by Roshan Ali
Ajju’s brother, his white hair plastered back, his trousers high and round glasses attached with a thread that went around his neck, came from his group and patted me on the back. ‘Your grandfather was a good man, Ib,’ he said. I nodded and he watched us till we left the crematory and went back to whispering things to his friends.
It felt strange after that; that a creature so powerful could dissolve into ash and have no influence any more on the world, even on its closest people. And maybe death was just the beginning, not for the dead, but for the people the dying weigh down. And once dead, the body sinks to the earth and the ones around are cut off and set free like helium balloons.
It was strange; that total absence of a total presence. The way all his control and all his power, so absolute in life, was so completely, utterly, gone. Such was the effect of immediate men, I felt, that their power and strength lasted only till the warmth remained in their body, and when the body was cold, everyone forgot about them and went about buying vegetables and underwear, haggling.
Amma went through the obligatory sadness, then, when society turned away to tend to other concerns, she was lighter, and though she didn’t smile more, I could see a freeness in her movement and an independence in her decisions that I had never seen before. Without consulting anyone, she moved Appoos back to a nursing home, and began a knitting project. I visited her every day for a few days after Ajju disappeared, concerned, but she seemed in excellent condition.
I had some money, not much, but some, and with that I bought her a knitting set, better than the one she had. When she saw it, she exclaimed and thanked me but I never saw it again and found out later that it was the wrong type of knitting set, the one with short needles, and she used the long type, for better results. But it was the thought that counted, I thought, and was satisfied, I think.
But sometimes, rarely, aided by some chance music, old weather, mother would slip into a blank phase and turn away, perhaps remembering. And apart from that Ajju was never brought up till the day of the will.
That day, his lawyer, Mr Muthappa, a small, energetic man, always in a hurry, summoned us to his office one morning. Standing before his large desk, he looked at us over glasses and said, ‘Where is Mr Surya?’
My mother said he hadn’t come, that flights were very expensive. The lawyer shook his head and asked us to sit.
‘According to General’s will, all his assets are for Mr Surya. The dog is for Ib. But I think so the dog is dead, right? Yes. House, shares, property on Solly Road for Mr Surya. All other items, Mrs Rukmini can dispose of as appropriate. You are Mrs Rukmini, right?’
Apparently, this was to be expected, and the anger and shock inside me died away with a whimper when I saw that mother wasn’t in the least shocked or angry. She knew Ajju would leave his property according to Hindu law; everything to the son. Amma signed some papers and we left with the keys to the house, to empty it, clean it out.
In the auto she sighed and said, ‘Ib, can you go to the house and see what to do? You can take anything you want, OK?’ She gave me the keys and got off near our house and told the driver to take me to Ajju’s. The driver wasn’t too pleased and argued. Amma couldn’t muster the strength to argue in return, so she agreed to his terms and we left her standing on the road looking tired.
Without Ajju, the house seemed normal and small. The roses were in full bloom, too. And the bars were essential to keep the bad people out. The rooms were musty and still smelt of Silly.
It was made clear that the house would go to Foreign Uncle, even though it had been years since he had come; and everything in it, to Amma, the daughter, the one who suffered, trying to get mango juice.
Was there anything of value in the house? Depends on your position on value, where you come from, your hopes and desires, your dreams, your nightmares.
In the upstairs office, there was a drawer filled with old pens, all gifts probably from Ajju’s friends and colleagues. There were pens with golden inlays and silver etchings; engraved wood and jewelled nibs; one made of stone and metal. They were all old, all perfectly cleaned, and in another drawer were the bottles of ink: blood red, sad blue, great black.
These tools were of great interest to me and I packed them into a shoebox.
In the safe in his bedroom, there was money, not much, but enough. For an instant I considered, then dismissed.
On the shelves, small square holes of stillness into the past, pieces of a life that no more stood erect and smiling. Ajju with soldiers and a background of ice and stone; Ajju and the President, a medal received; Ajju and his wife, confidence, pride, stature, and diminutive, traditional, a smile escapes, the thrill, probably, of being photographed, and behind, an anywhere street, a nowhere road, some trees, an old car.
