An Obedient Father

by Akhil Sharma

  “You want me to rely on your self-control?”

  “Anita,” I said, and then I had no more words.

  “Even by chance, you should sometimes do the right thing.”

  I wondered if our bargain was going to be broken.

  Mr. Maurya, of course, knew the dozen or so property developers with enough contacts to buy large pieces of school property. Instead of phoning, I went to see him. This time I did not have to wait on the veranda with the tea-drinking supplicants.

  I had been at a party once with a developer he recommended, Mr. Mittal. One night he and I rode to the school in his car. Other than asking directions, he did not talk. I was glad for this, because I was lost in worries.

  We parked along the periphery of Kamla Nagar, a kilometer from the school, because I believed Congress might try to follow us. For extra caution, we climbed the Hill and approached the school from its back. The woods were dark and we had to light our way with flashlights. Birds were scratching and twitching. We walked around a monkey sitting in the center of a path eating its own lice. Because it was out at night we were afraid it might be rabid and made a wide circle around it. We crossed a small pond spanned by a wooden bridge. The air was light and the temperature a few degrees lower than it had been on the road. I wondered how anyone could not want property here.

  I called for Mr. Gaur from the veranda. The school was lit with kerosene lanterns because they had no electricity. Mr. Gaur asked us in for tea, but we made excuses, and then he led us around the grounds. He had a hutch full of hares in one corner of the compound, which surprised me, because Mr. Gaur was Brahmin and a vegetarian. “I catch them in the Hill. I let the children play with them and I sell them,” he explained. We walked all over the property, sometimes going along its edges and sometimes cutting through it at various angles so that Mr. Mittal could develop a feel for its dimensions. Though the sky above was a city sky, the mild air and the birds nearby made me feel as if I were far from Delhi. Mr. Mittal asked a few questions: where the nearest electrified building was, who had built the school.

  We left the same way we had come. Only then did we begin discussing the price. Mr. Mittal was tall and thin, with round glasses. He, along with his brother, ran their family’s property business. “I have to wait till I talk with my brother,” Mr. Mittal said. He was ahead of me, climbing a series of dirt steps which was kept from turning into a slope by planks. “I think we will offer six lakhs.” I had begun liking the school so much that I found the offer rude. I kept following Mr. Mittal. “There is no running water and no electricity, so we have to pay the municipality for that, and for keeping things secret. And, of course, there is this BJP—Congress election.”

  “This is a fifty- or sixty-lakh property.”

  “If you were selling counterfeit money, would I even pay a fifth of the face value?”

  “This is not paper.”

  “Paper is easier to hide.” He stopped and turned to me. I could not see his face. “I have to be paid for taking this much risk. Land like this is not an easy thing.” We climbed the rest of the steps. “It will take at least a day to talk with my brother and get the money. See other developers.”

  I did not want to show the property to several developers for fear of rumors. All I could do was repeat, “You know how expensive land is here.”

  “It is,” Mr. Mittal admitted. “But even if there were no election, I would still only pay eight, maybe ten lakhs. Jail time makes everything cheaper.” We were crossing a grassy field and heard a peacock screech.

  “We guarantee that if we win, we’ll make sure the papers are done.”

  Mr. Mittal stopped. “If you didn’t guarantee that, we wouldn’t bid.”

  I was selling something that was not mine for enormous money, but I felt cheated. There was not another property like this in Delhi.

  We came out of the Hill onto a road lined with tall, expensive houses. We started walking toward Kamla Nagar. Along the sidewalk was a line of parked taxis with their doors open and the legs of sleeping drivers stretching out of them.

  “Shall I give the money to Mr. Gupta tomorrow night unless I get a message otherwise?” Mr. Mittal offered.

  “If we accept, I’ll come by.” I knew Mr. Gupta would not want any witnesses to him directly receiving money.

  We walked in silence till we neared his car. “This is a good price, Mr. Karan. I say this not to make you sell but because I don’t want you to feel cheated.” Mr. Mittal opened the Ambassador’s trunk and took out a box with a ribbon around it. It was a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue Label. I had never seen this before. “Thank you for your help,” he said, and handed me the present.

