by Anil Menon
He didn’t finish the sentence. He had lost interest in his own words. The memories tasted as flat as the biscuits. He didn’t care if he ever spoke again.
Anand downed the remaining chai, put the cup down, stretched out his arm. Ratnakar got up, removed the HMT wristwatch, went over to the Hindustan steel side cabinet, opened it, gave the watch a quick wipe, placed it carefully in its velvet case, then closed the cabinet. Ratnakar hesitated.
‘Sir, I can stay. I can always meet Amelie some other time.’
‘No.’ Anand swivelled his chair, turning it away from his factotum’s line of vision. ‘You may go, Ratnakar. Return victorious.’
After Ratnakar had left, he tried to work, but his mind wouldn’t focus. It had gauzed the injury, but there was no staunching the slow discharge of desolation. Had Padma ever loved him? He was nothing now: neither a son nor a father nor a husband.
He took out his copy of the Gita and read the fifth chapter for a while, before realizing that he didn’t need comfort or insight. What was he to do next? What the hell was he to do next? All directions seemed equally feasible. What would Father do? Father would Foch him. Situation excellent. I shall attack! Father would wreak vengeance. So that option could be ruled out, no disrespect intended.
#
Kannagi could tell John Liu was still mad. It was obvious in the way he was attacking his salad, slashing and dicing the poor thing to shreds. He had been fine until she apologized for not being around when Loeb and gang were in town. Then he’d begun to steam. She remembered watching a show about whipping boys who took the punishment meant for princelings. The salad was taking it for her. She felt bad but not that bad. What was the point; she couldn’t change the past. The thing to do was to look ahead. Liu paused his mauling of the lettuce and barked:
‘They delayed their return flight, Kay. Just to meet you. And you were out on the streets, protesting.’
‘I had no choice, John.’ Then she remembered Sawai telling her there was always a choice. ‘I called them up and apologized. They were pretty decent about it. Especially Puneet. He said he’d look into organizing a Skype call.’
Liu looked at her the way grown-ups had always looked at her when she was unduly optimistic. Then Liu sighed and said, ‘Puneet told me he thought you were too flaky. He’s never liked you. You blew it, Kay.’
‘He said that?’ She was a bit stunned at the reveal. Puneet Krishnan had been Oprah herself on the phone. Then she shrugged. If the NYU thing had fallen through, it had fallen through. ‘I’m sorry I put you in this mess but now it is my mess and I’ll deal with it. It’s a great day and I don’t want us to fight. Okay?’ He didn’t answer, so she stopped his hand and smiled at his discontented face. ‘Okay? You don’t have to worry so much about me.’
‘I wouldn’t if you would. If you’re worried, then I can sing trala-la, but if you’re singing tra-la-la then I have to be worried.’ Liu laughed, a half-angry, half-sad sound. ‘We’ll get you there, Kay. I’ll figure something out once I get back. Which will be soon. I’ve booked my return ticket. The seventeenth of next month.’ He reached for the biryani. ‘I know. It’s a bit sudden.’
‘Really? You think so? Next month!’ Her cellphone began to vibrate, but Kannagi ignored it. ‘When did you decide all this?’
Liu said he’d made the decision a few days after her arrest. It had been a kind of tipping point. He didn’t like the Lokshakti, he didn’t think he was getting through to the students, DU’s bureaucracy had stopped being amusing, and he wasn’t getting much research work done.
‘Life is hard here,’ mused Liu. ‘It shouldn’t be. It needn’t be. The country wants to be a superpower but its classrooms aren’t even equipped with projectors. Everybody is helpful but nothing gets done. The bureaucracy. What’s with the mania for notarized certificates? Everything’s disorganized, dirty. And the goddamn heat. Christ, the heat.’
‘Yeah, the heat takes some getting used to.’
‘That’s the danger here, isn’t it? You can get addicted to adjusting. We have to get you out before you adjust to being Indian.’ Liu took a sip of his diet coke. ‘God, this biryani just kills. I’ve got to get my biryani fix in the US.’
‘I wasn’t that fond of biryani. But you enjoy it so much, I’ve begun to enjoy it too. Isn’t that strange?’
