Virtual Realities
Page 26
‘No.’
‘Surely you’re not thinking of joining the select club of my customers?’ Vyas loaded each word to offend.
That five-second pause came from Sravan’s innate theatrical instinct. He underplayed perfectly the role he’d been rehearsing in his head for a week.
‘There’s an idea I’m keen to explore, but this Katrak biography I’m doing has a one-year deadline. I’m out of sorts—something’s not going right on the page—and the new idea’s too pressing to ignore. Ideally I’d like to be able to break my own record and do two books this year, but your discreet little writing firm [he smiled subtly] has offered me a better option. I’m sure you get the drift … I am, in short, accepting your tender … If I commission you to do this novella … it has to be a novella, a hundred and fifty pages or so. Do you have to check with your secretary?’ He was openly smiling now. ‘Is there a long waiting list?’
Vyas broke in. ‘You’re serious?’
‘My sense of humour is generally inoperative by this late hour.’
‘In that case, Sravanji, I deserve to be congratulated,’ said Vyas, smiling crookedly, ‘on netting such a large account, no?’ He pronounced his words with the right corporate inflection. ‘But I’m sorry,’ he hesitated, ‘I discuss business only in my official chambers in Darbhanga Lane. Mezzanine above motor garage—number 17. You’re welcome tomorrow evening.’ Sravan could see that Vyas was kidding.
‘So you can tape my voice, Vyas?’ he laughed. ‘No, I insist on discussing the project here—and I insist on home delivery. Chapter by chapter and subsequently in full. I’m an interfering client, as you’ll see soon enough. Come on, what’s the going rate for a 150-page novella? A parable genre?’
He’d mastered the situation for a minute. Suspicion flashed in Vyas’s eyes.
‘Are you taping my voice, Sravanji? Gathering evidence against me? What’s your game?’
‘Haven’t you learnt to believe me?’
‘Frankly, no. You haven’t given me cause.’
Sravan sighed. ‘I’ll only ask you to suspend your disbelief then for fifteen minutes. Let’s go down to the colony park in case you imagine this room’s got a concealed microphone or something. And in case you think my pockets could do with a search, go ahead. I also recommend the use of a lie detector …’ Funny how much he was enjoying this game. Like two small boys enacting a favourite thriller.
Vyas looked uncertain. ‘You’re absolutely serious about this … order?’
‘Pity I can’t prove it in writing. You’ll just have to make do with a gentleman’s word. Sorry, all that’s passé—no gentlemen now, only salesmen, so we’ll have to content ourselves with cordial threats of mutual exposure, if that’s any good.’
Vyas relaxed. ‘Oh, okay. One’s got to bank on customer goodwill, I suppose.’
‘Quite an entrepreneur.’
‘A born manager,’ grinned Vyas. ‘Triple charge. Production, marketing, personnel, all rolled into one! But just one permanent risk—a vindictive customers’ union someday. Wonder if the Consumers’ Forum covers a line like mine. The precaution-money bit makes HRD difficult …’
They laughed.
Out in the park, punctuated by sounds of traffic and phrases of breeze, Sravan verbalized his images.
‘Four men visit a village. Or a small town, if you prefer. You’ve got to highlight their telling features. Their sternness. Softness. Humanity. They’re different, but obviously related. Now this has to be done in a time-surpassing allegory vein. No magic realism, please. Something Bunyanesque. Epic. Get it? They’ve come looking for a man, a kinsman whose address they’ve lost. They ask their way down that village. There are many misleading reports—so-and-so answers to the description of the sought person—and they hasten to identify him. But they’re always disappointed. Okay. Right at the end they do manage to find the man. And this is going to be the toughest bit—the nature of the man they eventually find. He’s unlike anyone else. Nothing to recommend him. Dirty and fierce. He left the settlement and he’s a healer of beasts, a sort of male witch. An outcast by choice. Rough—yet plants grow under his touch and animals are cured. And humans. He’s given to beating people, too, and is believed to be subject to fits. He greets the four with abuse, asks them who the fuck they are, says he doesn’t know them and has no regard for ties of kin or unknown visitors. They say they are men of peace. He lifts the hempen curtain and says gruffly, I don’t care who you are, but if you are men of peace we are brothers. Now, can you see why an epic tone is important?’
Vyas wasn’t impressed. ‘A hundred and fifty pages of this?’
