by Anil Menon
‘So we’re in the middle of a power struggle?’
‘Possibly. There’s a rumour Dorabjee’s very ill, possibly dead. Could be. This entire situation may have been manufactured to eliminate his protégé. He’d become something of a player recently. Which means enemies. So I’m not sure of Chikliwala’s chances.’
Pillai thumped the table, jolting his glass of water. ‘Unbelievable. This is fucking unbelievable. Are we a banana republic or what.’
‘I’m assuming you’ve made your calls as well.’
‘Yes, but I don’t have much pull in Delhi. Why do you think I go bankrupt so often? This is not a country for entrepreneurs. This is a country for toadies, thugs and religious nuts. I’m sick of it.’
‘Yes.’ Anand didn’t like the defeated note in Eshwar’s voice. He already had plenty of people he could touch for defeated notes. ‘I think we can contain the damage. Tanaz Chikliwala aside, we should emerge mostly intact. Whoever survives the Lokshakti’s power struggle will be smart enough to realize they need us. They need business. We’re the golden goose.’
‘You need to re-read the story. They killed the golden goose. Remember what happened to Naval Godrej? It’s time to ask: they need us but do we need them?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I’ve been thinking. I’m fed up. All the difficulties we’ve faced getting this thing going. I thought having you with me would make it easier because you’d know how to work the system in ways I simply cannot stomach. And you did. I’ve learned an incredible deal from watching you. I respect you, admire you. I haven’t said that to very many people. We are the same kind, like half-brothers, any difference only highlights our similarity. The same poetry flows in both of us.’
‘Knowing Father,’ said Anand, drily, ‘that’s entirely possible. With all due respect, he spread a lot of poetry.’
Eshwar was in no mood for levity. ‘But dude, enough is enough. I can’t imagine what it must have taken you to grow Social Weather in this fucking country. Even now, when illiterate thugs you wouldn’t trust to run a bathtub, let alone an enterprise, want to muscle in and profit from something they had no hand in making, even now you are trying to figure out how to continue making things work. I salute you, man.’
‘Let’s skip the bullshit and get to business.’
‘I have survived six bankruptcies. You know how many bankruptcies Hershey survived before he succeeded with Hershey’s Chocolates? Four. I have survived six. I’m the fucking desi Rocky, King of the Ring, the master of disaster. You know that comeback scene where Rocky looks Clubber Lang in the eye and takes his punches? Wham! One to the head. Wham! On the chin. Wham! Another one to the head. You remember what Rocky shouts? Ain’t so bad. It ain’t so bad. It ain’t so bad. That was me. I could take the punches. But I’m done. I quit! This Atlas is going to shrug.’
Anand rubbed his forehead. Rocky. Atlas. What the hell! Human beings didn’t mind jumping off cliffs as long as they had a story to keep them company on the way down. He decided to attempt an Ayruvedic cure; vishasya visham oushadam. Poison to treat poison and a story to cure this need to live in stories.
‘Eshwar, let me tell you the real story of the Atlas fellow. Let me tell you what happened to him after he shrugged and went his way. It is a huge burden off his shoulders, okay? He retires to a nice place. It is nice, this life without the heavy weight pressing him down. You’ll find him relaxing at book festivals, or at art shows, or boring youngsters in classrooms, or holding his wife’s handbag at the mall. He’s Used-to-be-Atlas. He is a nice guy, always eager to buy you a drink, everyone has heard his story, but he likes to tell it just the same. It is the same crazy story. In the old days, says Used-to-be-Atlas, he used to carry an entire world on his shoulders. He shows you how he used to do it, right there in the bar, withered arms raised, grimacing, cheeks puffed out, every stringy muscle straining, groaning. People whistle and cheer. You’re so great, boss! Of course no one believes a word he says. Used-to-be-Atlas is good for the bar, entertains the clients, and so the waiters are told to be extra-nice to him. You want to be Used-to-be-Atlas?’
Pillai smiled. ‘The same poetry, bro, the same poetry. But I got to do what I got to do. I’m not quitting, I’m just quitting working for free.’
‘Where do you plan to go? What do you plan on doing?’
