by Ashok Banker
Dave nods. He looks seriously at Jay. ‘Yes, yes. Of course. But how do you want to achieve that? You see, Jayesh, all of us want to be successful. Even the smallest entrepreneur—the paan-wallah on the corner of this street—wants to be successful. The difference between him and you is in how you achieve your aim.’
‘Well, sir... I mean, er, Dave... I want to be given a good job, something with responsibility. A job where I can make my own decisions, where I can feel that if I achieve results it’s because I did something right, and if I don’t achieve results it’s also because of something I did. Something I did wrong, that is.’
Dave continues nodding all through Jay’s speech, then says, ‘You want to be a self-made man.’
‘Yes... Dave.’
‘Good.Very good. I’m a self-made man myself. But now tell me this, Jayesh: What is the epitome of your ambitions?’ When Jay doesn’t answer, he waves his right hand, dismissing his own choice of words: What I mean is, in terms of tangibles, what do you want ultimately?
A flat? A car? A bungalow? An annual holiday in Bermuda? Your own business? A big fat pay cheque? An important designation? A place on the board of directors of a multinational company like this one?’
Jay thinks for a moment. ‘I’d like. . .’—he reaches within, at a kernel of half-realized vision he hasn’t been aware he contained until this precise moment— ‘I’d like to... create something that lasts.
Something beautiful.’ He shrugs, surprised at his own words, amazed at himself. Is that true? Is that what I want?
Dave stares at him for so long Jay begins to shift uncomfortably in his chair, sure he’s said something wrong. Finally, Dave gulps down the rest of his tea and looks at him again: ‘Excellent. Excellent.’
Jay isn’t sure what he means by that, but he supposes it signifies Dave’s approval of his life’s ambition. He is thrilled at this appreciation and praise. He adds hesitantly, ‘ Of course, I wouldn’t mind if I could end up with a cabin like this, sir.’
Dave throws his head back and laughs. He has a good speaking voice but when he laughs, the guffaws are too harsh, too clipped. He slaps his thigh loudly, smiles at Jay again, and says, ‘You just might, young man, you just might.’ Then he laughs again. ‘But I hope you won’t mind if I occupy it for a while longer, do you?’ Jay sees his cue and laughs too. He feels better than he has felt in years. He feels like... like a man? Yes, that’s it. He feels like a man. A man.
And he knows he’s going to get this job.
He does.
When he calls Meera, she tells him that Dave Rai has confided in her his intention to hire Jay with effect from the 1st of January, as a product executive under his command. Jay is too excited to know what to say when she congratulates him. So he simply says, ‘Thank you.’ He thinks of telling her about Tuli s visit and the three-hour conversation they had. He wants to say to her: ‘Meera, I took this job because Tuli said that if I don’t have a good job and my own place I can forget about marrying her. So the one you should congratulate is Tuli, not me.’ But he doesn’t say that. He’s still trying to decide whether he should mention that he and Tuli are in touch again and that the engagement wasn’t hers—Tuli had gone to Ahmedabad to attend her cousin’s engagement—when Meera says something unintelligible.
‘What?’
‘I said I’m leaving.’
‘Quitting DM? Really?’
‘Leaving India.’
‘What?’
‘I’m going to Bahrain.’
‘Bahrain?’
‘HNN’s setting up a branch in Bahrain, its first in the Middle East.
They’ve asked me to head it.’
‘Head it?’
‘Branch manager.’
‘Meera, that’s terrific! Wow!’
‘I have to leave almost immediately. Go over to see some flats, set up things. I’ll spend Christmas week there, come back for a month or so, go through some orientation at HNN Bombay, then leave for good. I’ve got my tickets.’
‘That’s soon.Very soon.’
‘Yes.’
A moment of silence. Jay doesn’t know what he should say next.
He can’t figure out what Meera and he are to each other. Friends?
More than that, surely. Lovers? Not quite. Then what? As usual, while he’s still pondering semantics, Meera gets right down to practicals: How about dinner tomorrow night? A semi-farewell dinner.’
‘Tomorrow?’ He can’t remember why tomorrow doesn’t seem right, but says anyway: ‘Why not. Sure.Where?’
