Geeta had joined us in the park, determined to stay fit now that she was back on the hunt for a husband. We were certainly helping her in this effort—her legs were shorter than ours, so she had to scamper to keep up with us, which meant she was getting twice the workout that we were. Parvati refused to slow her pace; her policy was to endure but never accommodate Geeta, whom she considered a conservative elitist. The good-natured Geeta appeared not to notice Parvati’s disdain: She was puffing along behind us, straining to hear my longer-legged friend’s story about Promila, her Dalit maid who denied that she was a Dalit. The latest turn of events was that Promila had taken to refusing to do untouchable tasks. She and Parvati were at a standoff about her job description, which meant Parvati’s bathroom hadn’t been cleaned for weeks.
“Who does she think she is?” Geeta piped up behind us. “Tell her to do the work you pay her for, or get rid of her! There are millions of people in Delhi who would be happy to clean your toilets.”
I shrank into my skin. Parvati cycled through her own bouts of frustration at her misbehaving servant, but she also admired Promila for trying to buck the caste system. Parvati also hated hearing sweeping generalizations about caste, such as Geeta was prone to make—she refused to tolerate them from anyone aside from her mother.
She wheeled around to face Geeta.
“See, this is why India is stuck in the dark ages. Even educated people are stuck with medieval ideas!”
Geeta looked startled by the ferocity in Parvati’s voice. She was a punchy Punjabi, though, and she braced herself against the assault.
“Parvati, what I am saying is quite simple. You pay her to do certain tasks, and she thinks she’s too good for such work. If she is so much better than other Dalits, then she should prove it. She’s had plenty of opportunities. Already there are quotas in government jobs for the lower castes.”
Parvati’s eyes narrowed, and I wished intensely I hadn’t suggested we all go for a walk together.
“How many Dalits do you work with at your company? Just name them. How many.”
Geeta faltered: “I’m not sure. But … that’s not the point. Chances are there for them. If they want to apply for the job, they can.”
“Then why don’t they?” We were attracting glances from the speed-walking couples. “Do you think they’d still want to pick up garbage if they had the opportunity to work in an office? You think they prefer that, just because it is their traditional work?”
Like the battle over affirmative action in the United States, the debate in India about job quotas is a hairy one. Geeta was making the mainstream argument: that the quota system had created a “creamy top layer” of low-caste beneficiaries who now had an unfair edge over the higher castes. Parvati’s position was less popular: that affirmative action hadn’t yet helped the worst off, and wouldn’t unless the government extended the quota system to include elementary school education.
Digging deep into their argument, the two of them ignored my attempts to make peace; in fact, they ignored everything I said, until I gave up on the walk and led us out to Parvati’s car. Geeta’s face was still twisted with anger when Parvati dropped her at Nanima’s. She slammed out of the car. Parvati and I had planned to go out together after the walk, but I felt awkward about it now, because it looked as though I was choosing sides.
I could tell that Parvati was trying to pull herself together as she drove us out of Nizamuddin.
“Sorry about that. Even though she has bloody backwards ideas, she’s your friend.”
I mustered the nicest smile I could. I’d given up trying to influence how Parvati behaved—if that’s a bad idea in any friendship, it was utterly counterproductive with her. In any case, I had a feeling something was going on with her these days. The last couple of times we’d met, she’d come alone.
“Are you and Vijay fighting?”
This had become a fairly standard question in the years since we’d become friends. Parvati’s confrontational personality and Vijay’s propensity for whiskey-sodden gloom made for an explosive combination. I’d become somewhat inured to their hollering matches outside the Press Club or in Vijay’s apartment after dinner, and the occasional climax of Vijay storming off. After one of these fights, Parvati sometimes went weeks without speaking to him. It was probably for the best that they couldn’t share an apartment.
They both seemed content to accept the turmoil as the way things were. Vijay was pretty hotheaded in general, which was one reason he’d taken up boxing as a hobby. He spent a night or two a week at the extremely low-budget, cramped, and smelly men’s boxing gym in their neighborhood. At first, I thought this hobby seemed incongruous with Vijay’s string bags and Marxist politics, but as I got to know him better, I realized it was all of a piece. Boxing was a great way for him to purge his angry energy. It didn’t entirely work, though. He was notorious in Delhi journalism circles for walking out during editorial meetings if the management of his newspaper refused to take a stand on an issue he believed in, or if he thought his boss was ordering him around too much. Parvati had more than once talked him down from quitting. After a bad fight, Parvati would remind me—a little defensively—that she’d never met anyone with his passion for music and poetry, or his rigorous commitment to socialist ideals. That stuff made his terrible temper worth bearing, she said.
Luckily, Vijay rarely directed his angry outbursts at me. It only happened once, late at night; the three of us were having a nightcap at a hotel bar after an embassy party, along with a British reporter I’d started an affair with. It was a new and awkward relationship; we both had significant others back home, and no one other than Parvati knew that we were dating. I don’t know whether Vijay had figured it out, but if he had, it probably only worsened his mood, already blackened by the foreigners and elite Indians around us.
