Civil Lines

by Radhika Swarup

  Downstairs, Ajay whistled at Maya’s apparel, but all else continued as normal. The final edits were made to the month’s articles, and the layout was finalised. The fate of Maya’s profile rested in Kunal’s hands, though, and as I turned to my sister, I wasn’t sure if she was more impatient for or anxious about his arrival.

  When he did arrive, there was pandemonium. Maya shook his hand without looking at him, and Kunal burnt as if scalded by her touch. They didn’t speak to each other, and Sonia and I, their willing cupids, could do no more than stand like two gooseberries by their side, smiling encouragingly until we felt our cheeks would burst.

  It was Tasha-di, in the end, who took matters forward. I wasn’t sure if she was innocent of the history between the pair, or if she was simply focussed on the magazine’s fate, but her briskness at least got us all off the hallway. ‘We take our meetings in here,’ she told Kunal, ushering him into the garden room. ‘It’s a strange little space,’ she added, ‘too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter, but it suits us.’

  ‘It’s lovely,’ he replied. He spoke efficiently but politely, and was attentive to all that was said, but there was a sparseness to his speech that I liked.

  We sat, then, and Maya’s article was placed before Kunal. He winced as he saw the headline: Raja Singh: The Emperor has no clothes, but made no comment and carried on reading. He looked up once, studying the grills on the window facing the courtyard. His face whipped to where Maya stood. ‘Was that what we could see…’ he began, but catching our eyes on him, he trailed off. ‘Right,’ he said, putting his glasses back on. ‘Well,’ and he took up the magazine to peruse once more.

  I felt a little for him. Here he was, surrounded by four others—Maya, Tasha-di, Sonia and me—and even if his intentions were innocent, and his purpose purely a courtesy, our hanging over him like he were so much carrion felt a little distasteful. I rose, telling the others I would organise tea and snacks, but as I moved towards the kitchen, I ran into Shanti straining against the garden room door.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I called, but she waved her dishcloth impatiently at me.

  ‘Shh,’ she commanded. There was a lull in the conversation, and she pulled me to the kitchen. ‘I recognised the boy,’ Shanti told me accusingly. ‘It’s the same one who Maya baby used to meet in college, isn’t it?’

  ‘Shanti,’ I said, but my smile must have betrayed the truth to her words. ‘Please prepare some refreshments,’ I said lamely, but she had already turned her back to me.

  ‘Go back, Baby,’ she said to me. ‘I have work to do.’

  Kunal ran his pen through vast swathes of the article, instructing us on what we would be able to print. For all his bashfulness around Maya, he was certain about his advice. Raja Singh wasn’t to be mentioned by name, nor was any explicit reference to be made to his various enterprises.

  He rose at the conclusion of the meeting, and as Maya stepped forward to thank him for his help, he said, ‘You were always a wonderful writer, Maya.’ He paused as he spoke her name. ‘But I want to make sure The Satirist comprehends the changes that need to be made to rule out the risk of legal action.’

  ‘Of course…’

  ‘I mean,’ he said, colouring. His eyes were intent on my sister. ‘If you want, I can drop in at the end of the day…’

  Maya was smiling, nodding, shaking her head. ‘I don’t want to inconvenience you.’

  ‘No, no,’ he said, as if the matter was settled. He picked up his case, muttering ‘It’s no trouble at all,’ to all our expressions of thanks, and made his way out of the house.

  XXVIII

  Contrary to our expectations, the issue came out on time. Maya’s profile was pared down, and another few articles dealing with the issue of workplace harassment were added. One of Sonia’s former colleagues added her own account of being passed over for work after spurning an advance, and Sonia too wrote movingly about how opportunities had dried up for her once she had given birth. ‘I hadn’t meant to stop working,’ she wrote, ‘But all at once I wasn’t being assigned out-of-town pieces. All at once my editors decided I wouldn’t be able to commit to covering a year-long election campaign.’

  Benjamin came through too. He managed to procure a friend’s article on sexual advances made to her in the newspaper she had worked for in London. I accepted the gift of the article with gratitude, though I refrained from asking him who this friend was and how he had met her. I handed her article to Maya to edit, and when Maya told me the work was of an excellent standard, I smiled with pleasure.

