by Polly McGee
Lola had still not met Geet. There was plenty to organise for the wedding and emigration, and an absent groom was not helping. Apparently he was in Mumbai, competing in the mathematics Olympics or something. Lola knew from the tone of Malina’s response not to ask any more questions on the subject. Lola had tried to explain patiently that her Sydney bosses were handling the transaction, but Malina wasn’t convinced. She wanted to see evidence of her investment and insisted that with a small bribe everything could hurry along without Geet. Lola was tired of explaining the process, so she simply nodded, pretended to go to council and headed off every day to explore the city.
She had emailed Niz and Amit for guidance on her situation with Geet. They warned her under no circumstances to try to bribe anyone, but to just follow the instructions and it would all be fine. They would sort out the paperwork and bribery from their end. She should just make sure that Geet would appear on the allotted day, and they would be like ‘A royal couple, isn’t it?’ They had not responded to her questions about the unpleasant reality of her situation and the lack of fabulousness.
Geet was a phantom in more than a physical sense. Lola had been hunting for anything that might reveal him to her. The small space at Hastinapuri Estate that Gajrup and Malina, and now Lola, occupied seemed to be totally devoid of clues to Geet’s personality. He lived in a dormitory at university, apparently to keep him focused on his study, and it appeared he hadn’t been home in a couple of months. As a last resort, Lola had resolved to ask Gajrup about him the next time they were away from Malina’s sharp ears and even sharper tongue. She wasn’t even sure why Malina and Gajrup wanted to ship Geet off to Australia with a foreigner. Like every other Indian son, he appeared to be following in the footsteps his parents wanted, on the cusp of his graduation from university, with a high-status education.
Poona had told her that there was a vast oversupply of engineers in India. Lola was surprised at the surplus, given the endless unfinished civil works. Perhaps they thought Geet would have more opportunity in Australia, but most of the engineers from India she had met while working at Jaipur Nights waited tables or drove taxis. She was beginning to question why she had ever agreed to travel halfway around the world to live a lie. Especially as deep down she knew it had been a petty attempt at seeking revenge on a man who was completely oblivious to her drama.
The map of the subway in the carriage flashed red as it arrived at Connaught Place. More bodies got on and off, and it rumbled through the other side. Chandni Chowk flashed up on the LED network. Chandni Chowk market in Old Delhi was an enormous mass of warren-like corridors and precincts where anything could be found, bought and sold. This was today’s destination.
In the narrow alleys of the market, carpeted with trickling sewerage, the nagging thought still lingered that she was a target for pickpockets. Children were the most suspicious perpetrators, and she remained cautious of the motives of any child who looked at, spoke to or followed her. Tourists that succumbed to making eye contact or, worse, giving some coins, would resemble pied pipers – a ragtag mob of minors following behind, entreating them to give money or food or both. The beggar actors would widen their eyes and motion to their mouths with their hands, rubbing their bellies and crying, ‘Ppllleeeeeeaaaaassssseeee, madam.’ Poona had described the well-organised networks of adults that profited from the scams, and Lola now shooed them away without guilt.
The market was heaving with people. The many rows of vendors selling meat amplified the pungent smells of a city with an oversupply of engineers and an undersupply of completed sanitation infrastructure. Their wares were laid out raw and graphic: uncovered tables laden with goat, sheep and chicken parts. Heavy-eyed stallholders fanned cuts from hoof to head in an attempt to keep the gangs of flies at bay. The fish aisle was even more challenging. Ice for cooling was placed in slush piles, but it was merely a nod to the theory of refrigeration, rather than an attempt to keep the fish cool.
Lola wound one of Baj’s extra-thick pashminas around her nose and mouth. He had asked Poona to give it to her after hearing about the loss of her first one in the ear-amputation fiasco. This pashmina was actually much nicer, more so as it had come as a gesture of unprovoked kindness. Lola thought for a moment about Baj, picturing his handsome face with that funny film-star hair and shy gaze, and the way he mooned over his puppy. He barely spoke to her when he saw her around the estate, but he often seemed to need to drop into the kitchen to see Malina or Gajrup when she was there. Perhaps he was beginning to have a crush on her. Lola felt a funny little teenage flutter in her abdomen at the thought. Baj 4 Lola 4 eva. She smiled to herself at the absurdity.
