The Mountain Shadow

Mourners, mourning violently, shoved me aside to touch the fallen king. I scrambled through a quickly gathering crowd that no police rope could hold. People were coming from every stairway and narrow lane. I broke through to the main street and clambered over the collapsing wall of bicycles and handcarts to find Ravi, standing next to my bike.

‘Glad to see you, man,’ he said. ‘I need my bike. There’s gonna be hell tonight.’

If hell means fire and fury, he was right. Outrage breaks the dam of temper. The murder in the mansion, which also threatened a beloved mosque, would release waves of wolves, and we all knew it. The beautiful city, the tolerant Island City, wasn’t safe any more.

I wondered where Karla was, and if she was safe.

I unlocked my chain, set our bikes free, and we jammed our way back to Colaba. Ravi split away from me at Metro Junction to meet his brothers in arms. I ran up the stairs at the Amritsar hotel, checking to see if Karla was there.

‘You need a shower,’ Jaswant said. ‘And a change of clothes.’

My T-shirt was a mystery, ripped off in the fight. My vest was scorched and blackened. My bare arms and chest were covered in ash and scratches.

‘Have you seen her?’

‘She went to see the race.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Fuck you, baba,’ he said, as I took the steps four at a time.

I had to find the place where Karla would watch a legendary race. My guess was that she’d be drawn to the most dangerous turn on the course: the place where Fate and Death might watch together, with a picnic hamper.

It wasn’t easy to get there. The city was starting on lockdown, and I had to bribe cops at four checkpoints, just to keep my knives.

Inter-communal disharmony can cost lives in the thousands, anywhere in India, even in a tolerant city like Bombay. The cops locked the streets down tight, while a mosque was near to flames, and Hindus were thought to blame.

By the time I reached the vantage point the race was already run, and the traffic cops were responding to reports of a riot in Null Bazaar. A mob is coming from Dongri, I heard police radios saying, again and again in Marathi.

I rode down to the Haji Ali juice centre. I thought that Naveen might celebrate or commiserate the race there, because it was one of the few public places still publicly open.

There were people on the streets as I rode, running toward the Hindu temple, and the Muslim shrine. They’d heard that parts of the predominantly Muslim area of Dongri were in flames.

I had to weave between them, stopping now and then for panicked people who ran directly in front of me on the road. I slithered to a stop at Haji Ali, pulling my bike up some distance from a long line of foreign motorcycles, parked in front. I glanced inside the seated section of the juice bar, and saw Naveen, sitting with Kavita Singh.

I looked back to the biker boy group. There was a slim girl in niqab sunglasses, a red leather jacket, white jeans and red sneakers: Benicia. She was sitting on her bike, a matt black vintage 350cc with clip-on handlebars. The word Ishq, meaning Passionate Love, was painted on the petrol tank.

There were about a dozen people, all of them dressed in coloured leathers, despite the heat. I didn’t know any of them. A head turned toward me. It was Karla.

Karla smiled, but I didn’t know what her eyes said to me. It was either I’m so glad you’re here, or Don’t do anything stupid. I walked the distance between us, and took her arm.

‘I have to talk to you, Karla.’

The boy racers on Japanese motorcycles were looking me over. I was ashes, scratches, and burned-black marks.

‘What happened?’ she asked.

‘Khader’s house,’ I said. ‘It’s gone. Nazeer and Tariq, both gone.’

A psychic thing, but a thing real enough to make her shudder, forked through her body, jerking her head back in distress. She fell into me and slung her arm around my waist as we walked back to my bike. She sat on the bike, her back to the group outside the juice bar.

‘You look hurt,’ she said. ‘Are you okay?’

‘It’s nothing, I –’

‘Were you there, at the fire?’

‘Yeah, I –’

‘Lunatic!’ she snapped, simmering queens. ‘Things aren’t dangerous enough, without you have to go play with fire? Why am I taking all this trouble to keep you safe, when you take so much trouble to be unsafe?’

‘But I –’

‘Gimme a joint,’ she said.

We smoked. I was listening to the cops, in the police post nearby, talking about locking the whole city down as Plan B, if the rioting spread beyond Crawford market, which wasn’t far enough away from where we were.

I wanted to get her out of there. I wanted to take her home, dirty and all as I was. I wanted to take a shower and visit her in the Bedouin tent.

The biker boys were looking at us. They were hopped up on watermelon juice and someone else’s victory. Young men, with girls to impress: body language, looking for an offence no one committed.