"Arrey, kutta nahin," I said. Gee, there's no dogs here.
Johnny, Narayan, Ali, and the few other men who'd heard the comment turned their faces to me quickly and stared, wide-eyed with amazement and worry. Sure enough, seconds later a shrill, whining howl broke out from the footpath to our left. A dog rushed out from its cover and launched itself at us, barking furiously. It was a small, wizened, mangy cur of a thing, not much bigger than a fair-sized Bombay rat, yet the barking was loud enough to pierce the screen of sound in our chanting.
It took only seconds, of course, for more pariah dogs to join in the howling affray. They came from left and right, single animals and groups of them, yelping and yowling and growling hideously.
In an attempt to drown them out, we raised our chants to greater volume, all the while keeping our wary eyes on the snapping jaws of the dogs.
As we approached the Back Bay area we passed an open maidan, or field, where a party of wedding musicians dressed in bright red and-yellow uniforms, complete with tall, plumed hats, was rehearsing its songs. Seeing our little procession as an opportunity to practise their music on the march, they swung in behind us and struck up a rousing, if not particularly canorous, version of a popular devotional song. Incited by the spectacle that our smuggling mission had become, happy children and pious adults left the footpaths and streamed toward us, joining in the thunderous chants and swelling our numbers to more than a hundred souls.
Agitated, no doubt, by the wild throng and frenzied barking, Kano the bear swayed from side to side on the cart, turning his head to follow the peaks of sound. At one point we passed a group of strolling policemen, and I risked a glance to see them standing completely still, their mouths open and their heads turning as one, like a row of mouth-clown dummies at a carnival sideshow, as we passed.
After too many long minutes of that brawling and roistering, we were near enough to Nariman Point to see the tower of the Oberoi Hotel. Worried that we'd never rid ourselves of the wedding band, I ran back to press a bundle of notes into the hand of their bandmaster, with instructions that he should turn right, away from us, and march along Marine Drive. As we neared the sea, he led his men right when we moved left. Emboldened, perhaps, by their successful tour with our little parade, the musicians launched into a medley of dance hits as they marched away toward the brighter lights of the ocean drive. Most of the crowd jigged and danced away with them. Even the dogs, lured too far beyond their prowling domain, turned away from us and crept back into the mean shadows that had spawned them.
We pushed the cart further along the sea road toward the deserted spot where the truck was parked. Just then I heard a car horn sounding, close by. My heart sinking at the thought that it was the police, I slowly turned to look. Instead, I saw Abdullah, Salman, Sanjay, and Farid standing beside Salman's car. They'd stopped in a wide parking bay, surfaced with gravel stones, that was empty but for them.
"Are you all right, Johnny?" I asked. "Can you take it from here?"
"Sure, Lin," he replied. "The truck is just there, ahead of us, you see? We can do it."
"Okay, I'll peel off here, man. Let me know how it all goes. I'll see you tomorrow. And, hey, see if you can find me one of those wanted posters, brother!"
"No problem," he laughed, as I walked away.
I crossed the road to join Salman, Abdullah, and the others.
They'd been eating take-away food bought at one of the Nariman caravans parked near the sea wall. As I greeted them, Farid swept the rubble of containers and paper towels from the roof of the car onto the gravel park space. I felt the wince of guilt that litter-conscious westerners invariably experience, and reminded myself that the mess on the road would be collected by rag pickers who depended on the litter for their livelihood.
"What the fuck were you doing in that show?" Sanjay asked me when the greetings were made and received.
"It's a long story," I grinned.
"That's a damn scary Ganpatti you got there," he said. "I never saw anything like it. It looked so real. It was like it was moving. I got quite a religious feeling. I tell you, man, I'm going to pay a bahinchudh to light some incense when I get home."
"Come on, Lin," Salman prodded. "What's it all about, yaar?"
"Well," I groaned, knowing that no explanation would seem sensible. "We had to smuggle a bear out of the slum, and get him up to this spot, right here, because the cops had a warrant out on him and wanted to arrest him."
"Smuggle a what?" Farid asked politely.
"A bear."
"What... kind of a bear?"
"A dancing bear, of course," I said stiffly.
"You know, Lin," Sanjay pronounced, grimacing happily as he picked his teeth clean with a match, "you do some very weird shit."
"Are you talking about my bear?" Abdullah asked, suddenly interested.
