Baaz

by Anuja Chauhan

  ‘Okay,’ they chorus.

  ‘Good.’

  An odd pause follows. Clearly, something remains unsaid. Finally Mamuni edges even closer, pins Tinka with her beady eye and says earnestly, ‘You’re not angry with Prasanto?’

  Tinka has been aware of Prasanto all along, sullen-faced, hanging back from the rest of the group, holding a hand drawn Get Well Soon card so tight it is all crumpled and dented. Now she sinks to her knees and addresses him directly.

  ‘No,’ she says softly, ‘I know it wasn’t your fault – you didn’t know how badly it would go, and you tried to stop it later.’

  The other kids turn to look at Prasanto. There are dark circles under his troubled eyes, Tinka has already noticed, and bruises on his arm, just below the edge of the half-sleeved sweater.

  ‘So, basically, thanks,’ she says. ‘Thanks, yaar, Prasanto.’

  The children murmur to each other, surprised and happy. But Tinka’s eyes are on the boy. His face works, he gives a massive gulp and a sort of convulsive shudder. For a moment, it seems that he may break down. Then, with valiant effort, he manages to school his face back into its usual smug grin, shaking his head, scratching his nose and saying nothing.

  ‘Well?’ Mamuni demands of him belligerently. ‘Say something!’

  Prasanto grins, his impudent eyes rising to meet Tinka’s.

  ‘Kawta chokh,’ he blurts out.

  Which immediately sends the little contingent into gales of laughter.

  Grey eyes.

  Laughing, threatening, shaking her head, Tinka hushes them and ushers them out of the lawn. They troop down to the Club’s main gate in a boisterous band, growing sober as the time comes to say farewell. Tinka feels a pang as she shakes each little brown hand and kisses every grubby face goodbye. Then she heads for the reception to ask for a vase for the roses and mor-pankhi, damp-eyed and sniffy, and feeling decidedly deflated.

  Because with the refugee kids gone and Ishaan on full-time war duty, what is there for her to do in Calcutta, really?

  This is silly, she tells herself sternly as she climbs the wide marble steps that lead to the reception, you didn’t come here to befriend children or get embroiled in romantic relationships. You came here to work, to make the world aware of what’s going on here, to get some pictures and pieces printed. Luckily, WWS finally seems to be interested in your pictures, though, let’s face it, this is basically because (1) their regular war photographer has been shot dead at the border, (2) they’ve just discovered that you’re a famous pin-up girl in India.

  ‘Only thing is, we don’t want any more sweet artsy pictures of refugee children and Mother Teresa, Tinka,’ they’d told her over the phone last night. ‘We need action pictures. You know, of bombs exploding, planes burning, people dying, guerrillas chucking grenades. Can you manage that?’

  When she’d told them that that wasn’t really her sort of thing, they’d tried to wheedle her into it by offering her all sorts of seductive perks.

  ‘The press corps are all holed up at the Intercontinental Hotel in Dacca – it’s very close to AFS Tezgaon, and it’s a five-star with fantastic room service and a fab pool. We’ll pay for your suite and organize all your permissions. You have an American passport, so that’ll be easy. And don’t worry, it’s been designated a neutral zone by the International Red Cross, so it’s perfectly safe…’

  ‘Hah, if it’s so very safe and so very neutral, why aren’t they rushing there to feast on the five-star food?’ Kainaz fui had sniffed when informed of this offer. ‘Because they are scared the bombs meant for Tezgaon will land on their heads, that’s why! You saw how bad that Maddy’s aim was! He kept trying to put a bread roll into his mouth and kept missing. Don’t fall for it, Tinka!’

  Tinka had asked for a little time to think the offer over.

  Not, as she’d let her aunt think, because she was apprehensive of the security situation in Dacca, but because (humiliating though it is to admit this!) her thinking processes have been suspended till she meets Ishaan again. Once she sees him and is reassured that he is safe, her life, which seems to have been thrown into a sort of clenched, agonized limbo, will start moving forward again.

  But how much longer to wait? Should she just drive down to the base and demand to see him? She’s done it before, she can do it again. Maidenly reticence has never really been her style, anyway.

  I’ll check once again if he’s called for me, she decides, and if he hasn’t, I’ll just go down there and find out.

  At the reception she asks for a vase and, when they’re handing it to her, enquires casually (though her cheeks are flaming) if there have been any phone calls for her.

