It was different for me. During my vacations I saw almost all that was worth seeing in America: the Niagara Falls, the Rockies, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon, Florida—you name it, I had seen it. I loved Americans, loved their cities and the landscape. It was a beautiful country with beautiful people. But it was not my country and they were not my people. What mattered most to me was that I had only one blood relation left in the world, my widowed father. If I did not return to him, it would break his heart.
I wrote to my father almost every week and sent him a couple of hundred dollars every month. He put the money in my bank account. With his provident fund and whatever he had saved he had bought a DDA flat and was living on his pension. He cooked his own food and swept his one-bedroom flat. He had also invested in a room in an ashram in Haridwar where he meant to spend his last days. This much I had gathered from his letters; I had no idea what else he did or how he spent his time.
I had lots of farewell parties at Princeton. I was assured by many friends that if I changed my mind and came back there would be a job waiting for me. I decided not to think about that option until after I had done my duty to my father. I would not abandon him in his old age.
I left America with a heavy heart. At Kennedy Airport over a dozen of my friends came to see me off. I was scarcely able to hold back my tears as I took leave of them. When I boarded the Air India plane, the stewardess took a look at my tourist class boarding pass and asked, ‘Are you Mr Mohan Kumar from Princeton?’ I nodded, without asking how she knew. ‘Sir, you have been upgraded to First Class. Please follow me.’ She took my travelling bag from my hand, led me to the front part of the aircraft and showed me to a window seat. I was a little bewildered. I was not a VIP for Air India to show such courtesy to me; only a student who had just finished his studies. The chief steward solved the mystery of my upgrading. ‘Sir, the extra fare was paid by one of your friends at the counter. There are also some gifts.’ He handed me a big parcel and a bouquet of roses. I unwrapped the parcel. It had boxes of liqueur chocolates, an expensive leather wallet, a Cartier wristwatch, a Mont Blanc gold pen and a large ‘come-back-soonest’ card with the signatures of my friends. This time I could not contain myself. I buried my face in my hands and wept. As the plane took off, I saw the lights of the city of skyscrapers slowly dissolve into the darkness and wondered, ‘What people in the world other than Americans would make such a gesture?’
‘Sir, what would you like for a drink before we serve dinner? Scotch? Champagne? Wine?’ asked the airhostess as she pulled the trolley of drinks down the aisle. ‘And let me put the roses in a vase. You can collect them when you deplane in Delhi.’
I handed her the bouquet of roses and said feebly, ‘Scotch-n-Soda, please.’
It was a sumptuous meal of caviar, lobster, lamb curry and varieties of puddings. I glanced through Namaste magazine. Its last pages were devoted to articles on sale in the ‘sky shop’. It occurred to me that I had not bought anything for my father. He did not drink, smoke or wear any perfume. I ticked off a woollen scarf and as the stewardess was clearing my table, asked her to get me one. ‘What colour?’ I thought about it for a moment then said, ‘Dark brown or maroon.’
‘I’ll get it for you before we touch down in London. Anything else: Scotch? Cigarettes?’
‘No thanks.’
I put the black eye-mask over my eyes and dozed off into a half-slumber. I was woken up for a snacky breakfast as we began our descent into London.
We had a three-hour stop at Heathrow airport for refuelling, change of crew and partial change of passengers. I took a stroll around the shopping arcades and restaurants. I was surprised to see a number of Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis working as waiters and barmen; women in salwar-kameez scrubbing floors and cleaning toilets. What had they left their countries for? To wash white men’s dishes and mop up their urine splattered around urinals?
I bought a cardigan for my father. A woollen scarf and an angora wool cardigan would protect him against Delhi’s chill and wet winter months.
I spent most of the eight-and-a-half-hour journey from London to Delhi dozing off or reading Indian newspapers which I had not seen for almost six years. The papers were uniformly dull and had little besides reports of politicians abusing each other. The pictures they used were much the same. So also the strip cartoons, almost all taken from American papers. The only amusing items were obituaries and ‘In Memoriams’ couched in archaic Indian-English.
