Race Course Road: A Novel

by Goswami, Seema

  ‘No, no, I only want one,’ said Gayatri, holding her hand up in refusal when Malti tried to serve her two pieces. Malti thought about pushing the issue, then decided to give it up. It was enough that the girl was actually eating something. Most mornings, she just pushed her toast and eggs around in a desultory fashion until it was time to go to school. She really must read up on anorexia and see if her daughter was exhibiting any early signs.

  ‘I’ll take that one too if you don’t want it,’ said Aryan cheerfully. ‘I could eat that whole pile. I could eat two whole piles like that and still be hungry. I love French toast soooo much.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid,’ snapped Gayatri. ‘Nobody can eat so much. You’ll just make yourself sick, you idiot.’

  Before Aryan could retaliate to this open declaration of war, Malti intervened. ‘That’s enough, Gayatri,’ she said sternly. ‘Please don’t be rude to your brother. Surely you can tell that he was just making a joke?’

  ‘Making a joke? He is a joke,’ muttered Gayatri under her breath. Malti shot her a warning look and Gayatri subsided into silence. The four of them ate peacefully for a couple of minutes. And then Aryan, who had clearly been smarting at being called an idiot, piped up again.

  ‘I’ll tell you who’s a joke, Gayatri,’ he said. ‘It’s your bestie, Kavya. She’s the one who is a joke. And her Asha bua is a porn star.’

  Malti was struck dumb. It was left to Jayesh to shout, ‘Aryan, quiet! How dare you use language like this in front of your mother and sister!’ Turning to Malti, he asked, ‘Where on earth does he learn words like that? Does he even know what it means?’

  But it was Gayatri who answered through her tears. ‘Papa, he knows exactly what it means. Everyone at school is talking about it. Calling Asha bua a porn star and a slut and a whore. They make so much fun of Kavya, it’s horrible.’

  Jayesh looked helplessly at Malti. This was out of his comfort zone as a parent. He was happy to play ball, watch movies or take the kids swimming. But these were unchartered waters for him.

  Malti sighed and put down her knife and fork. So much for spending some quality time with her family!

  ‘Aryan,’ she started, ‘That is not a nice thing to say about anybody. I don’t care how many boys in school are using that kind of language. You are not to follow their example. Kavya’s bua and her family are going through a bad time. You must not make it worse by gossiping about them. In fact, you must be extra nice to Kavya at this time.’

  Aryan pouted, ‘But I don’t want to be nice to Kavya. She and Gayatri spend all their time together and refuse to let me play with them. They won’t even let me enter the room when they are playing. I hate Kavya.’ And turning to Gayatri, he added, ‘And I hate you!’

  With that, Aryan bounced off his chair and ran out of the room. It was clear that he was very upset or else he would never have abandoned a plate that still had two slices of French toast on it.

  Malti got up to go after him. Jayesh held her back. ‘Give him some time to cool off. And some space to think about what he did. He’s not a bad kid. He just thinks that it’s cool to talk like that. We’ll explain it to him that this is not okay. And I promise you, he will listen.’

  Malti nodded but her attention was still focused on Gayatri, who had also abandoned her breakfast and now had tears running down her cheeks. She went around the table to stand behind her daughter’s chair and take her in her arms.

  ‘It’s okay, baby. It’s okay. Everything will be okay. You mustn’t cry,’ she crooned.

  ‘Oh Mom, it’s so awful. Kavya didn’t know anything about what was happening to Asha bua. And then last week, Diya smuggled a phone into school. She had all these, ummm, pictures of Asha bua on it and she was showing them to everyone in the playground,’ sobbed Gayatri.

  ‘Did you see the pictures? Did Kavya?’ asked Gayatri grimly. She would have to have a word with the school as soon as things settled down. This was just unacceptable.

  Yes, nodded Gayatri, she had seen the pictures. Diya hadn’t been willing to show them to her because everyone knew she was best friends with Kavya. But the moment Kavya went to the loo during the lunch break, one of Diya’s friends, Bidisha, had snatched the phone and brought it over to Gayatri. ‘Quick, have a look!’ she had instructed. ‘Quickly, before Kavya gets back.’