  ‘No, but a gentleman has called to see you ma’am.’ The receptionist beams at her. ‘Your aunt asked him to go up to the suite. He’s with her now.’

  ‘Oh!’ Tinka’s hands fly to her hair, fluffing it up, while her heart starts to thud hard against her ribs. ‘Did he give a name?’

  The receptionist shakes his head. ‘No, but he looked like a military gentleman. I think he came from the base.’

  Tinka flashes a smile of such wattage that the young receptionist staggers back, instantly infatuated, then hurries up the staircase taking the wooden steps three at a time. Thank God he’s safe … How do I look? Should I nip into the ladies’ … no, that’s silly … Okay, here goes.

  She stumbles over the last step, smoothens out her clothes, takes a deep breath and pushes open the door to the suite.

  To come face to face, not with Fabulous Shaanu Bhaisaab, but a much older man. Square-shouldered, thick-waisted, dressed in a striped T-shirt and khakhi pants, his bushy white moustache bristling under a big hawk nose and quarrelsome, rheumy eyes.

  A man whom she’d naively imagined to be pottering about in his large white kothi in Defence Colony, ‘knee-deep in Punjabis’ as his sister disdainfully puts it.

  Major General Ardisher Dadyseth (retd) to be exact.

  Tinka sags against the doorjamb, the joyous lurching of her heart transforming neatly into a dismal lurching of the stomach.

  ‘Hello, Dad.’

  • • •

  ‘What nice flowers,’ Kainaz Dadyseth says in a tinkling, fake-cheerful voice. ‘Where did you get them, darling?’

  Tinka shoots her a burningly reproachful look, and Kainaz, who is wearing a tie-and-dye dressing gown, a tilted eye mask and a guilty expression, hurriedly looks away.

  Tinka enters the room, shuts the door and faces her father.

  He looks older. And distinctly grumpier. His white handlebar moustache, that symbol of pride and pompousness, seems to have taken over his entire face. He seems to be lurking behind it, like a soldier behind a shield, eyeing his daughter resentfully.

  ‘Put down that foliage,’ he tells her without preamble. His voice is as rusty as it used to be, and his habit of clearing his throat every now and then as he speaks has got more accentuated. ‘And, arrrrhum! get your bags. You’re coming back to Delhi with me. I’m going to arrrrhum! get you married.’

  ‘No,’ Tinka says, softly and steadily, then she strides across the living room and slams the bedroom door shut with a shaking hand.

  Damnit!

  Ardisher bloody Dadyseth.

  With his usual dampening aura of ‘duty’ and ‘patriotism’ and ‘no-backtalk, if you please’ and general party-pooper-ness.

  Just when things were going so well. (Of course, there is a war on and everything, and people are dying on both sides of the border, but still!) She is taking pictures and helping people deal with the horrors, and she might even have met someone special.

  Tinka rakes her hands through her short hair and slides down against the wall to sit on the bedroom floor.

  Even through the heavy teak door, she can hear her father grousing and blustering. Stray phrases reach her ears – ‘totally irresponsible of you’ and ‘shameless’ and ‘running wild’ and ‘that bloody draft-dodger Muhammad Ali’ and ‘those ridiculous John Lemon songs
’.

  They are followed by ‘everybody is laughing at us’ and ‘childless women like you don’t know how to handle children’.

  Tinka rolls her eyes and throws open the door, making the general’s eyes start from their sockets.

  ‘First, she’s not childless, she has me,’ she snaps. ‘And second, she does a much better job of parenting than you.’

  His lips curl, but he doesn’t react. Instead, he asks irritably, ‘Are you packed?’

  Tinka stares at him in disbelief. ‘I’m not coming.’

  Ardisher Dadyseth glares at his sister. ‘Why isn’t she packed?’

  Kainaz, who has recovered her composure, raises a haughty eyebrow and shrugs. ‘Don’t ask me. I’m just a childless woman who doesn’t know how to handle children.’

  He glowers across the room at both of them, his moustache bristling with frustration.

  ‘I’ve spoilt you,’ he says finally. ‘All this American living and Miranda House and arrrhmm! riding lessons and “You’ve come a long way baby”. I should have put you in a putri pathshala and married you off when you turned eighteen, that’s what they do to girls in the families your arhhhm! new friend comes from.’

