We that are young

by Preti Taneja

  He can do nothing now. This afternoon. But sit and wait under the neem tree for the basti-boys to climb off the dump and begin their flutterpicking. Flutterpicking. A good phrase – one that obeys the rules of Sanskrit, the meshing of two consonants to make a third. Rudra will apply the rules to English if Jeet chooses to now, here, crouched, as the figure of a Ajivikas ascetic from Harwan. He was curled in a posture reminiscent of the foetal position, the cosmic goose beneath him. Jeet once saw this figure carved on the last surviving terracotta tile from that place – a third or fourth century fragment held in the LA County Museum, USA. He wished he had found it himself. The carving was curved, emaciated, eyes sunken into cavities, its long hair and beard unkempt.

  Crouch and meditate: that’s all there is left to do in Dhimbala basti, barefoot.

  The dhaba TV blares news across the square. The monsoon is not expected. The office of meteorology is calling this an extreme drought. In the holy cities, cows are being washed with their own milk.

  Jeet remembers how he and Vik stood that day, arms crossed, looking at each other over the bed. They stood for what felt to be hours on either side of the rumpled sheets; it was the afternoon Jivan came home, all afternoon, when Jeet was supposed to be going to the airport. They stood, fighting, until Vik said, Catholic boy of the Sikh religion, wannabe Naph whatever – in any case, you wouldn’t last a day without your father’s money. Vik’s voice, telling him: I can’t live like this with you.

  Jeet fell forward, literally fell forward, face down on the bed, burying his nose in the sheets. He had bought these sheets for Vik, from Good Earth. They smelled of Vik’s body and his own. He lay there, his hands gripping those sheets, waiting for Vik to come curl around him, to say sorry and whisper love.

  These sheets belonged to Jeet and so do Vik’s ID papers. He paid the rent on this property, so they could be alone. He enrolled Vik in the upcoming term for a third tier college in Delhi University, night quota, IT: reservation: Other Backward Classes. He breathed in the sheets and the smell of old love, thinking: it stinks from Daryaganj to the line of climax, what I have done for Vik. Under the bed a locked box held half the non-taxable income Jeet had not declared from trading in three-headed Goddesses. He gave it to Vik in cash blocks along with his signet ring. Which is on Vik’s finger. Vik, who said that Jeet could not survive without his father’s money.

  He did not take it back.

  Jeet sits in the meagre shade, watching the young men pull up on their motorbikes to order at the dhaba: hot-hot parantha, chai and smokes for lunch. The smell of ghee saturates the air – now, as always, it reminds him of those Tuesday Company nights. He hardly ever ate at them. In the final months, he would leave after Bapuji’s speech, before the dancing started; it would always be to go to Vik’s place. There, they would spark up or take a pill or read out loud to each other from Vik’s book of Lalla. Then make love: hands exploring the skin difference between them; they might wander to the roof and lie on their backs, searching the sky to chose the stars they were born under. Then go back down to Vik’s bed, from which Jeet would not emerge until the night was so dark that even the dogs had stopped sniffing at the rats in the gutters. He would watch Vik sleeping until his lover turned over, protesting he was being too weird yaar. He never left until the dawn summons of the Old Delhi muezzin, when Vik woke up to pray.

  His skin is burned dark, now. A penance. His toenails have turned black. Madam and four girls pass from the Amritsar gate through the square to the dhaba; Jeet gestures the boys to come close around him.

  —So! Let me tell you all the times Jeet cheated and lied. He stole possessions from the ignorant aam janta, believing it was for a higher cause.

  He watches the boys shuffle forward and poke each other’s ribs, eyes wide, licking lips.

  —First I will explain to you the crore value of beauty. What is the most beautiful thing you have ever seen?

  The pack is struck dumb. They think for a moment.

  —Rani Mukherjee! Preity Zinta, Katrina Kaif!

  Little Amar jumps up and mimes a starlet: one hand at his temple, the other on his hip, wiggling and fluttering his eyelashes, sticking out his bums.

  —Kissy, kissy!

  The boys push each other and laugh, trying to get closer and away.

  —The fountains at Napurthala Company, says Akul.

