by Ashok Banker
Looking up, Jay sees what looks like three or four higher floors. They go up the stairs, the black iron rail ice-cold to the touch, and reach the first landing: a recreation room done in baize-green to match the enormous pool table and fluorescent neon orange to match the jukebox. A Smokey Robinson song blares out of the jukebox: — don’t care what they think about me, and—' Jay wishes he could try out some of the video games against the wall—especially that one, Space Invaders, which he’s heard so much about, but Conrad and Yogesh are already on the next level. He follows quickly, his rubber Keds slipping a little on the smooth shiny metal steps. The next floor is a bar. The entire place is done up in mariner's style, with a huge ship’s wheel for a chandelier, portholes set into the wall at intervals, and a radar console at a wooden desk which Conrad informs them is actually a ham operator's radio. The bar is larger than any Jay has seen in any restaurant. Two or three hundred bottles line the shelves, kissing their mirror-brothers and sending back fragments of his own tousled-hair reflection. Chivas Regal, JohnnieWalker Black Label, Red Label, Cutty Sark (an enormous 17-litre bottle which he can't believe is real until he goes up and actually sees the whisky inside the green bottle, behind the black and yellow label), Napoleon, Cour vossieur, Gordon’s, Bombay Sapphire,Tia Maria, Bailey's. .. God, what is this place? On this level, there are several people, couples all, milling about the bar, drinking and talking. A couple comes tramping down in high heels from the next level, flushed and sweating—Jay deduces from the volume of the music coming from above that the third level is where the party is. The number is Funky town, which was playing even on Yogesh's car stereo. He likes another number on the same album more than this popular dance-favourite: How1ong. Conrad and Yogesh fiddle with their hair, their shirts, their moustaches, and Jay suddenly realizes that he’s underdressed for a party, even a day party, let alone one of such lavish dimensions. But it’s too late to back out now, so he swallows nervously, wishing he'd taken the time to wear a better shirt at least. They go up to the last level and he sidles past a couple standing at the top of the staircase to step out onto the most stunning display of wealth and luxury he's seen in his life.
The room itself takes his breath away. A log cabin transported to Malabar Hill, is what it is. Enormous logs line the walls. The floor is polished wood, sprinkled with powder to facilitate dancing. At one end of the rectangular room is an arched balcony separated by (now open) French windows. Even from here he can see the twinkling blue of the Arabian Sea. And that’s it. The sole purpose and existence of the room seems to be for dancing. No furniture occupies an inch of space.
If there is a stereo system in the room, it is invisible, although the four quadrophonic Bose speakers (each with a 240-watt output, Conrad informs him) at the corners dominate the room. Strobes, signals, sequencers and a mirrorball turn the hundred-odd gyrating foot-stomping people into a sizeable discotheque. A few couples mill around the balcony, sipping drinks or kissing.
Jay stands and watches, flabbergasted. Funky town grinds down and the dancers break off, grinning at each other, stealing quick kisses, dabbing at sweating faces with handkerchieves, then Gloria Gaynor starts belting out I will survive and they go wild again. Someone throws a dupatta up in the air and it lands on Jay's shoulder. He holds it up but nobody comes to claim it. Conrad has already found a partner and while he watches, Yogesh asks a girl who’s standing on the stairs and they join the crowd. Jay stands and listens to Gaynor telling her man to ‘ turn about-face, walk out the door’, and shrinks back against the wall, still holding the soft, fluffy dupatta —it smells of ‘Charlie'—wondering why the hell he came here and how the hell he's going to get out of this palace, sorry, place, before somebody comes up and actually asks him for a dance.
chapter thirty-six
The next few months pass like a dream. First of all, Jay can hardly believe his luck when he is greeted by Dave on his return to office the following Monday with absolutely no mention of his week’s absence except for a casual reminder that he should fill in a sick leave form. Then, he’s thrilled to learn from Shiv that they’ve found a loophole in the tax law which enables them to ignore the salary advance: this, in short, means a restoration of his take-home to Rs 3,240. This itself is the best news he’s had all year. Then, as if to prove the maxim that it never rains but it pours and other such bullshit,Tuli calls up the same day—this is all on the Monday that he resumes work—and apologizes so touchingly for missing his birthday that he can’t find it in his heart to be angry.
