by Ian McDonald
Sajida Rana stands upright.
‘Subtle as ever, Secretary Khan.’
‘I am a mere civil servant . . .’ Shaheen Badoor Khan dips his head obediently but catches Ashok Rana’s eye. He is furious. Chowdhury speaks up.
‘With respect, Secretary Khan, I think you underestimate the will of the Bharati people. There is more to Bharat than Varanasi and problems with its Metro stations. I know that in Patna we are simple, patriotic people. There, everyone believes a war will unite popular opinion and marginalise N.K. Jivanjee. It is a dangerous tactic, playing subtle games at times of national danger. The same Ganga flows through us as flows through you, you are not the only thirsty ones here. As you say, Prime Minister, the people need a war. I do not want to go to war, but I believe we must, and strike fast and strike first. Then we negotiate from a position of strength and when there is water in the pumps, that is when Jivanjee and his karsevaks will be seen as the rabble they are. Prime Minister, when have you ever misjudged the mood of the people of Bharat?’
Nods, grunts. The climate is shifting again. Sajida Rana stands at the head of her table of ministers, looking over her ancestors and influencers as Shaheen Badoor Khan has seen at so many cabinet meetings before, calling on them to sanctify the decision she is about to make for Bharat.
‘I hear you, Mr Chowdhury, but there is merit in Mr Khan’s proposal. I am minded to try it. I will let N.K. Jivanjee do our work for us, but keep the army on three-hour standby. Gentlemen, reports to my office mail by sixteen hundred today, I will circulate directives by seventeen hundred. Thank you, this meeting is closed.’
Cabinet and advisors rise as Sajida Rana turns and strides out in a furl of national colours, her secretarial staff falling in behind her. She is a tall, thin, striking woman, no trace of grey in her hair despite a first grandchild imminent. Shaheen Badoor Khan catches a ghost of Chanel as she sweeps past. He glances once at the sex divinities crawling all over the walls and roof, suppresses a shudder.
In the corridor, a touch at his cuff: the Defence Minister.
‘Mr Khan.’
‘Yes, how can I help you, Minister?’
Chowdhury draws Shaheen Badoor Khan into a window alcove. Minister Chowdhury leans towards him, says quietly and without inflection, ‘A successful meeting, Mr Khan, but might I remind you of your own words? You are a mere civil servant.’
He tucks his briefcase under his arm and hurries on down the corridor.
Hungover on blood, Najia Askarzadah wakes late in her backpackers’ berth at the Imperial International. She staggers into the communal kitchen in search of chai, steers past Australians complaining about how flat the landscape is and that they can’t get decent cheese, makes a glass and gets back to her room, mobbed by horrors. She remembers how the microsabres leaped for each other and she had risen with the crowd with the blood roar in her throat. It’s a viler and dirtier feeling than she ever had from any drugs or sex but she’s addicted.
Najia has thought much about her attraction to danger. Her parents had brought her up a Swede, permissively educated, sexually liberal, westward-looking. They brought no photographs into their exile, no souvenirs, no words or language or sense of geography. The only Afghan thing about Najia Askarzadah is her name. Her parents’ opus was so complete that it was not until her first term at university, when her tutor had suggested she research an essay on post Civil War Afghan politics that Najia understood that she had an entire, buried identity. That identity opened up beneath Najia Askarzadah the little liberal arts Scandinavian poly-sexual and swallowed her for three months in which the essay became the foundation of the work that would become her final thesis. There is a life she could have led and career so far has been foreplay with it. Bharat on the edge of water war is the preparation for her return to Kabul.
She sits on the cool cool veranda of the Imperial and checks her mail. The magazine liked the story. Liked the story a lot. Wants to pay her eight hundred dollars for the story. She thumbs agreement to the contract through to the US. One step on the path to high Kabul, but only one step. She has a next story to plan. It will be a politics story. Her next interview will be Sajida Rana. Everyone’s after Sajida Rana. What’s the angle? It’s woman to woman. Prime Minister Rana, you are a politician, a leader, a dynastic figure in a country divided over a traffic roundabout, where men are so desperate to marry they pay the dowry, where monster children who age half as fast as baseline humanity assume the privileges and tastes of adults before they are biologically ten, that is dying of thirst and about to start a war because of it. But before any of that, you are a woman in a society where women of your class and education have vanished behind a new purdah. What was it that enabled you, virtually alone, to escape that silk cage of cherishing?
