs.

  As he points to pieces of meat, I consider what he’s saying. My shoulders drop unexpectedly, and for the first time in eleven years, it’s as though I have no past to hold me down, and I no longer have to fear for my future. I feel like I could push up off my feet and my whole body could float away, and it wouldn’t matter which way was the right direction.

  * * *

  The most pleasant I ever saw Gauri Ma’am was in the lead-up to her daughter Neha’s brief visit to Bombay two years back.

  We got away with murder. Sudeepthi asked to take a longer leave than usual around Christmastime so she could spend a few weeks with her granny in Manipal, and Gauri Ma’am approved it. Jayshree spilled her tea all over a stack of Gauri Ma’am’s papers, and Ma’am laughed it off, cheerfully. And when Utkarsh, newly hired at the time, said India shouldn’t decriminalize homosexuality because it would open the door to legalizing bestiality, Ma’am allowed Bhavana and Sudeepthi to tear several strips off him, instead of doing it herself. She also didn’t fire him, which everyone felt was far too generous.

  Before Neha and her husband’s arrival, Ma’am asked me to accompany her to the airport to help with bags and getting them settled. Not that I really had a choice. Their flight would arrive at midnight, and they would stay at Gauri Ma’am’s house before going on to Goa the next day for a friend’s wedding.

  The air was cool that night at the arrivals gate. Gauri Ma’am lent me her shawl to keep warm as we waited for Neha and Yogi to come out. Next to us, bored drivers dressed in white uniforms held signs that read MCKINSEY & CO—MISS PRIYA GAUTAM and MR SRINIVAS VODAFONE.

  “I think this will be a good visit,” Ma’am said, twisting her gold bangle around her wrist over and over again. “We’ll start fresh. She just needs a reminder of what she’s left behind.”

  “Ji, Ma’am,” I said, even though I had no idea what the disagreement between them was about. I was curious to meet Neha, at last. I had never met anyone who had stood up to Gauri Ma’am.

  After watching the steady stream of sleepy travellers dwindle, we were still left waiting.

  “You think something happened?” Ma’am asked me, her foot bouncing impatiently. “I bet customs is holding them up.” Finally, she dialled Neha’s number, grumbling about the international charges. “Hello? Hello, Neha? Where are you?”

  I could hear Neha’s voice on the other end of the line. “Ma? We’re already at the hotel. Why?”

  “What hotel?” Ma’am said, her voice rising. “I’ve been waiting at the gate for almost two hours.”

  “Yogi emailed you before we left. Haven’t you checked your email in the past twenty-four hours?”

  “I haven’t seen any email,” she said, her back stiffening.

  “We decided to just go to a hotel after the flight. We’ve got our flight to Goa tomorrow morning anyways. It didn’t make sense to drive all the way to Mahim, sleep for five hours, then come back to the airport. And you know Yogi has asthma. Sitting in a taxi twice for no reason, what’s the point in that?”

  I almost felt sorry for Ma’am as she let out a forceful breath. “It’s been three years since I’ve seen you.”

  “Ma, stop it. We’ll see you on our way out. We’re flying back to Bombay on January third for a whole day, remember?”

  “Don’t bother coming to see me, then,” she declared, her nostrils flaring. “Go back to America from Goa.”

  “Ma!” Neha shouted through the phone. “You’re being dramatic again.”

  Maybe Ma’am was being dramatic, but Neha was really pushing the limit. How hard would it be just to allow herself to be picked up at the airport, given a bed to sleep in, and dropped off at the airport again?

  “Because I raised you to be an intelligent person, Neha. And instead you throw away your career to be some housewife. And to a controlling, neoconservative NRI who you follow around as though you’re an obedient puppy.”

  “Controlling? You want to talk about controlling? You’re so obsessed with your work and yourself and being self-righteous that you alienate anyone who doesn’t agree with your radical opinions. You always put your work ahead of your family.”

  “No, I have always put you first, Neha. But I never raised you to be so apathetic. I never raised you to pick a man over your own ambition. I never raised—” Gauri Ma’am stopped and looked at her phone, her eyebrows drawing together. Neha had hung up on her.

  She pinched the top of her nose and pushed out three slow, deep breaths. “Come, Rakhi,” she said. “Let’s get a taxi.”

  We rode in silence down the Western Express, Ma’am staring out the window. I wondered what else Neha could get away with if she tried. If there was anything Neha could do to make Gauri Ma’am love her any less. Were there limits? And was this why Gauri Ma’am was so strict with everyone at the office? Because she could never manage to control her own daughter?

  As the taxi slowed to a stop near the main road leading to Behrampada, I slid to the door to make a quick exit.

  “Wait,” she said, reaching for my arm. “There’s a lesson here for you.”

  Her nostrils flared slightly, and she swallowed. Was she going to cry? I froze, overcome with a strange mix of horror and concern.

  She didn’t cry, though. Instead, she caught her breath and then looked me in the eye. “Even when people hurt us,” she said, “how we respond is a test of our loyalty to them.”

  Did it ever enter her head, I wondered, that there might be a lesson here for her, too?

  12

  On Monday, Gauri Ma’am sits me down with a pair of dull scissors in front of a stack of newspapers and instructs me to scan for stories about Justice For All.

  “Ma’am, won’t you know if there’s a story about us? The journalist would interview you, na?”

  “If Rubina gives even one sound bite to a journalist and mentions our name, I must know about it. Now stop asking questions.”

  When I’m done, I bring her four articles. She runs her finger over a headline from last week’s Times of India: BATTLE OVER FOR VICTIMS OF CHEMBUR FORCED EVICTION, HIGH COURT SAYS.

  “These papers get more ridiculous every year,” she murmurs. She flips through the rest of the clippings. “What’s this?” She pulls a story I found in the Mumbai Mirror: FORMER FILM STAR DEDICATES LIFE TO SQUASHING POVERTY.

  “Vivek,” Gauri Ma’am shouts. “Get in here, right now!”

  Vivek appears in the doorway, eyebrows raised. “What’s going on?”

  “Just read this.” Ma’am holds the article out to him as he sucks in his gut to squeeze past me.

  “Rubina Mansoor, one of Bollywood’s nineties screen queens, is speaking out on ridding India of poverty…? I don’t know if she can really be called a screen queen, but—”

  “Keep going.” Ma’am covers her eyes with her palms.

  “‘I love India, and India loves me,’ the superstar said. ‘I want to give back everything it has given me and more.’ What does she mean by that?”

  “Read out the bit where she talks about us.”

  “Accha…Okay, okay…Rubina has partnered with local human rights organization Justice For All, which operates under the leadership of Advocate Gauri Verma, a veteran human rights lawyer. ‘Gauri and I both want the same things for our country, but we have different ways to get there. She fights in the courtroom, whereas I am well poised to arouse the beating heart of this nation…’ Arouse? What does she mean, ‘arouse’?”

  “Finish reading.”

  “‘Together, we look forward to a brilliant partnership.’” Vivek puts the article down and rubs his chin. Both of them stare at the clipping for a moment. “Gauriji, did you and Rubina agree to send out a message that you were working together?”

  “Of course not.” Ma’am wrings her hands. “This is all moving so fast.”

  “Call Rubina up. We must control this situation before it controls us.”

  “You’re right.” Gauri Ma’am wipes her upper lip with her handkerchief before her eyes dart to me. “What are you still doing in here?”

  “I was just leaving, Ma’am.”

  “Rakhi,” she says, as I exit her office. “Good job finding this article. Never thought I’d see my name printed in the Mumbai Mirror.”