by Manil Suri
I imagined everyone around us looking on, holding their breath. There seemed nothing to do but nod my head. A shiver ran down from my ear through my shoulder as his fingers smeared the red onto my cheek. But I girded myself and managed not to flinch.
On the ride back home, I sat in the back seat of the taxi with you, our clothes wet. I wondered what Arya could have said to convince you to play Holi with me. How had you allowed your uncle to get so close, to control you with such sure influence?
You turned to me from the window. “Yara uncle must have been quite hurt when you didn’t reciprocate. The least you could have done was to rub some color on his face as well.”
I NEVER DID FIND out Arya’s secret words to change your attitude towards me that day. (A religious imperative to honor your parents? A threat?) I did, however, see, quite starkly, the error in the strategy I had adopted ever since your uncle reappeared. All the times I avoided him, all the pains taken to ensure our paths never overlapped. By cutting myself off from him, I had encouraged you to cut yourself off from me as well. So when Arya sent an invitation for the annual HRM martial arts showcase the next week, I went.
The function was eerily reminiscent of the HRM event I had attended more than a quarter of a century ago in Nizamuddin. This time, Arya was the main speaker, and his talk had the same blustery feel to it. The fact that some of his consonants didn’t come out correctly through his nose only augmented the effect of menace in his words.
“People accuse us of being hatemongers. But they’re wrong—all we hate is injustice. We might not want to break bread with Muslims, but we have nothing personal against them. They’re all descended from Hindu blood anyway—it’s their ancestors who converted, who came under the influence of foreigners and were led astray. We’re ready to welcome them back into the fold at any time—just let them acknowledge their Hindu roots and learn to coexist.”
He recited the usual litany of grievances—how Muslims were plundering jobs and usurping Hindu rights, how the government was squeezing out tax money to send them free to Mecca. “Coexistence is simply not in their vocabulary—look how they’ve even stopped us from building our gym.”
He had a new name for the enemy—they were the “limbus”—the lemons—in our midst. “Instead of mixing with us to make sweet lemonade, they go around curdling everything, like limbu juice dropped in milk. And our leaders just keep encouraging them—this she-devil we’re cursed with now and her imbecile father who gave away half our country in the first place. Mark my words—father and daughter will be rooting side by side in the same filth soon, when both are reborn as pigs.”
Lest anyone didn’t get the violent thrust of his message, Arya was more explicit in his final exhortation. “India is the land of milk and honey, not lemons and milk. Tell the limbus they better go back to Pakistan if they can’t mix. Tell them to stop taking our jobs, to remove their bigoted objections to our gym. Because if they don’t, we’ve all drunk the milk of Kali Ma here, and all they can expect is this.” With that, Arya sliced a lemon in half with a knife, then squeezed its juice into the dirt and ground his foot in. “Now on with the celebrations.”
One after another, the familiar martial arts exercises were performed on stage—the wrestling, the lathi twirling, the marching with rifles represented by sticks. Except with one dismaying difference. Right after the wrestlers, but before the recruits wielding lathis, came a group of young men carrying swords. Two of them did most of the fighting in the center, while the rest performed some minor maneuvers on the side. You were among the latter—when you saw me, you gave your sword an extra wave in the air.
AFTER THE END OF THE FUNCTION, Arya came up with you to where I sat, still dazed, in my chair. “I was so glad to hear from Ashvin that you were coming. We weren’t able to do it on Holi, but finally a chance to drink coffee with you again.” He filled two glasses from a thermos and handed one to me. “I made it myself, so it’s not going to be as good as the one at the Coffee House in Delhi, I’m afraid. Perhaps next time I can take you to the restaurant at the Oberoi.”
You lunged around, slicing through the air with your arms. “My part today was only for ceremony. But if I practice, perhaps by next year, I can be one of the fighters in the display.”
Arya mussed up your hair. “Now, now, Ashvin, we’ll have to see about that.”
