Abie’s big old family home was gone now, replaced by a Bauhaus-style apartment complex. But a sympathetic builder had retained some of the trees. Ray signed his name in the guest register and was seen off at the lift.
‘Fourth floor, sir. Penthouse flat,’ said the watchman.
Upstairs, Abie’s wife, Sumitra, hugged Ray. There was a lot of that going on. So far as he could remember, he had been embraced more in the last five days than in the rest of his life put together.
‘So, is the guy taking good care of you?’ said Ray.
Sumitra did the so-so move, see-sawing her thumb and little finger.
A girl of six or seven stood behind her and deadpanned Ray. Abie in a frock. Ray suppressed a smile.
‘Say hello, Kriti,’ Sumitra said, ‘this is Uncle Ray, from the US. He was Dad’s classmate and my senior in school.’
‘Did you bring any chocolate?’ said the girl.
‘Kriti!’ said Sumitra.
‘No, sweetie, sorry,’ said Ray, trying to pinch her cheek. ‘Looks like him. Is like him.’
‘Is him!’ said Sumitra, doing the pinching for Ray.
Giving Ray’s hands a full inspection and finding nothing, the girl ran away.
‘Looks just like you from the back,’ he said.
‘And how do you know my back so well?’ said Sumitra.
‘Well, the way Abie was chasing you those days, that’s all we got to see.’
The Abie-Sumi love story had been one of those Vidya Vihar legends: boorish, well-to-do Syrian-Christian jock pursues studious Tamil Iyer girl. To add to the fun, she’s two years his junior, and from one of Madras’s super-affluent industrialist families. He stalks her for five years, of which Abie is in college for two while Sumi is still in school. When Sumi finally says ‘yes’, more out of fatigue than anything else, the story doesn’t end. It takes a by now ragged Abie (who’s become half his size) three more years to convince Sumi’s ultra-conservative family that he isn’t a Suriyani shyster casting a beady eye on their little girl’s considerable fortune. When they, too, give in, as most people did with Abie, comes the kicker: he has to join their family business. Abie refuses to be co-opted and gives everyone the finger, and when Sumi gets up to leave with him, the family finally admits defeat. After which, though he denies it to this day, Abie apparently says, ‘Got you, you paappaan piss asses!’ and passes out in sheer exhaustion.
The one thing Ray could never figure in all this was why a die-hard boob man like Abie had gone for a petite beauty like Sumitra.
From Abie’s balcony, each holding a drink, they stared down at the forest in the middle of the city.
‘You should have bought one when I told you to. Fifteen thousand bucks a square-foot now,’ said Abie. ‘Look at this view, da. Overlooking the Theosophical Society, doesn’t get any better.’
‘What’ll I do with an apartment in Chennai, Abie?’ said Ray. ‘In fact, I’m selling off my father’s house.’
‘Why, what’s the big hurry?’
‘Well, firstly, with him gone, what are the chances of either Lakshmi or me coming back, huh? Two, Shobha is interested in buying it, which makes it easy for me, and three, if I do come down for a while, I can always pile on here, right?’
‘What about Padmini?’ said Sumitra.
‘What about Padmini?’ said Ray.
‘How long are the two of you going to continue this routine?’
‘What routine?’
‘Where you pretend nothing’s up. It’s getting old, Ray, which reminds me: so are you. You’re what, thirty?’
‘Thirty-one, actually,’ said Abie helpfully, getting up for a refill.
‘If nothing’s up, how come both of you are single? Tell me,’ said Sumitra.
‘I’ve had relationships,’ said Ray.
‘What relationships, you had one, with that girl, whatsername,’ said Abie, combing the Theosophical’s foliage for her name, ‘Katie? Karen?’
‘Kirsten,’ said Ray.
‘Kirsten!’ said Abie, making mammary movements with both his hands. ‘That wasn’t a relationship, that was just you getting Grade-A California pootang, bro!’
‘Pootang? Bro? Where do you get this stuff from?’ said Ray. ‘No one speaks like that. Anyway, I knew I’d made a mistake the minute I’d brought her along when you were there.’
