Vertigo

by Ashok Banker

  When he returns home after 3 a.m., he is still filled with a tremendous sense of something momentous about to happen, a great wave coming to lift him up and raise him to incredible new heights.

  He feels his life is about to change completely. He feels scared. He feels free. He feels cold.

  Part II

  chapter twenty-five

  Well, I’m glad to see that you’re finally getting somewhere in your career,’ Jay’s father says, sipping his fresh orange juice. This is only the second time Jay’s been to Copper Chimney. The first time was with Tuli, on her birthday last year. He likes the large spacious restaurant; the service is good and the food is excellent. The only problem is the prices are still a bit high for a young product executive without an entertainment allowance. His father, on the other hand, has an EA, so these lunches are invariably sponsored by him. Perhaps this is why Jay can’t help feeling guilty that he’s sitting here, being fed Kabuli Naan, Jumbo Prawn Masala and Dhingri Matar, while his mother hasn’t got any alimony payments from this smooth-faced man. But guilt is something Jay has learned to take for granted. He almost feels he was born with it.

  ‘I hope this time you’ll stick on and make a go of it,’ Niranjan Mehta says, breaking off a piece from the enormous kabuli naan studded with cashewnuts. ‘It’s about time you learned to settle down and make a mark.’

  Jay sighs. ‘Daddy, this is only my second job in over five years.

  Besides, I didn’t want to leave DM. Mama created that hassle, that was why.’ But the truth is that he did want to leave DM, and would have anyway. Compared to Synergetics, DM now seems like a two-bit operation to him. And from his exposure to corporate worlds in the past year, he knows that this is not the final frontier.

  A group of people enter; Jay recognizes Padmini Kolhapuri and some other starlet among them . This is the other reason he likes Copper Chimney. You can meet anyone here, including your own boss. He glances around, but of course Dave isn’t here. Dave likes to lunch at theTaj buffet; Jay’s been along with him once, to discuss an important post-lunch meeting. Dave likes to stay light; he only eats the salads at the buffet. Jay looks down at his own loosening belly. He needs to exercise but never finds time to do more than a few bends.

  But he’s still trim compared to his father or Dave or any of the other executives at Synergetics. After all those years of vadapao and vada chutney lunches, he’s finally able to consume the exotic dishes he’s read about only in food reviews before. He uses a piece of naan to clean his plate of gravy and sits back, sated.

  ‘So you’re planning to marry this girl soon?’ Despite his surly demeanour, Jay knows that his father approves of Tuli, not least of all because she’s Gujarati and comes from a wealthy family.

  ‘Tuli’s finished her MA. The results will be out by June or July, then we can go ahead.’

  Niranjan Mehta waves his arm deprecatingly. He thinks educating women is a necessary evil, and a girl doing her MA is wasting time in his opinion. Jay goes on, broaching the subject which led him to call his father and ask for this meeting: ‘Daddy, you remember I’d talked to you about speaking to Mr and Mrs Jhaveri? Did you think about it?’

  His father frowns, dabbing at a spot of gravy on his chin, pushing the finger bowl away. ‘Did you tell me something? I don’t know. You must have not made yourself clear. You should learn to be concise and relevant. Better still, write me a memo to make sure I remember.

  What was it anyway?’

  ‘Tuli’s parents are very conservative. They wouldn’t like it if I approach them alone with the proposal. And Tuli thinks it’s better if I don't mention Mama's condition. She suggests that I tell them I've been independent from a young age which I have and that you've been responsible for me throughout.' The speech made, he looks down at the bowl of hot water and begins rubbing the grease off his fingers with the slice of lime.When he looks up again, his father is frowning at the menu through the lower half of his bifocals. ‘Kulfi falooda?' he suggests, ‘Or ras malai? They have hot gulab jamun too.

  Do you like gulab jamun?'

  Jay visualizes a weighing scale: ras malai or kulfi falooda? Neither, whispers his body, give me a break, okay? ‘Ras malai,' he says, to avoid argument. The finger bowls disappear, white metal bowls containing dessert appear. The ras malai is chilled, delicious. But he's too stuffed to enjoy it.