  ‘And did you look at the pictures?’ asked Malti.

  Gayatri nodded shamefacedly. ‘I didn’t know what they were, Mamma! I thought it was just some Youtube video that all the kids were laughing about.’

  Jayesh stood up abruptly and left the room. He couldn’t trust himself to be around Malti now. She knew him too well. She would see the guilt writ large all over his face. And she would know that all his protestations of innocence had been a lie.

  But goddamn it, he hadn’t bargained for this. For his daughter to be exposed to that. For Gayatri to actually see those pictures. For Kavya to look at her aunt like that. For Aryan to call a woman a ‘porn star’. The boy was eight, for God’s sake! How did he even know what ‘porn’ meant?

  So, it was left to Malti to comfort an inconsolable Gayatri. In between sobs, she got the entire story out of her daughter.

  As Bidisha scrolled through the pictures, Gayatri had been frozen by horror. Which is why she missed the moment when Kavya returned from the loo and came and stood behind her. By the time Bidisha realized this and tried to close the tab, Kavya had already seen enough. She had grabbed the phone out of Bidisha’s hands and run off into the distance.

  Gayatri had finally found her a good ten minutes later, hiding behind the beakers of the Chemistry lab, the phone still in her hand, her head resting on the desk as she cried her heart out.

  ‘Oh, poor baby,’ exclaimed Malti involuntarily. What a horrid introduction to the world of sexting, she thought. And at an age at which she barely understood the concept of sex.

  ‘So, what did you do?’ Malti asked her daughter. ‘I hope you comforted her.’

  ‘I didn’t know what to say, Mamma. So, we just sat there all through the break. She kept crying. And I couldn’t help it. I kept crying along with her.’

  Malti felt on the verge of tears herself. But she persisted with her questioning. It was best to get all the information out of Kavya while she was still upset enough to talk. If she was left to herself for another hour or so she may well clam up.

  Had she told any of the teachers or the principal about it? No, said Gayatri. Kavya had been so ashamed that she had made Gayatri promise that she would tell no one else about the pictures.

  ‘But what’s the point, Mamma? Everyone already knows. And they say the most horrible things about Asha bua. And they tell Kavya that she will grow up to be just like her aunt. Another whore!’

  Gayatri dissolved in tears again. Malti thought about telling her that she should not use the ‘w’ word. But what would be the point? It was a word she would hear every day at school. It was a word that would be used like a weapon to beat Kavya day in and day out. It was a word that would be attached to Asha’s name for the rest of her life.

  And there was nothing Malti could do about that.

  ▪

  The good thing about using Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) was that it didn’t take long for the results to be in. By 12.45 p.m. it was done and dusted. The final seat tally was on the board.

  Loktantrik Janadesh Party (LJP): 190

  Samajik Prajatantra Party (SPP): 184

  Poriborton Party (PP): 60

  Dalit Morcha (DM): 55

  Independents: 14

  Others: 42

  But while Karan Pratap led the board with 190 seats and Jayesh Sharma was a close second at 184, it was clear that the two men were not the real winners of this election. That honour went to the two women—Sukanya Sarkar of the Poriborton Party and Didi Damyanti of the Dalit Morcha—who held the balance of power in their hands.

  Given the murky situation on the ground, neither Karan nor Jayesh were willing to come forward and face t
he TV crews laying siege to their party offices and homes. Both leaders remained huddled inside with their closest advisers, trying to get a handle on the situation.

  The first major leader to make an appearance on TV was Sukanya Sarkar. And she chose Manisha Patel’s election programme to do so.

  The two women went back a long time. When Manisha had started out as a junior reporter she had been assigned the SPP beat by AITNN. Trying to make contacts in the macho, hyper-masculine world of Indian politics was never easy. And it didn’t help that flirtation—or even the occasional batting of eyelashes—was not Manisha’s strong suit. She wanted to be treated like one of the boys. But there were enough boys doing her job, so the politicians she was assigned to shadow didn’t see why they should bother with her.

