Chamunda, aware of us watching her, shielded her eyes from the sun and looked up. For a moment she giggled with girlish embarrassment, then firmed up her voice and said, ‘Come on, boys. Come down for lunch.’
We followed an internal staircase, with old movie posters on the walls, and came out through a bright blue door into the courtyard. The sunlight went right through the pond’s green water, where orange fish flashed from time to time. The foliage round the pond was thick with palms and ferns. Behind the lunch table a tall forest-green bamboo fence protected the little courtyard from the view of those working in the house. Chamunda now sat at the table sipping a glass of pomegranate juice, a brood of pugs yapping at her feet.
‘Hi, baba,’ she said, with some distress in her voice, as I reached down to touch her feet. But with Aakash following my example, it melted quickly into embarrassed laughter, and, ‘Oh no, you don’t have to. It’s only because I’m like his aunt. I’ve known him since he was this high.’ Then, ‘May you have a long life, my son,’ she said at last, with resignation in her voice. But when he rose and she saw his face, seeing perhaps even more clearly than me the marks of his caste, I thought I saw a different light in her eyes. It was as if her various screens – of being chief minister, Sanyogita’s aunt, politician, older woman, princess – fell away and those vast eyes were now for a moment limpid. There was nothing innocent or unguarded about this gaze; if anything it was blacker despite its heat. And as quickly as it came it was gone.
A moment later, Sanyogita appeared from a corner of the house and we sat down to lunch. It was a grim meal during which everyone seemed to be negotiating their way out of some private mood. I had served myself meat curry and rice when I saw that Chamunda wasn’t eating.
‘You aren’t having anything?’
‘I’ve eaten, baba,’ she said. Then perhaps to deflect attention from herself, she added, ‘Here, have some wine,’ and filled both mine and Aakash’s glasses. Sanyogita looked sourly across at her. ‘Can I have some too, Chamunda massi?’
‘Tch! Yes, of course,’ Chamunda said, and passed the wine.
Silence fell over the table. Only Aakash, though still watchful, had a surprising calm about him. He ate and drank wholeheartedly, like a man celebrating a victory. He looked up occasionally at Chamunda with sidelong glances, seeming to finesse his study of her. At length we began talking about the case.
‘It’s a stain,’ Chamunda said bitterly. ‘It’ll blow over, I know, but it’s a stain and that bloody Shabby will do everything to draw attention to it in the run-up to the election.’
‘How can she not?’ Sanyogita said. ‘You’ve got the wrong…’
Her words were lost in her throat. Chamunda, though having gauged their meaning, made her repeat them. ‘What?’
‘Guy!’ Sanyogita said. ‘You have the wrong guy.’
Chamunda’s face darkened, but she didn’t say anything.
‘Isn’t there any way to save face?’ I asked.
‘No, not at this stage,’ Chamunda replied. ‘We’ve made one mistake already.’
Aakash looked up from his food and smiled, his lips glistening.
‘This other one’s more serious. It’s galvanized the whole city. Now if we come out and say, “It wasn’t him either, we just arrested him because my SSP got it into his head that the girl was of loose morals,” we’re going to look really bad. We need to keep the case going with this brother of hers as a valid suspect for at least some time. Till we can find an out.’
The remark seemed aimed at Aakash, but he said nothing.
‘Keep it going,’ Sanyogita said, ‘i.e. keep my friend in jail until then?’
‘You think I bloody want to?’ Chamunda exploded. ‘I have to!’
‘Why do you have to?’
‘Because your fat friend Shabby will crucify me if I don’t. This is politics, all right? It’s not fun, it’s not creative writing, but it has to be done.’
‘I don’t understand, if people like you don’t stand for justice and the rule of law, how is it –’
‘I can’t listen to this shit,’ Chamunda snapped. ‘I’m not Gandhi. I’m working with an imperfect system. Yes, I don’t want an innocent boy to go to jail, but I’m not losing my job over it.’
Sanyogita put a last mouthful of rice and lentils in her mouth, coldly moved the fork a little right of centre on her plate and rose. She looked at me, but I pretended not to notice. Then after kneeling down and stroking one of the pugs, she slipped away.
Chamunda had upset herself so much that she reached for a plate. She was about to serve herself some food when Aakash stopped her.