‘Forget her,’ said Sumitra, slapping Abie’s hands that were still massaging very large imaginary breasts on himself, ‘what about Padmini?’
The doorbell saved Ray but only for a moment. Kriti opened the door and in walked Padmini.
Abie took one look at her and burst out laughing.
‘What’s so funny?’ Padmini asked.
‘You are,’ said Abie, windshield-wiping his finger between her and Ray.
~
He stood on the balcony, relieved to be alone for a second. All evening, talk had been mostly of his father. He didn’t know his friends had liked the old man that much. Or were they being polite, as people usually are about the dead? Abie had even cried a bit, the poor fool. Ray had felt fake the whole time, uncomfortable with all the kindness. Wasn’t it usually the other way around? He should have been the one going on while everyone else got bored.
Below him, in a forest that had managed to escape man, the night creatures prayed for an extension on their lease. Inside, Abie was putting Kriti to bed while Padmini was helping Sumi clear things up in the kitchen, or so they said. Ray looked at the sediment from the melted ice at the bottom of his glass. How had the white residue got the better of reverse osmosis? Didn’t it know that it was supposed to disappear?
Yet again, Padmini had taken him by surprise. He hadn’t been expecting her. What were Abie and Sumi trying to pull?
The women came out to join Ray in the balcony and Sumitra relit the mosquito coil that had died out.
‘Give me five minutes, I have a few things left to do,’ she said.
Yeah, right, thought Ray as Sumitra left.
‘Relax, Ray. I’m not going to make it awkward,’ said Padmini. She didn’t beat around the bush, this one.
‘I didn’t think you would.’
‘This whole thing: you, me, meeting here. Let me assure you, it wasn’t a grand plan.’
‘I didn’t think it was.’
‘Sumitra called me over and told me you’d be here. I came, that’s it.’
‘C’mon, no explanations necessary.’
‘I’m not explaining,’ she said, leaning against the parapet and staring at the trees. An owl hooted. ‘I want you to know I totally understand how you feel.’
‘And how exactly do I feel?’ Ray said.
‘Listen, we’ve been through this, we do this dance every few years. Your life’s in the US, you always wanted that and, God bless you, you have it. Mine’s here. That’s the way I want it. That’s the way it will be. End of story.’
He thought of his mother. She had died when he was eleven. She had gone to buy vegetables, parked her scooter, and was hit by a car as she was getting off. It was nothing dramatic, no screeching tyres, no drunken fiend at the wheel, no pool of blood. It had been a mere tap by an elderly gentleman who had pressed the brake a beat later than required. Bystanders had said his mother had fallen and hit herself on the head almost as an afterthought. There was not a scratch on her, just a bump on her head.
After her death, Ray had cried himself red-eyed for a month. Life as he knew it had vanished. He couldn’t keep his food in, he dozed in class and, worst of all, stayed awake all night, his only companion, even with the lights on, an unnameable blackness.
Ray had figured he couldn’t continue that way and came to a decision. Like some bearded sage in an Indian folktale, he decided that, henceforth, he would always be prepared. His moral science book was full of people who took resolutions to great effect. Why not him?
He first got himself a 120-page ruled notebook. Then, in a month of concealed moments, in his bedroom, during recess, and even in the bathroom, far
from everyone, he wrote the words ‘I will always be prepared’ till his hands hurt and his head went numb.
When the book was filled from first page to last, he was ready. It had been his secret.
After that, nothing had fazed him: the IIT entrance, the visa interview, arriving in the US at twenty-two with just five hundred dollars in his pocket, the one time he had bungee jumped, his green card interview, his first sexual encounter, his pitch to IBM for the two-hundred-million-dollar deal, even his father’s death. He had always known what the outcome would be.
But this five-and-a-half-foot woman, whom he had known for nearly twenty years, and who was now leaning against the parapet with her droopy earrings (her one claim to anything girlie), was a different proposition.
From the first day she had joined school, in the summer of ’91, and had got half-a-mark more than him in the class test, she was the one thing that made him wonder whether he ought to have filled a larger book.