Would Amma want these? In the hall, a piano, untouched, save for the pattering of little mouse feet on the dust on the lid. This would be worth a lot, I thought, and opened the lid, and punched out a nonsense tune. Maybe enough for Appoos to spend an entire year in the nursing home. Tung, tung, tung, tuuuung; a new TV for Amma, tung, tung, tatung, a motorbike for me?
The unanchored notes gasped and floated away, not belonging to any tune, bounced about in the dust and came to rest in the silence, joined the silence, and it felt like it would take a bomb blast to lift this house out from its hole in the past.
And then finally I felt sadness, aided perhaps by those futile notes, by the dust that keeps thickening, by the untouchable past, the inevitable future, and by everything else that pushes us around. Ajju was also once a young man with dreams who sat somewhere and had a thought about girls, about a sunset in another country; and this was the sum of his life—a dusty house with a lonely piano and some photographs.
‘Life is cruel,’ I said aloud and the piano hummed and shuddered in response. It knew how bad things were; the piano always knows.
* * *
I had heard the saying ‘Life is a crazy man’s game’ but had never taken it seriously because crazy people were very rarely fun, and this wasn’t a light thing to say. But a few days after the visit to the lawyer, life, it seemed, was determined to be pretty crazy, unhinged, and surprised all of us.
It was still afternoon, I remember, and I sat with mother going through Ajju’s old records, sorting things out, tying up loose ends when the phone, silent after a long time, shrieked to life. Amma looked tired, and she probably thought it was one more of Ajju’s old friends calling to find out if he was really dead, and was this possible. But her face changed on the phone, from fatigue and boredom to brief joy, then checked, to confusion. She put it down and gaped.
‘That was Surya,’ she said. ‘He doesn’t want property, anything. He’s given up all worldly pleasure. He’s going to Rishikesh.’
Without realizing it, I had jumped up and was half way in the air, then when I landed, somehow I bounced up again. Amma laughed.
‘Are you sure, Ma? Are you absolutely sure?’
She nodded in disbelief. This was excellent news to us. First, because we had no feelings left for Foreign Uncle; second, because it was completely voluntary; and third, because with Ajju’s property and money, Amma could get Appoos the best care available. It really was the best thing that could happen, and Amma realized that and suddenly she stopped laughing and grew concerned.
‘Should I have tried to convince him? I didn’t say anything,’ she said.
‘Don’t say that, Amma. It’s his decision. If he’s giving up everything, I’m sure he thought about it a lot.’
‘Yes, but Pappa wanted him to . . .’
‘That’s on him. All on him.’
She allowed herself to smile again, then felt guilty and pretended to read something on a piece of paper.
‘Means I can send Appoos to Angelou’s,’ she said.
‘You can get a new TV too, Ma!’ I shouted, unable to contain myself. I jumped about the room like a crazy ball, and briefly held her hands and tried to evoke a dance but she shyly pulled her hands aw
ay.
‘I’ll make some coffee, babu, the good coffee. Ask Appoos too.’
I found Appoos by the window in his room looking out. He had heard the celebrations, and was smiling too.
‘Hi, Appoos,’ I said and hugged him sideways.
‘Ib, Ajju is dead. You know that, right?’ he said. He was still smiling. It was difficult to make out the context of Appoos’s expressions.
I said, ‘You want some coffee?’
He looked puzzled.
‘Coffee?’ he said. ‘Tea. Biscuits. Manatee. Pop stars.’
Amma was in the kitchen smiling to herself.
‘You deserve it, Ma,’ I said.
‘Do I, Ib?’ She stirred the coffee thoughtfully and then said, ‘What about Appoos?’
‘What, Ma? You know he’ll get better care at Angelou’s.’
‘I know, I know,’ she said, ‘but I hope he understands.’
