Given the surging demand for Kusro homes, the Bangalore project had been by invitation only, bypassing many hopefuls with mere money. Manas had been invited in by the balding, heavy-breathing Raj Mehta. Raj was a designated Kusro selector, one of three powerful people who could invite their friends into Fantasia. As my mother’s daughter, it did not escape me that all the selectors were male, though as with everything else about Fantasia, the environment seemed to encourage a numbing of all political consciousness.
‘But what’s he really like?’ Manas asked, turning to Raj.
‘Like Steve Jobs. A genius. If he wants something, he gets it,’ Raj said, rubbing his podgy hand on his glistening pate. With his cement truck heft, toothbrush moustache and fretful energy, Raj had an expertly cultivated network. After selling his company to Google, he had invested his millions in junior entrepreneurs who kowtowed to him. Even Manas’ startup, a travel company set up to design virtual guides, was partially funded by Raj who was also the company’s most prominent investor. Based on Raj’s advice, our Fantasia home was mortgaged to a bank, to bridge the company’s funding needs. ‘Nearly five o’clock, he should be here any minute. Heard he’s never late.’
‘I’ve heard otherwise. He’s always late,’ said the sultry and elegant Jacob Mathew, another selector. Jacob was a media tycoon who owned newspapers in many cities, including some in India and the US. On his left sleeve, he wore a glittering cufflink; on his right, his glittering wife, Simran. A spindly woman, several decades younger than Jacob, she stared into his face all evening, gushed obligingly at his jokes—but he never seemed to notice. ‘Take a good look at her,’ Raj murmured, ‘because she won’t last long. She’s his fourth, and I’m sure he has a tight prenup signed.’ Bizarrely, as if to emphasise this point, Jacob wore four bands on his ring finger, which seemed long and slender enough to accommodate more.
Prodding us towards a stockier man who was quaffing shots from a tray, Raj said: ‘What have you heard, Tushar? Is Kusro always late?’ The third selector, Tushar Khan was a partner at a global law firm. He had a weighty look about him, his face overwhelmed by jowls which gave him the look of someone who was always making ponderous decisions.
‘Asma said he was very late once,’ Hansika said, her hands fiddling with her scarf. Hansika was Raj Mehta’s frazzled wife, whose appearance, even at the party, was disheveled, her hair color uneven, her ill-fitting kurta dangling on her shoulders but tightening around her abdomen. Asma, Tushar’s wife—a few inches taller than her spouse, her face masked by thick make-up, her hair hidden by a Dolce & Gabbana scarf—nodded her head. ‘Three hours late. The audience had fallen asleep.’
‘Let’s start the program, Raj. Why wait for that fool?’ That was Damini Alagh, the large, bustling, overly loud woman in our midst, who introduced herself as a ‘celebrity Reiki healer’. I had met her briefly, when Hansika’s daughter was injured, but we hadn’t interacted since then.
‘Oh,’ I said, ‘You heal celebrities?’
‘Not just that, darling,’ she said, in her startling voice, too husky, almost manly. ‘I am a celebrity.’ She laughed, like she’d cracked the biggest joke ever. Her laughter was like a canon shot, ricocheting around the room. All heads turned to trace its source.
If the selectors reflected Fantasia’s refined sensibilities, Damini was the antipodal other: hennaed orange hair, an audacious grape lipstick, ballooning tie-dye pants, overwhelming breasts spilling out of a sheer blouse, a pungent perfume, and a laughing Buddha tattooed on her upper arm.
Raj didn’t hear her comment that night, and possibly hadn’t interacted with her enough to start disliking her intensely as yet. Maybe he was even taken in by her boisterous presence, because his greeting was gracious: ‘We’re lucky to have her living here,’ he said, his hand resting lightly on her shoulder. ‘She’s privy to secrets about famed Silicon Valley founders.’
‘Can’t name them, it’s confidential.’ She winked broadly at Jacob and Raj. ‘But I can tell you this, they’re all just babies, grown-up babies.’
After waiting for the elusive builder for two hours, the crowd shuffled around the room, restless. I was getting antsy too. I was afraid that a tired Sajan might be foggier than his wakeful self. Just that morning, he had stared at his banana milkshake for seven minutes as if an insect were floating on its surface.
