by Nillu Nasser
Zahid continued, enjoying his moment of power. “Look at my men here. So obedient. They know which side their bread is buttered. They’re no upstarts. How unfair is it to them that the old fool Janghir—” He spat in the sand “—gives you two handouts? What does it say for sane business practice? No, no, not on my watch. It’s time to teach you two a lesson. Let’s see if Janghir wants you at his store once we’ve finished with you.”
Akash struggled against his captor, pausing, gathering his strength and pushing forwards, to no avail. The man had an iron grip. The other man, heavy-set and sneering, straddled Tariq where he lay, positioning his weight on his friend’s already heaving chest so he had no hope of escape. Tariq’s cough rocked him with vengeance, and his face contorted as he tried to fill his lungs with air. Akash looked on, panic rising, wondering what Zahid had in store for them, wishing that he had his sack of belongings at hand, seeing in his mind’s eye the blunt shaving blade they could have used to defend themselves.
“Stay calm, bhai. It’ll be okay,” said Akash, desperation seeping into his words.
Tariq’s eyelids fluttered open, a hunted animal in the grip of a larger beast.
“It won’t be okay,” said Zahid. With his man still atop Tariq, crushing his chest, he began a rhythmic kick with his laced-up shoe, until the laces flew through the air, tapered ribbons of death, back and forth, back and forth. The sound of cracked bone, loose teeth. Tariq made no sounds, and Akash realised it was his own voice that cried out, insulting first, then begging.
“Bloodthirsty arseholes, you’re like a pack of wolves!”
“Not his head!”
“Please, hurt me, hurt me. I’ll do anything.”
Zahid halted his assault. “You’ll be my bitch from now on?”
Akash bit his tongue until he tasted blood.
“I thought not.” He wiped the sweat from his forehead. “Your turn,” he said to the brute on Tariq’s chest. The man clambered to his feet, then changed his mind, dropping to his knees in the cold sands which cradled Tariq as he inflicted hardened knuckles at Tariq’s head. Grains of sand dispersed through the air until Tariq’s eyebrows were matted with it. It mingled with blood from cuts, gooey pearls of crimson on ashen skin illuminated by the rising moon.
Tariq went limp.
“Oh shit,” said Zahid. He stepped aside, motioning for Tariq’s aggressor to do the same. Akash’s captor released his hold ever so slightly. It was enough. Akash tugged his arms, lashed out with an open palm, so his jagged fingernails caught the bruiser’s eye. The man yelped, disarmed, allowing Akash to disentangle his leg and launch himself at Tariq.
Akash fell to his knees beside his friend, ignoring the scuffling behind him. The wings of Tariq’s shirt remained open, his chest frighteningly concave.
“Tariq? Brother?” Akash cupped his friend’s wet face in his hands. Elation flooded him for a brief moment when Tariq’s eyes opened a fraction. “It’ll be okay. I’ll get help. Janghir Saheb...”
“No.” His breathing was ragged and painful to hear. Blood oozed from his head. “They broke me...Sometimes we lose.”
“Don’t say that.” Akash’s throat felt like blades of glass. He couldn’t eject his words. “Don’t leave me alone.”
“Promise me—”
“I won’t promise you anything. I’m getting help.”
Tariq shuddered, and Akash wrapped his naked body around him, burying his face in the crook of Tariq’s neck as if they were lovers. When he drew back, he saw his friend’s light had already flickered out and nothing remained except for the broken shell of his body.
Akash sobbed, rocking in the sands with his precious cargo. After some time, he looked around, and realised the men had gone. He pulled on his trousers and found the discarded pictures of his son and the baby. He wandered in a daze, repeatedly turning to look at Tariq’s lifeless body. Eventually he stumbled across Janghir Saheb’s keys, the metal like ice in his palms. He placed them in his pocket.
He returned to Tariq, his heart an open wound, buttoned up his friend’s shirt with infinite care, and found his shirt on the dunes. He kissed his friend’s cool forehead, then used his own shirt to cover his face. He imagined Tariq waking then, spreading his limbs into a star shape underneath his blanket as he did each morning, but there was no life left to animate him.