* * *
In May that year, we moved offices, from that small, dark room with grills and metal shelves to a shiny sprawl of a building covered in reflective surfaces outside and sleek wood inside. It was quite a jump up for us, and some of the boys were finding it uncomfortable sitting on the brand new swivelling chairs. First, they swivelled; and second, they were soft, and nothing had prepared them for the convenience and comfort. Ajit, the new boy from Mumbai, rejected this modern miracle and acquired for himself a metal stool, blue and circular, from where only he knew. Mr Bagram wasn’t too pleased as he made the rounds one morning and made his opinion quite clear, stopping by Ajit’s table and saying sternly but to nobody in particular: ‘Some people will remain small all their lives and never enjoy life.’ The metal stool was never seen again.
But work dried up for Mr Bagram. The real-estate market was in the gutter, and he began to travel more and look tired. The nature of his work changed; from sitting, it became travelling. From plenty of laughs and talk, it became hurried and silent.
I went along with Mr Bagram often, when he had no specific work for me in the office, on his trips out of town, but never alone. There was always one other guy who barely spoke and the guy changed every time. Some business associate or friend’s contact was Mr Bagram’s introduction. I always wondered why they spoke so little. But they were all right on journeys, and I was glad they weren’t the talkative types who ruin every landscape. We drove mostly, though one time we took a train, but that didn’t work out well because Mr Bagram found it hard to use the loo. ‘When I think of my arse occupying the same airspace as hundreds of other arses, it is very troubling,’ he confessed to me solemnly a few days later, as an attempt to explain and perhaps apologize for being on edge throughout the journey. (He had snapped at me when I asked him if we were reaching before or after lunch). Never again did we take the train and instead drove his brand-new dark-blue Maruti Omni that smelt of apples and rubber. He was proud of his car and kept it clean. ‘My first car,’ he used to say, ‘is the favourite car.’ But that wasn’t enough. He had to insist that it was also the best car. ‘The other ones are not spacious, are not smooth,’ he declared one evening when someone in the same building had bought a new Hyundai car, around which a small crowd had gathered. It was the first snazzy non-Maruti that we had ever seen. ‘But Koreans?’ somebody said, echoing everyone’s thoughts, ‘Are they good?’ ‘LG is there, yaar, Samsung also. They’re very good companies,’ answered someone else wisely. The owner appeared smiling widely and opened his car with the remote from a distance. As he approached, the crowd parted in respectful awe. Mr Bagram wasn’t happy. For a whole day he was found pacing various rooms and muttering to himself. The next morning there was a bright smile on his face because the Hyundai was nowhere to be seen. ‘See, already break down, this Korean shit,’ he said to me when I went to his office. Later we found out that the Hyundai had been in an accident and was completely smashed. The owner was dead too and neither could have been said to be the manufacturer’s fault.
Luckily, and perhaps due to Mr Bagram’s obsession with driving rules, the Omni never found itself in an accident and served us well on our long drives.
One summer morning we left early. Mr Bagram wore a nice yellow shirt, and our silent companion sat at the back with some boxes. The sun was getting ready to shine, resting on one elbow on the horizon. ‘What’s the plan, sir?’ I asked.
‘Breakfast first, Ib, where should we stop?’
There was a brief discussion and we decided on a restaurant that was on the highway. That way we could avoid the traffic in the city. It also happened to be Mr Bagram’s favourite restaurant for coffee and idlis but the dosas weren’t that great. ‘They must ferment the batter a little bit more,’ he advised me once. ‘Should I send them my wife?’
We reached earlier than expected, and the restaurant was just opening up. Steam rose from the kitchen, and the waiters hurried around placing glasses and spoons. Mr Bagram walked in and sat grandly at the nearest table, and anyone who didn’t know better would have thought he owned the place, and not only the place, but every waiter and cook who worked there. But this tactic always seemed to work, and he generally got service very quickly and the waiter was always nervous and often got orders wrong. That day there were no mistakes. We ate slowly as we had been assured by the plump waiter, strangely unintimidated by Mr Bagram and his silent companion, that there was no hurry and that food was made to be enjoyed. ‘If you eating fast, you are not getting the taste,’ he said, with a plump smile.
