River Of Gods

by Ian McDonald

  A crunch of gravel, a movement on the silver lawns. Ram Das appears from the moon shadows under the harsingars. Vishram freezes on his balcony. Another Western way he has slipped into: casual nakedness. Ram Das steps on to the shaved lawn, parts his dhoti and takes a piss by the lazy moon of India, lolling on its side like a temple gandava. He cleans himself, then turns around and waggles his head slowly at Vishram, a salutation, a blessing. He goes on his way. A peacock shrieks.

  Home at last.

  SATCHIDEKAMBRAHMA

  VISHRAM

  Until thirty minutes ago Vishram Ray had boasted that he had never owned a suit. He has always recognised that some day he might need one and that when he did he really would so he keeps a set of measurements with a family of Chinese tailors in Varanasi together with choice of fabric, cut, lining and two shirts. He’s wearing that suit now in his seat at the teak boardroom table of Ray Power. It arrived at the Shanker Mahal half an hour ago by bicycle courier. Vishram was still adjusting the collar and cuffs as the flotilla of cars arrived at the steps. Now he’s on the twentieth floor of the Ray tower with Varanasi a smoggy brown stain at his feet, the Ganga a distant curl of sullied silver and still no one will tell him what the hell this is about.

  Those Chinese really understand fabric. The collar fit is perfect. He can hardly see the stitches.

  The boardroom doors open. Corporate lawyers file in. Vishram Ray wonders what the collective noun is for corporate lawyers. A fleece? A fuckover? Last in line is Marianna Fusco. Vishram Ray can feel his mouth sag open. Marianna Fusco gives him the smallest of smiles, certainly less than you would expect from someone you (a) had first class sex with (b) embroiled in a street riot, and sits down opposite him. Under the teak table, Vishram flicks on his palmer and types invisible text.

  WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING HERE?

  The staff open the double doors to now admit the board members.

  I TOLD YOU IT WAS A FAMILY BUSINESS MATTER. Marianna’s message appears to Vishram to be hovering over her breasts. She’s in that great and eminently practical suit.

  But he’s not so bad himself. The bankers and representatives from the credit unions and grameen banks take their seats. Many of the members from the rural micro-credit banks have never been so far off the ground in their lives. As Vishram coolly pours himself a water with his left hand while his right texts IS THIS A GAME? his father enters the room. He wears a simple round collared suit, the length of the jacket his only concession to fashion but he turns every head. There is a look on his face Vishram hasn’t seen since he was a boy when his father was setting up the company, the determined serenity of a man certain he is doing right. Behind him is Shastri, his shadow.

  Ranjit Ray goes to the head of the table. He doesn’t take his seat. He salutes his board and guests. The big wooden room hums with tension. Vishram would give anything to make an entrance like that.

  ‘Colleagues, partners, honoured guests, my dear family,’ Ranjit Ray begins. ‘Thank you all for coming today, many of you at considerable inconvenience and expense. Let me say at the outset that I would not have asked you to come if I did not feel it was a matter of the utmost importance to this company.’

  Ranjit Ray’s voice is a soft, deep prayer that carries to every part of the big room without loss. Vishram recalls that he has never heard it raised.

  ‘I am sixty eight years old, three years past what Westerners consider in their business ethos the end of economically useful life. In India it is a time for reflection, for the contemplation of other paths that might have been taken, that yet might be taken.’ A sip of water.

  ‘In the final year of my engineering degree at the Hindu University of Varanasi I realised that the laws of economics are subject to the laws of physics. The physical processes that govern this planet and the continued life upon it place as stringent an upper limit on economic growth as the speed of light does on our knowledge of the universe. I realised that I was not just an engineer, I was a Hindu engineer. From these understandings I concluded that if I was to use my abilities to help India become a strong and respected nation, I must do it in an Indian way. I must do it in a Hindu way.’

  He looks at his wife and sons.

