Virtual Realities

by Neelum Saran Gour

  Oh, hell!

  Her face and voice had gone into their act. A little coil of pain came into her eyes. A sweetly contrived furrow of despair strung along her voice. God! He hated her! Her sad-caring, sulky-sneering, reproachful-righteous ways.

  ‘I mean, look who’s sponsoring this award …’

  With a boom of relief he realized that she was talking about the Golden Lotus!

  ‘It’s a shame—how could you consent?’

  ‘What d’you want me to do?’

  ‘Can’t you turn it down?’

  ‘No.’

  There was a shrill peal of rage in her pupils. ‘I don’t see why not.’ Her voice had risen.

  He put on his special, maddeningly patient tone. ‘I don’t expect you to.’

  ‘You know what? You’ve sold out. To this hype, the attention, the sales figures, the cameras popping, the journalists, the women drooling …’ She caught herself in time, the unspoken rage rearing in her face.

  ‘You know as well as I do that refusing would only stir up more hype. I’d have to state my reasons, and that would only rake up trouble. Attract too much attention.’

  ‘If you ask me, it’ll be the right sort of attention. A serious gesture doesn’t go waste.’

  ‘I have no faith in gestures, Pragya. They don’t achieve a thing.’

  She stared at him, simmering. When she spoke again it was in a dramatized mock wheedle. ‘Don’t worry. There won’t be an embargo on publishing your work. It’ll only mean greater dignity.’

  Fuck-all, these words!

  ‘I don’t want to carry on with those crusades.’

  She persisted. ‘You don’t have to explain anything to anyone. No public statements. The reason you give need not be the real one. Say you’ve changed your mind. Say you don’t believe in awards or something …’

  He laughed a hollow laugh. ‘After having received so many …’

  She ignored him. ‘No one obliges you to spell it out. But everyone’ll know why.’

  ‘No, Pragya, I’ve decided.’

  She fell silent. He knew there was more coming. She wasn’t one to give up easily. ‘I’m ashamed,’ she said at length. ‘I was so proud of you that time. You stood out in a crowd of literary mercenaries. Among the callow stars, you seemed the enduring thing. I’m proud of that period, in spite of all the risks and the threats and the tension and everything. And now you’re ready to undo it all.’ She searched his face. He looked away, sickened. ‘And what hurts most is that my opinion just doesn’t count. It isn’t important. It’s as if I don’t exist …’

  Oh, go to hell!—he swore to himself.

  ‘I’m of no consequence whatever. My words don’t matter. As far as you’re concerned, I’m just a shrew, a nag, a bore, a fool! Or is it because of that old issue? Is it that you hold it in your heart against me? When I was so genuinely sorry after I did it … you knew how sorry I was … do you have to go on punishing me all our life?’

  She spewed out the words in a bitter gush. Her wet gaze swabbed his face, slobbed all over it in sticky pleading. He wanted to mop his skin clean. It revolted him, this slovenly grief. He forced himself to look at her. Tears ran down her face like rain down a grimy windowpane.

  ‘What are you carrying on about?’ he asked impatiently.

  ‘That my opinion doesn’t affect you one way or the other,’ she blubbered. Her words sounded like the glushing of rainwater in a gutter, he thought, and he liked the simile instantly. He’d jot that one down. The glushing of rainwater in a gutter …

  ‘That you should carry that old matter in your heart and go on punishing me like this. That you should think me a shrew, a fool, a nag, a bore, a drudge.’

  ‘I never said those words,’ he said wearily. ‘You did.’ Then, with a cruel flash of vengeance, he added, ‘I merely agreed.’

  All of a sudden she was absolutely calm. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Go ahead and accept the wretched thing. I expect you’re apprehensive of letting anything go—insecure.’

  This was another remarkable thing—her lightning switches from hysteria to composure. They’d been having these see-saw quarrels for years, he and she alternating their tactics. When one became calm, it was a cue for the other to turn hysterical. He knew now that their marriage had outlived its span. In better moods he found himself adding up reasons for gratitude, all the good things they’d once shared. But better moods came less frequently. All too often their dislike surfaced in trifles, and this feeling of fatigue had come to stay.

  Now she swallowed, studied him in quiet triumph as his own voice rose. She nudged him, said in a strained voice: ‘Ofo! Don’t get excited. You can do as you wish if it gets you into such a state. I’ve nothing more to say.’

  At the door she turned to have the last word. ‘I’m only terribly sorry you’re being bought over like this.’ He wished he could knock her jaw in.

