by Rahul Raina
“He has to learn,” said Oberoi. “Think of our ratings. Go on, Ramesh. Tell him what to say.”
“The answer is Mauna Kea, Rudi. Everest is the highest,” I repeated.
Of course the boy said Everest. He looked so confident, so young, so proud of himself.
And then the studio lights turned red.
“Wrong!” shouted Rudi. “Wrong!” The audience gasped. “He got the first question wrong! The first time ever! It is Mauna Kea. That is the tallest mountain, which is half in the sea. Wrong!”
“Rudi, go easy,” I said.
Rudi smiled, ignored me, oh how he loved this, and shouted again, “Wrong! You thought you could come here and make fun of us little Indians? You thought we would roll over and die? You think we’re pathetic? You’re pathetic! You useless duffer.” He was shaking with anger. “We’ll take a break, then we’ll be back with another challenger. Let us hope he is better than this one.”
The audience began to laugh.
The boy wept inconsolably. He looked up at the crowd, and his face was covered with tears.
The audience clapped and clapped and clapped.
Priya left the room and hurried into the studio to deal with the weeping and broken child.
Nine
Two months into the show. Our ratings were ticking upward. Washing machines were still being sold. Rudi’s life was still a mess.
On Facebook, I saw that Priya’s birthday was coming up. Conscientious young man that I am, I wished to buy her a present. But I had never bought anything before for a woman so high-class. What did they like?
I walked around a mall one Saturday in a state of confusion. On WhatsApp I tried to dance around the question. Did she like chocolates? Which clothes stores had she been to recently? What music did she listen to?
I must not have been so subtle, for finally she simply texted, Ramesh, if you want to buy me a birthday present, I like flowers.
So I bought flowers.
Then Rudi and I stumbled into another disaster.
We were being investigated.
Just another mess to add to everything else I had to deal with.
How did I hear about it at first? I heard whispers of phone calls to Rudi’s old classmates. I received an email from some Central Bureau of Investigation underling asking for my assistance, then an urgent phone call, then a letter, full of stamps, signatures, and angry capitalizations, all of which I ignored.
I thought it was some crank, maybe a journalist, or a scam, or somebody jealous about Rudi’s success, trying to get hush money.
It wasn’t.
Her name was Inspector Anjali Bhatnagar, and she was a senior investigator at the Central Bureau of Investigation (Education Division). She had seen us on television, had looked up the educational records of one Rudraksh Saxena and been extremely puzzled.
Here was a boy who had formerly been somewhat stupid. Poor tenth-class results, no extracurricular activities, unimpressive pre-examinations record, and here he was, the Topper! How had that happened? I could just imagine her at her computer, Google and administrative records at the ready, rubbing her hands together as the details of Rudi’s life came into clearer focus. This was the sort of thing she had gone into public service to stop. Or maybe—I hoped—she just wanted a payoff. The rich and idle and fair-skinned, people like Rudi, had always cheated and paid their way to the top. She must have known that no one woman could stop that.
Next she went to Rudi’s parents, and they phoned him, panicked. He didn’t care, of course he didn’t; they were nothing to him now, just a link to a past he pretended had never existed.
Then she turned up at the studio, in a dark suit instead of the usual khaki uniform, definitely from money, and she demanded—demanded!—to speak to Rudi. She had some official-looking summons that she waved at us. We weren’t rich enough yet to laugh in her face. I hovered in the background of his dressing room, trying to look inconspicuous and subaltern. I mumbled out the word “manager” when Bhatnagar glared in my direction.
She was trouble, you could tell straightaway, from the way she held herself, the way she glared at Rudi, no pleasantries, no praise, none of the “I saw your Bournvita advert the other day” we got from everyone else. He was just another spoiled rich boy to her, rather than the fount of all knowledge. She was one of those true believers in the law, one of the Central Bureau people who were totally incorruptible, completely resistant to government pressure—and that was something so unlikely it was like an election without ballot-stuffing. Unbelievable.
