At last that asshole bartender serves them their drinks and Nil closes his lips around the glass and downs half of it in the space of a few seconds, but then gets his wits together and puts the drink down, only to find out that Mel has already finished hers and has returned to look at him, unpretentiously, as if extending an invitation.
“What did he say?” Nil asks.
“Come on, Nil,” goes Mel, “no job tonight.” She shakes the mass of her blonde hair and backs away from the counter and turns and, as if she just remembered, says, “I have a bit of stuff on me. You know, if you want, later...” And she’s gone.
Ferang is pulling off his charming tricks with a quartet of girls, three fat pig-like creatures and a cute one, whom Nil knows by sight from an extracurricular Theater course he enrolled in to overcome his anxiety last semester, but he has never spoken to them and doesn’t really plan to.
“There’s this new restaurant in Phoenix Mall and, dude,” says one of the girls, a chick that gives the term “overweight” a whole new meaning, “you have to try their peach cheesecakes.”
“Is it, huh?” goes Ferang, and by the way he speaks it seems like the most important matter on the face of the Earth. “Better than Starbucks?”
“Starbucks is good,” another one says, and she’s also fat, but at least her skin is fairer. “But this is something else.”
“The only thing is that we should drop the desserts,” sighs the pretty one, who clearly has no self-esteem nor an attractive body, but at least can see her own toes.
“Give it a rest!” says Ferang, serious but smiling an encouraging smile. “If one doesn’t indulge in food, which other pleasures may this life grant us? I think we should go together. Next week?” His body language, the pitch of his voice and his micro expressions are somewhere between assertive and boyish—the perfect performance.
Nil knows that Ferang will find an excuse not to go, and wonders why, then, he wastes so much energy to weave his spider-web each time.
Once Ferang rids himself of the buffalos, the two move through the crowd and Nil wants to ask Ferang to come out with him for a breath of fresh air, but before he can try to defeat the din of the music and raise his voice, he realizes that they’re technically already out, and Ferang is already shaking hands and embracing those from Specialized Reporting as if he were the Great Gatsby himself, and together they approach the bar ordering drinks with a nod.
“Guys,” says Vivaan after a sip of his Bourbon, “the conflict in Ukraine is taking a bad turn.”
“Yes, but in Syria it’s worse,” says Arjit checking his BBC app. “And, above all, the effects of the war are also affecting the civilized world.” A moment later, he’s on Instagram scrolling through the hundreds of notifications he received before returning his sideral gray iPhone into the pocket of his Armani slim fit black trousers.
“It’s all about finance,” goes Ferang with the air of someone who really knows anything. “Behind these conflicts are the world’s major banking dynasties. Azerbaijan is the silent centre of it all. And I wouldn’t be surprised if the Rockefellers were behind this or that attack.” Avoiding the straw, he sips his Gin Rickey. “But, on the other hand, we would never come to know, right? Unless one of us becomes, like, president of the world,” he says, smiling to himself.
“Yeah, man, those bastards are behind a lot of shit.” The iPhone back in his hands, Arjit is again ego-masturbating on social media. “The oil crisis, the recession, you know...”
Nil glimpses at Mel in the crowd and tries to follow her figure with his eyes, but he has lost her already in the throng of dancing students.
“For me, no offense, these conspiracy theories are not credible,” says Chucky, a fake punk from Advertising. “Think about it, Ferang, people love this crap because it’s simple, it’s sensational. It is easier for the masses to think that if the world goes to hell there’s a reason for it to. To believe in the existence of an evil order pulling the strings of the events is easier than to face the total chaos of the world we live in.”
“Well said,” goes Ferang. “People prefer ephemeral illusions when the truth is hard to face.” His buddy-buddy behaviour makes Nil clench his fists. He feels like he is losing his mind, the border between Ferang’s bewitching arts and his tendency to actually befriend these mites too blurred to bear.
“Bullshit,” Careena spits out, appearing from god knows where. “You think you know everything, but you are a farce, that’s what you are.”
Silence falls. Arjit pretends he saw someone he knows in the crowd and disappears.
