by Preti Taneja
She goes to her room with the imprint of Jivan’s body on hers. She whispers her sister’s names as she does each night to bless them. Then sinks into bed. Does not want dawn to come.
Eyes heavy, she thinks she can hear thunder cracking over the city plains and distant mountains, all the way to the border. Somewhere, she senses that rain has begun to fall. Sweet dreams, she whispers, and sleeps.
A freak storm comes that night. It spins around the Amritsar hotel; whips out across Dhimbala basti, it reaches the derelict grounds of the Company Napurthala, tearing up the earth and pulling down the trees. The Mughal gardens that Radha’s mother once lovingly planted to her own, specific catalogue of memories are blasted with sand and falling stone. Gargi comes to wake Radha with this news.
—Come see the damage, she begs, let us see what there is to salvage.
But Radha cannot leave the hotel. She cannot take breakfast until Jivan comes to sit with her. The Bapuji Bol! automated text service chimes crypticisms she did not choose and cannot make sense of: none can destroy iron, except its own rust… A sadhu’s shack is a haven for Kings… new India is new tourism.
In the afternoons, an unbearable game of watching and being watched begins; Radha circles the corridors, scrolling on her mobile till Jivan catches her. In the stairwells or storerooms or sometimes in his bed. At night she avoids dinners and drinks; sleep is swallowed by the news on repeat: Radha follows the cycle and reports back to Gargi: no sight of Bapuji.
Three days pass.
It is a Tuesday. Bapuji resurfaces where they least expect him: on every front page across the country. An image of him in the ruins of the Napurthala hotel, not more than fifteen kilometres away. He has crossed the stinking Dhimbala basti to the other side.
Radha stays in her bed, reading the English cuttings. Sending the local language ones to a service to be made comprehensible. There is international coverage too, the FT, the Times, the Telegraph, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Asian Age and the Sydney Morning Herald, even Dawn, for God’s sake, Dawn. Syndicated by Barun J. Bharat, exclusive to the world: The great Devraj with hollow eyes and sagging skin, wearing a kurta and dhoti, a Nehru cap on his tamed hair, he stands at the podium, finger pointed up at the sky, addressing a crowd of men. These look like factory workers, locals, picking over the ruins of Radha’s childhood. The kind of people her father never usually sees. The kind who serve his servants, if that. She knows that a man does not need violence to make a crowd love him. All he needs is a stage, a pointing finger, a few well-chosen words. I gave them my Company, and they kicked me out. I return to my people, to lead them to truth.
At Bapuji’s elbow is a half-naked holy man, all eyes – maybe some Sant picked up from the road. Wrapped in Bapuji’s priceless toosh as a covering for his shame. Unbelievable. Where is Nanu? Radha squints through the pictures, but cannot see her. She wants to find Barun, and kill him.
Ranjit Uncle advises them – keep calm, wait and watch. Your Bapuji will burn himself out and come home. He does not call Radha in her rooms in the morning: he does not invite her to tea. She notices this but there is so much else to concern her. The corridors are circular, she touches Jivan, she ignores the curved walls —Gargi, Bubu, married, slut, sex, shame. With Jivan, Radha can be happy. In his room, she hears nothing but his voice.
Another week. A blistering, dry, heat locks the city inside. Gargi and Bubu now plan for the Srinagar hotel opening all day; and at night they leave Gargi on the roof, scouring the stars through a telescope. Ranjit Uncle commissions Oxford astronomers to measure the distance of India from moon and sun, then he sends Bubu and Radha their horoscopes each day, via internal post. He excuses himself from dinner: he says he is working, trying to make progress in his attempts to communicate with Bapuji.
At 3am, before the crush of the day, Gargi now waits for Radha in the hotel lobby. Together they go to the Golden Temple. Across the marble platforms, their bare feet make no noise; the chanting wraps around her like the most delicate of fabrics, they are left alone, to walk and whisper plans for the coming days. They sit for a while by the sarovar; Radha watches Gargi’s reflection and wonders if she should confess. Her sister will tell her that adultery is a crime. Jivan could go to jail for five years if Bubu were to sue. What about her reputation? What will people say? Around them the chanting swells: they are blessed as they bow their heads.
