Pretty Vile Girl

by Rickie Khosla

  ‘Are you hopeful that the damage is minimal?’ Archana asked. She sounded objective, tired, anguished—all of those things.

  ‘I am always hopeful, bete. So should you.’

  Both parents were consoled by the man’s optimism.

  ‘Though…’ continued the doctor, ‘personally, I would advise you to find a way to move her to Lilavati or Breach Candy. Her chances will improve tremendously if she is at a private hospital.’

  Manjrekar and his wife quickly shot a look at each other before turning towards the doctor again. The kind man knew instantly what was going on in their minds. He had seen it a million times before—the grinding weight of helplessness on the shoulders of parents too poor to afford the best for their sick child.

  ‘But,’ he continued sympathetically, ‘don’t worry if that is not possible. We will do our best.’ With that, the doctor moved on to console the next set of hapless parents among dozens camped around the crowded hall.

  Later that night, sitting on the floor near the hospital entrance with her husband, Archana’s legendary fortitude, pounded relentlessly by circumstances for years, finally crumbled. There was no hysteria, just a silent acceptance of defeat—placid waving of the white flag.

  ‘There’s no point,’ Archana said quietly.

  ‘What?’ Manjrekar asked.

  ‘We should let her go in peace. What is the point in making her linger like this?’

  ‘How can you say that? We can…’

  ‘You can what?’ she cut him off. ‘Save her? We have no ability to save anything! Except, sickness perhaps, death, disability? Broken dreams. Exhaustion. Longing. We have managed to save all those aplenty, not much else.’

  ‘What is wrong with you?’ Manjrekar said.

  ‘I am just tired of saving things I don’t want.’ Archana sighed.

  ‘We are her parents. We are supposed to protect her!’

  She turned to look at him but kept quiet. Her forehead was deeply furrowed, as if debating whether to hold its tongue or let it all out. In the end, she decided to cross a threshold she never had before.

  ‘You are a Husband. A Father. A Son. A Policeman. You are supposed to be the Protector. Just how many of us have you managed to protect so far?’ she asked.

  Manjrekar was stunned. It was the ugliest truth about himself that he had ever heard anyone say on his face.

  The husband–wife sat in silence for a long time. The quiet was broken when Archana said, ‘Like I said, there’s no point. There is no point in saving or protecting what is already gone.’

  With that, she lay herself down on the concrete floor and went off to sleep. Manjrekar kept staring at nothing, right till the sun came up hours later.

  ‘How come you are always in Mumbai? Don’t they miss you in Delhi at all?’ Jazmeen asked derisively as she placed the serving bowls of Kashmiri dum aloo and yakhni near Karan. She was seated perpendicularly next to him at the dining table.

  Just like she used to with Arty once upon a time.

  Karan laughed as he licked his fingers clean and heaped some more of Jazmeen’s superlative offerings on to his plate. Then, he broke a fresh tandoori roti and began to devour his third helping. It was past 11:30 PM. He had had long meetings with half a dozen opposition MPs from Maharashtra since morning, followed by a secluded session with Lakhani late evening—and the entire day had whizzed by without as much as a decent meal.

  ‘Saran is starting to lose his patience with me, that’s for sure!’ he acknowledged. ‘Parliament session begins in two weeks.’

  ‘What about the Bill?’

  ‘Yes, it’s finally ready for presentation in both Houses, but…’

  Jazmeen looked at Karan, but he appeared to be putting all his focus on the food instead.

  ‘You know, Arty used to talk about your political ambitions sometimes,’ she said.

  ‘Really? What would he say?’

  ‘That you and your mother think alike. That she has groomed you for political leadership. That you will be Prime Minister someday,’ Jazmeen said as she watched him eat. ‘That kind of stuff.’

  Karan nodded in acknowledgement. His mouth was full so he didn’t say anything for a few seconds. He finished his mouthful at a leisurely pace, then licked all his fingers clean once again—even took time to flick off the food particles lodged inside the gaps of his teeth with his tongue, all the while looking at Jazmeen. Finally, he said, ‘Yes, someday…very soon.’

  Jazmeen’s gaze immediately turned serious. ‘Very soon?’

