Half of What I Say

by Anil Menon

  ‘Just one ticket? Is that all?’ She heard Anand mutter instructions to his assistant. ‘What are you doing in Kanpur?’

  She chit-chatted with Anand, teasing him, as she liked to do, but he seemed to be hearing things better too these days because he said:

  ‘Come stay with us for a few days. Your sister misses you a great deal.’

  She didn’t register his casual comment at the time, but later, ensconced in a co-opted first-class seat on an Indigo flight that had left Lucknow at six-thirty in the evening, she remembered his words and felt he had chosen them with care. Had Akka and Anand again fought over babies or what? But it was the kind of ill-posed woo-woo problem she especially disliked, so she worked on a paper.

  Kannagi reached her apartment a little past nine-thirty. It was empty. She left a third voicemail for Sawai. She was back in their apartment, she would be up, call when you get this. She didn’t feel tired; the trip had been very intense and her brain was still supercharged. Might as well get some grading done.

  Her cell rang but when she rushed to answer it, it turned out to be John Liu. His department at Austin was organizing a colloquium and he’d arranged for her to be invited. The plan was to fly her over, and after the colloquium, she was to spend a few days at NYU. Basically a job tour, but of course she wasn’t to tell the visa officer that. She still had a real shot at NYU. Their last candidate’s thesis had been based on Kannagi’s work. John said something about NYU realizing they didn’t need to settle for an apple when they could have the apple tree.

  This was getting crazy. Yesterday, zero alternatives. Today, three: IIT-K, NYU, TIFR. Yeah, and she could just stay at DU too. What would Durga do? She knew exactly what Durga would do. Little Goody-Two-Shoes wouldn’t pick the place where he was most wanted but the place where he was most needed. Curses.

  She retrieved the knapsack from the floor, sat down at her desk, stacked the exam sheets to her left, and removed the plaque from the drawer. The plaque had an elegant faux cherry wood finish and a sleek anodized plate, on which was engraved in fancy lettering the inspiring words:

  The power of instruction is seldom of much efficacy except in those happy dispositions where it is almost superfluous. Edward Gibbon.

  She moved the plaque—a welcome-to-DU gift from her colleagues— to one corner of the desk. All set. Forty-eight students in her class, two minutes per paper, so that would be about an hour and a half max. She set the timing app on a two-minute loop and worked at a steady clip. The decrementing pile on the left and the incrementing pile on the right were a morale booster.

  A cold paw encircled her breast.

  She screamed, lashed out with her fist, sprang to her feet, karate-mode. For a second, the Lokshakti uniform didn’t register. Sawai!

  ‘Hello Professor-ji. Surprised? I didn’t expect to see you also.’

  She hugged him something fierce, kissed his warm lips. She hated the uniform, the feel of the cords and pockets against her chest. When she saw him in uniform, it brought back all the anger.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ he demanded.

  ‘Shut the door.’ She didn’t want to fight. She wanted to cuddle. The cold night air always seemed to pick on her, not him. It was like he always carried a personal heater with him. ‘I thought you’d left.’

  ‘No, I have postponed my trip to Satara.’ He assisted her out of her T-shirt, unbuttoned her shorts, liberated her panties. ‘I’m leaving next week, I decided.’

  ‘Next week?’ So what was with the voicemail?

  Oh that, said Sawai. That had been the morning situation. Sorry, he should have given her an update. Was she inconvenienced?

  Yes Sawai, you could say I was slightly inconvenienced. Why the hell was she naked? She was pushed back on the bed, her arms lifted over her head. She couldn’t let go of her anger and that made her madder because she wanted to enjoy what was happening. It was as if she were standing to one side, watching Sawai do pushups over a blow-up doll.

  ‘Are we still fighting?’ Sawai turned on the bedside lamp, poked her nipples. ‘You’re not cooperating.’

  She watched her body make half-hearted attempts to simulate interest. It made her even angrier. Why was it trying to salvage some meaning? There was nothing to salvage here. It reminded her of a kid in school who’d wailed about mean friends, but then hung out, hope in her hangdog eyes, with the same group of bullies.