‘Not reader-friendly enough?’ Sravan queried in gentle self-mockery. The four men have to unfold slowly—right from page one. One has a faded robe and carries a bowl. One has an unkempt beard and has lived in a cave. One has matted locks and wears ash on his forehead. One has long, flowing hair and the marks of nails on his body. And don’t turn them all into women to give it a provocative twist …’
Vyas stood still, unblinking for an instant.
‘Are they recognized?’
‘Only by the reader.’
‘I’ll do it,’ said Vyas, a little breathless.
‘Good.’
‘When d’you want it?’
‘How long d’you need?’
‘Can’t say offhand. A year? That suit you?’
‘Don’t push yourself. Take your time. Give it your best.’
Vyas grinned. ‘Guaranteed perfect after-sale service. Motor warranty a hundred years.’
‘You’re a vain bastard, Vyas. I wouldn’t ever claim that for any of my books.’
‘This,’ said Vyas, ‘is officially your book. Wait and see.’
‘I believe you,’ said Sravan a little sadly. ‘Now, your invoice?’
Vyas thought. ‘Considering the appeal of the idea and considering that the idea is yours, not mine, shall we say twenty-five thousand only?’
‘You’re giving me quite a discount.’
‘For old times’ sake, Sravanji,’ said Vyas meaningfully.
‘Done,’ said Sravan. ‘Payable in advance?’
‘Ten as earnest money. Fifteen on delivery.’
‘And afterwards?’
‘What d’you mean afterwards?’
‘Your royalty. No, that’ll be me getting it, no? Your silence account, precaution money, whatever you call it?’
Vyas eyed Sravan with renewed mistrust. ‘Somehow I can’t believe you mean it.’
‘Shall I give you a cheque to prove my seriousness? Or do you have problems with income tax?’
‘I’m really excited about this subject,’ enthused Vyas on the stairs. ‘It’s got the promise of … ignition!’
‘Yes, I know,’ said Sravan. ‘Now, since you prefer cash, you’ll have to wait till tomorrow. No monkey business, right?’ Still mimicking the trigger-happy tone. ‘If you try anything funny I have my answer ready. I’ll say you’re a practising gay—and that’s the amount I paid to …’
Vyas roared with laugher. ‘Not a bad story. Might be the best hype line to promote this book. Senior Author Confesses to Buggering Up Junior Author. And it’s true, in a manner of speaking.’ Though it still rankled, Sravan tried to make a joke of it, too.
As he re-entered the study, Sravan’s eyes fell on Saraswati. Ranjana Devi’s words stirred in his head, this time with exuberance. Nothing more to do except think of a title for the book, speak to Mayur Vriksha and arrange for it to appear under the name of Veerendra Vyas. He could anticipate their curiosity. Veerendra who? The same Vyas who was hailed as a writer of uncanny promise twenty years back but who, by some mysterious conjunction of circumstances, went out of circulation, dropped by the wayside? Nothing more to do except, perhaps, practise forging Vyas’s signature for the contract and its counterfoil. And the fellow swallowed the bait, a savvy guy like that, Sravan chuckled. Ten thousand down and fifteen on delivery! Giving me a discount, too!
Then another tho
ught struck him. Twenty-five thousand! The same figure used on Farooqui’s dud cheque. Twenty-five thousand seemed to be the recurrent quantity in all his spiritual swindles. Life’s script repeated its circuits with breathtaking symmetry, too precisely and too often to be entirely accidental.
He’d copied Vyas’s signature from the old manuscript. It was strange now, practising and practising a signature not his own. He had it almost perfect now. Quite a penance. Gave him a paid-up feeling, the relief of a forgotten rightness. Fiction had been his lifeline, and forgery would be his salvation. Odd thought. Did justice to his sense of equivocation, his plight of inhabiting qualified realities. His tempered truths.
He wondered what luck Pragya was having with the injured kid’s treatment. He thought of Buddhoo’s theories of hurting and healing motives. He speculated on the book now taking shape in Vyas’s head. His own plans had suddenly clarified: the Katrak biography but nothing more. He would wait until Vyas’s book was through. Only then would he unlock his cupboard and, when he felt equal to the task, write a real book again. For real books, even when they happened on earth, were made in heaven.
THE BEGINNING
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First published by Penguin Books India in 2002
This Collection Published by 2018
Copyright © Neelum Saran Gour 2002
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Cover Designer: Puja Prakash
ISBN: 978-0-143-02806-2
This digital edition published in 2018.
e-ISBN: 978-9-353-05347-5
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.