‘But why didn’t you come over the previous Saturday? And where were you all week?’
‘Some problem. I’ll tell you when we meet.’
‘No,Tuli. Tell me now. I was laid up all week in bed, and you didn’t even bother to try to find out what was wrong with me.’
‘I called your office, they told me you weren’t well but it wasn’t serious.’
‘Oh.’ He remembers that Suchitra probably knew that all five of them were laid up with the same problem; this mitigates his anger a little, but he still insists: ‘But what was so great a problem that you couldn’t come over on my birthday? I mean, we’d planned it months ago,Tuli.’
‘Jay, when we meet.’
He argues. She relents, surprisingly, and whispers a hasty explanation when she’s sure her mother’s gone out of the room. Something to do with income-tax raids and her father and brother. Speaking of income tax reminds him of his own good news which he passes on to her. This in turn reminds her of the fact that ‘Bhaiya returned that money, it’s lying with me now, do you need it urgently? I can bring it over when I come?’
‘What money?’ he asks stupidly, then remembers. ‘Really? But what happened?’
‘Oh, hell, I told you, baba. I’ll see you in college. 1 o’clock sharp, okay?’
The rest of the morning passes in a whirl of similarly happy though minor incidents: Dave calls the group in for a meeting and informs them formally that the Pinch launch has been postponed, but, and this he emphasizes, only for two months. This raises a roar of exclamations from around the table. Dave explains:The postponement is due to the forthcoming elections, scheduled for November. Pinch has therefore been pushed forward to 1 January 1985. He also announces that they have finally arrived at the real name for the product:
‘Chamatkar’. This leads to an energetic discussion—which soon degenerates into an all-out argument of epic dimensionsfover the suitability of that choice. The strongest argument against it is that the final selection has been made by Synergetics’ foreign principals: How can a foreigner pick a name for an Indian product? Dave points out that the names themselves were shortlisted by the research wing of the company; all the firangs did was decide which name was the right one. Yogesh leads the argument for ethnic insight, while Conrad diplomatically supports the welcome intrusion of a ‘foreign hand’.
Jay puts in a few words at first but when the argument escalates into a hot-headed slanging match, he drops out and becomes a spectator.
Watching Yogesh's thick drooping moustache bristle and quiver with his empassioned arguments, it occurs to Jay that perhaps the Bihari harbours more than a little resentment against the’system’
which led to his idealistic father ending up lower than expected on the social scale; perhaps he himself is far more idealistic than he lets on. He certainly is patriotic. Jay wonders how it's possible to be so cynical (as Yogesh seemed yesterday in the van) about one's country and yet be so outraged (as he is now) when posed with the suggestion that Indians might not be the equal of theirWestern counterparts in any area, be it brand naming or marketing.
Dave brings the furore to an abrupt halt by pointing out quietly that if anybody has any further argument with the selection of the name for, for that matter, with any other aspect of this product launch—then they are welcome to put in their resignations, start their own multinational company, build it into a $15 billion global conglomerate over sixty-seven years, and then launch their own detergent powder
, naming it whatever damn name they please.
This is followed by pin-drop silence in which Jay can hear the gurgling of water in the air conditioner and the distant tinkle of heavy machinery in the dockyard. The threat is implicit in Dave's little speech, and even Yogesh, red-faced from so much moral exertion, doesn't miss the deliberate use of the opening phrase ‘can put in their resignations, and then start their own multinational’, etc. Dave clarifies his own stand on the matter—his typical way of summing every difference of opinion within the group—by saying that he personally doesn't believe that he has more wisdom and insight (his exact words) than a sixty-seven-year-old $15 billion global marketing giant with a hundred and twenty-three brand leaders in ninety-two product categories in thirty-one major world markets, and that therefore he prefers to reserve his own ‘personal’ opinion of such matters and bow to superior authority. ‘I’m just one molecule of plastic in the composition of a little pin on a very large map,’ he says, looking directly unblinkingly at Yogesh—who sits with his legs crossed in feminine style, body and face averted to one side, staring stubbornly at the clock on the sideboard which, Jay notes with some concern, now shows 1.10, ten minutes past the time Tuli was supposed to arrive.