Raj, whose beady eyes had been skittering between his watch and the door, shook his head and frowned: ‘Bloody two hours late when you’re the chief guest? Let’s get on with it.’
The show was held at the outdoor amphitheatre, where the sponsors had set up theatrical lights and high-tech speakers. The audience glittered like a restless, starry galaxy inside it. Rhea, ensconced on Manas’ lap in the front row, looked radiant in her gold and orange lehenga. The impressive turnout and the sight of bigwigs like Jacob and Tushar seated on stone benches with their silk kurtas, was gratifying to those who had laboured backstage.
After the inaugural lamp was lit, I stepped out of the green room to drink in the scene. The sun had set, and the clouds, lit by a silvery half-moon, had acquired gleaming edges. Around the amphitheater, swivelling lights tacked on metallic poles beamed white shafts onto the stage. Eucalyptus scents from the forest melded with the crowd’s perfumes. My worries about Sajan—Would he perform tonight? Was anything wrong with him?—seemed immaterial, unnecessary. With a slightly bemused smile, I marvelled at my own presence in such constructed perfection. Had I really broken into this world? Did I belong to such a shimmering set?
But my rising spirits were soon to dip. As I was busy getting my little actors ready, I missed the inaugural dance. I heard later on, from Manas and some of the ladies, that it was flawless, the dancers’ synchronous kicks silhouetted perfectly against the white backdrop.
I watched our play from the sidelines, and though Sajan occasionally fumbled and paused, he performed better than he did at rehearsals. As he effortfully mouthed his lines, with a fleeting uncertainty flashing across his eyes, I felt like my own heart had stopped beating. Though the subsequent applause was tepid, I was grateful the ordeal was over. I even thought we had done passably well.
Each of the dances and songs that followed the play received thunderous cheers from the audience. Though I had steeled myself for a mediocre review, I was stung when Kalpana greeted me soon after, with a patronising: ‘Vedika, I wouldn’t worry too much about it now. It’s too late, anyway.’
Later, in his Vote of Thanks, Raj skirted over the play when he named the lineup of events that had made for a scintillating evening.
Dinner that night, set up at the barbecue terrace in the clubhouse, consisted of a range of exquisite starters and entrees along with a special dessert bar. Moonlight, dribbling through silver oaks that encircled the clubhouse, shone on trays bearing shrimp canapés and onion tartlets. But I could hardly attend to the food because all the ladies, including that strawberry-blonde American woman Joanne and the mannequin-like Simran, cooed at Kalpana and her dancer kids while Sajan waited by my side with an expectant gleam in his eyes. Though I had lifted him up after the play and said, ‘You were the best,’ he yearned for affirmation from others.
‘Great job, Kalps,’ Simran said, as if she were intimate enough to use a nickname. Then she turned to the dancer kids and said: ‘You kids were stunning.’
‘Indian dances are so intricate. I want my kids to take classes,’ Joanne said, looking endearingly at her Tamilian spouse, Subbu.
Even Jacob placed a friendly hand on Kalpana’s shoulder and said ‘Congrats, simply brilliant. Your kids are going to take over the world.’ Then he turned to Sajan and winked: ‘What man? Didn’t practise your lines?’
Only Damini had kind words for us, walking over while I was at the soup counter. ‘That was brilliant, darling. I loved the play. Such a pity that Kusro missed it. And that’s your son, isn’t it, the adorable prince? You were astounding, my little darling.’ She bent down to kiss the top of Sajan’s head, and missed his ove
r-the-top, ecstatic grin.
‘Thank you,’ I said eagerly, slopping hot asparagus soup on my peacock-blue Tussar. I hoped, in the dim light, she hadn’t sensed that my eyes were moist. Rhea, who was slung over my shoulder, splattered a little rice porridge on my silk blouse to add to the mess. ‘Do you have kids?’
‘One son, darling, at the University of Alabama, in the US.’
‘And your husband?’
‘He’s a diamond trader, always trotting around the globe. Never around.’
When she walked away with her soup bowl, I watched her merry, swaying back with gratitude. No wonder she was a healer, her sheer presence made me feel better.