‘Have you been to Copper Chimney?’
‘Meera, you know I—’
‘Shut up about the money, okay? I’m paying and that’s all there is to it.’There is a note of determination in her voice; a note that seems to conceal something weaker, more emotional, a fear of rejection perhaps. A don’t-say-no-I-won’t-like-it kind of non-verbal message.
He sighs. ‘Okay. But after I start working...’
After you start working, I won’t be around, Jay. I’m on a two-year contract.’
‘You mean...’
‘Forget it. How does eight sound? I’ll pick you up. Five honks. One-Two-Cha-Cha-Cha. Be ready.’
And then he remembers. Oh damn. Oh shit. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
‘Meera, wait. I just remembered.’
‘Yes?’
‘Meera. . .. I can’t make it. Not tomorrow night.’
‘My problem, Jay, is that I’m meeting a client for dinner tonight, and I’m flying day after morning. In fact, I’m going to come for dinner with my bag packed in the car. Tomorrow lunch too with a new client.’
‘Meera, I’m meeting Tuli tomorrow evening. At seven.’
Dead silence for a moment. Jay can hear the music playing in the background: Rod Stewart’s Passions. Somebody somewhere. ..
‘Meera?’
‘Okay, Jay. I understand. It's fine.’
‘Meera, I'm sorry. I—’
She hangs up. He stares at the receiver, starts to dial again, then stops. He replaces it gently and walks away.
chapter twenty-four
The ayah stays. Mama gets tougher to handle as the days go by but Malati (the ayah) is used to dealing with non-cooperative alcoholics.
The most important thing is, she doesn't succumb to Mama’s requests and pleas to go get her booze. Another thing that happens is, Jay realizes the way to check Mama's drinking is by restricting her income.
Instead of giving her money in hand, he pays the bills himself. But this practice can't be permanent, since he intends to move out before he starts work at Synergetics. So he starts giving Malati money to pay necessary expenses, after impressing on her that if she buys so much as a bottle of beer, the money will be deducted from her salary.
Dave Rai is cheerful and patronizing on the phone when Jay calls.
He informs Jay that TVS, the other manager who joined them later in the interview to interrogate Jay about a number of work-related issues, has recommended hiring Jay. They want him to start from the 1st of January. His appointment letter has already been mailed and should reach him any day. It falls through the slot in the door one afternoon when Jay is going to the kitchen for a glass of water. Thick alabaster paper, professionally designed letterhead and company logo, electronically typewritten pages: ‘ ... To offer you the post of product executive... with effect from... a probation period of six months...
basic salary of Rs 3,200 p.m. , plus all company benefits as applicable.. .'
Jay tries to figure out his gross and thinks it should be around Rs 4,500
or so. He re-reads the two-page letter over and over again, running his fingers over the words, hardly able to believe this is really happening.
Tuli is thrilled at the news. She insists they celebrate. So on the evening that Jay was to have the farewell dinner with Meera, he finds himself at Chinese Room, Kemp’s Corner, eating Chicken Chow Mein and Paneer Manchurian. Tuli pays for the meal, and even lends him five hundred to manage fo
r the next week. Two days later, the provident fund refund cheque arrives in the mail. Twelve thousand rupees! He pays back Tuli's five thousand, finally, and also the five hundred. Then he takes her to lunch at Pasha, Pedder Road, to repay her for the Chinese Room dinner. It pinches him to spend so much money on food, but he knows that Tuli sincerely believes that men should pay and women should be pampered. He pampers her. She wears the earrings he'd sent her in the greeting card on the night they have dinner at Chinese Room and also on the day they have lunch at Pasha. After the meal, they walk down to Amarsons and he buys her a little silver pendant: a cute little cupid with a bow and arrow. She squeals with delight. He points out her an amusing little phallus-shaped pendant but she turns away with disgust.
He buys some new clothes for himself. Fed up of wearing trousers and shirts, he longs to buy a pair of the newly fashionable stonewashed jeans and cut-off tee shirts, but a glance at the price tags at InterShoppe and Jean Junction changes his mind. He sticks to ready-made office wear. He also buys a new pair of shoes. His solitary encounter with Synergetics and Dave Rai has impressed upon him the importance of dressing suitably for the job. Tuli and he disagree about handkerchiefs; she wants him to buy coloured ones that match the trousers, while he feels that white ones with thin stripes on the border look more elegant.