We landed in Delhi in the early hours of the morning. Being a first class passenger I was met by an Air India official and escorted through immigration. While I waited for my baggage on the conveyor belt I scanned the faces behind the glass pane on the floor above to see if I could recognize anyone. I noticed an old man frantically waving his arms. It was my father.
I picked up my two cases and took the Green channel to go through customs. I had nothing to declare. Nevertheless a customs officer accosted me. ‘Can I see your passport?’
I gave it to him. He scanned its pages and said, ‘You have been abroad for six years and have bought nothing dutiable for your relations and friends?’
‘I have no relations except a widowed father waiting for me outside. I have a woollen scarf and a cardigan for him. All other items are for personal use.’
The customs man seemed irritated, ready to pick on me because I had denied him an opportunity to appropriate some little gadget or trinket, or at least to throw his weight around and feel important. I was back in India—there was no doubt about that. Then the man noticed the Air India official escorting me and that made him more courteous. He chalked my two cases and my handbag and waved me out of the airport. My father had come alone to receive me. He had a single marigold flower garland in his hand which he put round my neck. I touched his feet with both my hands and let him embrace me. He was too choked with emotion to be able to talk. I pushed my trolley through a throng of people waiting for their relations. We were surrounded by aggressive, pesky cab drivers. My father brushed them aside. ‘A friend has lent me his car to pick you up,’ he said as he waved to a driver who was waiting for us. A few minutes later a grey Mercedes Benz pulled up. The chauffeur put my cases in the boot and opened the car door. He knew where to take us.
For a while we sat in silence. Then my father took my hand in his and said, ‘If your mother had been alive she would have been very proud of you.’ He could not say any more. I felt his warm tears dropping on my hand. I did not know what to say.
After another long silence, he asked me, ‘Did you say the Gayatri mantra every day?’
‘I did, twice a day, morning and evening.’
‘Recite it,’ he commanded. I knew he was not testing me, only making me thank the gods for bringing me back home to India. I obliged him:
Aum Bhoor Bhuwa Swaha
Tatsavitur Varaniyam
Bhargo Devasya Dheemahi
Dhiyo Yo na Prachodayat.
(O Lord of the Earth and the Heavens! We meditate upon thy supreme splendour. May thy radiant power illuminate our intellects, destroy our sins, and guide us in the right direction!)
‘This mantra is in praise of the deities of all the elements in nature. Gayatri is the most powerful mantra in the world, puttar. It wards off all evil.’ My father was happy.
‘I also did surya namaskar twice a day,’ I told him.
‘That was very good. It is the best exercise in the world to keep the body fit and free of disease. Gayatri mantra and surya namaskar ensure health and happiness … And you did not marry a white woman. You kept your promise to me.’
Obviously I did not tell him of the women I had laid. ‘I am what I was when I left Delhi, Papa—a chhara (single).’
‘We’ll soon fix that. I’ll find you a suitable bride. Do you drink or smoke?’
‘I don’t smoke! But I do drink a glass of beer or wine with meals. I’ve also tasted Scotch. It’s a little too strong for me.’
‘And meat?
I hope you didn’t touch badaa maas?’
‘That is hard to say. In the West they put all kinds of meat concoctions in soups and stews and one never knows whether it is beef or pork or mutton.’
‘Harey Ram! Harey Ram!’ chanted my father. ‘You must do pashchataap. We’ll go to Haridwar and take a bath in the Ganga to cleanse us of our sins. You can also see the room I have reserved for myself in an ashram. It overlooks Ganga Mata.’
My thoughts went back to Yasmeen. Of all the women I had bedded it was the fat, middle-aged, married Muslim woman, mother of three children, that I thought of the most. She had mocked me about Hindus washing away their sins in the Ganga. She no doubt had cleansed herself of her adulterous intercourse with a Bharati Hindu kafir by going on a pilgrimage to Makka and Madina.
