by Durjoy Datta
‘Print it out. I don’t want to stare at a screen for a minute longer than I have to. I don’t want to be blind and spectacles kill my swag, man,’ he says. I hand over the printout to him, he reads it, looks at me and starts to laugh. ‘This is a joke, man, no offence to whoever assigned this to you. Let me tell you something. I will find you a computer and send you a demo of the cataloguing software we have developed here. You can test it out. It won’t take more than an hour or two. Tell me if you can find ways to improve it. I already have a report on the software. I will mail it to you and you can make some changes and submit it. No biggie.’
‘Sure,’ I say.
‘Don’t sound so nervous, man! It’s no big deal. To let you in on a secret, the software is fucked up right now. And if you get bored of it, you’re free to download games from the LAN and try out a few rounds of Counter Strike,’ he chuckles. ‘I was against the whole internship idea, but they just don’t listen. The HR department wants to catch talent young. So just relax and enjoy your holiday.’
‘Fine, sir.’
‘And maybe we can go out in the evening? I will get my wife along. Sounds like a plan?’
I want to say I-don’t-go-out-in-the-evening-and-it-soundslike-a-disaster but I say, ‘Okay.’
‘If you need to eat, there’s a cafeteria down the hall. Everything’s on the house!’ he says and pats my back. ‘And hey, I want to see you at at the club cluster near Central. Just ask anyone. They will tell you where it is. Sharp at nine.’ He winks.
He finds me a laptop and then leaves. I test out the cataloguing software demo. It’s crude and still at the development stages. I make a list of my observations and mail it to Ritik who asks me to slow-down-in-life-man-and-playsome-Counter-Strike.
Instead, I download the document with the first paragraph I have ever written. I brace myself for a few hours of excruciating depression as I start typing again.
I spend another afternoon without eating, but this time it’s because I am writing and re-writing furiously—my brain’s a furnace and it feels like it is going to explode. I have heard somewhere, ‘The art of writing is rewriting.’ It rings true now. I have managed another paragraph and with this I have the license to read my words in print. I hit Crtl + P and wait for words to materialize on paper.
I spend the entire time on my way back, from the subway to my hotel, reading the words on the paper. Soon they lose meaning and disinterest me, and I think of twenty different things I can add to the text, and it all seems wrong, but they are still my words, my key to immortality.
‘As he entered the hotel, luxurious and opulent beyond his zaniest dreams, he felt privileged, spoilt, and even lucky. More so when he found himself next to a girl who was beautiful, fair and proportionate, like a goddess and the figures in Da Vinci’s sketches. He wanted to make sure it wasn’t one of his open-eyed dreams. They were on the elevator to the top of the hotel, and he could see them, the girl and him, riding together into the sun, like the elevator of the chocolate factory that broke right through the building and floated into the yellowness, the yellowness of the sun, the yellowness of Hong Kong. Aha! Hong Kong.
The little luxuries of the tiny shampoo bottles notwithstanding, he still thought of the girl in the lift, fair and radiant, with a strange determination in her eyes, a musician’s wardrobe, or a hippy’s, he couldn’t tell. He couldn’t help but think of how she had walked away from him, like life itself, and how he was left robbed of her, and of life, when she disappeared into her room. He waited in the lobby, walked around in circles, waiting for her to come out and step into the same lift with him, again, but she didn’t. Tired, he went to his room and slept, memories from earlier that day clouding his mind.’
The elevator is still empty.
10
I wake up to the ringing of the alarm.
My bed seems extremely inviting as I struggle to open my eyes. I notice a tiny red light flashing on the landline. I reach out to press the play button and hear a frantic Ritik over the din of men and women and dub step, ‘NINE P.M. THERE IS AN OUTLET THAT SELLS WRAPS AND STUFF. IT’S RIGHT WHERE THE CLUBS END. NINE, NINE OKAY! YEAHHH!’
I look up the location on Google and the results unsettle me. It’s a street known for its clubs and nightlife; clearly not my thing.
The phone starts to ring just then.
‘Maa?’