At home, a large gift-wrapped telescope awaited our little champ in his room. I had perhaps foreseen his disappointment. After all, through all my years in school, I had watched other kids scamper home with academic or other prizes, while I always returned empty-handed with a mother who insisted that her ‘lazy’ daughter hadn’t tried hard enough. Who seemed bitterly disappointed that I wasn’t turning into the erudite lawyer she wanted me to become.
Sajan excitedly set up his telescope by a large window, and pointed at a glinty Venus, while Manas guided his vision towards a distant star. Rhea sprang up with a spritely, ‘I also want to see, I also want to see. Star, star, Papa, me also star.’ As I held my bouncy daughter, I was grateful for the constellation in our home. Sajan and Rhea resisted Manas’ contention that Venus was a planet. ‘No Papa, you don’t know everything. That’s not a planet.’ Rhea was Sajan’s fierce supporter. My earlier disappointment was dissipated by gratitude. These were my guiding poles, my stars.
As they continued to squabble over faraway points of light—‘not planet, is a star, is a star’—I felt that familiar but dreaded tingling sensation in my spine. A feeling that had visited me every now and then starting from my childhood, a feeling that someone was watching us.
Later, after we had lullabied our little ones to bed, I reported the feeling to Manas as we slipped into our pajamas in the master bedroom: ‘It feels weird to say this, but I felt like someone was watching us. When we were in Sajan’s room.’
Manas said, ‘Vedika, it feels like you’re desperate to entertain yourself—you’re just constructing reasons to worry. What you need is something to do.’
‘I’m like a single parent here. Handling everything so you can focus on your startup, and you think I’m just idling?’
‘Maybe you should explore other hobbies…’
‘I don’t even ask you to cancel your trips or come home earlier. We don’t know if you’re going to make money, and we’ve mortgaged –’
‘Listen, my parents funded this. Aren’t you happy with this?’
‘Manas, I’m not paranoid. I really felt like someone—’
‘You can’t get a better lifestyle in the U.S.’
‘Someone was watching us. I felt eyes on my back.’
I was seated on the bed, while Manas flopped in behind me. With a sudden impish gleam, he said, ‘Someone was.’ And then he tugged me towards him. ‘Me. Because tonight, in your peacock-blue sari, you were the sexiest…’ I wish he hadn’t quieted my fears that night.
FIVE
I MET WITH SAJAN’S paediatrician and then with a neurologist. An MRI of the brain did not detect any abnormal blockages or tumours. The doctors seemed to think I was exaggerating the foggy episodes. Besides, he seemed to be coping with his schoolwork and scampering about as always with his friends. Relieved by the medical report, I convinced myself that this had been a fleeting phase.
Manas certainly seemed to think so. ‘You’re creating problems, where there aren’t any. It was just stage fright.’ I fervently hoped he was right.
At a lakeside picnic, we wondered about the shift in Raj’s behaviour. It was a sweltering April day, and we were gathered in a shady nook where the sun’s glare was dimmed by thick branches. Some men laid their heads on their wives’ laps, others rested on makeshift cushions of grass and leaves. Kids squealed at an adjacent park, beer cans clinked against wine coolers. Nothing could be more lulling than being with people we knew intimately, people that we loved and laughed with and occasionally jeered at.
We were well-versed with the characteristics of each marriage. For example, with Kalpana and Vicky, there wasn’t any doubt about who was in charge there. Kalpana had only to draw her lips into a taut, chastising line to set Vicky scampering off on some irksome errand. That afternoon, she dispatched Vicky with: ‘The sun’s falling on my face, can you get my cap?’ There wasn’t a please or an entreating smile to soften the command. All the same, he responded with his goofy, agreeable giggle.
Then there was flirty Manjushri, whose foxy face and arresting cleavage tugged all our men into sparring circles. Moaning about the relentless heat—‘You’re right, Kalps, it’s so sunny, I should have brought a cap,’—she settled her pretty head against male shoulders, all but those of her own surly Krish, a banker, whose facial scar created a permanent lopsided grimace. Whose caustic and sweeping remarks—‘IIT engineers are clones,’ ‘Software programmers are cyber coolies’—provoked a flickering anger in his wife’s admirers.