‘Well, that’s that, I suppose,’ said Padmini, jerking him back to the present.
It took Ray a second to figure out what they had been talking about.
‘What’s so wrong with what I want?’ Ray said.
‘Nothing at all,’ she said, ‘you had a plan and you went about it with precision. There’s no place for – how do I put it – deviations.’
‘You make ambition sound like a bad word,’ he said. He could detect the tiny tremor in his own voice. ‘I wasn’t a rich kid, like the rest of you.’
‘I wasn’t a rich kid, my dad worked in a bank.’
‘Okay, not you, maybe, but the rest. Abie, PK, Guna – all richer than god. They had backing, their lives were taken care of. My dad was a two-bit assistant director slash scriptwriter of Tamil films. We had nothing. I had to make my own life. Studying hard, going to the US and being safe was my plan, Padmini. That doesn’t make me bad.’
‘Are you two fighting again?’ said Abie, from behind them.
Ray shrugged and Padmini continued staring at the trees.
‘You know, you two should get married. Or, better still, take a room in a seedy beach resort on East Coast Road and hump away till you’re blue in the face.’
Swift guilt-free sex, preferably involving large mammaries. It was Abie’s quick-fix for everything. This from a guy who had endured blue balls for eight years waiting for Sumi the Coy.
Ray found himself laughing out loud for the first time since he had come to Madras.
~
That night, lying on his cramped childhood bed, further shortened by Dog Raj at his feet, Ray thought of Padmini.
The funny breathlessness he felt when he was near her that had lasted to this day. His strange joy at forever being second to her first place in class. The vivid if quickly suppressed fantasies about her which beat the hell out of anything Abie could think of. Their endless conversations in the old days about everything. Her smell. Her two unshakeable reasons for not leaving India: ‘There’s so much to be done here and I can’t abandon my parents.’ How she was the most feminine woman he had known without even one of the accompanying wiles. Her choosing to be a consumer rights lawyer who barely made auto fare when she could have been his boss in San Jose if she had wanted. How she could out-drink Abie on her day, how she liked Mr Bean, goddammit – everything about her.
The average idiot in his place would have called it love.
6
‘For me, one story that captures the essence of Raman more than a thousand-page book can…’ said the man, adjusting the mike. He needn’t have bothered, only the first row was full in the tiny hall that had been prepared to seat fifty. The man paused. ‘Irreverent stories okay?’ he said, looking at Ray.
Ray nodded.
‘Well, it was seventy-three, the last day of our law finals. Most of us were praying for a miracle because they had saved the toughest paper for last. Surprisingly, along with us duds, Raman also looked anxious that day. Usually, he was Mr Cool. Anyway, we went into the examination hall, looked at our question papers, and our hearts sank. You could literally see gods across all the pantheons being summoned up. The more practical among us decided the only way out was “chasing” the paper. While we were still trying to understand the question paper, Raman alone was writing away. He finished the three-hour paper in one-and-a-half hours, no exaggeration, handed it over to the invigilator and took off, just like that,’ said the man, his hand imitating a supersonic jet.
The man paused to survey his audience of twelve.
‘Well, the rest of us struggled manfully for three hours and walked back home with our tails tucked between our legs, sure we’d fail. The next day I saw Raman. “Ennada, you finished the paper in one-and-a half hours, what was going on?” I said.
‘His reply was pure Raman.
‘“Easy Rider,” he said.
‘“What do you mean, easy rider?” I asked.
‘“Easy Rider, American classic,” he said. He could’ve been speaking Greek. “Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper?” he added helpfully.
‘Seeing no signs of life on my face, he gave up.
‘“Yesterday, three o’ clock, was the last show in Pilot, da,” he said. “They were taking it off because nobody wanted to see the movie, can you believe it! They were bunging in an MGR film as a filler till Thursday. If I wanted to catch the movie, this was my last chance. So I did what I had to.”’
Everyone laughed.
‘Vintage Cine Mama,’ Shobha whispered into Ray’s ear.
‘Wait, wait,’ said the speaker, ‘here’s the clincher. When the results came out, guess who topped that paper?’