Bapuji begins to cross the country. The people host him wherever he goes. Idiots, don’t they realise he is going out of his mind? That he has never – not once in his life – given something for nothing, or anything back? Every time Gargi and Sita wanted to start some poverty-pleasing venture they were told No. Even that one time when Radha thought she and Bubu could maybe adopt she was told No Way. Now, look at him. One day he’s in Madhya Pradesh, the next in Maharastra; never in Company hotels. Instead, this new Bapuji seems not to sleep, or tire of finding new ways to disparage the Company that he founded, built, directed. He spends his time in the bastis of wherever he visits; he seems to take delight in pulling some filthy child or other out of some godforsaken factory. —Look! This one should be in school, not working! See what the Company is really built on!
Most of the blame is reserved for Gargi, some of it spills over. Bapuji’s supporters talk badly about Bubu: all those government contracts he milks for five times their worth. Nothing is ever levelled against the three wise men: Bapuji himself, Kritik or Ranjit. No one is interested in the past. All they remember is what they see: a great man who built the Company from his father’s ashes, and now wants to help them. Gargi is called to defend herself, she appears on television and in the papers. There are allegations the Company concrete is mixed to crack; there are rumours it is laid too thin on the roads, the un-poured extra inches become money in the bank – the balance so healthy, the shareholders happy. To Radha, everyone seems happy these days. Then costings are released of the lightbulbs in the Company hotels – each one far more than a worker’s daily wage. A montage is run of Radha at parties; the cost of her dresses – why is this news? Her phone becomes her second hand – each moment a new call from a reporter, an editor, or worse, a shareholder wanting to be reassured. No matter how many freebies Radha can arrange, still the men turn out for Bapuji: how they love to march for a cause!
Radha stays inside. She feels punished by the silence of corridors and lifts. It falls to her to manage the shouting in the press. Words and facts and other truths come out of her father’s mouth: Did you know that in each brickworks, Bapuji tried to set up a school? But Gargi Madam said the children could not be spared from work. Wherever he goes, the crowds get bigger, the podiums more swathed in khadi and white, adorned in marigold garlands. Amritsar seems a place where Radha should stay. As long as she is under Ranjit Uncle’s roof, nothing can happen to her. The days pass. It is getting to October. She might have been wedding planning, if Sita had stayed.
Gargi gives interviews: talks about her women programmes, the new eco-car. No one will listen. Paper after paper prints lines of truths Radha cannot verify. That Gargi is corrupt: she bribed a woman whose husband was beaten in Company employ. That Gargi is unstable: this summer, she went mad and shot all of Bapuji’s lovingly tended peacocks and pigeons on the Delhi Farm. Radha advises Gargi to swathe herself in nothing but saris, to stick to natural colours and saffron borders; when she wears blouses, they should have high backs and elbow-length sleeves.
—You’re on fire, Bubu tells her. ‘Dress up Gargi’ – this is the best PR work you’ve ever done.
Radha tries to avoid Bubu: he wakes up in a rage and stays there, until he passes out drunk each night. He flies about, trying to stop his building projects turning to rubble. Mud sticks – and no one in this climate wants to do business with a man responsible for high numbers of publicised worker deaths on site – whose cement comes from exploitation – who doesn’t give back to the local economy, offer jobs in private security or hire women to comfort him when he is away from his wife. Wh
o is Bapuji’s daughter.
Radha spends an hour with Barun on the phone. She points him to Twitter, where MrGee is full of support for Gargi; MrGee reminds his 28.6K followers (not bad) that Bapuji was in charge only until recently; that Gargi is a good egg; that so many women look up to her. MrGee (so Radha tells Barun) and his 29K followers call Gargi ‘Devi’, for she prays each morning and evening; she knows each member of staff in the Company by name. MrGee tweets all day to his 35K followers with pictures and gifs: Everything Gargi has learned is from Sri Sri Bapuji (she pays him respect with her whole heart).
Barun runs his ‘Gargi Ma’ piece with a picture of the sisters in Amritsar, at the temple, at dawn. Blue light, and Radha has her head covered; Gargi’s dupatta is looped around her shoulders. Interest in Bapuji drops; for forty-eight hours, the cognoscenti cognose on That Hair Cut. It is a sign, they say, that Gargi is mimicking the charisma of other strong women, that she is trying to win the respect of the business world. To keep the Devraj Company name from rotting inside out.