“You’re too cruel!” he called out to the gods, under the sky that he and Tariq loved so much.
That night, he kept vigil next to his friend’s corpse, chasing off the yapping packs of dogs that approached. He ignored the rupees scattered in the sands. Notes fluttered away on the breeze like monochrome butterflies. Coins bored into the sands to be found later by strangers. None of it mattered. Akash wrapped the cold and loneliness around him until deathly fingers embraced him. Then, he scavenged for some dry wood. He rubbed the wood together, the task as familiar to him as Tariq’s gap-toothed grin, until there was enough friction to create an ember. He blew patiently on the wood and coaxed the sparks into a larger flame. A sombre procession brought him to the palm tree that had held him captive, mere feet away from where Tariq had suffered. He set the tree alight and was mesmerised by its orange glow, billowing smoke and crackling foliage. The fire kept him warm, a symbol of the life that had been lost, raging against the night sky and ominous moon.
Chapter 38
The time had come for fresh beginnings. It wasn’t that Arjun wanted to erase his mother, but he had begun to see the Red Room—where she and his father had spent so much time together, where she had died—as a tomb. That part of the house pained him, and he avoided it just as he avoided talking about his parents. Now he realised his failure to communicate with Muna had been driving a wedge between them and had even begun to taint his mother’s memory. She gazed at him with displeasure whenever he passed her garlanded portrait in the living room, her almond eyes hard and unrelenting.
He had taken a few days off from the restaurant to clear his head, leaving the business in the capable hands of his right-hand man, although he had already begun to feel the lack of a woman’s touch there. It was important to him to white wash the Red Room himself, to purify what had happened there. Maybe then he could move on.
Arjun pushed the bed, side tables and the desk into the middle of the room, covering them with a dust sheet. He climbed the ladder, opened the tin of paint and spread thick white emulsion onto the walls. The claret-red shone through, and he knew he would need to apply multiple layers for it to be gone. He sighed, but eventually the monotony of the labour became comforting.
He could hear the faint echo of the baby’s cries upstairs. She had been missing her naps and Muna had grown tetchy. Geeta helped, but it hurt Muna when the maid was able to settle Leela, so she had become possessive and frustrated. The cries grew louder. A rattle at the door, and Muna stepped into the room. Leela gurgled and smiled at her father. Muna looked from one to another, and bit her lip. Tears threatened to spill.
“Can you take Leela for a minute? I need the bathroom.”
Arjun climbed down off the ladder and set down his paintbrush. “Sure.” He slipped into the ensuite to wash his hands, and then held out his hands to his daughter. She tumbled into them. Muna harrumphed and pushed past him into the bathroom, locking the door. He heard her sit down on the seat. She turned on the tap, and behind the door he thought he heard her crying. She emerged a few minutes later, red-eyed and downcast, watching him throw their chuckling daughter into the air.
“How about you take some time for yourself tonight? Meet with friends, go for a meal? I’ll look after Leela. I don’t need to be at the restaurant until Thursday.”
She hesitated. “I’m too tired to talk to anyone.”
“Then close the door and sleep, have a bath.”
“I need to get out for a couple of hours. These walls are driving me crazy.”
“So go out. I’ll get Rajesh to drive you anywhere you want.”
“That would be nice.”
“D
o it then.”
“Thank you.” She smiled, buoyed by the thought of a night without the baby. “How do you feel? It must be strange being in here. It looks strange in white. Maa was so stylish, she would find this boring.”
Arjun watched as she fussed over the sheets covering the furniture, her heavy plait swinging behind her. A yellow patch of curdled milk from the baby sat on her shoulder. Once it would have repulsed him; now it made him love her even more. It reminded him of how much she gave of herself to Leela and to him.
“What’s this?” said Muna.
