Harish “Harry” Chinappa was a proud man—who had made one incalculable mistake in his life—selling most of his vast Coorg coffee plantation when land prices, and coffee prices, were at their lowest. He sold and, having sold, was destined to spend the remainder of his existence watching land prices rise and recalculating his putative net worth had-he-but-not-sold. His son-in-law’s small successes might be a source of comfort to his wife; he himself appeared to reserve judgment.
Harry Chinappa sat down at the table. “The meeting tomorrow,” he said, “is with Mr. Sankleshwar.” In the brief silence that followed, he seemed to sense Anand’s surprise and hesitation and said: “Are you having any success in sourcing the land?”
“Yes,” said Anand. “That is to say, I have spoken to a landbroker of Vinayak’s. My friend, Vinayak Agarwal? But nothing has yet come through. They said these things take time.”
“Vinayak Agarwal?” said Harry Chinappa. “That young fellow? He has no concept of these things…. Why should it take time? What utter nonsense. No, don’t bother with him. My boy, when someone says something will ‘take time,’ it either means that they don’t have the resources to do the job or that there is some other unknown complication.” Harry Chinappa seemed to gain confidence as he assessed the effects of his words on Anand. “Now, about Sankleshwar. It is a big opportunity. I think I do not need to spell that out for you. Really, you are very lucky to be invited to his office. I know people who wait weeks and months just to see him, in fact, just the other day, who was saying? … I forget who, someone was saying that they have waited now to meet him for two and a half months…. You are very lucky. Very lucky indeed. But, as you know, I begrudge no effort if it will benefit you youngsters.”
“Okay,” said Anand.
Harry Chinappa waited for him to say more and then sighed. “It might be best,” he said, “if you were to allow me to handle it. At least initially. It would not do to say the wrong thing at the wrong time. I’m sure I needn’t remind you to be anything less than respectful to Mr. Sankleshwar. Such an important man. Really, you are quite lucky. But follow my lead in tomorrow’s meeting and we should be okay. Let me see, we need about twenty acres for the factory …”
“Ten,” said Anand. “Ten acres.”
“Yes. That is what I thought. Ten would be about right. Or perhaps twenty … Very good! … And of course I will absolutely ask for no special favors from Mr. Sankleshwar. In fact, I will insist that we pay a fair and reasonable price for the land. Not only must one be fair in one’s business dealings, one must also appear to be fair. At least, I like to think so.” Harry Chinappa moved a few objects absentmindedly about his desk; his gaze encountered Anand; he continued with some effort: “Very good! … Two o’ clock, tomorrow afternoon; you can pick me up and we can drive out to his office together. Excellent! … Oh, and I hear,” he said, with that slight softened change of tone that came about whenever he spoke of his grandchildren, “that Valmika is doing well in her studies. That’s wonderful! Vidya should see that the children spend more time out-of-doors. In fact, we should consider banning them from using things like computers…. I have said the same thing to Vivek in an email,” he said, as though Vidya’s brother in America were not alcoholic, divorced, and immeasurably distant from both his parents and his children.
“They should exercise,” said Anand. “But I don’t think banning computers is the answer.”
“I am not surprised to hear you say so. Vidya tells me,” said his father-in-law, “that you are rather addicted to your gadgets…. I am thinking of taking the children with me to Coorg next weekend. They can jump about in the fresh air …”
“Yes, they’d like that,” said Anand.
“Well, time for me to rejoin my guests. Come, come. Don’t just sit here, come and have a drink.”
Harry Chinappa swept out of the alcove, leaving Anand mulling over the conversation, several aspects of it slowly falling into place. For weeks now, his father-in-law had enlivened family gatherings with his planned foray into the world of real estate development: an old family property that he had decided to develop into a shopping mall in collaboration with this Sankleshwar, Harry Chinappa’s contribution to the venture consisting of the property itself and, no doubt, a supply of unsolicited advice. His interest in Anand was not entirely altruistic; orchestrating the purchase of several acres would add to his business credentials—which, as far as Anand knew, were otherwise nonexistent. Harry Chinappa had kept occupied his entire life by busying himself in other people’s business.