Not a bad line that. Najia flips her palmer open. As she is about to thumb it in her palmer chirps. It’ll be Bernard. Not very Tantra, going to a fighting club. Not very Tantra, going with another man. Not that he’s possessive, so he doesn’t need to forgive her, but what she needs to ask herself is, is this going to advance me down the path to samadhi ?
‘Bernard,’ says Najia Askarzadah, ‘fuck off and stay fucked off. I thought you didn’t do jealousy or is that just another thing you tell women like the Tantric thing with your dick ?’
‘Ms Askarzadah?’
‘Oh, I’m sorry, I thought you were something else.’
She’s listening to a lot of air noise.
‘Hello? Hello?’
Then: ‘Ms Askarzadah. Be at the Deodar Electrical warehouse, Industrial Road, within the next half hour.’ An educated voice, lightly accented.
‘Hello? Who are you, look, I’m sorry about . . .’
‘The Deodar Electrical warehouse, Industrial Road.’
And he’s gone. Najia Askarzadah looks at the palmer as if it is a scorpion in her hand. No call back, no explanation, no identification. She taps in the address the voice gave her, the palmer displays a route map. She’s out the gate on her moped within the minute. Deodar Electrical is part of the old Town and Country studio lot, broken up into small businesses when the series went virtual and moved into Indiapendent’s Ranapur headquarters. The map leads her to the huge double doors of the main studio, where a teen in a long kurta and waistcoat sits at table listening to cricket on the radio. Najia notices he wears a Shivaji trident medallion, like the one she had seen around Satnam’s neck.
‘Someone called me, told me to come here. I’m Najia Askarzadah. ’
The youth looks her up and down. He has an attempted moustache.
‘Ah. Yes, we were told to be expecting you.’
‘Told? By who?’
‘Please come with me.’
He opens a small access door in the gates. They duck through.
‘Oh, wow,’ says Najia Askarzadah.
The rath yatra stands fifteen metres high under the studio floods, a red and gold pyramid of tiers and parapets, riotous with gods and adityas. It is a mobile temple. At its apex, almost touching the studio girders is a plexiglass cupola containing an effigy of Ganesha, throned, the people’s god, claimed by the Shivaji. The base, a wide balcony for party workers and PR , rests on the backs of twin flatbeds.
‘The trucks are ganged together,’ the guide says enthusiastically. ‘They will always move in tandem, see? We will fit ropes if people want to be seen pulling, but Shivaji is not about exploiting anyone.’
Najia’s never seen a space launch, never even been close to rocketry, but she imagines the launcher assembly buildings share this buzz and industry: embraced in cranes and gantries, workers in coveralls and spray masks working up and down the golden flanks, light joinery robots poking their glue-gun probosces into crannies and corners. The air is dopey with paint and glass fibre fumes, the steel shed rings with power staplers, drills and buzz saws. Najia watches a Vasu go up on a hoist. Two workers with Shivaji stickers on their coveralls glue it into position at the centre of a rosette of dancing attendants around a throned Vishn
u. And at the centre, the golden ziggurat of the holy vessel. The chariot of Jaggarnath. The juggernaut itself.
‘Please, feel free to take photographs,’ the teen aide says. ‘There is no charge.’ Najia’s hands shake as she calls up the camera on the palmer. She goes in among the workers and machines and clicks until her memory is full.
‘Can I, I mean, the papers?’ she stammers at the Shivajeen, who seems to be the only person at the studio in any form of authority.
‘Oh yes,’ he says. ‘I am presuming that is why you were brought here.’
The palmer calls softly. Again, an anonymous number. Najia answers carefully.
‘Yes?’
It is not college-voice. It’s a woman.
‘Hello, I have a call for you from N.K. Jivanjee.’