‘Deep? Where have you been? I called you in the morning, shona, and no one picked up. Your father and I have been worried sick. Are you okay? Why didn’t you call earlier?’ she asks, as if I have been missing for days.
‘I’m okay. I went to the office. It’s very nice. I might go out tonight with colleagues. They asked me and I couldn’t say no.’
‘What? But it must be after six there!’ she exclaimed. My curfew in New Delhi is 6 p.m. and after 6 in the evening, Dad and I were supposed be within one arm’s distance of my mom, no exceptions. We didn’t dare to cross her.
‘It’s eight here.’
‘EIGHT! Ishhhhhh. No, shona, you’re not going anywhere. You are alone in that city and we don’t know anyone there. You don’t even have a phone. You’re not going, promise me, promise me, you’ll not go.’
‘I will try.’
I start talking about food and she gets distracted. I tell her about the allowance I had learned about earlier and ask her if she needs anything from Hong Kong. She tells me to spend it on myself, but I already have my eyes fixed on a handbag I’m sure she will like. It’s no Coco Chanel, but it’s definitely better than the ancient, tattered jute bag she uses.
I ask if I can talk to Dad because if there is an authority on how to conduct oneself in public gatherings it’s him (he’s the deputy chairman of our colony’s Durga Puja), but he’s cutting vegetables and his hands are dirty. It seems like ages since I have been home; I have even started missing helping out in the kitchen. I don’t like doing the dishes, but I’m a mutant when it comes to cutting vegetables into thin slices.
I disconnect the call.
The shirt issue strikes me again! I used my best shirt this morning, so I pick the second best hoping Ritik and his wife would be too drunk to notice the shirt. Or me. I need to buy a shirt soon—I make a mental note.
It’s 8.30 in the evening but it’s still day in Hong Kong. The sky is cloaked with buildings and signboards, and they are awash with lights. The sun never sets here. The subway is as crowded as it was in the morning, and if it is possible, the people are even better dressed than in the morning.
The clubbing district is a stone’s throw away from the subway station. I take a taxi and look out of the window to see men and women, dressed in suits and Little Black Dresses (which I think are Too Little), disappearing into clubs. I am positive I would be mistaken for a cleaner and handed a mop.
I walk around with a sense of urgency, trying to look for a familiar face but I’m easily distracted by the flashing lights of the packed clubs on both sides of the streets, and before I know it, I have walked twice around the two magical streets that comprise the district. I’m again reminded of what Aman had said about Hong Kong being the most densely populated urban centre, because everyone seemed to have descended to this street of frolic and unending parties. Back to my senses, I start looking for Ritik again; unknown people with drinks in their hands raise their glasses and wish me the best night ahead as I pass them.
I’m so out of place.
OUTLET THAT SELLS WRAPS AND STUFF isn’t hard to find. It’s right where the street starts and I don’t know how I missed it. The streets are my kryptonite: bars with women, lots of women! I’m still like the eighth grader who doesn’t hate girls any more, instead likes them, but they are so new to him that it’s frightening.
‘HEY! You made it! What up?’ he shouts. I can hear no music, but he’s still shouting. He’s definitely, positively drunk.
‘Yes. It wasn’t hard to find,’ I say, wriggling out of his embrace.
‘This is my wonderful wife, Connie! And this is Deep
, the brilliant intern,’ he says. A delightfully short woman waves at me. ‘Isn’t she just beautiful? Look how cute she is!’ He kisses her and she curls up into a shy ball.
‘He’s really drunk. Hi! I’m Corinna Cheung,’ she smiles, her eyes cute like a bug’s, disappearing into the crinkles of her skin. We shake hands. Then she turns away from me and joins her group of women. They all start talking loudly in what could be Korean, Chinese, or Vietnamese.
‘How do you like it?’ Ritik asks, grinning widely. He’s still in his office clothes; his eyes are bloodshot and he’s looking at his wife. ‘If it weren’t for her, I would have left this city long back. But now, “Woàitâ, woàizhèzuòchéngshì.” (I love her and I love this city.)’
‘Was that Chinese?’ I ask, shocked. He laughs.