  Once Mr. Mittal left, I crossed the road to the shops, looking for a place to eat. I felt ashamed for selling something so valuable for so little. The guilt I felt was not that of being corrupt but that of waste. There had always been a corruption discount in the loans and licenses I had arranged, but that had been more indirect than this and not as steep. This is what happens in elections, I told myself. I feel this way only because I already feel guilty about Anita. I found a Pizza King. At first as I ate I kept the Blue Label box standing upright like a trophy. But there was no taste to the food. I laid the bottle on its side.

  The guilt only got more intense overnight. What can I do? I thought. God will decide everything. I imagined myself as one of the vandals who pried jewels out of ancient statues and sold them to the British.

  In the morning, after avoiding talking to Anita, I went to see Mr. Gupta at his house.

  The night before, I had left and returned through the squatter colony in case I was being watched. That day, since I assumed Mr. Gupta’s home was under surveillance and I would be spotted anyway, I left through the compound’s main door. I did not notice whether I was followed.

  Mr. Gupta’s house was crowded. There was a foreign woman with yellow hair talking to two men in their twenties. A young boy kept wandering around taking tea orders. I passed a heavy old man in a kurta pajama who was dictating something about India’s gold reserves to a typist. Seeing this much energy being expended on things I did not know about made me think I could not be blamed for everything in the campaign.

  I was led to a room on the second floor. The curtains were drawn, and on a shadowed sofa, speaking under an air conditioner’s hum, were Mr. Bajwa, Mr. Gupta, and Ajay. Mr. Gupta was in the middle, sitting straight, with Ajay draped backward and Mr. Bajwa leaning toward them, smiling. The way they sat made them appear gossipy. I was not surprised at Mr. Bajwa’s presence, because I felt that I deserved to lose whatever benefits being Mr. Gupta’s moneyman brought.

  “We were just talking about you,” Ajay said.

  I assumed nothing good had been uttered and so replied, “I made at least five lakhs for you last night.”

  “How is that?” Mr. Gupta asked.

  I sat down on a sofa across from them and told him. He listened with attention, and I wondered if he knew how much the school should cost.

  After I was done, Ajay asked Mr. Bajwa, “Is that a good price?”

  Mr. Bajwa shrugged. This did not make me feel any less cheated. “The price is six, but I have to pay one lakh to Mr. and Mrs. Gaur, who live at the school.”

  “That’s too much,” Mr. Bajwa immediately said. “We’re not their parents that we have to give them a roof over their heads.”

  “We needed the money quickly.”

  Mr. Bajwa glanced at Ajay as if to suggest he could not work with someone as recalcitrant as I was.

  “Why is your phone tapped?” Ajay asked.

  “Maybe all of ours are,” I said.

  “We have machines to stop that.”

  And though I knew nothing about these things, I said, “They have machines for your machines.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Karan,” Mr. Gupta said. “Tell me what you think of this. This is a slogan for vans with loudspeakers. ‘If you want to see a movie, go to the hall. If you want to accomplish something,
go to the booth and pick Roshan Gupta.’”

  “It’s too long,” Ajay said. “The van will be down the block by the time the slogan finishes.” There were other slogans, some based on Rajesh Khanna’s movies, such as My Companion, the Elephant. The fact that Mr. Gupta was involved in this level of detail made me think the campaign was not being run well, which led me to believe the money raised from the school would be wasted.

  “The BJP’s Roshan Gupta. God and Bread,” Mr. Bajwa suggested.

  “What about saying something good about me?” Mr. Gupta asked.

  “My uncle is a kind man,” Mr. Bajwa answered, “but would you vote for him if you didn’t know anything about him except that he was kind?”

  I thought surely I would be punished for all this. Then they began babbling about posters, something none of them knew anything about. I sank into the sofa.

  Later Mr. Gupta invited me to a speech he was giving, but I told him I had to go see Mr. Mittal.