  The boys fall silent again, impressed by knowledge from the forbidden place, which lies around the pit, far on the other side of the basti.

  —How do you know about them? Jeet says.

  —We play in the gardens sometimes. They have monkeys and all kinds of real life birds, and loose women who have been turned to stone. Once we had a Teacher Madam here – she said they might just be waiting for a prince to come, and kiss them awake, says Nakul. He looks around the other boys, daring them to call him a liar.

  —None of you chutiyas has ever kissed any real girl, says Samir.

  —Have you ever kissed a woman, Rudra bhai? Little Amar says.

  —Chi! You don’t ask such things. You should count your luck that from this basti you cannot go lower. The only way you can travel through your lives is up, up, upwards!

  —Right, all the way to the thirteenth floor! says Samir.

  The boys cheer and jostle each other; they stand with hands on hips and stick their tongues out at the top of the Company Amritsar hotel. Jeet laughs with them, wondering all the time if Jivan or his father might be inside. If Gargi or even Radha are worried for him – or angry. He does not know how to go back. Still, at the least he could answer the basti-boys truthfully. He could say that the world of women was wide open to him – that he could have married any girl he wanted and fucked her every Sunday, or never touched her; he could have stayed in his old life and let his father sort out the mess, and lived as a dead man working for the Company. He eyes Samir and Tharu and Amar, these bachche-log who have no clue that the statues they are mocking are some of the finest examples of fourth century desire, found in the hidden parts of his beloved Kashmir. His first coup. It took stealth and cunning to get those pieces to Jor Bagh for Nanu’s birthday celebration. At twenty-one years of age, he had felt his life was beginning at last, although it cost as much in bribes as the amount in his first Company pay check. Money is fluid, he thinks, more accessible here than water.

  Sin comes in many forms, Rudra wants to tell the boys. It can be an act. Or a lack of action. It can be a lie or believing a liar. Doubt is one of the worst sins of all. In his past life, Jeet listened to his half brother – and believed him, too, when he said that Kritik was watching him. It was a possible truth. Kritik could have pictures of Jeet with Vikram. Shots of them in Daryaganj or at the Cinnammon club; even among the white sheets in the laundry room of the Imperial hotel, where Vik insisted on working nights.

  Jeet remembers his own protest, telling Jivan that India is not so backward. Since 2009, the government has celebrated the sex acts of Indian males; the law is no longer an ass of the British kind. Being Indian and gay is now, legally, natural.

  —Piche se penetration, that’s anal sex to you, has not been a criminal offence for three years. Catch up, brother – we are way ahead of you.

  Jivan had only shrugged, said he didn’t think Muslim boys could be gay.

  Jeet should have known, then. This bastard-caste American: could he really be so stupid? Could distance and mothers really make Jivan so opposite to Jeet? All he could think of, that night at the party, was Vik. The night they met. The bookstore in the Village. The premonition it would close. Daryaganj was crawling with plainclothes cops, their white trainers and clean fingernails, their strange, staring poses. If someone in the Company wanted to hurt Vik, Kritik Sahib would only have had to point a finger. Vik could already be dead.

  *

  —What’s the worst thing Jeet ever did, Rudra bhai? Motu, the only fat boy in the whole basti, says.

  Jeet was once possessed of the five demon consorts of Ravan, to fuck, to thieve, to drink w
ine and play cards; he disobeyed his father and cheated his so-called friends. When the dark mood took him he remained so quiet, and then he would rise and dance and play Gameboy. Instead of studying maths he wanted to be a rockstar poet – not a good business boy, made to run after whores whose Daddies pay them to be perfect in public and bad as bitches in heat in the dark.

  —Can you think of nothing better you want to learn? Jeet says. Ask instead, the best. For example, that there is nothing more beautiful in the world than temple flowers: the saffron of fresh marigolds mixed with red rose petals, a diya placed in the heart. That with the correct approach a simple steel thali can be transformed. The ancient Naphs believed that the divine was a cow, taking many forms, bringing pleasure in each. (And now Jeet has a new idea for business – that every Amritsar cow wandering the back lanes should be brought to this square, a sort of cow museum.)