She was one of those clever people who didn’t realize the law was just what rich people wanted it to be.
Rudi sat in the dressing room, slurping and flicking his way through Frappuccino and Tinder. He was taking the meeting too casually. His brain had become warped by too much money, too much everything, too easily. This woman could destroy him. She presented a greater danger than anything we’d faced. I needed to tell him, signal to him somehow.
“How did you prepare for the All Indias?” she said.
“Worked,” said Rudi. I texted him, all capitals. DON’T FUCK THIS UP, DO YOU KNOW WHAT SHE CAN DO TO US?
“Who were your tutors?”
“I’m naturally intelligent,” he said. He looked up from his phone and mouthed the word “whatever” at me. I would have laughed if I hadn’t been so nervous.
“Your parents didn’t allow me to see their financials. Is there a reason for that?”
I needed to get Rudi out of there. I was shaking with worry. “You’re needed in the studio,” I said loudly, but no use. He plunged on.
“They hate you, probably,” he said.
At this Anjali Bhatnagar took a deep breath. “My God!” she exclaimed, unable to hold her anger. She was a senior investigator at the Central Bureau of Investigation. You didn’t fuck with the CBI. People cried in front of her, spilled their guts. She knew no masters but the Indian people.
“If you wanted a date, all you had to do was ask. I would have said yes,” Rudi said, swiping away on his phone.
“Date?” she said. Rudi’s smile lit up his face, the first in days. I could not believe he was joking, in front of this woman who had the power to destroy everything we’d built together.
“Ramesh, see what my diary is like next year.”
She kept her composure. She tucked free strands of hair behind her ears. “I am going to get you,” she said.
“In bed?” Rudi asked.
It wasn’t even a good line. That upset me even more. I wanted to scream in his face: this is my future you’re destroying, for a stupid, witless joke. I won’t lie. I thought of Priya. I thought of a little farmhouse somewhere, with a bunch of kids.
“I got Malhotra. I got Fernandez. I am going to take you down,” Bhatnagar said softly. “I will never stop.” You could tell she wouldn’t.
“Am I supposed to care?” said Rudi, inspecting his fingernails. “Because I don’t.”
She left without another word.
“Man, what a set of knockers on that one,” said Rudi, smirking like a schoolboy. He expected me to smile along, the way everyone else around him did these days.
“What insolence!” I said. I was angry. “You can’t treat a woman that way. Your elder, somebody with that much power! Anyone! Rudraksh!”
“Whatever, dude,” said Rudi.
I tell you, in this country respecting women is only for temples, and for rich aunts with heart conditions.
Rudi rummaged around in his Armani suit, pulled out a bag of something, white powder, I didn’t want to know. He said, “Fuck off.” So I did. I should have stayed around. I should have stopped him. But I didn’t.
A few days later, we got our official summons, all the forms present and correct. I made our lawyers fire off a holding letter, grease some wheels, delay things, but we couldn’t avoid it forever.
Another bloody complication. You think you’re just faking exams for rich people, nice and simple, just the standard corruption of the mo
ral values we Indians hold dear to our hearts, and then all this happens.
Priya and I were beginning to have regular lunches, and later that week, over a sandwich in the canteen, she asked me, “Do you know who Anjali Bhatnagar is?”
I opened my mouth and gulped air.
“How did you know about her?” I asked.
“I’m good at my job,” she said.
She placed her cell phone in front of me. Page after page of Anjali Bhatnagar, a fan forum, Photoshopped deepfakes on Google Images, Facebook groups, news conferences where she told corrupt politicians she was going to get them and their kids, videos of her discussing anti-corruption initiatives at the Jaipur literary festival, watched by a crowd of adoring whites, interviews where she tore into other guests. India is the only country in the world where you get both sides of an issue, six, eight people, on TV and make them fight each other until their guts are on the floor. It is our great contribution to world culture, that and the bhangra song they play at gora weddings.