‘Ma’am, don’t. I have a solution. Everything will be fine.’
Chamunda looked stunned, perhaps both at what was said and the tone with which it was said. Recovering her poise, she asked, a smile playing on her comic-book lips, ‘Well, can I at least have some lunch?’
‘Better not, ma’am,’ Aakash replied quickly. ‘I was hoping to repay your hospitality by giving you a session after lunch.’
‘A gym session?’ Chamunda said with wonder, then looked at me as if I’d brought a lunatic into her house.
‘Yes, ma’am. I’m a professional person,’ Aakash said in English, and let out a short laugh.
Chamunda fell silent, her eyes wandered and for a moment it seemed as though she didn’t approve of this over-familiarity. Then looking up, she breathed, ‘Why not!’
Aakash laughed at the success of his overture and looked to me for approval.
Chamunda in the meantime had stood up. ‘All right, then,’ she said, as if convincing herself that she was truly about to work out in the middle of the afternoon on a day when her government was close to falling. ‘I’ll get dressed. Raunak Singh! Raunak Singh! Get my exercise things ready.’
‘Very good, ma’am,’ a voice returned from some hollow section of the house.
‘Aakash, in the gym in five minutes?’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
With this, Chamunda gave me a little kiss on the head and disappeared behind one of the rust-painted courtyard’s many blue doors. I turned in amazement to Aakash, who at that moment had submerged his entire hand into a silver finger bowl.
‘What now?’
‘Nothing now. We’ll see.’
‘Well, what’s the solution?’
I thought he relished saying that he couldn’t tell me; that he wanted to but couldn’t; that his future was at stake.
Chamunda appeared a moment later in her exercise clothes. She wore denim shorts, exposing her brown, faintly dimpled legs, New Balance trainers and a T-shirt. It was a simple white T-shirt, with a cartoon image of a Hollywood blonde in grey sunglasses, the lenses each mapping perfectly on to Chamunda’s large breasts. Hanging from the cartoon blonde’s neck, and stretching over our chief minister’s soft, slightly protruding midriff, was a pair of binoculars. Giving me a little wave, she trotted up the couple of steps that led from the courtyard into the gym.
Aakash followed her a moment later, leaving me in the courtyard alone.
Oppressed by the solitude, I went upstairs to get a book. Sanyogita was checking her emails in an involved, distancing way. The house, which had been driven since the morning by a jolting, uneven energy, was at last quiet.
*
It would have been an hour, an hour and a half later, once the late-afternoon light had almost left the courtyard, that Chamunda emerged from the gym, sweating heavily, her long hair in a bun, visibly exhilarated.
‘He’s very good, your friend,’ she said, ‘much better than my fellow. I think I might get him to come and give me trainings. He had me do ten to fifteen minutes inclined walking, then very light weights and finished me off on floor exercises. My body is breaking.’ She rested a hand heavy with rings on my shoulder, and becoming quieter, said, ‘Baba, he’ll probably tell you what we spoke of. Please, not a word to Sanyogita. Not till tomorrow.’
At that moment a band of fairy lights coiled aroun
d one of the trees in the courtyard came on. They followed a cycle: one strip at a time, they worked their way up the trunk, then all the lights glowed at once and burst into rhythmic flashes. Chamunda wiped her hands and lit a Dunhill cigarette. She offered me one, but I declined. We sat in silence for some minutes. The rising smoke moved sideways over a ruled page of fine, slatted light coming in past the green bamboo fence.
‘So listen, baba,’ Chamunda said, ‘it looks like no one will have to stay here after tomorrow. I mean, you can stay on, of course, if you want to, this is your house. But what I mean to say is that you don’t have to stay here. You don’t know how grateful I am that you came, though. These have been trying times, really. But you watch, we’ll win the election and then we’ll have some fun. We’ll get your mother here as well. You know, I love her like a sister. Much more than a sister.’ Chamunda laughed wickedly, thinking perhaps of Sanyogita’s mother, with whom she had strained relations. Then as an extension of that thought, she added, beetling her eyebrows, ‘Try and make Sanyogita understand that her aunt is not such an evil person. You don’t know how she wounds me. I have no children, so she’s like my own, but she’s always edgy around me. I want her to get in touch with India. We’ll need someone from the family at some point. Already there’s no one to contest the parliamentary seat from Ayatlochanapur. Get her to sort herself out. Creative writing! Emigrés at Home! What is this nonsense!’
