ARINGDHAM’S EYES ZEROED in on the entrance. An important guest had arrived. Rajendra Singh Parmar owned an airline and one of the largest television networks in the country. He knew little, if anything, about aviation or television, but he was politically connected and known to help his friends. Aringdham moved to receive him.
On the way Amie Kanga, an elderly Parsi lady, stopped him. “Ah, Aringdham, there you are,” she said, reaching for his face with flabby white arms. “Where have you been, you bad boy? Here, let me kiss you, before you get hooked, booked, and cooked.” Aringdham politely offered her his cheek and she delicately kissed it. Then, pulling him down to where he could see her dazzling white pearls and smell the perfume that rose off her powdered breasts, she snapped her fingers against his temples, the Parsi gesture for good luck, and said, “Bahut, bahut tandurusti, dikra. A lifetime of good luck, son.” Normally Aringdham would have stood and spoken to her, for he was fond of Auntie Amie, but right now he thanked her and moved on. He had to get to Parmar Sahib quickly. He was too important a guest to be left unattended. Besides, Aringdham didn’t want any of the other guests—especially his competitors—to collar him.
Aringdham walked along the edge of the lawn. Thankfully there were no lights here, nor people. A waiter offered him a drink. He picked a whisky, took two gulps, and placed the glass back on the tray. “That’s it!” he said to the waiter, and, wiping his mouth with a tissue, walked away. He couldn’t meet Parmar Sahib with a drink in his hand. It was important that he make the right impression, for though Parmar Sahib was a recent acquaintance, he’d be a good man to know. No one knew his past, where he came from, or what his core business was, yet many of the bigwigs of India, including some film stars, media barons, industrialists, and cricketers, enjoyed a place on his board. Aringdham felt pleased that Parmar Sahib had bothered to come. It spoke to his own standing among the elite.
He came to a part of the lawn where the tables were being laid. By the dress of the chefs he could tell this was the Oriental spread. The soups and starters had been laid out, and the burners had been lit, the blue of the flames contrasting nicely with the orange hues from the trees. The night had taken on an ephemeral quality, a shimmering buzz, metaphysical and unreal. A medley of aromas rose from the trays. Aringdham would have liked to have stopped, but Parmar Sahib couldn’t be kept waiting.
Just then, without warning, the lights went off, plunging the party into darkness. The guests went, “Ooh,” wailing their disappointment. A pallid gloom fell over the lawns; it was as if someone had hurled a thick woolen blanket over them. It felt warm, too, as if the breeze had fallen. From afar the guests appeared more like birds of prey, like people dressed to enjoy but now frozen because their fun had been arrested. Aringdham cursed softly and looked around. It seemed like a uniform collapse—all over the city—some fluctuation in the grid, perhaps. He proved right, for seconds later the lights were back. And they seemed brighter now, harsher perhaps, because of the moments of deprivation and the transition to light so sharp and definite. The guests cheered. And Aringdham noted the clarity with which he could see them now: details of what they wore, how they smiled, the snacks they eyed, and spouses not their own. He could see hips swaying, not for the music but for eyes that would blink and absorb. And he could hear laughter that was meant to flatter, that suggested wavelengths in progress or dates for later.
The manager, Keith Rosario, stepped in his way. He gripped Aringdham by the arm, his face redder than usual, his voice embarrassingly loud. “Everything satisfactory, sir, I hope? All the guests are happy?”
Aringdham got a strong whiff of alcohol. Rum. He could tell by the smell. He looked coldly at his arm, and instantly Rosario’s pinkish white fingers withdrew.
“You see, sir, I like to keep my word,” Rosario spluttered. “I had promised you a party to remember, so I hope nothing is lacking, sir. I hope it all meets your expectations?”
“Yes, Mr. Rosario, all is well. A little less attention on the bar, though,” Aringdham said before he walked away. Rosario blushed. These rich blokes couldn’t bear to see anyone enjoy. Not like people in the hills, who opened their hearts and doors to all. No simplicity left, that’s what the problem with this city was! Not like in the old days when everyone was free and open. He sighed and grabbed a drink off a passing tray. Then, on second thought, he called to the waiter and replaced it.