I barely heard the rest of what he said—the talk of yoga practice, of the upcoming rally at Juhu, of the HRM summer retreat in Nasik to which he’d invited you. All I could concentrate on was Arya rubbing the back of your neck and squeezing you to himself, as if you were his own son. And the ease with which you responded, your eyes all sparkle and scintillation, in a way I had not seen for months. “It’s a beautiful setting, the campgrounds we own in Nasik—only for the most promising from our ranks, I’ll have you know. Right next to a lake—Ashvin’s going to love bathing in it after the exercises we perform in the fresh morning air, aren’t you, Ashvin? Maybe you can visit too while we’re there. I could show you around—have you ever been to where the Godavari River begins?”
Could this then be what Arya had truly returned for—to stake his claim on you? Was he trying to impress upon me even now, as he wrapped his arm around your shoulders with such propriety, such sureness, just how effortlessly he could pluck your affections away? You broke forward to feint through the air again, stabbing at the back of a chair in a mock thrust. I imagined a real sword in your hand, imagined you slicing through lemons with its blade—squeezing each lemon half between your fingers to void their juice into the earth. My Ashvin, my child. Paji’s grandson. Learning to carve open limbus as you breathed in the fresh Nasik air. I would not allow it to happen, could not allow it to happen—my son growing up a fanatic, a member of the HRM.
Perhaps Arya read my mind, because he stopped his talk about the retreat in Nasik. “I hope I didn’t upset you with my address today. It’s all politics, you know—these speeches have to be fiery, I have to energize the crowds a little through what I say. We’re not trying to foment anything—we’re just trying to get people motivated enough to stand up and fight for their fair share.”
“By killing the limbus, as you call them? Is that what you plan on teaching in Nasik? Are you going to lead Ashvin into that colony so he can chop off a few heads if they don’t agree to your gym?”
Arya smiled reproachfully. “Do you really think I’d let any harm come to Ashvin? That I’d try to corrupt his brain, try to make a killer out of him? No, Meera, I’m setting my sights on much higher things—he’s going to be a leader, not a follower, our Ashvin. It’s good that he comes to the gymkhana, it gives him a sense of identity, a sense of connection with ordinary people, not just the pampered brats from that school of his. What you’re probably misunderstanding is today’s display—believe me, that’s only for camaraderie—the yoga is what really gives one discipline. Ashvin had to beg me to be allowed on stage—he’s supposed to be only learning yoga, not even taking lessons in swordplay.”
He shook his head, as if I had been deeply unfair to him. “I’ll say it again, Meera—I would never let Ashvin get in harm’s way.”
Down the row, you were still thrusting at the chairs—it didn’t seem like yoga you were interested in. I watched Arya take a sip from his glass, the wronged expression still playing nobly on his face. A line of coffee remained on his mustache, dyeing it a milky brown.
“Do you remember what I told you at the Coffee House in Delhi? About the movement taking over the country? About how the bankrupt legacy left by Nehru is finally going to be replaced?”
I was surprised he had brought it up. “Yes, but as I recall, the HRM wasn’t able to fix anything. With Indira gone, things only got worse. JP died, and your movement died with him.”
“True, but the question is why? Why did the movement not succeed? Because what came wasn’t pure enough, that’s why. A government that simply unites the opposition, the Hindus with the Communists, is bound to fail. No wonder we could
n’t even hold on to our seats for three years before that churail was swept in again.
“The key factor is purity, Meera. We’ve learnt our lesson, I’m prepared to say. No more mongrel governments. No more kowtowing to Muslim interests just to be in the majority. We’re going to do it successfully this time—do it only with the right parties, the right way. Just think of it for yourself. The country is eighty-five percent Hindu. Eighty-five percent. The number can’t be denied. All we have to do is build a fire. Find the right spark to ignite their minds. Once they know where their interests lie, their voice will carry the day. It’s only a matter of time before we teach them to unite and assert their political will.