Fortified, flattered and fragranced, she pushed through the haggling wives, sidestepping hustling restaurateurs to take a deep breath at the end of the corridor with its mass of slowly decomposing flesh.
Around the next corner, the meat and fish were neutralised by a long row of flower stalls. Children to elderly women sat in collegial groups, their nimble fingers stringing together endless garlands of flowers for the millions of shrines in the city. Tiny waxy jasmine blooms, saffron marigolds, every shade of orchid and heady roses made for a sensual antidote to the fish and flesh mongers.
Lola wandered from scent to scent. The volume of beauty muted the constant calls of ‘Madam, madam’ and the feel of the arms tugging at her sleeve to get her and her tourist dollar parted.
The greatest temptation of the markets came from the vast array of sweets. To Lola, the sugared and perfumed exotics of Indian sweets were a siren’s call. She stood transfixed as the magic strings of saffron-infused jalebi batter were woven into the boiling oil, sizzling into twisted infinities before being drowned in rosewater-flavoured syrup and drained on sticky racks. Over and over again, the wrists of jalebi-wallahs moved, flicking batter ribbons like rhythmic gymnasts. A stream of plastic trays were served up to hungry men with jalebi bellies poking out front, no doubt defying orders from their wives about reducing their waistlines. The sweet makers worked as though they couldn’t see Lola. Unlike the pushy-pully salesmen of the markets, these men were elite artisans, and she had to jostle for their attention to secure a sugar high.
Behind Chandni Chowk stood the ancient minarets of the Red Fort, a monument to Mughal excess, foregrounded by McDonald’s with its yellow arched minarets. Lola drifted with the crowd out of the markets and into the sprawling grounds of the Fort. She sat on the marble edge of the Diwan-i-Aam, nibbling at her jalebi, confronted by the full frontal architecture of sophisticated centuries.
Lola couldn’t suppress the niggling reality of her situation: she was in India to marry a complete stranger for money and go back to Australia with him as her unlawfully wedded engineer. She crunched the syrupy tail of the jalebi, feeling so stupid that this thought was just hitting home now, rather than before she had made the rash decision to get on a plane. If she didn’t go through with it, her deal with Amit and Niz was off, along with the payment at the end and the return ticket home. No money, no way to get home and no one to confess her stupidity to. She stared at the ground, looking for a solution in the ancient specks of sand at the feet of the Fort.
A motley pair of pariah dogs ambled past her on their way to nowhere urgent. The sight of the dogs reminded Lola of Rocky and the question of whether he had survived. She willed him to have made it, and to have found his way home, back to being a domestic pet again. Lola mused on the coincidences of her and Rocky, both far away from their homes and comfort zones. She, however, still had both ears.
She took out a tourist map of New Delhi from her bag. Her syrup-sticky fingers were like glue on the shiny paper, cheap print leaving fragments of the city on her fingertips. Kamla Nehru Park was smack in the middle of Civil Lines. She wondered how far Rocky could have walked to get there in the first place, and how many domestic dogs might actually be registered with the council as his tag had indicated. There appeared to be a relatively small amount of pet ownership in New Delhi in comparison to the dog
s that seemed to own themselves and the streets they lived on.
Lola was an optimist at heart. Suddenly she felt a surge of purpose. Perhaps finding Rocky’s owner could be part of the reversal of her own life made small and petty by the ancient magnificence of the Fort and her stupid choices. She could do something of note. That was how karma worked, right? She had to stay in this city for the three months required for the wedding visa and she may as well do something of meaning for the remainder of her time. No point moping around. This was the bed she had made, and she simply had to get comfortable and learn the lesson of her stupidity. Who knew, something good might even come out of it.
The Geet, Malina and Gajrup situation was diffused and pushed back into the holding pen of Lola’s mind where right wrestled wrong, now simply labelled ‘experiential learning’. Her new priority was to sort out Rocky. Geet would show up and perhaps her fantasy of their fated love could resume where it left off.