  The article on Raja Singh was pared down more than Maya would have liked. The title ‘The Emperor has no clothes’, was changed to ‘Her story’, which she complained sounded anaemic. All mentions of Raja Singh’s name were removed. I was a little disappointed too. The smell of the man; his liberally applied aftershave, the whisky on his mouth, his breezy email afterwards all still lingered, and the thought that he was not going to be exposed rankled with me.

  But then, as I read the article, not the proofs I had seen in their various iterations, but the actual physical piece as it appeared in the magazine, I had to acknowledge that the effect of Kunal’s efforts was to make Ma’s story more raw. The focus had lifted from Raja Singh’s villainy; it now rested on Tasha-di and Ma’s hopes as they had drawn up plans for The Satirist, and on the chaos that had followed her backer’s spurned advances. Maya and I had never discussed the folding of Ma’s magazine in any but the most abstract terms. We had looked at the proofs as the ruins of a failed business, but had never actually addressed the reasons for that failure. And in the aftermath of my last meeting with Raja Singh, after new details trickled out from Tasha-di about Raja’s rancour, about the calls he placed to friends warning them about Ma’s unprofessional attitude, we had focussed more on bringing the next issue out than on tackling how Raja Singh effected the complete destruction of Ma’s life. The Ma I remembered; the introvert, the homebody, the woman who taught us to shy away from life was Raja Singh’s creation, and this fact didn’t entirely strike me until I held Maya’s piece in my hands.

  The fact that Raja Singh was not mentioned by name made the writing stronger. It made the threat more immediate. The story was no longer just Ma’s story; it applied to anyone who worked or hoped to work in an office environment. The culprit was not any one single person; it was a careless superior, it was the man you shared a lift with, it was your boss or your boss’ boss.

  HER STORY

  She has been planning for this moment her whole life. She is the exceptional girl at school, sharp and focussed and driven. She is good with words, quick with her emotions, and in a hurry to change the world. Sometimes her words trip out of her mouth, struggling to keep pace with the keenness of her thoughts. She has edited the school paper, has volunteered for endless charities, has set up rainwater harvesting schemes for her local area. She has made sure her maid’s daughter is sent to school and that she stays in school.

  As she has grown, she has dreamt of impacting more people. She has worked as a campaigner and as a journalist, and step by step, she has planned to set up her own publication. She has written pieces that have focussed on the burning issues of the day. She has not been daunted by opposition, and has volunteered for the most hostile interviews, travelling to the most inhospitable corners of the land to build her resumé.

  Slowly, as her profile has built and her dreams taken form, she has partnered with a friend to breathe life into a new magazine. They work ceaselessly on their concept, meeting after they finish their day-jobs, negotiating the demands of work and family. They build a team and plan their first issue. Once this is ready, she approaches an investor, and he agrees to fund her new publication.

  A magazine with a woman editor, he tells her, is an ideal worth striving for. The investor has a knack for picking winners, and now he tells the girl he believes in her. All is set, and the girl’s fondest dream is on the point of being realised.

  The week before the
publication is due to be launched, the girl’s mentor calls her into his office. He pours her a drink, he sits next to her, and he tells her how much he has always admired her. The girl thanks him, and as he moves closer, she inches away. He puts a hand on hers and she shrugs it off. He moves closer once more and she inches away again. They continue this dance until there is nowhere left for the girl to move to.

  We all know how this story ends. There is no happily ever after for the girl. Her name is Rupa Sharma, and she had been on the point of launching this magazine’s precursor a generation ago before she was called into her mentor’s office and assaulted. When she resisted her assailant’s advances, the offer of funding was revoked. She tried to return to employment, but her erstwhile mentor placed calls to his friends and colleagues, and she found she was never able to work in journalism again. Rupa Sharma was a broken girl with a shattered dream. She was the girl who retreated into her home as her world grew darker and never left it again. She was the mother who shielded her children because that was the only way she knew to keep them safe.