‘Who? What? Hello?’ Najia stammers.
‘Hello, Ms Askarzadah.’ It’s him. It really is him. ‘Well, what do you think?’
She has no words. She swallows, mouth dry
‘It’s, um, impressive.’
‘Good. It’s supposed to be. It cost a damn pile of money too, but I do think the team has done an outstanding job, don’t you? A lot of them are ex-television set designers. But I’m glad you like it. I think a lot of people are going to be equally impressed. Of course, the only ones that really matter are the Ranas.’ N.K. Jivanjee’s laugh is a deep, chocolate gurgle. ‘Now, Ms Askarzadah. You do understand you’ve been given a highly privileged preview that will make you a goodly sum of money from the press? No doubt you’re asking, what’s this about? Simply that the party I have the honour to lead occasionally has information it does not wish to release through conventional channels. You will be this unconventional channel. Of course, you do realise that we may suspend this privilege at any time. My secretary has a short prepared statement that she will forward to your palmer. It’s a piece from me on the pilgrimage; my loyalty to Bharat, my intention that the pilgrimage be a focus for national unity in the face of a common enemy. It’s all checkable back to my press office. Can I expect to see something in the evening editions? Good. Thank you Ms Askarzadah, bless you.’
The prepared statement comes through with a discreet chime. Najia scans it. It is as N.K. Jivanjee said. She feels as if she has been hit across the front of the head with a big, soft, heavy bat. She hardly hears the Shivaji boy ask, ‘Was that him? Was it really him? I couldn’t make it all out, what was he saying?’
N.K. Jivanjee. Anyone can get Sajida Rana. But N.K. Jivanjee. Najia Askarzadah hugs herself with joy. Scoop! Exclusive! Pictures copyright Najia Askarzadah. They’ll be syndicated around the planet before the ink’s dry on the contract. She’s on the bike, course set for the Bharat Times office, swinging out through the wire gates into the path of an oncoming school bus before the thought penetrates the amazed numbness.
Why her?
Mumtaz Huq the ghazal singer will perform at ten. Shaheen Badoor Khan intends to be well away by then. It is not that he dislikes Mumtaz Huq. She features on several compilations on his car system, though her tone is not as pure as R.A. Vora. But he does dislike parties like these. He clutches his glass of pomegranate juice in two hands and clings to the shadows where he can peek at his watch unseen.
The Dawar garden is a cool, moist oasis of pavilions and canopies among sweet smelling trees and precision-pruned shrubs. It speaks of money and bribes to the water department. Candle lanterns and oil torches provide barbarous illumination. Waiters in Rajput costume move among the guests with silver trays of eats and alcohol. Musicians saw and tootle to an electric bass from a pandal under a harsingar tree. Here Mumtaz Huq will perform and afterwards there will be fireworks. That is what Neelam Dawar has been telling all her guests. Ghazals and fireworks. Rejoice!
Bilquis Badoor Khan seeks her husband out in his place of concealment.
‘Darling heart, at least try and make an effort.’
Shaheen Badoor Khan deals his wife a society kiss, one on each side.
‘No, I’m staying here. Either they recognise me and all they want to talk about is war, or they don’t and it’s schools, share prices and cricket.’
‘Cricket - that reminds me.’ Bilquis touches Shaheen’s sleeve lightly, an invitation into conspiracy. ‘Shaheen, this is priceless . . . I don’t know where Neelam gets them. Anyway, this terrible grubby little country wife, you know the sort of thing, straight off the Bihar bus, married up and everyone’s got to know about it. There she is, over there. Anyway, we’re standing around talking and she’s hovering, obviously wanting to get her two rupees in, poor thing. We get round to the cricket and Tandon’s century and she says, wasn’t it marvellous, on the eighth and final ball, just before tea. I mean to say. Eight balls an over. Just priceless!’
Shaheen Badoor Khan looks at the woman where she stands alone under a pipal tree, a beaker of lassi in hand. The hand around the silver mug is long and slender, patterned with henna. Her wedding ring is tattooed on her finger. The woman carries herself with country elegance, tall, refined in an unaffected, unsophisticated way. She looks unutterably sad to Shaheen Badoor Khan.