  Karan knew that he wasn’t completely ready to divulge the political machinations Lakhani and he had been up to. After all, he had not breathed a word of their scheme to even his mother yet. He had felt that there was no reason to do so until everything was in place. And yet, Karan felt differently about hiding his plan from Jazmeen. He had been grappling with a quaint urge to expose his big secret to her. As if confessing his life’s biggest secret, his most private truth that no one else knew, was akin to him offering something extremely valuable to her. Like one’s virginity.

  Like trust.

  After all, what could be bigger than trust? To take her into confidence over the outrageous scheme they were perpetuating. A scheme of which he was the architect. Heck, it was even bigger than the truth about Arty’s death that Karan knew he could never, ever share with her.

  Jazmeen’s eyes were continuing to bear down on him. She had sensed that there was something he wanted to say. Something quite significant.

  ‘So, are you going to tell me or not?’ she finally said, after the silence in the room had gone on for far too long for her to bear. ‘Or do you not trust me even after all that we have gone through together?’

  ‘Yes, I am going to tell you, you stupid woman. But not because I trust you!’ Karan’s lips curved into an impish smile. ‘The reason I’m going to tell you this is because I am falling in love with you.

  He silently picked up the half-full glass of Bordeaux that he had been sipping since he had got home. But just as he was about to get the wine glass to his lips, it slipped through his fingers still slippery from a lavish coating of ghee. The glass threw the wine on Karan’s white kurta, instantly making a reddish map of Australia around his right nipple, and smashed on the hardwood floor.

  Karan’s expression changed from impish and playful to shocked and penitent in a millisecond. He looked at his garment, then the floor, and finally at Jazmeen.

  She burst out laughing.

  ‘Such a bloody klutz you are, Karan Singh Rathore! Who the hell will want you as Prime Minister?’ she said between loud guffaws. It was the first time in many months that she had laughed so hard. Within a moment, Karan joined in too, chuckling noisily at his own clumsiness. Jazmeen noticed his face as it crinkled the corners of his eyes, cheeks and around the mouth. His shoulders shook with mirth.

  Any other time in the past, all of this would have reminded Jazmeen of Arty. But today, laughing away in his soiled kurta, the wetness of which exposed a bit of his chest, the only person Jazmeen saw was Karan.

  For five years, Karan Singh Rathore had been Satyendra Saran’s Doberman—barking, biting and rolling over as commanded. Sadly for the Master, the Doberman had now decided that he didn’t want to play the Doberman anymore.

  He wanted to be the Master himself.

  The Karan–Lakhani plan to wrest control from Prime Minister Saran was based on a tried-and-tested formula—the Trojan Horse. The Trojan Horse of yore had been a giant wooden horse gifted to a powerful Emperor by a clever adversary. The gullible Emperor, closeted inside the high walls of his fortress, accepted the present in good faith, little realising that within it were hiding hundreds of the adversary’s soldiers! Once inside the fortified sanctuary, in the dead of night, the soldiers sprang out of their wooden hideaway, taking the Emperor and his empire by complete surprise. In no time, the powerful Emperor had been brought to his knees and the clever adversary had won.

  The Karan–Lakhani Horse was goi
ng to be no different. Like the original, its success too, relied on the twin elements of loyalty and surprise. It needed an army of dependable soldiers ready for battle—a bunch of senior ministers here, a band of bureaucrats there. They would be the ones who would spring a surprise on Satyendra Saran, and once the King had fallen, anoint Karan Rathore as their new Emperor.

  And what about the surprise itself? What could this modern-day Trojan Horse unleash that was capable of causing a storm of confusion and bewilderment? That could catch Satyendra Saran so unawares that he wouldn’t even have the time to gather his wits to fend off the resulting tsunami?

  The answer was quite simple, really. There was only one thing capable of causing that kind of uproar. The collapse of Right-dot-Comm.

  Yes, politics is a dirty game where ambition supersedes everything. And sometimes, in order to achieve your ultimate goal you have to do a few unsavoury things—like, make a deal with a devil like Lakhani, or throw a benefactor like Saran to the wolves. Even sacrifice your own creation that you built brick-by-brick with your own hands.