Everyone knew the answer. They saved the speaker his punchline.
~
Ray looked at the cheerful snack boxes from Adyar Mitthai Ghar. Each contained a samosa, a chocolate burfi and a slim chutney sandwich – just the way his father liked it. He had ordered sixty boxes but more than forty sat on the table, unopened.
‘Please have them delivered to the Little Hearts Home,’ he said, looking at his watch. It was 6.30. If they hurried, the kids there would have some fun snacks with dinner. A man began piling them up in a cardboard carton.
Lakshmi waved from the door. ‘Sure you don’t want me to wait?’ she said.
‘I’ll take an auto, don’t worry. You go on with Abie,’ Ray said.
He sat down, a cup of coffee in hand (after all, there was a stainless-steel drum full), and surveyed the empty hall. His father’s garlanded photograph stared back at him.
So it hadn’t been his fault after all, the obit hadn’t been too small nor the funeral hurried. Ads for the memorial service in three newspapers had yielded thirteen people. Of these, four were his friends; Shobha, her husband Kumar, and daughter Shweta, accounted for three; then there was Lakshmi and himself. Which brought it to a total of four people who had come specifically for his father: two classmates from Law College and two distant relatives from Anna Nagar.
There hadn’t been a single person from the film industry.
He felt a vein throbbing in his neck.
The tens of scripts, the abandoned career in law, the crazy hours, the outdoor shoots in places with no bathrooms to crap in, the constant struggle for money, the near-invisible mention in the title cards, the shelves of reference books bought over a period of fifty years, the library of lovingly collected classic DVDs, the last ten years of loneliness in Madras with his children gone – is this what life had been about, so that he could die to an empty hall?
The funeral that had gone past his house the previous day had had more representation. There had been fifty mourners at least, all drunk out of their minds. They were stopping traffic, lighting fireworks, throwing flowers and thrusting their pelvises at death to give an unknown slum-dweller the rhythmic send-off he deserved.
‘Is this the memorial service for Raman?’ said a voice.
He saw a small man in a striped T-shirt tucked into terrycot trousers standing at the door. He looked to be about his father’s age
.
‘Yes, it is. Please come in.’
‘Are you his son … Ray?’
‘Yes … and, sir, you are?’
There was something familiar about the man.
‘Ray, it’s me. Mouli … of Jagannathan Street. Don’t you remember, you used to come there to pluck guavas from our tree?’ said the man.
‘Oh, yes, Mr Mouli. The guavas. That was my sister, Lakshmi, actually. You used to work in films, too … cameraman, right?’
‘No, no! Editor,’ said the man. He had a look bordering on mortification. How could people mix up one job with the other? ‘Sorry I’m late, son. My plane from Bangalore was delayed. I’m coming straight from the airport.’
‘You’ve come from Bangalore, just for the memorial?’
‘I had to come for Raman, son.’
The man was holding on to the back of a chair.
‘You should sit down, sir,’ said Ray.
‘Actually, with what I’m about to tell you, maybe you should sit down.’
7
Ray stared at the dead fly floating in his untouched coffee. In the last hour, the manager had peeped in and looked at his watch a couple of times. Ray had stared back at him.
If he had heard Mouli’s story right, his father hadn’t succumbed to cardiac arrest. He had been murdered. Cause of death: daily dose of disappointment clinically administered for thirty years by a cold-blooded industry, followed by final lethal overdose of betrayal from one of its most ‘respected’ members.
‘It wasn’t a heart attack. It was a broken heart,’ Mouli said, as Ray had seen him off at the door. ‘Happens all the time in films.’ This he had said half to himself, before driving off.
Who had Mouli been referring to: people in films or people who worked in them?
‘Sir, sorry, but it’s eight thirty and we have to close,’ said the manager, managing to tiptoe into the hall in his fourth attempt.
He looked at the quiet man in the loud tie and felt guilty. Why did the man have to say sorry? Only in this country would a person have to apologize for reminding someone of a contractual obligation.
‘No, I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Our time was up an hour ago. We had the hall only up to seven-thirty.’
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