  The flat was hot and still when I returned home that evening. I heard Asha’s voice coming from the roof. The kitchen counters were scrubbed clean, which meant that dinner had been cooked, eaten, and the dishes put away. The money Mr. Mittal had given me was in a gray plastic briefcase. Being paid had made me feel worse. I wondered whether I was so confused and unhappy because I was almost not eating. I hid the briefcase beneath some clothes in a trunk in my room and changed into a kurta pajama. After leaving Mr. Mittal, I had gone to Thirty Thousand, where my lawyer has his office, a school desk and two filing cabinets under a tarp next to a wall, and altered my will. Because I knew confession was no way to get Anita to honor her bargain, I had decided to try doing everything she wished.

  I killed my hunger with water and went up to join them on the roof.

  The sun had set and the sky was stacked with colors. There was a deep red at the base along the horizon, a smoky orange above that, then a yellow, and a blue that faded into white. The roof was gray concrete and had several levels because of the uneven heights of the flat’s rooms. Cords of tar ran across its surface from where cracks, over the years, had been sealed. Taller than some, lower than others, our roof merged into the roofs next door, which in turn connected to those near them. Asha was on the roof of my room swinging her arms in circles and rotating in place. She was wearing a blue shirt and red shorts. Anita stood below her, at the level of the common room, arms crossed beneath her breasts, and watched. I had the feeling I had lived this moment before.

  Asha stopped turning when she saw me. “I can see America from here,” she said. “There are buildings one hundred stories tall, and on the streets all the men wear pants and all the women wear dresses. No woman wears a sari.”

  “Can you see Kusum?” I asked.

  “I’ll check,” Asha said, and began twirling again.

  We watched her for a moment, and then I said, “Here is my new will,” and offered Anita the thick manila envelope I had brought with me. “The flat is yours, and everything else is to be divided in half between you and Rajesh.”

  Anita took it, but there was no expression on her face. “What happens if Kusum challenges it?”

  I shrugged. “All daughters have the right to demand an even share of whatever is left when their parents die. But why would she?”

  “Kusum Mausiji is driving her car past trees,” Asha called out.

  Anita took the will out, unfolded it, and, after reading the first page, put it back in the envelope. I wondered if even this was enough to calm her.

  “What are you doing for Mr. Gupta?”

  “I’m his moneyman.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I collect money. I arrange cheap loans or property grants for schools. For his election, I am selling property we own.”

  “‘We’ or the municipality?”

  When Rajinder was alive, around Diwali, Anita used to give gifts of expensive watches and bolts of cloth which she said Rajinder had received as presents from people who wanted loans from the government. To sell schools was not the same as selling cheap loans; still, the disgust in her voice felt unfair. “Some land is empty. Some schools have maybe forty students. Getting rid of the schools makes the students find better schools.”

  “It’s easy to say that what you are doing is not so bad.”

  “I am not saying that.”

  “Do you feel like a thief?”

  “I feel like that with these schools because I am selling them so cheaply.”

  “Not real guilt, then?”

  I reached up to touch my lips and Anita grabbed my hand. She must have thought I was going to slap her. She saw from my shock that this was wrong and, laughing sarcastically, said, “After eating a thousand mice, the cat goes on a haj.”

  Asha must have seen her mother’s anger, because she started to cry. Anita noticed it first, and then, through her reaction, I did. Asha’s face was completely wet. As soon as Anita saw Asha crying, she went to her and held her from behind. Asha tried pulling out of her embrace. Her sobs sounded like suppressed coughs. “What are you crying for?” Anita asked.

  “You. I’m crying because of you.”

  “What have I done to you?”

  “I’m crying because I’m going to die and I’ll never have been happy. Sometimes I wake in the middle of the night and I think if I die before morning then nothing good will ever have happened to me.” Saying this, Asha wailed and broke from Anita’s grip. She ran two steps, then turned around to confront her mother.

  “You’re not going to die,” Anita said. “You’re going to live eighty more years.”

  “You’re going to die, too,” Asha sobbed.