By the time we reached my father’s DDA flat, the eastern horizon had begun to turn a light grey. My father had put a charpoy for himself in his little sitting-dining room and vacated his bedroom for me. He refused to alter the arrangement. ‘Puttar, you must be very tired after travelling round half the globe. You need rest. The bedroom is more comfortable. Anyway, it’s nearing my waking time. I take an early morning walk and then go to the temple. I’ll wake you up when I come back and we’ll have breakfast together. You can tell me all you did in America and about your future plans.’
He lay down on his charpoy without changing his clothes. I got into my night clothes, stretched myself on the charpoy in the bedroom and closed my eyes. It was not very comfortable. I had got used to sleeping on soft mattresses with feather pillows. The coarse durrie hurt my back; the pillow stuffed with cotton was like a block of wood. The change was too sudden, the surroundings unfamiliar. Sleep would not come to me.
I heard my father get up and go into the bathroom to have his bath. I heard him leave the flat and bolt the door from the outside. I got up to take a look at my surroundings. It was a dismal scene I saw through the window—multi-storeyed sickly-grey apartments, all exactly the same, separated by narrow criss-crossing roads lined with dull, thin newly-planted trees. Children loaded with heavy satchels were being escorted by their mothers to the school-bus stand round the corner. Milkmen and newspapermen were going round the block on their bicycles, looking bored. I decided there and then that we could not live in that squalid colony. My father deserved better. I deserved better.
I lay down on the charpoy again and covered my eyes with a handkerchief. Scenes from my time in Princeton and other places I had visited in the States came back to me. There was no scene I recalled that was without a woman I had made love to. Some like Jessica Browne, who had initiated me into sex, and Yasmeen Wanchoo, who had so brazenly forced me into copulating with her, came to mind repeatedly; others appeared briefly and I barely recognized them. Come to think of it, none of my liaisons had lasted very long. Jessica was the longest, one whole term. Others were for much shorter durations because by then I had discovered that safety lay in numbers. This was before AIDS had made casual sex too risky. At times I was dating two or three girls at the same time. And there was no date I did not take to bed. As soon as I sensed a girl was getting emotionally involved with me, I dropped her. Which left me with the uncomplicated memories that were now coming back to me. Images of all those women—one with breasts like melons; another with buttocks that I adored, so she walked around bare-arsed whenever we were alone in her room or mine; the Mexican girl who was never satisfied till I took her from behind, while she grunted with pleasure, her bottom raised high and her face buried in the pillow …
I must have dozed off re-enacting this blue-film montage in my head when I heard my father come in. ‘Puttar, it is time to wake up. I will make you an omelette and tea while you bathe and change.’
I went along with whatever my father wanted me to do. He had missed me a great deal and wanted to smother me with affection. He was proud of my achievements and wanted to show me off to his cronies. He was old; I had been away for six years enjoying life while he had slogged here, alone. So I indulged him. The day after I arrived he invited a dozen of his friends and relatives to the tiny apartment and plied them with tea, coffee, cakes and biscuits. They were a bunch of old fogies, Hindus and Sikhs, who began their day by listening to shabad-keertan at the nearest gurudwara, met in Lodhi Gardens in the afternoon to mourn over the ways of Indian politicians, and ended the day with a visit to the Sai Baba temple near by. Once a month, usually on a Thursday, they also went to the dargah of Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya to listen to qawwalis. That Father had turned to religious ritual during my stay abroad did not surprise me. He had aged quite a bit, and like most other ageing Indians had taken to temple-going and prayer. I knew he would not insist on my accompanying him to these prayer sessions, but Haridwar and a dip in the Ganga were unavoidable. This I could endure, because I needed to see where Father wanted to take sanyas—retirement from the world.