  Sukanya Sarkar had been a virtual nobody in those days. She didn’t have a political father or godfather. She had come up in politics the hard way, scrabbling her way up the ladder via student politics and trade union agitations. She was a scrappy little street fighter, always happier leading a demonstration on the street than sitting and gossiping in the party office.

  It was on one such demonstration that Manisha had first met Sukanya. The venue was Calcutta, the city in which both Manisha and Sukanya had grown up, where the SPP was leading a protest against the lockout of a factory. It had started off peacefully enough but by the time the procession reached Chowringhee, the agitators had come up against well-fortified barricades manned by riot police.

  Sukanya was not one to be deterred by such obstacles. She marched right into the shields of the policemen, fully expecting them to give way to a lady. No such luck. The first line of cops began raining lathi blows on her until she crumpled on to the road, her white sari staining a bright red.

  Manisha had been right behind her when this happened. And while cold, calculated reason may have dictated that she beat a hasty retreat, some strange instinct had propelled her forward. Mesmerized by the deepening red of Sukanya’s sari, Manisha fell down to the road beside her, taking her injured head in her lap, and shouting to the policemen to stop.

  That entire sequence had been filmed by Manisha’s cameraman and run in full on the evening news. Sukanya had watched it later that night in hospital after she had been stitched up. And she had been immensely moved by Manisha’s instinctive reaction to protect her.

  Ever since then, the two women had been friends. Manisha had supported Sukanya when she had left the SPP in a huff after she was passed over for a post she considered hers by right. She had been right there beside her when Sukanya had started the Poriborton Party out of a dilapidated office in north Calcutta. It was Manisha who had provided the fledgling party the oxygen of publicity as it tried to emerge as a viable opposition in the state. And when Sukanya had defied all political predictions and won a resounding victory to emerge as chief minister of the state, she had repaid Manisha by giving her unprecedented access to make a documentary titled The Making of Sukanya Sarkar.

  So, it wasn’t suprising that Sukanya had chosen Manisha’s show to make her first public pronouncements on the election results. And it was equally unsurprising that she had chosen not to reveal much of anything at all.

  Now that it was clear that nobody could form a government without the support of the Poriborton Party, asked Manisha, which side was Sukanya leaning towards? Karan Pratap’s LJP or Jayesh Sharma’s SPP, with which she had historic links?

  Sukanya was noncommittal. It was too early to make that decision, she said. It would all depend on which side was willing to go along with a Common Minimum Plan that her party was putting together. They would only ally with the party that agreed with them on some basic principles.

  But, protested Manisha, surely the better ideological fit for the Poriborton Party would be with the SPP? The two parties were rooted in the same secular tradition, they had fought on a manifesto that was very similar, and in a sense, it would be a homecoming for Sukanya Sarkar.

  Homecoming? Sukanya scoffed at the very thought. There was no coming home. The home she had known no longer existed. The SPP of today was a very different beast from the party she had once been a part of. As far as she was concerned, both the LJP and SPP were on par. Which one she chose to support depended on which one was a better fit for her now. She wasn’t going to rely on ancient history to make that decision.

  Did Sukanya intend to reach out to Damyanti so that they could forge a joint strategy, asked Manisha. After all, if they joined forces, their numbers would be impossible to argue with.

  Sukanya treated the very suggestion with derision. ‘The question only does not arise,’ she snapped, losing her grasp on the English language for an instant. ‘We are not concerned with this Morcha or that Morcha. We are only concerned about staying true to our own principles. Other parties can decide on their own principles—if they still have any left!’

  Manisha, who had only asked the question hoping to goad Sukanya into saying something indiscreet, smiled and let her go.

  It wasn’t clear if Damyanti had heard this little barb directed at her by Sukanya by the time she emerged to address a crowded press conference on the sprawling lawns of her Delhi bungalow. Not that it would have made any difference. The two women had had a spectacular falling out when they were both junior leaders of the SPP and had remained sworn enemies ever since.