  The boys look at him, faces dropping. This one sniggering. That one rolling his eyes at Rudra’s teacher-tone. They want their stories served with blood – they want Akbar and Birbal – but if they want epics he will give them his Mahabharat instead. And Jeet, too, has done great things. He has saved art from destruction. As his beloved country minted more and more millionaires, it became Jeet’s business to show them the way. Most of them were pleased to have a genuine artefact in the corner of the living room, some precious iconography in the household mandir (after, of course, the installation of the Company-inspired home-cinema in the illegally converted basement). If it took a few extra thousand rupees of cash to smooth official egos, what was wrong with that? Who else could identify a priceless antique amidst a pile of rubble and – what is more – not show any reaction until it was safely in his possession? Who else knew where to find such things in Assam, Odisha, Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh? All those villages – places his father and Godfather would never go unless the Company was starting a mine.

  —Tell us about the party, Little Amar says. That’s what we want to hear.

  Ah yes, that night. It should have been the same as so many others – should have begun eight hours before with a pedicure, a massage, a frank-incense facial to keep Jeet’s skin light. After that, a little shopping, for this he would go to Chanel and Dior. He describes these temples to the boys by drawing the brand symbols in the sandy mud. The boys twist their tongues around the French words, their eyes widen when he tells them the costs of things in that world. A shawl for 30,000 rupees! The boys check with each other, none of them sure what this amount might actually mean. But when Jeet tells them that one cup of chai sold for 200 rupees plus tax?

  —No way! Samir says. You’re lying now.

  —You can get the best tea right here in Dhimbala for less than twenty annas, Motu says, even the chini is free.

  —The evening, Jeet goes on, might begin around 10pm with drinks.

  —Cocktails? Big Amar says; his cousin serves as glass washer for the Company Amritsar public bar. Whisky soda?

  —Yes, and gin lime tonic and vodka too (here, sitting in the dust, he mimes shots and being drunk). Jeet wants them to hear this, for then they might be wary of the basti bhang and petrol sniffers and aspire to drinks that are pure. He explains how he would swallow so much of these liquids that the faces in the crowds would blend into one and the bottoms of pools seem a good place to sleep by dawn.

  —Did you meet Rani Mukherjee, did you meet Priety Zinta? This from the younger ones who are allowed to watch the dhaba TV if business is slow and their mothers are working.

  —Don’t be stupid! This was past life only, not last month, Little Amar laughs.

  *

  Jeet looked up from the bed, where he was still face down. Vik had gone. To the roof, with his diary, a sign that he wanted to be left alone. So he did; Jeet left Vik’s rooms and made his way through the lanes to the main road, where he went through the auto rank until he found a yellow and black that had the words War chariot painted in pleasingly correct Hindi on its hide. He felt the city whip around him, the road hard and pot-holed underneath, bumping as the auto raced along the avenues. The smog caught in his mouth – diesel dhokla. As they drove, the sky turned pink, the rhythm of the traffic sang shame, shame puppy, shame, all the monkeys know your name – as if everyone knew where he had been, but still would keep his lovely secrets. Splayed on the backseat, Jeet had urged the driver to go faster, faster; he loved the feeling that no one in the world knew where he was at that exact moment. If only he could live as if there was no destination and nothing to do but ride! Once or twice he whooped! and the driver turned to look at him, grinning black gums, teeth missing from bad hygiene or a fight.

  Just after India Gate the guy pulled over; he flicked his eyes across Jeet’s body.

  —Gandu, he spat.

  Jeet got out without argument and paid without argument. Skin burning, he watched the man phut-phut away; he vowed again to stop Vikram’s essence from clinging to him – he needed a carbolic scrubbing even then.

  Standing on the wide pavement under the sheltering trees of Lutyens’ Delhi, Jeet called his own driver Balram to come get him. He walked into the Habitat Centre, via Mehar Chand Market, where the real estate was about to go through the roof. A new set of expensive kids’ clothing stores was reproducing along the strip, where customers once came to get all kinds of cloth cut and altered. You wanted a suit to fit or a tent to sleep in? This had been the market to come to.