Elegance, class, sophistication: these are words he uses more and more often in the days to come.
He discovers that Warden Book House also keeps management and non-fiction books and gives them out for reading. He picks up titles like The One-Minute Manager, Up the Organization, Odyssey:Pepsi to Apple,and A Taoist on Wall Street—which turns out to be a novel after all, but of a kind he has never read before, a novel dealing with people like him, struggling young executives trying to make it in the big world of business. He hates novels about filthy rich socialites and oversexed tycoons. Tuli loves them.
Tuli can't meet him either on Christmas Eve or New Year's Eve.
She has dinner parties both nights with her parents. So Christmas Eve finds him sitting at home with a twenty-rupee eighteen-inch synthetic tree he bought at Cheap Jack on Hill Road, trying to get little silver balls and bells to stay on the hooks. His mother sulks in the bedroom because he won't allow her to drink. Finally, at 8, filled with maudlin sentiment and remorse, he relents and goes out to buy her two bottles of beer. The beer goes to her head and she amazes him by passing out cold on the sofa. ‘Liver gone,’ Malati says, helping him carry her into her bedroom. She sets out her own bedding and prepares to sleep a few minutes later.
Jay is suddenly seized by an impulse to go somewhere, do something on this evening when the world is partying around him.
Knowing full well that Meera must be in Bahrain by now, he calls her flat anyway and counts off thirty-five rings as he watches cars filled with yelling party-goers zip past.
He walks the streets till 10.30, then comes home and realizes that Malati is sleeping in the kitchen so he can't warm up his dinner. He eats it cold, then wishes he had brought some beer for himself. He stays awake until midnight for no good reason, then sleeps fitfully.
On the 26th, 27th, and then the 28th and 29th, he keeps telling himself he must shift. Tuli seconds this. She listens to his ‘reasons'—
‘Mama looks a bit weak today’ , ‘The ayah wants a day off’, ‘I have to get the flush in Mama’s bathroom fixed today ’—then she tells him coldly that she’s decided to do her MA which will take another two years. After that, if Jay’s not ready to approach her father, she’ll ask her parents to find her a match and fix it all up. Jay loses his temper.
Blackmail’ is the word he uses. ‘Love’ is the one she uses. They argue.
He loses. He agrees to leave the next day.
So, on the morning of the 30th of December 1982, Jay packs a bag with his clothes, some books, and other essentials, puts it on his bed, and goes to tell his mother. She is sitting on the sofa, talking to Malati.
Both look up when he comes in.When he sits down, Malati gets up and goes into the kitchen.
‘Mama, I told you about my having to leave,’ he says. He has told her about a company flat which, he lied, was part of the package he was offered. He has not shown her the Synergetics appointment letter or mentioned the company name. ‘About the company flat.’
‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ she snaps, pouring more beer into her glass. She has regained the use of most of her faculties now, including the ability to drink two bottles of beer daily, one before lunch and one before dinner. He doesn’t care any more. He is weary.
All he wants is to leave without a scene. Please, god, just this one time. Please.
‘Mama, I have to go.’
‘No you don’t.’
‘Don’t you want to see me in a good job? It’s a fantastic deal. You don’t want me to turn down such a good offer, do you? My own company flat!’
‘Ask them to give you more money instead. Ten thousand a month.’
‘The flat is a perk, Mama, not a substitute for salary. Besides, I can’t dictate my terms.’
‘Ask them to rent this flat for you and pay me the rent.’
‘Oh, Mama.’
‘Why not?’
‘I have to shift today,’ he says at last. ‘I have to go.’
She keeps quiet: her most eloquent argument.
‘Mama? I’ve packed some things. Of course I’m not moving out completely. I’ll be coming to meet you at least three or four times a week.’
She looks at the wall, her arms crossed tightly.
He goes into his bedroom, returns with the bag. He tells Malati he’s going. He asks her to look after Mama, and assures her he’ll keep visiting and will pay her as agreed. He pays her that month’s salary.