Calculating, money-minded Razia had a needle-like focus which had rubbed off on her lax husband, so that, after several wine coolers, Sid babbled on about other cardiologists who were raking it in but hardly dwelt on patient outcomes or medical advances. Simi continued to hang on like Jacob’s appendage, as if her spine would buckle without his support. Joanne, who was originally from Minnesota but flaunted a fierce and almost proprietary attachment to all things Indian, was dressed in a garish blue salwar today, her strawberry-blonde curls billowing above her shoulders. She spoke about her husband Subbu’s culture—idlis and dosas, Karthikai Deepam and Ashtanga Yoga—with a startling insider mastery. And we were accustomed to Hansika being constantly belittled and bullied by Raj. Many of us wondered if she had been less fidgety before marriage, if Raj’s irascible nature had reduced her to the twittering creature she had become.
But abruptly that afternoon, it was like Raj and Hansika had decided to change their act. At every gap in the conversation, between Krish’s caustic remarks and Manjushri’s flirty laugh, Raj preened in a new way. Today, he showed the same pride and possessiveness towards Hansika that he normally reserved for Fantasia. ‘She’s repainted the kids’ rooms, done an amazing job.’
During lunch, he had his arm around her shoulder and later on, his palm resting on her back, an affectation we wouldn’t have noted if we hadn’t known them earlier. Not only that, during the cards game after dessert, he clung to her as closely as Simi clung to Jacob, his concerned eye roving over her dessert bowl and juice glass. ‘Want more OJ, sweetie?’ he asked once, startling us, despite the heat and afternoon languor, into wakefulness.
It was Kalpana who clocked the bump on Hansika’s belly. ‘Are you pregnant, Hans?’
‘Yes.’ Hansika blushed like a new bride.
‘No wonder you two are acting like you’re newly married.’ Kalpana sounded bitter. I sensed that Kalpana, who had always been held up by Raj as a wifely role model, was not just stirred or amused like us, but agitated by his new avatar. She turned to me and hissed: ‘At this age, so ridiculous isn’t it?’
Despite the picnics and lunches and barbecue dinners, the early rapture of living in a new home had begun to abate. The thrill of new relationships had started giving way to the rancour of forced intimacy. There was a split between working and stay-at-home mothers; arguments over school buses entering the complex. Or skirmishes about turning street lights on at 7 p.m. instead of 6 p.m.; tussles over poaching maids or blacklisting drivers.
But few conflicts reached the frenzied pitch of our battle over the Fantasia milkman. Some villas wanted to change the supplier, others didn’t.
I liked to believe that I was easygoing with our staff. But even I started having quarrels with the milkman, who distributed milk packets in exchange for coupons. Each morning, his hefty frame l
umbered between villas like a sloth bear. There was nothing complex about his job. But inevitably he goofed up. One morning, I pointed out the discrepancy between coupons and milk packets.
‘Venkiah, I put three coupons, you gave only two litres.’
He looked at me with a baffled expression. Was he hearing-impaired or merely indifferent? I repeated myself. He continued to stare at me without a response.
The next morning, he muddled the numbers again. Rattled by the milk shortage at home, I brought it up more sternly.
‘Venkiah, you have to count the coupons and give it correctly. This is becoming a big problem.’
This time around, I saw it. The same fogginess that was clouding my son’s responses was also taking over our milkman. The chill from the milk packets seeped into my fingers. Hoisting our milk basket into the dining room, I turned to Manas.
‘Manas, the milkman, he’s also turning foggy. Just like Sajan, this is so scary. Why’s this happening?’
‘Foggy? Why do you think he’s foggy?’ Manas buttered his toast without looking up.
‘He messed up the deliveries again. And there’s this cloudy look in his eyes. He doesn’t mean to mess up, I can see that now.’
‘How exciting! Why don’t you drag him to some doctor?’ Manas was given to such wisecracks. Usually, he made me laugh. But that evening, all I could muster was a snide ‘Ya, right.’ Something about the milkman’s expression had seeded a disquiet that couldn’t be dispelled by my flippant husband.
SIX
GIVEN HOW BUOYANT RAJ had been during all those weeks leading up to Hansika’s delivery, the community was filled with an excited anticipation about the baby’s arrival. Hansika mentioned that she felt ‘differently sick’ this time, but most of us attributed her symptoms to her late pregnancy.
No Trespassing Page 3