‘Yes, it is. I didn’t want to lose out on a single word she says.’ He’s still looking at her. ‘And man, the first time I heard her talk, it was like music, and I felt so bad I didn’t know what she was saying. So I took classes and now I know exactly what her relatives say about me and let me tell you, they love me like crazy! I don’t blame them for that!’ He laughs again.
‘Woàini!’ (I love you) he shouts at Connie and Connie smiles and says, ‘He’s too drunk.’
‘I will just be back. Let me show Deep around. And I’m not nowhere near drunk!’
‘That’s a double negative.’
He frowns. ‘Oh, so now you’re going to be all Shakespeare with me.’
‘Geoffrey Chaucer,’ I correct him.
‘Now who’s that?’
Before I can tell him that he’s, like, only the father of English grammar he tells me I should get a girlfriend.
‘You like it? You like it?’ He asks with a childlike enthusiasm as he takes me around the two streets again. We walk gingerly through the streets, which are now teeming with even more people, all of them about my age but infinitely better-looking, many of them screaming and dancing like the world is ending in a couple of hours. Crowds have spilled over from the clubs and bars onto the streets. I spot just like in the movies, groups of boys and girls standing around in a circle, gasping and cheering a solitary dancer’s busting moves.
It looks like I have stepped onto the sets of a Step Up sequel. Everyone’s a phenomenal dancer, and everyone’s having a great time.
‘Now let’s get you bent, homeboy.’
Before I can ask him what ‘bent’ means and devise excuses to keep myself away from the drinking or the dancing, he says, ‘Bent means drunk!’
11
‘This is the best!’ Ritik pushes a flaming shot at my face. I think he has just burned one of my eyebrows. The group of girls with Connie, his Chinese wife, are wreaking havoc on the dance floor.
‘I can’t drink it.’
‘WHAT?’
‘I SAID I CAN’T DRINK IT, RITIK!’ Before I can finish the sentence he forcibly pours the drink down my throat and it burns wherever it touches as it goes down, which is everywhere.
‘That’s disgusting!’
‘Welcome to Hong Kong!’ He laughs throatily.
And then Connie walks towards us with her legion of genetically engineered dancer friends. ‘You are not drinking? Come drink!’ And as if on cue they start chanting, ‘Drink! Drink! Drink!’
And then I feel myself dissolving in the flaming shots of Whatever the Heck It Is.
Half an hour later, I am pretty bent, like, really bent. I remember myself—flailing legs trying to kill someone, and Connie laughing and telling me that I dance like a fish out of water, that I flap my limbs like a headless chicken.
Being ‘bent’ is kind of like being victorious, it’s powerful and liberating, and yet it’s lonely, like it’s only you who can feel the utter joy of flying, but you’re flying alone even in a crowd and there are no cotton clouds.
‘You smell weird.’
I am banging my head on the bar table because the world’s spinning like a goddamn carousel. I remember Ritik helping me up on a bar stool after my dance moves were deemed a threat to public safety in general. I also remember having complete conversations, though I don’t remember a word of what I said, with an American student studying dentistry, a German pole vaulter on vacation, wildlife photographers from Australia, and a group of bubbly honeymooners from India. That’s the most culturally diverse experience I had ever had in my life, even though I was, like, totally smashed.
The bartender is serving drinks at a frantic pace; there is literally no place to stand. It’s dark with flashy lights.
Connie, her friends and Ritik are still dancing. Ritik is as bad a dancer as I am. He’s crossing his hands, flashing gang signs, and from a distance it would seem like he’s eve teasing his own wife.
‘You smell old.’
I look up because I feel it’s addressed to me. ‘Huh?’ That’s my best response because I am like why-is-a-girl-talking-to-me.
‘You’re the guy from the lift, aren’t you?’ She laughs. She is definitely the girl from the lift, the girl from the first two paragraphs from my book, the pocket-sized hippy. She is sitting on the bar stool next to me, legs swinging, smiling to herself.
‘Yes,’ I blurt. My throat closed up. Our legs are touching under the bar table and I am frightfully aware of it. Between me and my speech hangs her beautiful face like a cloak, blocking my words.