  You can choose to think of Rupa Sharma as a failure who accepted defeat. She gave up the minute she encountered an obstacle. But then, she dared to look at the sun when so many others chose to follow a pre-set path.

  Rupa Sharma was a dreamer and a trailblazer. She was a journalist, a mother, and a friend, and this is her story. It is a story of fierce ambition coming up against a brute, repressive predator. But her story is not hers alone. It is also the story of every girl who goes to school despite being told she won’t amount to anything. It is the story of every girl who resists being married off in her teenage years. It is the story of every girl who wants to continue working after marriage and after bearing children. It is the story of every girl who dreams not of being rescued by a prince but of rescuing others. It is Rupa Sharma’s story, of course, but it

  is equally ours. It is yours and mine, and if we don’t act to effect change, it will be our daughter’s too.

  The minute the magazine hit the stands, it was clear that the article was resonating with readers. Ma’s story, Her Story, was being read by women as their story. The article that followed, Sonia’s ex-colleague’s account of a career curtailed by an unwanted advance, was in the same crushing, confirmatory vein.

  We worried there would be fewer readers now that the magazine was no longer free, but Mr Seth called us to order more copies. ‘It’s nearly sold out,’ he told me, his excitement palpable. ‘And you won’t guess who I just sold a copy to—Mrs Singh.’ I took a deep breath. Singh was a common enough name; it didn’t necessarily mean Raja Singh’s wife was reading our magazine. But then he said, ‘She’s a pretty, flimsy little thing,’ and I knew it was the same person. ‘She just told me these sort of stories fascinate her. Women’s issues, feminism, and so on.’ Mr Seth chuckled. ‘Who would have thought it?’

  I saw instant signs of reader engagement. I had uploaded key quotes from all the main articles on our social media channels, and our Twitter account was the first to light up with mentions. The quotes I shared—‘It is the story of every girl who dreams not of being rescued by a prince but of rescuing others.’ and ‘It is Rupa Sharma’s story, but it is equally ours. It is yours and mine, and if we don’t act to effect change, it will be our daughter’s too.’—were retweeted thousands of times. Normally I would be lucky to have a quote retweeted a dozen times, but here Ma’s story had created a hashtag of its own. The story was trending, and the tag #HerStory was ranking above all the other stories emanating from India that day.

  Other voices amplified the hashtag.

  One reply to one of my tweets read: ‘I was assaulted at an interview, and not hired because I resisted. #HerStory’

  Another read: ‘I was turned down for a promotion because I was of marriageable age and sure to be planning a family. #HerStory’

  They came in drips and then torrents, stories of workplace discrimination and gender bias, stories of harassment and neglect, stories of gaslighting and trivialisation until I couldn’t keep up with the updates anymore.

  I fielded calls all morning. Magazine editors called to express their commiserations, but also to gossip. Did I know the identity of Ma’s assailant? I pleaded ignorance, but more often than not, Raja Singh’s name entered the fray. He was India’s venture capitalist before venture capital was thought of; the angel investor to hundreds of dreamers. His reputation was well known, too, and the older people I spoke to recollected Raja’s involvement in The Satirist’s first incarnation. One by one, I parried the questions thrust at me, but the queries about her attacker’s identity remained. Who was it? Was it someone still active in journalism? Was it someone still wielding power? Was it Raja Singh?

  Maya’s article was sought for syndication by publications all over the country. By the following morning, her words would be translated into Telegu and Tamil and Bengali and Marathi and Punjabi and Urdu and be read in homes in all the urban and rural corners of India’s great and sprawling land.

  She had repeated offers to appear on television, and though she initially declined them, Sonia urged her to reconsider. ‘It’s good PR for your mother’s story,’ she said, and then, ‘and it’s good PR for the magazine too.’

  ‘I worry about being put on the spot,’ replied Maya. ‘It’s all very well Siya fielding the calls and refusing to answer when they ask if Ma’s assailant is Raja Singh, but I would give the game away instantly.’

  ‘No you wouldn’t…’

  ‘I would.’