“All these privileged choots. Screw this bloody globalizing Indian government. Selling us off to any foreign government that’s buying. We’re at the beck and call of the U.S.!”
In his booze-addled blur, Vijay made a fabulous leap of logic: He tried to blame my British friend and me for the Iraq war. At first we laughed, but it was not a joke; Vijay’s yelling soon got us evicted from the bar. It took him more than two weeks to call me and acknowledge that I wasn’t personally responsible for the actions of my government.
Parvati’s fits of pique were not as irrational, though they were more often directed at me. She was the dominant force in our friendship, and I rarely contradicted her: I considered myself the Maneesh to her Radha. When I refused to go along with her plans or do favors for her, it sometimes turned ugly. Once, she called late at night to ask for the cell-phone number of an acquaintance at the U.S. embassy, whom she wanted to talk to for a story. When I told her it was too late to call him, she hung up and refused to speak to me for more than six months.
In the time I had to stew over the incident, I decided that she was right in thinking me ungenerous—I should have just given her the number; what did I care if she woke up the guy? Still, I was shocked that she could hold a grudge about it for so long. One evening, she showed up unannounced at my apartment with a bottle of Seagram’s Blenders Pride. I was so happy to hear her voice that I swallowed my pride and buzzed her upstairs.
I needed Parvati’s intensity and independence—especially if I’d been spending a lot of time with Geeta. My own inclinations lay somewhere between theirs, and it seemed to me that only with them both in my life could I achieve some kind of equilibrium.
Still fuming about Geeta’s conservative views, Parvati tugged her seat belt across her body as a police car appeared beside us at a red light.
“Bugger off, you bloody cops.” She looked at me a moment later, to acknowledge that she was overreacting, and her tone lightened. “This has been a bad week. I’m feeling really tense.”
I was surprised; this was a vulnerable moment by Parvati’s standards. The light changed, the cop car sped off, and eventually she spoke again, gazin
g straight ahead at the road.
“You know, I’ve been wanting to talk about something with you. Shall we go somewhere?”
She drove us to Khan Market, an upscale shopping spot that was central to my existence: It contained the ATMs that allowed me to withdraw money from my American bank account, the pet shops that sold cat food, and the well-organized grocery stores that I relied on for expat luxuries like peanut butter and soy sauce. Parvati and I liked to meet at Café Turtle, a bookstore and coffee shop—though never with Vijay, because he’d refuse to order even a cup of tea at such places, on the grounds that the chai at outdoor stalls cost a tenth of the price.
Parvati found a table outside so she could smoke. We had the patio to ourselves. She collapsed in a chair, looking worn out, and took a long drag of her cigarette.
“Vijay’s college days were really exciting for him. You know how he was a student leader and all.”
I turned back from the view of the bustling Saturday market and the green of Lodhi Garden beyond. Vijay often boasted about how he’d chaired meetings and led protest marches in his student days. He’d shown me photos of himself in those days, thinner, longer haired, and fiery. I imagined him surrounded by girlfriends in college, though he’d never directly said anything to give me that impression.
Parvati had occasionally mentioned boys she’d dated before she met Vijay; but his discomfort with the topic was on another order of magnitude. We’d been friends for years, and he still scarcely acknowledged his multiyear commitment with Parvati to me. Sidelong references to my relationship with Benjamin made him uneasy, too. Sometimes, if Parvati was feeling mischievous, she’d tweak him by making a bawdy joke. He’d promptly remove himself to the kitchen to pour another drink, and she’d whisper loudly, “Isn’t it cute? My boyfriend is as modest as a blushing Bollywood bride!”
Parvati was looking at me steadily now, and her next comment brought me back to the present.
“His college days were passionate times. In fact, Vijay got married in college.”
The last of the evening light picked up the green flecks in her eyes, giving them an urgent glitter. Everything I’d thought about her, and their relationship, and even India, shifted a little in that moment. Parvati lit a second cigarette off her first.
“Her name’s Divya. She was his college girlfriend—very beautiful, he is always saying, and very intense. I guess she wanted to get married, and he went along with it. It was a love marriage. I don’t know that many details, though. He doesn’t like to talk about it, which is hardly surprising.”
“What happened?”
“Well … they’re still married.” The words hung in the air for a moment before Parvati picked up the thread again. “I mean, they have been separated for a long time. But she didn’t want to do a divorce; it was too shameful. So he agreed. He won’t ever officially divorce her now.”
After the split, Divya left Delhi and moved back to her hometown, Jaipur, several hours’ drive away. A decade later, she had yet to acknowledge to her family that her defiant love marriage had collapsed. Her family continued to go along with the ruse, perhaps preferring it over the humiliating truth. Vijay had explained this choice to Parvati by reminding her how difficult it was for women who break the mold. First Divya had married against her family’s wishes, and now the marriage had fallen apart; if they found that out, it would surely only vindicate their conservative beliefs.
When Parvati told me that Divya had started contacting Vijay again, I couldn’t help but think that Divya was probably holding out hope that he would one day return to her. Parvati seemed to read my thoughts.
“I don’t think he loves her anymore. I really don’t,” she said. “I think he takes her calls because he feels so guilty about how it ended.”