Then Bapuji goes on hunger strike. A statement is published. Radha sees it first retweeted by @IndiaBS to @MrGee. Then it comes to the press. Corruption no more! The target is not Bapuji’s daughters. Now he calls on the poor to be inspired by his work to stage protests against ‘the terrible conditions of their lives’. What? Conditions are of his making only. He promises that their labouring will end with the fast. Corruption no more! The pundits state that this is the great repentance, a seismic moment in the history of twenty-first century India. Change will begin with a fast. It will cleanse Bapuji’s body from years of indulgence. Then will come a reckoning against backhanders, manipulation, greed.
It is enough to isolate Bapuji from some important business friends. Some begin to send flowers and presents to Amritsar, addressed to Gargi and Radha. Some try to come; she puts them off. @MrGee carries on, tweeting common sense and facts; citing the many initiatives Gargi was prevented from implementing – the provision of shoes for the workers, the crèche for the secretaries. The Company women tweet and retweet; they confirm Gargi is a Ma to them all.
Radha and Gargi stay in Amritsar, putting up with the village-standard service in Ranjit Uncle’s hotel – the staff hate her and Bubu, she knows they do – and she tries not to blame Gargi for the bad HR culture here. Details of the business wash over her: Jivan and Bubu reframing the security of the Company, more cameras, more watchers, more alarms. Bubu in Srinagar most days and most nights, fighting with the contractors, dealing with the local politicians. Gargi, implementing an immediate financial penalty to stop Company workers joining the Devraj Campaign; an army of them is no match for Radha’s desire.
It becomes clear that Gargi is not just crushing on Jivan: she thinks she is also in love. How her eyes follow him, how she tries to be with him at every opportunity! But in the late afternoons, when Bubu is away and Gargi must answer call after call, it is Radha who captures the chiru. Sometimes they do not do anything except burrow in his bed, turning one way and then the other to press lips, thumbs, knees, elbows, into each other’s spines. Sometimes this is the prologue to sex that begins, slowly, gently and always face to face, getting stronger until Jivan makes so much noise that she threatens to put a pillow over his face.
She tries not to think about what she is doing and how many people must know. From the basement right up to the thirteenth floor. Even Bubu. Does he know? She tells herself she does not care. Only Gargi cannot know.
*
When Radha goes outside in the early mornings, she finds the temperature has dropped. She can see her breath. At the Temple, the peace and silence feels almost like a drug. The marble chills her feet as it has not before. She will call for woollens to be sent from Delhi, she thinks. She listens to the chanting, it is still dark. Her stomach churns. As she and Gargi do their round, she counts five black ravens at the side of one of the Temple pools, dark against the early morning gloom. She points them out to Gargi, who shrugs and tells her that the peacock story is true, only it was not her, in the Farm at Delhi: it was Daddy who sliced them all up.
She returns to the hotel, she cannot eat: she wants Jivan but the concierge tells her he has gone out on a drive with his father. All day. This makes her feel slightly sick. Do they talk about her together? she thinks. Does Ranjit Uncle know?
Radha crawls into her bed. MrGee on her mobile, her cuttings in her hand. She wakes in the dark, a flickering in her head, words, scrolling, words, lines, with no idea what day it is, what time. Bubu is there, he is climbing onto her. He stinks of the office, of sweat: he reaches for the lights.
—Get up, pretty Radha, he says. Why are you sleeping? It’s only 7pm. He wants her to play bosses and secretaries, to smack him hard with a wooden rule.
They lie, the cuttings shredded around them. She, scrolling her mobile while Bubu sleeps beside her. A bell. Bubu opens his eyes. The bell rings again. He gets up to see what’s what.
—Stay here, he says.
Where would she go? Radha in the bed, retweeting a pic from the Mumbai Mirror (her favourite paper) of Bapuji in Chandigarh (wait, they are covering him from there?) giving a rally – his face in a frown; his finger pointed, always pointed at anything but himself. She writes – That finger when your dad doesn’t like your skirt length – and tweets. Thirty hearts almost instantly respond. The doorway to the living room gapes at her.