‘Ib, how is it today?’ asked Mr Bagram as the waiter disappeared into the depths of the kitchen.
‘It’s good, but the sambar could be better.’
‘Yes, yes, always the same complaint, man,’ he said grumpily, but he knew like me that the things we hate never change.
With coffee, I needed a cigarette. As I left the table and made my way to the back where smoking was not frowned upon, I heard Mr Bagram explaining the art of making good dosas to the silent guy. ‘You need to be spreading evenly,’ he was saying, ‘you need a steady hand.’
The posterior of that transient establishment, and it was transient to all but those who worked there, was quieter and more local, because nobody cares about the backs of buildings and what impression it gives. Without the style and structuring of the front, it felt more natural and was cooler somehow. I lit a cigarette, the first of the day, and sucked in its healing vapours. This was the best part of my day, when the first wave of nicotine made its way through my body and the morning air was cool on my skin.
The cigarette was finished and I returned to my troubled companions. Mr Bagram was still explaining something, waving his arms around, and the silent guy nodded.
‘Ib, please tell me,’ he said as I sat down, ‘why are you smoking? It is unhealthy.’
I smiled helplessly and nodded. Mr Bagram shook his head and went back to illustrating to his silent audience the subtleties of dosa-making.
Business was always at the forefront of Mr Bagram’s consciousness. There was nothing more vital to his mind. In the same way women were my muse and I would spend hours thinking about smooth skin and firm, flowing hair, Mr Bagram spent his entire life on some business deal or other, either in his head in the form of plans, or in real life. He was hardly at home, and I had never met his wife or family. That was a part of his life that he just didn’t consider introducing to other people, and instead spoke of how much money he had managed to make on a deal that nobody else would have gone near.
That particular day, we were on our way to see his oldest and most respected client, a powerful politician of some sort, who normally stayed at his government-appointed palace in the city, but that weekend being a long one, was out in his country castle, in a green and coffee-covered part of the land, between hills and water. From the road, on both sides, coffee plantations spread their dark-green curls far, and amongst this deep green, tall silvery trees stood like sentries. ‘Silver oaks,’ Mr Bagram said, as if following my gaze, ‘and see the pepper that grows on them.’ He
pointed towards the trunks where vines clutched and twisted their way up the strong grey wood. ‘There was some near my house, where I grew up,’ I said, looking out of the window, into the cool, dark depths of the wood and leaves.
‘You need to go back, Ib,’ said Mr Bagram, ‘you need to go back home.’
I fell asleep soon after, and the last thing I remember was the smell of coffee flowers, thick and sweet, and the luscious howl of the wind in the trees.
When I woke up, we had slowed down. We were off the tar and on dirt. The car shuddered and complained over every bump and rock. ‘God, hell this road,’ Mr Bagram was muttering. Soon, we saw a grey stone wall, at least nine-feet high, that began suddenly by the right of the road and kept us company all the way till a tall black gate, like an attentive sentry who never left his post. Two guards stepped around our vehicle—they had guns. A few brief words and we were through the hard metal and into a landscaped and smooth world—lamp-lined paths, trimmed lawns, clipped hedges. Our silent companion let out a long whistle. ‘Wealth has grown,’ he said.
The house, at the end of a winding cement path, was entirely shades of red. The walls were brick with strips of red oxide and the roof sat comfortably on these walls, like a Vietnamese hat: two hats, one held up by the walls and another smaller one, half its size, floating above on four red metal pillars. White-framed windows punctuated this rust red giant, perfectly shaped rectangular windows that provided relief and character. Beyond the house were the hills.
We stepped out, Mr Bagram first, then me and last our nameless friend. Immediately, the cold nibbled at my skin. This and my nervousness were suddenly banging at my hand as one does desperately on a door when there’s no answer, making my hand shake.