“Every second person on the news is the son or cousin or mistress of a neta. You have to be very careful who you mess with,” Priya said. “I would not want a woman that tenacious after me.”
You don’t take out the rich and connected without coming to some harm. I read the articles about Bhatnagar’s career, and how she had suffered. She had been passed over for promotions and received death threats. These stories, leaked from inside the CBI, littered the press. Anonymous editorials from government newspapers called for her to be sacked.
She was the last person in the world we wanted after us. She got results. She had taken down rich, connected people, and now I was guessing she was out for blood and her career was on the line, and that really was frightening. Rudi, a fucking Topper, a TV star, would be the catch of a lifetime.
“We’re fucked,” I said.
Priya looked at me and tilted her head to one side. “Only if you did something wrong,” she said.
I couldn’t say a word.
We had become closer lately and I often used silence to build a wall between us. Like a parent, or a producer, she tried to use it to get me to talk. But I said nothing.
On, on, on it stretched, that silence, like the timeless eons before the world was created, a primordial cosmic silence, leaking into a canteen serving tandoori paella.
“You can talk to me, you know,” she said. “I know you are not like the rest of them.”
But I was. Oh, you can convince yourself you’ve only acted out of poverty and desperation, but only for so long, and so I still couldn’t say anything.
“Please, Ramesh,” she said, and took my hand. “If something happened, you can say. I won’t tell anyone. You can trust me. I understand.”
I looked down at her hand in mine.
The bell rang for the end of lunch, and a hundred employees stood up together in a communal groan. I did the thing I least wanted to. I took my hand from hers.
She looked disappointed for a split second, and then quickly began to gather her things. I mumbled some excuse and left. I had not betrayed myself, but I knew I had to make it up to her somehow.
I had to ask myself what I wanted.
I wanted her. I didn’t want riches without end, I’d realized. Only real pricks want that stuff—the cars, the cash, the fame. What an un-Indian sentiment, what an Instagrammable sentiment; I was starting to feel more like that every day.
So when I got home from work that evening, I asked her out. By text.
I waited nervously for her reply, like a kid after the All Indias—well, the kids whose parents haven’t hired me.
She said yes. Three little letters.
When I met Priya again, the lunch incident had been forgotten.
We met in a mall, on the weekend, like American teenagers courting in a film.
I managed to slip away from Rudi that Saturday, for a few precious hours. An escape from tax forms, legal documents, the recent threat of investigation hanging over us, from the confused mess of his new life, the hangers-on, the money, everything.
I walked into the coffee shop, and there she was, at the far end, in jeans and a knitted sweater. I sat down. I didn’t know how to start.
“So,” I said.
“So,” she said.
I was considering launching into a fascinating discussion about the structure of Rudi’s monologues when a girl behind us shouted out, “He is my boyfriend, everyone has them, Daddy.” My eyes snapped onto Priya’s, and hers onto mine, and then we looked away.
“Everyone has them now,” the girl said again, filling the room with her voice. The father harrumphed that it was a Western thing, only low-class Indians did it.
Priya’s eyebrows moved up and down as she sipped at her coffee, and I tried not to laugh. The father and daughter fought, shouted, without a care. In America, they would be on camera for the world to see, but here people simply eavesdropped.
Then I started to really shake with laughter and I felt a sharp sensation. I looked down at my thigh, and there was Priya’s hand, pinching the flesh above my knee. She winked at me. I winked back. Then I did the same to her. Soon our thighs were stinging with pain and we only stopped when we were both breathless with exertion and a few uncles at the next table started making tutting noises.
So we started talking, about anything and everything. Whatever pretense we had concocted was forgotten.
We talked about our parents.
“Civil servants,” she said. “Honest, can you believe? Only a government pension to live on. I have an uncle who was in the police. Honest too. No money. I send them all a little every month.”