  Half a minute later Buddhoo appeared on the scene, a look of benign interest on his face. ‘How now? Bought?’ he asked. ‘Sorry to butt in, yaar, but that was quite a domestic jham, na? Small difference of opinion betwixt man and wife?’

  ‘Well put,’ said Sravan drily.

  ‘Couldn’t help tuning in.’

  ‘Your pleasure.’

  ‘Kindly explain this to me. Unless you’d rather not. I understand from what she tells me that you’re just about to disgrace yourself by accepting that award—that Golden Phallus, sorry, Golden Lotus, right?’

  ‘That’s how she looks at it.’

  ‘How’re you looking at it?’

  ‘Look, I don’t mind telling you the whole messy history, but in case she’s sent you pimping for her, you can just fuck off!’

  ‘Relax, bhai. She hasn’t sent me. She hurtled past me and locked herself in her room.’

  Sravan twisted his face into a grimace of a smile. ‘Good. Now you’re in time to see me hurtle past you and lock myself out. Not to worry. All in a day’s work. I’ve got to get out of this hell-hole—take a walk round the block. You can come with me if you like. I’ll tell you everything.’

  ‘The award’s been sponsored by the Katrak Group. Know the name?’

  ‘Newspapers?’

  ‘That’s right. Bunch of high-profile, hard-hitting, multilingual tabloids. Azad Hindustan, Bengal Bulletin, The Voice, Southern Cross, Sportovision, Life and Letters, all those.’

  Buddhoo nodded.

  ‘About six years back I had an unpleasant brush with J.B. Katrak, the media baron. It was just after my book Vipreet Karma was banned. You know about that?’

  ‘Actually, I don’t. I was—underground six years back.’

  ‘Ah. Well, Vipreet Karma is my favourite—my best, my only real book, I sometimes feel. Ten thousand copies of it were burnt in a single week. All over the country. It continues to be read—in private. And discussed. But the ban hasn’t been lifted. Bookshops were looted, windows smashed. I was attacked at an inaugural reading organized by the Vakya Sammelan.’

  ‘How flattering.’

  ‘Sure, when it wasn’t terrifying! The surreptitious sales continued. No profit for me, of course. For me there was hate mail and threatening phone calls. Pragya and the kids were housebound. Even my servant got threatened. Too much attention for my liking. Yet that’s the period Pragya’s so proud of. It gratifies some funny moralistic gloating in her. Even after it had all blown over, whispers followed me—at conferences, parties, readings. The sodomy scenes were widely discussed.’

  ‘Details?’

  ‘There was one sequence about caste war. A Brahmin boy in a college hostel is sodomized and killed by four Dalit seniors during ragging. He’s made to pedal a rickshaw round campus with the seniors sitting behind, lashing him on with an improvised whip—because he happens to come from a village where ten years back a Harijan busti was torched. When his elder brother abuses them, he’s beaten and reported for misbehaviour with a Dalit. No one will record his complaint. There’s no chance of justice for him or his brother. The
class war in the hostel spreads to the township. I’m proud of that book. It’s the whole truth, not a partial or expedient one. It’s never a class that history punishes—it’s always an individual. The individual’s trapped. That’s my abiding concern—the captivity of the individual in the history of his time. Classes are abstract things. The boy in my book begs for mercy, protests—I and my family had nothing to do with that Harijan busti—I was only seven years old then. But he’s taunted by his tormentors—You’re a Tripathi. You’re one of them. Is it a human-rights issue or a retributive vendetta? Is it ever possible to rise above this caste complication? Those are some of the questions I tackled.’

  They’d reached the end of the last lane in the block. The failing light dribbled into the ashoka trees in small runnels. Buddhoo produced his wallet, upturned it on his palm and, under the street lamp’s faucet of sodium light, counted the coins. Sravan understood, turned right and chose the lane leading to the corner cigarette–bidi–paan–masala booth. They bought their fags, lit them, and turned back across the park’s overgrown quad to Sravan’s house.

