She was there too, the girl who had come to his office in her cat t-shirt. Sitting by the door, bobbing her head to the beat of the song she was listening to on her iPod. The wire of the earphones ran between her breasts. She had hair on her stomach, he noted with surprise.
‘What are you looking at?’ asked his son, suddenly, turning back to face him. He sounded concerned, bringing his flabby, bare arms close to the dupatta regulator’s face. The dupatta regulator hastily shook his head. The sun had set and under the light that sprang into the car from the streetlights outside, the dupatta regulator’s eyes fell on the rearview mirror. There was a man in there. He wore no clothes either but there was something very familiar about him. He made the dupatta regulator very angry. Just as he opened his mouth to question him, ask him what right he had to be in this cab in such an indecent state, the man in the mirror smiled at him.
Terrified, the dupatta regulator shut his eyes tight, determined to wipe away the images that he’d been exposed to. He quietly wondered if he had lost his mind. As the car weaved its way through the traffic, he willed himself to erase the images of arms and legs, breasts and buttocks, bellies and thighs, penises and … he couldn’t let himself complete that thought.
When they reached his in-laws’ house, the dupatta regulator’s son got off his lap, stamping his father’s feet on his way out, waking him up. The dupatta regulator tumbled out of the door and threw up at his father-in-law’s feet, the vomit spreading to his sandals like a runny egg.
Fourteen
Something did not add up here. As the rapist waited for the signal to change, his eyes went to the petrol gauge. It was dangerously low. The last thing he wanted was for his scooter to conk. He’d had a light breakfast, hoping to finish work quickly and stop by at his favourite restaurant for a quiet lunch before the Sunday crowd came in. But the sherbet he had been forced to drink had killed his appetite. Overly sweet and nauseating. Besides, his mind was occupied with what he would tell the president.
‘Pregnant,’ he said to himself. The signal changed and he needled his way through the traffic. How could she have applied for divorce if she had been pregnant? It did not make any sense. Could the retired moral policeman have been mistaken? It was a possibility, but the rapist had a notion that he was right. He appeared to be a meticulous man, even though he was a bit too pompous for his liking.
Maybe she hadn’t known when she’d gone to the bureau. He’d waited discreetly outside the dentist’s house to observe the family – the dentist and his mother – but they hadn’t displayed any sign of discord. In fact, they had come from the temple with smiles on their faces and sweets in their hands. The rapist did not know if he should proceed with the president’s request in these altered circumstances. It could be that the problem had resolved itself. The woman would go back to being a dutiful wife for the sake of the child. He’d never raped a pregnant woman before this and he wasn’t sure if he liked the idea of it. But if it had to be done, he wouldn’t back out. The rapist was a thorough professional.
‘Best to check with the president,’ the rapist said to himself. He spotted a petrol pump at the distance and filled the tank to half capacity. ‘Every time I come, there’s a rise in prices,’ he grumbled to the mute attendant who gave him his trademark smile. The Adjustment Bureau did not work on Sundays, so the rapist went back to office, wrote his report and left it in the president’s mailbox.
He read through the Twitter celebrity’s profile once again. He had decided to work on her first thing the next day. She was going on vacation with a rich, balding businessman to a sleazy hill town known for its drugs and illegal ‘massage’ parlours. The rapist had the address of the guesthouse in which the two of them would be staying. The businessman would be a cakewalk, the rapist knew. All he had to do to get him out of the way was to threaten leaking a choice tidbit he had gathered about him to Straight Shooting. The businessman was bisexual and the rapist even had photographs of him kissing a big burly man in a hotel. His friends in the Moral Police Force had given the pictures to him. They’d had him on their radar for a while now but hadn’t done anything because he was very rich and powerful. The rapist knew that the Twitter celebrity was just another woman in his harem and the businessman wouldn’t risk his reputation over a tart.
The rapist dialled his travel agent’s number and confirmed his itinerary. He would take the overnight train to the hill town and come back the next day by the same train. He loved travelling on work. It was one of the few perks in his otherwise taxing job. Also, he would get a decent travel allowance that would add to his monthly pay if he spent it wisely.
His work done for the day, the rapist decided to go to the theatre and watch a movie. Just as he was parking his scooter between a bulky motorbike (the eunuch had come to watch the same movie too) and a small car, he saw her.
She was smiling and munching on popcorn. The rapist’s eyes went inadvertently to her stomach. She did not look pregnant but it was too early for her to show. His wife hadn’t looked obviously pregnant even in her last trimester, he remembered. She was a petite woman and the baby, his daughter, had been small at birth too. ‘Only weighed two kilograms,’ he smiled to himself. She’d had an extremely loud voice to make up for her diminutive size though. The rapist wondered what she would be doing now. ‘Probably taking a late afternoon nap,’ he thought, looking at his watch. His daughter was very fond of sleeping, much to the chagrin of her mother who always rebuked her for being lazy. The rapist was generally a calm man but he couldn’t take his wife yelling at their daughter. He punished her for it often, but she still forgot herself sometimes.