“This is what I’m grooming Ashvin for, Meera. To lead us all into the coming order. A new age, a new yuga, not of Nehrus or Gandhis, but of Ram and Shiva. Where the population itself will insist on Hindu values being returned to their rightful place, where the teachings of the Vedas will once more hold sway. Where the law will be straightened to treat everyone alike, where minorities won’t be coddled with special rights. An age where our ancient civilization will peak once more, where neighbors will respect our might as we set an example on the world stage.”
I had meant to let him carry on, but his words were so preposterous that I broke my silence. “It all sounds very grand when you say it, but you’d be bringing back a past that never existed. This age of Shiva you’re talking about is the age of the bullock cart, not the atomic age. Without Nehru’s vison we’d have no science—without Indira, no nuclear bomb. We’d still be happily prancing around with our lathis on the world stage.”
“Actually, Meera, it’s just the opposite,” Arya calmly replied. “Read the Vedas, and you’ll find out what a wealth of scientific knowledge they contain. Remember, we Hindus gave the world the number zero, without which science wouldn’t have even been invented. Indira can take all the credit for our bomb—even claim she discovered zero herself, for all I care. But really, it’s Hindu widsom that’s responsible, it’s the Hindu way of life, it’s Hindu scientists, carrying us through age after age.”
“I didn’t realize the scientists in India were all Hindu. That the Vedas are what they turned to for nuclear know-how.”
Arya ignored my comment. “In a way, it’s good that Indira won the elections. It forces us to come up with new ideas to counteract this propaganda she has everyone enchanted with. To reach out to people with our message, to beat the HRM drum in every town and village. Already one can see she’s not as strong as before—she’ll never be able to ban the HRM or force our movement back into the bottle again.” He glanced towards you, then fixed me again in his gaze.
“A decade from now, a few years more or less, we’ll have this country in our grasp once again. That’s when you’ll see how high Ashvin will rise, realize how his uncle’s molding helped him seize the day.”
I COULD HAVE KEPT arguing with Arya that day, flung all sorts of cutting rejoinders in his face. That underneath the veneer of his words, I had recognized the usual message of intolerance and hate. That the backward-looking philosophy of the HRM was bankrupt, and I would do everything in my power to repudiate it. That I would rather see you remain tethered to the ground than climb the rungs of the future he envisaged.
But I restrained myself. There was no point in showing my hand or revealing my intentions—it was better to leave Arya with the hope that he might be able to sway me. Clearly he was not going to give you up so easily—my idea of negotiation had been laughably naïve.
Or had it? Suppose I were to extend the most unvarnished bargain possible—your freedom in exchange for my acquiescence—surely he would be inclined to accept? I spent a whole night mulling this possibility, examining the practicalities of how I would ensure Arya actually kept his end of the agreement. Then I imagined myself enfolded in his arms; my sheets, my skin, my lips smelling of him, and realized it was a price I couldn’t bring myself to pay.
My idea spawned variations. In one version, I lured Arya home some evening, then arranged for it to look as if he was forcing himself on me when you walked in. (The timing would be too difficult to get right, I reluctantly concluded.) In another scheme, considerably less feverish, I simply planted doubts against Arya in your mind—questions about his motives, qualms about his good intentions. This was the strategy I decided to go with. “I wish your uncle wouldn’t look at me like that,” I said each time I picked you up at his house. “He keeps brushing against me for some reason,” I complained, after I accompanied you to a function of the HRM.
One day, I pressed in deeper after an argument over the summer retreat he wanted you to attend. “I know you love your Yara uncle, but don’t you realize he’s being so friendly just to get to me again?”
“That’s not true. He’s not even come to our house once—you’re the one always going there. It’s me he likes, not you.”
“Then tell me this, Ashvin—all those years back, when he was writing those letters to you. Whom did he come after in the end?”
The next week, I deployed my first outright lie, after you brushed off my concerns about neglecting your studies to cavort around with your uncle. “He’s touched me already, you know. The evening we accompanied him to the wrestling match, and again when we saw him at the pooja the other day.”