‘I don’t know.’ For someone who lived in possibility, Eshwar seemed ill at ease. ‘I’m thinking Singapore. I need to see brown faces around me. Always have, always will. So that’s a hard constraint. Maybe I’ll return to gaming. I’ve been toying with a crazy idea for a long while. Want to hear it?’
Anand shrugged. ‘Sure.’
‘I think I know how to make newspapers profitable again.’ Pillai waited, his eyes sparkling with madness. ‘Newsmaking.’
‘Go on.’ Anand hid his smile. He ordered chai over the intercom. ‘Tell me more.’
Eshwar Pillai set sail. His idea was to treat news as tradeable ‘speculatives’ on which bets could be placed. The speculations had to be of public interest, verifiable, and either true or false. Such ‘contingent’ news had economic utility. This made it possible to build a prediction market, much like Intrade or the Iowa Electronic markets, around such contingent news. His ‘newsmakers’ would take a position on the price, investigate the speculation, and if possible, settle it. Once settled, the contingent news became regular news and the market would clear. The economic value was placed where it belonged: on the potentiality of the news, not the number of potential readers. Et cetera, et cetera.
It could work, thought Anand. All of Eshwar’s ideas could work. That was the problem. There was nothing so dangerous as a crank with a viable plan. But Anand was also moved by his friend’s attempt to comfort him with ideas. He humoured Pillai with questions. Would he offer news on the secrecy markets? Had he considered trading in health data?
‘You know Eshwar, you really need a country of your own.’
‘I know! We all do!’ Pillai broke into a rant about sea-steading. A market in places. Eshwar Pillai wanted artificial islands where people could try social experiments. Eshwar Pillai wanted people to vote with their feet. Eshwar Pillai wanted a world filled with exits.
‘Sociopolitical experiments of every kind, Anand!’
‘That’s usually code for lots of free sex,’ remarked Anand and was pleased when his friend found it amusing.
‘So you want in? Let’s go have an adventure.’
Anand laughed. ‘Eshwar, you are a mad dog.’
‘That sounds like a yes to me, brother Anand.’
Pillai calmed down after that. They went over the numbers, got an estimate of what the Lokshakti hiccup would do to the project. It wasn’t bad news. The Digital Access project was on track. They were going to bring the supernet to the masses. Pillai was all business, the very embodiment of can-do optimism. It was as if he had only needed to entertain the possibility of exit, not actually exit. On his way out, his friend paused at the door.
‘Anand, you know we can’t let them destroy our country.’
‘I know, Eshwar. We won’t.’
‘You can count on me, man.’
After Pillai left, the room seemed to shrink. Or perhaps it was his perspective that now demanded a larger room. Who had cured whom? Anand tried to continue working but he found it hard to focus. Might as well go home and get ready for the evening’s function. Perhaps Padma could use some help. The gallery exhibition, now also a memorial, had kept her sane but what happened after this evening remained to be seen.
Once home, he discovered Padma had already left for the gallery. He headed for his home office, followed by Ratnakar, carrying his briefcase. Anand poured his assistant a drink, sank into his leather chair. Whew. So tired. When the chai arrived, he acknowledged his assistant’s toast.
An old ritual, but it would soon come to an end. He wondered when Ratnakar would find the nerve to tell him he was quitting. Pillai had infected his factotum with dreams. Pilla
i had given him a heads-up of the impending departure, and explained that Ratnakar had approached him and not the other way around. Ratnakar wanted to join Pillai’s enterprise. A Birbal would now try to be Akbar. Ratnakar didn’t realize he was born to be an assistant. He was the best at what he did, but now he wanted more. Ratnakar was about to do foolish things. So be it. He must have been lost in thought because hardly any time seemed to have passed when Ratnakar gestured to his watch.
‘Sir? It is time to leave for the gallery.’
‘Is it? Yes, let’s get going.’
Anand had the driver drop him off outside the gallery’s grounds. He wanted to walk. Ratnakar also began to get out but Anand gestured to him to stay inside. He noticed that Ratnakar acquiesced easily.