At lunch, he learns that the ‘problem’ mentioned on the phone was a forthcoming income-tax raid on Tuli’s father’s business. Her father has been tipped off that it will occur any time. Jay reflects aloud on the kind of business her father operates that would make an income-tax raid assume the proportions of a witch trial. Tuli doesn’t take offence at this for once. Instead she admits that she and her mother have been trying to convince her father to legitimize his business as much as possible. ‘He will do it, but it takes time, you know.’ Jay doesn’t know; he’s never even aspired to running his own business let alone actually start one. Why would anyone want to undergo such heartaches and ulcers? For what? Jay wants money, yes.
He wants to be rich, of course. But not at any cost. Strangely, the income-tax raid episode lifts his own battered self-esteem. The great Mr Jhaveri isn’t as godlike a being as he seemed. He cheats the government. He trembles before the minions of law and order. Is this the man Tuli fears so greatly that she dares not even admit to knowing Jay while living under his roof?
The income-tax raid never does take place. Tuli’s brother manages to track down the deputy commissioner in charge of the investigation and diverts him with some attractive... er, diversion. Tuli won’t tell him what the bribe consists of—she claims not to know—but Jay imagines briefcases full of cash changing hands like he has seen in a hundred Hindi movies. He is both repelled and fascinated at being so close to real corruption; he looks at Tuli, at the dark circles under her eyes from anxiety and lack of sleep—the entire family is agitated over the raid-threats. And he thinks, Surely I’m better than some dhoti-clad corrupt Gujarati businessman who fears the clear light of legality almost as much as his own daughter fears him. And for what?
A few lakhs more?
The thirty thousand she returns to him that Monday itself. That too is a result of the perseverance of the dogged income-tax investigators. The building project her brother was undertaking has been put on hold until the ‘problem’ blows over, and so he’s returned the money he’d borrowed from private investors, keeping only the fractive ‘white’ amount borrowed from the banks. So Jay suddenly has thirty thousand rupees cash to do with as he pleases. His first impulse is to return the money to Shiv and have done with all salary deductions once and for all. But Tuli impresses upon him the need for furniture, and he reluctantly agrees to spend five thousand—not a penny more—on furbishing his desolate flat. Then there’s also the matter of the unpaid rent, for which he privately decides to set aside another Rs 1,500 . Then, when he has a brief talk with Conrad, he is led into temptation and delivered unto evil via the lure of the stock market. Conrad claims he has some ‘hot tips’ which are guaranteed to return at least 40 per cent net profit after highs and lows over the next year. Jay thinks about it for a day, then decides he doesn’t have anything to lose. He deposits the money in the bank and tells Conrad he’s game. Conrad claps him on the back and telephones his broker that very day. He speaks for a moment, then asks Jay how much he’s willing to invest—would he go as high as fifty thousand? Jay laughs and tells him he doesn’t have fifty, but he could manage twenty-five.
Conrad does some more talking in fluent Gujarati, which makes Jay feel embarrassed because he himself doesn’t speak a word of his father’s language. Conrad puts the phone down and writes down the name to which Jay must make out his cheque immediately. Jay does.
He feels a thrill of adventure, signing a cheque for‘Rs 25,000 only’
and wishes his plain cramped signature was more flamboyant, more artistic, like Dave’s graphic flourish or Conrad’s mysterious cipher.
The name of the company he’s invested in is Enforge, a firm that manufactures dies and casts.