  His father wipes away a spot of gulab jamun syrup from his upper lip: ‘Difficult, son. Lot of travelling. Maybe when I get back from the trade fair. Frankfurt, you know. By the way, did I tell you that we're planning to buy some sick units. I'll probably be in charge of new projects. CEO, of course. And the directorship is bound to come in the next two, three years. Not bad, eh?'

  Jay tries to smile politely. ‘Great, Daddy. You're at the top.'

  His father beams; loves praise. ‘Coffee?'

  Jay doesn't think he can accommodate anything else for the next twelve hours at least, but his father signals to a waiter and two cups of steaming Kona coffee arrive.

  Walking to his father's car, a group of beggars accost them. They trail behind like faithful disciples, stretching out grimy hands, displaying stumps of limbs, raising pinched-face infants. Jay is touched with a twinge of sympathy for the children: snot-nosed, filthy, hair stiff with dirt. He relents and reaches into his pocket for a coin but finds he has no change. The smallest money he has is a two-rupee note. He folds it twice and slips it to a little girl with tear streaks on her dirt-caked face. She takes it and runs off instantly, waving it triumphantly. Like bulls shown a red flag, the others surge forward. Jay goes around to the other side of the car, but his father is beseiged by a swarm of clutching hands.‘ HUT!’ he explodes, striking out blindly at the urchins.

  The girl carrying the baby stumbles back, trips and falls. A howl of indignation rises from their mouths. Niranjan Mehta gets in the car, kicking away a little boy who can’t be more than two years old, and slams the door shut. ‘Scum!’ he breathes, ‘Should be gassed.’

  Jay doesn’t say anything. He is shocked at the viciousness with which his father struck the beggars. He looks back as the Premier 118NE pulls away from the curb, sees the girl and the baby sitting on the pavement crying. The others stare pathetically at the car. None of them offers to help the girl up. As the car stops at a signal, Jay sees the others all drift away towards other patrons emerging from the restaurant. The girl and the baby lie there. He sits back and looks the other way, disgusted. Sometimes he hates this damn city.

  ‘So how’s your mother?’ his father asks.

  ‘I see her every Sunday. She has a full-time ayah, and I pay all her expenses.’

  His father nods. ‘Don’t be so guilty.’

  ‘I’m not guilty. Why should I feel guilty?’

  ‘Calm down, Jay. I understand. That woman is terrible. I’m very glad you’ve managed to get away from her.’

  ‘I didn’t have a choice.’

  ‘You have to think of yourself. I wouldn’t want you to go through what I went through with her.’

  ‘Daddy, what really happened? Between Mama and you.’

  ‘Her drinking.’

  ‘But she never used to drink when she met you. I mean, she never had a drinking problem, did she? In fact, she only started drinking after you two split up. Long after.’

  His father doesn’t answer for a moment. Jay has tried to ask this question a dozen times, each time phrasing it differently.

  Now, at twenty-two, he’s determined to get a straight answer. He persists: ‘Something happened after you left her alone at home with Dadiji and Foiba, didn’t it? What happened?’

  His father looks sharply at him. ‘I’m really not interested in going into this now, Jay. I have a very busy schedule. Can I drop you off somewhere?’

  ‘Daddy, I want to know. I have to know. I’m trying to understand what went wrong.’

  His father looks out the window, a ghost-image of his round face and double chin reflected in the tinted glass. ‘Your mother
wasn’t willing to make an effort to make the marriage work.’ In Gujarati he instructs the driver to stay in the left lane to allow Jay to get off at Warden Road.

  Jay isn’t supposed to be getting down at Warden Road. He’s going back to office, to Rampart Row. He knows that, his father knows that, he knows his father knows. But he doesn’t correct him.When the car stops at the curb, he thanks his father for the lunch and gets out.

  ‘Call me sometime,’ his father says through a slim crack in the window, ‘We must do lunch more often. Aojo, Jayesh.’ The crack vanishes, leaving Jay with a grotesque reflection of himself melting into the sidewalk. The 118NE pulls away. He hails a cruising cab and gets in: ‘Kalaghoda.’

  Back in office, he greets a group of product executives heading outward: ‘Jay!Where have you been? Dave’s calling the police about you!’ He smiles and doesn’t rise to the bait. He knows Dave’s gone for a conference.