Lola reconstructed the map into a shape that in no way resembled the original fold lines, wiped her hands on her pashmina and set off on her mission.
Chapter Fourteen
Rocky’s Road
Lola caught the metro back to Connaught Place. She went into the Council Chambers as she had every day for that first week of her hopeless missions to wrangle wedding documents without evidence of Geet. Lola waited in the queue until she was summoned forward with the terse wave of a finger. Next. The woman behind the counter had a name badge: Officer 47.
‘Namaste, I’m looking for a lost dog.’
‘Registration?’ Officer 47 asked.
‘Um, no, I don’t have it, it’s not my dog.’
‘Then why are you looking for it?’
‘I found it,’ Lola said.
‘Then you have its registration number?’
Lola shook her head. ‘No, it ran away again.’
‘So you have lost a lost dog?’
Lola was getting tied up in knots. She tried a different approach. ‘Officer 47, can you find the registration of a lost dog if I have its name?’
‘Yes and no.’
Lola discovered through stubborn bureaucracy, that under the New Delhi Municipal Council system, the animal-eradication area managed the register, but thanks to the Monkey Wars it was understaffed and overworked. Officer 47 gave her a look of finality – there were no officers available to assist her at this time.
‘Next,’ she called.
Lola persisted: surely non-enforcement officers could search the database. It turned out they could, but that was against the rules.
‘Next.’
This time the tone was sharper. The queue was getting fractious behind her. Lola looked at the emotionless expression on Officer 47’s face, searching for a way to crack the hard veneer. Lola spotted a photo taped to the booth, showing a small, jaunty dog with oversized ears and wiry fur.
‘Is that your dog?’ Lola asked in a conspiratorial whisper.
Officer 47 gazed at the picture and momentarily her face softened. ‘Yes.’
‘It’s just like the one I found in the park, they could be brothers.’
Officer 47’s eyebrows lifted ever so slightly.
‘He was hurt; I’m desperately trying find his owners – that’s why I need your help.’ Lola waited. She could feel within Officer 47 the battle between the love of rules and the love of dogs. More leverage was needed.
‘Poor thing, injured and alone with those killer monkeys.’
That was enough. Officer 47 passed over a pen and paper. ‘Name,’ she hissed between her teeth.
Lola wrote Rocky in large clear letters and slid the paper back across the counter. Officer 47 typed R-O-C-K-Y in and waited. The computer itself seemed to be deciding whether or not to release the information. There was only one dog registered with that name. She wrote the address down on the piece of paper and pushed it back across to Lola, checking her surrounds to ensure no one had seen her transgression.
‘God save him,’ she murmured. ‘NEXT!’
Lola felt like she had won a prize, or at least got even with the number of times the New Delhi Municipal Council had been the victor in her dealings with them. Outside, she unfolded the scrap of paper. The information trail was getting warmer. Lola was so buoyed by her triumph over the council that she was tempted to get into the mixed-gender carriage on the way back home, but her nerve failed when she saw the after-school crush of testosterone-fuelled boys. She stepped into the pink carriage, smiling broadly at her fellow travellers as the metal tube swayed homeward. At Civil Lines station, the crowd carried her out and deposited her back into the afternoon. The momo vendor stationed outside was dishing up his steamy fare. Lola’s jalebi sugar high was long gone, and she was hungry. She stopped and bought a bag of dumplings and walked up the marg, waving at the man with the turban in the empty pharmacy, and none of it frightened her anymore, which was a surprisingly delicious victory.
***
Lola was having her own private cooking lesson in how to make paneer. It was chiefly because they needed a batch for the dogs, but also because Poona had taken the interest Lola showed in Indian cooking as a sign to impart everything she knew to her before Lola’s ‘holiday’ with the Ramdases was over. Due to Malina’s domination of the kitchen used for the guests, they were based in the Hastinapuri House kitchen. Poona was clearly relishing teaching Lola about the food and culture she loved. They had convinced Gajrup to part with two litres of fresh cow’s milk, despite his obvious misgivings about handing it over.