  ‘Shortly after that, when the pandemonium was wearing thin, I got a phone call from J.B. Katrak. You know—mega-journalist, political power broker, unofficial Opposition activist, general dicey character. Applauded me for my “bold” upper-class partisanship, as he put it. I said I spoke for myself and no class. He wanted to discuss a biography of his grandfather, B.K.G. Katrak. Wanted me to do it. My banned-book fame was just the sort of publicity he needed. B.K.G. Katrak was an exemplary man. Freedom fighter, social worker, human-rights activist, philanthropist, you name it. I told him biographies didn’t interest me. He said—Come over all the same. I went. He started off politely enough; said there was also a column he had in mind. We want a responsible and recognized author to cover certain under-exposed events from a class analyst’s angle. I asked what events. He said one of them was the Madhavgarh immolation riot. Fifty young men and women had set themselves alight; twelve had died. But that wasn’t a caste issue at all, I said. It had to do with a labour complication in the carpet belt. He said—Never mind what you know; the six who died were Dalits. I said the issue for which they died wasn’t a caste issue, and anyway the remaining six were a mixed lot. And the surviving forty-four? They were largely Dalits, he insisted. I said I knew for a fact that they weren’t. You can’t have a headline screaming, “Six Dalits Immolate Themselves” and suppress the thirty-four others. He began to laugh, and said—Ah, I’ve got you now. You’re an upper-caste partisan after all. I retorted—What’s upper-caste about citing the facts? Ah, but it’s the particular facts a man chooses to cite that betray his affiliations, Mr Kumar, he sniggered. I said—You’re a psychologist, Mr Katrak? Then you’d do well to read my earlier novels, all, without exception, citing facts to support the Dalit cause. So if you don’t mind, about that column you proposed, I don’t think you and I shall be able to see eye to eye, and biographies are not my line. He said—You’re perfectly within your rights and I have faith in your astuteness, Mr Kumar, but I hope you’ll reconsider. I said I’d get back to him in a few days. That’s how we parted.’

  ‘Did you get back to him?’

  ‘Of course not. That matter rests. The biography hasn’t been written, the column didn’t find other takers. Somehow Katrak’s offer and my reluctance became public—a literary rag carried an account. But meanwhile there’s the Golden Lotus, funded by the Katrak Group. Okay, I’ve accepted it—and why shouldn’t I? I turned down Katrak’s offer as an independent individual, and it is as an independent individual that I’ve accepted the award. But try explaining that to Pragya—the opinion of others has always mattered too much to her.’

  If he expected comment, he was disappointed. Buddhoo kept a guarded silence.

  Back in his study, Sravan worked off his disturbance by rewriting a chapter. But a low hum crept into his room, like the distant surf-roar of traffic. ‘It can be done. The portable automobile is practical, non-fuel, lightweight, collapsible canvas body, aluminium frame. Lift your car, pack it in a shoulder bag. A price low enough to beat the price wars. The Great Indian Dream come true. I resent this attitude: if a Japanese company does it, it’s the rage; if yours truly announces it there’s ridicule …’

  Buddhoo shifted gears.

  ‘Wah-re-wah, my little tomcat! Scratched the bloke’s face with a razor, eh?’

  ‘Ya.’ A child’s sullen voice. Sravan’s eleven-year-old, Ashvin, was a snub-nosed kid with narrow eyes in an intent face, and a stubborn knot of muscle bunched between his eyebrows.

  ‘What were you up to, yaar?’ persisted Buddhoo.

  ‘Murder,’ was the crisp answer.

  Buddhoo sounded impressed. ‘Eh, shabash! How many murders you completed, bhai-jaan?’

  ‘I’ve murdered him four times before,’ announced the kid with pride.

  ‘Satyanash! And has he managed to murder you yet?’

  ‘Only once.’

  ‘Anyone else murdered you so far?’

  ‘Two small-small times. Rahul Gupta murdered me once,’ admitted Ashu, voice lowered. ‘He’s a bania. And Sanjay Soni did it once. He’s a Punjabi. But that was when I was so high.’ A pause. ‘They don’t even try it now—I don’t let them.’

  ‘Wise.’ Buddhoo approved of such prudence. ‘But that business with the razor—your Ma was called to the school, you know—what were you murdering him for?’

  ‘HQ said to.’

  Buddhoo began to laugh. ‘I see. Urgent message from Police Headquarters.’

  ‘ “Shoot to Kill,” ’ completed the kid.

  ‘Okay, why did HQ order his killing? Had the guns landed by parachute on his farm? Was the bastard refusing to give them up?’

  ‘No. He called me bloody motherfuck chootiya. So I told him to go bugger himself. He told Madam and Madam hit me—with a ruler—here.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘How did HQ’s message come across?’

  ‘Wireless.’

  ‘Why not your mobile phone?’

  ‘Top secret.’ The kid had the fantasy completely ordered in his head.

  ‘But have you got enough arms, brother? Bombs? Bullets?’

  ‘Not yet,’ confided Ashu. ‘Rakesh Pandey—he’s in the Senior Section—he’s a Brahmin—he said he’d teach me after Diwali.’

  ‘Teach you what?’

  ‘How to make a bomb.’