  ‘You want to fight, I can tell.’ Sawai propped himself up on his elbows. ‘You want to fight?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘I do. You are blaming me for changing my mind. But in science, when you find new facts, don’t you change your mind? I looked at the facts. The fact is Durga Dhasal is dead. The fact is our country needs a strong hand. The fact is there are no loyalties in politics. The fact is I think our Hindu culture needs to be preserved. The fact is I am thirty-five years old. The fact is the Lokshakti is not one thing, it is many things. I looked at these facts, and I changed my theory about the Lokshakti.’

  ‘Yes, that makes a lot of sense. Thank you.’

  ‘Welcome.’ Incredibly, he lowered his head and began to nibble at her breasts again.

  Her cellphone rang. It was on the dresser, too far away to reach. Had to be Akka, wondering if she’d reached, wondering if she was okay. She tried to get up, and the ringing abruptly stopped.

  ‘Is that Mir-ji?’ inquired Sawai. ‘Will you get wet if the hijra is here to watch us?’

  Her pent-up rage exploded. Kicks, scratches, punches. He tried to push her away and she nipped his index finger. It must have hurt him like hell, because he jerked his hand back, slapped her. A pistol shot.

  They stared at each other in shocked silence. Kannagi smiled, almost breathless with sorrow.

  ‘I’m sorry, Kanno,’ he said, looking bewildered.

  She leaped, balling her fists in mid-leap. He took the punishment for a few brutal seconds, then grabbed her, flipped her over, sliding his left hand deep between her thighs. She squirmed under his weight, swearing obscenities, and crying with spite and desire. The tiger’s tooth on his necklace clawed into her back. She lifted her ass, spread her legs. His cock was the Sawai she remembered.

  Later, she shared with Sawai some of the ganja nano-beads she’d brought from IIT-K. It didn’t have the satisfaction of a smoke.

  ‘So this is the goodbye fuck,’ she said, yawning.

  Kannagi switched off the night light. The ganja had sharpened her hunger but also dulled the ability to feel too strongly about it. They lay in peace, exhausted by the rigours of breaking up. She thought he was drifting off, but he began to speak instead.

  ‘The day I was arrested, I was separated from the others. I was held for a few hours in a cell. I lost sense of time because they’d placed a bag over my head, and my hands were handcuffed. I got disoriented, as if I were in a dream. I heard shots, people being beaten. I was held—I don’t know, six, maybe seven hours. Then I was led down a corridor, put in another room. This room was utterly quiet, no noise at all. An hour later, the bag was removed.

  ‘A Lokshakti officer stood in front of me. I learned he was the director of Cultural Affairs. My first thought was, politics is now part of cultural affairs? My handcuffs were removed. He offered me chai, which I accepted. He arranged for water and some food. As I ate, he explained there had been a goof-up, they’d processed some other Shailesh Gawai. That’s the word he used, processed. In a sense, I had been reborn as myself. One of my possible selves. Did I understand?

  ‘I understood I was all alone. Bhavi Itihaas was finished. You have heard of a headless chicken, yes? I was the body-less chicken. The only reason for not killing me was that my resume showed I had some organizing skills. He told me to think about that. If I helped him, he could help me. We talked for a long time. What he offered wasn’t unattractive. Anyway, does this filmi story change anything between us?’

  She didn’t say anything.

  ‘I don’t need stories anymore either,’ he said, without
bitterness.

  He rested his head on her belly. Their bodies had decided long back it was better for her to hold him rather than the other way around. He stroked her waist, played with her belly button. Soon he started to snore.

  The next morning, Kannagi heard him padding about, humming, clattering in the kitchen. As she did her ablutions, she thought about work. It would be cool to arrange some Jadoos for Mr Natwarlal to play with. There was grading to finish. Update Mir on the gallery showing. And a meeting with Dharmaraj. The honest thing was to tell him she was leaving. Maybe. It would all be so damn quiet tomorrow.

  When she came out of the bathroom, Sawai announced he was making omelettes for breakfast.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked. ‘Omelette not good enough for the maharani?’

  ‘Omelette’s great.’

  ‘What then? Smile. Your khadoos face is curdling the milk.’

  ‘My face isn’t khadoos.’ She popped back in to check. It was khadoos.

  ‘That’s better,’ he said, when she popped back out.

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘Yup.’ He smiled. ‘Come, your omelette is getting cold.’