Aringdham saw that Parmar Sahib had joined a group of youngsters. He was smiling in their midst—that same indulgent smile he had seen on page 3 of the Bombay Post. Aringdham wondered if the smile was real. Did it spring from some inner source, genuine and spontaneous, or was it induced and cultivated? Did it harbor secrets of how wealth could pour in unexpectedly? How it could multiply overnight and find its way into mysterious banks outside the country? Did the smile say it knew how the country ran, and where and when it stopped running, and where funds were diverted, like a river dammed, to its rulers and their pockets?
Parmar Sahib seemed relaxed with the youngsters. He would! thought Aringdham. They were all highflyers, achievers, crossover filmmakers, fashion designers, runway models, painters, musicians, writers, producers, television stars: the future wave of India. Brand India, as they were calling it now in a recent tide of optimism. Parmar Sahib would want to be part of them. They gave him what he lacked—glamour, glitz, and social panache.
Aringdham was surprised at his thoughts. What had happened to him suddenly? He looked around and drank in the shining pockets of goodwill, the clever talk, the ribald bonding, the chemistry of the moment, which he had himself drawn on earlier to feel young, successful, and superior. But now were people looking out for him? No! Were they missing him? No! Wishing for him, toasting him, drinking to his health? No, no, no!
Did the conversation and the bonhomie cease because he wasn’t around? Not a chance! Would it stop if he were to stay here in the dark or if he went away or dropped dead quietly at the side? Would anyone miss him besides Ritika and a few genuine friends like Nagpal and Sen Gupta? No. It would just spread to another lawn, another party. Same faces, different venue. It was all a game of self-reflection and self-promotion, a Ferris wheel of illusion that never stopped, because if it did people wouldn’t know what to do with themselves, their lives, their wardrobes, and their manners, all so carefully cultivated for occasions like these.
This was interesting; he’d never seen it this way, in this light. He was intelligent enough to know he was going through some transformation, an awakening beyond a lightbulb moment. He stopped a waiter and picked up a glass. Any glass, it did not matter now. Then he retired into the shadows where no one could see him but from where he could see them all. What a chance this was to play voyeur, to observe and evaluate equations, to take stock of the world he had built and of the people who were drinking and feasting off him tonight.
In the midst of this, he spotted Ritika. A rare diamond, she sparkled for him and him alone, because in reality she was where she did not belong. She was here because of her love for him. The guests were polite to her and she to them. She exchanged pleasantries, said the right things, saw to their food and drinks. Patiently she listened to their views on child-aid programs, their jargon about generation next: “The child is the future of man. We love the child so much, we’ll drink some more. Don’t mind us, for that’s how we are. We can’t change the world, so why change ourselves?”
Ironically, none of them had ventured out of Bombay to parts of India affected by a catastrophe—neither to Latur when it shook and collapsed, nor to Bhuj when it reverberated and ruptured, nor to Gujarat when it burned. Yet they spoke of their love for children, their social commitment, and notions of good corporate citizenship. As Ritika listened to them, she smiled and only volunteered as much as they needed to know. By their short-lived conversations Aringdham could tell that they didn’t know what to make of her. “He could have married better,” he imagined them saying. Or, “She’s not a Bombay girl; she won’t last.” “Big dea
l,” someone else would say. “She will become one. I have never seen anyone hold out against the city. The city has a way of taking you in. You can’t help but get swept off after a while.”
Aringdham looked toward Parmar Sahib. His circle had increased. Nimesh Pai, the Bollywood producer, had joined in now. He looked funny in a fluorescent yellow shirt straining at the paunch, his sideburns flowing down his cheeks. The shirt had a limelight of its own; it shone and revealed shrubs of hair flattened by perspiration. Pai’s mannerisms implied an attempt at shaking off his years. But what about his failures—the flop movies he had made in the last ten years? Aringdham could guess what his pitch would be: he’d be trying to build up a case for his flops—how they had fared well outside the country; how within India the timing was bad, there were too many big-budget films released at that time; how the big markets lay outside India; who’d imagine otherwise that Amitabh Bachchan would get so big in France? And so on and so forth, Pai would pontificate—how Bollywood must reinvent itself, shed its dependency on Hollywood plots, attract better scripts, consider collaborating with foreign studios, and summarily look at the world as its market. Occasionally he’d drop names like Ted Turner and Rupert Murdoch—to keep Parmar Sahib interested. And Parmar Sahib was interested. Anything to do with the media and celebrity fascinated him. Like most of India’s business gentry, Parmar Sahib was starstruck, and Pai was still a big name.