‘Yes! That’s happened to me too.’ Liu’s face lit up, but in a strange way it cast a shadow on his cheerful tone. She sensed untold romances, lost wives, roads not taken. ‘We infect each other. I’ll be in my office in Austin and wanting this or that, when it’s probably only you, lingering on.’
At the counter, Liu asked about ‘her boy’, whether it was ‘getting serious’, and when she said yes, he said: well, I hope it’s worth it. She had to expend some brain cycles to figure that one out.
‘It wasn’t Sawai’s fault,’ she said. ‘I made the decision to be at the morcha.’
After lunch, she and Liu walked back to the Department, shivering in the sudden and unusual drop in temperature.
‘You miss your pals, don’t you?’ said Liu.
The waiter had asked from habit if she wanted the leftover bones. But the street dogs were all gone. She missed them, the way they’d come crowding to greet her, tails wagging, noses exploring, and palpitating with one voice: So late? Come play a bit! Anything for us? Missed you, sister! You smell great!
Liu launched into a crazy story about how in the 1730s, apprentices at a printing shop in Paris—he knew the name of the road and everything—had exploded in rage at their horrible working conditions by slaughtering their master’s wife’s cat and every other cat in the neighbourhood. Cats had their spines broken with iron bars, they’d been disembowelled, drowned, smashed against brick walls, set on fire, crucified. He smiled, relishing her horror.
‘The point, Kay? Things were so bad in eighteenth-century France, Nicolas Contat, the apprentice who recorded the incident in his memoir, wrote that the cat massacre was the most hilarious experience of his whole career. Humans.’
The argument over whether humans had changed for the better or not was warm enough to ward off the cold. The Delhi winter had arrived early and it had come with knives.
Back at the office, she remembered she’d had a call. She checked her cell. It had been Mir Alam Mir. He’d been about to board an Islamabad flight for a literary conference and had left a voicemail. The message was short but it was so very pleasant she immediately thought of her sister. Her cell rang.
‘Akka! I was about to call you!’
‘Are you all right?’ Padma’s voice was filled with dread.
‘Why shouldn’t I be? Listen, I’ve some great news. Remember I told you about Mir Alam Mir. The movie guy?’ She explained that Mir had a friend, Sameera Jain, who owned a small art gallery in South Delhi. He’d sent her portfolio to Sameera and now Sameera wanted to discuss a possible showing. ‘Isn’t that cool!’
‘Very. But I’m not surprised. I always said your work was great. You never believed me. After all—’ Her sister spoke Tamil beautifully. The roly-poly syllables washed over her, as tender and thorough as a mother’s busy towel. Akka even got the pregnant pauses and sarcastic emphasis just right. ‘But of course, what do I know? I only hang out in houses filled with art all day.’
‘Will you be my agent?’ asked Kannagi, trying to think up other practical questions. ‘I’ll pay you an hourly commission, negotiable after six months. No pension.’
‘Be serious for once. Okay—’ Padma’s tone turned even bossier. ‘There’s lots to do. Your collection is a total mess. Some here, some there. How many kolam pieces do you have in the apartment?’
‘Dunno. Several hundred. I have just sent a new batch to the printers.’
‘See! This is what I mean. You’re so disorganized. I have seven of your pieces, four on the walls and three at the framer’s. Who’s going to go through the rest of it all? You think a showing just happens by itself. Darling, it’s a full-time job. And I don’t eve
n have a PA at the moment—’ ‘Whose fault is that? You have to treat your people better. They aren’t slaves.’
‘Don’t you dare use that tone with me. I’m your elder sister.’
‘Oh ho, the truth stings, doesn’t it Akka?’
The call rapidly went south after that.
The remainder of the day was filled with two classes and student hours. Dharmaraj popped in, then Yashpal. She skyped with Tara and Radha about their fab-jab project; they were making awesome progress. Professionally and personally; they had pet names for each other now. The coordinator for the Waqt Ki Awaaz fab-jab Club seized the opportunity to ping her on Skype and complain that Kannagi came to far fewer of their sessions; they were feeling unloved. Kalai also pinged her, but she quickly skyped out. So he sent an email. Aiyyo. There were only so many things she could do simultaneously. It was time to start worrying about how to scale the fab-jabs. And organize her time better. She was hardly getting any time to work on her own research.