  Sukanya and Damyanti had started out as allies: two brave, ambitious, fiery and strong women trying to make it in a world run by men. They had joined the youth wing of the SPP around the same time and had been quickly talent-spotted by party president Girdhari Lal Sharma (the now-deceased father of Jayesh Sharma). For a while, the two women had worked well together, building up the party cadre, going out and recruiting young men and women, campaigning for local and state elections and generally making themselves useful to the party leadership.

  It had taken a couple of years for the rift to set in. Sukanya had become increasingly wary of Damyanti, believing that Girdhari Lal Sharma was treating her as a favourite. There was some merit to her suspicion. Sharma Senior was getting tired of Sukanya’s temper tantrums, her constant fights with her colleagues, her tendency to shoot her mouth off to the press. In marked contrast, Damyanti was the soul of restraint and the model of discretion, never contradicting him in public and always falling in with the party line. (And it didn’t exactly hurt that she was way better looking than Sukanya.)

  So, when it was time to appoint someone as the head of the youth wing of the party, Girdhari Lal Sharma went with Damyanti rather than Sukanya. That was all it took for Sukanya to throw a fit and resign her primary membership in a huff.

  Ironically enough, Damyanti didn’t last long in the SPP either, falling out with the party leadership when they refused to announce her as the chief ministerial candidate in UP when the state elections rolled around. But what did last was the enmity between the two women; getting more and more entrenched as the years went by.

  Which explained why Didi Damyanti reacted with cold fury when she was asked if she would follow Sukanya Sarkar’s lead when it came to government formation. After all, that was the only way of ensuring a truly stable government, suggested one hapless reporter.

  ‘Stability? Why would I want stability? Stability is overrated,’ Damyanti snapped. ‘Stable governments have done some of the worst damage to India. I would rather have an unstable coalition in power that works for the people rather than a stable one-party government that works only for itself.’

  So, which way was the Dalit Morcha inclined? Towards the LJP or the SPP? And would it ally with the Poriborton Party under any circumstance?

  Damyanti smirked at this. ‘Why would we ally with the Poriborton Party? They are minor players. They are of no consequence. We have to decide between supporting one of the two national parties. And we will make that decision after due deliberations.’

  Some people are suggesting that you will go with anyone who dismisses all those CBI investigations against you. Is there any truth to that
?

  The Dalit Morcha leader’s colour rose. ‘How dare you ask me such a question? Those cases against me are nothing but political vendetta. I challenge the CBI to do its worst. I know that I will emerge clean. I don’t need the support of the government of the day to do that. And my party will make no decisions on that basis. It is laughable to even suggest that!’

  Madan Mohan, who was watching at home, laughed out aloud at this. Who did the woman think she was fooling? Of course she wanted the cases against her dropped. And of course both Karan Pratap and Jayesh Sharma would agree to do that. But that wouldn’t be enough to tilt the scales to either side. Both parties would need to promise something a little extra to win Damyanti over.

  As for Sukanya, she would be an even tougher nut to crack. Scrupulously honest, she had no vulnerabilities that they could exploit. And neither Karan nor Jayesh knew her as well as he, Madan Mohan, did. He was the one who had negotiated the pre-poll seat adjustment with her in the last election. He was the one who had introduced her to Sharat Aggarwal, the Calcutta industrialist who had become her primary financier. If anyone knew how to win her over, it was Madan Mohan.

  Maybe this was the universe’s way of telling him to get off his ass and get his hands dirty once again. If he could find a way to get these three women—Sukanya Sarkar, Didi Damyanti and Asha Devi—on one side, he could easily see off both Karan Pratap and Jayesh Sharma.

  It would need careful planning, loads of cunning, a mountain of cash and lashings of luck. But if anyone could pull it off, it was Madan Mohan Prajapati, the original Chanakya of Indian politics.

  NINETEEN

  Sukanya Sarkar was back in Delhi after an age. She usually left all the politicking in the capital to her trusted lieutenant Abhik Ghosh, choosing to stay above the fray in her modest two-bedroom home in Calcutta. But the stakes were too high now. She could no longer persist with her Olympian stance while lesser mortals tussled on the ground. The government of India was in play. And if she wanted a piece of the action, she had to take charge of the negotiations herself.