  ‘My family has heard this many times, I trust they’ll forgive one more. I went on a year of pilgrimage. I followed bhakti and did puja at the seven sacred cities, I bathed in the holy rivers and sought the councils of swamis and sadhus. And of each of them, at each temple and holy site, I asked this same question.’

  How may this engineer lead the right life? Vishram says to himself. He has indeed heard this homily more times than he cares to remember: how this Hindu engineer used a crore of rupees from a micro-credit union to build a low-cost, no-maintenance domestic scale carbon nanotube solar power generator. Fifty million units later, plus alcohol fuel refineries, biomass plants, wind farms, ocean current thermal generators, and an R&D division pushing Indian - Hindu - minds into the void of zero-point energy, Ray Power is one of Bharat’s - India’s - leading companies. One that has done it the Indian way, sustainably, treading lightly on the earth, obeying the wheel. A company that steers resolutely around the maelstrom of the international markets. A company that commissions exciting new Indian architectural talent to build a corporate headquarters from sustainable wood and glass and still welcomes Dalits into its board-room. It is a great and inspiring story, but Vishram’s attention is wandering all over Marianna Fusco’s stretch-brocaded breasts. A message appears cross them in cheeky lilac. PAY ATTENTION TO YOUR FATHER!

  BAA BAA BLACK SHEEP he thumbs back.

  PUNS ARE THE LOWEST FORM OF COMEDY, she returns.

  WELL EXCUSE ME, I ALWAYS THOUGHT IT WAS SARCASM, he emblazons in quick-riposte blue across the lapels of his really fast suit. Which is how he almost misses the punch line.

  ‘That is why I have decided it is time to once again take up that inquiry into how the right life may be lived.’

  Vishram Ray looks up, nerves electric.

  ‘At midnight tonight, I will resign my directorship of Ray Power. I will give up my wealth and influence, my prestige and responsibilities. I will leave my house and family and once again take up the sadhu’s staff and bowl.’

  The boardroom of Ray Power could not be any more quiet or still if it had been nerve gassed. Ranjit Ray smiles, trying to reassure. It doesn’t work.

  ‘Please understand that this is not a decision I undertake lightly. I have discussed this at length with my wife and she is in agreement with me. Shastri, my aide and help of more years than I care to remember, will be joining me on this journey, not as a servant, for all such distinctions end tonight, but as a fellow seeker after right life.’

  The shareholders are on their feet, shouting, demanding. A Dalit woman bellows in Vishram’s ear about her clients, her sisters but Vishram finds himself cool, detached, anchored to his seat by a sense of inevitability. It is as if he knew from the moment the ticket arrived on his Glasgow doorstep this would happen. Ranjit Ray quiets the board.

  ‘My friends, please do not think I have abandoned you. The first requirement of the man who would follow the spiritual life is that he leaves the world responsibly. As you know, other corporations seek to buy this company but Ray Power is first and last a family business and I will not give it to alien and immoral systems of management.’

  Don’t do it, Vishram thinks. Don’t say it.

  ‘Therefore, I am passing control of the company to my sons Ramesh, Govind and Vishram.’ He turns to each of them, hands held out as if blessing. Ramesh looks freshly shot. His big veiny hands are flat on the table like flayed animals. Govind fluffs himself up and looks around the table, already dividing the room into allies and enemies. Vishram is numb, a player caught up in a script.

  ‘I have appointed trusted advisors to guide you through the transitional period. I have put great trust in you. Please try to be worthy of it.’

  Marianna Fusco leans across the wide table, hand extended. A sheaf of ribbon
bound papers rests on the polished surface beside her. Vishram can see the dotted lines at the bottom of the page, awaiting his signatures.

  ‘Congratulations, and welcome to Research and Development, Mr Ray.’

  He takes the hand he remembers so firm and dry and soft around his dick.

  Suddenly he knows this script.

  ‘Lear,’ he breathes.

