The Haunting of Bobby Bangash (Ongoing)

Casanova in the Capital

The ghost of Bobby Bangash sat staring moodily into the distance. Below him the city was still asleep, blanketed in a cool thin mist. He heard a crow cawing somewhere in the distance. "Too many crows in these damned cities", his father used to say darkly, "not a good omen, I tell you. Sure sign of disaster, of death." Dad had some strange ideas, thought Bobby. Perhaps he was right; I mean, I did die. But there wasn't any crow around as I was dying... or was there? He thought hard but couldn't remember.

As he sat there on the terrace of a 40-storeyed building, a long forgotten feeling enveloped him. He couldn't understand it at first. It crept up his ghostly spine and made him want to smile and cry at the same time. After a long long time, Bobby was feeling nostalgic. It took him by surprise, for he never was a sentimental man – alive or dead. When was the last time he had sat like this, silent and alone, just listening and taking in everything around him? Counting his 51 "alive" years and 12 "dead" years, well, never. He had always thought of himself as a practical, no-nonsense man. Emotions and reminiscing were the crutches of fools, he believed. And Bobby had been far from a fool.

Till he had gone ahead and made the most foolish mistake of his life, that is.

His pre-blunder days had been fun. He'd had a normal middle-class upbringing – normal school, Mum helping with homework (taking tuitions from an outsider was considered almost a sin and certainly a shame), Dad taking them out once every two months for a movie or a picnic in a garden. They had never been on "holiday" – maybe once to Mahabaleshwar but nowhere else. Holidays meant visiting relatives and having them over for summer.

Being an only child, he was a little spoilt, to be honest. Early on in life Bobby had learned to get what he wanted one way or another. His motto in the early days had been "ghee agar seedhi ungli se na nikle, toh ungli tedhi karni chahiye". It had worked well for him too. Before he knew it, it had become a habit and then a part of his personality. Later in fact, he resorted to keeping his ungli tedhi right from the beginning; saved loads of time. The day after completing his Master's Degree in Psychology (and topping the university no less!), he threw all his study notes away, hugged his stunned parents goodbye, packed his brand new camera (a gift from his parents the previous day for his spectacular result) and took a one-way ticket to Delhi to become a photographer. He got rid of his middle-class-good-boy looks too. He wasn't exactly handsome... but there was something attractive about his face nevertheless. With shoulder length noodly hair, a not-so-charming French beard and brand new clothes that had then carefully been torn and made to look dirty (that was how artists dressed), he looked every bit like the loafer he had set out to become.

Obviously, he was a great success in the so-called "intellectual" and Soho circles of New Delhi. Women swarmed around him like flies on a pile of dog poop (that's what he looked like in those terrible clothes and he knew it). It made for a wonderful contrast – pretty women, single and married, bleached till they all looked white-washed with their perfectly plucked eyebrows and manicured claws, wearing the littlest possible and making sure the little that was covered would be exposed at the right times, and Bobby, the Bombay boy whose only alluring quality perhaps was his eyes that twinkled with intelligence and a hidden humour, and who spoke English very well. The ladies loved him for being so exotically desi. The men loved him for keeping their wives and girlfriends busy while they hunted for 'fairer pastures'. Bobby loved them all for providing him with excellent food and wine everyday at no extra cost.

For the first couple of weeks, Bobby stayed at a cheap hotel and survived on just one meal per day to save the money he had stolen from his father. Then he chanced upon his first prey – a 30-something woman, wife of a Delhi High Court judge, whom he found arguing outside a photography studio. Her arms were full of colourful clothes, still on the hangers, and a big vanity box. She was arguing with the photographer who, it seemed, was doing his best to run away. A few moments of eavesdropping and Bobby understood what the problem was. The lady (not remotely beautiful but not hideously ugly either) wanted a few... ahem... enticing photographs of herself to be taken in the various outfits she was carrying. The photographer refused to shoot in his studio saying he didn't do "that" kind of photography. Bobby smiled. Now was his chance.