Lola watched as Poona heated the milk on the stove, expansively instructing Lola as she went.
‘It mustn’t boil; just have some movement under the surface, like this, look.’
Lola peered over the side of the pot. The milk was turbulent.
‘Now vinegar.’
The white vinegar went in, and in seconds the milk began to release its solids.
‘Now stirring gently. You just want them to get clumpy.’
The liquid that separated from the white clumps in the pot was an intense green-yellow colour, apparently the perfect indication of readiness.
‘Okay, okay, quickly now, na. While it’s soft, we must strain it,’ Poona said.
Lola had never seen milk transform from liquid to solid. It was gastronomic alchemy. They strained the curds into muslin, tied and pressed the bundle between two plates, saving the whey for chapatis. Lola tasted a scrap of paneer – the sweetness of the milk sat in balance just beneath the mild tang of the curd.
‘Every woman in India does this daily,’ Poona declared expansively. ‘You are one of us now, meri dost.’
They sat together with tea, and Lola showed Poona the address where Rocky lived, explaining the battle with Officer 47 at the council.
Poona was intrigued. ‘Are you sure, Lola-ji? I don’t think anyone lives at this address.’
Lola looked confused; this was the address that the woman had given her. ‘Do you know it?’ Lola asked.
Poona drained her cup. ‘Everyone knows this house. It is cursed.’
She stood up and motioned Lola to follow her back to the bench.
‘Work to be done, bachana, we must stuff our cheese like drug cutlets for our guests in the park tonight.’
Poona and Lola stuffed the paneer. They were working to a tight deadline, balancing the smooth running of Poona’s hotel business with her unfinished Rocky business. Poona put Gajrup in charge of evening guest arrivals at Hastinapuri Estate, and delegated Baj to be the driver. Lola sat in the back of the car cradling the paneer cubes and a nice thick batch of dog food she had made in Poona’s kitchen. Poona sat in the front, spotting the entrances that were likely to have the least amount of guards.
Poona’s dog-feeding program had been abandoned since Godboley’s demise and the start of the Monkey Wars. The acting acting director, Gaurav, had stationed the first of his newly outfitted men in black, complete with weapons, at the popular entrances and exits of the park. The guards weren’t car
rying live weapons, merely the net guns.
As a consequence of the pretend-armed guards, it was difficult to infiltrate the park to give the dogs their food. Poona was deeply worried about the health of the missing Rocky and the other injured dogs, which she hadn’t seen since the initial monkey skirmish. Even though the guards were supposedly stationed around the clock, the reality was that they were council workers and knocked off in the afternoon the minute the clock ticked around to the end of their shift.
***
Baj looked in the rear-view mirror at Lola as she gazed out the window. He was so proud to see her wearing his pashmina. As often happened when he thought about a beautiful girl, his ears burned scarlet. Baj was a modern romantic, and although his mother had often tried to marry him to a girl from the village when he was younger, he had resisted, claiming he wanted to be able to be a good husband and provider for any future Mrs Chandrasekaran first.
What he really wanted was to have the heady love portrayed in films, when he would have uncontrollable physical sensations at the mere sight of his beloved entering the room, and nothing would stand between them, except a complex plot.
Since his puppy Rama had revealed to him the sensation of pure love, Baj was yearning to experience the expansion of his heart for a human, as well as a dog. Baj’s mother was dead now, and with no other family, his prospects of finding a girl were more challenging without a female relative to broker the deal. In the spirit of the true romantic, he believed that love would find him like luck and Rama had, rather than the other way around.
Baj stole another look in the rear-view mirror as Lola turned away from the window and accidentally caught his eye. She smiled in a friendly way and kept talking to Poona about her visit to the Red Fort or something. He wasn’t sure what they were saying; his ears were so hot he could barely hear a thing.
As suspected, at just past four-thirty pm there were no guards to be seen. It was still quite light and the daily downpour had held off. Poona strode out, gripping her monkey stick, Lola alongside her. They had entered midway between Flagstaff Tower at the one end and the temple at the other.