  Jeet walked the high pavement; he almost went into a design boutique which had sets of pink Delhi 100 anniversary pencils in the window, unsold from the year before. Instead, ignoring the lounging guard’s gaze (natives do not walk in New Delhi, only white people and the poor, but this one is clearly mad), he went and took refuge on the roof deck. There he ordered nimboo pani, sweet/salty.

  The view was of traffic, a tiny army crawling in their tanks up the avenues. Two boys were playing football on the airforce school field, highkicking, goose-stepping miniatures of the Indo/Pak border guards at Wagah. He was too high and the dusk too rich to see the ball. He was higher than even the birds; the rag pickers and street sweepers were less than ants. Parrots swooped under his nose, slicing and swirling, chasing the last of the light.

  When Jeet reached the Farm he could not bring himself to go to his father. At the pool, Abhinash was on duty but no one was swimming. They went into the caretaker’s room at the back of the pool house and locked the door. Sitting on upturned buckets, they shared a joint. The weed spread up their nostrils, through their heads, took root and bloomed in the crevices of their brains. For a moment it was if the room, the pool, the Farm, the city outside – everything was dissolving or was never actually there. He heard from Abhi (who heard from Umesh in the kitchens via Satyam, Radha’s hairdresser, and Vesh, Sita’s personal maid, who was ordered by Uppal to pack and get out with Sita) that Gargi Madam has been crying since lunch, and Surendra Sahib has been chanting in the mandir all that time. Radha Madam ordered her usual cocktail and headache pills in her room at seven, and when Chintu the busboy went to give them to her, she answered the door herself, in her innerwear and only a robe to cover. He saw— (and here Jeet waved his hand, not wanting to hear what Chintu saw; he can well imagine). Anyway – the dear, very dear Radha Madam is apparently leaving at dawn. Suresh, her driver, is on call for the airport. And Nanuji? She has taken to her bed. Juiciest of all: Sita Madam is gone.

  Gone? Jeet remembers his mellow high, punctured with this word.

  —Where has she gone?

  Abhi did not know. But Umesh, the pastry chef was devastated. He was in charge of covering the Congratulations Sita Engagement cake with a golden crown made of spun sugar, a delicate web that was to be dusted with real gold powder. Umesh had planned to try a fingertip as he prepared it, just so he could report to the others on its taste. But again, Jeet did not want to hear about how Shivji deprived Umesh of this one chance to eat gold. Nor how he wailed in the kitchens (asking what, in his past life, he had done so wrong that this should happen to him). Wh
at Jeet wanted to hear about was Sita – and finally, Abhi got to it: Sita has left, with a boy. The rumour is, she is going with him, to Sri-land. It took Jeet a moment to work out what Abhi was telling him. Sri Lanka. Perfect.

  Jeet laughed, and when Abhi looked confused, he called him a dunderhead. Sita. The Ramayan. Sri Lanka. When comprehension dawned, Abhi laughed too, so loudly that Jeet had to silence him with a smack.

  Feeling in need of some comfort, Jeet let himself be persuaded – by an unbuckling of his belt and the soft pressure of an arm around his shoulder – to sit on the caretaker’s ladder and accept a hand-job to calm his nerves. After, he cleaned himself with a cream Company pool towel embossed with red lettering. Sitting on Abhi’s lap, he called his dad and tried to beat down his guilt. He leaned back, Abhi’s chest hairs tickling him. They shared a bottle of champagne; then, he left Abhi and went back to the house, to the party. Jivan was there with Ranjit. Devraj Bapuji was about to speak.

  Across the square Feroze Shah is setting up for the evening service. On the dhaba the TV news is now saying – what? That Bapuji is on his way to Amritsar, where he will make a visit to the Company hotel, after crossing the country from Mumbai to Kerala. He is coming here, now. Rudra releases the boys to their families. He takes this news and climbs the dump, in need of its comforting stink.

  §

  EVENING TURNED TO NIGHT. The call from the mosques came for me through the gaps in the walls, over the roof beams. I sat with Sita cradled in my lap, singing quietly to her.

  The young manservant said,

  —Bapuji, is Sita Madam sleeping?