Aringdham took a sip of his rum. Exquisite, this Jamaican stuff. No wonder Rosario had been going at it. Aringdham thought of his conversation with the manager and felt ashamed. What was the difference between the manager and Nimesh Pai? They were both doing the same thing, availing themselves of an opportunity and juicing it. Rosario, grabbing at booze he would never normally taste, and the producer, trying to make a channel sale for his movies.
“Television is any day a better medium than cinema,” Nimesh Pai would say to Parmar Sahib. “Cinema doesn’t have that kind of reach. Nor the sweep and the impact.”
“Nahin, sir,” Parmar Sahib would reply quickly, “the investment in television is too high. Too much money has to go in, and it takes years to recover.”
And Nimesh Pai would immediately talk about Kaun Banega Crorepati, that one big break that put Star TV at the head of the ratings. At the same time he’d comb Parmar Sahib’s face for signs. When would be the best time to sell him a television show?
A good dance number had started: Nancy Sinatra’s “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’.” A group of women cheered. All forty-plus, they were the beauty queens of yesteryear, salvaged and restored by endless face-lifts. They descended on the male models at the bar and dragged them to the floor. The Swapnil sisters led the offensive. In private they were known as the sisters of swap, because at different times they’d been married to the same guy, Prem Swapnil. Sangeeta Swapnil got to keep him; Naina Swapnil had to back off. Yet they were one big happy family, with Naina Swapnil refusing to give up the surname. It had its advantages. On the guest list of the rich and famous, names could be forgotten but not surnames.
Some of the guests had started to eat, holding plates in one hand, drinks in the other. Aringdham could tell they were from the consulates. Next to them was Pat Trivedi—French-bearded and brown-eyed—who wrote a weekly column for the Bombay Post. A superficial knowledge of jazz and a deep understanding of same-sex swinging made Pat popular with the foreigners. Another socialite, Bhisham Malkani, had tried to break into this circuit for years, but he didn’t have the panache to give his sexual leanings an intellectual varnish. So he had to be content with married Indian bisexuals whose wives were into swinging with younger men.
Some of these wives were on the dance floor; they were gyrating with the male models in a spirit of pelvic synchronicity. From a distance the female models looked on and whispered to one another. What they said couldn’t have been flattering, for their minds were soaked as much in envy as in alcohol. Yet when they’d meet, they’d exclaim, “Darling, what energy! Where do you get it? Just looking at you, I feel so wasted.” And the elder beauties would wink and say, “Exercise, dahling—all kinds! It’s the elixir, you know?”
Aringdham watched all this as he sipped his rum. A wisp of a breeze lightened his mood, made him feel refreshed and truantlike. His eyes fell on Sam Bakshi, the shipping tycoon of India, prince of socialites, and playboy of the Eastern world, around whom a large number of men and women had gathered. Bakshi was holding court, and Aringdham could guess what he was saying. He’d be talking about a course, on the art of spiritual rejuvenation, that he’d taken recently, how he had awakened to a world outside fast cars, fast horses, and fast women. Ever since Bakshi had become “awakened,” his life’s mission was to press people into taking the course. His guru was Swami Kaviraj, a half-bald fakir with strands of long ropey hair, kohl-rimmed eyes, and a faint smile transfixed permanently. He gave the impression of one who knew he was going to hook you sooner or later.
Aringdham had attended one such course. Bakshi had cornered him at his New Year’s Eve party when Aringdham was on his fourth drink and too polite to refuse. Because Aringdham was well-read, he had seen through the sham—the spiritual rejuvenation course came out of Vipassana, the Buddhist technique for self-realization, practiced over ten days of self-observed silence. Clever, crafty Kaviraj had distilled it down to two days; he had packaged it into a dull, watered-down version, a quick fix that worked at the physical level, inducing a little lightness—relief, not realization—and this way he made it easy for the spiritual wannabes, the idle rich bored with their toys. “Of course you can do what you want—enjoy! You can continue to indulge in the material, but don’t get attached, that’s all,” he cautioned, smiling, while participants in the course sighed ecstatically and agreed to leave the distribution of their wealth to him. They agreed to it as a precondition critical for spiritual growth. And he helped them all he could.