A man was by her side, talking to her. Must be her father, the rapist guessed, looking at the crinkly hair they both had. They looked relaxed and happy. The rapist decided to stalk her for a bit of fun. He bought his ticket and stood behind the woman, as if he was admiring the posters adorning the wall. She was jabbering away to her father about the movie they were about to watch.
‘It’s going to be priceless,’ she giggled. ‘He’s such a bad actor, I can’t wait to watch it!’ Her father smiled at her indulgently. The rapist couldn’t help smiling as well. He loved watching bad movies too. The mindlessness of the activity helped him relax. It was precisely for the same reason that he had come to the theatre.
‘Your mother was very disapproving of this plan,’ her father said. ‘She thinks you should stay in bed and take rest. You know, given your condition.’
His daughter burst into laughter. ‘I know, right? I should be vomiting all around me and demanding mangoes with masala or some such thing. But here I am, as if I weren’t pregnant
at all!’
A small frown appeared on her father’s brow but he continued to smile. ‘What are we going to do?’ he asked suddenly, his expression unchanged.
The woman’s face became serious. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to think about it.’
The rapist sensed the fear in her voice. He was no stranger to fear. He could smell it a mile off. And right now, its stench was so strong, he felt himself stiffen in his pants. And just like that, the truth fell into his head.
Fifteen
The eunuch was watching television with his legs up on the beanbag, a mug of beer in his hands. The house was quiet. His wife was asleep or pretending to be asleep. His mother was tossing about in her bed, praying to the gods to take her to heaven soon. His father, who had worked for the Adjustment Bureau as a scientist, was dead. Had been so for years. And yet, whenever the eunuch saw his unsmiling photograph on the mantelpiece in the drawing room, he felt as if he were still alive. It was a creepy thought, the idea of his father watching them lead their everyday lives. His father had been a great believer in after-life, holing himself up in his lab with an assortment of dead things, trying to record movements and noises that nobody else could discern. Often, the eunuch would do something his father would have disapproved of right in front of the photograph. Like scratching his crotch or
digging his nose. It was juvenile of him to behave this way at the age of forty-four but the eunuch did not care. There was precious little else to celebrate in his life.
‘Look, Father, they’re showing pregnant couples on TV!’ said the eunuch in the falsetto he always used when talking to his father. His father’s work at the Adjustment Bureau, the invention of the Prison of Illusion, had won him the Noble Prize, the highest civilian award for extraordinary contribution to the maintenance of social order. The eunuch got up shakily from the floor, spilling a little beer on his way to the mantelpiece. He turned the photograph of his father posing with his prize, towards the television and said, ‘There, can you see better now?’ He increased the volume and sat down on the floor again. His paunch nearly touched the floor. ‘Maybe I am pregnant!’ he giggled to his father.
Soon after discovering that he was sterile, the eunuch had suggested to his wife that they adopt a baby.
‘For what?’ she had shot back. ‘Do you think I want to wipe the shit off somebody else’s child?’
The eunuch’s mother stopped attending all family functions and became even more pious. She tied various threads on his wrists, swearing that their magical powers would make him a real man. The eunuch wanted to believe her very badly though he knew her efforts were futile. He indulged his mother’s devotion, unable to rebuff her for the love that she showered on him. Something he no longer received from his wife.
But one day, as the eunuch was bathing, one of the threads, the red one, came loose and fell on the floor. The eunuch watched it with fascination as it slithered towards the drain like a worm. It disappeared down the hole and the eunuch waited for something to happen, something terrible or something beautiful, his heart in his mouth. When nothing did, the eunuch dressed quietly and left the bathroom, smiling at the mirror wryly. The next time his mother came to him with a sacred thread, he asked her if she could tie it around his penis since that was where the problem was. She turned red and almost looked afraid of him. The eunuch felt sorry for her, but did not bother to apologize. Instead, he took a pair of scissors and chopped the threads on his wrists to tiny bits.
That had been his last conversation with his mother. The reporter on television was gesticulating wildly. He was talking to a woman in a white coat, presumably a doctor. ‘So you are saying that the birth rate has gone down so much that very soon the demographics of our country will change?’ he asked, pushing the microphone towards her.
‘That’s right,’ said the doctor. ‘We are seeing fewer and fewer births in the hospital these days. This means that in the next fifteen years, we will have fewer people in the reproductive age group. Which obviously means we’ll have fewer babies. It’s a cycle.’
The eunuch snorted. He loathed the Good News channel but loved watching it. The reporter had now moved on to the neonatal care ward in the hospital. The camera surveyed the number of empty cradles in the ward and then focused on the faces of the five babies there, one by one. ‘Will we soon forget the sight of these sweet faces?’ the reporter was asking emotionally. ‘Will babies become an extinct race soon?’
The eunuch laughed. He stared at the red-faced babies dispassionately. What was so great about them? The minute one of them entered the house, you could forget about having a life of your own. For the next twenty years or so, you would have to slave over some crummy job just so you could feed that extra mouth in the house. Come to think of it, he did not really want a child. All he wanted was for everyone to shut up and stop giving him those looks of pity. As if his life were pointless and his bike, a joke. The eunuch loved his bike more than he loved his family. He could ride it all day and be at peace, far from the voices that still asked him if there was any good news. He often spoke to his bike and imagined that it purred back to him. On weekends, he sometimes rode his bike up the small hill behind his house and spent the entire day there, reading a book or listening to music.