  ‘What?’ Tinka blinks, then turns to look at her aunt with huge betrayed eyes. ‘You told him about Ishaan?’

  Kainaz fui spreads out her hands helplessly. ‘Bachche, he is your father. He has a right to know. And after what happened that day, with all those men chasing us, screaming randi randi randi…’

  ‘What?’ the general roars, looking from daughter to sister, his face reddening alarmingly.

  ‘Oh, don’t be such a pompous ass, Ardisher,’ Kainaz says. ‘I called you here because I thought you could help with the situation. But if you’re going to jump like a stuck pig every time we tell you something, you might as well not have bothered.’

  The general’s face grows even more livid (red as a chukandar, thinks his unloving sister uncharitably. And with his flashy white moustache festooned across it, he looks a lot like a tastefully wrapped Christmas present).

  ‘From what I can tell, you have been encouraging her to behave disgracefully, Kainaz,’ he thunders. ‘This assault in the mandi—’

  ‘She’s exaggerating,’ Tinka interrupts impatiently. ‘And anyway, Ishaan saved us.’

  ‘So what?’ The general pulls at his massive moustache. ‘If you hadn’t done that arrrhmm! stupid, shameless ad, nobody would have been chasing you in the first place.’

  ‘Well, if you hadn’t put so much pressure on me to get married married married, maybe I wouldn’t have done it!’ she flashes. ‘I can’t believe you got him to come here, fui!’

  Kainaz looks desperately ashamed of herself.

  ‘I’m sorry, darling, I panicked…’

  ‘It was the only intelligent thing you’ve done in years!’ roars the general.

  ‘But maybe it’s all for the best?’ continues Kainaz like there’s been no interruption. ‘I mean, now that there is a war on, maybe you should go home with him.’

  Up shoots Tinka’s chin.

  ‘I’m going to Dacca.’

  ‘Oh no, you’re not.’ Brother and sister spring to their feet, looking remarkably alike.

  They are alike, Tinka thinks, feeling betrayed and furious as she looks from her father’s beetroot-red face to Kainaz’s distressed one. I thought Kainaz fui was different – broad-minded, liberal – but I should have known that anybody who says Betty Freedom instead of Betty Friedan could only be a farzi feminist.

  ‘You can’t stop me,’ she says quietly.

  ‘I don’t think young Ehsaan will let you go to Dacca either, darling,’ Kainaz says in a gentler voice. ‘It isn’t safe.’

  ‘I don’t need young Ehsaan’s permission,’ Tinka snaps. ‘And it’s Ishaan!’

  ‘Yes yes, Ishaan the kisaan,’ grunts Ardisher Dadyseth, thoroughly disgusted. ‘From Haryana, I believe. Typical bloody bumpkin.’

  This makes Tinka so angry that for a moment all she can do is gape. Then she pulls in a quantity of air and says, her tone blistering, ‘You are such a hypocrite! You go on and on about patriotism, but you think some Indians are better than others. You think Shaanu’s good enough to die for India, but not good enough to enter your social circle!’

  ‘I’m not a hypocrite!’ General Ardisher throws out his chest. ‘My son died for India, too!’

  All the fight goes out of Tinka.

  ‘Oh no, he didn’t,’ she says in a tired voice. ‘You bullied your son into joining the Army even though he didn’t want to, and he went to Chhamb to defend a stupid little border—’

  ‘Borders are not stupid!’ the general roars, starting to his feet, veins sticking out of his forehead. ‘Soldiers live and die to protect every inch of border!’

  ‘… and he killed six Pakistanis with his bare hands and was so shattered that he came home and shot himself.’

  General Dadyseth’s eyes bulge out frighteningly. ‘He was cleaning his gun,’ he thunders. ‘It was arrrhm! an accident.’

  ‘Yeah yeah,’ says Tinka wearily and stalks out of the room.

  • • •

  Shaanu is attacking his boxing bag with savage energy when there is a knock on the door of his quarters. He ignores it and continues to punish the bag, his hair slick with sweat, his eyes glazed with concentration. But the knocking continues.

  ‘Damnit!’

  He throws one last punch, leaving the bag swinging, then strides to the door and throws it open.

  Tinka Dadyseth is standing in the corridor.

  He barely has time to shut the door before she hugs him.

  ‘Thank God you’re safe.’