But Sankleshwar was a well-known name in real estate; if he had a reputation for slightly dubious deals (which Harry Chinappa liked to gloss over), he was also a property developer of stratospheric proportions; it was very probable that he would be able to help Anand find the land he needed—that was the rice in the midst of all the husk of Harry Chinappa’s words, and Anand forced himself to concentrate on that.
He trailed out of the alcove to find his father-in-law installed behind the carved rosewood bar, where he was once again dispensing drinks in his best plantation manner. “Ah, Anand! I thought we’d lost you to the lure of fine literature …” Harry Chinappa laughed at his own joke. “What will you have to drink, my boy? A beer to wash away the factory soot?”
“A beer will be fine,” Anand said. “Or a whiskey.”
“Ruby!” said his father-in-law. “Ask the boy to get another beer from the kitchen. And more ice, Ruby, for goodness’ sake! Quickly, please. Mrs. Nayantara?” he said. “Another sherry for you?”
Mrs. Nayantara Iyer shook her head, but the Colonel at the piano raised his glass for another whiskey.
“Ah,” said Harry Chinappa, in a pleased way. “I have here a single malt that I think you will enjoy. One of my collection,” he said, “that I save for special guests.” Anand knew that single malt; he had bought it himself (on his wife’s suggestion) the last time he’d passed through the Singapore duty-free as a ritual sacrifice on the altar of family relations.
“Actually,” said Anand, “I think I’ll have a whiskey too.”
To be honest, he was not that fond of whiskey; the strength of it tested his tongue and blurred the edges of his resistance after a single sip. He saw an empty chair next to Mrs. Nayantara Iyer and, on an impulse, made his way over. He sat down and wondered what to say, feeling foolish. He could not ask after her daughter; he did not know how to phrase the question in a casual way. Instead, he said: “Aunty, I saw your granddaughter in the park when I was out running with my daughter. Very sweet child.”
He saw by the smile on her face that he had said the right thing. She reciprocated by asking after his own children; this was a topic he could converse on easily.
Kavika’s mother lived next door in an old stone bungalow set in a large property; she had been a prominent High Court judge in her day. Years before, on the occasion of their wedding, Ruby Chinappa had introduced her: “And this is our great and famous judge, Nayantara Iyer, our next-door neighbor and our dear friend.” Anand, newly married, virgin shy, awkward, had barely touched her extended hand and said: “Oh, yes, madam. I have read your articles in the newspaper.”
The judge had smiled kindly at Anand and the nervousness within him had quieted, but Ruby Chinappa had quickly swept him away, to introduce him, in appalled fashion, to the people she thought of as her most important connections, not so much to propagate his interests as to impress upon him the heights into which he had married. She had had no intention of letting him talk to anyone, hurrying him from guest to guest before depositing him next to his parents in the far corner of the room, where they were sitting in their own distressed fashion, staring at the other guests across a wide chasm: they were provincial, traditional; caste still mattered and Chinappa social connections did not; they, as much as the Chinappas, could not approve of their son’s ill-considered liaison. The Chinappas had proceeded to ignore Anand and his parents while they fussed over the rest of their guests; Anand and Vidya sat sil
ent under the weight of general disgrace.
Now Ruby was tugging at his arm. “Come and sing,” she said. “You must sing. Colonel Krishnaiah is at the piano, as usual, and he can play anything you want.”
No, no, said Anand, embarrassed.
The piano started up again; everyone else seemed to know the songs and the mysterious source from which they sprang; they added their voices to the chorus, weighing it down and letting the music sink around the soft, encroaching chintz sofas. Mrs. Mascarenhas, another neighbor, now opened her mouth: “I could have danced all night,” she sang. And still have begged for more.
It was a ludicrous assumption; she was fatter than his mother-in-law; she couldn’t have danced for two minutes at a stretch. Was he the only person here to catch the fucking irony of this? Apparently so. Mrs. Mascarenhas’s efforts were greeted with applause.