  I nodded. Her life had been so sheltered that she hadn’t had the need to compromise or pretend. ‘She would,’ I said. ‘I would come along with you if it helped, Maya,’ and as my sister nodded plaintively, I said, ‘but I’m already behind with my follow-ups. I’ve had more requests for comments and for quotes than I can deal with.’

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ offered Sonia. ‘It makes sense for the two editors of the magazine to appear on these shows. It will allow us to sell the magazine and not just the story.’

  The first show they appeared on was a panel. Chaired by a boisterous, opinionated woman, the other panellists were veterans of the media industry. The article was read out by Maya, and after the initial hand-wringing, talk turned to the reaction the article had been attracting. ‘The piece itself,’ read out the anchor, ‘has appeared in publications across India and as far away as the Maldives and Thailand. Don’t forget,’ she said, nodding as she looked across at her panel, ‘that this is a small, local Delhi magazine. A rag, if you will, that had to be given away for free up until a month back. But this issue has touched the nation, I can tell you,’ and here the screen began to display the comments that had flooded our social media accounts. ‘This is from Indore, this,’ said the woman, peering at her screen, ‘rape, rape, harassment, dismissal, rape.’ She paused, turning straight to the camera. ‘It’s everywhere.’ She paused, and as I wondered if an account of her own was to be unveiled, she said, ‘It’s always been there, and it appears it still is.’

  They spoke of the impact of the story, and Sonia leaned forward to give the magazine a plug. ‘This, in some ways, is Maya’s Ma’s final victory. This is the magazine she conceived of, and it is finally gaining attention because of her ordeal.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ said one, ‘I remember Rupa. She was a most promising writer.’

  There were other nods, other words or regret and commiseration offered, until the anchor turned to Maya, ‘What do you know, Maya, about the nature of the attack?’

  Maya flushed deep. She opened her mouth but didn’t speak, and it was Sonia who surged in. ‘The reason this story has struck such a chord…’

  ‘There’s the matter of accountability, though,’ said the sole male panellist. ‘A finger has been pointed, an inference drawn.’

  ‘We’ve not mentioned any name.’

  ‘Now, now…’

  ‘That’s just semantics,’ the man insisted. ‘It’s pretty clear who you’re thinking of. There is on
ly one man of the right age and profile to have invested in Rupa’s magazine.’

  ‘That’s not true,’ said Sonia robustly, but the man was waving his hands in the air.

  ‘Who are you trying to fool, child?’ he said dismissively. ‘It’s clear as day that you are trying to pin this on Raja Singh.’

  The newspapers the following morning were full of news of the panel, and though Maya refused to appear on TV again, it appeared the connection had been made. In publications up and down the land, ‘sources’ emerged to claim that Ma’s attacker had indeed been Raja.

  A letter from Raja Singh’s lawyers arrived the same day to announce they were launching a lawsuit against us. And just like that, we went from reporting the news to being the news.

  A frantic call was placed to Kunal, who rushed over to look at the letter, but he was as bemused as the rest of us were. Raja Singh cited the article as libellous and defamatory. ‘But,’ Kunal pointed out, ‘he’s never once mentioned by name. We’ve only ever referred to him,’ and here he picked up the magazine and read slowly through it, ‘as a leading investor. Don’t tell me there’s only one rich man in all of India.’

  ‘No,’ Maya agreed, ‘but he is the obvious candidate.’ She had been incandescent after the panel, certain that legal action was going to be launched. I’d tried to allay her fears, but had known she was right. The reporting afterwards, on the television, in the papers, on drive time radio too, centred on the identity of Ma’s assailant. Her story had gripped the nation. Many identified with her ordeal, and one by one, the ‘experts’ being called on to talk on Ma’s behalf pointed the finger of blame at Raja Singh.

  Maya was shaking her head, still angry at herself. The magazine’s last issue had been more of a departure for her than for any of the rest of us. She had been so used to resting in the shadows, and while the rest of us had been exposed to a greater or lesser degree to the outside world—I in a strange city abroad, Sonia in the job market after having her children, and Tasha-di too, who had chosen to walk alone—Maya had always been sheltered from pain. With the magazine too, she had let Sonia take the juiciest stories, and the fire she had displayed on Ma’s behalf had been one I had never before sensed in her.