  They all laugh, touching his hands, arms, back as they go out, clutching folders, files,briefcases, a Kodak Carousel Slide Projector, a box of slides, an advertising guard book. Jay nods at Suchitra, the receptionist: ‘Hi.’ She smiles sunnily at him: ‘Hi. Your girlfriend called.

  She said she’ll call back.’

  ‘My fiancee.’

  ‘Oh?You’re getting married?’

  Jay shrugs. ‘We thought about the live-in sin, but I don’t think her parents would approve.’

  Suchitra laughs. She’s the most meticulously groomed woman Jay knows. Sometimes, when she flicks her hair back, she reminds him of Meera. God, Meera. He hasn’t heard from or about her in ages. Since that last telephone conversation December before last. He stops, turns back to Suchitra, hesitates, then says, ‘Don’t you go out for lunch?’

  ‘Depends.’

  ‘On?’

  ‘Whether or not someone asks me out.’

  ‘Oh.’

  She laughs at his expression. ‘How come you’ve suddenly become so concerned about my eating habits?’

  ‘I was just wondering.’

  ‘About?’

  ‘About why nobody asks you out?’

  She smiles. ‘Who says nobody asks me?’

  ‘I never see you with anybody.’

  ‘Maybe I never say yes.’

  ‘Oh.’ Time to back off.

  He escapes to the toilet.What is he, crazy? He should thank his lucky stars Tuli never found out that Meera and he were together on the day that Mama tore up Chris’s office, or that they had spent the previous night drinking and talking. He knows nothing happened that night and day, but he also knows thatTuli would never believe that nothing happened. Tuli suspects him constantly. Everytime he looks at a girl, or mentions a colleague more than once, she looks at him sharply. She's never said anything yet, because she's never had reason to. And because she’s secure in the knowledge that he's hooked.

  After that month he spent in agony—the time when he was nursing Mama and couldn't get through to Tuli—he never wants to do or say anything, anything at all, that could create another rift. He needs her.

  God, how he needs her. If only she weren't so firm about not going ‘all the way’ before marriage, he wouldn't be forced to indulge in these fantasies about sex. About Suchitra. About a hundred different girls.

  chapter twenty-six

  I can’t do it.’

  ‘Jay, you’ve got to.’

  ‘Tuli, he doesn’t give a damn about me or my mother. The only way he’d even consider something like this is if l go to him on bended knees. Even then, he might say no.’

  ‘Then go to him on bended knees.’

  ‘Come on,Tuli. Try to understand.’

  ‘No, Jay you don’t understand. My parents won’t even talk to you If you approach them alone. You’ve got to come with your father at least.’

  ‘What do you mean “at least"?’

  ‘I told you.’

  ‘Ask my stepmother to come along too? Tuli, are you crazy? I’ve never met that woman. She hardly knows I exist. Besides, what would be the point of bringing her along?’

  ‘It’ ll help convince my parents that you’ve had a normal upbringing.

  That you’re not... you know.’

  ‘What? Mentally unstable? Psychopathic? Psychotic?’

  ‘Oh, Jay.’

  ‘Tuli, you’re asking me to beg my father and my stepmother—

  whom I’ve never even met—to pretend that they brought me up?

  This is ridiculous.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘This whole thing is ridiculous.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Our marriage. It’s the most ridiculous thing in the world. You have a drunkard mother, a father who treats you like a stranger, and your career...

  ‘What’s wrong with my career? I’m earning five thousand, aren’t I? I got that raise, didn’t I? I thought you’d be happy.Why, aren’t you happy I got the raise,Tuli?’

  ‘I expected... more.’

  ‘More what?’

  ‘Well, you only got a thousand rupees’ raise.’

  ‘That’s more than 20 per cent! That’s a good raise, Tuli. Look, nobody gets salaries doubled. Not at this stage of their career anyway.’

  ‘Daddy’s eating Mummy’s head about my marriage. There are two more proposals from Baroda.’

  ‘Screw Baroda. It’s YOUR life,Tuli. They can’t pressurize you into marrying someone.’

  ‘You don’t know my father. Once he makes up his mind, nobody can say no.’

  ‘You can say no. You’ll have to. Unless you want to marry some nerd from Baroda.’

