Fin-ears

Nancy Adajania

On Marine Drive, the bhuttawallahs were fanning their succulent corncobs on coal stoves that sparked and wheezed in the evening breeze. Lovers stole furtive kisses while pretending to be entranced by the horizon. Scores of heads bobbed up and down like hats floating on the ocean. College students from the Marine Drive hostels, high on weed, balanced themselves on concrete tetrapods that pointed uncertainly in three directions – Save, Drown, Float. 

It began as a gurgling sound, grew into a growling, followed by a rumbling so loud that the people on the promenade thought their eardrums would burst. The clouds had clotted, gone red. The sky split open and unburdened itself in a gigantic puke. From its mouth exploded fish fresher, more radiant than any this sea-kissed city had ever seen. Intense bursts of turquoise and silver, neon green melting into fuchsia, chevrons and crimson stripes, black polka dots on mustard yellow. Dragon-tail, moon-tail, enormous flippers, streaming frills, blue ribbon, long nose, brittle star, clownfish, ocean fish, river fish, goldfish. 

The people on the promenade had never witnessed anything like this before. For the pious Parsi at the Prayer Gate, who looked up from his Khordeh Avesta, shouting ‘Khodai! Arré, the turtles are flying!’ this was a vomit of divine luminescence. For the college kids, this was way better than a stash of Meow Meow. Slipping and stumbling over the tetrapods, they smiled goofily:  

‘#puke – This is dope. AWESOME!’  

The lovers felt blessed and horny amidst the slither and shimmer of leaping fish. The bhuttawallah from Patna felt dread at this cosmic deluge. ‘Arré pralay mach gaya!’ he screamed, throwing up his arms, attempting without success to shield his head against the fish raining down on the Drive. 

Did the sky really puke? Did it really puke so hard? The next morning, a tiny item buried on page 11 of The Times of India read:  

Outrage at Marine Drive  

An inebriated man is alleged to have driven an excavator into the Taraporevala Aquarium on Independence Day. In the head-on collision with the building, the man died instantly. The aquarium, one of the most popular tourist destinations in South Bombay, opened in 1951. It is now irreparably damaged, according to sources close to the State Government. However, senior police inspector Amol Apte assured us that the Mumbai Coastal Road project, which adjoins the aquarium building, remains on track. 

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A week later, Amol Apte was barking at his junior: ‘Have you got wax in your ears, you idiot? Remember what Top said. Nothing happened.’ The sky had not dribbled in weeks, let alone poured, he reminded her. The lakes were dry. Like Senior’s green eyes, Junior thought, no tears hidden there. A petite woman with a top knot, Junior persisted: ‘But some promenade regulars told me that they had seen the most dramatic fireworks, I mean fishworks?’ Her version was that the sky had not only dribbled, it had poured long enough for the lakes to overflow. Anyway, she knew she was not an idiot. She had seen the clean-up crew cordon off the site and work on it around the clock. By the time they had finished, the pavements were practically gleaming. ‘Pavements without kachra in Mumbai, as if the Ingraz had come back with their sprinklers,’ she muttered. 

‘Tujha doke thikanyaavar aahe ki naahi?’ Senior’s question was rhetorical. Everybody knew that Junior’s head was not screwed on right. A child of the Konkan, whose ears stuck out like fins, she always smelt of fish, moist coconut and tangy tamarind.  

That night, the sleepyheads in the police control room were going about doing nothing when a call came through and their faces lit up. Meera Priolkar was on the line, with her routine end-of-day press inquiries: ‘Hello, Meera here.’ Pause. They rushed into loudspeaker mode and the tittering began. ‘Times of India VAR-oon pat-TRA-kaar baul-TAY. Sarva KSHAY-mm?’ Senior, in his high-pitched voice, barely able to control his giggling, replied: ‘Ho, ho, madam, sarva kshem, sarva kshem. All good!’ Meera’s rotund anglicised Marathi made the officers roll on the floor with laughter. Junior, the only female in this group of balding, middle-aged officers, looked away. Used to being the butt of everyone’s jokes, she did not join in. One of the officers, half-apologetically, took her aside: ‘Sorry, but what to do? This is a palace of tears, you know we don’t get too many laughs here.’

Pleasantries were exchanged, diligently by Meera, wickedly by the officers. The usual silliness, thought Junior. But her fin-ears perked up when Meera said: ‘I have an anonymous tip about the Taraporevala Aquarium incident – a photograph. The face of the man who drove into it is visible. We should…’ Senior cut her off mid-sentence: ‘Nothing happened on Independence Day.’ Meera butted in: ‘But the photograph…’ For a second, Senior stopped in his tracks. He recovered immediately and shot back: ‘Fake news, madam. All lies – Photoshop.’ The conversation wasn’t over, far from it, but how could it ever be resumed? The thought of Top made Senior break into a sweat. Nothing could have been allowed to go wrong on Independence Day. And not around the Mumbai Coastal Road, for Top’s sake! 

Junior, on the other hand, was fearless. She swam out of the room, hitting the surface of imaginary water with a clicking sound that irritated Senior no end. 

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In the police canteen, the smell of fried onions and urine circulated under a blue tarp. Its steel benches had already been warmed by many bottoms. Meera’s freckled, bottled-shaped nose drew a clicking sound from Junior. What was she doing here, Meera wondered, on an oppressive afternoon unrelieved by the sea breeze, sitting with this woman who made funny sounds?