Then she hears Jivan’s voice, she thinks it is in her head; is he here? greeting Bubu? She strains – hum, hum, something about Chandigarh, a drive – then,
—Sita.
Radha fights the sheets; she puts on her robe and goes to the living room. Jivan and Bubu are standing still by the dining table; there’s an arrangement of dried lavender shedding little flicks, it needs replacing – this whole suite needs updating – tourism, the foundation of the future— she stops next to Bubu, trying to read Jivan’s face. Tired, slight panic, she thinks. Interesting.
—I knew something was up with my Dad, he says.
Bubu’s body goes slack, he shakes his head. Radha looks from him to Jivan. Is he saying that the money for the Devraj campaign is coming from Ranjit Uncle? That he, instead of having tea each day with Radha, has been out and about, supporting all of Bapuji’s natak, for weeks?
—What else? Bubu says.
Jivan purses his lips. Bubu starts to laugh. A sound worse than he makes when he looses a deal. He doubles over, holding onto Radha’s arm. What else? What?
—Do you know the basic structure of the Devraj Group Radha? The holding Company for everything we have? says Jivan.
—Explain it to her, Bubu says. She’s never deigned to learn it from Gargi or me.
She shrugs Bubu off. What’s to explain? She and Bubu, Gargi and Surendra now hold thirty percent each of the Group. Ranjit Uncle has twelve percent. Fourteen percent shares held for staff on (mostly unattainable) performance related rewards. All are invested in shell companies registered in the UK, which the Devraj Group has nothing to do with (of course). The shell companies sometimes buy shares in the Company Subsidiaries – especially Consumer Goods, which keeps the other share holders happy. So happy – that makes Bubu happy. Then there is fourteen percent between forty or so private individuals, deep, longstanding family friends who bought in the dry years, when capital investment was needed to grow. Some have only one percent, some have six. No one has more than eight. What else? MrGee could spit this out in less than ten tweets.
—You and Bubu, Gargi and Surendra now hold thirty percent each of the Group, says Jivan. Sixty percent together. My dad had twelve percent. Fourteen percent was held for staff on a rewards based-scheme. Fourteen percent was with private individuals, all of them from here, in Punjab. So that’s forty percent.
Jivan still says Pun-jab, like the stick. Radha wants to laugh. Jaab, jaab, jaab, she has tried and tried with his accent. She looks from boy to boy.
Bubu puts his elbow around her neck, catching her hair beneath.
—How man
y shareholders has Ranjit bought out? he says.
—All, says Jivan. He showed me the papers himself. He says he’s going to put it all in trust.
—For you? Radha says. Wow.
—For Sita, says Jivan.
Sita, Sita. She’ll have twenty-six percent, Radha thinks. What about my shawls?
She grips Bubu’s arm, tight around her throat.
—Good work, little girl, says Bubu. What else?
—The staff shares – the Company lawyer – what’s his name?
—Kishore, says Bubu. Eldest son was in the Devraj Hundred. Batch of ’05.
—Right. Kishore has agreed to reconfigure the terms of the staff share allocation to go through Ranjit – on paper, he’ll control forty percent. To pass more to Sita, or Bapuji or keep for himself. Who knows what he will do?
Forty percent.
Now Bubu tilts his arm, forcing Radha to face him. Is that sympathy? His grin is wide, splitting his face.
—My intelligence is reporting that this protest-showtest is all Sita’s idea, says Jivan. Is this the kind of thing she would do?
—Sure, but… I can’t believe Ranjit Uncle would… I mean, Sita wouldn’t do that to me. Or Gargi. Especially Gargi, says Radha.
—Why not? Bubu says.
Radha pulls herself free. Then feels Bubu’s arm around her back, his thumb in the belt-hook of her robe.
—Prove it, she says.
Jivan takes a Company envelope from his pocket. Inside is a paper, covered in Ranjit Uncle’s handwriting. Painkiller, Radha thinks. She takes the paper, and reads.
Sita, you must come meet us in Kashmir. Launch won’t take place without you. Your father needs you right now and will be happy to see you. I’m sure you are aware of the problems your sisters are causing. I will arrange it, our secret. Yours always, Ranjit Uncle.