  Shaanu finds he can’t speak. Filled with a profound gladness, he clasps her in his arms, rests his cheek on the top of her head and gives into the pleasure of just holding her.

  She frowns.

  ‘You’ve cut your back.’

  ‘Minor flak,’ he says into her hair. ‘You should see the other guy.’

  She pulls back, upset.

  ‘Is he dead?’

  ‘Would you rather I was?’

  It is flippantly said, but there is an edge to his voice.

  ‘No.’ Tinka shakes her head fervently and hugs him again, shutting her eyes tight. Oh God, it feels so good to hold him! She wants to cry, but she … will … not. She’s cried all the way to Kalaiganga and that is really enough crying for the day.

  As she leans into his warm, rock-steady body and inhales him gratefully, she makes a discovery.

  ‘You’re shirtless.’

  ‘Uh, yeah. I’m also sweaty, sorry, I was working out – I’m a bit offended it took you so long to notice, actually.’

  She smiles against his chest. She could get used to this chest. It is smooth and firm and sculpted and highly touchable. It also features a gold chain with a small eagle pendant, which she isn’t too mad about.

  ‘I’ve noticed now.’

  ‘Can I put a shirt on?’ he asks formally. ‘It’s … a little cold.’

  Reluctantly, she lets him go. He walks down the corridor to the bedroom and shuts the door behind him – with unnecessary emphasis, Tinka thinks, piqued.

  Alone for the time being, she looks slowly around the room. It is painted the pale MES yellow of her early childhood homes – Wellingdon, Dinjaan, Babina. There is a round dining table with four chairs, a well-worn sofa before a fireplace stacked with dry firewood and a makeshift divan created out of two battered black trunks, with letters stenciled out in white paint.

  I. FAUJDAAR

  There is a mantelpiece with passing-out-parade pictures, the entire Faujdaar brood posing in a blooming mustard field, several trophies and ribboned medals, and through an iron jaali-ka-darwaza, a balcony overlooking the parade ground, with a battered red boxing bag suspended from the fan-hook.

  ‘It’s not Ultimate Road, but it’s home,’ Shaanu remarks as he emerges from the bedroom, freshly showered and very properly covered in grey track pants
and a cream cable-knit cricket jersey. ‘Should I light a fire? I have to fly a sortie in two hours, though, so it’ll have to be a small one.’

  Two hours. Is he trying to tell her something? And why hasn’t he phoned her all these days? Surely he could’ve taken out time to tell her he was safe?

  ‘Yes, please.’

  Five minutes later, a crackling blaze is throwing up jumping shadows all over the room. Tinka settles down on the couch, kicking off her shoes, staring at the flames and sucking her thumb pensively.

  ‘How did you get it going so fast? It always takes me ages.’

  ‘Arrey, I’m a gaon-ka-gora.’ He flashes her a quick grin and hands her a small glass filled with hot brandy. ‘Besides, commando training. Cheers.’

  She doesn’t sip the drink. Putting it down beside her, she asks, her voice ragged with emotion, ‘Can you please tell me what is so goddamn holy about a wretched border?’

  He looks at her in surprise.

  ‘Arrey, surely you know! Borders keep order. All countries have borders. If we don’t protect our borders, the Pakistanis and the Chinese would soon be sitting in Delhi. And if they don’t protect theirs, we’d swarm up sooner or later and gaardo a tiranga at Lahore Fort.’

  ‘So what?’ she demands passionately. ‘It’s all one planet!’

  He sighs, looking like he would like to roll his eyes, but instead he picks up her glass and hands it to her.

  ‘Just have your drink, hmmm?’

  She stares at him mutinously for a moment, then snatches the glass from his hand and takes a gulp.

  ‘Good girl.’

  He doesn’t sit beside her, though she’s left space for him. Instead, he drops down on the floor, resting his back against the couch.

  Then he adds, ‘To friendship.’

  Tinka splutters and lowers her glass.

  ‘Friendship?’

  He nods guardedly, stirring the flames with his foot.

  ‘Yeah.’

  Tinka starts to get a very bad feeling in the pit of her stomach. She sits up. ‘Why friendship now, suddenly?’

  He looks at her, the Kota-grey eyes troubled, and quickly looks away. ‘Well, I’ve been thinking this over, and I feel that, given that the war is now officially on, it would be better if you and I were just friends.’