At the time, it didn’t occur to me to ask how Chamunda would have known the name of Sanyogita’s creative writing group. Nor did I think she was purging her guilt as she spoke. I thought she was acting with her niece’s best interests at heart.
Raunak Singh appeared a moment later with a cordless telephone.
‘Right, baba. I must go. I’ll see you in Delhi.’
I sat in the courtyard a while longer, looking at the flashing tree, and got up only when I saw Chamunda, now in a turquoise sari adorned with reflective, gold-rimmed flowers, go out of the house for the last time, followed by a small entourage.
Aakash had not emerged from the gym. When I went in a few minutes later, he was working out himself, barefooted, bare-chested, in just his jeans.
‘Hi, man. How’s you doing, man?’ he said, swinging his arms up in bicep curls.
‘Fine,’ I said, and sat down on a workout bench.
‘It feels so good. I can’t tell you. It feels like I haven’t worked out in weeks. Everything’s gone. Look, look,’ he said, flexing a tricep, which emerged obediently like a great vein in his arm.
‘Aakash, it’s fine, really.’
‘And chest,’ he said, shrinking his face and pushing out his pectorals.
‘Also fine.’
‘But abs are really gone, no?’ He pulled down the skin from his stomach and the faint outline of a six-pack emerged, the beauty spot on it, reminding me that I had seen it before.
Then he looked hard at my reflection, and seeing perhaps some fatigue, some sorrow in my face, he stopped and turned round. ‘You’re all right? No?’ he asked with concern. ‘Not angry with me, I hope. Chamunda Devi told you what happened between us?’
‘No.’
His face cleared.
‘You’re upset this is our last night.’ He laughed. ‘You were getting comfortable. Come on, I’m going to cheer you up. We’re going to do something I used to do with my brother when we were children.’
‘Aakash, I’m fine.’
‘No, no, no. I can see there’s a problem. Come on.’
With this, he pulled me out of the gym. The house was in half-light. It was caught in that special Indian hour when the day has gone and the servants are still to turn on the lights. Under the cover of this dusk hour, Aakash stole into the dimly lit pantry, past a few Nepalese maids, and hunted round for something. Not finding what he wanted, he stuck his head out and said, ‘Sister, where is the wine kept?’ She pointed him to another area of the kitchen, and not wishing to break momentum, he rushed over there. The sight of many bottles of wine of varying quality confused him.
‘Aatish, help me out,’ he whispered.
‘Choose something from the top.’
He stood on his tiptoes and pulled out a bottle of wine. It looked Californian and expensive. It had a single red drop falling against an off-white label. Around the drop, as if it had broken the surface of the label, were faint ripples, also in off-white.
‘Mod… mod…’
‘Modicum.’
‘Good?’ Aakash asked.
‘Probably.’
‘Great. Let’s go,’ he said, taking two glasses from a shelf.
We made our way up the internal staircase to the first floor. When we reached the landing, Aakash whispered, ‘Now, really quiet.’
We tiptoed past an open doorway, in which Sanyogita, now in darkness, could be seen still in front of the computer. Two or three doors down, Aakash gently slid back the bolt of a room I hadn’t seen so far. The light outside had become so dim that I could barely make it out. A kind of purple gloom spread through the room and only the silver of a mirror at the far end was visible.
‘Fuck,’ Aakash said, a moment after we entered, ‘I forgot the screw thing. I’ll go back. You wait here.’
Before I could protest, he had slipped out, leaving me in the empty room. As my eyes slowly adjusted, I could make out a crystal dressing table in one corner, a dark wooden cupboard from the fifties and an old four-poster Calcutta bed with a white bedspread. I wandered ahead absent-mindedly, opened a wide, heavy door with a long brass handle, and found myself in a dressing room. Past a further door, there was a high-ceilinged bathroom, with an art-deco floor of black, white and beige stone arranged in a large rhombus shape. Great panels of mirror, screwed into the wall, whose silver had rusted and fallen away, stood over a black bathtub, and steel capsule-shaped lights threw low-voltage shadows over the room.