She had opened a desk drawer to stack its contents neatly: a pad of paper, envelopes, a few postcards from his mother’s trip to America many years ago. The police had searched in here after his mother’s death and hadn’t thought to return the items to their proper place, so now Muna rearranged what she found. She shuffled through glossy rectangles of his mother’s favourite places from her US travels: Boston Library, a misty San Francisco, Broadway. She then coaxed out a small blue envelope from it that had half-disappeared into the join of the drawer. It had been inscribed with the big S impression his mother liked to use. Muna swung around to Arjun, her eyes wide.
“It’s for you.”
There, in his mother’s loopy handwriting—as if even the mere act of forming the letters possessed an innate freedom—was Arjun’s name. Muna offered him the letter and then reached out her arms for the baby.
Arjun trembled as his slid his finger across the seal, bitter-sweet in the knowledge that this was most likely her final instruction to him, her final comfort. It was everything and not enough at once. He heard his mother’s voice in his head, not his own.
My son,
I didn’t want to leave you so soon, but I am happy that you aren’t alone, that you have Muna, Leela and your father. When you find this letter, you will know that it was my decision, and that your father comforted me in a lonely moment. It was not a burden I could ever have asked of you. You are everything to me, so why would I cause you pain?
I think it would bring you and your father both comfort to reconcile with each other. His absence was, after all, my fault. I know better than most, that there’s a wound that comes from secrets.
Please forgive me for my mistakes. If I can ask anything from beyond the grave, it is this: live bravely. I know that you’ll go on to do wonderful things. Know that you were always the most important thing in my life, and that I am only gone because my body demanded it.
Maa.
Tears sped down Arjun’s face as he read. He folded the letter carefully, slipped it back into its envelope, and rubbed his fingers across the imprint of his mother’s initial. Then he gathered his wife to him, with the baby held tenderly between them. He couldn’t put it off any longer: he had to find his father.
In the early hours of the morning, Akash stirred from his uneasy slumber. Dawn had broken across the city, blanketing it in a red haze, bringing with it the full horrors of the night before. In front of him, the tree stump still smoked. Akash staggered to his feet, his skin clammy from the fever that had taken him in the night. Next to him, in perfect repose, lay his best friend. Tariq’s shirt rippled in the breeze, and if Akash squinted, he could almost confuse the rise and fall for breath.
But that would be a lie. His friend was dead. Tariq’s words reverberated through his skull. Sometimes we win, sometimes we lose. A sob caught in his throat. It was so unfair. Just when fortune had turned their way, when it looked like they could build something of their lives. He had tucked his shirt around Tariq’s upper body and used the weight of his friend to hold the shirt in place. Now, he peeled back the material covering Tariq’s face, and saw that his mouth had remained open and the blood had stopped flowing, making it difficult to close the orifice. He wept then with the passion of a child, for the blameless, hapless man, whose dignity had been stolen even in death.
After some time, when the waves of grief receded, Akash swallowed the needling pain in his throat and clenched his fists. Zahid and his henchmen had to pay. He owed Tariq that much. He knew who he must see, and yet he could not bring himself to abandon his friend’s body, not when he was all alone, defenceless even in death. The city stirred and Akash could linger no more, so he crouched next to Tariq and whispered in his ear.
“I’ll be back for you as soon as I can, bhai. You matter.”
Part of him thought that the dead could still hear the living, at least until burial. Akash considered finding items to shield Tariq from prying eyes, but the beach was bare except for litter, and passers-by could mistake him easily for a sleeping drunkard. He turned to leave, and then swivelled back, his tone gentle. “You made these past years worth living, my brother.”
He collected the fallen rupees he could find, some of which had been Tariq’s, then began a brisk walk to the main road to hail an auto rickshaw. Nobody would blink twice at a shirtless man of his ilk, but Akash knew the reason for it and his pain and anger weighed each step down. He climbed into the rickshaw, and held on as the driver, opaque eyes showing the tell-tale signs of cataracts, bumped along the potholes and wove with vigour through the growing traffic.