“Not civil servants,” I said. “Just my father. Not honest. No uncles. No one at all. Also no money. I don’t send him anything every month. In fact I haven’t seen him in seven years.”
“What about your mother?” she said. Nobody ever asked about my mother.
“Died giving birth to me,” I said. Priya went quiet, replicating my silence this time, and placed her hand over mine. I squeezed it back and broke the silence. “Tell me more about this absurd honest family of yours.”
I wondered if I would ever meet them. What would they think of me? Rude, uncultured, north Indian—all synonyms, really. They would be elegant, refined, like their daughter. I was getting ahead of myself, like a mother who sees her son share a two-word conversation with a girl at temple and starts to measure the drapes, calculate the dowry, name the children, and schedule the childminding.
“You know, they built a house, got cheated by developers, and now I give them money every month, and whenever I’m not working I feel guilty. They believed in socialism, that they were building a new India, a better country full of equal people,” she said.
“I knew someone like that,” I replied.
I was about to tell her about Claire, the whole misery and heartache, but the silence choked me up again, and then my phone rang.
Rudi.
“Forget him for just one day,” Priya said, and took the phone from my hand and put it back in my pocket.
We left the café, got into a cab, and went shopping on the other side of Delhi, an hour of comfortable silences, browsing the mall together, our bodies close, our knees touching, our arms brushing against each other as I held open doors, the rose scent of her hair in my nose and the sparkle of her earrings catching my eye.
When it grew dark, I knew I had to get back to Rudi. My phone had a dozen missed calls.
“Oh God, leave me alone for just one day, boss,” I said when I called him back.
Rudi went on a rant. A nice stream of insults for me.
I could imagine him, sitting in the dark, his face hollow with lack of sleep. I hung up as quickly as I could.
“I have to get back,” I said to Priya. I made a very forward, Western-type move. I took her hand in mine. “This has been wonderful.”
Then she made an even more forward, Western-type move.
She got very close to me, moved her hand to
the side of my face, pulled me to her, and kissed me.
“We have to do this again soon,” she said.
I let go of her with extreme reluctance. As I left, I kept looking over my shoulder at her. She waved me off, and mouthed the words “Hurry, hurry.”
She was the best thing that had happened to me for a long, long time.
I felt sorry for Rudi.
We were three months into the show. It was all too easy for him. Three hours of hanging around a studio every night, maybe two ad campaigns a week, two hours each for fifteen lakh. It went to his head.
He stopped going to the studio for production meetings, said he would only turn up a few hours before air, that he was a professional now.
I was his only friend. Who else did he have? But I was trying to spend more time with Priya.
He reconnected with his school friends who had ignored him before, who now went to Delhi University and turned up on Fridays to our flat when they wanted quick entry into a club. They would mill around him like flies on shit, going on and on about Grey Goose vodka and where they wanted to do their master’s and the best club nights in Delhi.
One particular Friday, one of his hangers-on, Shivansh, sidled up to me and said, “Who are you?” Then Shalini, she of the kohl eyes and henna tattoos on her inside wrist, said, “How did you meet Rudi? You’re his servant, right?”
We had met before, of course, and we would repeat this every Friday. Maybe they were being cruel, maybe the drugs had zapped their brains, maybe they were practicing their barbs for middle-aged married life.
Children.
Rich kids, Instagram kids, Dubai-educated American-accent kids, kids who were rappers, up-and-comers, my-name’s-Purana-Killa kids, here’s-my-SoundCloud kids, they insulted me when my back was turned, as if I couldn’t tell. Imagine all the suffering I had undergone, the work I had done, the money I had made, to be mewled at in half-lit clubs by chutiyas who frequented delis, chocolateries, and pan-European fusion eateries.
We were all the same in the dark anyway—why did it make so much difference?
On these nights in the club, Rudi would saunter back to our booth with two white girls on his arms, the ultimate status symbols, better than the Bollinger that Nigerians pour over their heads. With him back in our presence, everyone would have to be nice to me again.