  They watched the news. Sawai had changed to CNBC. She asked if he knew what an indexed perpetual-futures market was. He didn’t, so she made him change the channel. A film channel came on, and his face lit up with sudden pleasure. ‘Wah, Pyaasa. Yeh duniya agar mil bhi jaaye toh kya hai. Watch, watch. Best song ever made. That’s Guru Dutt.’

  Before her time. She’d mostly watched movies from the 70s onwards. She commented that Guru Dutt was kinda hot. The scene seemed to be about a poet who’d shown up, inconveniently alive, at his own memorial service. Funny. But as she continued watching, it began to feel less funny.

  ‘Watch, watch. Every shadow, every glance means something.’ Sawai was transfixed. ‘Jawaani bhatakthi hai bezaar ban kar. Jawaan jism sajte hain baazar ban kar. You know what it says? Of course you don’t know what it says. It says—’ He paused, got his English words in order. ‘It says: youth goes here-there bezaar, youth decorates itself for the bazaar. See how Sahir Ludhianvi plays upon bezaar in one line and bazaar in the other? Bezaar means hopelessness. We’re all for sale. We’re all going to hell. How true. That’s our story, Kanno. That’s our story. That’s our world’s story.’

  ‘Not according to the data.’

  Sawai turned off the TV. When he put the remote away, he picked up a CD.

  ‘You know,’ he said, ‘I’m going to end up with a woman who will agree with everything I say, and I will be the unhappiest man ever.’

  ‘So be unhappy!’ She felt a tremble come all over her. He was waving the CD at her. ‘What?’

  ‘Mir’s movie; return it to him. Tell him the peacock’s dance attracts the wolf as well as the peahen.’

  ‘I’ll return the movie,’ she said, baffled by his sudden dip into poesy. Kind of insulting too. Peahen? Seriously? ‘But tell him yourself you liked the movie. I’m going to tell him it sucked.’

  Sawai helped her clean up. Breakfast was over. They were over. He already seemed distant, covered in armour, ready to move on. He sat on the bed, put his leather shoes on, and then just sat there, thinking, looking around the apartment. He smoothed the bedsheet with his palm. When he hugged her goodbye, it was perfunctory.

  ‘Kanno,’ he said. Smiled. As the door closed behind him, Sawai continued to smile. In the span of that smile, he was all that he had been.

  She tidied the apartment, rearranged the furniture. He’d forgotten to take his necklace with the tiger’s tooth. She got ready for work, made another cup of chai, then sat cross-legged on the floor, meditating, sipping. She slipped his necklace over her neck, then removed it. Then she put it on again. It would be a difficult day.

  Life was so sad frikkin awesome.

  #

  It was good to be king. Anand sat encircled by Pillai’s core team, consisting of two dozen or so developers, most in their twenties, except for a couple of grizzled thirty-year-olds and one near-senile Linux expert who was in his forties. The discussion revolved around money. Pots and pots of money, oh, lovely jingling jangling munny, and what Pillai’s programmers would do when they got their callussed denary digits on above-mentioned houris of paradise.

  ‘The main thing to understand,’ concluded Anand, carelessly, ‘money is a fiction. It’s the greatest fiction there is, but it’s only a fiction. This whole world will come to an end tomorrow if the public stopped believing in it. Or more correctly, if they stopped suspending their disbelief.’

  He downed his beer. Immediately, another bottle was placed in his hands. He examined the label. Kalyani Black Label. Good. He didn’t really like alcohol but today was a special day, so no big deal.

  ‘Madam,’ mouthed Ratnakar, making the call-me gesture.

  Bangalore’s Matrix bar was cramped as most things in the heart of Bangalore tended to be, but Anand didn’t mind. On his right was his Yuvraj, Eshwar Pillai, and to his left was ‘Maddy’ Mudaliar and her right thigh, very brown, squeezably heavy, and solidly flush against his own linen-encased expanse.

  ‘Sir, what’s your net worth?’ asked a youngster who sat directly opposite from him.

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t put a number on it.’ Then Anand gestured to the fellow’s T-shirt. ‘But if you, as an Indian, feel the need to walk around displaying the American flag, then you really should be more worried about your self-worth.’

  ‘Thousand crores?’ said the youngster, unfazed.

  ‘A little higher probably.’ Anand felt a tremor developing in his left leg. It started in the shank, moved underneath his thigh. He flexed his toes, but his leg rubbed against Maddy’s and he immediately stopped. Maddy gave him a warm smile.