“So … what happened?”
My astonishment had rendered me incapable of articulating a different question. Flustered, Parvati smoothed the free strands of her hair with her hands.
“You know Vijay. Not many people can put up with him, and I think she was a pretty moody girl, too. But how can I know? He hasn’t come to terms with it himself.”
I remembered that Vijay hadn’t spoken to his parents for years, and that he’d told me that his relationships with his siblings were rocky. Maybe this explained it. My mind was careening all over the place. The right thing for him to do, I thought, was to initiate an official divorce; even if it would take years, it was the only way to be respectful to Parvati. Of course, that was an American idea, born from a culture that actually lauds couples for ending unhappy marriages. Not so in India. Even in Vijay’s liberal circle of journalists and activists, a divorce could render him a social outlier. No wonder his relationship with Parvati was secretive and turbulent, I thought.
I considered how I would feel if I were relegated to the status of mistress in the eyes of society. I was pretty sure I’d be paranoid about what people thought of me, even in my significantly more tolerant world. I didn’t have Parvati’s mettle to battle worries like that. It also occurred to me that Parvati might have adopted a stance against marriage and kids because she was, in any case, unable to have those things with Vijay—though I would never have suggested such a thing to her. In fact, now that I knew the backstory, I wished I hadn’t quizzed her so aggressively about Vijay early on in our friendship. She’d finally told me the whole truth, and I had no idea what to say. Parvati had run out of words, too. She stubbed out the last cigarette of her pack and drove me home.
During my first years in Delhi, I rarely caught more than a glimpse of the air-conditioned, generator-supported world of the elite. Because I’d shown up in India without a foreign correspondent’s salary or contacts, I didn’t meet the kind of people most of my colleagues socialized with—industrialists, government officials, film stars. Over time, I found myself scheduling interviews at five-star hotels and dining out at the aptly named Diva restaurant. I had to force myself to put it out of my mind that I was blowing the equivalent of Radha’s monthly earnings on a plate of pasta and a glass of wine. In fact, I learned to celebrate how far my paltry public radio salary would stretch in India. It seemed amusing that my servants considered me the epitome of wealth, but in a way, I was. Having secured a steady job and salary, I could even have moved into one of Delhi’s luxurious gated enclaves, but I found them to be disturbing reminders of class and clout in the status-obsessed political capital.
When I began shambling after the five-star denizens I was forced to learn a whole new set of Delhi rules—starting with the vehicle I was seen in. If I took a rattling taxi to an interview with a government official or an important businessman, I’d have to hope that he wouldn’t catch sight of me climbing out of it in front of the building—because if he did, I knew it would be a struggle to be taken seriously. As for rickshaws, they aren’t even permitted inside the gate of most Indian hotels and government buildings. I’d often been dumped at the bottom of a hotel driveway and forced to approach the entrance on foot—undoubtedly the least classy way to arrive at an appointment in a city where no one other than beggars and dogs walks between destinations. The hotel porter would gingerly hold open the door for this sweaty, uncouth feringhee, his mustache twitching disdainfully.
One of the best things about hiring K.K. was being able to turn over to him the stress of dealing with my vehicle status. I’d call the taxi stand in the morning and describe my day’s appointments, and he’d choose a car accordingly. Having driven Delhi’s elite for fifteen years, K.K. was better qualified than just about anyone to be a vehicle snob. As co-owner of Nizamuddin Taxi Stand, K.K. liked to remind me, he had access to “all many kinds of top-class cars.” On important days, he’d show up in a Honda City, because foreign-made vehicles confer the greatest status on their passengers. No matter what appointment I had, though, K.K. outright refused to drive an Ambassador, the classic Indian car, first made in England but manufactured in India since 1948. Like the flowing white kurta uniform, the Ambassador remains an essen
tial accessory of Indian government ministers. But to K.K., as to many of the aspirational classes, the car was nothing more than an unwelcome reminder of India’s shoddy socialist days, when the best way to acquire wealth was to bribe a corrupt government bureaucrat.
K.K.’s personal vehicle of choice was the Tata Indigo, an Indian-made sedan marketed as “the working man’s luxury car.” He deemed this vehicle acceptable for most of my evening social events—partly because it was equipped with a DVD player. He kept a stockpile of Bollywood movies for the nights he waited for me while I mingled at some work-related cocktail hour. With hundreds of embassy officials and Indian businessmen filling the lawns of multimillion-dollar colonial homes, such parties ran late into the night.
It took me a while to get used to the dozens of uniformed servants flitting across the lawns, proffering predinner kebabs. I’d never experienced anything like it in my rumpled academic family. It was always a relief to clamber back into the car and ask K.K. to drive me over to Parvati’s tiny apartment, where the blinking tube light needed to be replaced. I’d have a similar sensation when I showed up at the dinky Fitness Circle after an indulgent Sunday brunch at an ostentatiously decorated restaurant with other Western reporters, as if I was living two lives and neither of them was exactly real.
When I complained to a wealthy Indian friend about it, he was unsympathetic.
“That’s India. This country is totally irreconcilable. There’s only one thing to do: Reconcile yourself to it.”
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