The reporter disappeared and a large woman appeared onscreen. She’s even fatter than I am, thought the eunuch, draining his mug. His eyes felt hot and feverish. ‘I’ll wake up with a terrible hangover. And it’s Monday tomorrow!’ he groaned. He did not want to think about going to office – he was supposed to have worked out a marketing strategy to sell the company’s new shampoo over the weekend but he’d done absolutely no work. The large woman was calling out to the public to breed in large numbers and save the human race. She quoted impressive statistics and waved her fat arms about, like a squawking hen.
‘People who cannot reproduce are unnatural,’ she said at the end of her speech. ‘We, at Good News, beseech each and every one of you to do your duty as responsible citizens and reproduce. Babies are good news.’ As the credits for the show began to roll, the eunuch went to the mantelpiece and dug his nose. He rolled up the snot to the tip of his finger and plastered it gently over the photograph. ‘A prize, Father,’ he said.
He was still rolling on the floor, howling with laughter, when his mother and wife came to the drawing room to investigate the noise.
Sixteen
The president of the Adjustment Bureau read the rapist’s report with interest. Life, he mused, was not without a sense of irony. When he had given the baby in the box to the woman, she had dropped it as if he’d given her a viper. The president had wondered how any woman could be so insensitive. It had taken his entire office close to an hour to stuff the thing back into its box and freeze it again. And now, she was pregnant!
The president thought for a moment about what his reply to the rapist should be. On the one hand, he hated revoking orders. On the other, it was obvious now that the woman was pregnant, she wouldn’t leave her husband. But if the rapist did his job, there was a possibility that the husband might dump her (if he was rich enough to do away with the compensation for damage that they would offer him). At the very least, there might be some disruption in family harmony. Overall, he felt he should tell the rapist to drop the matter.
The president dialled the rapist’s number. There was no answer. He disconnected the call, irritated. He hated it when people didn’t answer calls. But before he could get on with the next task at hand, the phone rang.
‘Hello,’ said a breathless voice. ‘This is the rapist.’
‘President,’ said the president simply.
‘Yes, sir,’ said the rapist immediately. ‘Sorry I didn’t answer. I was on a job.’
‘I can’t hear you very well,’ said the president, switching off the noisy ceiling fan. The air conditioner was on but it could never be cool enough for the president who had been raised in the hills, far from the capital city. He noted the layers of dust on the fan and made a mental note to yell at housekeeping.
‘I am in a remote location,’ said the rapist. ‘I don’t think the signal is very good here.’
‘I am calling about your report,’ said the president, cupping his hands over the phone. He could hear the rapist mumbling something, but could not make out what it was. The president moved to the window. ‘Can you hear me now?’ he asked. He looked down at his phone and shook it, as if that would improve matters. When he put it back to his ear, the call had been disconnected.
The president considered texting the rapist but he hated typing on the tiny keypad. He was too slow (as his daughter never tired of telling him) and in any case, the case could wait. The rapist would take some time to come back to town and get down to work.
The president made himself some coffee. As he settled back to work, he noticed that he had received a text from the rapist. It said: ‘Wrkng on Twttr celeb. Gt intrstng upd8 on rprt. C U 2mrw’. The president’s irritation increased. What in the world did he mean? Why did people use this annoying SMS language? The spelling almost hurt his eyes.
He shoved his phone angrily into his pocket and forgot about it. Mondays were busy days at the bureau. The more time couples spent together over the weekend, the more fights they seemed to have. And the cricket World Cup had started the previous day. The Adjustment Bureau had co
rrelated sporting events to a spike in divorce applications. Its research team had discovered that husbands had a tendency to take their rage out on their wives if the teams they supported lost. And wives had a tendency to nag their husbands to switch off television sets and have conversations with them (about groceries, about clothes, about their marriage) instead. The president sighed. No matter how many years passed, relationships remained the same.
People found it so hard to adjust and pay heed to the noble Institution that they had entered. He thought back to his own experience as a newly married man. He had fallen in love with a self-proclaimed feminist in his college days. A woman with short hair and large breasts. Within a month, the Moral Police Force had sent their respective parents a memo, asking them to get married or face the wrath of the government. The feminist had found that hilarious. The president, only a boy then, had begged her not to tempt fate. They loved each other, didn’t they? Why rebel when they did want to marry? She had said yes, treating it all as a joke, a bit of play-acting, nothing more. A subversion, that’s what she’d called it, the president recalled.
The night of the wedding, the president (who had just written the entrance test for admission into the government services) had entered the nuptial room with such eagerness, only to find the feminist curled up against a pillow, fast asleep. He tried to wake her up with gentle kisses, but she pushed him away, claiming to be too tired. That angered him. He pushed her to the floor and forced himself upon her. The president still remembered the shock in her eyes.
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