She sips her coffee. She doesn’t look at me; I don’t blame her, I don’t look like anything worth seeing, and I smell old. She smells like hotel room shampoo and strawberries and fresh lilies like she does. She’s staring at the neon-lit sign behind the bartender that screams in yellow and red: FREE DRINKS FOR LADIES.
‘Is your coffee nice?’ I ask.
She nods, she has a coffee moustache over her full lips that are like little pink dew drops, and she’s still not looking at me. ‘I didn’t know what else to order. But it’s almost the best coffee I have ever had.’
‘Who are you here with?’
‘Dad.’
‘Oh.’
Aman says I’m funny and if that’s the case, this is the right time to bring it on, bring it on like the freaking tsunami, but I am silent like a faulty water sprinkler.
‘I drank something which was on fire. It was terrible,’ I say.
‘Drinking is lame. Coffee is better. Although my dad differs. He’s quite the authority on alcohol. I have heard we have a huge bar at our house in India.’ She laughs, and it’s like drunken birds chirping, melodious and wonderfully out of tune.
‘What do you do?’ I ask, putting the water sprinkler on.
‘I play a few instruments, though I’m not very good at it. Also, I’m blind.’ She sips her coffee.
‘You’re what?’ I ask, not sure if I heard her right and to confirm that it is not just an excuse she uses to ward off strangers.
She licks her lips. ‘I’m blind. I have Leber’s congenital amaurosis. I feel so good about myself whenever I can pronounce it correctly. It’s such a big word.’
‘I know bigger words,’ I say. ‘Like Pneumono-ultramicroscopic-silico-volcano-coniosis. It’s the longest word in the English dictionary.’
‘That’s impressive!’ she beams.
‘Are you really blind?’ I asked, still unsure, and trying to make sense of the missing eye contact between us, which is fine because I’m not a big fan of making eye contact. ‘You can’t see anything?’
‘It’s called visually impaired.’
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t—’
Her laugh is like drunken birds’ laugh—chaotic and lovely. ‘It’s okay. I don’t mind.’
‘But your eyes look fine.’
‘It’s some problem with the nerve. That’s what the doctors tell me.’ She turns to me, but not really. She’s looking over my shoulder, like she has a squint or something.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘You don’t have to be!’ she laughs again and it’s gorgeous and I want her to stop doing it.
‘You really can’t see anything?�
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‘I see blurry figures. I can make out if it’s night or day, but other than that, all I see is a mixture of colours, like a kids’ painting, everything overlaps and smudges. It sort of sucks.’
‘Then how do—?’
‘I used to have a guide dog but he got run over. Now, I have my dad and a stick. I miss my dog though. He always smelled so terrible.’
‘Is that why you could smell me? Like you have developed a supernose?’
She chuckles. ‘Unfortunately, I haven’t developed superears or supernose as a side effect. I must be the worst blind person ever.’ She’s still looking over my shoulder. ‘I last saw clearly when I was five.’
‘I read a book once by Tom Sullivan. He’s a blind author and—’
She interrupts and she looks pissed. Her blind eyes are angry. ‘Dad doesn’t let me read books about blindness or by blind authors. He feels they will make me feel bad about myself.’
‘I was just—’
‘Though I read, or rather, I heard, The Country of the Blind, by H.G. Wells. It was so interesting!’ she gushes, her eyes lighting up. Anyone would guess that her eyes—an extension of her face, beautiful and expressive—still work.
‘The guy who wrote The War of the Worlds, the first superstar of sci-fi fiction! He was a genius,’ I say, excitedly.
‘I have heard.’
‘Did you watch the movie The War of the Worlds as well? The book is so much better!’
‘I can’t see.’
‘Oh, right. I’m sorry.’
12
Her eyes are constantly darting around us, not looking anywhere, but everywhere.
‘Do you see my dad around?’ she asks.
I look around. ‘Is your dad in his early twenties and wears skinny red denims?’ I ask cheekily.
‘I wouldn’t know, but I don’t think so. Red is not really his colour,’ she says. ‘He’s in mid-forties, really, really tall and sports a crew cut.’