The Moors Last Sigh

rag, with which he would bandage my hands, before pointing to his hairy chin. ‘Right there, baba,’ he commanded. ‘Land your super bomb.’ This was how we discovered that my crippled right was a hand to be reckoned with, a torpedo, a fist of fists. Once a week I slugged Lamba as hard as I could, and at first his toothless smile never faltered. ‘Bas?’ he taunted me. ‘That feather-tickle only? That I can get from my parrot buddy here.’ After a time, however, he stopped grinning. He still presented his chin, but now I could see him bracing himself for the blow, calling up his old professional reserves … on my ninth birthday I took my swing and Totah rose noisily into the air as the chowkidar fell to earth.
    ‘Mashed White Elephants!’ screeched the parrot. I ran for the garden hose. I had knocked poor Lamba cold.
    When he revived he turned down the corners of his mouth in impressed respect, then sat up and prodded at his bleeding gums. ‘Shot, baba,’ he praised me. ‘Now it is time to start learning.’
    We hung a rice-filled bolster from the branch of a plane-tree and after Dilly Hormuz had finished her unforgettable lessons, Lambajan gave me his. For the next eight years, we sparred. He taught me strategy, what would have been called ringcraft if there had been a ring. He sharpened my positional sense and above all my defence. ‘Don’t expect you’ll never get hit, baba, and even with that fist you can’t punch if you’re hearing tweet-tweets.’ Lambajan was a coach of all-too-plainly reduced mobility; but with what herculean determination he strove to shrug off his handicap! When we worked out he would cast aside his crutch and bounce around like a human pogo-stick.
    As I grew older, so my weapon increased in might. I found myself having to hold back, to pull my punches. I did not want to knock Lambajan out too often, or too violently. In my mind’s eye I saw an image of a chowkidar grown punchy, slurring his words and forgetting my name, and it made me reduce the force of my blows.
    By the time Miss Jaya and I went to Zaveri Bazaar I had become expert enough for Lambajan to whisper, ‘Baba, if you want some action for real, just say one little word.’ This was thrilling, terrifying. Was I up to this? My punchbag did not hit back, after all, and Lambajan was a sparring partner of long familiarity. What if a biped opponent, made of flesh-and-blood rather than rice-and-sackcloth, danced two-legged circles round me and beat me black-and-blue? ‘Your fist is ready,’ said Lambajan, shrugging. ‘But about your heart, I cannot say.’
    And so, out of bloody-mindedness, I had said the word, and we went for the first time, into those Bombay Central alleys that have no name. Lamba introduced me simply as ‘The Moor’, and because I came with him there was less contempt than I had expected. But when he told them I was a new fighter of seventeen-plus the guffaws began, because it was obvious to all the onlookers that I was a man in his thirties who was beginning to go grey, I must be guy on his last legs that one-legged Lamba was training as a favour. But as well as taunts there were raised voices in misplaced admiration. ‘Maybe he is good,’ these voices said, ‘because he is still pretty after so many years.’ Then they brought out my opponent, a loose-haired Sikh salah at least as big as me, and mentioned casually that even though this bucko had just turned twenty he had murdered two men in such bouts already and was on the run from the law. I felt my nerve going then, and looked towards Lambajan, but he just nodded quietly and spat on his right wrist. So I spat on mine and walked towards the murderer. He came straight at me, brimming with confidence, because he thought he held a fourteen-year advantage and would be able to put away this old-timer pronto. I thought about the rice bolster and let fly. The first time I touched him he went down and stayed there for a lot longer than the count of ten. As for me, even after that single blow I was visited by an asthmatic attack of gasps and tears so severe that in spite of my victory I began to doubt whether I had a future in this line of work. Lambajan pooh-poohed such uncertainties, ‘Just a little virgin nerves,’ he assured me on the way home. ‘I have seen many boys have fits and fall down frothing after their first time, win or lose. You don’t know what goods you got there, baba,’ he added delightedly. ‘Not only a pile