  SHIV

  Yogendra leaves the SUV in the middle of the street outside Musst. Police and thieves alike recognise a raja’s parking space is where he leaves his motor. Yogendra opens the door for Shiv. Cycle rickshaws detour around him, bells jingling.

  MUSST, feat. TALV announces the neon. Now everyone’s got personalised aeai DJs and grooves to their own mix, clubs sell themselves by their barmen. It’s too early in the week for the salary-men, wife hunting, but the girls are in. Shiv slips on to his stool. Yogendra takes the seat behind him. Shiv sets the flask of ovaries on the bar. The subsurface lighting turns it into some alien artefact in a Hollywood sci-fi movie. Barman Talv slides a glass dish of paan over the plane of fluorescent plastic. Shiv pops a pinch, rolls it round inside his cheek, lets the bhang percolate through him.

  ‘Where’s Priya?’

  ‘Down the back.’

  Girls in knee boots and short skirts and cling-silk tops cluster around a table where the club polychrome begins. At the centre, haloed by cocktail glasses, is a ten-year-old boy.

  ‘Fuck, Brahmins,’ Shiv says.

  ‘Contrary to appearances, he is legal age,’ Talv says, pouring two glasses from a shaker that looks treacherously similar to Shiv’s stainless steel prize.

  ‘There’s good men out there, give a woman everything she wants, good home, good prospects - she’d never have to work - good family, children, a place up the ladder, and they hang off that ten-year-old like a calf from a teat,’ Shiv says. ‘I’d shoot the lot of them. It’s against nature.’ Yogendra helps himself to paan.

  ‘That ten-year-old could buy and sell this place ten times over. And he’ll be bouncing around long after you and me’ve gone to the ghats.’

  The cocktail is cool and blue and deep and chases the red paan into the deep dark places. Shiv scans Club Musst. None of his girls will catch his eye tonight. Those who aren’t laughing with the Brahmin are fixed intently on the tabletop tivi.

  ‘What got them so wrapped up?’

  ‘Some fashion thing,’ Talv says. ‘They’ve brought this Russian model in, some nute, Yuri, something like that.’

  ‘Yuli,’ Yogendra says. His gums are scarlet from paan. The light is blue and the string of pearls he always wears knotted around his neck glows like souls. Red, white, blue. American grin. As long as Shiv has worked with him he has always worn those pearls.

  ‘I’d shoot them too,’ Shiv says. ‘Deviates. I mean Brahmins; okay, they fuck around with the genes, but they are men and women.’

  ‘I read the nutes are working on ways to get cloned,’ Talv says mildly. ‘They’d pay normal women to carry their kids.’

  ‘Now that is just plain disgusting,’ Shiv says and when he turns back to set down his empty glass there’s a slip of paper on the luminous blue bar.

  ‘What is this?’

  ‘This is what they call a bill,’ Talv says.

  ‘I beg your pardon? Since when have I paid for drinks in this establishment?’

  Shiv unfolds the little docket, glances over the number. Double takes.

  ‘No. What the fuck is this? Is my credit no good here? Is this what you’re saying, Shiv Faraji, we don’t trust him any more?’

  The tivi girls look up at a raised voice, lit blue like devis. Talv sighs. Then Salman’s there. He’s the owner, he has connections Shiv doesn’t. Shiv holds up the bar tab like a charge sheet.

  ‘I was telling your star here . . .’

  ‘I’ve been hearing things about your bankability.’

  ‘My friend, I have status all over this city.’

  Salman lays a cold finger on the cold canister.

  ‘Your stock is no longer as ascendant as it used to be.’

  ‘Some fucker is undercutting me? I’ll have his balls in dry ice . . .’

  Salman shakes his head.

  ‘This is a macroeconomic issue. Market forces, sir.’