  ‘Arré baap ré!’ Buddhoo gasped. ‘But why after Diwali, yaar?’

  The kid clicked impatiently at this display of adult obtuseness. ‘Because we have to collect the fireworks powder from the park.’

  Buddhoo uttered a low whistle. ‘Have you made bombs before?’

  ‘Once. Clinton, Rakesh Pandey and me.’

  ‘Clinton!’

  ‘Clinton Peters. He’s in my class. He’s a Christian.’

  ‘He’s actually called that? Arré baba! Yes. All the kids in the class followed him round the playground singing, “Monica, My Darling” and he cried and cried.’

  ‘Stop! You’re going too fast for me. Why did they sing “Monica, My Darling”?’

  ‘Because of the blow job,’ said the kid disinterestedly. A splutter from Buddhoo, who appeared to be choking. In a distinctly shaky voice Buddhoo asked, ‘How did you know about that?’

  ‘I saw it on the Clinton Web site,’ said Ashu professionally. ‘Shekhar Suman says Clinton wears purple underwear …’

  ‘Shekhar who?’

  ‘Movers and Shakers.’

  Buddhoo’s aplomb was plainly baffled.

  ‘A postmodern Indian child,’ he observed.

  ‘Look here, yaar, anyone told you about Mr Bankim Nath Chakravarty?’

  The kid perked up.

  ‘No, tell.’

  ‘Ha, the postmodern child wants a story as badly as the medieval one!’ laughed Buddhoo. ‘Okay. There was this crazy Bengali gentleman in Calcutta who went to the Eden Gardens to watch a cricket match.’

  ‘Buddhoo Cha
cha, stop,’ begged the kid. ‘I’m pissy. I’ll just piss and come.’

  Buddhoo laughed. ‘Do that. We’ll keep Mr Chakravarty waiting till you return.’

  A brief pause. The kid came scuttling back in a flurry. ‘Buddhoo Chacha, come with me—I’m scared.’

  ‘Scared? A mafia hood like you! What’re you scared of? Okay, let’s hoist you up.’ Sravan heard the creak of a door, a squeak of hinges. He hoped the story wasn’t going to continue in the corridor. He was keenly interested in the Bengali gentleman at Eden Gardens.

  When the door squeaked open again, the story was far advanced. ‘After fifty years, Sri Lanka made 251 runs for the loss of eight wickets. That year India had beaten Pakistan in the quarter-finals. You remember the crackers going dhoom-dharam in the night? And the rockets whooshing up? Fine. When Azharuddin won the toss and decided to field, Mr Bankim Nath Chakravarty was moved to strong emotion. Tears, poetry and song welled up in his soul …’

  ‘What was his name?’ asked the kid, thrilled but confused.

  ‘His real name—the one his father and mother gave him—was Bankim Nath, though in those parts they call it Bong-Kim Nath. But Mr Chakravarty was an Englishman at heart. He loved cricket, he played the piano, he spoke a resounding English and he wrote nature poetry that began with lines like “Hail to Thee, Glorious Mother Mine” and “Tears Drop From Mine Gloaming Eyen.” He encouraged his friends at the Calcutta Club to call him Bonkers or just Kim, and he began spelling his name Chuckerverity to accommodate his plummy mates. They started calling him Chuck. Finally he changed the name officially to Bunkum Not, and he was pleased that it even made some kind of sense.’

  ‘What’s it mean?’

  ‘Bunkum means—you know—rubbish, faltu, nonsense, shit! Not means—well, you know what it means, so Bunkum Not means No Nonsense. Get it? So now he was being slapped on the back on the golf course at the Tolly Club and called “Bonkers, old chap!” Where was I? Ah yes, I was telling you how thrilled Mr Bunkum Not was when the match began. Especially as the Indian team was playing wonderfully. But then, he became a little worried. You see, the Sri Lankan batsmen played still better. They thrashed every Indian bowler in every corner of the pitch and piled up a huge score. And then … and then the pitch began to change. The dew. Only, the Indian batsmen didn’t realize it then. Now the Indian score was 120 runs for eight wickets and Mr Bunkum Not was frantic. He couldn’t stop himself—hopping mad he was. Like he felt when Subhash Bose disappeared, like he felt when he read the history of the partition of Bengal, like he felt when he heard of those mealy-mouthed east-country rustics pouring into his golden Bengal and bagging all the coveted positions. He wanted to do something, either write a poem of passionate grief or tear his hair and scream. It was, unfortunately, not possible to write a poem in a crowded stadium on a muggy day, and when his hand closed on his plastic water bottle, he flung it with all his might into the field.’