By the time Kannagi reached home, it was nearly seven in the evening. When she pushed open the door, she heard Sawai in the kitchen, cooking. She resigned herself to vegetarian delight. Sawai had recently turned vegetarian.
‘I would’ve cooked!’ she yelled, setting down her bag.
‘I was mad for some eggplant.’
Yay, eggplant. God made eggplants and then God made me. She went to the kitchen, kiss-kiss, then headed to the bathroom. The first thing that struck her was that the bathroom had been scaled down. It felt smaller. It felt smaller because there was something larger in it. The bathroom had a larger, newer geyser. A Bajaj Majesty 15 litre unit, cylindrical, vampire white, had set up residence in the upper northwest corner of the bathroom. She stared at the geyser, dumbfounded. It looked expensive. ‘Try the new geyser,’ shouted Sawai. ‘They installed it today.’
Was Alzheimer’s setting in? Not only could she not remember asking anyone to install anything, she couldn’t even remember any geyser-related discussion with Sawai. She really couldn’t. Sure, he’d moved in, but still. Staring at the mirror, she made loud exclamations of joy, seeing if she could sound appreciative without her face cooperating one bit.
Kannagi ran the water, turned the unit on. After a few seconds, the water began to steam. Nice. As the bucket filled, she pushed open the bathroom’s tiny window through the grate, injuring a finger in the process. The hot water was super-hot! The chilly air streaming in completed the sauna experience. It wasn’t bad, but she missed the old unit. Its incompetence had suggested all kinds of new ideas. She dried her hair in the small bedroom, checked her email—Kalai had sent an update to his paper—changed into her usual rags, and then went into the kitchen.
‘Like the new geyser?’
‘I love it. Thanks, babe.’ She leaned forward, kissed him. ‘What do I owe you?’
‘For what?’
‘For the geyser.’
‘It’s free. I have a friend; he arranged it.’
‘Yeah, sure. C’mon Sawai, how much?’
‘Go watch TV. Stop nagging me. You are earning, I know that, no need to jatao.’
‘I wasn’t jatao-ing anything. But the geyser looks expensive and I know money is tight for you right now.’
‘It’s not tight. Soon I’ll have a new job. In the morning, you’ll thank me for the geyser.’
‘I’m thanking you right now. Okay, as you wish.’ This couples thing wasn’t as easy as people pretended it to be. Suddenly, every sentence began to have double meanings, triple meanings. ‘How was your day?’
‘Great.’ He looked at her, gestured with the spatula at her T-shirt and shorts. ‘Don’t get too comfortable. We’re going out later.’
‘We always go out. Let’s stay home tonight. Watch a movie.’
She expected him to argue, but he only shrugged. ‘Okay. What movie?’
‘Mir’s movie,’ she said, cautiously. ‘We’d promised to watch it, remember?’
He’d become weird about Mir. At first Sawai had joked about the horny weekend at the haveli, then he’d turned weird, and when she prodded, said bitter things suggesting the poet had stolen something from him. And from her. Nothing from my purse, she’d replied puzzled, wondering if Mir should be told he had a thieving servant. I’m not talking of money, he’d barked. Purity. He stole your purity, your innocence. When she’d burst out laughing and said, no, I’ve always been a slutty whore, he’d gotten angry. So she’d said filthier things. They’d ended up tangled and sweaty on the bed, and laughing, but she had a feeling Mir Alam Mir would always be a sensitive topic in the Gawai household.
‘You had promised,’ muttered Sawai. Then he relaxed. ‘Okay, we’ll watch it. But these art movies are all mood kills, I’m telling you.’
‘Not necessarily.’ But Kannagi suspected he was right. She told him about Mir’s call, about the possibility of a gallery showing. Sawai made all the right noises, interrupting only to offer a sample from the eggplant dish and to shoo her away from the carrot halwa he’d made. It was all very cosy.
‘When did we get the extra gas cylinder?’ She pointed to the squat spare cylinder by the side of the kitchen’s cooking platform. ‘Santa again?’
‘You live with me, you get perks. I’ve some news too. I have found a job.’
Then he laughed because her face was such a transparent reflector of her feelings.
‘So you were worried,’ he teased.