  “I’m not afraid.”

  Anita hugged Asha again, but she kept crying. After a while Anita began murmuring to her, “What do you want?” This set Asha shrieking.

  A boy about Asha’s age with a kite came out onto a long roof across the courtyard from us. He put the kite on the ground, jiggled it with the thread in his hand, and then jerked hard. As the kite was flung up, he let the thread flow through his fingers. He gave short, sharp tugs and with each almost immediately released more thread. The kite caught a breeze. I saw Asha focusing on the boy without stopping her crying. After several minutes, when the kite was high and steady, Asha became quiet, though occasional tears leaked from her eyes.

  “Why did you cry?” Anita asked.

  “We never do anything. We never go anywhere.”

  “What do you want to do?”

  “I want something sweet with dinner.”

  “All right.”

  At this Asha gasped and began sobbing again.

  “We can do anything you want,” I said. Anita did not look at me, and pulled Asha tighter to her.

  “I want an adventure,” Asha said, looking up at her mother.

  Beyond them were roof after roof, like steps which went up for a little while and then dropped. “We could walk across Delhi from roof to roof,” I said. “I heard of one man who did that. He used ropes and ladders.” I had no idea where the idea came from, but as soon as I said it, the idea’s miraculous freedom captured me. Asha’s face was startled into calm. I thought of climbing from our balcony to the squatters’ roofs and crossing those to a building which faced the approach to the Old Clock Tower. From there, with the help of ladders placed across the narrow alleyways, we could literally walk across roofs to the Old Clock Tower. “We could see how far we can go.”

  “That’s an adventure,” Asha said, glancing at me.

  “It isn’t that dangerous,” I said and, of course, realized that it was.

  Anita sighed and kissed Asha’s cheeks. The sigh was enough to end our fantasies. Asha stared at the boy with the kite. Anita looked at me, but I could not tell what she was thinking.

  “There are other things,” I said.

  “Tomorrow we’ll do something,” Anita said into Asha’s ear. Her voice was thoughtful.

  “Let’s go out tonight,” I offered.

  �
�Yes,” Asha said.

  After a moment’s hesitation Anita said, “All right.”

  “Let’s go to a movie,” I suggested.

  “Yes. Yes,” Asha said, staring up at her mother.

  Anita looked at me and then at Asha. “Yes,” she repeated.

  SEVEN

  I started to buy things for Asha. Most nights I purchased a half liter of milk and two Campa Colas and stirred them together with many spoonfuls of sugar. All three of us had contests of eating raisins and almonds. Asha was so thin that when she flexed her hands there was the eeriness of watching individual bones working. Sometimes I brought home coloring books and gave them to Anita to present to Asha. When I discovered that Asha liked stickers, I bought long rolls of them and had Anita hide them in Asha’s pocket.

  Kindness made me feel competent. When the electricity generators didn’t appear at one of Mr. Gupta’s rallies, I could imagine feeding Asha canned lychees and this somehow made me less unhappy with the moment. The van driver who blasted Mr. Gupta’s slogans from loudspeakers crashed into an autorickshaw. I laughed as I told Asha this, whereas earlier that day I had felt fear at the inept campaign we were waging.

  The first time I met Asha at Rosary School, it was because I was passing near it and thought she might feel protected seeing my familiarity with Father Joseph. Father Joseph sent one peon for Asha and another for Campa Cola.

  “Asha is a serious girl. Was she so serious before her father died?” he asked as we waited. I was on the sofa where I had sat and spat onto the carpet when I was extorting money from him. Remembering that made me feel I had power over Father Joseph. I slouched back at ease. Father Joseph was seated on a chair across from me with his legs crossed.

  “She was always quiet, I think.”

  I was surprised that he would know her enough to have an opinion.

  “She shouldn’t bring her problems to school,” he said.

  Asha came in as I tried to interpret his words. She wore a blue shirt and a maroon skirt. Her maroon jacket was buttoned over a maroon sweater. When she saw me, her face sagged. She pressed the fingers of both hands over her mouth and keened.