She touches the money to her forehead, the typical Hindu gesture.
He goes into the living room. His mother is still staring at the wall.
She turns her head deliberately, stares at him blankly, then looks back at the wall.
‘I’m going, Mama.’
As he turns to the door, ‘At least eat your lunch and go for god’s sake.’
He hesitates. ‘Okay.’
‘You have to eat to live, no? Not live to eat, that’s bad, but eating to live is essential.’ She slams down two dishes of food on the table, splashing dal on his shirt.
‘Mama!’
She sits down on the sofa, grinning inanely.
‘Look at this! You did that on purpose!’
She begins whistling: Yankee doodle.
He stares at the dishes, the stains on his new shirt. He rises, picks up his suitcase and walks to the door, fighting down the anger. He looks back at her. She looks up at the ceiling: ‘Lovely weather we’re having, isn’t it?’
He opens the door and stands there, breathing heavily. He can see the ayah watching him. He shuts the door and goes into his bedroom.
He locks the door behind him, takes off his clothes, masturbates furiously. Then he goes to sleep without lunch.
The next morning he gets up at six, opens the door quietly, and leaves. Nobody sees him go.
He catches an autorickshaw to Lokhandwala Complex. As the jolting scooter roars away from his mother's flat, he feels a terrible surge of guilt.Will she be all right? He remembers her nagging, her drunken tirades , her habit of mixing milk with water, keeping chicken bones for weeks, making soup with them over and over again. The time she ran naked down the steps and danced the tango in the lobby. He thinks of Synergetics, of Dave Rai, of Dave Rai's cabin, of forty-five hundred gross. Of his flat. Of making love to Tuli in his flat.
He gets out of the auto and looks up at the building. It seems taller, bluer, newer. The flat seems smaller, dirtier, colder.
He washes his face and goes down for breakfast. He feels strange, naked, free. He sees a girl in a very short miniskirt and a blouse without a bra underneath and fantasizes taking her back to his flat, having sex. He gets an erection and walks slowly, trying to hide it.
&nbs
p; Buses of all sizes and colours fill the street at this hour: school buses, BEST buses, contract buses.
Everything seems new and different to his senses. He finds a restaurant and goes in. A Muslim with a grey-black beard sits reading an Urdu paper at the counter. The menu is covered with cracked grimy plastic and stained with curry. He orders mince and an omelette.
A group of schoolgirls climb into a bus, their skirts riding up to reveal slim smooth thighs. The mince is hot and has too much black pepper; the omelette is dripping with oil. He is hungry enough to eat it all.
The bill comes to only twelve rupees and fifty paise. He leaves a two-rupee tip for the waiter and looks back as he leaves to see his reaction.
The man slips the note into his uniform pocket without looking at it.
Jay walks down the street, watching shops open. He walks right to the end of the long main street, then back to the Muslim restaurant.
Then he walks another circuit. He finds a south Indian restaurant which serves excellent filter coffee. He drinks three cups, oblivious to the automobile pollution clouding the intersection (the restaurant has cafe-style seating on the sidewalk). The coffee sloshes in his belly as he walks back.
He calls Tuli from a pay phone. She's incredulous. Finally, she accepts that he really has shifted. She says she can't come over before Saturday. Jay pleads. She threatens to hang up.
That night, New Year's Eve, he buys a quarter of Old Monk rum and drinks it neat from the bottle, standing in the balcony of his rented flat, trying to get a glimpse of any good-lookers in the next building. None. The rum hits him hard and he falls asleep early, around 9. Somewhere in the middle of the night, he is startled awake by the sound of firecrackers exploding—in this very room, it seems. Some people are celebrating the arrival of the New Year in the compound below.
He dresses in a daze, still half-drunk, and goes out with a strange sense of expectancy. The streets are filled with people returning from parties or going to other parties. An elephant trundles by, sporting a brightly coloured cloth banner advertising the opening of a new jewellery showroom at midnight. It is half past midnight. He walks behind two pretty girls in tinsel-encrusted churidar kurtas for a while before he (and they) realize that he's doing so. They look back at him and giggle. He blushes, embarrassed, and turns back.