“You’re lying. Yara uncle would never do that.”
“No, of course not, your Yara uncle is a saint. Isn’t that the reason you had to break his nose for him?”
“That was so long ago.”
“And now he’s changed? Suddenly he’s so virtuous that he’s become your hero? Someone to defend against the word of your own mother? Should I tell you all the other things he was whispering in my ear, acts he promised we would perform together?”
You ran out of the room. No matter how much I persisted (with allegations that sometimes seemed so compelling, I almost believed them myself), your trysts with Arya continued.
And then, one evening, I decided to use the vein of guilt that I knew ran through your consciousness. You had returned three hours late from school, so I asked you where you had been. “Each time you go and see him, it only gives him more encouragement, makes him bolder. It’s like telling him that whatever he wants to do with your mother is fine—is that the message you want to give?”
“No.”
“You have to decide, Ashvin—you’re almost sixteen now, so you know what I’m talking about. It’s nice that you can go do all these things with your uncle, but is it worth the risk?”
“You always twist things around. I wish you’d stop thinking like this.”
“No, you think, Ashvin—if you were to come back and find me the same way as before. Do you still remember that Divali—have you forgotten what he was doing to me on that floor?”
“It’s not true. You’re just being jealous. I’m not listening to anything you’re saying anymore.”
“Maybe you don’t think there’s anything to it,” I said, unable to stop myself. “Why not Yara uncle, too, if I can let you, my son, get away with it?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know what I’m talking about, Ashvin. The night of your fifteenth birthday. Just because I didn’t say anything at the time, doesn’t mean I approved, that I’m open to everyone else. You should be ashamed of yourself for harboring such a thought—I’m not some family bicycle, on which you can offer your uncle a ride as well.”
SO IT COMES DOWN to this, Ashvin—the issue on which your mother must be judged. Was it too destructive, what I did to sunder you from your uncle, even though I used only words? Could it really have been in your best interests, or was it my jealousy taking control? The thought of being displaced in your affections, which I could not endure.
What I can say in my defense is that in the heat of the moment, I didn’t see any other way to go. My correction had to be quick and effective—else wouldn’t Arya have appropriated your soul? This much you must believe—I had no desire to cause you injury wit
h the cauterizing words I spoke. Though I suppose I could have accepted defeat, surrendered you to his hands, left your future for him to mold. Surely happiness must take root in the cadres of the HRM as well.
The day after our exchange, you came home so early that I asked if there had been a problem at school. Over the months you had been staying out late I had forgotten this was the regular time you were supposed to return. “There’s nothing wrong,” you replied, and took your books into the bedroom. In the evening, you filled your plate with rice and lentils and sat in the balcony to eat your dinner alone. That night, and every night after that, you took care to sleep with your back turned towards my bed.
On Saturday, when I asked if you were going to the HRM gymkhana for your yoga session, you replied you didn’t need the class anymore. “I know the exercises well enough now to do them myself at home.” You didn’t mention Arya’s name all weekend, in fact you barely spoke.
Two weeks later, Arya came to our flat. I had just emerged from my bath—I opened the door with my hair wet. I felt an acute embarrassment as he greeted me—I realized I didn’t even have my dupatta on. But my immodesty barely seemed to register on him. “Could I speak to Ashvin?” he said, and looked past me into the room beyond.
I withdrew into the kitchen to allow you to converse. It was about the summer camp—there had been a preparatory meeting at which you had failed to show up the night before. “I already told you I can’t go this year,” I heard you say.
“Do you realize what an honor this is, what strings I pulled to get you asked? Besides, you’ll be sixteen in a few weeks—if not this year, you’re never going to go.”
I didn’t trust myself not to intrude again, so I went into the bedroom and shut the door. I could still hear you arguing, so I stood in the balcony and watched the cars below. When I came back to the living room, you were alone.