Thirty minutes later, Akash stood in front of the gloomy police station he had left a few weeks previously. No journalists waited outside this time. He thought how different death was for the famous, and how similar. He shuffled up the steps, his adrenalin spiking, suddenly unsure whether he could trust the woman whose help he needed. Inside, the grey plaster reminded him of the Tariq’s pallid complexion where he lay on the sands. He imagined cocooning Tariq’s body in a chrysalis to preserve him. A man’s voice startled him, tearing him away from his morbid thoughts.
“Can I help you?” Inquisitive eyes over a khaki uniform and handle-bar moustache.
“No.” He corrected himself. “I mean, yes. Inspector Fortes. Can I speak with her?”
“Do you have an appointment?”
“No, but I have information.”
He looked Akash up and down, taking in his state of undress. “Your name?”
“Akash Choudry.”
“Wait here.” The man strode away, into the recesses of the building.
Akash lowered himself onto a bench, his bare skin cool against an oak bench. He was tracing the circular patterns of the tree’s life cycle in the grain of the wood when Inspector Fortes arrived.
“Mr. Choudry?” Her angular face was rounded out by concern. She held out her hand to shake his. Akash returned the gesture, taking comfort from her firm grip.
“Thank you for seeing me.”
“Is everything okay?”
Such a simple question, and such a temptation to invent some fiction, to let the question float past as millions of people did on a daily basis, keeping their secrets for themselves. Except, Tariq was alone, and Tariq deserved justice, whatever the risk to Akash.
“My friend, Tariq.”
She furrowed her brow. “I remember. You were concerned he would worry about you.”
“He was killed last night.”
Inspector Fortes nodded as if this was the most normal thing in the world to say. “Follow me.”
Chapter 39
Only at art class could Jaya unleash her truest self. Here, she was not judged, regardless of what she put on the page or the quality of her interactions. She arrived early this week, knowing Firoz would always welcome her. He buzzed her in, and she travelled up in the elevator to the studio, her mind whirring like the keys on a grand piano being played by a virtuoso.
“It’s all ready?” said Firoz.
Jaya nodded.
“I’m glad, brave woman.”
That morning, she placed a poster in bright red lettering in the window at Tara, inviting Akash to meet her on Friday evening. The poster read:
To A,
if you see this,
meet me at dusk on Friday,
there where the flowers died,
J.
She knew how to play him. He was her husband, after al
l. It was her way of taking control, of testing him about the moments that haunted her most. Only then would she know if their marriage was worthy of a second chance.
She banished him from her mind as she helped Firoz set up for class, dotting easels around the place, setting out a bowl on the table and balancing the fruit there precariously for a still life session. Coconuts, guavas, bananas, mangos and grapes spilled out of the bowl. Then the click of heels behind her. She spun to see Firoz greeting a young woman in cobalt kitten heels.
Firoz opened his arms wide in a flamboyant gesture. “Welcome! This must be your first time?”
The woman nodded, creamy skin, flawless even under the unforgiving spotlights.
Firoz beamed. “I need to give the paint bottles a quick clean, but please, make yourself comfortable. Jaya is an old hand here. She can answer any questions. Why don’t you take the easel next to hers?” He wandered off, his pert bottom bobbing up and down in his yoga pants, toned from years of exercise despite his age and penchant for caramel ice cream.
The woman, perhaps young enough to be Jaya’s daughter, watched Firoz disappear, then turned to Jaya with a look of trepidation.
“Don’t worry, you’ll get used to him,” said Jaya. “I’ve been friends with Firoz ever since I started coming here. Come, how about those two?” She motioned to two easels on the far side of the room. “The glare from the windows isn’t too bad there.”
“Thank you,” said the woman. “It’s my first time away from the baby. I thought doing some art would relax me. But it’s been so long since I’ve done it, that I probably won’t be able to do it at all.”
“You’ll be fine,” said Jaya. “How old is your little one?”
“Eight months.”
“Beautiful.”
“Honestly? It’s tough. I don’t even know from one moment to the other if my breasts will cooperate. I’m feeding.” She laughed, and Jaya found herself warming to her. “I’m Muna.”