He made his way slowly through the park, pausing now and then to admire a particularly striking conspiracy of light and leaf. The park had a number of saptaparni and bombax silk trees, the intensely fragrant white clusters of the former complementing the feverish red sprays of the latter. It was as if Delhi’s winter had taken out its banjara skirt. It was unusual for the bombax to be flowering this early, but perhaps it was because the winter had started on a relatively mild note. The tree had made a mistake.
As had Kannagi. He had run the final catastrophe several times in his head, trying to determine if she could have done things differently. He turned to her.
‘I couldn’t not try to help,’ said Kannagi. ‘I could hear Mir screaming.’
‘So? Why the hell didn’t you call me? Why did you run back in? Because you wanted to help him. But I was your best option. What did the recklessness buy you? Nothing! Were you able to save the poet?’
‘Anand, if you’d heard that scream, it would’ve curdled your blood. It was like an animal being beaten. There was no way not to—’
‘Yes, there was! There is! There always is. Why didn’t you come to me?’
‘Never mind all that. Have you done a good job with my exhibition?’
Padma had done everything. He had wanted her to, she had dried her tears and gone to work. Sameera and Padma were lovers, he was sure of it. It didn’t matter. Poor woman, let her find pleasure and comfort where she could. He didn’t care if she cuckolded him. He would do what he had always done: protect her, love her. In time, who knew, he might once again be happy enough to be jealous. ‘We really built you up,’ he told Kannagi. ‘Padma worked closely with my marketing department.’
‘Really! What angle did you use? The young genius whose life was cut tragically short? The neglected female artist? The postcolonial slut? The feminist computer-scientist? How did you present me? How Anand, how?’
‘I’ll find out the same time as you. My guess is, you won’t recognize yourself. But I’m worrying about another problem. Should I tell Padma you were pregnant? How could you be so careless?’
‘I did get laid a lot.’ Kannagi sounded very pleased. ‘Just forget about it. The so-called lifeform was only a few cells. A fingernail is more of a person. But you are obsessing about it, right?’
‘Of course.’
‘Did you invite Sawai?’
‘Yes, but he will not be coming. He said he has you with him, forever and always, and that he has no interest in burying what isn’t dead. I liked his response. Well, we’ve reached. Are you ready? This will be boring.’
‘No need to act tough with me,’ she said, quite tenderly. ‘I know it will be hard for you. But I will be there, Anand Dixit.’
Anand strode up the stairs; at the entrance, he picked up a brochure. The short corridor leading to the gallery’s central hall was adorned with photos of Kannagi doing jolly Kannagi-type things. The large rectangular gallery with its high ceiling was filled with several types of people: the Delhi socialites in their ethnic kurtas, salwar kameezes and expensive shawls; the jeans-and-T-shirt contingent, probably Kannagi’s university crowd; the scruffy but hip poser group, earrings, tattoos, would-be Picassos; and finally, white people. It didn’t matter what white people wore in India; first and last, they were white people.
The room was a riot of different colours. According to the brochure, the theme of the exhibit was ‘Transgression,’ which perhaps explained why the place had the general look-and-feel of Liberace’s spanked ass. Orangutan reds, moist pinks, angry blues, green, saffron, truly, the only colour missing was grey. Even the whirling blades of the floor fans in each corner of the room were a cheerful yolk-yellow. Rays of the sun, presumably. The gift of art, the brochure claimed, was that it freed pleasure from justification.
Not true. Every object in the room screamed for someone to please the fuck explain, boss!
The floor was covered with an enormous kolam, labyrinthine and hypnotic, with many dead ends. Anand watched visitors take tentative steps along the lines, get lost, call their friends to also try it, laugh, and then quickly recompose their expressions into one of sombre reflection. Kannagi’s works of art were displayed on the walls and the labyrinth’s lines approached these points but then diverged so as to create open semi-circular areas, thresholds, in front of each work. At the far end of the room, hogging the largest of these empty spaces, was a small stepped podium about the height of his Godrej Housewife’s Delight. Atop the podium was a velvet-covered stand on which brooded a very large photograph of Kannagi, needing only a brush-moustache to launch a world war. An eternal flame, one hundred percent real, had been centered in front of the grim photo. On either side of the flame was a burial urn. The one on the left was that of Balbir Singh, the one on the right was that of Kannagi. Padma had been insistent on including these objects as part of the exhibition. She had almost broken up with Sameera over that insistence. Understandably, visitors were avoiding the shrine.