Harry Chinappa maneuvered his way to the front of the piano. “Elvis!” said Mrs. Mascarenhas. “ ‘Blue Suede Shoes’! Or ‘Hello, Dolly!’ ”
Harry Chinappa smiled. “I will, later,” he said. “But you have inspired me …” He signaled for silence from the piano and, instead of singing, began to recite what sounded like dialogue from a play or movie: “Look at her,” he said, “a pris’ner of the gutters.” His gaze seemed directed at Anand, who felt himself flush.
A few years before, the old buzzard took the freedom of speech offered by his fourth glass of whiskey to lean across the dining table one evening and say confidentially: “My dear fellow, of course you may have some, but—you won’t mind me saying this—one doesn’t quite pronounce the word in that way. No table in it, you know.” And when Anand had looked bewildered, his father-in-law had been happy to oblige: “It’s ‘veg-t-bil,’ ” he said, with a kind smile. “Not ‘vegie-table.’ Oh, and one other thing: it’s ‘there,’ not ‘they-are.’ And your daughter likes to play with ‘Don-ild’ Duck, not ‘Don-ald’ Duck.” In the face of his father-in-law’s happiness, Anand had sat still and silent. Vidya had quickly passed him a roti, Ruby Chinappa had quickly chattered about curtains, and the moment had passed—straight into his stomach, where it lay for quite a while, leaking acid.
Now, once again, his father-in-law’s finger seemed to be pointing at Anand; Look at him, he seemed to say, that creature of the gutters, Harry Chinappa’s words flying, spittle-flecked, vomitous, straight at his son-in-law: “He should be taken out and hung, for the cold-blooded murder of the English tongue.”
Loud, shattering applause greeted his words; the piano struck up again; voices rose in song; Anand looked around, bewildered.
“They have demolished the old Pinto house, those developer chappies,” said Colonel Krishnaiah, refilling his whiskey glass. “Rascals. Really, forgive me, but that was a beautiful old home. Much like yours, Mrs. Nayantara,” he said, raising a glass to Mrs. Nayantara Iyer.
“So awful,” sighed Ruby Chinappa, “to think of having another apartment building going up close by.”
“In our time,” said Colonel Krishnaiah, “we preferred gardens and fresh air to the smell of concrete. But that was Old Bangalore … nowadays, money is more important.”
Anand could not understand what the fuss was all about. Yes, gardens were lovely—but a city that did not build was a city that had stopped growing and the idea of such stasis was appalling, abhorrent to his very being. He voiced none of these thoughts, noting that his father-in-law too was relatively reticent on a normally favorite topic. “A garden,” said Harry Chinappa in some abstraction, “is a lovesome thing, God wot!” A mall built with Sankleshwar presumably even more so.
“They spoke to me as well,” said Mrs. Nayantara Iyer. “Those construction people. Twice.”
“Dear, dear,” said Harry Chinappa. “If they should turn troublesome, please let me speak to them on your behalf, Mrs. Nayantara. I know just what to say to them. One needs to take a firm hand. In fact, I will give them a call tomorrow.”
“No, that’s all right. Thank you. I’ll attend to it myself.”
Anand wished he could refuse Harry Chinappa’s offer of involvement with the same ease that Mrs. Nayantara displayed. It behooved him to be grateful: he did so by wishing that with any luck the construction company in question would approach the development of the Pinto property as a cost-cutting, tightfisted venture and put up a vast apartment complex of tiny-tiny apartments, all of them with their service balconies built facing his father-in-law’s home, so that each morning Harry Chinappa could wake up to the sight of a hundred drying bras and chuddies, fluttering like banners in the early morning breeze.
Furthermore, Anand would, in future, take to emphasizing, particularly, the table in vegetable. And why not? He had recently read an article about how English had become a true Indian language; that from being the language of the colonizers, it was now colonized in turn; Indianized; used in ways new and original and made in India, mixing and settling with the 550 other Indian languages; that, far from languishing amid its imported Victorian roots, it (like the ancient country it now inhabited) had turned inexplicably young and vigorous. Anand would play his role. He was part of the loyal, proud, nationalistic mainstream; the language would serve him, rather than he serving the language.
