‘Perhaps five,’ he replied, accepting the change of topic with tolerant equanimity. ‘Is that many, do you think?’
‘I guess it’s enough. There aren’t any women. Are women not allowed to come here?’
‘Not forbidden,’ he frowned, casting about for the right words. ‘Women are permitted here, but they do not want to come. There are other places where women gather, to do their own things and to hear music and singers, and no man would want to disturb them there, either.’
A very elderly man approached us and sat at Khaderbhai’s feet. He wore the simple cotton shirt and thin baggy pants known as a kurtapyjama. His face was deeply lined, and his white hair was cropped into a short, punk cut. He was thin and stooped and obviously poor. With a curt but respectful nod to Khader, he began to mull tobacco and hashish in his gnarled hands. In a few minutes he passed a huge chillum to Khader, and waited with matches ready to light it.
‘This man is Omar,’ Khaderbhai said, pausing with the chillum almost to his lips. ‘He is the best maker of the chillum in all Bombay.’
Omar lit the chillum for Khaderbhai, breaking into a toothless grin and basking in the praise. He passed it to me, studied my technique and lung-power with a critical eye, and grunted a sort of approval. After Khader and I had smoked twice, Omar took the chillum and finished it with gigantic puffs that swelled his thin chest to bursting. When he was finished, he tapped out a small residue of white ash. He’d sucked the chillum dry, and proudly accepted a nod of acknowledgement from Khaderbhai. Despite his great age, he rose easily from the seated position without touching his hands to the floor. He hobbled away as the singers returned to the stage.
Abdullah rejoined us, bringing a cut-glass bowl filled with slices of mango, papaya, and watermelon. The scents of the fruits surrounded us as their tastes dissolved in our mouths. The singers began their next performance, singing just one song that continued for almost half an hour. It was a lush, tripartite harmony built upon a simple melody and improvised cadenzas. The musicians accompanying the singers on the harmonium and the tablas were animated, but the singers themselves were expressionless, motionless, with their eyes closed and their hands limp.
As before, the silent crowd in the club broke out in rowdy chatter when the singers left the small stage. Abdullah leaned across to speak to me.
‘While we were driving here in the car, I was thinking about being brothers, Mr. Lin. I was thinking about what Khaderbhai said.’
‘That’s funny, so was I.’
‘My two brothers-we were three brothers in my family in Iran, and now my two brothers, they are dead. They were killed in the war against Iraq. I have a sister, in Iran, but I have no brother. I am just one brother now. One brother is a sadness, isn’t it?’
I couldn’t answer him directly. My own brother was lost to me. My whole family was lost, and I was sure I would never see them again.
‘I was thinking that perhaps Khaderbhai saw something true. Perhaps we really are looking like brothers.’
‘Maybe we are.’
He smiled.
‘I have decided to like you, Mr. Lin.’
He said it with such solemnity, despite the smile, that I had to laugh.
‘Well, I guess in that case you’d better stop calling me
‘Jeebies?’ he asked, earnestly. ‘It is an Arabic word?’
‘Don’t worry about it. Just call me Lin.’
‘Okay. I will call you
‘I guess it is.’
‘Then we will remember this night, at the concert of the blind singers, because it is the night we begin brothering for each other.’
‘Did you say, the
‘Yes. You don’t know them? These are the Blind Singers of Nagpur. ‘They are famous in Bombay.’
‘Are they from an institution?’
‘Institution?’
‘Yeah, a school for the blind, maybe. Something like that.’
‘No, Lin brother. At one time they could see, just as we are seeing. But in a small village, near Nagpur, there was a blinding, and these men became blind.’
The noise around me was dizzying, and the once pleasant smell of the fruits and the charras was beginning to cloy and stifle.
‘What do you mean, there was a
‘Well, there were rebels and bandits, hiding in the mountains, near that village,’ he explained in his slow, deliberate way. ‘The villagers had to give them food, and other help. They had no choice. But when the police and soldiers came to the village, they made twenty people blind, as a lesson, as a warning to other people, in other villages. This happens sometimes. The singers were not from that village. They were visiting there, to sing at a festival. It was just bad luck. They were made blind, with the rest. All of them, those men and women, twenty people, were tied on the ground, and their eyes were put out, with sharp pieces of bamboo. Now they sing here, everywhere, and are very famous. And rich also…’