What did surprise me—only because I had not anticipated it—was my father’s anxiety to see me married. For him it was the top priority. Without consulting me he put in an advertisement, with my photograph, in the matrimonial columns of The Hindustan Times and The Times of India. There was little finesse in what he had to say: the advertisement mentioned my Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude, and, for good measure, added that I held a Green Card. He included details of the salary I had been offered by a multinational corporation. In rupees the figure came to several lakhs a month. He did not bother to conceal his own identity behind a box number: he gave his name, address and telephone number and asked interested parties to get in touch with him. I only got to know when the first family arrived with father, mother, bride-to-be, her uncles and brothers. Father interviewed them like the chairman of the Public Service Commission: How far had the girl studied? Was she working? What salary was she drawing? What was the family worth? Who were their references? And so on. In turn they interrogated Father. I sat silently watching the girl and wondering what she would be like in bed. After a few weeks of abstinence, sex had again reared its ugly head in my mind. I had got used to bedding women almost on a daily basis; sometimes two in one day. What a woman looked like no longer mattered very much to me; more important was her bed-worthiness. I caught the girl, decked up in a Kanjeevaram sari and gold jewellery, stealing a coy glance at me. We did not exchange a word.
It was after the family had left that I spoke angrily to my father: ‘Papa, what is all this?You should at least have asked me about it.’
‘Why?’ he replied truculently. ‘It is a father’s duty to see his son married in his lifetime. I am only fulfilling my dharma. If your mother had been alive, she would have been helping me. Now I have to do it alone.’
I would not let him get away with that excuse. ‘Papa, if you had a daughter whom strangers came to inspect and then rejected, how would you have felt? It is very humiliating for girls of marriageable age to be treated like this. I don’t like it one bit.’
He did not relent. ‘You leave this business to me,’ he said in a tone of finality. ‘If I like a girl and her family, I will ask for your approval. I will leave the final choice to you.’
Thereafter not a day passed without a family being invited over for tea or soft drinks and an interview session. I remained a mute spectator, eyeing one girl after another, my eyes stripping them of their saris or salwar-kameez. I found all of them beddable in different ways and fantasized about them at night. My Father recorded his opinions on paper and filed them. He could not get over the habit acquired in a lifetime of government service of noting down everything and methodically filing it for future reference.
I began to tire of these daily sessions and felt sorry for the girls and their parents who were told that we would get back to them. At the end of every meeting Father would ask me, ‘What did you think of the girl?’ I would give him the standard reply: ‘Okay, you decide.’
‘So far all the parties we have met were lower middle class,’ he said once. ‘You deserve the richest and the best-looking girl in Delhi.’
‘What about that visit to Haridwar?’ I asked to change the subject. ‘I still have to atone for my sins.’
‘I haven’t forgotten that,’ he replied, ‘I have asked my friend Sardar Mehnga Singh to lend me his Mercedes Benz for a weekend. It was his car I came in to fetch you at the airport. He’s as generous as he’s rich.’
A day before we were to leave for Haridwar, a car drew up below our flat and the driver delivered a letter to Father. He was very excited. ‘It is from Rai Bahadur Lala Achint Ram. He’s one of the wealthiest Punjabis in Delhi: sugar mills, cinema houses, bungalows, farmland. He wants us to come to his house for tea. He has only one daughter—still unmarried!’
Father sent back a note saying he would contact Lala Achint Ram as soon as he and I had returned from Haridwar.
I had never seen Haridwar. My father had first visited it over twenty years ago when he had gone there to immerse my mother’s ashes in the Ganga. Thereafter he had gone there several times by bus and stayed in the ashram in which he had rented a room for himself. Travelling in a large Mercedes Benz was for him a novel experience. We left early in the morning. All the way from Ghaziabad through Meerut, Aligarh and Roorkee, he talked of nothing else except the Achint Ram family. ‘If it comes through, it will be a very good alliance—brains from our side, money from theirs,’ he pronounced. ‘He will set you up in a good business or help you in whatever you choose to do.’ And so on.
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