Yeah, she’d been worried. There was no need to tell Sawai about how poor old dad had sat jobless for months after the return from the States.
Perhaps it was the good news, but the eggplant had some extra deliciousness. She didn’t once think: ooh, mashed cockroaches.
Over dinner, Sawai spilled the beans. He’d got a government job with the Department of Cultural Affairs. They’d come to him, he hadn’t gone to them. He had met the director, a smart, practical fellow. Cultural Affairs had launched a series of educational initiatives all over India, especially the rural areas, and they could use someone with his skills. In a few days, he would join the six-week training program at the brand new Swantantra Center. It was a bit like the American Peace Corps, except Swantantra officers were paid in real money and real career opportunities, not thanks and dysentery.
Sawai said he’d been doing a lot of thinking. About Durga, his fundas, the way he built on things instead of tearing them down, how he was growing older, and wanted other things from life, blah, blah. She listened, not giving much weight to his reasons. Ultimately, what mattered were his actions, not his reasons. He really wanted her to be happy for him, so she was.
She washed the dishes. Wet, soap, wash, shake. He wiped them down, put them away on the dry-rack. Let’s start the movie, he said, hanging the towel neatly on a holder thingy. She didn’t remember having a dry-rack or a holder thingy.
She connected her laptop’s HDMI port to the LED TV, returned to the couch. He made space and she stretched out on the couch, her head resting against his chest.
‘If Mir is behind it,’ she said, ‘how bad can it be? I bet it will be damn good.’
‘I bet you a foot massage it will be a bakwaas movie.’
Twenty minutes into the movie she had to admit Sawai was right. The movie blew chunks. She had been prepared for a slow movie but not a paralytic one. The camera was in love with the actress’s face. It spent long minutes trying to capture minute variations in her expression. Which never varied. Her expression said: Help, I’m in a bad movie and I can’t get out.
The story was the basic love triangle, except that every character seemed mental. Saya played a silly, frivolous wife who’d had an affair. Mir was the creepy artist-lover. Durga played the tight-assed lawyer-husband who had never met a situation for which he didn’t have a principle. The entire situation could have been resolved if all three of them had been willing to hash it out, but of course, there was no chance of that. The inane characters were too busy weeping and hollering and lecturing each other in the dimly lit scenes.
‘I wish I was blind,’ remarked Sawai, and she bumped her head against his chest in agreement.
Durga had been a polymath. His work on artificial immune systems, now almost thirty years old, still inspired research programs. He had been a mentor par excellence, a wonderful human being. He had done a great deal of good. She loved Durga.
‘I wish someone had killed Durga before he made this movie,’ remarked Sawai.
Another chest bump.
Sawai had begun to skip scenes. Fast-forward, watch, fast-forward. The flash of a naked breast. Sawai paused the DVD. Slow play. Nothing. Rewind. Advance frame by frame. Freeze frame. There! Just for a fraction of a second. Mir’s anaemic paw was firmly on Saya’s naked boob. Sawai laughed.
‘Good this is not released,’ observed Sawai, after the fifth such freeze-frame. ‘Kanno, give me a copy of CD, okay? Maybe I can blackmail her into sex with me some day.’
‘Stop it,’ said Kannagi and made him rewind.
The acting was terrible but the movie’s story was kind of interesting. The lawyer-husband loved his wife. He knew her affair hadn’t been a serious one. When his wife had been young, he had neglected her. She had strayed but she was now the best of wives. She loved him and had put the past behind her. The husband had only contempt for the artist-lover; hate was too much of an emotional investment. And yet, he was proceeding to ruin the wife he loved in every conceivable way because moral principle demanded it. The principle was more important than the person.
Kannagi could see the logic, in a way. She wouldn’t compromise if a scientific truth was at stake. The lawyer-husband simply had the same view about moral truths.
Suppose she was married to some guy and they both worked in a research lab. Suppose that without her knowing, her husband fudged experimental data to get desired results for some corporate creep. It was a small fudge and no real harm was done. But if years later she were to discover what her husband had done, how would she react? Would she report the data tampering, ruin her husband’s reputation? Yes, she probably would. Because the principle was more important than the person. It was the right thing to do. So why it did feel wrong when transferred to the romantic sphere?