Dahanu Road: A novel Read Free Page B

careful,” he would say, as sparkly green leaves fell on him, “your strength is making the trees tremble.”
    But the name had meant something else to Zairos when his Navjote ceremony was performed. On the day of his initiation into the Zoroastrian faith, the head priest, in a white robe and prayer cap to match, admonished the nine-year-old Zairos for using that name, even if it was in jest with his friends.
    “Alexander is an enemy of the Zoroastrians,” said the priest. “He murdered dasturs like myself and destroyed our holy scriptures.”
    Shapur Irani was quick to knock some sense into the priest.
    “By walking the farm with his head held high, Zairos is reclaiming what Alexander stole from us,” he said. “That is a sign of greatness.”
    Then he bent down and placed his hand on Zairos’ head.
    “Remember, it is our enemies who make us conquer fear.”

    Shapur Irani’s eyes were closed.
    Even though he was ninety now, he was still a big man. Over six feet five, he did not have the hunched look of a person who carried his ninety years in a dhobi sack on his head. He had his teeth, his strong legs and bushy eyebrows, the hair on his chest was white and long, and he shaved every morning at five, even though he never went anywhere.
    “Pa,” said Zairos as he sat on the porch steps.
    Shapur Irani did not respond. His eyes were still closed and his lips revealed the faintest quiver, a ghost language of sorts, which only the dead could decipher. Zairos stared at his grandfather’s thick head of hair—slicked back and silver.
    “Pa,” he said again.
    Shapur Irani opened his eyes slowly. If there was one thing that unnerved him, it was light. He did not want the light of the sun to gain entry through his eyes and illuminate the parts of him that were dead and gone. “To look at the past,” he once told Zairos, “is like shining a flashlight on a dead body.”
    Zairos heard the familiar rattle of cup and saucer. His tea arrived magically, as it always did. Lakhu, the male servant who had served his grandfather for years, had strange powers. Perhaps Lakhu heard the cracking of pebbles under Zairos’ feet as he walked to the bungalow each morning, and he took it as a sign to boil the tea. It did not matter how Lakhu knew that Zairos was coming. He succeeded in not making Zairos wait for more than a minute.
    Zairos took a sip and relished the taste of Brooke Bond, mint, cardamom, and ginger. Ants crawled around his grandfather’s feet carrying biscuit crumbs on their backs.
    “It’s time you visit them,” said Shapur Irani.
    He was talking about his chickoo trees. They were his children, just as real, and loved, as his three sons, Khodi, Sohrab, and Aspi. Their breathing had kept him alive all these years. Every morning he walked through his fifty-acre farm, with gusto, without a cane, to let them know he was still around. He wanted Zairos to do the same.
    “Go meet them,” said Shapur Irani.
    When the last of the ginger tea was gone, Zairos walked across the gravel and into the farm. The branches brushed against his arm and left their mark. Each day it was a new scratch or two, sometimes on the forearm, sometimes on the wrist, always gentle.
    Zairos recalled that the chickoo had been brought to India in the mid-1500s by the Portuguese, and it continued to thrive in its new home long after the invaders had gone. But when Zairos was little, his father had told him that a Mexican gnome named Rose—called that because he had a deformed ear shaped like the flower—walked all the way from Mexico to Dahanu with a chickoo in his hand and, upon arrival, dug a hole and buried the shiny black diamond seed of a chickoo, and himself, in the earth. That was why chickoo trees did not grow as tall as pine trees. They had to restrict their height in deference to the gnome. When Zairos asked his father why the gnome walked all the way to India, Aspi Irani had replied, “He got lost.”
    Zairos went past the papaya