  ‘Ten thousand, sir?’ asked the pest.

  ‘You know what they say, if you can count it, you don’t have enough.’

  He could feel Maddy’s body heat, a warm diffuse glow that made his skin sweat. Pillai’s QA manager didn’t seem to be particularly aware of the coincidence. Her hand darted busily over a smartphone, even as she lifted her head now and then to keep track of the conversation.

  ‘Listen guys, his father was a billionaire,’ said Eshwar, ‘and Junior thalaivaan here is twice as smart. He could have a garage full of Bentleys and he rides in a Lexus.’

  ‘No, no, I’m not half the man Father was,’ said Anand, hastily, and then added: ‘Money is mostly meaningless. My worth varies drastically from day to day and there’s not much connection between that number and what I can do with what people believe I can do.’

  ‘That’s exactly right!’ said Pillai, thumping the table. ‘I’ve been bankrupt and it didn’t make any frikkin difference whatsoever.’

  They wanted to believe. They desperately wanted to believe. The lust to make money was so intense it was practically an odour. Anand caught Eshwar’s glance and the two men laughed.

  ‘Each and every one of you here is a millionaire,’ began Anand, but he couldn’t proceed any further because the two glasses of beer was doing funny things to his head. Or perhaps it was Maddy’s small hand on his thigh.

  ‘Sir,’ said Maddy, smiling pleasantly, ‘please excuse, going to Ladies room.’

  Oh! Yes, yes of course. As she squeezed past him, he angled his legs to the side. He glanced at the time. Eight-fifteen. Eshwar leaned towards him.

  ‘Anand!’

  ‘Eshwar.’

  ‘Don’t mind my monkeys. Having a good time?’

  ‘Sure. I’m glad I came.’

  ‘Me too. Poondhax hard and play hard, right?’ Eshwar clinked his bottle. ‘How’s bhabhi? I told you to bring her along.’

  ‘Yes, that’s why I didn’t.’

  Eshwar laughed, glanced at his smartphone. ‘Bhabhi lights up any room, brother Anand. But she’s my bhabhi. Listen, you’re here, you’re single, you’re my guest and you’re in my city. I promised you some fun. Still up for it?’ Fun? Oh yes, fun, he was up for fun. He was determined to have fun.


  ‘Why is the music so quiet?’ he inquired, pretending to be puzzled. ‘Is this a funeral or what?’

  ‘Good, that’s very good.’ Eshwar laughed, got to his feet, held up his glass. ‘Hatyacharis! Listen up! I have some news.’

  ‘Wait for Maddy,’ cried a few voices.

  There was no need. Maddy was already hurrying back from the restroom. Everyone quietened. Eshwar’s expression became serious, though a smile stood waiting. ‘Ten minutes ago, Maddy got an SMS from Rachna saying we’ve completed the handoff to Anand’s people. The Vayuputra distribution has cleared all the JTests. Did I say cleared? It soared! It flew! It leaped over continents!’

  Pillai raised his hand to stall the cheer, but his manic grin had been let out of its cage.

  ‘The tablets are in Delhi. All that remains is for Anand’s team to install content, run some final sanity checks and distribute the hardware.’ Again he raised his hand. ‘Seven months ago, when we started, all we had were a bunch of desi tablets no one had faith in, a new communication protocol no one had faith in, and a radical user interface no one had faith in. Except us. Today, thanks to our hard work and the partnership with brother Anand here, we have nine thousand users lined up, lakhs on the waiting list and the dawn of a supernet. Villagers are going to have better net access than we city turtles. Elections, education, entertainment: we’re going to change it all. You have made it all possible, hatyacharis. Give yourself a big hand.’

  Anand downed his beer, thumped the table. Shook hands all around. The job wasn’t done. There still wasn’t a single tablet in the hands of anyone outside of employees and beta-testers. Still, there was no denying a significant technical benchmark had been met. Vayuputra. The name would go down in history. And he would have played a part in its making. Thump, thump, thump. Pillai waited for them to calm down.

  ‘I only have to tell you one more thing. It is an important thing I wish someone had told me when I was having my first successes. I want to tell you that what you all achieved, what we feel this moment, that’s what life is about. Enjoy it. Find someone to make love to. Because this moment has no substitute.’