Ferang chuckles looking at her from the corner of his eyes and you can see he’s startled and then he bows his head to his drink and he looks like he wants to dive and disappear inside the glass.
“And they all listen to you as if you were saying something sensible,” she goes again, spluttering through every two words and Nil wonders if she is high on crack or something.
“Is it?” goes Ferang, playing along and trying to meet the others’ eyes. “And why is that?”
“Because you’re white.”
Nil turns and leaves and is swallowed up by the crowd and as he pushes against these unknown bodies to get as far as possible from the group he closes his eyes shut and then someone bumps into him saying, “Look where the fuck you’re—” but Nil keeps on walking and when he opens his eyes again, he looks around and wishes he was closer to the bar. Instead finds himself before a cactus in a vase in a corner of the terrace.
“Bhai, what are you doing?” Ferang holds him by the shoulders and leans toward his face as if to check on a patient.
Nil shakes his head and says he needed just a little space and Ferang agrees and together they turn and observe the lights of East Ayodhya spreading beyond the railing, but the view is partially obscured by another apartment complex showing off the Worlds United logo, the three intersecting compasses, and Ferang goes about how much he likes to observe the city from above and how from there the world seems to follow an order and have a purpose but when you walk down in the road there is only the present and everything is in the grip of chance, and soon his monologue begins to take on poetic undertones, and Nil closes his eyes, ready to cushion the effect of the impending migraine.
“Nil, what is it?”
“Nothing.”
Ferang places his hand on his back. “I know what you need,” he says and pulls him back into the throng of guests and, moving as if he really knew where they were going, pops out in front of the DJ console where Imal is standing, and Ferang grabs Imal’s arm and whisper something in his ear, but the words are drowned by a song that Nil doesn’t know but one that reminds him of all the previous ones.
Imal has changed his shirt and is now wearing a fourteen thousand rupees colorful striped Paul Smith with its sleeves rolled higher up and nods and leans in and starts talking to Ferang but Nil can’t understand what he’s saying either, and then he realizes that they are in the same position him and Mel were earlier, and he feels like punching Imal in the face.
“So,” repeats Imal, “you want it or not?”
“What?” Nil takes a step back to read his lips.
“Charlie, man. Flake. Snow.”
Nil looks at him for a moment, then turns to Ferang, and back to Imal.
“Fuck off,” he says, and once again makes his way through the crowd and feels like the night is suffocating him and this party is a monstrosity and Nil wonders where Mel might be and with whom, and would she like to spend a few minutes having a drink and chatting in peace with him without mentioning their job or anything serious; and when he sees her, she sees that Mel is talking to a not-too-fair guy, but someone who, Nil has to admit it, is tall and physically enviable, wrapped in a maroon sweatshirt that reads “Harvard” on the chest, and he notes that they seem to be talking amiably, but something in the guy’s eyes is off; and when Mel sees Nil she simply walks away from the guy and approaches Nil and he’s overjoyed, just fucking overjoyed, but then h
e pauses to think about how he must look, his face wild-eyed and bordering hysterical, and so he rubs his eyes hoping to regain a normal appearance, and Mel covers the remaining distance between them with one last step and she’s here.
“Come on, let’s get the hell out of here,” she says, and together they walk away and she doesn’t turn around to say goodbye to that Madrasi brute, and for that Nil is grateful.
Somehow, Nil doesn’t know how, they find themselves next to the same cactus, in front of the building with the three compasses on it.
“Our parents never lose sight of us,” Nil goes, nodding at the complex, one of the many United Worlds buildings scattered across the city.
Mel takes out from her bra—a Victoria Secret, Nil recognizes before looking away—a plastic package full of dope. Mel asks him the time and Nil lifts his arm to check his Rolex, but before he can answer, she grabs his wrist and pours a gram of cocaine on the dial and then uses her credit card, an IndianOil Platinum, to turn the pile into a perfectly shaped line.
Nil stares at his watch covered with powder and the memory of the bathroom and Mel’s mouth pressed against his skull invades his mind and, raising his wrist to his face, he snorts, feeling the drug bolting through him and an adrenaline surge hitting him like a hammer on the anvil from the back of his throat to the bottom of his spine, and he fears he’ll fall backwards, but the truth is that he’s never felt more straight in his life.