  ‘They’re not nerds, Jay. They’re from very good families, both the proposals.And they ’re rich. One’s the only son of a diamond merchant, and the other—’

  ‘What are you saying? That you want to marry one of them?’

  ‘I’m just saying that it would be so much simpler. At least they wouldn’t have hundred and one hassles like you do. Your hang-ups are too much for me. I can’t take it any more, Jay.’

  ‘Baby, I’m doing my best.What else do you expect me to do?’

  ‘Talk to your father. Convince him.’

  ‘Tuli, that’s...’

  ‘Jay, I have to go. And, listen, I can’t meet you on Saturday.’

  ‘Why? You promised.’

  ‘My cousins are coming from Ahmedabad tomorrow.’

  ‘Again? They were here last month, weren’t they?’

  ‘Those were my first cousins, these are my father’s sister-in-law’s cousins.’

  ‘At this rate, even Indira Gandhi must be related to you.’

  ‘Chalo, bye.’

  ‘Hold on. Don’t hang up. You’re always hanging up on me.’

  ‘When did I hang up?’

  ‘Yesterday. You told me that we would have to talk to Daddy by June latest, and you hung up.’

  ‘Because the conversation was over.’

  ‘Your conversation maybe, not mine.’

  ‘Jay, I’m in a hurry.’

  ‘So you’re not coming over on Saturday?’

  ‘You know how difficult it is now that college’s closed. Mummy’s getting suspicious. The other day she asked me casually who this Jayesh was who keeps calling. I’ve told you so many times not to call up when I’m not home.’

  ‘How do I know you’re not home unless I call?’

  ‘Then don’t call. I’ll call you.’

  And she hangs up. End of conversation. Jay puts down the receiver and rubs his face. Lately, talking to Tuli always leaves him drained, emotionally and mentally.

  The intercom on his desk buzzes. He picks up the phone again by mistake, still tuned in to Tuli-talk, bursting with a rejoinder to her sign-off comment for was it an order? Don’t call me, I’ll call you.

  She should have been a corporate executive, she would have got a 500 per cent raise by now. Come to think of it, why can’t she get ajob?

  Earn? Because that
would be social anathema to her family. A rich Gujarati girl working! Bad enough she has an MA!

  The intercom buzzes again, long and impatient. Jay snatches it up:

  ‘Yes!’

  He listens. ‘Okay, Dave, I’ll be right over.’ He replaces the intercom and breathes deeply for a moment, trying to clear his mind of the emotional fog that always forms when the problem of his marriage comes up. A figure blurs past the glass partition between his cubicle and the corridor, and Conrad’s long horse-shaped face appears around the edge. ‘Are you ready? Do you feel ready to fight the dragon?’

  ‘What’s up? Dave sounds tense.’

  Conrad leans forward, palms on Jay’s desk: ‘He’s going to sack all of us.’

  Jay’s heart leaps. ‘Come on, don’t joke.’ Seriously.’

  Jay stares at him. ‘But why? I thought we were doing fine?’

  Conrad raises his eyebrows and shakes his head this way then that in a slow rocking motion.

  ‘Anyway, let’s go, he’s waiting,’ Jay says, his palms growing slick with sweat at the very thought of losing this job. Conrad whistles softly as they stride down. He knocks twice. Dave’s tense voice from within: ‘Come in, come in.’

  The entire team is in Dave’s cabin. It looks like a conference. Five product executives, two supervisors, one coordinator, and Dave. All older hands than Jay; except Sunil, but he’s been in Synergetics for nearly three years, it’s just that he got transferred from Delhi six months ago.

  Jay doesn’t like the look on Dave’s face, nor the edge in his voice when he says: ‘Had a nice stroll in the park, boys?’

  Jay’s cheeks burn as he sits down on a stool, the only seating available. Conrad takes another stool. The large cabin looks overcrowded with nine men in it. He notices the serious expressions on the other executives’ faces. Please, god, not me, Jay prays. I really need this job.

  Dave taps out his pipe. He never smokes when someone else is in the room. He swivels his chair around to face the window. Everybody waits in silence. Conrad touches Jay’s shoulder, startling him, offers him a cigarette. He shakes his head, then changes his mind and takes one. It’s not his brand but he smokes it hard, trying to release some of his tension with every exhalation. Dave turns and looks at everyone, one by one.