  And Musst Club Bar goes into long zoom, so that its walls and corners seem to rush away from Shiv except the Brahmin’s head, which is huge and inflated and rocking like a painted helium balloon at a festival, laughing at him like a rocking fool.

  Some see the red haze. For Shiv it has always been blue. Deep, vibrant, intense blue. He snatches up the plate of paan, smashes it, pins Talv’s hand to the bar-top, a long blade of glass poised over his thumb like a guillotine.

  ‘Let’s see him shake and make with no thumbs,’ Shiv hisses. ‘Bar. Star.’

  ‘Shiv; now,’ Salman says very slowly and remorsefully and Shiv knows that it’s the hiss of the cobra, but it’s blue, all blue, quivering blue. A hand on his shoulder. Yogendra.

  ‘Okay,’ Shiv says, not looking at anyone or anything. He sets the sliver down, puts his hands up. ‘It’s okay.’

  ‘I will overlook this,’ Salman says. ‘But I do expect payment, in full, sir. Thirty days. Standard business terms.’

  ‘Okay, there is something very wrong here,’ Shiv says, backing away. ‘I will find out what it is and I will be back for your apology.’

  He kicks over his bar stool but doesn’t forget the body parts. At last, the girls are looking at him.

  The Ayurvedic restaurant closes promptly at eight because its philosophy dictates you should eat no later. From the scene in the alley, Shiv guesses that it won’t be opening again. There’s a hire van, two pony carts, three delivery trikes and a gaggle of pay-by-the-hour gundas running cardboard boxes in a chain out the door. Headwaiter Videsh, dismantling tables, barely looks up as Shiv and boy wonder storm in. Madam Ovary is in the office cherry-picking the filing cabinet. Shiv bangs the vacuum flask down on the battered metal.

  ‘Going somewhere?’

  ‘One of my laddies is on his way to your lodgings as we speak.’

  ‘I was taken away. On business. I have got one of these, you know?’

  Shiv flips out his palmer.

  ‘Shiv, non-secure communications. No.’

  Madam Ovary is a small, fat, almost globular Malayam and wears a greasy pigtail down to the small of her back that hasn’t been released from its bonds in twenty years. She is Ayurvedic Mother to her laddies and plies them with tinctures and papers of powder. Those who believe credit her with genuine healing powers. Shiv gives his to Yogendra, who hawks them to tourists coming off the riverboats. Her restaurant has an international reputation, especially among Germans. The place is always full of pale Northern Euros with that gauntness of facial features you get from thirty days of constant gastro problems.

  Shiv says, ‘Explain then: you’re firing everything into handcarts and all of a sudden this’ - his cool, stainless flask - ‘has got leprosy in it.’

  Madame Ovary consigns a few balance sheets to her plastic briefcase. No leather, no animal produce at all. Human products for human consumption, that is Ayurvedically sound. That includes embryonic stem cell therapy.

  ‘What do you know about non-blastular stem cell technology?’

  ‘Same as our normal foetal stem cell technique except they can use any cell in the body to grow spare parts and not embryos. Only they can’t get it to work.’

  ‘It’s been working perfectly since eleven a.m. Eastern US Standard Time. What you have in there isn’t even worth the flask.’

  Shiv sees again the body caught by the stream. He sees the woman’s sari bubble up behind her. He sees her on the scrubbed enamel tabletop in the All-Asia Beauty plastic surgery clinic, open under the lights. Shiv hates waste. He especially hates it when an inexperienced surgeon turns a routine egg-harvest into a bloodbath.

  ‘There’re always going to be people can’t afford American technology. This is Bh
arat . . .’

  ‘Laddie, do you know the first rule of business? Know when to cut your losses. My overheads are enormous: doctors, couriers, policemen, customs officials, politicians, city councillors, all with their hands out. The crash is coming. I do not intend to be underneath it.’

  ‘Where are you going?’ Shiv asks.

  ‘I’m certainly not telling you. If you’ve any sense, you’ll have diversified your assets long before now.’