Mel looks at him from the bottom-up and it almost seems like she wants to climb up to his eyes and dive inside, where Nil would tell her his secrets, but the mere thought of it makes his anxiety reappear and so Nil casts a pleading look at Mel, and she gets it at once and pours some more coke and Nil sniffs even before she can make a line out of it and the building in front of him is nice and bright and taller than that of Goldman Sachs down the road, and that cactus is big and totally badass.
Ferang is right, Nil thinks, the world is beautiful and worth fighting for, and so he smiles at Mel, a warm and embracing smile, and she reciprocates, and her eyes shine with surprise, and Nil is possessed by the thought of taking her in his arms and kissing those lips at the same time hard and soft, so that they can both forget about the dancing mass around them and celebrate their union with the only witness being that fat, solitary cactus; but then Mel takes a step towards him and Nil bobs his head to greet her and she puts her hand on his chest, and he knows his chest is swollen, proud, and she plays with the buttons on his shirt, and then drops the plastic packet in his pocket and, fluid as ever, she vanishes in the crowd.
Nil walks back to the bar and orders a Sazerac and as he waits he makes small talk with the bartender, who turns out not to be too much of an uneducated villager after all, and when he finally sips his drink, he feels like he’s having the best cognac in the history of liquors and finds that all the other guests at the bar are all beautiful, their skin glowing and, waving his hand, Nil greets Diviya from Feature Writing, who’s sitting alone at the other end of the bar, and then someone shouts, but Nil mistakes it for a cry of exultation to the new, posthumous song by Avicii playing, but then the crowd amasses at one side of the terrace, leaning over the railing, the flash of the cameras of the iPhones giving the scene an air of excitement, as if they were all journalists hunting for a scoop.
“He’s fucking dead,” someone says, and to this Nil jumps off the stool and runs to the parapet and tries to look beyond but there is no space and then, seized with sudden anguish, looks around for Mel and Ferang, but there is no trace of them.
A remixed version of “Wonderwall” by Oasis is washing through the terrace and some in the middle of the floor are still dancing, and then Nil sees Mel swallowed up by the elevator and he catapults himself toward the sliding doors, but when he gets there the floor numbers are already popping up in descending order on the display and so he presses the button again and again and lights a Benson and smokes more than half in three deep puffs and then puts it off and throws it on the black silk dress of a girl from med school standing nearby. Nil smiles as the fabric burns, and then feels like shit because of it. The elevator doors open.
On the ground floor, people are in panic and a horde has crowded around a point in the courtyard and the gatekeepers are sweating and speaking on the phone and Imal, purple lips, pale face, bumps into Nil from behind and rushes through the lobby and then to the main gate, and what is more shocking to Nil is the inexplicable presence of an umbrella, a midnight blue Alexander McQueen umbrella placed in the umbrella stand next to the entrance. Like, who needs an umbrella in Ayodhya? Nil feels compelled to hide it somewhere or throw it into the elevator shaft or make that asshole gatekeeper swallow it because he’s is still talking on the phone in some sort of dialect that is hurting Nil’s ears.
Approaching the crowds, Nil can see the body lying on the concrete at last, a dislocated jaw and white foam pouring off his head and one leg bent at the knee at the wrong angle, the guy pressing his own shoeless foot against his stomach as if he were guarding for some kind of treasure. For a moment, the person on the floor looks like the guy with the Harvard sweatshirt, but Nil turns away and can’t be sure and tells himself it doesn’t matter—someone is taking a video for sure, anyway. Mel is not there.
A ridiculous police bike stops just outside the main gate, and although Nil expects to see Imal coming along with the cops, it’s Mel that makes her entrance next to the Police Commissioner of Candil, whom Nil knows all too well. What is he doing in East Ayodhya?
Nil tries at first to read their lips, but then again looks away for the fear of being spotted, and when he turns back, a pair of paramedics is running and carrying a stretcher and Mel and the Commissioner are talking near a marble column in the parking lot.