‘Priceless, yes,’ he says, turning away from his wife.
‘Ah, Khan! I thought you’d show your heathen face here.’
Shaheen Badoor Khan had tried to steer himself away from Bal Ganguly but the big man can smell news like a Luna moth. It is his purpose and passion as proprietor of Varanasi’s premier Hindi news site. Though he is never without his posse of unmarried stringers - the kind of parties he is invited to draws the kind of women they hope to marry - Ganguly is an obdurate bachelor. Only a fool works his life away building his own cage, he says. Shaheen Badoor Khan also knows that Ganguly is a big giver to the Shivaji.
‘So, what’s the word from the Sabha? Shall I start digging a shelter or just stockpile rice?’
‘I’m sorry to disappoint, but no war this week.’ Shaheen Badoor Khan glances around for escape. The bachelors circle around him.
‘You know, it wouldn’t surprise me if Rana declares war and half an hour later sends the bulldozers into Sarkhand Roundabout.’ Ganguly laughs at his own joke. He has a big, gurgling, infectious laugh. Shaheen Badoor Khan finds himself smiling. The devotees compete for who laughs loudest. They check to see if any women are looking. ‘No, but come on, Khan. War is a serious matter. It sells serious amounts of advertising space.’ The unattached women in their own private pavilion glance past their chaperone, smiling but shy of eye contact. Shaheen Badoor Khan’s attention is again on the country wife under the pipal tree. Between worlds. Neither one nor the other. That is the worst place to be.
‘We won’t go to war,’ Shaheen Badoor Khan says smoothly. ‘If five thousand years of military history has taught us anything, it’s that we aren’t good at wars. We like the pretence and the posturing, but when it comes to battle, we’d rather not. That’s how the British rolled right over us. We sat in our defence positions and they kept coming, and they kept coming and we thought, well; they’ll stop sometime soon. But they just kept coming, bayonets fixed. It was the same in ‘oh-two and ‘twenty-eight up in Kashmir, it will be the same at Kunda Khadar. We’ll pile out troops on our side of the dam, they’ll pile theirs on their side, we’ll exchange a few mortar rounds and then everyone can march away, izzat satisfied.’
‘They weren’t dying of drought in ’twenty-eight,’ one of the paperboys says angrily. Ganguly pulls up, next witticism aborted. Bachelor reporters do not speak out of turn to Prime Ministerial Private Secretaries. Shaheen Badoor Khan uses the embarrassment to duck out of the conversation. The low-caste girls follow him with their eyes. Power has the same smell, town or country. Shaheen Badoor Khan dips his head to them, but Bilquis is on an intercept course with her former lawyer friends. The Ladies Who Used to Litigate. Bilquis’s career, like a generation of educated working women, has vanished behind a veil of social functions and restrictions. No law, no imam, no caste tradition took them out of the workplace. Why work, when five men claw for every job
and any educated, socially adept woman can marry into money and prestige? Welcome to the glass zenana.
The clever women are talking now about a widow of their acquaintance; an accomplished woman, a Shivaji activist, quite intelligent. No sooner back from the burning ghat and what do you know? Bankrupt. Not a paisa. Every last stick of furniture gone as surety. Twenty forty-seven, and still an educated woman can be turned out on to the streets. At least she hasn’t had to go to, you know. The ‘0’ people. Has anyone heard from her recently? Must look her up. Girls need to stick together. Solidarity, all that. Can’t trust men.
Musicians take up positions in their pandal, tuning, striking notes off each other. Shaheen Badoor Khan will make his getaway when Mumtaz Huq comes on. There is a tree near the gate, he can hide in its shadows and when the applause starts, slip out and call a taxi. Another has seen the opportunity, a man in a rumpled, civil servant’s suit holding a full flute of Omar Khayyam. His hands around the glass are quite refined, as are his features, but he carries a heavy five o’clock shadow. He has great dark, animal eyes, with animal fear in them, in the way that animals instinctively first fear everything.