I was still taking in the bathroom when I heard Aakash enter behind me.
‘So you’ve found it,’ he said. ‘Good boy.’
He pushed me into the room and locked the door. The bottle of wine was open. He poured me a glass and sat me down on a cane chair against the wall. Then, still only in his jeans, he leaned across the vast bathtub and opened the taps. There were some bath salts on the edge, which he smelt suspiciously before scattering them in large handfuls into the bath, turning the few inches of water cloudy.
As the bath began to fill, he sat down on the edge of it and took a large sip of wine.
‘It’s good, man!’ he said.
It was very good – heavy and smooth.
The moment overcame him, and as if wondering how it was that life had brought him into such varied situations, had shown him both poverty and luxury, he said, always with that special ability to explain complicated problems in simple material terms, ‘Now Chamunda Devi, she smokes Dunhills, right?’
‘Right.’
He nodded. ‘On Marlboro packets the price is shown, on Benson the price is shown, but on Dunhill there is no price.’ He took out a packet from his pocket, and twirling it in his hand, showed me it had no price. ‘What does that mean?’
I thought it was a rhetorical question and didn’t answer, but he pressed me for a response.
‘I don’t know.’
‘That it’s imported! Now people might say,’ he said, taking on the voice of an impressed observer, ‘ “Right, so she smokes Dunhills, she must be very rich.” They don’t stop to think, why does this person smoke Dunhills?’
Again, I thought I was not meant to give an answer, but Aakash waited for one.
‘Because of the length, the quality of the tobacco?’ I offered.
‘Right,’ he replied, a little disappointed. ‘But those people will say, “Such and such person smokes Marlboro, that’s all right, not bad.” My brother smokes Benson, but Benson you can buy loose. Dunhill, you have to buy a whole packet at a time. “So, good, this person must be pretty rich.” What they don’t see,’ Aakash said, seeing perhaps some confusion in
my face, ‘is that the person who smokes Dunhills might also smoke Gold Flake should the need arise.’
At this point the bath was more than half-full and the clouded water was steaming up the mirror.
‘Let’s get in,’ Aakash said abruptly. ‘I’ll explain in a minute.’
I didn’t question him, but undressed to my underwear. Aakash watched me the entire time. When I took a step towards the bath, he said, ‘Come on, man. You insulting me? I’m not a fucking gay. Take your underwear off. This is like something I would do with my brother.’
I took my underwear off and put one foot into the bath. It was still very hot and I could keep only one foot in at a time, even as they began to tingle from the heat. I was able slowly to manage both, then to lower myself in. Aakash watched, smiled with satisfaction, then seeing I had left my wine by the chair, went over and brought it to me. When I was up to my neck, he took off his jeans and stood for a minute on the edge of the bath, looking at himself in the browning mirror. He watched himself take a sip of wine, rubbed his body with his other hand, pulled at his foreskin, which had become small and shrunken, then let himself sink into the bath.
‘So I was saying,’ he said, once we were both in the cloudy water, our knees sometimes touching, our bodies mostly submerged but occasionally floating to the top like refuse, ‘that everyone is in their correct place and working accordingly.’
In the suspense of the filling bath, I had missed the importance of his words. I hadn’t seen that behind the rambling about tobacco and brands was a philosophical, almost Hindu, way of dealing with the problem of inequality. The world to Aakash was not illusion; it was real and material, and he was hungry for it. But it was impossible to live in India, especially the new and shaken-up India, without having a way of coping with its inequalities. Zafar had his idea of the poet, and though Aakash had a corresponding idea, a new idea, of himself as a trainer, to which he was willing to ascribe Hindu notions of duty, he also had something else. He had his high idea of himself as a Brahmin. With it came an innate acceptance of fate and the inequality of men. And even though, in the new scheme, Aakash’s caste was not on top, he saw this more as a practical problem than a philosophical one. He said, ‘So now what am I to do, if I don’t have money? Perhaps the day won’t be far off when I’ll have more money than the people who were to be my in-laws, perhaps even more than you. And what will they say then? “Fine, you can marry my daughter”?’
The Temple-goers Page 28