“He shakes like someone high on smack,” goes someone in the crowd as the paramedics load the body on the stretcher, and when it is paraded by next to him, Nil can’t recognize him, he just can’t all blood-spattered as he is. Sure he doesn’t belong to any important family, otherwise he’d know, and then the ambulance sirens are lost in the main road.
His arms wrapped around her, Ferang is comforting Priyal, who cries convincingly, if only it were not for the complete absence of tears. Nil wonders if she will use saliva to do the trick. As the stretcher passes next to him, Ferang snaps a selfie.
Imal buys off the Commissioner with a stack of pink bills and he does so making sure that all are witnesses, and a part of Nil hopes that the cop would be outraged and slam him in jail, or even better, that he’d slam them all in jail, but of course the Commissioner wobbles his head and scratches his mustachioed lip and makes the money disappear into the inside pocket of his jacket and, before returning to his rickety motorcycle, glances at Mel one last time.
Imal huffs and runs a hand through his perfect hair and his gaze seems to dwell on the spot where the guy hit the cement. There is no trace of blood or hair or skin on it.
Everyone is looking at Imal, and someone dares to say, “Let’s go back upstairs?” and all the others wait in silence for the verdict, and Imal looks conflicted for a moment, but then shakes his head and, serious as hell, says that he doesn’t feel like it anymore and that they need to decamp.
“I told you,” he says, “if you do this kinda shit I’m fucking out.” He seems hesitant, however, and for a moment Nil expects him to announce the date of the next party, probably tomorrow night, but Imal turns and disappears beyond the entrance doors, and all of them know that this time they’ve gone too far.
Priyal follows Imal inside, and Nil can’t say whether Ferang resents her for abandoning him like this or whether he doesn’t give a damn about her at all, and then Mel is close to him and her expression is unreadable, and Nil thinks about embracing her and comforting her, but when he’s about to do so Ferang is next to them along with the rest of the guests, who are heading towards the main gate or to the elevator to pick up their stuff from the terrace, a Louis Vuitton here, a crack pipette there, a forty thousand rupees gazelle-s
kin wallet here, a used condom there.
Darting on the main road, with Ferang sitting sandwiched between him and Mel, Nil realizes that Mel is probably quite drunk, but he’s not afraid. He blindly trust her driving skills. He can smell the aamla powder-based shampoo in her hair. Written on the Enfield’s only rear mirror, he can read the words, “Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear,” but in the mirror there is nothing but his worn out face and the Worlds United Redevelopment Program sign hanging on the Fence on the side of the road, and the black Nothingness beyond.
At home, Nil takes a Xanax to calm his racing heartbeat at the thought of Ferang and Mel alone on the Enfield while she gives him a ride home, and the coke packet burns like a bullet in the breast pocket of his twelve thousand rupees Hugo Boss shirt, and Nil is looking into the eyeballs of his own reflection in the mirror in the main bathroom. Then he pours some coke wasting enough dope for at least two or three snorts, and does a line and it hits him in the face like an invisible hand, his eyes filling with tears, and when he can see again nothing scares him anymore, not even Mel, and indeed, in their future there’s a villa in Hampstead, two children, a dog, woof woof—the perfect life.
He doesn’t sleep much, watching half of the third season of Stranger Things on Netflix. He feels like he’s falling asleep at dawn, but when he regains consciousness, Nil realizes he’s not in his bed, he’s standing instead, the same clothes on, leaning on the kitchen counter, dazzled by the noise of the electric ice crusher that is now mincing only water, and so he downs the glass of lukewarm Old Monk that he had poured himself god knows how long ago and showers and wears clean clothes and calls the driver to go to college, where people are already exchanging the video of the guy who fell from the terrace. Some say, “He is a Madrasi,” and Gargi, a first-year student, says, “Ew,” but no mention of whether he survived or not, and Nil doesn’t really care, or not as much as about looking for Mel in the corridors, hoping not to meet her because he knows he’s shitfaced, but feeling the Whole clawing at his organs when he realizes that she is not there.
Objects in the Mirror Page 9