Aringdham didn’t tell Sam Bakshi he’d seen through this, for Bakshi wouldn’t take kindly to a dissenting view. Besides, that wasn’t the way to get by in Bombay’s socialite circles. You had to nod when the mighty spoke. You had to show interest and open-mindedness. You had to scratch the other’s back, so the other would scratch yours in return, and by mutual consent you progressed and prospered, were invited to parties and featured in the papers, and would have the rest of Bombay envying you. It was a society full of icons, and more dangerous than the icons were those who made them and those who sustained them by their adulation.
Aringdham felt a sense of embarrassment. He realized how deeply he had craved this attention. How important it had been to get here, to stay and scintillate once he’d arrived. Well, he was tired of this game of pretense and performance, all the silent one-upmanship calculated to make an impact, to reflect his wit and reflexes, and to feed some illusion of superior refinement, which was never fulfilled and always growing. He was surprised at himself. It was as if he had donned a new identity, had gained a new power—calm, curious, and self-assured. He hoped the feeling would stay; he could live with it easily.
There appeared to be some stir at the entrance. Jay Chawla, the industrialist, and his wife, Shaheen, had arrived. They were in their twenties and quite a favorite with the party set. Jay wore a transparent black shirt, sleeveless, which showed the serpentine tattoos on his chest and arms. Shaheen did the same with her belly; it was tattooed colorfully and her navel was pierced with a diamond stud. Their hair was blond and jelled, and through their eyes a piercing vitality showed. It was rumored that the two were using Colombian white, the purest you could get off the streets of Colaba, but that was a rumor spread by people who’d seen them disappear into the restrooms together. There was no proof of it, none whatsoever.
Aringdham thought the Chawlas would hunt for him, would come to congratulate him and Ritika, but no, they headed straight for the dance floor. The crowd parted and welcomed them with shouts of, “Oh ho, here they come,” and “We will, we will rock you.” Shaheen blew kisses and rol
led her eyes—oh, she’d stay and talk, but when Jay wanted to rock, she had to roll. “Later, dahling, later—I promise!” she told them. “The night is young, and so are we.”
Jay leapt onstage and fired instructions at the bandleader, Joe Braganza, or Jazzy Joe as he was called. The crowd went, “Yes, yes, yes,” and Jazzy Joe nodded. He was here to entertain, here to please. He shot instructions to his musicians, and the music switched to a popular Hindi tune, the remix of a classic song. The beauty queens went mad. They shook their boobs and hands vigorously. After a while they lifted their arms to reveal thick green underarms and they danced bhangra-style, pouting their lips and swinging their hips expertly. Jay was center stage. He bent his body backward and, with a well-rehearsed motion, jiggled a part of his chest, fingering a make-believe guitar in mid-air. The beauty queens surrounded him and screamed hysterically. Shaheen grinned with achievement. Wasn’t he too much, just too much? She drew closer and stuck her tongue out—at his quivering chest, his flattened stomach, his arched groin, which came into sight. “Isn’t he too much, girls? Isn’t he a real pacesetter, a real party animal, a real floor burner?” The crowd squealed in agreement. “Oh take off your shirt, Jay. Let’s see those muscles; let’s see that chest.” By cheerleading for the Chawlas, the people on the floor earned their approval and an invitation to their parties.
Aringdham sighed. He looked for Ritika. She was talking to Parmar Sahib, who was without his coterie. The film producer Pai was on the floor, cutting a lewd number with a model, a wannabe actress six inches taller than he. Ritika was listening to Parmar Sahib, who spoke softly, but her eyes were roaming, searching the lawns beyond the lights. From where he stood Aringdham could read her mind. His wife was missing him; she needed his presence, a touch, a smile, to reward her for her patience. Aringdham stepped out of the shadows and set off at a pace. She saw him and her face lit up.
Breathless in Bombay Page 34