His mother-in-law called her guests in to dinner, doubtless the same menu of pork and chicken and baked cauliflower that Ruby Chinappa had served with due veneration, like prasadam after a pooja, at every dinner he could ever remember, and Anand treated this as his signal to exit.
HE COULD HEAR THE television in the upstairs living room, tuned to a show favored by his wife and daughter. They would be settled next to each other on the couch, Vidya and Valmika, giggling and gasping over the unreal, unpleasant drama about rich teenagers and their parents in New York; Pingu dozing with his head on his mother’s lap. Anand walked slowly up the stairs, the exhaustion of the day settling on him with every step. He did not join them as he normally might; Vidya would subject him to a detailed catechism that he could not yet face.
His bedroom was gifted with a momentary peace, rich in solitude, gilded in silence, the silk of lamplight captured against the warm colors of the bedspread. He locked the bathroom door and stripped, glancing at himself in the full-length mirror. He was lean, which was good, and short, which was not; his height a victim, he had always felt, of the spartan vegetarian diet he’d had growing up.
The session with Harry Chinappa had created unnatural bands of tension in his neck muscles, which welcomed the soothing fall of hot water in the shower. His right hand reached for his penis; he tugged at it briskly, catching the eventual release of semen in his cupped left hand and depositing it tidily in the drain, watching it flush away with the shower water. He was always fastidious about this, ensuring no glutinous streak left accidentally on walls or floor to be discovered later by a disconcerted wife or maid.
• • •
WHAT IS A WIFE?
In the simplest sense, the mother of your children.
In the grand Indian sense: the purveyor of domestic comfort; the chief priestess of patriarchy; the legislator of harmony and peace; the weaver who knots the extended family together; the Diwali firecracker who creates a sense of celebration in the home; the keeper of spirituality and a reminder of earthly goodness; the creator of future life and the guardian of the ancient ways; a partner in earthly pleasure; the feet-presser and old-age comforter to his parents; the role model for his sisters, and the object of secretive devotion of his brothers and friends.
In a more modern sense, as per the women’s magazines Vidya left around in the bathroom: all of the above, but let’s add to that, girls, the secrets of looking hip and sexy; of working a job that sounds glamorous (but that doesn’t take time away from the home and hearth); of adding that touch of panache to your hostessing and home interiors; and the art, for god’s sake, of giving your husband a decent blow job.
Anand had seen Vidya on the second day of college at St. Peter’s Academy. He watched her walk across the campus to her c
lassroom; later, he watched her leave through the college gates.
If, at that stage, he had paused to examine the qualities he looked for in a wife, the list would have been short and very simple: someone with whom to share sex, some laughs, some music, some dreams. Instead, he found himself fascinated by Vidya and charmed by her evident reciprocal interest in him. There she was, beautiful, vivacious, with her precise convent accent, westernized, her father a member of the best clubs—and she had leaned toward Anand as a sunflower to the morning sun. This had completely captivated him.
If the list of Anand’s transgressions against his father’s wishes was long, Vidya’s solitary moment of rebellion had occurred in her marrying Anand, an act of filial disobedience that was quickly buried beneath the birth of the children, two intervening miscarriages and Harry Chinappa’s defiant public face of scandal-averting acceptance.
Eventually, the origins of such an association became lost in the mists of time and youthful passions. In fifteen years of marriage Anand had still not summoned up the courage to request a blow job and indeed, at this late stage of things, could not imagine ever doing so. As for the rest, he had never thought to quarrel with Vidya’s choices or the pressured influences of her parents, quelling his moments of marital rebellion in the interests of domestic peace. Now they were just who they were, destined, it seemed, to continue as such until the end of time, when they would merge into one peculiar and badly-constructed unit, as his parents had done and hers. What remained vivid between them were the children; Vidya was a good mother, and whatever their own incompatibility, Anand never let himself forget that.
ten
LIKE SOME GRAND OFFICIAL IN a government bank, Thangam carefully counted the money that Kamala’s slatternly neighbor handed over. Kamala, seated next to her on the courtyard stoop, was mesmerized; she washed her evening rice absentmindedly, swirling the grains repeatedly through the water, all her attention on the two women.
The Hope Factory Page 10