‘Well, I hate it,’ said Anand. ‘The space, the colour scheme, the whole thing.’
‘Yeah, total disaster,’ said Kannagi with relish. ‘But I love it. I mean, it really puts the boor in Boorzua art. Just look at it. Try finding reasons for this freak show.’
‘Spin it any way you want, your Akka and her friend are idiots.’
‘Anand!’ cried Padma. ‘Darling! Where were you?’
For a second, he didn’t recognize the ruined woman with the Visine-clear eyes, puffy skin and crushed handkerchief. Crow feet. Lines around her mouth, ringing her neck. Cascading black hair, salon black. Padma, yes, of course, Padma.
‘Just admiring everything,’ he said.
‘You like?’
Yes, yes. Love it. He made all the appropriate noises.
‘Is the AC not working?’ he asked, and she told him they’d had problems with the AC, off and on, and decided to use fans. Besides, fans were art objects in their own right.
The show got underway. He assumed his responsibilities. Ratnakar on one side. Padma on the other, leaning on his arm. A lot of people had turned up.
He watched his wife swap half-embraces, allow her hand to be squeezed, nod gravely through the condolences, so sorry for your loss Mrs Dixit, you know, Kannagi had been this, Kannagi had been that. He watched her move among Kannagi’s colleagues, executing a graceful Kathakali of gestures and pauses, consoling them rather than the other way around. He watched her make an extra effort to reach out to her sister’s students and they filled her ears with heartbroken praise for her kondai. The fab-jab kids had all come.
Kannagi’s students walked around the exhibits, explaining them to each other. Many hadn’t really known about their professor’s artistic side. Even fewer realized these kolam drawings had been drawn by software, artificial personalities. Her code, yes, and in that sense Kannagi’s works. But it still seemed to Anand this was an exhibition of the work of a dozen robots, not the living Kannagi he had known.
A lot of her DU students were drawn to the kolam generated from the powdered marble bust of Darwin. They remembered seeing the bust in Kannagi’s office. Seeing the bust here, sir, seeing it here, made them feel, made them feel.
He needed his wife. Anand found her in conversation with an
old gentleman, Mr Das.
‘So sorry for your loss, Mrs Dixit, so sorry,’ said Mr Das, repeatedly. Padma hugged him, thanked him.
‘I’m here,’ he told Padma, when Mr Das had moved away, consoled. ‘I’m here.’
She took his hand and was about to say something when their attention was drawn by a commotion at the entrance. The reason came in the form of a street dog. God alone knew from where it had come. It darted in, nimbly avoiding the lathis of the gurkhas. It was probably frightened, poor thing, all these fine people, even it probably knew, dumb beast, it was in the wrong place. Where was the exit? Where was the exit? Shrieks. Screams. Servitors dropped trays of appetizers as the dog scuttled in between their legs. The animal streaked towards the podium, perhaps because people were blocking the other direction. Or perhaps because villains always climb to the highest point, whether its bell towers, cranes, mountains, buildings, or podiums. All the better for you to finish me off, my dear. Or perhaps the street dog had recognized Kannagi’s photograph and dimly remembered leftovers and scraps, petting and compassion.
It darted up the steps, but the gurkhas followed it, shouting, waving their lathis most threateningly. The dog ran across the podium, knocked over the urns, one of which fell with a resounding metal crash. The dog yelped, twisted, leaped off the podium, and its failing legs kicked the other falling urn up into the air. Ash everywhere. The fans picked up the dust, spread it. The dog shook the ash off its fur and people scattered in all directions. There was no escaping the dust. The dust gently fell, radiant in the bright artificial lights, and the mind saw patterns, imagined lines binding being with being. The nuisance dog took advantage of the confusion, streaked out. Anand took out his napkin, started to brush the ash off his wife’s hair, her face, her skin. But Padma stopped his hand.