For the next few months, he developes a habit of checking the stock market listing daily. He starts reading publications with titles like Money and Profit and Dalal Street. He discusses trends and aspects of stock market investment with the other executives. Great promise hangs in the air at these discussions. At first he’s surprised at the enthusiasm with which the others answer his often naive queries and the vigour with which they argue or agree over apparently trivial points. Everything from whether J.R.D. Tata has a cold to the effect of Ayatollah Khomeini on cement futures is grist to the mill. In fact, not only at Synergetics, but everywhere he goes, Jay sees a growing fandom of the stock market. Reliance launches a major capital issue and claims that the company has the largest group of shareholders in the world. The index is shooting up with no ceiling in sight. Experts in the columns are predicting a ‘boom’. Jay can almost hear it, this
‘boom’, although to him it sounds more like a gigantic collective roar; the raising of lakhs of voices of amateur investors ploughing their savings into the Great Indian Dream: get rich quick.
Jay has never bought lottery tickets or gambled before—except for one innocent game of flush played at 25 paise a point in his first month at DM—but he sees a similar impulse drawing people to the stock market. Dream money. Jay feels he wouldn’t mind sharing a slice of that dream, whatever his other differences with his fellow countrymen.
The months trundle by. The Pinch/Chamatkar sessions go on. And on. And on. The group grows weary of questioning housewives about their preferences in detergents and desired benefits from a new product. Product advertising concepts are generated by the hundreds—and are tossed out just as quickly as they're thought up.
Long days and short nights. Slimmer weekends.
Suddenly, August. He wakes up one morning and looks at the calendar and realizes a new month has begun and, in the same glance, that his mother's birthday is this month. And that it's now three whole months since he's met her. The last two months he did the same thing he did the time when he got the reduced salary cheque—dropping envelopes full of cash in through the mail slot. But he's been putting in more money, not less. Fifteen hundred rupees, skimmed off the remnant of the Rs 3,500 left over after buying the sofa set that now adorns his living room and after paying the missed rent for May. He also put in long letters with each monthly allowance; anxiously worded accounts of how well his job is progressing, and how well things are going for him in general, and that Tuli is fine, and that he hopes she's keeping good health and taking care of herself and not drinking too much, and that he's sorry he hasn't been able to visit for so long, but he's so busy, and they're working on a very important project, and she's not to worry about him (‘but of course I will,' he can hear her reply, ‘I'm your mother after all') and he's looking forward to seeing her soon, most probably on a Sunday, no not next Sunday, but soon, maybe even on a public holiday, maybe he'll come over and spend a whole day with her (twinge of guilt at this bald lie) and do please look after yourself, and if you need any more money do let me know.
&nbs
p; Although how she would let him know is something he doesn't think about. After the fracas at DM, he's been careful not to let her know even the name of the firm he's working at, let alone the firm's address or the address of the Lokhandwala flat. This is part of his exhilaration, his sense of freedom from her alcoholic tyranny, the feeling that his life, his future, belongs to him at last.
chapter thirty-seven
Under the cold glare of the tubelight: the old sofa; its upholstery ripped; foam spilling out; sagging sadly in the centre; the dining table; too large for the room; its once-proud teak wood scratched and crusted with dried food stains; the wooden beach chair; its white paint peeling; the wood rotted by moisture at the junction of the rear leg; its slats loose and rattling as he sits down gingerly; the little black table on which her ashtray; cigarette pack—she's changed her brand to a cheaper non-king-size one—matchbox with a picture of a train on it; bottle of country liquor (orange flavour); plastic bottle half-full of water; and a strip of paper with a ball pen refill on it. That's it. He leans forward; trying to read the scrawled words on the paper. Her handwriting used to be similar to his own; but now the characters are carelessly scribbled; almost illegible. He gets up; piqued by curiosity; and picks up the paper. It seems to be some kind of shopping list.
He can make out the words ‘ Gelusil—5 foils’ and ‘Dipy's Tomato Ketchup—2 bottles’ and that cracks the code. The rest of the unformed characters become clear; he knows what they will be even before he reads down the whole sheet. He has carried lists like this before; these are her staple requirements. Only the quantities are inexplicable.Why would she want fifty foils of Digene?And 100 bottles of Liv.52? Forty packets of Carefree Sanitary Napkins? He stares at this last item with some surprise. Hed thought she had passed through menopause already; in fact, he had assumed that her last act of violence—the trashing of Chris’s cabin at DM—was the result of menopausal madness.