  Karan Singh Rathore was ready to do all of that.

  As a strategy to shield himself from the destruction of Right-dot-Comm, Karan had already started distancing himself from his party’s signature legislation. His frequent absences from Delhi, just when they were so close to tabling the Bill in Parliament, was part of the same plan. The next item on the agenda was for Karan to build his own army of loyalists. That was hardly a difficult task either. Especially since he had Lakhani’s billions at his disposal to achieve it.

  After the first few meetings with Lakhani, especially once the two men had prepared the blueprint for stealing the Prime Ministership, Karan had begun to focus his energy on building his army of loyalists. His strategy involved clandestine one-on-one meetings with key people in the government, bureaucracy, media and the corporate world, where he conveyed his quiet message of the new future. With some, winning support was as easy as by reinforcing his trust in them. With others, it meant massaging their deepest fears. Regardless of the method Karan chose, using the power and reach of Romesh Lakhani in one way or another was usually all it took to clinch the deal.

  One such clandestine meeting had been with the Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister, a slimy man who was no friend of Karan’s, but crucial to the coup. Pradeep Roy was a distinguished IAS officer, 1980 batch, West Bengal cadre, and the senior-most bureaucrat in India by way of responsibility. He looked benign—almost professorial—in demeanour, but was acerbic in mind and tongue alike. Royda, as he was commonly known, had been surprised by Karan’s request to meet him alone in one of those new nondescript five-star hotels in Gurgaon, away from the prying political eyes of New Delhi. The only reason he had even agreed to drive up there was because he’d been intrigued by Karan’s odd invitation to discuss the forthcoming Padma Awards with him. The Padma Awards—Padma Vibhushan (the highest), Padma Bhushan (the mid-range one) and Padma Shri (for the chhota-mota achievers)—fell under the purview of Karan’s ministry, and the list of awardees for next year was currently under discussion.

  Perhaps there was an opportunity to wrest one for the accomplished Roy family, Royda thought. After all, Royda’s father Bhabani Shankar Roy was one of the most distinguished writers in India, already a Padma Shri winner in 1978. ‘Surely it is time for him to get a Padma Bhushan, if not the Vibhushan?’ Royda reasoned.

  ‘Why couldn’t we just discuss this in your office, Sir?’ he asked Karan quite gruffly once they had made themselves comfortable in Karan’s hotel suite. ‘This is highly irregular.’

  ‘Trust me, you wouldn’t have wanted this meeting to happen in either of our offices,’ Karan replied.

  ‘I did like your father’s last book. I read it with great interest,’ Karan began, genially. ‘Such great command over the language.’

  ‘Thank you, Sir. So, are you proposing Baba’s name to be included in next year’s list? Is that why we are meeting?’ Royda asked, his voice trying to balance his anger at being summoned so far like a peon with the deference that a bureaucrat must show a minister, and a sense of anticipation of recognition for his father.

  The minister merely smiled.

  ‘Something tells me that there is more to our meeting here,’ Royda said, looking around the antiseptic décor of the hotel room. ‘You want something from me in exchange for—what is it going to be? Bhushan or Vibhushan?’

  This time Karan laughed.

  ‘What is the matter?’ asked the surprised visitor.

  ‘My dear Royda, what makes you think I am thinking of giving another award to your father?’

  Royda looked on without saying a word.

  ‘On the contrary, I was actually thinking of taking back the one he already has!’ Karan said matter-of-factly.

  ‘What do you mean?’ It was clear from Royda’s tone that two of the three emotions he was managing just seconds ago had evaporated. The only one he still retained was anger.

  ‘You see, Royda, I think your fucking father did not deserve even the Padma Shri the Government of India so kindly gave him in 1978. It was a mistake on our part.’

  ‘What the hell are you talking about, you foolish man?’ the bureaucrat’s face was darkening with anger.

  Very coolly, Karan picked up a file that had been sitting on the side table all this while. He handed it to Royda, who received it quietly. As he flicked open his folded glasses from his shirt pocket and opened the file to read it, the dark hue of his face started to disappear. It was being replaced by an ashen colour, the type that usually symbolises horror.

