Bombay Balchao

by Jane Borges

But when you love someone dearly, you allow their truth to take precedence over yours.

Her customised pair of closed heels had been styled from pure leather by the famed Chinese shoemaker Charlie Bhang, of S Bhang & Company in Colaba.

No commas should be there

Inconsistent

Slightly sudden

this, Pedro, a

Merlyn

Coleen Ferreira,

Love her

sorpotel and mutton xacuti

The couple didn’t realise when the forty-day abstinence from sex extended to indefinite physical asceticism. Once that happened, neither party made the first move, shamed mostly by age—a sagacious reminder of the carnal tidings of their youth.

She remembered how Michael had once lovingly called her ‘my Helen’. Today, her nicknames oscillated between devil, fool, monster, and sometimes just Merlyn. None of them reminded her of the actress.

hair. They were both exhausted by the ravages of love.

Mario Lawrence. His father David had

His parents were protective of him, and but naturally. Mario’s birth had been nothing short of a miracle.

David was a victim of circumstances, both good and bad. Orphaned as a child, twelve-year-old David had come to Bombay from the village of Parra in Goa with just ten annas in hand. He

Like mess baaris of kolkata

Michael, whose classroom was two floors above Mario’s, scampered down to get the boy so that he could take him home safely. To his luck,

The bell at the Church of Our Lady of Hope swung slowly, ringing a sound so beautiful that those who heard it wouldn’t forget it for aeons. It had music, it had rhythm and it had strength. It had everything a church bell could boast of; such was the sway of the enormous clapper that when it struck the rim of its brass container, its thud pervaded through all of Cavel in a divine, ceremonious hum.

Marlene D’Silva

Thelma D’Costa was

V jane austen

Meanwhile, Ellena Gomes was

cho add’do

Lester was devastatingly handsome and nobody in the hall could deny this. He was broad-shouldered, with the bulk of his chest, chiselled arms and slim waist revealed from within his fitted turtleneck shirt, making him look nothing short of a Greek God. The good looks were an added bonus, especially the pointed nose that gave his face the

Years could roll by, and you’d have done ten million different things to keep yourself from thinking, and yet, the mind would remember that moment when your life fell apart and crushed you whole. Then one day, while lying on your bed, the fan whirring above you in circles, you’d try and dredge up that old feeling, simply out of boredom, but find you couldn’t. Joe was almost there. Maybe.

in the area, generously parting with trivia on Cavel in some dear

hope that the residents would feel the same pride she did in being associated with this quaint locality.

Ellena got so tired of this failed pursuit of love that she eventually decided against marrying; she couldn’t think of allowing anybody else into the space she had once carved out for this man.

The force of the water was so abysmal during the summer months that if you turned on the taps, tiny drops would beat languidly into the hungry steel buckets creating a lazy rhythm that brought joy to no one.

But I absolutely hate the winters there. People get so excited about white Christmases. I used to be that way too. But nobody tells you how lonely it can get. Also, to

The maid doesn’t charge me for her work, and I don’t charge her for mine. It works well for both of us.

talking about. Since you have burnt my previous letter, I am sending a copy of that too. Please go back to it and highlight what part seemed offensive and ‘snarky’. We can discuss it in the next letter.

P.S. Do you know that the average life of a butterfly is approximately one month? I didn’t. I learned it the hard way.

But in Mario’s life, there had been two centres—his art and his heart—and both of them were so close to each other that he possibly mistook them as being one significant whole. And so, when he lost one, he lost everything, including his universe.

Suleman

Botawala Chambers on Sir Pherozeshah Mehta Road, Fort.

most Goan Catholics in the city were oblivious to the ‘H’ in Andheri, just as they were to the ‘Ra’ in Bandra, choosing to call the suburb Bandruh.

Omly imdicator of tje tomeline

neighbourhood, especially at the foot of the stairs of 185,

Placed in a plywood coffin in a grey-striped suit that he had had made in the prime of his youth when he performed only for Bombay’s glitziest, Benjamin alias Benji alias Banjo Man shared no resemblance to the evil and ugly soul that he had been yesterday. He looked peaceful. But if you looked closely, you’d notice that his lips had a faint curl to them from the shock of dying, as if even to him, death had come by surprise.

Ewwww

They were decked in gold jewellery and dressed in the traditional pano bhaju, the Goan outfit comprising a long garment wrapped like a sarong (pano) and worn with a loose gold-embroidered blouse (bhaju) and a stole called tuvalo in Konkani.

Im fem the other end of this stry

There was another reason he held on to this home so steadfastly. Every person he had loved—his parents, his childhood sweetheart, his best friend, his wife—had been connected to this building in some way or the other. He could feel the residual energy of their souls, the lingering of their warmth and conversations within the confines of Bosco’s walls. It brought him comfort when everything else around him seemed to be crumbling.

Repeated

You don’t want to burn the tongue that has been kind to you,’ Lorna had advised in Konkani. The pan sizzled as Ellena poured the oil, rather

‘Nothing lasts forever, baby, but it also depends on what your forever is. Is it a day? Is it a month? Is it a year? We make our own forevers.’