  ‘I trust you are aware of Tapon Gogoi, then?’ Karan asked.

  There was no response.

  ‘The young student of your father when he was teaching English at Jadavpur University? I’m sure you remember him. Young kid. A few years younger than you. Yes, the same boy whose manuscript your father stole and published as his own. The Last Saltwater Lotus. Such a seminal piece of work. It got your Baba the Padma Shri, the Sahitya Akademi, and a dozen other awards.’

  There was still no response. Just a very dry mouth. And a pallor so grey that one might have mistaken his reaction for a heart attack.

  ‘Should I go on?’

  Royda shook his head slowly. He put the file away on the coffee table.

  ‘What do you want?’ he said, finally.

  ‘But you didn’t even read the part about how your father fucked this boy for almost twenty years. About how that young thing continued to make beautiful prose while ‘receiving’ your Baba up his ass. For twenty years. Until pneumonia took him away in 1995.’

  The face of the bureaucrat had started to redden again.

  ‘Except that it wasn’t pneumonia, it was AIDS,’ Karan continued. ‘But you already know all that, don’t you? Just you…and perhaps your poor mother too? The only two people in on your dirty old man’s dirty old secret.’

  Royda could not take it anymore. ‘What the hell do you want from me?’

  Karan smiled. ‘Good of you to ask, Royda,’ he said, now sure that he had the bureaucrat on his knees, ‘because I do need something from you. I need you to erase all records of my meetings with the Prime Minister since the beginning of this term. Why don’t we start there? After that, I will make more requests as we continue to become better friends, OK?’

  The meeting was over pretty soon after that. When the visitor left, he carried the expression of a child chastised by the headmaster with a wooden ruler for cheating in his exams. After Royda was gone, Karan put away the file into his briefcase.

  In the next few weeks, many such files were deployed against targets that might have otherwise been less amenable to Karan’s message. Each of the dossiers contained the real truths about ‘the scum of the Earth who run this country’—as Lakhani called them. They had been meticulously put together over the past few years by Lakhani’s agents. They were like a proverbial Pandora’s Box of scandals, crimes and secrets.

  ‘It’s like hav
ing the drawstrings of another man’s kachcha in your hand. One pull and…’ Lakhani had once said, to which the two men had laughed like naughty teenagers.

  Another one of such ‘kachcha’ men was Gopinath Chaube, the Minister of Steel and Mines, whose daughter was about to get married into one of the biggest industrialist families of Gujarat in a union the media had dubbed the Wedding of the Year. Chaube was in Surat to personally oversee the selection of some venues for events. Karan had asked to meet his senior there for a quiet evening over drinks. The men were reasonably close to each other and, except from expressing some mild surprise about why the meeting needed to happen in Surat instead of Delhi, Chaube had agreed to his junior’s request without hesitation.

  The two politicians were sitting by the pool at a sprawling—and ostentatious—farmhouse just outside town. It was late evening. The dense trees around them were having a tough time stifling the cacophony that accompanies birds returning home. Nevertheless, the setting offered the kind of tranquillity that was long gone from Delhi. Water rippled in the pool as the breeze hit it, occasionally sloshing against the blue tiles.

  The men had their preferred poison in their hands—Karan had chosen some red wine and Chaube was happy with a glass of Stoli. There was an attendant standing quietly many feet away.

  ‘You should thank your stars that you have no daughters,’ Chaube was saying. ‘Laundiyan, they leave no stone unturned to finish off their fathers when they get married!’ he said, with only fatherly love in his voice.

  ‘How much is all this costing you?’

  ‘Yaar, don’t ask. Should easily cross twenty, maybe twenty-five…’ Chaube replied, the whine in his voice persisting. ‘Thankfully, Mohanlal Bhai has just one son…’

  Karan shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘…and very deep pockets!’ Chaube added, pointing his right hand at their settings in a sweeping 360-degree wave.

  ‘Where would folks like you and I be if it wasn’t for the blessings of the Mohanlal Hanslal Daves of the world, right?’ Karan prodded. ‘Our world runs from their baksheesh, after all.’